Hi, I'm Joe.

I recently bought "Rogue Trader" and have read cover-to-cover. I love roleplaying and I'm an expirenced gm for dungeons and dragons. I love the background for warhammer 40k and play the wargame...OK, OK, I'll get to my point! I want to gm a game of rogue trader and need ideas for how to start a campaign...like the back story like how they all meet and how the rogue trader came to be. I also would love some ideas for the campaign. Thanks so much for reading and your ideas mean the world to me!

Thanks again and please help!

Origin path is your friend. Intersections on the path are where your characters have met, or similar circumstances. I'm a fan of starting in media red, throwing my players into the action. I've had a lot of fun with giving them a situation on which they don't have all the information and see what they come up with they come up with to explain it

Yep, the Origin path for the Warrant is quite nice in that respect as well.

I am also a huge fan of starting them in the middle of it so to speak, in fact when I run a DW game in the future it will be with the adventure fromthe core book and the PC's will "fade in" during drop pod transit with mission briefings coming though over the vox to them.

There is a downside to that though, a friend of mine ran a Robotech game some years ago where he started 6 players in a transport plane/ship/flyer that was taking fire and crashing. He gave thr group like 30 seconds to write down on a sheet os paper what they grabbed before they bailed out of the exploding ship.

Only two people wrote down "parachute".

There are some useful tools over the books to get you started with the creation of your game's plot involving the player's background as much as possible:

1-Origin Path: check for your player's intersections and start from there.

2-Warrant Origin Path (Into the Storm): once you have your player's intersections, check the history of their Warrant.

3-Nemesis Path (Hostile Acquisitions): this allows you to create the villain of your game using the intersection of the player character's Origin Path. Very useful tool.

If you only have the Core, then just check your player's Origin Path and the story they made for their Dynasty. Once you got that, make a list of possible plot hooks. The most important thing is to get as many character backgrounds as possible, to get them all involved and interested in the history.

With all due respect to previous people's suggestions my advice is start the player's off as one arm of a larger dynasty. This helps explain how they got together (the powers that be arranged it) and also gives you a set of rails to guide them with when they start to make mistakes that you feel someone would correct them on. It seems to work well if you also give them a slightly better ship or gear then they would ahve otherwise had to represent their dynasty's investment in their success. Finally the desire to either earn one's own warrant or succeed the current warrant holder (best if you start them off as old and "soon to retire") helps provide a plot nexus at least at first.

I say this from some level of experience as it's the setup I'm currently using and seems to be working swimingly so far.

In re-reading the old 1st Ed 40k Book of the Astronomicon recently, it struck me how the original concept of Rogue Traders has evolved somewhat since their original incarnation.

Originally, under 1st Ed 40k, Rogue Traders were a bit like Christopher Columbus, with the Imperium playing the role of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella...by this I mean that Rogue Traders were agents packed off to outer space in order to fulfill a specific, often fairly narrow objective or series of objectives, with most of the equipment and military forces for the expedition being directly supplied by the Imperium.

Now the canon has changed slightly...they're more often than not now effectively hereditary merchant princes, heads of ancient dynasties. The default assumption is that the PC Rogue Trader is the 112th of his line, wielder of a Warrant going back tothe mythical age of the Imperium. The Rogue Trader is his own master, and has total freedom to make his fortune how he wants.

Nothing about "modern" Rogue Trader precludes adopting the former approach of course: so perhaps rather than getting into the concept of a dynasty, you could present the players with a more railroaded series of initial missions where they play a crew of rogues and opportunists who are attempting to curry favour with the Lords Calixis with a view to with the intention of getting them backing, finding sponsors, getting a ship, getting a warrant etc, all with a view to fulfilling a specific objective. The first couple of sessions could be fairly tight, Dark Heresy-alike affairs with players working towards the initial "get a ship, get a crew, get out of Calixis" mission. During this time, the PCs can forge bonds, friendships etc, and the players (and you) can get used to the ruleset.

Once you're into the expanse, you can then switch to the more typical freeform RT play style, and they can decide if they want to carry out their underlying mission or not! .

Just a thought - hope that helps!

THANKS FOR THE HELP!!! Keep it coming. The more idea the better. I would like to start people off with lower-middle profit factor (low 40s) with a average ship. But as I said earlier I'm not sure of ideas on how they got to be that way...but great ideas and I hope more show up

Keep a good Villain in mind!!!!!!! I find RT runs best with a rival trader competing with the players some one they can really hate.

Try to create a Capulet and Montegue situation.