Hi there folks!

Im a big fan of W40k and a big fan of FFG products too. In the last few years managed to get a copy of most of the Rogue Trader and Black Crusade books in my country, which is no small feat . Havent been able to play at all due to well... too much work and small kids, but since i was getting more and more spare time so i gathered a few friends and started preparing a campaign. In the beginning, i was thinking of running Black Crusade, since i really loved the books and the theme; absolutely gorgeous. I have the Horus Heresy tabletop game too so i thought about having them build a warband and then start attacking imperial planets, using the figures from that game in different strategy maps. But... tbh my players are quite competitive and i could foresee a future of infighting and player characters getting murdered by other players... So i told them i thought it would be best to play Rogue Trader to try to make a more cohesive group of characters. I ran into 2 problems:

- My players didnt really want to play a rogue trader type of game, in the sense that they dont really want to have to manage one of those huge ships, and worry about all that crew, etc. They would rather play a "Firefly" type of game: a few buddies with a small ship, roaming around, smuggling, doing daring stuff and such. So i had to completely forget about Profit Factor and asign a Throne cost for all the gear and stuff. My plan is to give them a guncutter and have them work for different parties doing all kinds of jobs. Im also using the Black Crusade system for skills, talents and combat actions since i found it a bit more polished, so i had to rework advancement tables.

- Thing is most of the players play or have played 40K and i had a few eldar players wishing to play eldar. So i took Dark Eldar stats and worked out some eldar paths of origin and some eldar careers: mainly ranger and seer.

Were basically ready to go, but i have my doubts with a few things.

- Anyone went for this kind of campaign? Did it turn out fun?

- Im a bit concerned about a few things of the gaming system. First its the low characteristic values of my players, and well... of most of NPCs. I think that the highest characteristic among my players is around 50, and when i look at some of the NPC thugs im planning to throw at them in the first skirmishes i see a lots of 20s and 30s... Worried that combat turns out to be a boring fest of miss, miss, miss, miss...

- Also... isnt damage a bit over the top? I mean... I have characters with xeno mesh armour and 8 Wounds. I was planning to have them go through Vaults of the Forgotten in the near future, but the basic RakGol Marauder can hit for 1D10+12 or more... That means a good roll can have characters burning fate points quite quickly. Is this normal? What are your experiences?

Thanks in Advance

For the power level they seem to be after they should be playing Dark Heresy. It is possible to create some quite tough characters (Explorators or Augmeticised humans), but generally Rogue Traders survive these horrors through having amazing gear and incredibly amounts of rules lawyering. If they are forced to constantly consider Thrones, then they're not going to be running into the kind of enemies you run into with Rogue Trader.

Again, 50s aren't great but Rogue Traders run around with Best Quality gear, characteristic advances are cheap and if they spend a round aiming they usually hit on 80s. Low quality mooks are often going to miss, but that's why they're mooks. I do prefer to throw my players against one large, tough enemy than a group of smaller enemies for a similar reason however.

If you want to make your campaign feel more Rogue Tradery I recommend shifting the theme of your campaign a bit. Have them be based out of a Shadowblind bay on a Transport that's run by a legitimate businessman, and then the players are a specialised group of Cold Traders that make regular raids or shady business deals on the side, while the captain of the Transport carries up the facade of being an honest trader in the Koronus Expanse. You can keep your Throne Count that way (failed Acquisitions are the group being unable to buy something without attracting attention), and they still essentially can have their guncutter and do a bunch of shady business deals, but then the option to break into a larger space combat is still there.

Lastly, someone came up with a fun amount of Eldar origin paths if you wanted to give them a look: http://darkheresy.wikia.com/wiki/Eldar

I will attempt to answer some of your questions.

1. I had a previous campaign a while back where the PCs wanted this, and it went smoothly for the 4 sessions we played. Remember though that with the FireFly approach, the PC's ship should commonly be going to adjacent planets in that system and uncommonly go out to local outlying systems. On the rare occassions shoud it go to far away systems (unless they hitch a ride with a ship that does Warp Travel, then n/m). So, prepare to prep for about 10-20 interesting planets, space stations, asteroids, moons, orbiting ships etc. that are close that only take about a day to two weeks travel time to each. And then for the local outlying system(s) another 5-10 that are about 1 month away and the rare far away about 2-3 (which could be 6 months to years getting to without hiching a ride). You can design your own transport ships if you want. A player of mine pulled a few from the web and they used one of them. Can't recall where he got it from though, sorry.

2. As Erathia mentioned, this is something you have to factor in. Using DH/RT rules, shooting at a target that is close (+10), unaware (+30), and with full auto (+20) gives a bonus of +60 on top of the skill. So a mook with a skill of 25 now has a 85% chance to hit the PC with an autogun if he was hiding around the corner. Other things such as easy/routine (+30) tasks can help PC's with low skills accomplish something, to include the right equipment (+10 to +30).

3. Erathia is right. RT critters are normally harder to kill than DH. So go with DH creatures. If in doubt, find the average weapon the PC's carry, take the average damage and pen of that and compare it to the armour and toughness of the target. For example, the PC's had autoguns. Average dam is 8 pen 0. Target is the Maraudar. Toughness of 8 and armour of 6 (don't have my book with me). Yea..... that Maraudar would be the boss critter they all fight. Same goes with the weapon of the enemy. Average weapon dam and pen versus average PC Armour and Toughness. Mind you, cover, concealment, and movement places alot in this game in not getting killed at low level. Remind that of your PCs. Use examples of mooks standing in the open getting gunned down in the first 1-2 rounds, while the smark ones take cover behind corners, trash cans, crates, vehicles, etc etc and live for several rounds.

Happy gaming and wish you and your merry band luck.

Hi there guys!

Thanks Erathia and Nameless for the kind answers. I've been away for some days (holidays! yay!). Were having our first session next weekend. In the end the group consists of:

- Rogue Trader. A decadent kinda guy. He's a descendant of the Haarlock legacy, but as you'll see he has no idea of what has happened to his bloodline at the beginning of the campaign.

- Archmilitant. Ex-initiate of the Officio Assesinorum. A pious guy, he questioned orders from people in high places, was deemed heretic and had to flee to avoid retribution.

- Eldar Ranger.

- Female Eldar Warlock.

Both Eldar come from Alaitoc. Visions and dreams about a dying Craftworld drove the warlock to travel to the Empire of Man in a "sort of" undercover mision. The ranger, more used to traveling and dealing with other races is her guide.

To start the campaign im running an adapted version of the free adventure, Broken Chains (for Black Crusade). If you havent had a chance to check it, I recommend it. Pandorum is one of my favourite sci-fi movies and the theme here is quite similar. The players start as prisioners of the Inquisition for different reasons and they have been held in stasis for over 200 years. They dont really recall what happened just before their imprisonment. That will be unveiled for each of them through a series of flashbacks. In the case of the noble, it explains why he has managed to avoid the family purge by Erasmus Haarlock. In the case of the eldar, it was the Warlock who had them surrender to Inquisition. It was a big sacrifice but she had foreseen that following that decision would have them meet someone related to her visions (the noble).

Anyway... I've tweaked the adventure quite a bit cause i wasn't sure some threats were manageable by the party. I introduced a few other prisioners in the stasis crypt, other convicts who were just awaken and can become enemies or allies of the characters. I replaced the Carrion Hunter with Ghilliam though they are more or less the same. I removed the Plaguebearer in the bilges and replaced it with a horde of nurglings. Tweaked the damage of the murder servitors a bit and created individual profiles for the alpha acolytes using Dark Heresy to give them a bit more "character" and give them more variety... I built different archetypes: a moritat reaper, a sororitas, a sanctioned psyker... What i really like about the adventure is that it feels like a sandbox; once you flesh the NPCs and have an idea of the ship, theres a lot of ways the PCs can achieve things. They can side with different people and work their way through fights or intimidation. To add a bit of drama I introduced a complication; the reserve generators are almost exhausted and theres a countdown of x hours til they finally fail and every system in the ship goes down: life support, Gellar Fields, etc.

Once out of the Chains of Judgment i plan to have the PCs meet Wrath Umboldt, who will rescue their drifting guncutter on his way to Port Wander. If there's a good feeling between the players and the old man, he might become some kind of mentor, able to provide advice and also warp transportation when needed (of course in exchange for some legwork and favors).

Ill give you a summary of how things develop after our first game session. Cheers!

Lohn

- My players didnt really want to play a rogue trader type of game, in the sense that they dont really want to have to manage one of those huge ships, and worry about all that crew, etc. They would rather play a "Firefly" type of game: a few buddies with a small ship, roaming around, smuggling, doing daring stuff and such. So i had to completely forget about Profit Factor and asign a Throne cost for all the gear and stuff. My plan is to give them a guncutter and have them work for different parties doing all kinds of jobs. Im also using the Black Crusade system for skills, talents and combat actions since i found it a bit more polished, so i had to rework advancement tables.

I had the same situation when playing my game with all of my players being huge fans of Firfly but myself having never seen all of it. The set up we came up with is still the large star ship but all of the crew and ship management happens in the back ground while they can focus on their adventure. They quickly adapted to the Star Trek red shirts being around and the scale of the space combat and seem to be really enjoying it. Also providing them with a gun-cutter to run around outside of their ship has proven to be effective as well. Making use of TiLT's generating software has also a worked out great giving them rich environments for exploration.

Doing it this way may be easier on you as profit factor and grand scale adventures don't have to be scaled down and they can experience more of the universe.

That's how most of the games I've been involved with have gone as well; most players don't wrap their heads around the fact that they effectively own tens of thousands of people.

Well, first game session went pretty well. The noble scion, the tough mercenary and both eldars managed to escape from the Chains of Judgment. The interaction with the different denizens of the derelict ship was really funny, and i think i managed to create a creepy/scary atmosphere by keeping lights low, and using a lot of sound effects (rofl; i downloaded loads of sci-fi sound effects on my ipad (like pressure doors opening, alarm warnings, cogitator activation sounds...) and used them to support the descriptions as players made their way through the ship. Interrogator Crane was soundly defeated (but not before blowing up the eldar seer's arm with his bolt pistol resulting in him burning a fate point) and the players escaped in an inquisitorial guncutter with just enough rations to survive for a few weeks. They have activated the ship's emergency beacon and are now adrift in the void between star systems, things looking grim enough.

They will be picked up by one of Wrath Umbolt's ships and will be taken to Port Wander where i plan to run my own tweaked versions of Into the Maw and Vaults of the Forgotten.

Things i noticed in this first game session:

- My fear about low characteristic values was ill-founded. Gear, aiming and other stuff really make a difference. The eldar scout ran around wearing a camaleonine cloak and an activated stummer and he was quite a good infiltrator. In combat, aiming with an accurate weapon plus the bonus from short range gave quite some buffs to the stats and players were hitting quite frequently.

- Combat is pretty brutal. In the beginning of the adventure there's a battle that ensues when the characters explore the medicae deck and find their stored gear in the hands of the savage ghilliam. Characters and their opponents are unarmoured there and use improvised weapons (well ghilliam have improved natural weapons but they are stil primitive; not that it matters if you arent wearing armour). I had some sick damage rolls from the enemies (like three 0s in a row) and though i dont use righteous fury with NPCS that dont have fate points, my players were severely wounded after the fight. They had to be extra-careful the rest of the session, planning every encounter very well and trying to avoid new fights.

Not that im complaining. It really helped improve the mood of the game session.

As i said im going to run them through some tweaked adventures in the near future and i recently acquired Frozen Reaches, the first part of the Warpstorm trilogy. Now, i dont have the 2nd and 3rd part of the trilogy yet but ive read the overall plot of the adventures and id love some advice about some things; if you guys have ran the adventure, it would be cool to hear your experiences:

- First, id love some feedback about the trilogy. I really liked Frozen Reaches after reading through it (except for a few things). Do the other two books keep up the good work?

- In Frozen Reach the characters arrive at Damaris, a planet besieged by orks and about to be invaded by the green tide. It strikes me as odd that the nobles would hold a party/social meeting??? In that sense, the governor's gala really seems out of place, at least to me. Id rather have the PCs seek the different influential NPCs and bargain for them with their support.

- Third, I do not fancy eldars appearing to give the NPCs the location of the Ork warboss. You see... there's an eldar appearing to "help" the characters in Vaults of the Forgotten already and i think thats too many eldar interferences in such a short time. Can you imagine some other way in which the characters could find out the whereabouts of this threat?

- The mass combat rules provided (units, strenght, etc) look really scary, at least after my first read. They also look like a lot of work to do for the GM. Since i own the Tome of Blood i was planning on using the Tome of Blood rules on mass combat for the game. The system is pretty straightfoward giving every unit some sort of Combat Skill that can be increased by wargear and other support options (psykers, vehicles, air support, etc). Fightning units just roll their Combat Skills in an opposed roll and the first side to score X degrees of success wins. The PCs could enlist different units and different gear options, vehicles etc and distribute them in the different combat areas as they see fitting. Then you would roll different opposed tests (each test representing f.e. a week of combat) and you could easily describe how is the war developing in the different areas. PCs could move support and gear to areas that are faring badly, or could even intervene themselves to help out the troops. How does it sound?

- And finally, ive read that PCs are suppoused to leave the planet with the relic of Saint Drusus which will become important in further adventures. According to Damaris descriptions sounds like the Relic is a very important item for the planet and the imperial worshippers. It sounds really weird that the Bishop would seek the characters, some unknown guys who just made their appearance in the planet, to safe-keep the relic during the ork invasion. Sounds even more unbelievable that the Bishop would suggest the characters to take the Relic off-world.... after the threat has passed? why?? I cant find any references to this in the adventure nor any convincing explanation.

Hoping to read your ideas. Thanks in advance for the help.

P.D. I just got the Relic tabletop game (it was just released in a translated version in my country) and i have to congratulate FFG. Gorgeous sculpts, really nice 40k atmosphere... Just missing some kind of PVP!

I'm glad your first session went well! The first session is always important for both players and GMs to feel each other out, so it going well bodes great for the rest of your campaign!

To answer your questions about the Frozen Reaches...

1) Are the other two adventures as good? - For my players, no. The Frozen Reaches is interesting because of all the politcal maneuvering and possibility for gaining profit through screwing people over. The next two adventures are more traditional campaign, and the third one certainly will feel like it's being run as some sort of sector-wide game-changing event, they're pretty set in terms of adventure path and I didn't find they had as much player interaction. It sounds like it might be more your speed, so by all means check it out!

2) Why isn't Damaris freaking out about the Orks? - Imperial Nobility and the local planetary forces are pretty blasé about the whole Green Menace thing because they probably have never experienced one. There's one Imperial Navy officer there with one Light Cruiser, and in their mind that's probably enough to see off these uncouth ruffians. Said Imperial Navy officer is fully aware that tactically she should probably bug out, and her superiors agree with her. The gala is held before the invasion begins properly and Roks start dotting their countryside. Play it up as if these people really believe that the Orks can be scared away with a show of force rather than the hilarious opposite reaction occurring.

3) The Eldar show up again? - Yes they do, and in terms of the overall arching plot for this campaign, it makes a lot of sense that they do. Just trust me on that. The Eldar appear a lot as helpers because they're the only Xenos race in the Rogue Trader books who might conceivably have interests that can reliably align with humanity, and be able to express their views coherently. Before revealing themselves to have been jerks all along. Their insertion here is definitely more important than in Vaults of the Forgotten, although if you run that adventure first I believe it's the same Eldar in both so have the first adventure be a "test" for the second.

4) The Bishop just hands over the relic? - Yes he does. Again, this is fully explained later in the Trilogy. If you need an explanation, the Explorers are meant to become the defacto military leaders of this campaign, so he might entrust them with it because he thinks they have the best chance of making it offworld. If you'd like to know what the relic is, I'd be happy to PM it to you.

5) Mass Combat Rules - I actually greatly preferred these mass combat rules to the ones from BFK. It felt more like a game, and it allowed me to move through the siege scenes pretty quickly. If you want to make them more drawn out and intense, then by all means tweak them to your satisfaction. It made the battles more cinematic for me, not having to worry about intense micromanaging.

- The mass combat rules provided (units, strenght, etc) look really scary, at least after my first read. They also look like a lot of work to do for the GM. Since i own the Tome of Blood i was planning on using the Tome of Blood rules on mass combat for the game. The system is pretty straightfoward giving every unit some sort of Combat Skill that can be increased by wargear and other support options (psykers, vehicles, air support, etc). Fightning units just roll their Combat Skills in an opposed roll and the first side to score X degrees of success wins. The PCs could enlist different units and different gear options, vehicles etc and distribute them in the different combat areas as they see fitting. Then you would roll different opposed tests (each test representing f.e. a week of combat) and you could easily describe how is the war developing in the different areas. PCs could move support and gear to areas that are faring badly, or could even intervene themselves to help out the troops. How does it sound?

Don't own any of the Warp Trilogy so can comment on that. Though from what I've been reading on various posts on this forum, it's a very interesting and enriching campaign. Definitely on my next to buy list.

As for mass combat, that is something we are all still trying to figure out. I have edited the BFK Ground Wars some, and have it posted on my link listed below. From what I've read from other various postings though, is similar to what Erathia mentioned. The Frozen Reaches ground rules are preferred to BFK ground rules. My recommendation though. Use whatever you and your players are familiar with and works best for everyones gameplay. And from the sounds of it, you already found it. Happy gaming.

I do think the Eldar helping is an interesting quirk of FFG campaigns (hints of Deus Ex Machina, unfortunately, which I seriously dislike). During my Frozen Reaches playthrough it worked out because Caine already had a run-in with Eldar that were both cagy and mistrustful, and nearly killed him. Having that same Corsair Captain show up again to offer 'help' made him weigh the cost/benefits of accepting the meeting invite.

As a possible stand-in, since more Eldar show up in the Frozen Reaches or could easily be summoned to help, there are other ways for Damaris to find the Orks: Perhaps long-range patrols located hints of the Gas Giant out in the Reaches, which would require the Explorers to venture out to pin down its location in the middle of the war; or maybe Snogritz gets angry at the Explorers for sweeping aside his forces and issues a "Publik Chall'ng!" daring the Explorers to come get him at his home base. If that doesn't work and you have Psyker players in the group, an Autoseance or Tarot reading might turn up clues to begin looking at.

Personally, they let the players be in more control than having hints of information dropped because the campaign got written into a corner and they wanted to drop hints for future storylines. (in case that came off harsh, I actually like Frozen Reaches, which is why I'm writing about my own game in the link below).

As a complete side note: Does anyone know what Hadron Shard is researching? if its a spoiler than I'd appreciate a PM, but I never could figure it out. For readers, I won't spoil what Caine ends up doing, but Shard plays a big part in the end of my Frozen Reaches playthrough, and I'd really like to know what he was ultimately planning instead of the direction I took him in.

Captain Remi Vandigrath has a valid point. If the eldars don't suit your preference in the Frozen Reach campaign to assist in finding the orks, then tracking down the Orks main base shouldn't be too much of a problem utilizing other means. I mean they are using Roks right? I would think all you have to do is figure the trajectory the Roks are coming from, and/or even the Ork fleet (which I'm sure are not running Silent), and you have a good grasp of where they might be coming from. As I previously mentioned, I don't own that book (or the trilogy) so don't take my word on it to much.

I can't imagine running this with any players who can't figure out that the Roks are coming from the asteroid belt, but even assuming the Orks aren't using cunning brutality, an approximate location could still require precious days of searching that the planet can't afford to have you missing from while you're hunting them down.

I agree the Eldar showing up is kinda Deus Ex Machina, and I would rather you assign some system ships to hunt them down and have them report back as a valid solution, but in terms of the overall Trilogy the Eldar intervention really does make sense, certainly more than in Vaults of the Forgotten.