Hi

I am about to star running the preview adventures for Rogue Trader (Forsaken Bounty & Dark Frontier)

As i don't have the time to write a campaign at the moment so I was thinking of running the pre-generated adventures (Lure of the Expance and the Frozen Reaches)

But I was wondering if they are worth getting (not run any pre-written campaigns before), if not then can anyone point me in the direction of a good fan written campaign.

The pre-written adventures are quite good, but don't do much to handle your players going off the rails; a particular endeavour sequence involving a battleship in Lure is comparatively easy to break if you aren't a railroading/creative GM. Frozen Reaches gets a little wonky at the end, the mass combat rules aren't the best they could be. They're both definitely worth investing in though.

This pretty much works for every prewritten adventure.

Once you get the hang of a little improvisation, it doesnt matter wether you prebuy or create yourself. I use a mix myself.

I use scenes from prewritten adventures and put them into my own stuff.

Rogue Trader is one of those settings, where players can go crazy on an adventure. And they have the power to do so.

Spoilers to Follow: If you are a GM it doesnt matter

Lure of the Expanse is acceptable. There are some really wonky secenes in there (strange eating habits), some downright heresy (strike a deal with people who imprisoned missionaries), and an endboss killed by a valkyrie fire mission.

Frozen reaches is quite good. The mass combat system isnt. Its a simple rules construct to provide a purely narrative background. The troops involved make no sense (1 billion city has less troops than the US, let alone China, and this is supposed to be 40k). Nothing insourmountable though.

So basically, if you dont have time to prepare a prewritten adventure, you must be ready to have said adventure crumble within a few minutes and you having to improvise 100%. With a little preparation and some knowledge of your groups tendencies, it is fun to play those adventures.

I even started with the starting advenutre from the core rulebook. Fun enough to play, and provides a nice introductory run into the expanse.

I'm running Lure of the Expanse at the moment as the starting adventure for my campaign. With the group about a third of the way through, I'm finding it quite easy to run and full of interesting options for the PCs. The middle 50% or so is very open ended, and while it is a rather long adventure, it gives the players a lot of room to do whatever they want for large periods. It's also very easy to drop in as many or as few side-missions and plots as you wish (rather than limiting the Heathen Stars portion to the five (six with the web enhancement) critical locations presented in the adventure, I've given them a very wide range of systems to visit and explore along the way).

It does take some off-the-cuff GMing at times to make it work, but if you've got an even moderately pro-active group and a willingness to focus on the stuff that works for you and ignore the bits that don't, it provides a very well done adventure framework that's easy to turn into a great game.

I haven't run Frozen Reaches yet, but having read it, I am thoroughly impressed -- it looks to me to be one of the best official modules I've encountered in any system.

I agree with Vornonesh that the GM needs to have studied the modules in advance, and have a good feel for the bits with upcoming relevance before each session -- however, this is not to say that you need to know the material backwards, you just need a good sense of the relevant themes and critical details.

Ahh yes,

i did not want to leave the impression that you need to know every detail, just the bits that might come in "handy".

Spoiler for LotE:

There is a scene where a trade endeavour can be easily completed, by taking the imprisoned missionaries back, and leaving the barbarians to their unbelief. Straight heresy in my eyes (since the missionaries are semipresent). At least one other GM had his players call an immediate conquest of the planet (which makes sense for me as well).

Stuff like this is what you need to be prepared for. Is your group a semi fanatical "For the God-Emperor" party, or can they be downright shady at times. This information alone, lets you gauge alot of their general reactions to the "theme" of every endeavour / subplot present in a campaign/adventure.

Thank you for your insights in to the pre-written adventures. I may give them a go.

I am tempted by The Frozen Reaches (would it benefit from the use of Deathwatch Horde rules?).

I am good at improvising and planning on the fly. (I once ran a Serenity game that was completely improvised). I have ideas for a campaign but I don't have the time, knowledge or the confidence at the moment to build a campaign.

Arnu said:

I've found it fun to download free adventures from games like the old D&D RPG and flesh out the background and statlines for RT. I can't wait to run 'Against the Giants' with my RT group... it'll be a blast. Iron Men...

That said the pre-written adventures are worth buying if you intend to run them. Change things up a bit to keep them on their toes in case anyone reads 'ahead'. I especially liked the GM screen - not only do you get a actual GM Screen u can use but you get a nice adventure that is easily read in an hour and playable right quick if you are in a hurry.

Arnu said:

Sounds cool.

No it wont help to use DW horde rules. Frozen reaches has deeper problems: (im going by memory, so i might be slightly off)

Around 3 divisons in defense or maybe 6 regiments, depending on how you count (real wolrd vs 40k), to defend a 1 billion people city.

Armsmen (RT ship crew) are nearly as powerful per company as a batallion of PDF.

The combnat system simply compares numbers and then decides on either a loss / close victory / decisive victory. PC interaction is by guessing (with scouting) estimates and then assigning defenses (which piles numbers onto a battlezone), a few rolls (command etc. ups that number) and then the battle happens. By comparing those two numbers.

Now dont get me wrong, the adventure has lots of great scenes. (which i wont spoiler, since they are truly fun), but the actual combat system is rather meh. RAW, youd tip the balance by 1000% if you bring a single transport ship with troops. Upping the troop numbers is easy enough, but i can be fun to replace the war with a different campaign system, if you have one.

Generally, I think the Rogue Trader pre-written adventures are the best of the 40k series, and some of the best anywhere. The Rogue Trader ones are fairly open ended really, allowing GMs to tweak things as required, depending on the group in question and their actions.

That's my honest opinion, by the way - don't let the fact I playtested Lure of the Expanse and Frozen Reaches fool you

MILLANDSON said:

Oh the irony.....

Please take this as the jest it is meant to be . This is aimed as much at the general RPG industry at is it at FFG.

Voronesh said:

Irony?

Troop numbers.

That is stuff that can be crosschecked within 5 minute using google.

Frozen Reaches is so wrong on so many accounts its not even funny. Ofc the general adventure is good. But if it was written by a non military minded guy (i dont know the author so this is speculation) he really should read 2-5 wikipedia articles about WW2 operations. The troop numbers are good for a single battle, maybe a small operation. The all out war for survival of a supercity of a full billion people? No simply no.

The irony is rather that matters like that, (which really detract from immersion) and its still one of the better adventures out there. (Id argue over LotE with you, but Frozen Reaches is good.)

We are WW2 interested people (The co GM and me), so anything like that had me going, huh? Same 40k problem as ever (for me as i know 40k). If i told him that, we could have an instant discussion about troop deployment sizes in the middle of the adventure for few minutes. Killing any immersion existant. (RT is his first 40k game. Before all he knew was, thats its a tabletop game about how 1000 guys conquer planets etc. Small troop numbers abound in the whole hobby)

Though I'm yet to run , I also though Frozen Reach looked excellent, some solid encounters, good npc write ups and a well defined location.

My players are definitely not military minded poeple, and nor am I, the odd numbers of troops don't matter so much. but as you say, troop numbers are low across 40k as a whole.

it's pretty simple to solve though, just double or triple the numbers. Bam, problem solved.

Agmar_Strick said:

Just a nitpick. But you are right.

Think about putting a factor of 20-50 there. Then it makes sense.

Thatd give you at least 50+ Divisions in the area, which i would consider low for 40k. (waaaaaaagghhhhhh and all that)

Just a small information, China has over 2 million (active) soldiers. Enough for around a 100 divisions of varying types. And they are not in a 40k state of permanent war. (Overall population is comparable to Damaris city). These are numbers where 40k should start and expand upon.

This is around 0.2% of the total population. During wartime, up to a full percent can be easily drafted. Anything approaching 10% is hard to pull off unless you let the homefront suffer (Stalin). (take this with a grain of salt, this isnt necessarily truly researched information, but rather an amateurs knowledge)

I will be running Frozen Reaches soon myself. The numbers threw me as well, so I am going for a double ended solution.

Firstly, the population of Damaris itself seems to be on the high side, so I am cutting it down to "only" 300,000,000. At the 0.2% rate, that means an armed force of 600,000 to account for. Lets assume a 50/50 split Navy / Army

Now as to the armed forces, I'm going to multiply the numbers by 10. My PC's will still be able to bring considerable forces to bear (a barracks full of 5,000 troops and a second ship, potentially in range, with another 5,000 troops on board), and the "depleted" numbers for Damaris will be the result of sending a recent tithe of troops back to the Imperium as well as a fool-hardy charge against landed orks before the siege proper begins (a cassulaty list of about 120,000 in one day should scare them a bit).

For the Damarian Navy, 300,000 pesonel would translate into 70k on the station, say another 30k on other satelite stations, deep space augers etc. That means that their navy needs about 12 system ships. Might sound like a lot, but my PC's can muster a fleet of a BC, a FF, a DD and three armed and dangerous transports if they call on all their resources.

I think I might need more Orks...

Basically you have the setip for a great war. The book handles the social stuff perfectly. (Its really good in that regard).

Damaris could be turned into Stalingrad though . Simply up the Orks to a million or two, and have new Roks dropping in every few days (Those Freebooterz are good in space, but their ground combat skills suffered apparently). The orbital space moon can regularly handle half or more of those Roks coming in at Damaris, but those dead kunning Freebooterz start landing close to some other cities as well.....

This alone can potentially drag the campagin into a multi month affair. Simply replace the weekly calendar with a monthly one.

BTW i love how you will tell your players about casualty numbers. Really rams home how much the defense of this planet is going to cost.

Stalingrad cross-bred with the Somme will be the feel I am going for. I like the idea of turning the weeks into months on the calendar. Suitably epic and consider it yoinked!

And as for ded-kunnin, how about sending the roks into the planet where the orbital space moon isn't?

Yes, it can even give you the chance to introduce other cities, not so tied up into the Imperial governor politics. The other cities will have some basic from of defense, but maybe need that little bit of extra help in the form of the PCs....

Especially considering how the adventure pretty much starts with how to destroy a rok, this could get you a chance to get the PCs away from the capital, have them fight a glorious battle, only to return that character X (perceived as incompetent by the PCs) has done either something really good or really bad.

I had not given a great deal of thought to either the population of Damaris or the scale of the conflict in my first read-through of the module. However, having taken a closer look in light of this thread, I believe I am going to make the following adjustments.

The planetary population will be reduced to one billion. Military forces will total approximately five million, of which three million are ground-based and aeronautica. Combat units will make up about one million of that number, and about a third of these will be deployed directly in the defence of the capital.

1st and 2nd Damaris Highland Levy Regiments
These units are replaced with eight infantry divisions, each consisting of approximately 24,000 combat troops.

• Four infantry regiments
• One armoured regiment
• One artillery regiment
• One administration and support regiment

Each division can be broken down into four regimental combat groups.

Sphinx Heavy Guard
These two companies are replaced with two armoured divisions each numbering about 20,000 combat troops.

• Two heavy armoured regiments
• Two armoured fist regiments
• One SP artillery regiment
• One armoured reconnaissance battalion
• One airmobile battalion
• One administration and support regiment

Highland Wardens
The Highland wardens are replaced with two aeronautica wings each consisting of:

• Three fighter squadrons
• Three bomber squadrons

Magistratum Forces
Enforcer cadres become regiments, approximately 6,000 troops each
Suppression cadre becomes a regiment, approximately 4,000 troops

Tech Guard Forces
Two cohorts become two legions of approximately 3,500 skitarii each.

Conscript Militia Forces
Two of the Blitz/Orleans armsen units become Damaris Conscript Militia Divisions, each consisting of five infantry regiments – approximately 30,000 troops per division.

Lady Orleans
The two companies of household troops are replaced with two well-equipped mercenary infantry regiments being transported by Blitz, about 6,000 troops each.

Blitz and Orleans each supply one regiment of mustered armsmen, approximately 12,000 strong. Orleans other two armsmen units have been changed to Damaris conscripts as above.

Locke
Locke has no barracks with which to transport a sizeable ground force. I considered hand-waving this limitation away, until I suddenly realised that her storm troopers could be replaced with a few squads of space marines being carried for some other purpose.

PC Forces
Each point of crew strength (or double point for smaller vessels) will represent approximately 1,000 armsmen. This somewhat over-values their combat strength, but I don't see it as a major issue.

These changes mean that some of the unit combat values are a bit off, but not sufficiently so to cause any major problems IMO.

At this point, I'm not sure what adjustments, if any, I plan to make the space forces.

Thanks for posting the commentary on the FRozen reaches. I own it, but haven't given much more than the first couple pages a read. It does look good, and so it's good to know that the numbers need some tweaking, but the actual plot is good.

WOW.

Simply great stuff right there.

Definitive thumbs up.

Havent done aynthig yet, because my group just aquired a barracks for their cruiser and cant aquire additional troops too easily. (**** PF )

Having run Frozen Reaches I noticed a few issues that any gm might have to deal with.....

1 - Troop numbers and the war in general.

2 - The whole idea of the hidden gas giant caused some serious disbelief in the players but they plodded on.

3 - Locating the big bads really wasnt that hard and they quickly thought of a number of ways to track them down early, luckily they played the game and we had fun.

Overall it was a good adventure but as with any you buy and add to your campaign you need to stay on your toes and adapt.

I'm not sure about the physics of a gas giant (or such a dense ice belt, for that matter) existing that far out in the system, but if you can accept that it does, I don't think it's a stretch to say that the planet is hard to find.

If the Damaris ice belt is analogous to our Kuiper belt, it lies about 4.5 billion kilometers from the sun, is 2 billion kilometers deep, has an inner circumference of 14 billion kilometers and is denser than the Kuiper belt by several orders of magnitude at least.. Even if you halve those numbers, that's a hell of a lot of debris to sort through. I have no doubt that a dedicated survey team could locate the planet, given time and resources, but it seems entirely credible to me that it could remain hidden if no such significant effort was undertaken.

Edit: And a quick google informs me that the Kuiper belt is presumed to have had about 900 times its current mass at some time in the past, so a much denser belt does, in fact, seem plausible.

Further Edit:

If the Damaris ice belt is an order of magnitude denser than the Kuiper in its early days, it weighs in at about about 300 earth masses. If we presume that the gas giant is a smaller Uranus or Neptune, it has about 10 earth masses, which is admittedly significant. However, even without being obscured by the belt itself, at that distance and with properties similar to Uranus, it will be all but impossible to spot in the visible spectrum.

If we surmise that there is something not entirely natural going on out there, then other methods of pinpointing it may not work as intended either. The normal methods would probably involve measuring density and gravitational effects, but if there are other anomalies in the belt, this data may be inaccurate and even actively misleading.

Disclaimer: I am not a cosmologist, astronomer or scientist of any type, so I could be very wrong about most of this.

You would simply look for the gravitational effect of the gas giant.

Huge amounts of asteroids would either impact the gas giant and be added to its mass. Or they would turn into "moons" around the gas giant.

Both effects would resolve within a few centuries, and youd be easily able to pinpoint the location of a gas giant with a hubble-like satellite.

Which is why I said there would need to be other anomalies present in the belt -- something that is altering normal gravitational effects. Or if, as the text implies (IIRC), the planet doesn't remain in the one place for extended periods of time, there may not be an opportunity for noticeable gravitational effects to occur before it shifts elsewhere via some strange warp fluctuation.