So what do you guys think the style of Rogue Trader is going to be?

either:-

1. The Star Trek model

The players are the bridge crew of a vast and powerful vessel, kilometres long and with a crew of tens of thousands. Each player is a member of the senior command crew in charge of legions of independent soldiers/seers/priests. Play revolves around the responsibilities and moral quandries that arise from the bearing of an Imperial Charter into uncharted space, and dealing intelligently with aliens, lost civilisations and renegades.

or

2. The Star Wars model

The players are the skeleton crew of a tiny ramshackle vessel barely held together by faith and duct tape. The players are the only ones on the ship. You are wheeler dealers living from hand to mouth, running blockades and shooting rivals in Throne-forsaken cantinas in the back end of black market spacestations. Play revolves around criminal hijinks, crimelords, bounty hunters and card games.

Whaddaya reckon? Are the two models mutually exclusive? Maybe you start off with one and develop to the other?

For my part, I think there's a clue in the Rogue Trader section of the FFG website: the Missionary is described as being "the spiritual leader for thousands of souls aboard the Rogue Trader’s ship, and it is your voice that can silence a mutiny with a single prayer."

So here we're talking in terms of "thousands of souls" on the ship... mutinies... all this hints at the Star Trek model to me...

If i had to guess i'd say its going to be Han Solo on the bridge of the Enterprise.

I'd imagine the PCs will be the 'command crew, but whereas Solo has a crew of 1, the Pcs will have a crew of 1000,s that will form a 'background'.

Solo fiddles with a few knobs and off in the engine room the power couples spark, and 'whooosh'! Off the Falcon flys into Hyperspace.

The Pcs fiddle with a few knobs and somewhere off-stage in the unseen bowels of the shipp hundreds of servitors crank up the Warp drive, and 'vvveeeerrrrmmmmm' the ship translates into the Warp...

In fact, personally i'd rather like the idea that you start off as the crew of a small ship (fluff be damned) in the vein of Firefly (except with perhaps a crew of a few hundred servitors/slaves), and work your way up to commanding a fleet. I'm really not sure how you'd do that with the DH rules system though so i await RT eagerly...

Star Trek roleplaying has never really caught on the same way Star Wars has.

Actually one of the reasons I couldn't finish Rogue Star was that they seemed to want to have both - ie, have big ships with thousands of crew while in space, but on the ground they forget about all the staff and just have the Rogue Trader on his own doing missions.

Even Kirk could aford a few redshirts (or Dark Heresy PCs...).

I see it more of the Romuleans and the Admiral Thrawn then Kirk or Solo to be honest. You're still a representative of a repressive government, you have the right to invade and conquere if it makes sense without being condemned for it, you'll have a huge number of warriors at your disposal, but if it makes more sense to, you'll simply be able to trade and missionize and accept the planet into the Galactic Imperium without having ot ever fire a shot.

You'll be the perfect expression of Gunboat Diplomacy.

I suppose it depends on what sort of scale you want and I hope the play supports both styles without it being too rank dependent, there's no reason Han Solo should be lower rank than Kirk, he just has a different set of skills and perhaps a few less resources. Naturally he's going to have a different set of missions.

Ideally I'd like a crew of maybe 20-50 hanging around in the background to provide replacement PCs. This raises the problem of "Why is the captain/chief science officer leaving the ship?" to which I have two answers:

1) "That's above my pay grade" - Those 50 crewmembers can't be trusted with this sort of task, you really want your most skilled officer on this mission. Either the lower ranks will screw it up or they'll find out something you'd really rather they didn't.

2) "Sweet! These new uniforms come in red!" - Those 50 crewmembers can come along too if you'd like, unfortunatelly the best you can hope from them is some storm-trooper style marksmanship and maybe a bit of ablative armour if you get into a lot of trouble.

The mook rules work in both directions I suppose.

The reason why the Jr. Rogue Traders go down to the surface is exactly as was stated above. You have the skills, you can read, you are not affraid of aliens and what not. Your average rating says a prayer every night to his alarm clock and cant read basic low gothic.

The PCs represent one of the crews specialists in trade, exploration, military, religious operations. I still think the PCs may be charter captains of smller vessels of a larger fleet.

Replace Inquisitor with Sire of Roge Trader Fleet.

Luddite said:

Space Marine Escort vessels have a crew of 5*.

Granted they are space marines but I imagine a customised RT vessel (is there any other kind?) could easily be crewed by 5 people too.

(* there are about 150+ servitors but they are more 'equipment' than 'crew')

I know it probably doesn't have much traction here, but the "minimum economically feasible ship" for me is around 100 m in length, or with a volume or around 500,000 cubic feet...

Erm, but that's just me.

Kage

Lupinorc said:

I wouldbe interested to know your source. Especially as to there (apparently) being no chapter serfs on the escort. The only references I could find allude to space marine vessels having fewer crew (which was possible due to the chapter serfs being skilled and motivated (unlike ratings) and many more servitors. Actual numbers, of course, were very hard to come by.

But on to the topic at hand I hope it is more of Kirk than Solo.

At the risk of being redundant (as I wrote a similar post on the old forum), I think there may be the possibility of a flexible and rewarding compromise between these two styles of play.

For starters, (if it need be said) the basic star wars/firefly adventuring model is at odds with the established 40k cannon. The Dark Millennium is simply too vast, too dangerous, and too terrifying to traverse without tremendous amounts of manpower and near-stellar energy. The idea of a small tramp freighter zipping around the Imperium is about as practical as getting together with four of your closest mates, renting a Bass-Boat, and setting out on the high seas to seek fame and fortune. You will -in all likelihood- starve, drown, or be eaten by sharks. In any event, you won't make it very far.

That said, commanding a starship the size and complexity of an industrial city has its own set of storytelling pitfalls. As someone pointed out above, there has never been a very successful or entertaining Star Trek Game. The unimaginable (and often undefined) scale of the Imperium's Star Ships is designed more to produce a sense of supernatural awe and Gothic dread then it is to present a realistic picture of space travel. It is, in essence, a literary convention and an atmospheric flourish (one that I rather appreciate, in fact). 40k isn't really proper Science Fiction, after all. A nuts-and-bolts approach to 40k space travel might just detract from the literary magic of the setting's conventions. If we are to ask practical questions about 40k starships, we might as well begin by asking why the hell they're covered with gothic stone-work and festooned with bell-towers.

Rather, the 40k vessel is more like the Imperium itself -awe-inspiring, unspeakably ancient, and tragically symbolic of mankind's hubris. To command such a vessel would require a person of extraordinary managerial skill, political acumen, military training, technological knowledge, endless initiative, and profound willpower.

This is all well and good, but without significant storytelling license, it might end up playing more like sim-city-meets-battle fleet gothic, with the tired convention of having to justify why such an august personage as a starship captain has enough time on his hands and sufficient disregard for personal safety to attend every away mission required under his command.

One also has to justify why the hell the other players should have any interest in obeying the orders of the player who happens to be captain. Obeying a GM-controlled Inquisitor is one thing, obeying one of their own is another thing entirely. Not to mention, a rogue trader has VAST resources at his disposal, which would make the usual chasing after loot and new toys a pretty hollow and unrewarding experience. Alternatively, it would be hard to justify to the PC's why they wouldn't have access to any given set of toys.

I'm not saying this wouldn't be entertaining, but rather it would be a rather different style of play from the more prosaic -and rewarding- rags-to-riches tale that most gritty adventure RPG's try to tell.

On the other hand, one could imagine that a rogue trader fleet could be replete with all manner of sundry characters out to make their way in the universe. The 'rag-tag fugitive fleet' might arrive in-system and disgorge a veritable horde of small, intra-system vessels -be they prospectors, missionaries, profiteers, idealists, cultists, etc- while engaging in the larger agenda as established by the Fleet-commander...(these 'smaller' vessels would be fertile ground for 'nuts-and-bolts' style cataloguing) The big vessels themselves may have populations on a par with some cities, after all. Why shouldn't the 'citizens' of the fleet have their own small transports, gunboats, prospector-ships, and freighters with birthing booked aboard one of the larger vessels. Being that a Rogue Trader fleet is as much exploratory and mercantile as it is military, one would imagine it would lack some unity of purpose and possess a great diversity of motivation.

To borrow from the very oldest RPG conventions, we could understand the setting with the following conceptual framework: In essence the Rogue Trader fleet and whatever system it happens to inhabit at the time could be presented as, in effect, an enormous mobile campaign-setting. The capital ship of the fleet could be looked at as a 'home town' for the players. A place to recuperate, seek medical attention, politic, adventure, buy gear (weapons, starships, etc) and birth their vessel while in warp-transit. The other 'big' vessels of the fleet could be considered other 'towns'. One could picture a pious ecclesiarch vessel, a liberantine collegium vessel, a dank and mysterious mechanicum vessel, all of them moving with the fleet and under the command of its mighty rogue-trader, but each replete with their own machinations and agendas, agendas they are all to happy to drag the PC's into.

The system the fleet currently occupies could be considered the 'wilderness' where the majority of 'dungeons' and 'adventures' take place. Beyond the protective arms of the fleet, anything is possible and the PC's are either free to do what they wish or to accomplish whatever missions have been set out for them by their masters (if they obey any masters). And if the fleet goes to war, its safe to say all aboard would be dragged into it in one way or another. The onus is on the players to make it back to the fleet before it transits out of system lest they be stranded forever, unless they are important enough to keep the fleet at anchor until they return.

This allows for a logical progression in power and influence, as the PC's move up in importance within the fleet. They might one day, if they live long enough, command a vessel of their own with a charter from the High Lords themselves. Or perhaps they'll simply get filthy rich and retire somewhere. The possibilities are endless, but do not immediately tie down the PC's with an enormous amount of narrative responsibility commensurate with a command billet. It also gives them a set of goals to strive for. There's always a better gun, a better starship, or a more prestigious posting over the next horizon. And if they want to command the fleet, that possibility is open to them as well, but they'll have to work together to achieve their goals. There is room within this framework for Inquisitors, Space Marine detachments, Pirates, cutthroat ganger-scum, mutants, Xenos, heretics, and all the other mortar and pestle of a good 40K tale, including a beat-up tramp freighter with a few extra horses under the hood and a few 'special' modifications.

It also gives the GM the option of constantly reinventing the campaign to avoid ennui. Perhaps the players get tired of the decade-long war of attrition with the inhabitants of planet-X, or searching out the terrifying ruins of planet so-and-so. After a suitably dramatic finish, the GM can simply declare that the fleet is moving onward to an entirely new system, new narrative landscape, and new set of missions or opportunities.

Wow, that was a long post. I apologize.

great post Nullius, you made me thinking about some global aspects of rogue trader fleet...

I was thinking about the idea of having the characters start as junior officers, with the Rogue Trader being a young relative of the CO of the ship (or fleet) and his "crew" are his fellow junior officers whom he works with. As the "crew" goes up in career rank they also go up in rank on the ship until finally commanding the craft and its underlings. This covers why the crew is inexperienced (you really should not captain a starship at 1st lvl, let alone be the head of Security, Medical or anything else) and allows them to be working together (this is the goto group of young Master Xxxx, our Captain's Cousin. Let them work together and we will see what they can do).

They can take crew rotations for watch duty (so they can get valuable bridge experince and let you have those cool capital ship encounters), go off on their own for "away missions", and still have the ability to learn and be instructed by thier superior officers on board the flag ship. With a Rogue Trader fleet they could start by commanding a tiny ship and work their way up to a capital craft. So I guess I see it as the "crew" starting out like Han but ending up like Admiral Kirk.

As Nullis wrote: On the other hand, one could imagine that a rogue trader fleet could be replete with all manner of sundry characters out to make their way in the universe. The 'rag-tag fugitive fleet' might arrive in-system and disgorge a veritable horde of small, intra-system vessels -be they prospectors, missionaries, profiteers, idealists, cultists, etc- while engaging in the larger agenda as established by the Fleet-commander...(these 'smaller' vessels would be fertile ground for 'nuts-and-bolts' style cataloguing) The big vessels themselves may have populations on a par with some cities, after all. Why shouldn't the 'citizens' of the fleet have their own small transports, gunboats, prospector-ships, and freighters with birthing booked aboard one of the larger vessels. Being that a Rogue Trader fleet is as much exploratory and mercantile as it is military, one would imagine it would lack some unity of purpose and possess a great diversity of motivation.

To borrow from the very oldest RPG conventions, we could understand the setting with the following conceptual framework: In essence the Rogue Trader fleet and whatever system it happens to inhabit at the time could be presented as, in effect, an enormous mobile campaign-setting. The capital ship of the fleet could be looked at as a 'home town' for the players. A place to recuperate, seek medical attention, politic, adventure, buy gear (weapons, starships, etc) and birth their vessel while in warp-transit. The other 'big' vessels of the fleet could be considered other 'towns'. One could picture a pious ecclesiarch vessel, a liberantine collegium vessel, a dank and mysterious mechanicum vessel, all of them moving with the fleet and under the command of its mighty rogue-trader, but each replete with their own machinations and agendas, agendas they are all to happy to drag the PC's into.

P.S. As for why there is all of the gothic architecture on the ships of the Imperium, it is believed that the gargoyles and buttresses stave off the effects of the warp.

I think the two main examples I'd use for different rogue traders are from the Eisenhorn trilogy and the Ravenor trilogy.

Tobias Maxilla is captain for Eisenhorn. He seems illustrious and upstanding, but often hints at roguish, possibly illegal things that he may have taken part in. He is heavily augmented, and most of his crew are servitors. He enjoys Eisenhorn's company because it brings forth his relish of adventure.

Sholto Unwerth becomes captain for Ravenor when the group needs to replace their contracted regular. Unwerth is self-important, annoying and seemingly ignorant. As the books progress, though, Unwerth proves a worthy comrade to Ravenor's retinue, showing bravery, capability, and stalwart loyalty.

Neither is Han Solo or Kirk. Both have mixings of Solokirk, or Kirksolo depending on your age, and dashes of Picard and Calrissian. When I think of a Rogue Trader game, I think the emphasis is on profit. I don't doubt that there might be a few captains with <ahem> nobler aspirations. But I think most of them join the Imperial Navy.

I believe I read somewhere that most captains given a Rogue Trader charter are capable men who the Imperium can't decide what to do with them: Brilliant Generals who endanger the careers of their superiors, Imperial Captains who take too many chances, Administratum who come up with new, efficient filing systems.

I would think that the captain and crew would work hard to increase their fiscal bouyancy. I think the descriptions of Maxilla's and Unwerth's ships show the vast difference between rogue traders. Maxilla's great boat, with its gothic decoration and pristine halls, vs. Unwerth's chug-tug that may be leaking radiation and is definitely jury-rigged. The crews vary, but the main focus is on Maxilla, his astropath, and his navigators, or Unwerth's brigandy crew and man-hound Flaylock.

In short, I think the two templates, the Kirk template and Solo template, are moot.

Nullius said:

Except that we know that it is not against canon, at least insofar as canon incorporates small ships that do travel in the galaxy. It might not suit some peoples interpretations, but they are there. Not everything is solved by kilometre-long ships with torpedoes hundreds of metres long and slaves dragging guns into place, ramming down the gunpowder and... Erm...

Nullius said:

While that's true, the idea of having a "rational" approach—call it "nuts-and-bolts" if you will—is not excluded from the 40k universe if one is willing to accept certain... conventions, which includes some somewhat crazy Imagery.

I would not, however, use these as a means of marginilising anyone that had a slightly "sci" preference, most especially since that always ends up going down the route that if you don't buy into all that imagery you just don't "get" 40k. Erm, but there you have it.

Nullius said:

While that might be true, surely the standard imagery of the 40k universe would actively encourage such actions? All that high-seas adventure with Drake or Captain Jack leaning out in the rigging, salt... erm, warp spraying into his face and... erm, instantly mutating. Okay, bad example.

Nullius said:

Seems like a value judgement, although not one that is inappropriate given what you can arguably suggest we have "come to expect." It is always hard to encompass such radically different power levels without a group that is willing to suffer through the trials and tribulations.

Strangely, and at the moment, while I'm not overtly fond of the idea of merely putting the Age of Sail into space in much the same way that Dark Heresy put the medieval church into space, I am strangely enjoying Relentless , which reads in essentially the same way that you seem to be advocating in your post.

With that said, it's all good, whether you want the "high power" campaign or the "low power" campaign.

Kage

Indeed, Relentless was a suprising and excellent little book. It was written from a perspective that I can only imagine was born of good research or perhaps a bit of actual naval experience, plus a healthy does of imagination. I hadn't imagined the society of a 40k naval vessel to be so vast, so byzantine, and so diverse. I thoroughly enjoyed this one as just about the best bit of imperial Navy source material out there. Great read.

As far as Tobias Maxilla and Abnett's Rogue Traders go, I heartly agree. Maxilla was amongst my favorite characters from a series replete with evocative and humerous characters. And, as Mkoll said The kirk/solo debate is moot, because 40k is quite a bit broader and more baroque than either of those genres.

The purpose of my post above was simply towards achieving a scheme of playability and a system of rewards/risks/advancements. Whatever can be said of Dark Heresy (I love it, personally) it is an emminantly playable game, with a formula set for endless serialized adventures; i.e. Inquisitor orders PC's to go somewhere and do something, PC's try to survive the experience and reap the rewards. It's hard to read Dark Heresy and not begin immediately to imagine the sorts of narratives it might produce. The 'formula' for a rogue trader campaign is not as immediately apparent. Of course, that's the job of the good people at FF to work out on their own; I'm merely speculating.

I feel Mkoll may be on the right track in that 'Fiscal Boyancy' may turn out to be the dominating motivation in the adventure formula, but the question I'm considering is how to make the monetary rewards actually rewarding in terms of narrative. The essential point of D&D was the accumulation of wealth and experience against often unsurvivable odds. At the end of the adventure, the survivors would retire to their town and spend their hard earned loot on gear for the next adventure. The star wars/firefly formula is similar. The Fantastic wealth and resources of a Rogue trader, however, might make the accumulation of more wealth and power a slightly hum-drum experience, offering little in the way of in-game rewards to players. Furthermore, if the fleet is beyond the borders of the Imperium, where can they go to spend their loot anyway.

I suppose I'm just trying to imagine how to shoehorn as much gaming and narrative potential into the concept of a rogue trader. I like the idea of a massive flotilla -almost a piece of the imperium broken off and set adrift in the void- as a centerpiece for a variety of adventures, be they as grand or gritty as the players desire.

It would be ironic if rogue trader, despite the lack of limitations on the players, offered a more narrow set of narrative oppertunities than dark heresy, which places a fair number of limitations on the acolytes. Mind you, I'm not complainning, but merrely spectulating on what the final game is going to look like.

I suppose you're right, as well, that the Cpt. Jack Sparrow and Black pearl model would work admirably well for rogue trader, or for that matter the Jack Aubrey model. The genius of 40k is that it often manages to cram a wholee bunch of genres together into one skull-encrusted package. I hope FF continues along the same lines and wish them luck in their venture.

Cheers. And three cheers for Relentless. I hope you enjoy the read.

llsoth said:

(Sorry for long time coming forgot I posted this ) I am 99% certain it's in the latest Space Marine Codex (if it's not who knows where but I know I read it somewhere! ), indicating that the "small" ships of the Imperium do indeed have a crew comprised of a few people. Which means fluff may not be damned and that credance is added to the "High ranking officers performing nigh on everything" view point.

On topic I agree that the Kirk/Solo idea is far too narrow for the possibilities that a game like Rogue Trader has in a setting such as 40K

Not all rogue traders are rich.

I imagine many who barely make it from week to week.

Nullius said:

It was actually Jack Aubrey that I was thinking about, but for the life of me I was too lazy to IMDB it and could not quite put my finger on it. Thanks for posting the full name.

Nullius said:

Going well at the moment, even though I must admit getting a bit tired of the continual "Oh, it's so dark and vicious" central bit with all the crewbosses, etc. Ah well, it's just like "warfare" in most of the other novels, I guess—gotta get through it to get to the interesting tid bits.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

I have to say, Kage, if you haven't read the Aubrey/Maturin books by Patrick O Brian, read them. NOW. I get quite boring, frothy and evangelical about them, but I think they're an absolutely ideal source of concepts for Rogue Trader. The movie is good, but it's very much a "sawn off" version of the books.

By the way, the Anargo Sector project is looking fantastic at the moment, nice work, fella!

Lightbringer said:

I second this comment whole heartedly. If you haven't read the Aubrey/Maturin novels, you have to, not just because of Rogue Trader, but because they're some of the best reads out there.

The Aubrey/Maturin novels were a big influence on me, definitely.

That's encouraging Mr. Watson. They really are fine books.

FFG Ross Watson said:

You know what...I have a feeling Rogue Trader is going to be something extra special!

Lightbringer said:

Maybe I'll check them out, then. Unfortunately I'm going through a "down period" due to overwork, so perhaps they will inspire a new adventurous spark in me! Thanks for the pointer.

Xathess Wolfe said:

All we've done is changed the redirect to the forums to the partial, WiP Explore website, but I'm sure that the contributors will by happy to hear your well-wishing. Thanks once again.

Kage

I belive that quote belongs to Lightbringer, not to me, but I agree with Lightbringer whole heartedly.