Hey guys and gals,

My group and I have been playing Dark Heresy consistently for almost two years now, and we've dabbled in Deathwatch and Rogue Trader during that time, only finishing a mission or two for each before going back to Dark Heresy.

I really liked Rogue Trader, but as GM I noticed a few problems that arose quite quickly, unique to the system.

First of all, the players didn't want to do anything themselves!

We need to go recover that ancient artifact? Send a squad of troops to do it!

With nigh unlimited resources, there's little incentive for the players to get their hands dirty. Now, I managed to deal with that particular example by having their squad ambushed and obliterated, necessitating their personal intervention. They didn't know they were being 'sucked' into the action, and luckily the void master was not down with squandering lives.

Another problem was that the two girls playing the navigator and the astropath (quite reasonably) figured that it would be extremely foolish to risk themselves in crazy missions. I mean, if the navigator gets killed by a creeper vine on some xenos world, the WHOLE ship is doomed. This meant that a third of the party sat on the boat the whole time, and since they're intense role-players, they weren't accepting "You're a PC, just come!" as an excuse.

I've discussed this with the group, and tried to explain that Rogue Trader characters are foolish braggarts who care little for personal safety or reason when there's glory and profit to be earned. It's a bit of a suspension of disbelief to have the navigator and astropath go spelunking with the group, but it was necessary to get everyone to participate.

Wondering what you GM's who've played Rogue Trader more than a couple of sessions do to deal with these two problems. Players very reasonably want to make use of those resources they have, as well as not have everyone die because the navigator ate a stray bolter round.

Without forcing the players to participate, or come up with excuses why everytime they delegate actions it happens to fail, what do you guys do to keep your players at the center of the action?

GreyHunter88 said:

Would you care about Star Trek if Kirk stayed on the ship the whole time?

No?

Then go do it yourself.

Easy; If they don't go on the planet, they cannot claim officially the world for their Dynasty; sorta like if Colombus only send 3-5 random sailors on Cuba so he could claim it for the Queen fo Spain...or he simply looked at the island from afar, said "Ok, it's ours!" and left.

Our GM does that; the RT must put his foot on a world to claim it, or must be ther himself to stick that flag onto the earth AND while they CAN send a boatfull of crew down an unexplored world, the crew will loose massive morale as they are going somewhere even the brave billionaire foolhardy Captain won't go himself.

As for the Astropath/Navigator, no RT would leave the Imperium with ONE Astropath and ONE navigator; pretty sure there,s a few astroapth on board, and perhaps a small crade of NPC Navigators that can fill up the PC's shoes, if they die or get critically woudned enough to no longer be able to perform their duties for a while.

The Star Trek analogy is a little dishonest. I think yelling at my players that they're not playing it right, is probably the worst solution. To be honest neither I nor any of my players even care about Star Trek, so we wouldn't care about Captain Kirk one way or another.

As to the second response, makes a bit more sense but still has lots of ways around, and feels very gamey. It's not hard for the RT to step onto the planet after it's deemed safe. If all it takes is him to plant the flag in the dirt, there's no reason he has to fly to the surface under enemy fire while clutching the banner to his chest. Second, that RT family is not going to make it very far. If that ONE dude has to go everywhere and do everything, they're going to be pretty much homeless in no time. There's a reason that Rogue Traders rule dynasties... because you simply can't be everywhere at once. It could take a century to establish a colony, so if the guy's got to be there the whole time, he's going to at best bring 3 new planets into the fold?

And I really, really don't get the morale thing. Perhaps if they were grabbing people from the gun decks and forcing them to the planet's surface everywhere they go, I would agree. However, if the ship is fully stocked with professional marines and mercenaries, who do this kind of thing for a living, I really don't think 'doing their job' is going to lower their morale. They're getting paid big bucks precisely so that the RT doesn't have to go get killed by the first hostile party they meet. That again seems like a "you're playing it wrong and your crew hates you!".

Finally, if there's tons of navigators and astropaths on board, then what's the point in the PCs? What is the point in being an astropath if you're just one of a choir. That sounds really boring. Also, our RT family is not wealthy. They're declining, and I really don't think they have a cackle of navigators on the ship of a young and unproven young scion. I was always led to believe that navigators are very rare and valuable commodities. I agree that having back-ups would solve that issue, but it would completely diminish the importance of the PC and the role they play in the game.
If that navigator was just one of a dozen, why would I bring them to the surface anyways? The only purpose would be if they had skills that were so valuable, and experience that was so important, that I had to risk everything to have them there with me. But clearly they aren't that important, since there's a baker's dozen waiting back on board.

I still think that the solutions offered are either very prescriptive, and focus on telling your PCs how they have to play, or are suspending disbelief in weird ways.

Colombus wasn't a RT. He wasn't even close. Colombus was basically a ship captain, HIRED by a Rogue Trader, to go find islands and put their flag in it. If anything, the Colombus example proves unequivocally why a Rogue Trader WOULDN'T need to go around doing his own dirty work.

The game is just half-swashbuckling adventure, and half-dynasty building, and they don't always mesh well in my opinion. You either forego the dynasty building to triapse about in unexplored ruins, or you have to purposefully make characters that are terrible, terrible heads of household who are willing to risk it all for a little bit of fun.

Thanks for the opinions regardless! Don't mean to sound critical, I just wasn't completely convinced.

Gamey? Yes. However, look at the tabletop game. If you have a Champion, he unwaveringly leads from the front of a squad, first into combat, and almost never wears a helmet. The 40k Universe is not practical, it's a romanticized heroic universe filled with important people who fight their own battles.

Justification for the Astropath is easy: Sure he's only one of a Choir, however he is the Choirmaster, the best of the bunch and unequivocally the most consistent and valuable one. Should the Rogue Trader risk his person on a planet's surface, he'd be a fool not to have an Astropath with him at all times to provide and instantaneous link to the ship should things run afoul. Who better to serve as the personal safety net of the Rogue Trader then the best, for such a valuable person would demand nothing less.

The navigator, however, is not forced to do very much at all. That said, Navigators invariably wind up dead or mutated and degenerated into immobile hunks of flesh hardwired into the ship to serve their unique gene's purpose until even the technological wonders of the Omnissiah cannot sustain them any longer. Due to this unavoidable fate, Navigators tend to use their considerable sway and influence to ensure that they live as much as possible, do as much and experience as much as they can beforehand. They are likely the only member of the crew with enough pull to tell the Rogue Trader that they are going, rather then ask. If the character does not see the appeal in adventuring, well then the Rogue Trader can use a slightly less plausible approach and demand the unique insight into the Warp of a Navigator.

If your players are absolutely adamant about having someone doing their work for them: see Background Endeavors from Into the Storm. No complaining when the entire expedition gets eaten by giant rats. No need to meta-game anything, but if they want it done RIGHT, they have to do it themselves. Teach them this...

On the note of the navigator/astropath.

- First. They are certainly not the only ones of their kind on board. Each has at the least several juniors to assist him. Or did you really think the navigator/astropath spend all of their respective times plugged in? This does not diminish the importance of the PC's, they are the senior officers and while they can certainly let buckteeth-Bob the junior navigator try to steer the ship through the warp I'm sure he's going to take a wrong turn somewhere. On the other hand, buckteeth-Bob can probably handle the relative calm warp routes. Same goes for the astropath, if you really need to send that message back through to Port Wander past a warp storm, you get your best on the case. Receiving the daily/weekly exchange rates for minerals or the sports results from Scintilla is probably a job for Frank 'Lispy' junior astropath.

-Second.
If you lose your astropath AND your navigator in the Expanse you are not going to die. It's not going to be easy but it is not an automatic 'reroll characters'. Even if you ignore my first point, here's how: Assuming you were paying attention to where you were going you have updated starcharts of your general area. Instead of making one smooth jump from your location to your destination you merely need to drop out of the warp every couple of days. Recheck your position and make another jump, rinse, repeat. Commercial ships do this all the time, real navigators are expensive. Compared to having a proper navigator on board it is not going to as fast, but you will make it(barring anything happening that will eat the ship, navigator or no).

Heck, I'd drop out of the warp every day or so in the Expanse when using this method.

Yea, these are much more along the lines of what I was thinking.

I have explained to my players the idea of the heroic characters, and in fact I brought that up in my original post. The problem is that it relies on every character to want to be that bombastic fool leading from the front. Not every Rogue Trader is like that, let alone their entire retinues. So if you have players like that, it's all fine, but people who want to play more intellectual or intelligent characters might feel ushered into line if they have to follow this approach.

I also really don't like the idea that there is a whole slew of astropaths and navigators on board. I understand the junior officer thing, but if anything, the PLAYERS should be playing those still-learning, expendable fellows. I've never read anywhere in the fluff that ships have more than one navigator. In fact, lots of the fluff I've read (and I've read a lot) stresses quite the opposite. Navigators are so rare that most ships don't even HAVE one, let alone have 4 or 5. I understand that maybe the Haarlocks in their prime could have a pair of navigator twins on their flagships, but our family, who barely has anything left, just some ancient proud ship from a bygone era... I really don't see it being fitting that there's a whole class of aspirants on board.

The navigators have assistants, but not back-up. The navigator families are adamant about training and observing their own, no? I don't think that in most circumstances they would have barely tested navigators sitting beside the PC, learning from him. It's so risky, and cost innefficient and such that it doesn't seem to make much sense. The Space Marines have like one navigator per ship, and they're the SPESH MAHREENS!
The astropathic choir I can see much more likely, but even so, their particular talent doesn't seem all that useful planetside when a strong vox would be sufficient to talk to the ship.

Finally, warp-travel without a navigator is not nearly that easy, or else they wouldn't be valuable. Ships that are traveling very, very well established warp-routes, through Imperial space, that have been traveled (likely by the same ship) for generations, can be traversed without a navigator by the methods you outlined.

However, how could you do that in uncharted space? How could you drop out to check for directions in a place nobody's been to before? There are not going to be updated starmaps or astromantic charts. If there are, they're going to be really old, or unclear, etc.
I think that if a ship loses its navigator in the middle of uncharted space, it is boned. It might be impractical for an RPG, but 40k is impractical on a whole. It's meant to be. I mean, instead of "re-roll characters" you could of course spin it into a fun and desperate adventure, where they're blasting randomly through time and space in a mad effort to get home. I wouldn't just shut the game down in that scenario.

The concern however, is that the PLAYERS aren't going to risk it all thinking that "it's just a game and we'll find a way out regardless".

Thanks a lot for the feedback, ideas and responses though! I definitely think that Rogue Trader is the hardest game to play, both as a GM and a PC, in the 40k line. I haven't tried Black Crusade yet, but I imagine it would be pretty difficult too.

RE: The 1 Navigator per ship problem that you are expressing. Makes perfect sense that there is 1 generic navigator on your RTs ship, then there is this PC Navigator who is probably either indebited or indebiting the RT, or their close personal friend, a Navigator who is prominent enough to get her own way. That's what the Navigator class represents in RT. At least, that's the way I view it. The ship will run semi-efficiently without the PCs, but they are major characters and important people, they make everything better and/or easier. In ITS is assumes that all ship positions will be filled by NPCs, even if they're not major ones.

If the two of them are still bent on staying behind, let them. You say they are heavy roleplayers, so give them a primarily roleplay problem that'll keep the occupied and talking (quietly, lest they disturb what's the primary focus) long enough for you to handle most of everyone else. If you make it a problem that requires a creative solution, it's likely they'll become absorbed in it and not even notice the rest of the group. As it's the two characters with the highest connection to the warp it could be something as simple as a small bit of warp stuff that seems to be following the ship around, everywhere.

My examples were in the case of direct doings; if your PCs have a fleet of dozens of ships flying around claiming worlds for them, then why should they even bother leaving Port Wander or their Spire palace when you got a fleet getting you new worlds to exploit and you only need to sign at the bottom of the page when your scibes brings you your weekly reports?

If there's no need to make planetfall under enemy fire or any other situations when you got faceless crew to do it, then no reason to go around travelling into the warp and risk your life and soul when you got a fleet of mook captains working for you.

And keep in mind that the Pcs are the Epic Heroes; the crew are just your average Imperial mook hired or presed-ganged into service. They get scared by everything and anything. The Captain is their 'rolemodel', leader, master and commander. I would loose respect for my superiors if the first thing he does each time he faces some unknown world or dangerous situation is to send a few waves of crew who get shot at or killed, while he simply reap all the glory and fame and cash, I would loose my respect for him rather quickly. Not to mention take any opportunity to pocket a few spoils for myself. Pretty sure the IG General that is good to send waves and waves of men might be a hero of the Imperium, but the grunt in the mud sure curse his name for being a fool after being ordered to charge again a well defended fortress without any artillery or air support. In daylight. Oh and you got to run across a barren 1km field before reaching the fortress entrachements.

Same for mercs; Captain Epic hires you, but he never leads the fight, or even fight at all, only appreaing when the smokes clears to reap the rewards; oh they'll to do job all right, but pretty sure they won't have that much respect for him and will do the bare minimum within their contract and argue (or negociate) a new price when the RT asks them to do anything else that's beyond their original contract.

If your players don't buy in the premise enough to activate SoD ... don't play RT. The game is tailored to those who want to play empire-building whilst not braving the dangers that are out there in person. It is tailored to go out, explore the unknown and kick ass. If they cannot find an ingame reason for the character to do so, it's because they don't buy that premise. And nothing you say or do will make them buy it.

If they do buy the premise they could find a million possible reasons. Most of them would likely have to do with personality of the characters involved. Sure you can have your minions go first. But you'll end up loosing a lot of them as none of them come close to the kind of training PCs have. And thus if the RT and retinue have any moral fibre in them they'll go themselves. Or they'll go because it's fun. Or they'll go because it's the only way to ensure it's done right. Or because they're stuffed into a flying metal can with dank air for months or years on end and they urgently need a breath of fresh air, dangers be damned. Or an Inquisitor has taken an interest in them and unless they go out exploring the expanse he'll likely have'm all killed. Or anything else out of a million possible reasons.

It sounds to me like neither you nor the players are interested in the kind of game RT is designed to be. Move on would be my advise.

My group take the approach that the Lady-Captain takes the lead on most missions and the other players are her adviser and confidants who join her on the missions.

The players do make use of various crew member (and have named and given background to various crew members) but they are use to add to the flavour to the adventure.

For example if they use the gun-cutter it has it's own crew that protect and maintain it (but sometime the players like to take control of the piloting or weapons systems as is their whim). Also they have a security team that accompanies them on dangerous missions.

The other NPC the use is the Cartio-Artifex who is a keen sage who has a good library of lore (they go to him to help aid their knowledge when they investigating).

GreyHunter88 said:

No, you need backup, unless you're planning on only staying in the Warp for a few hours at a time. When in the Warp, the ship needs a Navigator in continual attendance to guide it and look for dangers. Given that many trips through the Warp take days, weeks or even months, it would be flat out unreasonable to expect a single Navigator to shoulder that burden alone.

As for Astropaths... if the ship's in orbit above you, a decent Vox Caster will do the trick, so long as the conditions are right. If the conditions aren't right, or the ship is elsewhere in the system, or even currently on the other side of the planet or whatever, an Astropath is far more effective. And that's only covering the basic telepathic capabilities of an Astropath. Instantaneous short-range psychic communication is a valuable tool, as is being able to read minds, and that's before you even consider other disciplines.

All that aside, having someone in the group with the Psyniscience skill is a really useful tool for avoiding the warp-spawned wierdness that can easily get a group into serious trouble. Astropaths and Navigators are the people with the easiest and most effective access to Psyniscience.

Much of what I am going to say will already have been said in the thread, but I feel it is important to add certain points.

Rogue Traders and Danger: From an out-of-universe perspective it is what they do. Weathering perilious danger is what they exist for and it simply is part of the kind of archetype Rogue Traders represent, the fearless explorer at the edge of the known world. In-universe any coward or lazy person will make a poor Rogue Trader, they are exploring the very edge of the known galaxy afterall. RTs were granted a Warrant of Trade because of extraordinary service to the Imperium, not because they might be good in sending armsmen to be ground to blood and bone dust (although they might have done similar things if they were Imperial officiers before, but usually with little regard for their own safety).

Using your minions and armsmen: What you have to keep in mind is that most of the crew are needed aboard the ship. Even the armsmen are there to keep law, order and security, so an RT with a spendthrift attitude towards his armsmen is inviting crime and mutiny and perhaps worse. Furthermore, the crew as NPCs are much, much less capable than the player characters. Using them to do your dirty work will either end up in failed endeavours, less PF earned, lost Crew Pop and/or Morale.

Yes, you can send a couple hundred armsmen to hunt down that vicious xeno beast that is plaguing that colony, but then just a handful will return in the end, the rest were hunted and torn to shreds/driven mad (that is assuming they actually do manage to kill the beast in the first place and not take their chances with the RT by fleeing). OR a handful of heroic individuals (yes, that means the PCs!) could go out there and do it themselves, slaying it without major casualties (maybe a burned FP or two, though).

Also, leading from the front does not mean relying entirely on yourself, of course you can take a retinue of bodyguards with you, but you will still have to do the worst by yourself.

Repeateadly having the armsmen slain because they were sent to their deaths while the RT enjoys fine amasec on the bridge will reduce morale, no matter how professional they are, especially considering the expectations they must have of their masters (see my first point).

If they still refuse to get into dangerous territory themselves consider these things:

• Throw it at their ship! Force them to be in danger that they can only solve themselves, make them the reactive, instead of the active part occasionally (some ideas: weird celestial phenomena screwing with the ship (see the Siren Star from Edge of the Abyss ), pirates (always a classic) and adventures on the ship (mutant rebellion in the underdecks!))
• Bad Reputation! Once other RTs and Imperial organizations learn of the cowardice of the PCs they will gain a bad reputation with their peers. Making positive interaction with those individuals harder, in the worst case this can end with reduced PF as business opportunities die because their partners do not wish to work with individuals that shame their Warrant of Trade. On the other hand, pirates and such organizations will see the RT's ship as ideal targets, considering how weak their backbones apparently are
• Less XP. Since they are obviously not actually doing anything to hone their abilities, they should not be able to increase them quickly

Oh, one last thing, when they do delegate without supervision, do not forget to make them do Command tests or similar to see how well they were able to express their orders and have the minions chance of failure increase if the Command test failed.

Navigators and Astropaths :

Firstly, the Astropath (Transcendent, keep that in mind) and Navigator PCs are not your run-off-the-mill boring dudes and dudettes. They are the prime specimen of their kind. An Astropath Transcendent has abilities far above that of "mere" Astropaths. Most NPC Astropaths will not be able to do much besides Astropahy. Keeping him/her aboard the ship would be a great waste of potential, especially considering there are other Astropaths aboard the ship.

As for the Navigator: While you are correct that most ships only have one Navigator, this is not necessarily the case with an RT's ship. In fact, Into the Storm explicitly states that below the Warp Guide (the PC Navigator) there are Lesser Navigators in the case of an RT ship. It just makes sense, considering how long they spend outside of the Imperium. And again, the abilities of a PC Navigator are far too great to just have him/her rot aboard the ship and most Navigators will relish the thought of action and adventure, considering their lives.

Final words : Try reminding them of the "spirit" of the Imperium. Sacrifice and duty. For most people of the Imperium this will be very heavily ingrained and their attitude arguably betrays this spirit. See how in the Imperial Guard even some Generals lead directly from the front, for example.

Saibot said:

As N0-1 said, even on a non-RT ship, you'd need at least a few Navigators, since they'd need to operate in shifts even for short trips of a few days. Say 8 hour shifts, plus some spares, and I'd reckon most ships of Raider size and bigger would have at least 3-5 Navigators of various ability (with the PC often being the best one).

MILLANDSON said:

True- if they can afford it. Most ships are part of the Civil and Commercial Fleets, effectively Administratum owned/registered short-haul freighters plying one, maybe two routes that they have a license and charter for, and probably barely making a profit at all. These guys are mostly limited to calculated jumps (4-5 LY, managing maybe 1 jump a day), because they don't have the cash or connections to afford Navigators. Even famous Chartist vessels may be without even one member of the Navis Nobilite if they don't have the right connections.
However- all these ships are limited to known routes in Imperial space. They may not even have the right to make Shift outside their sector-of-registry. They are The 99% (actually, I believe the numbers are closer to 65% in this case, but it's **** good agitprop). So, yeah, Navigators are **** valuable.

Of the ships that do have a Navigator, I can think of precisely 3 incidences in fluff of the ship explicitly having only one Navigator: the Tormentum Malum , the Wandering Star and a third whose name I forget from the short story Lacrymata. In these cases it is mentioned that the Navigators are taught special meditative trances to keep them alert for longer periods, and are generally on horrendous cocktails of stimulants, which makes for some really interesting RP potential for anyone playing a ship's sole Navigator- witchy-twitchy, paranoid, hyperactive/hyperfocussed and generally speeding off the walls or strung out twitchy, paranoid, depressed and useless until the next fix...

The other vessels either don't mention the (number of) Navigators aboard, or generally only mention one, but refer to them as the "principal Navigator", implicitly confirming the multiple Navigators theory. (Incidentally, this includes all incidences I've been able to find of Space Marine vessels of Strike Cruiser size or larger).

As far as solutions go- boredom is probably a good one for getting the Navigator down- unless you're aboard a ship with many other Navigators and enough of a retinue from the Navigator Houses, you're going to be very bored and more than slightly cabin-fever-y on any voyage of appreciable length. Navigators are essentially among the most segregated people aboard a starship, predominantly by their own choice, admittedly, but they do tend to keep to their own annex aboard ship, where not even the ship's Captain may enter without invitation. Yes, they have their (ridiculously stressful, and potentially crazy-making) work to keep them occupied, and all the creature comforts of home, but unless they deliberately venture out of their cosy apartments and down to the planet, the only people aboard ship with less of a social life are the techpriests and servitors, and I'm not certain about the techpriests...

If you spend every endeavor never leaving the comfort of your command couch you don't experience much. So you don't get much experience. I'd say sitting around giving orders and sending others to do the adventuring for you is worth about 50xp a session.

Lol is your Crew led by Zap Branigan?

Come now the 40k universe is about exploration and adventure. While I get "realistically" staying on the ship is the logically safe thing to do, it's going to wind up in a pissed off crew that doesn't think they're captain is worthy of leading them.

Their jobs aren't to go down and explore, it's to load cargo and keep the ship in order. Extra crew, gunman and the like, may be on but their likely voidsmen, not mercenaries. Even then consider the fluff, the vast majority of people (even mercenaries) don't ever leave their planet. Think of even your most senior of npc crew as imperial guardsmen, scared, badly armed, and only strong do to their numbers. If their brave senior officers with the best gear and greatest skills solution is "send waves and waves of men at them" every time they run across a situation that might hurt at them, it's not likely that cew's going to stay loyal for long.

As for the navigator while the role is extremely valuable on a ship it's not absoultely necessary. Allow at least one other NPC navigator (perhaps a relative of the PC in training) as backup. If players are going to play one just assume that they where able to get 2 simply for the sake of it not making for a dull game where players choose to sit in the background "just in case". As for Astropaths they're one of a choir and you're always going to want the best of the best on the surface with the landing crew for emergency communications.

There are other things to consider as well, such as treasure found, corruption, and simple cost. Imagine the PC's send a party of NPC's who, given they've survived other such expiditions, are likely going to start thinking themselves more valuable than what they're payed for given the average life expectancy of such a party of mooks. They come across something valuble (information or a physical object) and figure instead of reporting it they can sell it to another RT at port for a nice chunk of profit rather than turning it over to the captain whose paying the same either way (given they don't find out, or make it happen and let them find out so that they learn that if they want something done right it's best if they do it themselves).

All in all it seems if your players want to just stay on the ship and let the NPC's do everything they might as well not be playing no?

GreyHunter88 said:

Today I hope that everything I say wasn't said twice already, but I don't feel like reading through everything, and having nothing left to say, so here we go. First, yeah, characters in this setting are supposed to be a bit crazy/suicidal, and go places where lesser men and women would pause; that drive to go beyond their homeworld, explore beyond the Emperor's light, and hold relics that have not felt the hand of a humanoid in millennia is why one becomes part of the Rogue Traders.

Second, I have embarrassed myself (slightly) talking on this forum about not wanting to risk specific characters (mostly the Navigator and Astropath, but even the RT, themselves, as they have the Warrant that allows the group to operate), and people politely informed me that even a single, smaller ship is likely to have redundant personnel. Your character won't be the ONLY anything onboard, except maybe the Trader, and even then, that's why he has backup. So, having one's Navigator say "I can't go, I might die, and then who will guide the ship through the warp? [smile] Remember to send a postcard from the jaws of death!" you can reply with "Well, okay. I'll take your Navigator brother Latharel, then, and he can get any of the reward, along with the XP. Realistically, no one should have an excuse to say they can't go, as the ships need multiple Explorators to keep various things working, several Navigators, in case of incident or long-term trips (I believe Navs begin to get Fatigue, or something, after long trips), and a handful of Astropaths to form a choir, so that their mobile signal is strong enough. They shouldn't feel expendable, but they should know that it's okay to get taken out of the plastic case.

Third, and maybe the most important, despite there being a few of everything on the ship, the characters should have, among them, a very wide array of skill sets, and in some cases, be the one of the team with a skill. If the Astropath stays up on the ship, she can't examine anything with possible psychic connections, while the Navigator might be useful for attuning to the area, and making more accurate charts for future travel, or using various powers of the Warp Eye for any of numerous scenarios. The Explorator should be present in case anything techno, archeo, or xeno is discovered. Since you never know for sure what you might find, you should bring everyone who might be useful. Nothing says your group of grunts can operate a dark ages tech-level cogitator, or realize that it is actually possessed by a daemon, and be able to exorcise it. While nothing says only one class will have THAT skill, it's good to assume the stereotypical class for THAT skill will be the best, and that the PC of the ship's them will be among the forefront in talent with THAT skill (hence the RT keeps that one close by), thus, the PCs can't afford to stay home, if they want their Dynasty to make money and fame, and have everyone else come back alive. Otherwise, Rogue Trader would be much more like an Empire Builder game, with exceptionally vague stats, where the Rogue Trader would live on a space station, overlooking a planet, and send various ships, with crews he barely knows, out into the Vast, to acquire wealth for him, so that he can swim in it, spending points to buy ships, crew, and and stuff they never use, and it would be very boring. Granted, a few bits of it could be fun, and I like the idea of an older Rogue Trader buying a space station, and retiring to it, to live out his twilight years in the wealth he fought hard to acquire, while his hand-picked successor to the Warrant continues to carry the name of the Dynasty. He could sit up there, maybe manage the planet below (a nice, easy agri-world, for instance), and be a source of various fields of information for various individuals, and somewhat manage various arms of the Dynasty, without flying all over, hoping age and infirmity don't flare up at just the wrong second, but that would be of little fun for an active PC, and is mostly just the lofty goal for how that max-Rank character might retire out, without dying (and yes, this is an NPC I am describing that I made, for if I ever get to run RT, though now I can't find him).

Perhaps tackling matters from a different angle, have the adventures be really mystery focused, the ancient xenos ruins are empty but the treasure held within can only be reached if you achieve the task of unlocking it's mysteries, going down onto a world covered in orks and one covered in the ruins of an abandoned civilisation are different. This might entice them to get into a very different kind of action.

If they are inclined to want to take a commanding position of the situation and not quite get into the thick of it you could take a look at the large scale combat in Battlefleet Koronus, your players might enjoy the various tasks and logistics of organising and commanding an army rather than leading it from the front lines. They stay out of personal danger but can conquer a world. Where other (more typical for PCs) Rogue Traders might concoct grand schemes of espionage and daring they can take the approach that is very much Imperial too of using lots of men with lots of guns of varying sizes to grind the opposition into a pulp.

In space combat also the whole group can't avoid fights, they can perform tasks to aid and deal with the threat by whatever means the group chooses. So it'll be good to shake the dust off things.

The game is geared towards certain expectations that most but not all player groups will enjoy and find rewarding but if you make treasure hunting and social encounters the order of the day then you might get them engagin with the world outside the ship directly more often. Now if it really is the case that even for social encounters or intellectual encounters they keep trying to throw the NPCs at it as well as combat scenarios then you're in real trouble.

I agree with many of the points previously made by others but they have been made already and I sought to give a few suggestions on different ways you can approach endeavours with the players to suit the style of game they want to play rather than try to cajole them into it... I can give you plenty of ways to do that but they are often mechanical or partially mechanical in nature as well as the background reasons people have mentioned here. Exploring new worlds might not be your groups thing, or maybe their crew can uncover the puzzles but need the PCs to solve them.

Well there is simple solution, if they want to sit on their butt's let and they gain no XP no special stuff is gained(the common crewmember won't touch the Archeotech or Xenotech). Give them coruption points and Bloated Form Mutation. If they don't want to do anything ask them why the hell they are playing RPG. If thy want to play it this way tell them to play some RTS (on Mac).

Don't forget, unless they have some swanky components or spent a lot of starting profit factor boosting the stat, NPC crew has a 30% chance of accomplishing any given task that can be attempted without special training or Talents.

Tony Montana said in Scarface

"Orders? You giving me orders? Amigo, the only thing in this world that gives orders is balls. Balls. You got that?"

And that's why Rogue Traders get amongst it. It's a big pissing contest about who has the biggest balls.

I'll throw in my two cents.

Remember that the 40k society is not our own. Think of it more like medieval fuedalism in space (In SPACEEEEE!). Rogue traders and their officers are doers, movers and shakers and they aren't going to pass up the glory and bragging rights to their flunkies. Flunkies exist as beaters, door openers, cannon fodder, "the help" and pool cleaners, they don't do the awesome stuff.

In 40k society, with its incredible martial leanings, this is expected. Nobles don't sit around counting coins (except for Lord Krin), they lead the guard, captain starships and join the imperial inquisition. RTs that let the help do all the work will have no glory to speak off, will receive no respect from their peers and will have little authority with their crew (since the crew will be aware that the RT needs them, more than they need him). Make this clear and your problems should disappear.

I haven't read every post, however I will touch on a couple of things.

Both the Navigator and Astropath are going to die, badly. Their job is corruption and insanity, it will take its toll, eventually. Both have lived cloistered lives filled with training and conditioning - being in the Koronous Expanse marks them as being exceptional (like all PCs in RT). Eventually both of these classes succumb or retreat into their condition: getting out and experiencing anything, anything - before you die is high priority: you maybe corrupted tomorrow.

Further, the Koronos Expanse is the bleeding cutting edge of the Imperium's hunger for more resources: the Navigator house clamour to get their castes onto the ships - discovering stable warp routes is an utmost prioirty and likewise only an Astropath can provide communication or an early warning. In both cases the Imperium is highly motivated to provide these resources to Rogue Traders at the best prices and high avaliability (since both classes are very specifically part of the heirarchy of the Imperium: by helping the RT, they help themselves). As such, the player is the best of their respective type - but certainly not alone, in fact, as Rogue Traders and explorers that travel beyond the borders of the Imperium - they are going to be much better supplied than all but the extreme examples of the Imperium's mailed fists.

GreyHunter88 said:

It's cannon that there are multiple astropaths on the ship for a choir and what not your astropath is just the best on the ship. I don't think your astropath realises how useful their skills are, they need to be around to do all sorts of investigative work or read peoples minds.

There can be multiple navigators on the ship and yes there can be back ups. My Navigator likes to sty on the ship as well, I personally think it makes sense but to engage him I always make sure he has to keep the ship running smoothly.

The rogue trader has to go investigate stuff and according to imperial law has to personally set foot on planets and space wrecks to claim them its a document called writ of claim, it's talked about in the online adventure. If they don't go onto a world themsleves first they can't increas their profit factor.

MAKE IT CLEAR THE ROGUE TRADER HAS TTO GO DOWN THEMSELVES