You know you're playing Rogue Trader when…

By antijoke_13, in Rogue Trader

You know you're playing Rogue Trader when:

-Your reaction to waking up after a fight in a Slaaneshi shrine sporting a brand new Wraithbone leg is to shrug and ask no questions.

-Trazyn the Infinite is your direct competition on a vault raid.

-Inadvertently summoning a Great Unclean One while in a fight with a Daemon Prince of Slaanesh actually de-escalates the situation.

-After taking an unscheduled trip through the Warp without a starship, never mind a gellar field, you find yourself speaking a dialect of Eldar that even the Eldar think is archaic.

-Horrible visions of the Necrons murdering you and your shipmates whenever you go somewhere new have become the norm.

-Voices from the Warp offering advice or power are treated with enthusiasm first, suspicion second.

You know you are playing Rogue Trader when:

Your senechal uses the Teleportarium to hit a 20x20m target from 50,000 km away by just eyeballing it.

Your negotiations with the Admech start with colonial sponsorship and end with Knight Titans.

One Repulsive GC is not considered enough dakka.

Your senechal routinely shmoozes any and all Eldar you meet into non-hostility.

And your Death Watch Marine is strangely okay with it.

Your charismatic RT fails to charm so badly that she ends up declaring war on a newly met xenos species.

When the life story of your Arch Militant reads; IG massacre survivor, RT merc captain, Knight Titan house leader.

When the RT gets some mutant ratmen sanctioned just so she can then teach them to ride bikes made from Mars itself. Alternatively, rats riding bigger rats for a rat cav unit.

When those ratmen turn out to be the most elite troops in the RT's ground forces.

When First Contact with a new xenos species is to send the Death Watch Marine over to knock on the door their space station. After you've taken the space station into your hold.

When you help a species wipe out 1/4 of itself just to set up a trade deal.

When your Red Shirt away teams are better armed than most Storm Troopers.

When a shipping error resulted in you being the proud owner of 500 blow up dolls.

Your RT has more mechanical bits then an Explorator.

Your guns crews on your flagship can out shoot your Void Master Gunner on his ship. (90 vs 75)

Your Void Master Gunner has his own ship.

Edited by Lady Kataline Jianwei

When the Explorator finds a way to detonate 20 000 slave bomb collars attached to slaves being forced to defend a boarded ship, and does it (got 3 in the -40 Tech Use roll). He then realizes what he just did... Look at his sheet and finds out that with his insanity points + being admec, he can actually explain his actions.

No one else besides the Explorator actually knows what happened. Everyone thinks it was the slaves' owner who did it while trying to get away.

... when you declare five minutes into dinner with the commander of a space dock, that you'd execute him, if he were one of your soldiers... then proceed to take over the station so he becomes one of your soldiers, just for the sake of form.

-Trazyn the Infinite is your direct competition on a vault raid.

When Trazyn comes in third in said Vault Raid.

When your vault raids get the undivided attention of killer Abominable Intelligences, the Cult of Sollux, Necrons, the Inquisition, and Tzeench, you may be playing Rogue Trader.

When the GM says "No point in giving you guys nukes if you don't actually use 'em, right?"

When the GM says "No point in giving you guys nukes if you don't actually use 'em, right?"

When you scoff at the offer of antiquated nuclear weaponry and ask your Explorator for a few more Cyclonic Torpedoes instead.

When you don't even bother asking how the Explorator obtained the means to procure or produce weapons of planet cracking potential.

When the Explorator scoffs at using relics of the Dark Age of Man to bomb any old target, and insists on keeping them for something more fitting of their hallowed past.

When the Explorator still takes those nukes and reverse engineers them to discover the secrets of Dark Age terror weapons just in case he might need them. Plus, nuclear bombing has that nice poetic justice going that planet cracking doesn't; you won't annihilate their planet, thereby killing all of them, but instead you'll shatter their world and make it a blasted rock so toxic nothing will grow on it for millennia, and, in the future, you might be able to harvest the surviving wildlife for interesting, radiation resistant qualities.

When you jump into a ship graveyard in the middle of the deep void orbiting a sphere of nothing and everyone's first thought is "Let's go shopping!" and well, you go shopping.

When everyone's first choice isn't the neat looking frigates, or big heavy transports full of loot, but the salvage ship, in a twist of irony or poetic justice, so that it can help with even more shopping/salvaging.

- When you realize that all the information your players have created concerning their household troops - uniforms, medals, customs, weaponry, the fact they shall mandatorily wear a mustach or a beard, a fake or painted one if needed-, when gathered-, should make one or two Osprey army books.

-when for once almost no PCs are orphans. instead they make a point of having extended families...

- when using names like " Tyrannosaurus Tyrael Fête-Nationale the VII th []insert dynasty name] or "HEctor Bullywiff Vendigroth [DYNASTY NAME]" is expected.

-When a proper RT campaign ending with the characters saying "screw this galaxy, we can't handle this, we're outta here" is "yes, you succeeded.", then the GM procceeds to describe, a century and half later, what Tigurius is seeing while probing the Hive Mind, that it is fleeing in utter terror a bunch of genocidial maniacs in a scarry ship screaming : "GIVE ME BACK MY HAT YOU SONOVA##### !"

- When a new adventure introduces a new race and everyone's first response is to (a) try and recruit them into the crew and (b) modify their weapons and armour for use by humans.

- When, on sending an expedition through the gate to the Jericho reach and the Tau salient, the explorers need to explain to the paranoid Lord Commander Ebongrave precisely why their contribution to the war effort consists of what appears to be a full hunter cadre of Riptide battlesuits

- especially since they've been 'improved' by the resident mekboy.

When your crew regards the events of Banned from Argo to be rather tame and quiet compared to when they go on shore leave.

When your crew regards the events of Banned from Argo to be rather tame and quiet compared to when they go on shore leave.

You know your playing Rogue Trader when....

the events of Felini's Satyricon are considered 'tame'.

The Dark Eldar Wych's backstory sounds a lot like Kill Bill .

The Rogue Trader Elizabeth Dane was interested in restoring her families honor and wealth, by way of a mashup of Inglourious Basterds and Raiders of the Lost Ark .

The Explorator Magos Molly Millions is a disciple of magi Taniguchi (watch Tetsuo II: Body Hammer) and Fran Madaraki (for those that do not know, look it up).

The Archmilitant 'Blondie''s back-story is a mash up of The Man with No Name and real life tank ace Michael Wittmann.

The astropath is named Tetsuo Shima. He has a rather normal 'was hive ganger then Black Ships etc' back-story. (This should not need explanation)

Edited by BaronIveagh

- Your hat is a more effective attack craft than a starhawk.

You refuse to deal with chaos marines, not out of any moral or religious code, but because the last time a guy in blue and gold armor paid you all the currency turned into weird spiders that started eating your ship.

Your pretty sure the explorer kept some around " just in case"

-Your ship can hold concerts that Noise Marines flock to.

-Notably, Noise Marines stay away from your Arch-Militant during these concerts. The term "Mosh-Pits" and "Massacre-Pits" are essentially the same to him.

Edited by jabberwoky

-When your resident Ork's Gretchins slay two sisters of battle with their Sluggas alone.

-When in honor of this the Ork, with the help of the explorator, loot the armor off of the sisters and craft it into gretchin sized armor.

-When your Ork begins training his sister killing gretchins as his own personal retinue of "grot marines".

Edited by sigismundthegrotmarine

- When you equip an entire army with bolter canes and power fists to create the Fighting Pimps Regiment

- A Slaugth Infiltrator is too horrified by your actions to want to consume your brain matter

- A prominent political figure inside of the Imperium thinks that you and your bridge crew are all loyal, Imperial members resulting in endless Scrutiny rolls to figure out whether or not they actually believe that.

- When the rolls all come up with indicating that said person believes them are disbelieved, and the Astropath brainwashes them "just to be safe"

When you take the "you have people for that" to the next level and hire 6 people to follow you around just to express various emotions for you.

When one of your RT's top agent teams is made up of an Eldar, Tau, Kroot, Ork and the poor stress out human Senechal who got "promoted" to baby sit sanctioned xenos.

When your resident Death Watch Marine sees said group of sanctioned xenoes and thinks "That'd make one hell of a sweet kill team."

When the DWM on staff thinks the RT is too heavy handed when dealing with newly encountered xenos and asks the RT to tone it down a bit.

When your Senechal can out tech a Tech Priest.

When your Senechal can out tech a Tech Priest.

-When problems cannot solved by small arms, they are solved by explosives.

-When problems cannot be solved by explosives, they are solved by ship-based ordnance.

-When problems cannot be solved by ship-based ordnance, they are solved by one-liners.

-When the Rogue Trader's current endeavor is not about acquiring weapons, wealth, honor or hats, but more languages for more one-liners.

Edited by jabberwoky

When problems cannot be solved by ship-based ordnance, they are solved by one-liners.

When said one liners are followed by drop pods and thunderhawks of the Space Pimps chapter.

'Even in death I've got balls of steel'. -Relic Dreadnought Dux Bellorum.

When said one liners are followed by drop pods and thunderhawks of the Space Pimps chapter.

You know you're playing Rogue Trader when

Your crew's attempt to sell a genestealer to the Red Cages escalates to a mercantile arrangement to capture more genestealers and distribute them throughout the Imperium. For fighting things. No other reason. Nope.

While arranging said completely-not-subtle-takeover-of-the-Imperium, your crew encounters a noble 'hunter' who's just inherited his entire family's wealth. Your crew's attempt to acquire said wealth leads to a servitor accidentally strangling said hunter in a starship-turned-fancy-brothel in an attempt to convince him to come on the greatest hunting trip of his life.

-When Tyranid genes in the Rogue Trader's family tree is the least scary skeleton in their closet.

-When the Arch-Militant has had his face mauled at least three times, and he can still be a face for the party.

-When the Astropath Transcendant has a reputation among the Eldar as a therapist.

-When the Navigator is the Rogue Trader's brother.

Said Space Pimps are, of course, armed with more one-liners.

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Edited by BaronIveagh

@Baronlveagh: Bling without one-liners is rendered moot.

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-When the Rogue Trader is threating the Missionary to put her out of the airlock an average of 12 times per session.

-When the seneshal has 21 armor on chest

-When the group's light cruiser cripples a chaos grand cruiser, BOARDS IT, and kills all the champions on the bridge.

-When the navigator disables life support in quaters inhabited by slaves saved from the forementioned ship when an inquisitor requests entry to their ship.

-When the rogue trader finds out the whole group of imperial guardsman sent into the cave system got wiped out and orders "we're going in!"

-When your crew finds itself in a silent zone surrounded by warpstorm consisting of a few dozens of star systems cut off from the imperium for a millenium, and one of the first things they do is gravely insulting and humiliating a commander of local flet in front of his crew. (and they get away with it, of course)

Edited by Elavion