At the end of previous campaign my players managed crashland their ship on (prettymuch) virgin planet. Group has Explorator Magus, Rogue (not much of a) Trader, and a Missionary, and a two primary NPCs Arch-Militant and Seneshal. Now (six months after) my player are badgering me to revive the campaign.

Would current rules work as single planet campaign, with remains of their ship as center of new settlement and a fortress. And if so any experience which rules break first (on this kind of campaign). Good part is on the last run they were carrying refugees from Ork invasion so there is now shortage on people.

.atomiclich

The colony rules make assumptions that you have the ability to go out and get more of whatever's needed by using your Profit Factor. It's doable, largely a matter of reducing the scale of your endeavours to 'uncover mining site, convince native tribes to dig ore, construct ship' rather than the more grandiose things that are normally done by rogue traders.

You should check out The Glass Key on the Rogue Trader Support Page as it has an adventure centered around the idea of a crashed spaceship turning into a city. Keeping in mind that those things had massive populations, it's not unreasonable to suspect that they could have turned the crashed remnants of their ship into their preliminary shelter.

There's a few ways you can spin this that I can see. The first is the idea that they've been surviving in their ship for some time, but gradually systems are failing and they need to find more reliable food/energy sources to keep things running. Turn their first adventure into a safari a few kilometers away where they have to trek through the jungle, carefully conserve ammunition and retrieve the glorious MacGuffin that will keep them in business.

The quickest way to get them off the planet is to have the Eldar capture them for sullying their Maiden World. In exchange for sparing their lives and getting them off the planet, they gift the Rogue Trader with a captured Imperial Transport and tell them to make a dangerous supply run to a specific system, after which point they will let them go. The motivations of the Eldar are almost certainly not altruistic, nor even consider the survival of the party a necessity, but it is a shot.

Third have them actually have succeeded in picking up the colony, and spin off your new campaign as their descendents who were rediscovered by the Imperium and brought back. Given that the Rogue Trader's Warrant of Trade would still be valid, they might enter into a business relatoinship that could turn into the revival of the dynasty.

Last, if the Galaxy at large thinks the Rogue Trader's ship has crashed then people are going to come looking for that oh-so-valuable Warrant of Trade. Have them be contacted by an orbitting Cold Trader who detected the frantic distress message from the Astropath before the crash, and has arrived to offer assistance and aid. Of course they're only after the Warrant, but if they're clever enough they can get off the planet and aboard the ship, and then it's one quick crew-fuelled mutiny to get back in business.

Great Ideas so far

The game mechanics does not really change I don’t see how they would or could break considering the game was made for this kind of stuff.

Now the style might change a little bit but it’s still a game of exploration and discovery with profit making potential, although maybe the total PF will not be available just a few points (GM’s Discretion to just the stuff they have on them or what survived on the ship).

1. Getting off the ground is a no brainier (remember your dealing with people who “Space Travel”. Creating a simple rocket to reach orbit is not that hard (maybe a one or two seater, did they have torpedoes on there ship?) with a communication and or GPS satellites to deploy. If you are feeling like a merciful GM you might give them the ability to repair there Cutter which can reach space. It sounds like it was a controlled crash landing (meaning that a lot of stuff survives although it’s up to you)?
2. Did the Astropath survive? Maybe they can phone home.
3. Maybe they can build a city or something and then put themselves in Cryo (Cryo-Stasis is a great way to move some time along) till the crew and their descendants build another starship, it’s not like you don’t have a few spare parts?
4. Any aliens even Orks can come around and provide more spare parts or even a way off planet (I totally cannot understand how a looted Lehman Russ or a Arvus Lighter for that matter becomes unusable to humans after Orks have thrown some red paint and welded some gliphs on it, but that’s another thread).
5. Theirs plenty of inspiration in TV shows like star trek the next generation and the old series and the movies and books and comics and so on.
6. You also have to remember that the players “character’s” know things that the the players don’t. It’s just like real life the navy train for the eventuality of finding themselves on a deserted island, and I’m sure there are some protocols for the same eventuality in the a few thousand years of space travel.

It’s a whole planet bursting with adventures there’s plenty of room on a planet for things like ancient alien crap which lies buried or just under some overgrown and aggressive man eating shrubs. Did you mean a “Virgin Planet” completely un-touched by the multitude of alien races that are in 40k? I call this the Ghetto-Pocolypse Adventure.

1. You can make a few minor endeavors with the players establishing a town or a few towns (The basic rules to survival are; breath, shelter, eat, and drink.)But I think the most important rule of survival is determination. Without the will to survive you have nothing). Then finding all the technical personal that were on board your ship.
2. A few greater or minor endeavors creating some rockets or recover a Lighter to launch some communications gear into orbit along with some weather satellites and what not, so everyone can communicate and see what the weather will be like or just get a better idea of what the planet looks like and some telescopes to see what else is in the system.
3. A greater endeavor to send a rocket or shuttle farther out into the system to see if there’s any other habitable planets or semi-habitable to create mining operations and such to get exotic materials for ship building and exploration to see if there were ancient xeno ruins or xeno mining operations or other weird stuff.
4. Greater endeavor create space station so that you can make a star ship or warp capable rescue beacon (like the Tau and there warp beacons that they use to travel since they don’t have Navigator Noblise).
5. You can come up with something I’m sure.

hope this helps