Greetings mighty Game Master!

I wanted to draw from your ineffable wisdom few answer for my bothering questions. I started long time ago my adventures in wild Rogue Trader game. Its one off my favorite system that have come to light. Exploring mysteries of Warhammer 40.000 space is that what I looking for! BUT there is one tiny problem. In the book there used to be few heroes: Rogue Trader, Missionary, Void Master etc. But my players always ask about all this crew on board of the ship.

Let take example from the book, Tempest class strike frigate. Yes, wonderfull metal behemot with over 30 thousand crew members! How much off them should players use for thier own needs? It is always problem for me to answer this question. Can they use them, or who are they?

I make few sessions with some guards of those explorers they where always dying, or coming to rescue thier chief in the end. But I wanted to ask how do YOU deal with this problem? Ignoring all those people and letting players do adventure alone or take as fresh meat for traps etc.

Regards Mighty Pringles!

Not a RT GM myself, but … I think what you could try is remind your players of the downsides of using their crew for everything. Sure this can be done, but out-of-game it leads to less involvement of the players, basically dumbing the game down to a series of dice rolls with little interaction / role-playing, as the PCs are just going over their daily duties on the ship. Don't directly take this choice away from them, but let them figure out for themselves that this isn't what they as players signed up for.

Ultimately, I think the ideal game of Rogue Trader would, in this aspect, be somewhat akin to the classic Star Trek or Star Wars schpiel where you've got a bunch of heroes backed up by one or two dozen redshirts. It just makes sense for the latter to be around, but for the epic stuff to happen you need a Kirk or a Solo.

This is big punch of good advices! I should start to think out of box.

Thank you Lynata!

One of the things to remember is the logistical issues of disembarking thousands of men and women, from a spaceship! Given that they have enough shuttles to actually land the troops in the first place, you will need to feed these people too. Another thing to consider is that the 30 000 souls onboard a starship in the 40k universe are just that, voidsmen. They are not by default ground troops and they are DEFINATLY not organized as a land army. Yes around 10% are armed for combat, but that would be boarding combat and not in enviroment were they have to forage for food, find shelter for the night and so on.

Always consider that if they want to land an actual army, if they have one onboard, this is quite the undertaking. For every soldier you land, you will also be landing vehicles, munitions, food, medical supplis, tents and if this is going to happend without it all breaking down it will need to be supervised. It will take days to organize an army if you ask me.

Make your players ask themselves, "How many men do we need? Can we do it with less?". ANyway thats my take on the issue.

I dealt with the idea of my group wanting to train people up as soldiers in the following ways.

First I said that about one-third of the Crew would be treated as having a simple weapon and training in it (one of Pistol/Basic Weapon Training SP/Las), but that they werent' soldiers so they'd always be at 2/3rds of their Crew Rating in combat. Thus you could swarm enemies with your crew, but they're not great at it although you can throw unlimited numbers of soldiers.

Second, when they trained up "real soldiers", they set a firm number of soldiers they would be creating who would be better trained than the crew and could function at their full rating and use special weapons that the RT acquired for them. However they would no longer be functioning as "crew", but as hired soldiers so they would subtract proportionately from the Crew Rating. They trained up 1,000 people to serve as a basic house troops, and since they use a Dauntless Light Cruiser their maxmum crew population is 65,000 so they lost 1/65th of their crew population, or suffer a -2 Crew Population (always round up) for having house troops on board.

Third, they can always relentlessly throw their own troops at a situation, which means if you're trying to infiltrate a compound and they take down just a core group of PCs then they might be able to infiltrate a compound relatively undetected, but if you're moving in a thousand or more people then it's going to turn into a pitched battle where they will suffer deaths and loss. The easiest way to represent this is that if they do run a pitched battle involving thousands of their own troops, it should hit where every Rogue Trader feels it. Their profit margin . Subtract Achievement Points for using a huge army to represent the logistical costs of moving your troops to and from the surface. Subtract Achievement Points for hundreds of casualties that need to be replaced and re-outfitted. Subtract Achievement Points for success because these troops aren't the Imperial Guard and are going to expect to be paid for putting their lives on the line for you. If your Rogue Trader starts abusing the trust of his troops, don't be afraid to throw a mutiny at them, have a portion of his troops defect during a fight, start performing worse and so on.

Then if they manage to deal with all of this and compensate for having an army, give them the feel of actually having commanded a few thousand troops into combat successfully. Let them start cheering your name and be celebrated by your troops. Or cursed and reviled but barely tolerated. It's up to you.

I use the rule of thumb that a ship can carry 10% of it's crew as passengers, plus 10k per barracks module. While 10% of the ship's crew is armed, they are security and boarders not ground troops. In Frozen Reaches they discuss using ships crew and troops on a large scale. They say to use the Hired Gun stats for them. That makes them pretty ineffective against most things a RT is going to be facing. In war, they can expect to take a lot more casualites than real troops. If they end up losing a lot of crew that way, I would have the ship lose 1 morale. Ship's population would drop 1% per 1% of the crew lost, with a coresponding loss in morale. If they are buying real troops, I use the BK rules to buy them. Note, this buys the troops/equipment/vehicles and the necessary supplies to keep them in combat.

My players tend to be a bit militant, and maintain a strong standing military force pulled together from various troops they have hired/rescued and led by an ex-Imperial Guard General (the RT). They equip them well, and rotate who goes on 'away missions' to both keep them rested and practiced. In combat, the troops handle the more minor enemies while the players take on the big stuff. Getting their troops wounded or killed is usually the first sign that things have gotten serious. Some players maintain their own personal bodyguard of elite troops as well. Note that the players can buy 100 house troops with excellent equipment (Carapace Armor, hellguns, 40 skill) and decent training for an aquisition modifier of -30. A bodyguard in Stormtrooper Carapace and lots of heavy weapons is -30 (5 Veterans, skill 50, Heavy Infantry, Well Equiped) and represents an elite squad that is pretty likely to survive and make a significant contribution in most fights. Those troops suck to lose, but my players are pretty happy to have them. They would also carve though crew used as troops like a powersword through a grot. For more serious and large scale conflicts buying up standard Imperial Guardsmen is a -10 base aquisition modified by quantity. Enterprising players with a barracks component could buy up a whole infantry regiment, and use them to subdue xenos or guard their colonies. That is fine, and represents the very large scale of typical RT games.

The main reasons not to use these troops for their 'away team missions' is usually stealth, politics, or skill. Crew and troops are both trained to do one thing, fight. But RT missions usually also involve a lot of skill use. Troops and Ship's Armsmen don't have good stealth skills, Tech-use, Security, Social Skills, or Lores. A lot of the time, anything but elite troops brought on RT missions tend to be more like thermometers, when they start dying you know it is getting hot. Even elite troops are mainly used to keep the player's flank clear and let the RT concentrate on strategy, the Engiseer on breaking the door encryption or hacking the dataport, the Arch Militant on killing enemy leaders, and the Senchenal on sneaking behind the enemy and rolling Rad and Flame grenades into their ranks. The troops become part of the background and let the players take the center stage for the really heroic stuff. I tend to throw harder and more dangerous opponents at my players, and let the troops soak up some of the hits to keep the fight tense but survivable. If they are bringing along crew as troops, then they die in droves. When they bring along elite troops, then the troops are more likely to survive wounded to be rescued to fight another day. If you are unsure, try actually rolling combat once or twice. The weapons in RT are deadly enough that crew will die without really contributing much of anything to the fight. Make sure to limit the players to their lift capacity. If they are using a guncutter they can bring 30 total, including themselves and any servitors. 25 Crew are not really going to make much of a difference in a serious RT fight.

A few things I've done in my game to try to head off too much crew spamming:

1. I established at the start that the ship posessed eight arvus lighters and two halo barges when they came into command of it (after years of mismanagement by a demented old fart but so goes feudalism), so that at most they could only ferry just short of two hundred guys around in a single trip. Presumably the process goes much faster in a friendly port where local ferries, tugs and longshoremen become involved even if the ship isn't fully docked.

If you care to look up Arvus Lighters and Halo Barges you'll also note they they absolutely suck for anything but routine transportation. Well that and it has a pair of Aquilas but neither flies, one's been canabalized to keep the other going and then that one crapped out too a decade ago so both need to be rebuilt. Anyway if the players want to have a fleet of little vessals to transport crew they can **** well buy them.

2. I told them that the ship's various officers, techs, craftsmen, bosons and so forth have it in their standard guild, union or other contract that they don't have to go dirtside if they don't want to and when it comes to hostile or uncharted planets no they don't want to they're not stupid. I did tell them however that they could take as many ratings with them as they like, then I punched up a stat set for a typical rating and showed it to them. They opted not to bother. If they want to hire house guards or put together some sort of East India Company style security force they can try to buy that later. Obviously they can use their crew for boarding actions or repelling boarding actions, but like others have said the standard crew does not really excel at such.

I have found that my players don't really need their other crew members. Yes, granted they do end up on some missions/explorations but only at the very beginning or very end. I do not endorse the use of the crew, but if you do happen to keep count of that sort of thig, you could recrute new crew members and that could be quite interesting. Happy Gaming!

I view it that the PCs are the ALWAYS the best men for the job, they're the most competent, most courageous, most awesome, and most good looking members of the crew! Sure they could send crewman Bloggs to go search that alien ruin but he'd probably drop the priceless artefact, wake an ancient evil, and lose the Captain's favourite hat in the process. Also PCs, Rogue Trader PCs in particular, tend to be glory hounds unwilling to share the limelight and glory with the mere scum and menials that slosh about the crew decks of their ship.

Untrained, inexperienced, superstitious hangers-on can also be a massive hindrance. Take a thousand men down to the surface of that alien world and you have 1000 unskilled, uncomfortable, probably agoraphobic accidents waiting to happen. Some might blunder into hidden traps, attract the attention of terrible native predators, get hopelessly lost, be weirded out by the strange round horizon (or just the concept of a horizon), and generally misbehave. Crew are for the most part idiot yokels who've spent their entire life in the guts of a starship. Many might never even have seen the surface of the planet, some may even believe planets are mere folk tales and don't really exist.

My players have basically three different kinds of crew handy, with different capabilities and usableness….

They have an Imperial Guard regiment (1000 men) gifted to them as part of their new contract, but these men are still Imperial Guardsmen and won't fight simply at the Rogue Trader's say-so. They're intended to used in the fulfillment of their contract, and outside that theater they must be convinced to risk their lives, the difficulty of which largely varies by the good intended by the act (it's much easier to get them to defend a planet from an Ork invasion or go dirtside to bring the Imperial Truth to an ignorant populace) and the risk factor involved. But they're highly trained, well-equipped (comparatively), and rather capable.

They have their skilled crew, the people that actually run things behind the scenes. Sure, the Rogue Trader say fly that way and the Arch-Militant says fire guns 4-17, 4-21, and 2-02, but the crew chiefs and techpriests and sergeants are the ones that know how to make the ship fly that way or engage three particular guns out of a 6-deck broadside. These guys have particular skills, possibly including combat skills, and could be useful additions to your general "adventuring party" setup dirtside, but losing them could even further effect the ship's already poor Crew Rating…

Finally, they have their unskilled crew. Lots of them. Most of them are mostly muscle (have you seen those Strength ratings?), but muscle has it's uses. But going dirtside will probably cost some Morale, and if they lose numbers, Morale could plummet - and losing enough could even cost Crew Population, but don't worry, they have a Reclamation Facility for that… except, you know, see also: Morale Loss. Additionally, the Imperium used the Explorers as a decent way to dump off prisoners and other unwanted, and they're not exactly trustworthy… they do their jobs, but ask them to haul your treasure out of an ancient/xeno ruin, and don't be surprised if bits are missing when you get where you're headed.

Perhaps they should seriously consider investing in training and equipment for their crew, at least. Remember that only about 1/10 of the crew are likely armed at all, and even then only ever are issued their weapons during a boarding action. They don't train for that stuff, they get handed guns (or more likely melee weapons, since **** GURL LOOK AT THAT STRENGTH) and told "Fight for all our lives because they're here to take our ship" and then we pray they're willing to fight for home harder than the other guys.

Well, being Warhammer 40k you could have subordinates and people in general disrespecting them for "Hiding behind your minions (metal bokses) like a coward." Leaders are supposed to lead from the front and arsekicking equals authority.

I also try to hearken back to the Startrek away crew vibe (especially since everyone always seems to go for the teleportarium). Sure it doesn't make sense to send your chief engineer into an unknown, probably risky, situation, when you have non-chief engineers to spare, but do you really want the episode to be "Geordi sits at his desk/basecamp and reads reports?" No, that @#^& is boring as heck.

Sure bring some red-shirts to be albalitave meat armor, but unless you're about to assault a keep keep it to a half dozen bodyguards.

They can still be useful from a storytelling angle. They'll be the ones getting the worf effect going on or disappearing mysteriously into the bushes when the xeno(morph) starts picking people off. Or you can use them as a clue bat to point out things you think of as obvious or sensible but the players are apparently oblivious to.

I have found that the comrade system from only war and the formation system from enemies of the Imperium has helped alleviate these issues drastically. It allows for the players to bring squads of redshirts and bodyguards without stealing to much of the spotlight and considerably simplifieng the logistics of combat between scores of people. The formation rules are also very good when you want the pc's to meet massive amounts of enemies without making it to deadly or complicated.