so I am the RT with 3 other players (one explorator, one void trader, one arch-militant) the Gm givae us 100Sp, so we got a Mars Battlecruiser with launch bays, fighters, bobmers, barracks for ground troops etc etc.. as the GM wanted to make it epic with giatn battles and not ahving to give us a pair of frigates all the time for a space battle.

Thoguth recently, the GM complainted to me about how I use said fighters/bombers. Mostly as cover when we go planet side on the gun cutter. Also last game, after a pitched void battle with orks ships (1 'Ammer, 2 cruizer and 4 frigates) a near-by planet (uninhabited, only remnant of a Imperial colony, fully explored world) had about a hundred (100) or so ork on the surface. As we were started to chart a cluster of 50 stars (for the AdMec) I simply ordered the bombers to firebomb the orks into dust (as even if dead, the spore will simply bring more Orks in a few years) rather than sending down troops and ourselves for some minor issue.

Now the thing is with the GM, is that he planned some sort of dungeon crawl on the world (which according to him, was supposed to bring +8PF, dunno how but..), claiming we never scanned the world (we did to know there was a hundred orks or so), we didn't stopped to think the Orks were looking for something we didn't know (even if we fully explored the world via exploration challenge and c'mon, it's orks, it's either killing or looting or both for them, not playing Indiana Jones) and he,s all pissed about having to plan a 3-4 player dungeon crawl we'll enver do, since we'll just bomb our way away from the situation (since his intro seemed so minor, and more about loose ends than a whole mission, might as well)

So now the GM is pissed that his 3-4 player game gets screwed over by ground troops arial cover and the like; for me he,s basically saying that he lacks the imagination or dieas to set-up a situation that we won't simply bomb our way out and mvoe along. So he called me and basically got me ina corner about no longer using bombers and figthers within a planet's atmosphere, never..or maybe last solution, which will never happen (except if he plans for it of course)

So what shoudl I do? Because frankly, having all the power being halted becasue of a GM who lacks ideas, is not a fun gmae for me.

Welcome to the sandbox, for both of you. I'd sit down and have a talk with him, since he basically gave you the ship and let you fit it the way you wanted, he should always be prepared for whatever the players decide to do. I'd also recommend that you mention that his prep hasn't been wasted as he can just move the "dungeon" to another place and STILL have you guys go down and deal with it. Hell, it can even be on the same planet, just in an area that wasn't firebombed OR in the area that was, just the dungeon was shielded against the attack.

Rogue Trader is a Sandbox, both for the players and the GM. A creative GM can always run whatever he wants, he just has to find the right motivations for his PCs.

Larkin said:

I agree.

Maybe the bombing opened up a cavern and your auspex picked something up or maybe one of the bomber pilots noticed some structure the auspex missed.

It's up to the GM to control the game. If he wants you to go do something it's his responsibility to make you know you are supposed to go there.

Larkin said:

Yeah, that was my first thought. Ok, so you didn't bite there, looks like we'll have you find it at the next planet you explore. Oh, you firebomb orks from orbit? Ok, maybe instead of orks we have some heretek logicians trying to break into the complex / having there own little archaelogical dig. Ok, why are there logicians in the expanse? Suddenly you want to go in and capture the site intact. Get some prisoners to interrogate. Most of all though, steal what they were looking for before their resupply boat arrives and call in all their allies.

Alternatively… do any of a number of other things. That's the key to how I would deal with the sanboxness. You run into whatever the GM prepares wherever you go. Then he sees which of the hooks you bite on the hardest and he makes more stuff themed like that.

Keeping in mind said planet was epxlored fully; we know there is no cave with goodies or an ancient trasure lying around;we would have found it the first time. But yeah- he can simply move his planned encounter somewhere else; what I am fearing is that it'll be basically D&D with flashy guns and golden clothing rahter than cheap swords and **** covered clothes.

It's very simple, the dungeon is on the next planet you visit that you discover it on.

I have an adventure planned for my players in this game, and with the adventure I have another 5-6 solar systems roughed out, usually with 4-5 planets in some detail. This sits in the folder, ready for the players when they get bored and move on to new planets, run at the first sign of trouble, nuke the site from orbit and so on.

You bomb the orks to death, this is good. On the next planet is the dungeon. Failing that the "Your bombers open a chasm" idea is great too.

I created 4 ships for my players to start with, we play once a week at a club for four hours a session and alternate each week with another GM who runs his own game so table time is scarce and it can take hours to create a ship when you have 5-6 players taking part.

They chose the Star Galleon which was outfitted as a trader with huge cargo capacity and lots of little useful things like manufactorum, pharmacia etc. The downside is, its poorly armed with just low powered macroweapons. Alternative ships included a Lunar Cruiser outfitted for war, a deep space exploration light cruiser and an allround frigate (which would have been balanced by a better starting PF).

I wouldn't dream of stopping them from using all thier ships fun toys, not even the teleportarium (although it took 3 adventures before they remembered to take a teleport homer).

Braddoc said:

Railroading your players like that in a RT game (or in any game really) is blasphemy! I don't know what you said to let yourself be backed into a corner like that, but the correct answer to his b.s. should have been: "No, I have the bombers, so I'll use them". Particularly if he lets you start of with an (in my opinion) insane amount of ship points (and therefore hardware). Sounds more like he wants you to play grunts who get bossed around while he gets to decide what happens with the overpowered vessel. The solutions given in this thread are the best ones for a situation like this, which will occur more often than less in a RT game. Maybe you should point your GM towards here and have him read them. Any GM worth his salt will have to improvise heavily in RT. If he doesn't know how he will have to learn quickly, or move back to a more traditional setting.

So, we played yesterday; got into a space battle the arch-militant (a new player, first game) was sadly all about killing and going into a fight that the space battle was just some lame excuse for a fight. In retrospec, I should filther my companions to not be one minded and one trick, makes for lame games…anyways, we teleported into the pirates' cruiser, where every crew member, even (or especially) the lowly slaves/ratlings, had a bolt pistol/chainsword combo, which means we did not even began dealing with the captain and his high end goons that we're all down between 1 to 4 wounds, burned fate points too, meaning it's not that well going on

Braddoc said:

Oh wow. There's so much wrong with this. But do not worry. Should you somehow subdue this ship you'll be either rich (well richer) or forever in the favor of the Adpetus Mechanicus or Astartes.

I mean a ship where every crewmember has either a bolt pistol, a chainsword or both. That means that there are at least 5000 bolt pistols, if not more and about as many chainswords. Both of which are items that only the rich can afford.

Braddoc said:

Teleporting onto the enemy cruiser yourselves was very brave, my players would have waited until thier troops and armsmen had done most of the killing and the enemy ship was crippled and a Pirate cruiser…..thats some pretty **** rich pirates, given that a pretty standard pirate ship is a wolfpack raider and that only the richest and most powerful trader families can afford cruisers. What was the background to the fight, why did you fight them, why did they fight you, what is thier pirate clan name…… (I have lists of random clan names ready to go, the important thing it to record which name is with which clan, the players will remember!).

Space battles should never be about just a fight, a reason for you to risk damage to the ship, loss of crew, loss of morale, loss of time, loss of profit……….

Enemy ship crew ratings will usually be armed with a pointy stick, club, bare manacled hands and so on. Only the armsmen have decent weaponry and it will all be low pen shotcannons, shotguns,stubguns and so on. If everyone lets rip with bolt weapons inside the ship, its going to be doing more damage than the borders are. I'd be pretty annoyed as a player to be gutted by the enemy dregs and loose fate points over something pointless. My characters havn't burnt a FP yet and they have been trapped by hordes of genestealers on a space hulk, attacked by the Yu'vaths Whisperer, in countless bar fights, brawls, standoffs, space battles and so on. They have used good tactics and some luck to avoid being truely screwed yet although we have had some pretty serious injuries (The tech priest is always on hand to help with some new bionics…..)

UberMutant said:

The GM is basically doing the meta endeavour from Into the Storm (That star cluster to chart, clean and exploit), we charted the place, talked with the human civilization and currently trying to clean the place of pirates: they are not a single clan (like a 100 independent pirates in a loose confederation), we need to get rid of them, and since the party is now hell-bend on fighting (the voidmaster got cyber arms, legs, eye, stomach, and is looking for cyber skull and torso soon, gonna go augmentist) we had to take the pirate fleets down. The first gorup we faced (still facing actually) is 6 frigates and 1 cruiser.

We went in silent mode to get closer before firing torpedoes/bombers/sunsears, got pretty close until the GM got bored of 3 rounds of simply moving and prepraring our attack that he decided that they detected us (no roll, just decided, and the round right before we attacked of course- not the first time he bends the rule in his favour or refuse us things he judges too strong for us or 'unfair' for him (see: bombers and fighters in atmosphere) on a case-by-case scenario) and fired a couple of torpedo salvo (yes, the frigates had torpedos, the 4 shot-at-a-time kind of tubes too). We planned on destroying a few before starting boarding ships to capture them for our own use, and to find the pirate's base in the region (and well, loot of course).

Didn't go like that; we didn't destroy a single frigate before the **** arch-militant, being the 'kill,kill, KILL" kind (both PC and player), insisted hard and loud enough to do a hit-and-run on the Cruiser (since you know it's the biggest, therefore, the small fleet boss is on it) via teleportarium, the void-master backed him up, the GM wanted it to happe (since 2 games without a ground battle=bad game)

Teleported on the bridge, behind the Captain and top dogs, our starting position (in a corner and with little room to move) was set up by the GM and we started the battle, facing crews armed like bosses, the arch-militant and void-master splitting away, leaving me with the 2-15 men platoon (armed with sh*tty, GM-approved and enforced weapons, like a normal non-mono swords and 1d10+5 Pen 2 hellguns but 'it's ok they got AP6 carapace') facing (that I know of)

15-20 crew with bolt pistols, chainswords and high end armour (light carapace or storm trooper carapace)

1 Arch-militant who one hands a boltgun and wears a power fist

1 Explorator with a meltagun

1 Void master with power sword and bolt pistol

1 Captain

The GM's reason is saying he wants opponenets that equal to us for a challenge: fine by it, but the mooks are not elites; the reason "They're pirates, they don't follow Imperium ways'. So after 3-4 rounds, I got hit twice and died had to burn a FP to live (which the GM houseruled that you simply ignored the damage that killed you: so I'm at 2 wounds now) the arch-militant is down form 16 to 3 wounds, void-master got perhasp 5 or 6 wounds and we did not yet got into combat with the Captain ans his top croonies, who seems to not care aobut firing bolt weapons and melta guns on the bridge of their own ship…yet again the GM is not caring much about where the misses shot goes, it simply misses.

OH! and trowing grenades is also ok on a ship's bridge (your own that is)

Rolf stump!!!

Yeah this game is hard to DM but tell your DM to man up and you players too. If you decide to teleport on a bridge… die. It's supposed to be the most secured place on a ship. Blow the crap out of them in the sky.

2 games without a fight and lots of interaction and critical skill roll is very good.

That Dm of your's needs to work on is adaptation skills, you think this game is hard to DM, try dming a game of Eclipse Phase where player can fork their process to work in accelerated simulation space then they can reintegrate with a back up of what a player use to know, etc. They can have copy of their chars, etc. THAT IS A HARD GAME TO DM.

RT is a sand box, tell him to relax, some meta gaming may help (yep guys), through NPC!! My Lord, I just noticed something on the planet, I ran a scan as usual even if not asked, it's just a routine for me you see and I discovered a hidden set of caves and there are strange power reading from it!

SERIOUSLY tell him to use NPC to sway you guys and You may not want to Crawl a dungeon… it's ok it's RT.

Braddoc said:

I would never show up for a game with that GM again. Really if any GM saying something is 'unfair' for him is a) too immature to play rpgs in general and b) lacking in comprehension of what the job of a GM is.

That said, part of the problem does sound like your party isn't unified in play style though. You sound like you want to play slow and strategic and some of the other players sound like they're more the, whatever, let's go mess s**t up kind of players. Both are valid but they don't work together well. This is like my first game of RT where everyone made space combat characters except one guy who made a close combat missionary. The GM was starting to figure out how to make it work when we got bored (by the brokenness of space combat).

Still though, this GM doesn't sound like the kinda guy I like rpging with.

Braddoc

Has your GM considered Deathwatch? Its a much easier to GM (he setst he missions and available equipment) and much more fighty game than RT. RT is all about the interaction and combat should never be top of the list of how to solve situations.

I know of the Into the Storm endeavour, I cherry picked some ideas from it for my campaign. That pirate fleet (Cruiser backed up with torpedo firing frigates) is equal in size and loadout to a strong naval attack fleet! Given that a standard navy patrol is two sword frigates, that Pirate fleet has more power than most Rogue Trader families and would give the Battlefleet a run for its money. I like the idea of a hit and run to capture enemy vessels and the Arch Militants pace is to lead things like this of course, but why take the pilot and captain along too? You should be up on the bridge running the fight against this huge pirate fleet that has you badly outgunned and outnumbered.

As for the silent running detection, GMs can fudge the dice, but do it behind the screen or in a way the players won't see. I often roll bad for my bad guys and encounters or the players roll well (I have seen a rolling critical produce over 150 damage and kill a Hive Tyrant in one shot during a Deathwatch game, so much for the epic final encounter…..) but you have to use dice fudging carefully or, justifiably, the players get angry. One time I allow it is if the players do something so epic, awesome, fantastic or downright ludicrous that it has to work because of the effort and roleplay they put into it and I will remove the need for the diceroll.

What is your crews personal weapons loadouts? If you all in power armour with powerfists and multi-meltas I could begin to understand you needing a challenge but if your packing standard light weapons then its a bit OTT and reads like a GM who likes to "win".

Good luck and remember, if its not fun, then have a break from it and play something else for a while.

Echoing the previous post- Rogue Trader does NOT sound like a game your GM is capable of handling. Switching to Dark Heresy, he could have an almost identical game using the Acension rules but having the ship be designed by him, and the captain of the ship being an Interrogator working for an Inquisitor (the GM character). Basically the same end result, but allows him to pre-determine outcome options of scenarios and not feel cheated.

That said, i'm amazed you haven't voted with your feet and left the game… i can only assume the group are friends outside of the game.

He is really into Deathwatch, the only problem is the language barrier: in our group of 5 me and the arch-militant are the only bilingual guys around (and the arch-militant is because he was born in Ontario). so a few months still before we see Deatchwatch in French available. He did take the horde rules for our troops, but he never, ever uses it for our enemies (meaning our troops basically are a 2x2 player with 1 wound but 15 lives) so no point into makeing big fights as we,re not facing a few hordes but individual enemies.

We all went mostly because of the time difference between gorund combat rounds (5 sec or so) and void combat (30 minutes), meaning he engages 1 foe while we destory 3 ships; it can be done, we done it before, but..I dunno, GM wanted to have us all there I suppose. As for the pirate fleet strengh, since we got a pimped out Mars Battlecruiser weith launch bay and all, the GM fears a pair of frigate or 3-4 raiders may be too weak for us in terms of challenge (that and the void-master is gunnery master; so he can do damage with those sunsears) but it simply makes that every fleet is either very numerous or equipped with loads of xeno tech (frigates with turret rating of 4 and 2-3 shields, but it's ok they're pirates!) and even then he ignores rules and logic concerning more strategic weapons, i.e torpedoes; he fires a salvo at us, it misses, but there's 3-4 of the enemy's ship behind us…but he won't see if they go for the other ships; they simply fly off into the void not causing any more problems or being heard of again. (Never salvageable as well)

The GM never fudge his rolls; he rolls in front of us; and he did not roll to detect us; he decided they saw us and fired. He usually does that as well when the enemy's is ship turning 2 or 3 times in a combat round or things like that.

For gear we're a bit over normal weapons- the GM also gave us a special manufactorium that can transforms anything up to best quality, so everything is best quality (sort of the sealed carapace armour)

Explorator: can't recall (he's not there right now) but he's got 2 gun servo-skull, 1 combi-tool servo-skull and a pict recorder servo-skull, power axe, hellgun, autopistol, sealed carapace

Void-master: 2 cyber arms, 2 cyber legs, handcannon, acheotech laspistol, bolt pistol, plasma pistol, jumppack, power sword sealed carapace

Rogue Trader (me): power sword, Angevin Crusade chainsword, plasma pistol, bolt pistol, 2 digi-weapons (last resort only, not for offensive work), Mars refractor shield, flip belt, concealed bolter cane, sealed carapace.

Arch-Militant, Sealed carapace, 2 bolt pistol, mono great sword, graviton gun. (new player, so no chance to buy stuff yet)

Kasatka: I am thinking seriously of walking away; they are not really friends, more like people I know. Dark Heresy is for him and the arch-militant player not enough epic/powerful enough (and the ascension book is in english only for now as well) I did ran a DH game for them, but it failed; the GM was a psyker who's plan during the assault on the Cathedral by the Voicers from the adventure in the back of the core book, was to hide in the cathedral while the tech-priest and guardsmen did all the fighting…hell they were doing EVERYTHING to not fight, even the encounter with the locals at the spaceport was basically intimidate rolls ("I open my coat to reveal my weapons to intimidate them not to attack me!") followed by running away….I fear that anything that requires logic or investigation may be too much for them, if there's no combat, it's not a game for them.

Sounds like Deathwatch is the game he will want to play when you can get the language problems sorted out. To me, RT is not a combat heavy roleplaying game so if you crave epic battles and huge swirling fights your looking in the wrong place.

Mars Battlecruiser….thats not so bad although the Nova Cannon is a big advantage. As for the pimping pirates, why doesn't he just replace human pirates with an Ork infestation and let you fight some of them. A few Brute Ram Ships will have your battlecruiser sweating, or maybe a Rak'Gol warfleet, their boarding mentality will be very difficult to deal with.

I can understand why you might be sticking with it, gaming groups are so hard to find, sometimes you have to put up with someone who isn't in the same zone as everyone else (and/or is a tool).

Sounds like Deathwatch is the game he will want to play when you can get the language problems sorted out. To me, RT is not a combat heavy roleplaying game so if you crave epic battles and huge swirling fights your looking in the wrong place.

Mars Battlecruiser….thats not so bad although the Nova Cannon is a big advantage. As for the pimping pirates, why doesn't he just replace human pirates with an Ork infestation and let you fight some of them. A few Brute Ram Ships will have your battlecruiser sweating, or maybe a Rak'Gol warfleet, their boarding mentality will be very difficult to deal with.

I can understand why you might be sticking with it, gaming groups are so hard to find, sometimes you have to put up with someone who isn't in the same zone as everyone else (and/or is a tool).

Aye envoye moi un PM Braddoc!!!!

We actually took a mars Battlecruiser from some sourcebook the GM off the internet; so no nova cannon, a few points extra in armour and a more numerous crew (not that is making any difference)

As for space encounter, it's always either pirates or Orks; the GM doesn't feel confortabel enough to use Eldars (since he doesn't, know how to play them, heh..) Rak-guls and the like are never spoken of, never met the ..3 eyed dog-like alien merchants, so the whole of the Expanse only have

1- Footfall (which the GM made go nuts with a warp storm and is now occupied by an ever-growing chaos fleet in constant battle with =I= forces, the Navy and the Astartes)

2-Other Rogue Traders that we never met

3-Void Pirates

4-Orks.

5- Whatever the GM judges nessesary for his story.

Yeah that can be both fun and a issue, I prefer not to play with big fluff too much… soem DM like to include the big fluff. Depends on pla stile and how you can tie it in.

Sounds to me like you just have a poor GM. Changing games might work, but be prepared for that to suck too. You may want to start lookinf for another GM, or consider running a game yourself.

GMing Rogue Trader is a massive pain the in the neck. In a good way… mostly.

In all my years of RPG I’ve never played a game that’s so challenging to run. There’s just something about the setting which screams “rebel against every boundary” to the players. This is especially true when the GM lifts the limits by allowing players to have a wonking great ship, multiple ships or some other insanely huge toys. It’s hard for a GM to say “no, you’re impoverished people working for an NPC Rogue Trader so I can control the game” when everything is so excitingly laid-out in the books. I mean, after seeing Battlefleet Koronus will your players ever be truly happy starting in some cruddy raider with one gun?

So it’s clear that Rogue Trader just doesn’t work for some groups.

You need a GM who’s hard enough to set limits – in the game preferably rather than arbitrarily outside of it – but flexible enough to plan for “everything” the players might pull and a group who’s understanding enough not to pull completely random stuff out of their hats with the respect to the fact that most GMs simply can’t come up with challenges on the fly.

I don’t think you should be blaming your GM exclusively, certainly it sounds like he’s struggling with the freedom of the setting but as players you also have a responsibility to remember that you’re playing a game and it’s meant to be fun for everyone – GM included. I can’t even begin to tell you the number of times players have thought it was my “job” to provide them some sort of gaming service which met their expectations and allowed them to play exactly as they wanted.

Anyway, with regards to your situation my suggestion would be to sit down with your GM and discuss what, exactly, you are trying to get out of this game. Set the story aside and talk about the feel you want here – big action, personal action, dealing making… etc… they are each handled in a completely different way and, more often than not, it’s nothing to do with hard rules (i.e. in your example about the bridge combat I, personally, would have had the players duelling the enemy captain while a no-dice bit of fluff fight goes on with the crew in the background – the outcome is determined completely by whether the players beat their enemy. Less rolling, better focus on the players, etc).

In my opinion your GM seems like he needs more of a voice in the game to “control” some of the characters and help point you in sort of the direction without robbing you of your freedom. I would highly recommend an “accountant”. A Rogue Trader is more than a man and ship; he’s a household with a legacy, he’s a standing business with responsibilities. Your GM could have someone assigned by the legacy who, while having no power to stop them, can simply remind them constantly how expensive it is to put bombers in the atmosphere, power up the teleporters or run silent for extended periods. It’s a subtle way of politely asking the players to consider other methods without punishing them, some of which might be more suited to what the GM has prepared for you. As polite, considerate players you would of course factor these recommendations in… sometimes!