- the smallest ship in your arsenal is a few kilometers long and requires a crew of 20,000 to function properly

- the best fighter in your party is the blind, frail old astropath wielding the staff and pistol he started the game with

- you are considered poor if your holdings *only* consist of the wealth of an entire world.

- it is socially acceptable to wear clothing and bear weapons of obvious xenos manufacture, but you execute the inhabitants of other planets for doing the same thing

- your job is to bring the light of the emperor to heathen stars, which you interpret as destroying entire civilizations so that you can seed the planet with your own colonists. this is in fact exactly what the High Lords had in mind.

- if you deny an inquisitor his demands and then immediately flee to uncharted space, there isn't a whole lot the inquisitor can do.

- you are charged destroying xenos wherever you find them, but your closest advisor is a kroot shaper, your bodyguard is an Ork Freebooter, and your Morale officer is a Dark Eldar Kabalite.

- it's cheaper to give every crewman a personal hooker than it is to feed them

- you can't commit crimes. you just make choices that are "frowned upon"

- its better business to take another Rogue Trader's planet than to find and colonize your own.

- the more people want to kill you, the more popular you are with your peers.

- taking the young women of an entire village as your own personal playthings is encouraged, but if you choose to learn how to read in a dead language, you've "gone too far"

- attempts on your life by another rogue trader is considered grounds for war, but attempts on your life by Eldar Corsairs is considered a rare business opportunity

- what your crew does in the name of good would make blackbeard look like a pansy

Aaaaaand all of a sudden i became interested in playing Rogue Trader…

antijoke_13 said:

- compared to some of the things your priest has done in the name of the good of mankind, blackbeard is a pansy

- your priest's idea of a night on the town is a witch hunt.

- you make your money selling xenos artifacts, but have no problem helping the inquisition bring down another Rogue Trader house for selling xenos artifacts

- Your Navigator is a mutant, who has an almost obsessive interest in genetic purity. no one says anything about this.

- Owning a ship is enough to get most men executed as traitors and pirates. Not you though, you're a special little snowflake

- despite (most) everyone in your crew being human, the only person who's been to earth is the ship's Astropath, who has nothing to show from the trip but some vicious scarification and a distinct lack of eyes. in spite of this, he's always talking about how he'd like to go back one day.

-you discover an alien infestation problem that's been on your ship since your family acquired it several generations past.

-Your priest gleefully takes one of the dirtiest, most dangerous, and horrible jobs on the ship. This is because the Twist Catcher gets to burn mutants on a nearly daily basis. (side note make ABSOLUTELY sure you don't schedule a mutant burning excursion on BBQ Wednesday, you'll avoid horrible brain scarring accidents)

-The Enginseer Prime is forced to ration said priest's flamer fuel because he is making a notable dent in the ship's fuel supply. Single-handedly. On the up side the ships fire crew are getting lots of practice in.

-Your tech priest is essentially Spock with cybernetic implants “Captain, I would advise against that course of action. It is highly illogical.”

-In a similar vein ships with a teleportarium (most of them it seems) tend to result in much “beaming up and or down” and a tradition of sending the Red Tunic Guard down in advance of the Rogue Trader's party.

-Your Rogue Trader Captain is an irresponsible drug and hooch hoovering, two feet and a heart beat chasing, semi sociopathic madman. Yet that's ok, because there are worse things out there, and “he's got a good heart.”

-Said Rogue Trader's favourite command is “ramming speed,” even in situations where it is wildly inappropriate, like trying to negotiate a peace treaty and transferring supplies from one ship to another.

-You've ever uttered the phrase “Gunnery, give them a little taste of the grape to remind them who wears the big boy pants,” when the grape in question consists of shells larger than buildings fired from orbit followed by a “quick blip” from a lance which incinerates a city block.

-Freed from certain legal and social bonds your tech priest has essentially devolved into a mad/pain doc and is experimenting willy nilly, welding guns together and chemically altering the crew without their knowledge let alone consent.

-Your best pilot (the void master) decides to crash the lander intentionally because he's bored with it and wants the RT to buy him a new one.

- When it is not in the least surprising when your resident mad Tech-Priest, realizing the great potential in installing MIU gun mounts on his test subjects fellow crew mates, decides to invest in the construction of an MIU gun mount factory and has them installed on all the armsmen.

- Nor is it surprising when said Tech-Priest decides that "reeducating" said armsmen as they undergo surgery to make them better soldiers is a good idea

- When Your Rogue Trader decides to get Murder Servitors to guard his kitchen hidden as food blenders after his dealing with Ork Freebooterz accidentally brought hungry squigs in the pantries, who proceeded to eat the Rogue Trader's favorite cheese, much to the joy of the Priest, who got to use his new flamer.

- When the Priest's panoply of flamers have singlehandedly condemned more than one entire species of xenos to a crispy (but oh so delicious) ending.

- When your Captain insists on always maintaining the stocks of nova cannon shells as full as possible "in the event some knuckle-headed xeno needs to be shown the might of the Imperium by annihilating half his planet".

- When the former is standard protocol for opening trade talks with new species.

- When your Captain insists on having the biggest, most outlandish hat in the sector, with the ship ranks are based on the size of the hat worn by the individual.

- When said hat is a miniature copy of his ship, complete with force field generator and armament, including a half-dozen digital weapons, a grappling hook and a grenade launcher.

- When your Captain, despite having a few thousand red shirts armsmen to protect him and do his bidding, insists on charging by himself into any unknown, reluctantly accompanied by his trusted advisors (including the Tech-Priest who could, and rather would, teleport in after running some scans and a nice preliminary bombardment)

- When your Captain is worried that his Kroot bodyguard may cause some issues, but not with Imperial officials (he doesn't care what they think), rather for some Tau connections of his, who may take offence at one of their so called "Partner Races" doing business outside of the Greater Good collective, thereby making the acquisition of some nice railguns for the Tech-Priest to reverse engineer slightly more difficult.

- Your Navigator insists on wearing a bandolier of Cataclysmus Devices everywhere - especially to formal dinners

- Formal dinners become an elaborate and intricate affair of backstabbing and diplomacy

- You insist on holding elaborate State Funerals for the half-dozen NPC armsmen who died on your last mission before trade negotiations can proceed.

- Mind Probing is now the standard replacement for conversation.

- You discover a Jokaero, let it loose on the ship and periodically hunt it down and "ask" it to "upgrade" key systems on your vessel.

- Your Tech-Priest begins murdering anyone on board who finds out while denying that he's resorted to Tech-Heresy. Or the regular kind.

- When your Tech-Priest is so deep in tech-heresy that the hereteks he routinely raids are terrified of his weaponry for the few moments they get to enjoy it before he steals their souls to power more of his devices.

- When your Tech-Priest has lost so much of his humanity that playing around with daemonic forces doesn't bother him because there is not enough left for it to be logically corruptible, despite past evidence indicating the contrary.

- When taking technology from heretics is a major heresy (of both the tech and normal kind), but having your resident Tech-Priest "reverse engineer" it from "ancient STC data too corrupt to preserve" is perfectly fine. Bonus points if a printout is made and sent to the Mechanicus for approval later on.

- When your Captain is a megalomaniac who thinks nothing of destroying entire worlds to obtain fame and fortune (or, even better, to make his rivals or the Inquisition look bad), your Priest makes the Redemptionists look like amateurs, your Navigator's main form of communication is starring at things with his Third Eye until they do what he expects them to do or wither away and your Tech-Priest has created (and field tested) more doomsday devices and heretical combinations of xeno and warp technologies than anyone cares to count and has been accused of heresy by a dozen Inquisitors who have all than disappeared in freak accidents.

-Dark Eldar are YOUR sex slaves.

-Orbital Bombardment covers a multitude of sins.

-The Rogue Trader is thrilled to find a source of juvenat drugs, to ensure that his harem will remain young and beautiful for as long as the campeign lasts.

-Exploring strange new worlds begins with Drop Pods filled with elite armsmen and storm troopers followed by valkyries and heavier weapons.

-Being attacked by pirates is a chance to get a new ship and test out your tech preists latest murder servitors.

-You wear power armor so you can carry all your weapons.

-When your worries as a GM no longer begin with "what will the players not bring with them" but instead start with "what are they bringing now"

-Having the Arch-militant carring a lascannon for normal encounters is no longer a worry

-Having the Explorator becoming more powerful than an SM is a worry

-Exploring the underbelly of your ship is an adventure all it's own

-A RT that has died of old age does not exist

-A RT that has disappeared is a common occurance

-Having to track down and kill a warp predator on your ship is just another Monday for the PC's

-The idea of encountering a ship eating void beast is considered fun by the majority of the PC's

-The idea of encountering a ship eating void beast is seen as a business opportunity by the rest

-The most deadly weapon in a Rogue Trader's arsenal is his witty, well timed remarks during some bridge fight against an enemy captain.

-The most powerful weapon in a Rogue Trader's arsenal is not his power sword or plasma pistol, but his outrageous Hat.

-Despite having access to elite troops, bombers, fighters and lance weaponry, you go down on an uncharted, unknown world with your senior staff because hey, got to claim it as your own.

- Your first encounter with a member of any sort of authority anywhere is how to plot their murder and make it look like an accident.

- When that fails, you resort to outright murder.

- When that fails, you execute the people behind the outright murder and portray yourself as a hero for stopping this violent conspiracy.

- You burn huge amounts of profit factor to finance dozens of supply runs just so you can literally salt the Earth of a rival's Agri-World

- Someone makes an impassioned plea that getting crew members to fight each other using the newly discovered weapons to test them for daemonic influence is just sound reasoning and not a cause for gaining Corruption.

- Your players strip a vessel down to a shell of its former self, and then run an elaborate bluff against someone convincing them that it is good as new. And succeed.

- When your greatest fear when traveling the Warp is encountering a time paradox causing you to meet a copy of yourself, thereby invalidating most of your titles until you can sort things out with yourself.

- When encountering past or future selves due to Warp travel is not seen as a troubling experience, but rather as a way of doubling your influence and learning from your past and/or future mistakes. That, and the look on the Governor's face when you pull seemingly magical feats of teleportation by doing things in two places simultaneously is priceless.

- When the rest of the Imperium only requests your help in desperate times not because you inadequately equipped, but because you tend to be a little too trigger happy with the Capital Ship sized ordnance. There is a distinction between a preliminary artillery bombardment before a ground invasion and nuking an entire planet from orbit. And shattering the planetary crust with massed nova cannon barrages definitely does not fit the former, no matter what the Arch-Militant says.

- When kidnapping thousands of innocent people from any world you visit is viewed as a perfectly acceptable recruitment method.

- When the only reason you don't let your pet Jokaero into a large scrapyard is because you are afraid he'll make one of those weird space ships of theirs and run away, forcing you to rely on your resident Explorator for your experimental weaponry.

- When your Explorator refuses to buy any Xeno tech because he feels that if they are willing to trade it, it can't be good enough to be worth anything, and it might ever be safe . Stealing Borrowing it for inspiration in creating more effective weaponry is however fine.

- When your Explorator conducts a battery of bombardment tests with all ship weaponry on any world not clearly populated by sapient life to determine their exact firing profiles on ground targets so the crew can know when "danger close" for lance strikes and macrocannon bombardments is close enough.

- When some of your crew is absolutely convinced that the entire universe is contained within the ship, and that there is nothing outside of it.

-You hire Space Marines to do your dirty work...

-...not because they can do a better job than your elite assault troops after the Explorator finishes outfitting them, but because they're actually cheaper.

-What you call "personal entourage" others call "raiding party" at best, "invasion force" at worst.

-You requisition a mass conveyor starship just to carry your gold...

-...and another one for people who count your gold.

-Upon learning that the act of ownership of a profitable mining world was "misplaced" somewhere in your archives, you shrug and buy yourself another one.

-You tip people for more than their businesses are worth...

-...yet they still hate it when you arrive because apparently you can't have a nice dinner without something happening that necessitates bombarding the restaurant with melta-rockets.

-You execute people for not ironing your gala outfit just perfectly, yet have no qualms dealing with hardcore recidivists and borderline heretics.

-High Fabricators of prestigious Forge Worlds petition your Explorator for the right to use his superior facilities.

-Inquisitors and Lords Dragon wish they had as efficient a spy network as your Seneshal.

-That Deathwatch Kill-Marine you "borrowed" for a particularly nasty job doesn't want to leave after you casually outfitted him with a set of relic armaments and weaponry, and a Terminator armor for good measure.

-Archbishops weep upon seeing your personal reliquary.

-The secretive death cult hiding in your ship's bilge traces it's roots to the days when your ship flew in the Great Crusade. You still think of them as annoying pests.

-For all your wealth and ridiculous equipment, your endeavors are still 100% dependent on a needy three-eyed mutant, an insane blind old man and a cyborg dressed in red.

-For all your wealth and ridiculous equipment, your endeavors are still 100% dependent on a needy three-eyed mutant, an insane blind old man and a cyborg dressed in red.

Well, when that three-eyed gentlemen has been ducking it with the worst the Warp can throw at him on a daily basis for centuries, and been known to kill men, xenos and daemons with a stare, the insane blind old man can speak to his fellow across half the Galaxy and crush scout titans with his minds and the red robbed maniac has a personal retinue army of zombie-cyborgs that makes the Arch-Magos of the Lathes jealous. you have to expect that they'll manage to do something useful once in while when they aren't damning their souls to the Warp. That, and well, no matter how wealthy you are, you kind of don't know how to start your own ship's engine, pilot it through the Warp or communicate at speeds faster than snail mail. Which is why you keep around the other guys and don't ask too many questions. That, and you value your soul; no point losing it to some stupid incident instead of selling it for some real profit.

- When your Rogue Trader keeps his elite retainers with him not because he's particularly fond of them, but because he knows that should they join another family or strike out on their own, there is no telling what kind of trouble they could wreck to the sector, and that is definitely not good for business. Unless you invested in the arms market that is, than it's very good for business.

- When the only reason you don't enslave your workforce on the planets you own is that you need to maximize the population so you can keep harvesting it for your ship crews.

- When your pilot is a drunken wreck, but can still outfly 90% of the Imperial Navy while in a battleship missing half its decks.

- When your ship pilot is so **** full of himself that he tried to convince himself that he could fly anything with wings and/or some form of engine, and somehow succeeded.

- When you don't fear tyrannid infestation in your lower decks because you know that what is down there would probably enjoy the added variety in food.

That, and well, no matter how wealthy you are, you kind of don't know how to start your own ship's engine, pilot it through the Warp or communicate at speeds faster than snail mail.

That's exactly what I was getting at. It's the paradox of the Rogue Trader's existence - you get all the wealth and power available to a mortal man in the galaxy, yet can't exercise any of it without having those three guys (and hopefully their cadres) around. Everything else is replacable.

Mind, the particular guys holding these positions are also perfectly replacable, an important thing all four should remember when setting up their mutual relations.

Back to the topic:

-Your Missionary knows and preaches a thousand different and mutually exclusive doctrines, yet his faith is somehow unwavering enough to still grant him holy powers.

-Your response to anything or anyone of importance being destroyed/killed is "Gentlemen, we can rebuild it, we have the technology".

-The Kroot in the Expanse know you by a name that translates into "Master of the All-You-Can-Eat-Buffet". Somehow, that really acts as a honorific, and you're well past wondering why.

-You specifically hire Vindicare assassins to date Eldar Farseers and the Officio just rolls with it because of how much you're paying.

-You count food by planets, mineral riches by mines, and military assets by factoriums.

-All your weapons run on Schrodinger ammo - it's always there unless the GM asks about it.

- When your Guncutter is attacked in-atmosphere by Dark Eldar Razorwing Jetfighters, your creepy underdeck mutant Arch Militant suddenly chooses to become incorporeal and phases through the cockpit floor, plummets towards the ground in free-fall with one of the jets just passing by under the cutter, rematerializes INSIDE the Dark Eldar jet's cockpit, slits the pilot's throat with her combat knife and somehow manages to gain enough control of the machine to crash land it without breaking every Emperor forsaken bone in her body...

- When Dark Eldars Haemonculi have seen your Explorator's pet projects and given him their personal invitation to Commorragh to demonstrate some of his creations.

- When the Dark Eldars courteously ask him to leave the city because even they are troubled by his creations. That, and the soul eating weaponry was a little too vivid reminder of their mortality and ultimate fate.

- When your Explorator encounters Necrons for the first time, and decides that the whole "trade your soul for immortality inside a necrodermis shell" was a pretty good bargain, and tries to ask them for information on achieving said transformation despite the Necrons' clear omnicidal tendancies.

- When your dynasty has been the orchestrator of a dozen minor rebellions solely to increase arm sales by selling to both sides while also actively sabotaging the war effort to keep the war going longer.

- When, despite being surrounded by a bunch of clearly insane heretics and having to face daemonic corruption on an almost daily basis all the while acting diplomatically with dozens of cultures and species, your ship's Confessor maintains a set of hardline religious beliefs that would make most Red Redemptionists look like believers of convenience.

- When your Navigator's dynasty still insists on having him be always accompanied by a retinue of bodyguards when outside his chambers despite having the last 173 bodyguards die in horrible circumstances, usually involving insanity, dismemberment or incineration, or a combination of all 3.

- When, despite his mad experiments being known by nearly everyone on the crew and his tendency to recycle "corpses" without necessarily waiting for them to be really dead, your Explorator is still the Chief Medical Officier.

- When your Explorators has more Mechadentrites than the rest of the party's characters combined have limbs, and insists on having a different weapon or implement on each.

- When your Explorator does not see any issue with having a chain scalpel, a saw, a bonesaw, a steel saw, a jigsaw, a plasma cutter and 13 other cutting implements including a power chef's knife on his mechadentrite array.

-Your personal chef makes you toast by cutting bread with a power knife that most noble houses would consider a priceless heirloom and AdMech would simply call "Archaotech".

-When the Dark Eldar conduct slave raids in your general area of operation, the first thing they hear from the locals is "Thank the Emperor, for a moment we thought it might be (your name here)!"

-When said Dark Eldar learn of how you deal with people that dare cross you, they suddenly grow respectful and try to avoid crossing you.

-When a scammer sells you the ownerhip of a summer house in Commoragh, you simply go and claim it, and the Dark Eldar prefer not to make a fuss.

-When you negotiate with Great Fabricators, "... or I'll get it from the competition" is a valid argument for you to make.

-Your Arch-Militant has more weapons than your Explorator has mechadendrites.

-Your Arch-Militant has a custom-built servitor just for carrying all his weapons and magazines.

-Your Arch-Militant spends more time deciding which weapon to use than using them...

-...yet his kill count still qualifies him as a living WMD.

-In battle, enemies are afraid to shoot at your Arch-Militant from a hundred meters because they fear exploding all the munitions he carries on himself.

-Even the Orks believe your Arch-Militant has "just enuff dakka".

-Trazyn the Infinite is envious of your personal trophy room.

-Blood Ravens bolt things to the floor when you pay a visit to their battle barge.

Applause to everyone who contributed to this thread. Some of these are really good, and after the week I had at work, I quite needed the laugh. Erm, I suppose I should try to contribute my own...

- It's easier to list which components on your multi-kilometer long void ship aren't archaeotech...

- ...or xenostech.

- When the Imperium of Man calls for their next crusade, your dynasty says "I'll do it." And you do. Without help.

Cheers,

- V.

Hey how much rage would I bring down on my head if I did one of these for the other 40k games?

Hey how much rage would I bring down on my head if I did one of these for the other 40k games?

None? If you posted them on their respective forums that is.

Hey how much rage would I bring down on my head if I did one of these for the other 40k games?

No hate, but it's the sheer scale and old school lunacy of RT that makes it so zany. DH is all grimdark, DW is all "holier than thou" superman angel of death, OW is all grimdark, but in the trenches, and BC is like RT, except you do crazy stuff because of Chaos, not because you can.

But back on topic;

- When you seriously consider petitioning the Mechanicus to make one of your worlds a forge world so they can produce more stuff for your empire, and they agree, with a discount on future purchases.

- When people still want to deal with you favorably even though associates of yours tend to meet an untimely end because your enemies tend to meet a quicker death. Even the Inquisitors. **** Inquisition, always snooping around where they shouldn't...

- When the Inquisition knows you have killed (or facilitated the death of) a dozen of their Inquisitors, but still deal with you because you have also helped eradicated dozens of chaos incursions, and your associates are experts on daemonology and Warp studies from their respective fields.

- When the Ordo Xeno accepts to work side by side with your Kroot bodyguard Cadre and the freeloading bunch of Ork Freebooters who follow the Explorator around (because "Ez got da biggest dakagun and ez da meanest and da biggest. Ez probably green unda da red and mechanikal bitz!") because your expertise with fighting wars in space and on the ground against uncommon xenos is unheard off since the Great Crusade.

- When you find a stash of ancient nuclear missiles, but decide to donate them to the Mechanicus as relics of the past because half your enemies don't care about radiation, and you have enough issues with mutations from Warp that you don't need more of them. Emperor knows the Navigator is already looking dubiously human.

- When the only reason you don't purchase Exterminatus devices from the Mechanicus is because you know that the Inquisition will bother you to no end over them, and a ship's weight of nova cannon shells is probably cheaper anyways.

- When you have to routinely remind your Explorator not to develop Exterminatus level weaponry because he has a tendency to "accidentally" test things he wasn't supposed to.

-When your Navigator refers to the Lathe Worlds as a "Shopping Mall"

-When your GM has to plan for: "4 hours game of time, 2 hours of shopping"

-When the GM has to explain why you can't get a Baneblade... yet.

-When the party seriously considers that each party member make separate checks to acquire said Baneblade.

-When the GM glares at the player, prompting the response "But it's only one ..."

-When the Rogue Trader asks for his brown coat because he "Aims to misbehave."

• The arch-militant reads the wrong line of the chart and accidentally buys Bombards/Medusae instead of Basilisks and Gryphons