As the title suggests, I just recently started a Rogue Trader group up and I am the GM.

So far so good, we completed Into the Maw last session and will pickup with Lure of the Expanse Sunday. I played the last couple evenings a little more ridged than I would have preferred, but I want to make sure everyone in the group gets the basic flow of rules and a glimpse of how life in 40k is like. Luckily one of the players in the group is a long time 40k fan and is familiar with the lore surrounding Space Marines and he has helped the group get an idea of what kind of place 40k REALLY is.

So far my only complaint has been the flow of the Core Rulebook, and some rules seem to be hidden in out of the way random text boxes. Luckily one of the players who has played a lot of other PnP games has been a big help and we've compared our interpretations of rules and been able to get everything figured out.

I mainly wanted to thank you all for the good posts in this forum, they've been helpful in getting started and given me good ideas for upcoming sessions.

Lastly I welcome any tips anyone may have for a fledgling GM as myself.

Feel free to say "yes" a lot more often than "no." Yes makes the players enjoy themselves, even if it gives them an almost broken advantage. The more you say Yes the more dangerous things you can throw at your players that they can survive and squeak by, usually the more fun they'll end up having.

If a bunch of your players are new (and it sounds like almost all of them are) type up and print out a combat cheat sheet with all of the actions and important combat tables/mechanics on it for easy and quick reference. It'll help people realize what they can do in the midst of it all. Make sure to include page numbers for easy reference, and I'd make at least 1 per person. Make a separate one for space combat.

If you're running a pre-designed adventure, feel free to mix things up whenever. For instance when my group encountered the Orks in Into the Maw, I had 3 players none of which were combat oriented, and I didn't change anything. The combat dragged on for 2 hours while they dealt with the Orks and the Navigator ended up with the most kills thanks to Lidless Stare. I should have cut the number of Orks in half.

Then again, in the last encounter inside the Righteous path, I only had 2 players and therefore cut out one of the murder servitors and they took the other one out with a surprise round and 2 House Guards with heavy stubbers. So it's a balancing act that you'll get better at over time and that extends to any encounter.

The cheat-sheats I thought of after the first session while everyone passed around the GM screen or looked at the book trying to find Full or Half actions. So I wound up duplicating it in excel sorting out by action type and combat went MUCH smoother than the first time. I made one for Skills, Party Combat and Ship Combat, these were a big hit.

The Orks went down pretty quick after a couple were picked off at range and charged in as angered Orks would. The group had suffered a bit of damage and the Navigator quickly put them down.

One of the servitors targeting ocular must have been on the fritz, to the luck of the party. I had equipped one with a heavy bolter and the group didn't think to ask to make out weapons. Thefirst servitor with the autogun laid down some suppressive fire, a couple rounds hit the group. The second was going to unleash with the heavy bolter, but missed horrible, i rolled an 80 on that one.

After that, the guy familiar with 40k was all, "Ummm yeah... He goes down FIRST!" After they focus fired they tore through them and defeated Lady Ash in quick order.

This was in stark contrast to the Oathsworn body Guards who pinned them down and lobbed blind grenades into their group for the better part of the 8 rounds. Only 1 party member put together that they were being pinned to let Lady Ash escape and tried to crawl through the pile of bullet riddled shoppers while the other members mocked him.