Portal 2 jokes aside, I think it might be interesting to see some rules for moving from world to world. A big part of any given Inquisitor's gig is, after all, tracking leads across worlds. It'd be neat to see some guidelines for things like hiring a rogue trader vs trying to find a charter captain going your way vs persauding a Navy vessel to play taxi, and what kind of Influence tests/costs those involve, and what kind of impact those have on your subtlety.

Also it'd be nice to know where the Askellon sector is so we know who the neighbors are.

Agreed. The only real reference to travel duration in DH1 was a fleeting mention of Sepherus Secundus being three months travel from Scintilla; more concrete guidelines would be helpful, especially to newcomers to the 40Kverse who likely use Star Trek as a frame of reference ("Warp travel is quick'n'easy!") rather than 40K's arduous 'Age of Sail' asthetic.

I'm quite familiar with the 40k universe, but I haven't the slightest idea how long Warp travel actually takes. Much of the fiction deals with Warp travel in a very hand-wavey fashion; "the Warp is very unpredictable, so even the Navigator has no idea how long it'll actually be before we reach our destination!" More concrete guidelines on this would be much appreciated.

Also, some rudimentary guidelines on the size and organization of Imperial ships would be awesome. I feel like Rogue Trader is the only 40k RPG that even touches on this, and there is a huge difference between the tidy ships of the Star Trek Federation and the labyrinthine voidfaring cities of the Imperial Navy.

Some little flavourful encounter tables for the kind of stuff that can happen during warp travel would be a great addition, I think. Along with some way to determine travel time, at least roughly.

Also, they really need to retcon what they said in Rogue Trader and have realspace distance play some role in determining warp travel times. If it takes as long to cross the sector as it does to cross the street, then there's absolutely no reason to have starmaps, or to even organize the galaxy into sectors, since every point is adjacent to every other point for travel purposes.

Absolutely

"Rogue Trader: The Navis Primer" has a lot of information on this.

In my game we usually spend days up to a week in transit between the inner systems and the warp jump points and months in warp. So travelling from one star system to another involves considerable time.

I always like to keep warp jumps a little unpredictable (although keeping the real-space distance a factor) there are lots of examples in the fiction of how warp travel distorts time, so what might be a week long trip in real space might be a two month trip for those on the vessel. Conversely a trip that felt instantanious could have taken months in real space time.

One of my favourite examples from the fluff is that because time works differently (and is indeed malleable in the warp) some ships can actually arrive before they left. While it seems weird, once you establish this concept to your players as something people just accept it can create some really great factors in the plot. I've had everything from them chasing a ship through the warp only to find that they arrived months after their quarry did, to a particularly memorable encounter when they responded to a distress call only to become the ship that means the distress call needed to be initiated.

Another advantage of this kind of approach to the warp is it stops the party just 'calling in the big boys'. They literally have no guarantee when their reinforcements will arrive, even if they leave today.

An information where Askellon exactly is would be very welcome.

I'd love it to be close to Calixis, so the SLaught could be an option...

An information where Askellon exactly is would be very welcome.

I'd love it to be close to Calixis, so the SLaught could be an option...

Slaught < Tau, Tyranids, Bhargessi, etc.

Ultima Segmentum, please. We already have a Sector near Calixis- it's called the Calixis Sector ! Not enough? There's also the Koronus Expanse, the Screaming Vortex, the Spinward Front... enough with this same corner of the Imperium, with it's built-in fluff limitations. Let's explore someplace substantially different !

An information where Askellon exactly is would be very welcome.

I'd love it to be close to Calixis, so the SLaught could be an option...

Slaught < Tau, Tyranids, Bhargessi, etc.

Ultima Segmentum, please. We already have a Sector near Calixis- it's called the Calixis Sector ! Not enough? There's also the Koronus Expanse, the Screaming Vortex, the Spinward Front... enough with this same corner of the Imperium, with it's built-in fluff limitations. Let's explore someplace substantially different !

If you want something different Ultima is NOT the place to set it given it is EASILY the most explored region of the Imperium fluff wise.

I say go for segmentum Tempestus or Pacificus if you want to explore something new. Ultima is really the worst possible choice if thats your goal.

I'm quite familiar with the 40k universe, but I haven't the slightest idea how long Warp travel actually takes. Much of the fiction deals with Warp travel in a very hand-wavey fashion; "the Warp is very unpredictable, so even the Navigator has no idea how long it'll actually be before we reach our destination!" More concrete guidelines on this would be much appreciated.

Also, some rudimentary guidelines on the size and organization of Imperial ships would be awesome. I feel like Rogue Trader is the only 40k RPG that even touches on this, and there is a huge difference between the tidy ships of the Star Trek Federation and the labyrinthine voidfaring cities of the Imperial Navy.

Long ago I made some charts and posted them. They were based on WH40k: Rogue Trader (the original Rogue Trader book). I must have quoted too much of the book because GW's IP Inquisitors made FFG take down my post. Bummer, it was a great chart and pretty much answered all these questions.

The answers to the questions you seek are in the original Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader by Rick Priestley.

There have been many threads on the issue of travel times before, and I agree that the fine rulebook should adress it somewhere.

In the meantime, I'll point you to some previous discussions on the matter, in which I did some research on the subject. A result of this was a table of common journeys in the Calixis sector, with distances and average transit times, which I later turned into a little web-tool .

There have been many threads on the issue of travel times before, and I agree that the fine rulebook should adress it somewhere.

In the meantime, I'll point you to some previous discussions on the matter, in which I did some research on the subject. A result of this was a table of common journeys in the Calixis sector, with distances and average transit times, which I later turned into a little web-tool .

That's really cool- but it doesn't change the fact that at least basic rules for space travel should be included in any game that features space travel as a key component ...

That's really cool- but it doesn't change the fact that at least basic rules for space travel should be included in any game that features space travel as a key component ...

I agree, and DH is an ideal opportunity to introduce a faster, simpler, multi-line compatible system. One that RT too can use, for when the journey is less important than the destination.

In the mean time, we use 3 types of warp speed, so to speak:

• War Fleets (Imperial Navy), using the old WD numbers.
• Merchant Fleets (pretty much everything but the Imperial Navy), where 1 LY is 30-60 mins in transit & 12-48 hours in real time.
• Calculated Jumps, where 1 LY is 3-6 hours in transit & 1-3 weeks in real time. Mind that Calculated Jumps have an upper limit of 5 LY.

These numbers don't fit the FFG fluff either, but they work as far as we're concerned

As for random encounter type stuff, surely we lot can come up with some that are suitable for non-RT games?

The obvious stuff would be things like various degrees of warp incursion during transit, accidentally discovered cold trade items, multiplied real time, etc.