Hi all, I am planning on GM'ing a rogue trader campaign in a month or two and I want to do something very low level.

My idea at the moment is to have the parties rogue trader to have basically nothing, with a profit factor around 15-20, disgraced, outcast and generally down on his luck and resorting to things like piracy to try and grab back at his wealth.

I was wondering if any of you had played or gm'ed a campaign like this before, if you have any advice on how to handle it. Basically the theme right now is Firefly in 40k.

EDIt - To add, I am also looking for a very small, very fast ship. Something with little armour and not much in the way of weapon mounts (just a prow and dorsal at most). Is there anything in the expanded books like this? Or should I stick to just making one from scratch?

There are two Raiders in the main rulebook. Either would seem to fit your spec. With a crew of 20k, its not quite Firefly, although you might have a cute heretek enginseer…

Warp capable ships don't come much smaller - outside the high ranks of the inquisition and temple assassins.

The smallest vessel is the Viper Scout Sloop, which weighs in at 7500 crew and is 1 KM long by .25 KM (which still makes the hull large enough to contain a handful of Empire State Buildings)

I'd double triple check with your PLAYERS that it's okay to start with a tiny ship AND a tiny profit factor. I think I big part of the Rogue Trader setting is having a nonzero amount of wealth and power (and it's worth nothing that even 10 profit factor is described as a smaller merchant house, or a normal labor guild. So if all the carpenters on a planet get together and pool their resources, they're about as wealthy as your player.)

If you want to start small, give them a system ship, and an interesting star system with say 10+ planets in it to play in. System ships can be tiny if you want them to be.

Yes, a system ship is the Firefly set-up.

http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Kalidasa_system

If a RT found such a system, he could make it a pocket empire.

I'm currently doing exactly this. They started with a Guncutter as thier primary vessel, had to hunt down clues to the location of a ship, Charter Passage and a bunch of other things as well.

It's been great so far.

If your going to start that small then you might almost want to start a Dark Heresy campaign and 'build up' to Rogue Trader.

Well it is a hybrid game already, using the BC rules for the most part since the group wanted to play characters distinctly seperate from the Empire. They also wanted it to be low powered, but still be able to travel the Expanse.

This is happening directly after a Trader Militant campaign with multiple ships in the fleet and much exploitation of the PF and AP systems.

Viper class scout sloop is fast, but not much else. Its also paper thin. I prefer the Orion class star clipper - its a transport ship with the speed of a raider and is limited from adding any component that affects armour. This means you can outfit it with great sensors, extra engine stuff and smuggling components, luxury passenger quarters etc and you basically have a 40k scale Millenium Falcon. The players can start off with maybe a quarter of their crew after a recent mutiny or hostile acquisition of their dynasty, spend their first session recruiting/press ganging/trading for new crew and then set out to strike back at those that wronged their house. Or alternatively they could get hired for the knack at getting valuable cargo to where it is most profitable by a large merchant guild, only to get embroiled in a sub-sector wide war between two rival factions.

Basically what im saying is that Star Wars has some great narrative elements so steal them all you want

The Viper Sloop though very small is a very specialised and somewhat rare vessel in its own right. I would suggest the Iconoclast (also in Battlefleet Koronus), this is almost more a broad designation than an actual proper class. It's the most basic form of warp capable vessel the Imperium makes as well as being made quite a bit outside the Imperium since it's so much easier to than other ships. It's fast, with room for two dorsal weapons and comparable armour to the Viper and comes in at twenty nine ship points. It has a special rule for doing long term repairs. Perhaps this vessel might fit the theme a bit more? A patchwork, cheap and undeniably "common" vessel. Dock it in port near Lady Sun Lee's vessel and the stark contrast of the dynasty's financial fortunes is plain for all to see.