Hi GM's of the world! I have a problem.
I am relatively new to roleplaying games, getting my start in Deathwatch only a year or so ago. I took to GM'ing like a fish to water, me and my friend switching off every mission, working off our different ideas and stories. After about a year of games once a month go by and we got tired of Deathwatch, too serious. Then we decided to go Rogue Trader.
My friend promised to continue Deathwatch as GM if I took on the Responsibility of Rogue Trader. I accepted.

Now I'm in a pickle, here are my problems:

1. Our Roleplaying group has swelled from 5 to 10. Now our combat time has doubled, so people have just simply become uninterested in the game with 9 people do their combat turn before them.
2. The characters our players play as are really hard to deal with. Our Rogue Trader is a jerk, a greedy, malicious, dictator. Every time one of our players comes up with an idea or has a suggestion he immediately shoots them down. Everyone gets tired of it real quick.
3. Lastly, I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO ENTICE THEM. The Rogue Trader life is just so free I am having a really hard time coming up with a plot line. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or campaigns you have previously run I would really appreciate hearing them.

Please help me save my roleplaying group, I'm losing them!

It sounds like you have a good group and game ideas.

So my suggestions to make it all smoother for ya.

1. Because you have so many players break them up into teams a lot. The rounds won't go any faster but it will feel like they are. For example some players are part of the landing party while others are still in ship evading enemy ships etc until extraction time.

2. Pull you Traders player aside in private and explain to him that his pc is really cool being an arrogant dickwad but it's up to the player to be a cool guy towards the other players regardless of his pcs personality issues. Ignoring the input of other players is not ok. Ever. It's their game too. His character could hear out the ideas and still shoot them down in game, right before saying "I have a great plan! We will do…(insert previously suggested plan here)". That way the players can feel like they are contributing even if their characters are feeling stifled.

3. The Warrent often has built in requirements or duties that need to be honored. So a Trader might be required to say, check up on a particular world and bring a new batch of imperial colonists to said world and assist the beginning colonization efforts. Also Astropathic distress cignals are handy hooks to draw in pcs. The last time I played as the trader I agreed to give an inquisitor a short ride to a nearby planet. That simple errand started all sorts of drama. (as a result, I will strongly concidder not giving any more rides to inquisitors in the future!)

After the group has made friends and enimies as well as aquired assets that can be seized the adventures will start to flow real easy because you will have hooks that hold meaning to both players and characters.

I would reccomend the other players do a coup and replace the rogue trader with a puppet. Then run his dynasty from the shadow council of players. Being a rogue trader should not excuse a jerk from the consequenses of his actions. And if he is really all that, then he will overcome the mutiny anyway.

You dont need to entice your players. Plan what you want yo happen, then let them do whatever it is they want to do. Then have what you planned happen on the way or during what they planned. I reccomend leaving the start of your plans open for improvisation to set the specifics. For the most part though, rogue trader is all about picking your own adventure and you should avoid forcing a plot on them. Be ready for a lot of improvisation. Often times a rogue trader group will set the plot on thier own… Take for instance the trader who is practically trying to force a mutiny.

If you really want to avoid a pvp confrontation though, one idea is to have the various players organisations invest in the rogue trader dynasty by giving each player thier own ship and giving that player the instructions to watch out for the interests of that group (IE the ministratum, ecclesiarchy, imperial gaurd, navis nobilite, etc.). The organisations then inform the rogue trader that these players are the captain of those ships and if the rogue trader acts in opposition to those organisations, they will withdraw their support and treat his dynast as hostile. The rogue trader would not have much of a choice to accept or not because he can not afford to alienate the major organizations of the imperium.

This would increase the power level of the group, but that can be compensated by you, the GM, with the challenges they face. It would also add alot of potential intrigue to the group in a roleplaying sense. Further it would place each player on a clearly equal footing.

Cryhavok said:

I like your idea of a Trader "fleet" quite a bit. You could have the Traders ship Plus a "priest Ship" and a ship full of Tech Priests.. This does sound sweet! I like it.

Soul Hunter said:

I have been been running a multitude of different games since the mid 80's. Send me an message and I will get back to you with a plethora of options.

Our game started with the ship in impound; the Rogue Trader's father had been arrested and executed a bit unjustly. Therefore, the Ministorum applied some pressure to get the ship released back to the Dynasty. The Dynasty had to appeal to the Mechanicus to refit and repair the ship, and of course a Navigator's House had to be contracted with. Therefore, the ship had a Board of Directors: The RT, the Priest, the Tech, and the Navigator, with the Seneschal (also from the RT Dynasty) being a tie breaker. The RT is the captain and his word is law in battle, elsewise everything can be put to a vote.

Heh, I already knew our RT was going to be difficult. He tries to dominate in games, so I had to squash that horse out of the gate.

Now to your problem. Cryhavoc's suggestion is a good one. Kill the RT and start the game's power structure over.

DigitalRedneck suggests the more common form of dealing with a difficult player. Talk to them and tell them their style of play is killing the game. Do it nicely, and make suggestions to him/her on how to change in order to make it a better game.

Kill off another player's character, and have their new character be the RT's father/grandfather/uncle or what have you that is more higly placed in the Dynasty and simply usurp the position.

I may not be very helpful here. I'm a tyrant myself, but I don't have these problems when running a game, either.

You might need a secondary GM, too. You can engineer many situations when a landing party gets engaged at nearly the same time a space combat ensues, break into 2 groups, and run both simultaneously. This works best when your best player and potential secondary GM has a character that's not very engaged during play.

Unfortunately, the Rogue Trader rules are very crunchy and not very suited to large playing groups. We've stopped using their rules altogether when it comes to character combat and skills checks. We still play Rogue Trader, kind of, but we use (insert another company's product…a rules "light" set of rules), and we use Rogue Trader for ship combats. We love the genre, and we do like FFG's rules, but the size of our group made it necessary to streamline things. We all discussed the situation and opted for another set of rules, heavily house-ruled.

As just a general comment, I can't imagine running a group at all with 10 people. I'm sure it's occurred to you to split your party into two groups (or more), but I can't think of a way that having a lot of people wouldn't work.

The problem with a Rogue Trader dominating a group is one I was worried might happen, but fortunately hasn't come up with my group. There are two important things to remember. First, you as the GM are the one in control of the adventure, not your players. You absolutely should listen to what they're saying, and try to play to their strengths but they can't force you to take a course of action that you are uncomfortable with. Second, even though in-game the Rogue Trader has final authority on everything, the player is part of a gaming group and one vote against everyone else's puts him in the losing camp.

In-game, although the Rogue Trader controls everything, if an Astropath isn't feeding him his messages correctly, if the Seneschal keeps certain pieces of information to himself, the Explorator persuades machine spirits to give out false information, the Navigator "loses his way" in the Warp, the Missionary preaches that the Trader has become a threat to their soul, the Void Master relays ship orders as s/he sees fit and the Arch-Militant takes the "Klingon Promotion" route, and their life can become a figurehead of power on board their own vessel. If this is happening and players aren't going along with it because they find it inherently funny then there is something that needs to be addressed in your group, but the in-game role does not make one player an equivalent lynchpin outside of roleplaying.

Ten is just too many. I could never make that work, and make sure everybody is having fun (including me). Maybe some people could, but not me.

We run with upto 8 players so I feel your pain on the "people get bored" front. I try and keep things moveing as quickly as possible and involve everyone. We run alot of group challenges, streamlined spaceship combat and binned alot of the endeavour points rubbish.

8 players makes things easy when it comes to plot hooks. So, an example with pre-written adventures, the ship pulls up in Footfall and everyone goes on shore leave.

Immediatly the RT gets a friendly call from Chorda, asking if he wants some work (Fall from Grace adventure)

The Voidmaster is at the pub drinking and gambling and wins a stake in a cold trade venture (Vaults of the forgotten adventure)

The Missionary is at the church and gets news about an ork threat to an important shrine on the world of Damaris (The Frozen Reaches)

The Seneschal is digging and finds details of a lost treasure ship (Adventure in the core rulebook)

The Arch Militant meets a rich nobleman who wants to go on safari to a death world (Example endeavour from Hostile Aquisitions)

The Navigator gets a message about suspicious warp anomalies detected in the expanse (Reworked Light of Reason from The Lathe Worlds DH)

The Astropath gets a vague prophacy at the pit of voices which leads to trouble and profit (Lure of the Expanse gamebook)

And to cap it all off, an Imperial Navy cruiser has shown up and is looking for you (~Whispers on the Storm GMs Kit adventure)

Make them look for work, they are not Deathwatch marines with someone to give them orders. This makes the game even more fun as they have to work out what to accept, what to decline and what they can put off (my crew got the safari seeking nobleman aboard ship, then entertained him with a drug and drink fuelled orgy for a few months as a perk while they went and recovered Lady Chorda's cargo).

With an overarching main story that weaves in and out, they have built up a fleet, colonies, armed forces and a number of favours (currently the Ordo Xenos, Deathwatch, Titan Legion, Navy and Army) and chunky profit factor. These will help them when the main story comes to a conclusion in the fiery rebirth of the Yu'Vath into the material world via the main warp gate of an abandoned eldar craftworld (shameless stolen from Fallen Suns).

See, its easy

As for your player who has the RT character…..just politly tell him to stop being a numpty, its a game and people are there to have fun. If he is a numpty its not fun…..

Thank you, thank you, and thank you, for all the responses. Rogue Trader is just so different to me that I was having such a hard time. Ubermutant, I love your method that sounds perfect for my group right now. And Piterious I may just message you about that if I get GM’s block again.

Just so yall know, we are restarting our dynasty, a fresh start, with some new characters, a new ship, and a new RT. I spoke with him and he promised to change his ways, he understood how it would be difficult for me and the other explorers to work with it. So right now my plan is to have them go through the ‘Stations of Passage’ (Port Wander, The Battleground, The Hermitage, etc.) just to get them on the right path, ease them into the new playstyle that is very different from the Deathwatch gameplay we are so very accustomed to. And then, the Expanse is theirs to explore.

Thanks for the help guys. I’ll be sure to keep on these forums and keep in touch about the games.