You guys are great. These are awesome things to think about and consider for my game, which is actually going more strongly then anything I've put together in years! We've made it three sessions!

*Rubs eyes* And now… I present to you the horror laid upon me last session.

Our newest player and the action that made everyone else at the table say wth?

The ship had just faced down its first enemy, an intimidating ork krooza that ripped through the Battlefield and flew straight for the Asao (the player's ship), while it was salvaging the ship from the Free RPG Day adventure, Forsaken Bounty? Trigger finger had them sending two volleys of plasma and one volley of meltas at the krooza. It was obliterated, with 3% population but managed to ram the Asao in the flank (causing itself to lose another 2% population).

There were five fires at the start of the turn on the krooza and these all spread. One of which was on the warp drive. I mentioned in another, or maybe this thread that I wasn't sure what to do as a Damaged result didn't seem like it would rules-wise cause the drive to explode. However, for some interest I decided once the fire Damaged the warp drive component I'd have someone make a d10 roll, on a 1 or 2 bad things happen. They roll a 2. Warp Drive Explosion, which they ended up hugely lucking out on and it didn't manage to suck the Asao and Bounty up (sucks!).

With the damage taken from the ramming, the crew had lost some population. The navigator decided he was going to "console some of the widows in the lower decks.' Ofcourse, someone makes a joke of a space…disease. The player decides his navigator has obviously caught this and is now mad with grief because his fourth eye is apparently destroyed. Then comes our first warp jump back to Port Wander. What does the Navigator do? Well, he's now crazy so he decides to fire the ship off in a random direction. Silence around the table. After checking in at four different times if he was sure this is what he wanted to do, he makes the rolls. Not only does he send them off in a random direction but he also fails his tests so now the course isn't just purposely off, its even off of the off-course he put them in. Oh my.

Long story short, the Junior Navigator has to pull them out of the warp so they can decide how they're going to fix this situation. Its a Hard test anyway, and he's a junior, and ofcourse I roll 97 for his Exiting the Warp test, giving him at least like 4-5 degrees of failure.

At the end of the session the player of the navigator (whom halfway through this madness had heard me remind the other players of the events of the Forsaken Bounty adventure, it had been awhile, and he was not there either). So the closing scene was of the navigator drawing a picture of the pyschic worm on his cell in blood. It gives me a way to fix this, but needless to say, out of character the other players weren't very impressed (partially becasue they've had to deal with this kind of stuff from previous players, and are abit short on patience when it comes to player sabateurs). My thought is to have had the worm active again when the krooza caused the ripple in the warp. It lashed out and tried mind controlling whatever it could. I'm going to have the NPC astrotelepath have suffered an attack but beat it off, I suppose the navigator wasn't so lucky. I'm going to try to downplay the "space disease" angle as much as possible….

My plan was to have the ship enter real space in the middle of a system who's orbits are all whacky. I think I'ma have the planets all heading towards the sun, and some of these planets have struck eachother and exploded, creating a massive asteroid field and maybe one or two planets that are still 'alive,' but are definatly heading to the hot place. I'm not sure if there is an actual phenomena that would have planets sink towards the sun, but I'm going to call it Special Effect 8, and that is why this is happening.

The Asao is going to enter real space in the middle of the asteroid field and have to try and get out. Pilot and Augury skills will be needed to travel and find their way out of this. Neither of which any players have (we've lost our voidsmaster, so I'm thinking after this event those involved can take some necessary skills as elite advances).

In the begining this post was just going to ask a simple question, I suppose I went a bit far on that but hope it was atleast an interesting, if not horrifying, read. My question; the Asteroid Field states it does 1d5+1 damage per DoF. Does armour still reduce this? If so, it seems like they aren't that scarey. The light-cruiser has Armour 20, so they'd have to massively fail and then roll high on damage to even dent the ship, is this correct? If so, or either way, do you think it'd be appropriate to increase the danger here by either a higher difficulty or more damage? I do want there to be some real danger here, and in an asteroid field made up of smashed planets I'd think we're looking at some big hunks of rock.

I'm wondering if one of these surviving planets could be made of minimal use to the Rogue Trader at this point. If they survive the field, I'm wondering if maybe they should find survivors or city ruins and maybe something worthwhile down there. I don't want to hand over a bunch of loot for this side travesty, because I think it might promote this thinking in the future where "see my crazy ass decision totally was worth it," do you know what I mean? There's also the chance that maybe they could find a civilization out there that is about to get vaporized and could find some loyal potential crew (either forcibly, or for saving them). With only three (and maybe four, but rarely it seems) players they are lacking in the skills department so this could be a way to let them have a few competent NPCs.

Was this post too long?

What do you guys think about the Asteroid Field? What do you think would be cool to find in this selfdestructing system? Any thoughts would be much appreciated! You've been so helpful already!

Sounds like the kind of place where Chaos Reavers might be crazy enough to make a home. The Dioskouri system in the Foundling Worlds is a bit like this: A binary system in which one of the stars has become a black hole, and the planets have been smashed around like billiard balls, destroying many of them, creating deadly gravity tides, asteroid fields and whatnot. The Faceless Lord Karrad Vall calls the place home, and has his fortress on one of the system's surviving small moons. These guys mean business, and a run in with them might teach your navigator not to be such a flaming idiot. But if the players aren't daunted the fortress does contain a vault chock full of interesting goodies.

To me though it sounds like he just trying to ruin the game. In my game no player would get to suddenly decide they had a disease like that and use it as a legitimate excuse to sabotage the game. Stuff like that is the GM's call, not his. Act like a tool if you like, but you aren't going to dream up a story reason out of thin air like that to justify it. The players create their character and backstory, and control their own actions, but they don't get to control reality in the game. If players can suddenly decide they have a disease, then what might they try next? Magic a heavy bolter out of their hat in a tight spot? ("I had it all along, honest") Super powers? ("The Warp must have done it") "Oh, and by the way, my character was just possessed by a demon for no reason, why not." If he was in my game he'd be on borrowed time after pulling that little trick. One more stunt like that and he'd be out on his elbow. My role-playing time is too scarce and precious to let a player deliberately ruin it for everyone, and I'm definitely not going to let him bend the reality of the gaming world to give him an excuse for it.

Goodwin said:

Love it, great idea mate.

Goodwin said:

As someone else mentioned in this post, your crew can do a number of extended actions (or even regular actions like Scan, Maneauver, Shoot) based off the 10's digit in their crew rating. The base test is then made with the crews rating. So, the ships probably has a normal crew, skill of 30. This means your crew can do 3 extended actions with a base skill of 30, not to mention any number of regular actions like Shoot your ships weapons, Pilot your ship, Use the Augers, etc. This is so your ship can be NPCed when the PC's are away.

Goodwin said:

You're right. According to page 227 RT that's what they do. IMO though, that is your normal small asteroid, about torpedo size. Now take the Orc's "Roc" for example, pg 82 Battlefleet Koronus (BFK). It does 1d10, and is 4km in diameter, a little bigger than Cruiser size. Bigger asteroids, do more damage per DoF, like half of a moon would probably do 3d10+5 or something. The rules are more guidelines to give you a grasp of what stuff does. If it seems broken, House Rule something once you talk to your players talk about it and everyone comes to a consensus.

Goodwin said:

This is Warhammer 40k. Anything is possible.

Goodwin said:

Nope.

As for what your PC's may find in the system, well, that's up to you. I agree with everything Plynkes said, but mind you I would not retaliate against a bad player, because that's just un-sportsman like. Example: You have Rak'Gol attack out of no where, launch boarding torpedoes, and where does one enter? Right in the Navigator spire where you PC is, while all the other NPC's are off eating. Or maybe a Lance strike by the Reaver ship blows a hole in the area where your PC Nav is at, venting everything into space. Somehow he survives but everyone else thought the area was evacuated and everyone accounted for. What does this mean? Well, they closed all the main partitions and oxygen is slowly leaking into space when the Nav PC is. He now has to figure out a way to get by all these partitions and get oxygen before he suffocates. This is all stuff not to do, mind you.

Opps. I went off on a rant and didn't advise you on what possibly to do with bad players.

If it's simply a miscommunication thing like what Plynkes stated, talking to the player(s) and letting him/her/them know that you, the GM, are the one that states what happens and doesn't happen in the game. Obviously this isn't your first rodeo, but it might be your first time dealing with a bad player. Here is a hint, their is one in every bunch. You can either figure out who he/she is and continue to play and have fun, or, like what I do sometimes when no one is having fun with "him" around, not invite that person anymore. You can't make everyone happy, but as long as you and your players are having fun, that's all that matters. Best of luck to you and your players.

May the Emperor bless the lost explorers, interred on the wandering Asaos.

Hey guys,

Thanks a ton for the thoughts. Definatly not new to bad players, but this player was new so I was trying to say "sure, you can do that," as much as possible. However, when questioned why he'd do that, his explaination was always "I'm just playing my character!" Which again is something I"ve encountered before where that's the reason the player can have their character do whatever they want to ruin everyone else's day. I'm not sure why I didn't just say no, but I think its mainly I didn't want to make him not want to play, though by not being more stern my other players weren't very happy (luckily not at me). I think I can salvage the situation though, but to be honest they are debating whether they'd kill him or not. Which awkward for anyone to say to another player "well, I kill your character," even if they are proclaiming that its totally okay because they are playing their character. At least for my players, I know its not something they'd like to just do (at least one of the two having suffered random killings of his characters by fickle DMs or players in the past). Know what I mean?

The navigator was shot in th earm suffering -3 critical to his weapon hand. His guards held off the security team for awhile with good command rolls until a chunk were killed, and a few security were killed as well. So the spire's now under control of the Rogue Trader's forces.

My thoughts on fixing the issue with the character are:

Have the Astrotelepathic have had a similar encounter. Maybe he was stronger and fought off the temporary possession/crazyness. He can explain to the Rogue Trader that he felt something. I think I may even have him admit sadly that he's sent a message into the void. A message he doesn't remember to where, or containing what. Maybe the worm was calling daddy? He didn't have the episode that the navigator had but something bad happened as well. Now that they are very far from the warp rift, maybe the character can 'snap out of it,' with a stern look across the table.

The trip out of the warp is a bump one. The vessel is being torn right and left as it wiggles into real space. The junior navigator is barely hanging on. If the navigator can get his wits together he might be able to save the ship from going completely into the center of this field. I may give them a second roll at Exiting the Warp. They've failed horribly once, so they will still end up IN the field, but maybe they won't enter real space infront of a half a moon hurtling towards them. They are then going to need someone to get them back to Port Wander.

The Rogue Trader can maybe hire a second, better trained navigator. This wouldn't be at the same scope as the character, but maybe someone who can check over the start charts and the plotted course and make sure he doesn't shoot them into the moon again? This seems possible, they may even get a discount since sir crazy is from one of the big powerful houses, and they'd likely want to keep their reputation in order.

The other big idea floating between the other players is actually killing him. I'm torn whether this is a good idea or not. The player is apparently totally fine if he gets killed. He did cause a huge problem on the ship and several dead bodies now, and that's not counting what's about to happen when they exit the warp. We're looking at the potential for a lot of damage from the huge asteroid field and that's an even higher kill ratio! The other players are kind of thinking they may have to. What do you think? Do I let this happen, convince them out of character not to, or let them decide themselves? I'm not sure I like this idea but how can a powerful figure like a rogue trader spend time out of his day wondering if his ship is going to be launched purposely off course again?

Goodwin said:

Ahh, simple yet elegant. I like your style.

Goodwin said:

Just FYI, someone made a supplement that FFG published to Forsaken Bounty, linking the worm to a daddy "being." The supplement is called ' Dark Frontier' and can be found on the FFG Rogue Trader support page. Or you can click the link below and find it, along with other fan made and FFG published material.

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite_sec.asp

Goodwin said:

Your idea that the PC was possessed or that the Worm caused it is right on the money by the way. But now that the Navigator has been stopped, I don't think the Navigator's House would appreciate someone killing their people for no viable reason. Navigator's are important people, and almost all of them belong to powerful Navigator Houses. Explaining to them why you killed one their people, after the danger ended, would take allot of successes on a Social Encounter. I almost always encourage newbies to play simpler characters like the Arch-militant, Void Master, or Missionary, so maybe the new guy doesn't like playing the Navigator? With that said, if he wants to roll up a new character, you can justify the other PC's locking up the "sick" Navigator until they meet with representatives from his Navigator's House. At that time, he can be switched out for another NPC Navigator. With that said, if it was anyone else other than an important NPC or PC, I would say kill him if you think he was tainted in some way.

That was part of my annoyance with him deciding it was the pyschic worm that caused all of this. I had planned to keep Dark Frontier in my back pocket for a time when I was feeling lazy. They had secured the worm in a strong box and kept it aboard. His character wasn't there, and the player wasn't playing yet, when they had done the Forsaken Bounty endeavour, he had just heard an off hand comment about it halfway through the dramatics he imposed on everyone. It was a nice save, I suppose, but now that kind of pushed the action. I haven't read Dark Frontier, but my plan is likely he was controlled briefly by the worm to try to get it closer to the big bad, and the astrotelepath was temporarily controlld to send a message to the big bad. This should hopefully keep things interesting while at the same time reducing the role that his 'space disease' played in his going crazy.

I'm also thinking a few d10s worth of corruption and insanity. Not quite sure how many, as I don't want to let him go insane and give him more of a reason to do some crazy junk! Maybe 2d5 of each?

Thanks again for the responses, you guys are most swell!