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Made in us
Battlewagon Driver with Charged Engine




Ye Olde North State

Hello all. I will be DMing a Rogue Trader campaign for the first time soon, and have just been churning out adventure ideas. However, i've recently noticed that the adventures i'm cooking up seem to follow more of a D&D type pattern (mostly encountering strange or evil planets, space stations and ships and finding a way to stop them) rather than the Rogue Trader style of setting up long-term profit. But every time i try and come up with some sort of adventure based on collecting resources from planet x or establishing a colony on plant y it all seems terribly... dull. Making them feels like making lousy fetch-quests in the case of collecting resources or boring go-here-do-this-leave quests in colonization. Most of the quests that i can come up with that lead to long-term profit that befits a Rogue Trader just seem really trivial and boring. All of the cool ideas I come up with seem more suited to incredible cosmic encounters that don't really lead to long-term reward in the Rogue Trader setting. And because the world is so open ended, I can't railroad the players to make the various encounters make sense in the future. How do I spice up colonization and exploration quests?

grendel083 wrote:"Dis is Oddboy to BigBird, come in over."
"BigBird 'ere, go ahead, over."
"WAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!! over"
"Copy 'dat, WAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!! DAKKADAKKA!!... over"
 
   
Made in us
Servoarm Flailing Magos







Maybe do a self-contained adventure as an intro, then ask the players what they'd like their crew to be involved in... It could give you some direction.

Of course, I know there's times when if you catch players on a bad day you'll get a lot of 'I dunno' which isn't helpful.

It's also a chance to tailor to your player characters. if they're all 'loyal sons/daughters of the Imperium' with a lot of faithful types, you might want to build up to them getting a job hauling pilgrims or Crusade forces around. Being tasked to help haul defensive forces, research teams, etc. to a recently uncovered artifact could be a definite set-up for a campaign.

Working on someting you'll either love or hate. Hopefully to be revealed by November.
Play the games that make you happy. 
   
Made in us
[MOD]
Solahma






RVA

First off, I think about in basic RPG terms. We're going to do a quest like usual. But what makes a RT quest different? Most obviously, RT crews are actively looking for quests along the lines of their two interrelated main goals: exploration and profit.

Perhaps the simplest way to conceive of this is to note that RTs are exploring the galaxy in search of profit. Profit is what happens at the end of any given quest line and allows for the next one. The quest line itself should therefore be about exploration and enterprise.

Design-wise, this implies a series of basic questions:

- what is the particular nature of the opportunity for profit that the PCs will encounter? for instance, is it something they are selling or something they are buying? are they buying something to trade for something else to sell, etc?

- why has no other Imperial capitalized on the opportunity in 10,000 years? (there have been other treasure-hungry RT crews, after all)

- how do the PCs find out about the opportunity in the first place? (charts found on a derelict, a family legend or curse, the insane gibbering of a possesed crewman, etc) how are they going to keep rivals from sniffing them out?

- how do they learn enough about it to judge whether the reward justifies the risks? remember, potential losses are presumptively high at a baseline; the particulars drive costs higher still so RT crews need more than a murky rumor to risk life, limb, and (most importantly) ship

- since we're dealing with uncharted space, what unforeseen risks (and rewards!) emerge in the course of their enterprise? the weirder the better since a good RT crew would negotiate with Cthulhu itself if the margins were high enough

Try your hand answering those in the most creative way you can. Some general tips:

- make sure some obstacles can be overcome with trade, negotiation, wits, and charm rather than just more fighting

- use xenos non-antagonist NPCs as this is the only 40k RPG where you can do so BUT please make sure they don't come off as human (like elves in D&D)

- if you get stuck, steal something from Pirates of the Caribbean and translate it into GrimDark

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/03/16 09:39:20


   
Made in us
Battlewagon Driver with Charged Engine




Ye Olde North State

Thanks all! Does anyone have any examples of notable adventures that they have ran that fit the criteria?

grendel083 wrote:"Dis is Oddboy to BigBird, come in over."
"BigBird 'ere, go ahead, over."
"WAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!! over"
"Copy 'dat, WAAAAAAAGGGHHH!!! DAKKADAKKA!!... over"
 
   
Made in gb
Oberstleutnant





Back in the English morass

You could run the Forsaken Bounty introductory campaign http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/rogue-trader/support/PDF/Forsaken%20Bounty%20%28web%20quality%29.pdf and the follow up Dark Frontier http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/ffg_content/rogue-trader/support/PDF/Dark%20Frontier%20%28Web%20Quality%29.pdf

I haven't tried it myself but it should fit your needs, at least so that your group can get a feel of the game.

I am currently constructing a campaign that will use the rumour of a vast archeotech horde as a hook. The first stage will involve following up and decyphering the rather vague clue and fending off the attentions of other rogue traders (this section will be mostly involve social interactions/investigations with a little light combat). The second stage will involve a fair bit of space combat as the explorers head towards the coordinates of the haul and are involved in an unusually large number of pirate attacks en route as well as a fight with a suitably nasty renegade warship when they reach their destination (this will give ship skills a good airing). The final segment will involve a shore party investigating the ruins which will discover that although the hoard was originally real it is now being used as a lure by Nurgle renegades (mostly cultists but a few plague zombies and a single Plague Marine). The final section will involve the proper investigation of the site and the negotiations that will be required to properly profit from their discoveries. The final reward will be a genuine STC (for something trivial like an alarm clock) which will give them a modest profit rating boost which will be modifed by the actions of the players and its possible that the players may not find it at all if they perform poorly. Obviously it will be a lot more fleshed out than that.

This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2013/03/17 12:59:37


RegalPhantom wrote:
If your fluff doesn't fit, change your fluff until it does
The prefect example of someone missing the point.
Do not underestimate the Squats. They survived for millenia cut off from the Imperium and assailed on all sides. Their determination and resilience is an example to us all.
-Leman Russ, Meditations on Imperial Command book XVI (AKA the RT era White Dwarf Commpendium).
Its just a shame that they couldn't fight off Andy Chambers.
Warzone Plog 
   
 
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