hi all

me and me gaming group have been playing deathwatch and dark heresy for a while now and have been looking a RT for a while now recentlyi ordered the rouge trader core book and into the storm recently and we are looking forward having many epic adventures among the stars

my intention for this post was to find out peoples experiences with RT and its sourcebooks as well as peoples favorite adventures they have had or even just humorous/emotional moments from your games so we kan get an idea of what to expect when we have our games and to giv u ghuys a chance to remanice

also if you could tell us what does not work that would also be appreciated

thanks

sam

hippodude21 said:

Disclaimer: RT is my favourite, so I'm quite partial!

The best part of about the game, for me, is that you can run a game that is stationary AND adventure/exploration. What I mean by that is that most games, you have a home base (maybe) but you basically spend your time leaving that home base in your adventures and the game is directed outward: find the heretic, rescue the politician, reclaim the artefact, etc. And you generally do this stuff for other people.

However, RT is great because you bring your base with you, and in addition to having things to do and places to go, you also have to take care of your ship and storylines inside the ship. I've made a character (Macharias the Mendicant) that has served on the same ship for 30+ years as Navigator and in that time has set himself up as a purveyor of illegal substances and hard to get items, a (not always so petty) crime boss. I've got secret emergency caches of supplies all over the ship and contacts in the underdeck, etc that get me all sorts of information. People in the lower decks know him as the Blessed One who carries them through the dangers of the warp, and he holds court where people come to ask for blessings and favours. Of course, with the captain and the more powerful, he's a grovelling wussbag! The captain, of course, knows about his dealings but seeings as it's pretty minor in the grand scope of thing, he tolerates it. And, it also helps that Macharias hears a LOT about what's happening in the bowels of the ship, information which the captain has found very useful in the past...

It would be hard to play that out in a "regular" setting at times because the source of the intrigue is not always around. But in RT, while we travel around the sector managing our business, the politics surround the whole Endeavour-ing. You get the benefits making planetfal and shooting your way through Death World jungles, trading weapons with the Tau, hiring on some Kroot mercenaries to turn the tides of a battle on the edge of a system. But you also get to play out all of this personal business which we have found to be great for generating great roleplaying!

Also, RT allows you to break the rules - use illegal tech, Xeno artefacts, whatever. That's always fun. We have Tau passenger on board right now, for instance... And the power levels involved make for some epic storylines!

I guess the summary of all this is: it makes for stories which are really driven by and tied to the characters in ways that is often different from DW or DH.

I have a bunch of links I've been saving up, from this forum and from rpg.net, where RT is also discussed. I highly recommend reading the "Into the Maw" Actual Play write ups.

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?488776-Rogue-Trader-RPG-The-Thread-of-Endeavors

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=159&efcid=3&efidt=374691&efpag=1#403481

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?495607-Rogue-Trader-Cheatsheets-GM-Tools

http://darkreign40k.com/drjoomla/

http://roguetraderottawa.wikispaces.com/

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?569682-Rogue-Trader-any-advice-for-someone-DMing-it-the-first-time

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?410651-Dark-Heresy-Defining-Hive-Sibellus-OR-Reason-s-Thread-of-Ultimate-Awesome

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?489083-Rogue-Trader-Into-the-Maw-or-How-I-Became-Incredibly-Wealthy

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?468497-Rogue-Trader-The-Lord-Captain-Munchausen

http://www.scribd.com/doc/44386034/Rogue-Trader-New-Ship-Components

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=123&efcid=3&efidt=388948&efpag=0

Well first of all, welcome to the system

The great things about Rogue Trader is that while the Gamemaster can dangle carrots and force unforeseen circumstances on the players, like he can in any system, In rogue trader it is usually, if not always the players who control the movement of the storyline. The gamemastering becomes less about preparing a thorough story, and more of a dynamic reactionary narration wherein he must shape the world around the actions of 3-7 powerhungry, freetrading, scumbags cruising around in their flying fortress.

I like to compare the gamemastering to my experiences mastering Old World of Darkness (Death to all those who play NWOD and false metal). My playstyle when mastering WOD was to spend an hour or so, drawing up a list of movers and shakers, and colourful characters that my players could or would run into. Then I drew up their relation to eachother with some dotted line, wrote 1 line of motivation for each of them and voila. Now my players can do WHATEVERTHEFUCK they want in this city/country/county/block/etc, and I'll be there to respond to their characters actions, and toss in appropriate NPCs that can help the story along.

Despite Rogue Trader being a system that has rules for conquering planets, rules for aquiring the most expensive substances and equipment produced in the Imperium, and rules for social encounters, it is (oddly enough) a very characterdriven game. Since every individual member of the captains closest crew make up some very powerful individuals, their whims and personalities could very well shape the fate of millions.

I WOULD write more, but I don't feel like it all of a sudden. (Spontaneously tired)

Have fun

From my experience, I think this game needs more GM attention than Dark Heresy or Deathwatch, partly because it's very open and partly because of the scale things are on. If your GM's prepared to put time and thought into it, and the players will readily accept rulings, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun.

War stories? We recently fought a pink horror roughly the size of my flagship (or maybe there were two, it's easy to forget in the excitement, that's why one has Remembrancers) and our GM is a big fan of the Critical Tables, and chose to look up the damage we had inflicted on the beast to see how it would meet its end (or return to the Warp, at least).

This resulted in a badly-wounded, gigantic pink horror throwing up over my flagship shortly before disappearing back from whence it came. The ratings were cleaning it up for months. And then we needed new ratings to clean the old ones up.

I'm sure there's a moral to this story, but I for one don't want to draw it.