One thing I've always been curious about, has anyone been able to pull off such a campaign? I had been hoping Hostile Aquisitions would add some official rules for something like this (with the possibilities of pirates, privateers and such, I thought they may be some options for playing people who either don't have Writs, or have means below the standard backing of the Imperium...), but no such luck.

What I'm thinking is more Rogue Trader: Firefly Edition. The main issue I see to this is the fact there's no way of being particularly hard up - you either have an amazing ship, and little money, or a little ship with -tons- of money, and the means to easily supply whole armies with bolters and ammo. What would people recommend to limiting a Trader's means, to the point of really having to work for their stuff in the darkness (thickened with grimness)?

You could just start cutting things in half. PF rewards, achievement points no longer add extra PF or only add extra PF when it's 200, or 300 etc over the needed amount. Increasing costs for things on the rarity scale would help that. cutting acquisitions to one very other session, or even fewer. Only allow half of the PF to be available outside of civilized space or without the direct intervention of a money lender. Maybe even have a PF tax, where in order to make an acquisition your players have to spend PF to force the item to a +0 modifier.

If you did ALL of those, I think you'd have a gritty game very close to DH in space with a rinky dink ship. But even one or two would cut back on the High Power feel of RT.

Vanity Evolved said:

The only problem with starting them with a guncutter is that they're going to be stuck in one star system unless they hitch a lift with a larger ship (either by sneaking up and staying close enough to the starship's hull to be drawn into the warp with them (think the Millennium Falcon latching on, or the first space-fold thing from Robotech / Super Dimension Fortress Macross , when it transported a nearby island, a large amount of ocean and two wet-navy ships to Pluto's orbit) or by leasing a berth in one of their cargo/landing bays in a Dune heighliner fashion).

Of course, if you pick the right system, there's plenty of scope for a campaign at an interplanetary scale.

Alasseo said:

A system with 4-5 habitable planets, a couple of space stations and some mining colonies on several moons could be a good place to set a low-powered RT game.

The game could even be set on several very close systems and the characters can hire transport ships to travel from one to the other.

On such a game, tough, I don't know if I would allow Rogue Trader as a Career or even use the Profit Factor rules (there is nothing stopping your players from burning 10 PF and get a ship during the first session). Maybe you can take a look at how DH deals with money, in a more direct way.

[EDIT]

A Navigator wouldn't make sense eighter, since there is no warp capable ship.

Alasseo said:

Yeah the Guncutter fits Firefly. The setting of Firefly is a single binary system. It has loads of terraformed moons and a few planets, the setting also lacks FTL. So yeah a gun cutter, with in a large active system and a very low PF could pull it off.

Maese Mateo said:

A character using the Rogue Trader class need not actually be a rogue trader but a captain of some sort. The rules work fine, especially if you take some underworld-themed alternate ranks.

A navigator from a shrouded or renegade house and seriously down on their luck might end up anywhere in the galaxy. They might be headhunted but perhaps there is a good reason they aren't on board a ship already...

If the players are interested in such a game then I'd say go with the above and just cut stuff down. Maybe start them with a transport even. Since it wouldn't be fast, agile, or really a warship at all they would have to think more before jumping into stuff.

Another idea is to make warp travel take longer. This means your supplies fun out "faster" and mean you have to look for replacements more often.

Or place the game in the Jericho Reach, with a single ship; maybe a raider or transport. Simply put, there is a crusade going on, massive amounts of Tau, Chaos and Tyranids. They would have to really do a lot of work to get their job done there.

Another option (stolen from a friend who would love to run this) is to make all of your players lower-ranking members of the ship. So nobody is "the captain" and none of them are on top of the food chain. They take orders and do their job. Maybe a voidsman master of small craft, arch-militant bosun or something, lower-ranking Explorator, etc. Would really make the game different as they don't directly control the ship or the endeavours, but rather are part of that system.

At a slightly larger than "Firefly" level scale, but lower than standard RT, you could reduce Ship Points and restrict players to some of the cheaper hulls. Some of the warp capable ships in the game are clearly capable of being used for low level RT campaigns of the type you mention - I'm thinking ships like the Vagabond, the Iconoclast or the Claymore class Corvette.

As well as the points already raised, it might be worth amending the terms of the PC's warrant of Trade, if you intend to run a low level campaign. So don't make them Peers of the Imperium, make them Chartist Captains or Free Captains or something of the type. This would probably make it illegal for them to operate beyonnd the Imperium, making for a lower-level campaign.