Hey all - I'm new here, and in fact have never played a pen and paper RPG before, or anything like Rogue Trader. I've always been in love with 40k however, and my friend is going to get a Rogue Trader campaign game started for him and our two girlfriends (whom are also quite interested; he's the only one of us that's ever done a pen and paper RPG before).

So all that unecessary information brings me to my next question - can you use characters from Dark Heresy/Deathwatch/Only War/Black Crusade in your Rogue Trader games?

The way I see it is that, right now, if we can't use characters from any of these then it doesn't really pay to check out the other character choices available to me in preperation for my first game. Fyi, I've RP'd in a number of online MMO's, and have done so almost daily for years. This is of course an entirely new thing, however - thoroughly different from that. (I hear its unique allure is in being able to be face-to-face with others as you do so? I can hardly fathom it, but I'm going to try!)

Anyway so ends my introduction/question-asking first post. If any of you guys also have any tips for first-timers like myself and my gf, please feel free to put them here!

PS-I'm extremely curious if any of you have ever worked in 40k models into your RPG games much, being a long time 40k TT gamer myself. If so, how have you done it?

Mechanically the game lines are somewhat compatible but there are enough differences that things do not port over easily. At almost every step there will need to be GM calls since sometimes the same Talent does different things from game to game (compare Jaded in the various lines) and this holds to eapon traits too. Dak Heresy has a different system for pschc powers that bears little resemblence to any of the other lines. Only War and Black Crusade diverge even more from the other lines with combat Actions being reworked considerably. I say that these differences are sufficient to make conversions tedious and direct porting almost impossible, but tothers are obviously willing to put out more time and effort on it than I am.

What HappyDaze said, and it doesn't make much sense themewise either.

In Dark Heresy you play anti-heroes, low powered thugs that an Inquisitor won't miss much if they get themselves killed. Well, at the beginning at least. Small and dirty detective stories are your routine.

In Deathwatch you play the mightiest champions of battle the Imperium has to offer. The stories are accordingly epic!

In Rogue Trader you play archtypical adventurers who boldly go where no one has gone before. You get the drift.

In Black Crusade you play evil Heretics who want to bring down the Imperium and get the attention of the Dark Gods while doing so.

You see, they don't really mix well. It can be done of course. But what's the point?

RT and BC can be thematically blended rather easily. A band of Chaos corsairs and a band of RT privateers are not necessarily all that different.

Likewise, a Dark Heresy character who survives long enough could end up in the service of a Rogue Trader

They are generally compatable systems, but like others have said, in practice it is a complexe undertaking to combine the systems. As a "New to they game and to paper and pencil RPGs in general" person, I would strongly reccomend that you start off with just one system and add others after you get going if you so desire. That being said I have been doing it for years.

The key is in syncing what xp level players are starting at as the systems are set at different power levels. The books all have sidebars to tell you what it is at compared to the other systems. After that what my group does is, if there is a difference in rules, use the rules from the book your character is from. This represents the training and experiences you have due to your character's origins and history (IE space marine or rogue trader). After that we allow elite advances (something the books will explain) to acquire another systems talent at the same point you could in your class. For example the rogue trader wants to get black crusade's version of swift attack, a rank 4 talent that costs 500 xp. So when he is rank 4, he takes it as an elite advance, instead of a normal one, for some extra XP ( I'm a fan of an extra 200xp on top of what they would pay for for thier normal one, but really this is a gm call).

Characters use the rules for such things as fate points from the book they are made from. Special weapon qualities use the rules for the specific weapon from the book it was gotten from. (IE the hellgun from inquisitors handbook vs the hellgun from the rogue trader core rulebook)

Again My advice would be to get experience behind you with your chosen system before going into this stuff though.

thank you all a ton! I will definitely be putting this information to use…mainly by taking your advice and just using rogue trader characters, lol.

Might I ask, however, to augment your responses - what sorts of ideas for female characters are available for our girlfriends? I know the universe tends to discriminate in some ways, so what is and is not available to them for sake of character creation?

PS- Do the expansions have other character 'class' options?

Rogue Trader doesn't really have any gender-restricted character options (apart from orks which are sexless). I've never seen a female priest of the Ministorum (Missionary), but you could just as easily have them from the Sororitas (not likely a Battle Sister, but there are many other paths).

Yes, women in service to the church tend to be pressed into the ranks of the Adepta Sororitas.

You can still play them with the same rules as the missionary, but give 'em a power armor and let them act like a space nun with a rocket gun.

As far as I am aware the only gender restrictions in the 40k universe, as far as humans go, is: spacemarines are men (deathwatch system and grey knights from the deamon hunter book in dark heresey), and adeptus sororitas are women (Found in the inquisitors handbook and fleshed out in the blood of martyrs, both in dark heresey). Everything else is open to any gender.

To your PS: The expansions do not have whole additional classes generally, with the exception of a few xenos races made available for players (kroot, orc freebooter, orc wierdboy, dark eldar kabalite warrior, dark eldar wytch). They do have alternate ranks that can be taken to alter your base class a bit and help tailor it into the character you want.

There are no female Space Marines. Apart from that girls are good to go.

Lycerus said:

I almost always use miniatures to define who is where relative to who in combat. For outdoor fights I usually use 3-D wargame terrain, and measure distances with a tape measure, pretty much just like tabletop 40K (I recommend a scale of 1/2" = 1 meter; 1" = 1 meter makes the battlefield too cramped). For indoor fights, I use either a wet-erase board with a grip of 1" squares printed on it and the layout temporarily drawn on it, or, if I want a more elaborate map for a particular location, I'll draw one out ahead of time, using brown wrapping paper and Sharpies. Or once in a while I'll bust out the old Space Hulk tiles- these are great for space stations, research outposts, etc.In a confined space, a scale of 1" = 1 meter is fine.

Lycerus said:

As has been said, everything is open to them. If you want to reflavor the Missionary class as a Sister of Battle, that's fine, but don't feel obligated to. You can have female Missionaries too.

You can also have female explorators, seneschals, rogue traders, archmilitants, voidmasters, astropaths, and navigators.

Re: Miniatures:

If you already have 40k minis, then by all means, use them.

I don't, and there's no way in hell that I'm paying the exorbitant costs required for minis. My group just uses army men for the PCs, and coins for the enemies. This is much more economical, since you can get 100 pennies for a dollar. The aesethetics of it have grown on me over the years, too- Mooks are pennies, dull and small, and then big bads tend to be the larger and shinier coins.

eBarbarossa said:

Discrimination in 40k depends entirely on one's homeworld. Many powerful positions within various Imperial organisations are held by any gender and any skin colour, from local security forces all the way up to powerful Inquisitors . The Imperium consists of many worlds with different customs and traditions. Whilst some cultures are surely patriarchal or even mysoginistic, there will be other worlds where no social difference exists, or even where it is the women who are regarded as higher. For example, the background of one of the characters from the Last Chancers mentioned the world Xenan (go figure) populated by warrior women.

I believe the Rogue Trader core rulebook actually depicts both genders nigh-equally for illustrating the various classes. Is not the picture accompanying the Rogue Trader class a woman, too? I don't think there is any class in RT that cannot be played by either gender. The only major limitations throughout all of 40k that spring to mind are Space Marines (all-male) and Sororitas (all-female), as well as some minor organisations such as specific Imperial Guard regiments. And even these restrictions can be lifted for your game, if your group thinks that would work out. FFG themselves have made their version of the Vostroyan Firstborn recruit girls as well, after all, obviously for increased player freedom in Only War.

As to the original topic at hand, I agree with keeping the games separate. It's quite possible to carry items or even characters over from one game to another, but this will almost always require some tinkering. FFG's 40k RPGs are all related, but all have different rules, different themes, and different "power levels". Just pulling things over without adapting them to the game at hand has a high chance of breaking something, regardless of how much the books claim this would work. If you like to craft your own rules for things, however, feel free to take a look around.