Ghost, the answer to "Why doesn't FFG do (whatever)? is "GW won't let them."

GW doesn't care about RPGs at all.  They are a "toy soldier company" as one founder was quoted as saying.  Dark Heresy sold out the week it was released, GW closed down Black Industries anyway.  Why?  Because they couldn't care less about RPGs, to them the only possible value of an RPG is to sell miniatures and Codices to RPGers.

Too much information about the official 40k setting or racial info in a book means someone doesn't buy that from GW and that people might look to the RPG for setting info instead of the wargame.  It's been that way for decades.

Like, ultimately I don't need someone to say "You should steal an ice planet's crystalline wealth, bro!" I need to know how much crystalline wealth the ice planet has, and how many space bitches I'm gonna evaporate when I park my ship in low orbit over the ice king's palace, and how whiny my spacemen are gonna be if I send them down without snowsuits to haul that shit up to my space bank.

What's weird to me about the talk of Rogue Trader failing to address premise properly, is that the original premise of 40k WAS Rogue Trader.  The whole game was centered around the skirmishes of RT garrisons and such.

For that matter, Space Hulk was a direct off shoot of Rogue Trader activities as well.

Did anyone on the FFG staff actually go back and look at the old game?

Quote from: Benoist;453096What? The part where he says there "isn't an endless supply of aliens like ST," or the "40 page treatment for each Xeno race," or all of the points at once?

Yeah...

Quote from: J Arcane;453106What's weird to me about the talk of Rogue Trader failing to address premise properly, is that the original premise of 40k WAS Rogue Trader.  The whole game was centered around the skirmishes of RT garrisons and such.

For that matter, Space Hulk was a direct off shoot of Rogue Trader activities as well.

Did anyone on the FFG staff actually go back and look at the old game?

It doesn't matter what the old Rogue Traders were - basically Conquistador/Diplomats who went beyond the Imperium, it matters what the new GW Rogue Traders are - Yankee Traders/human Ferengi.  That's what they had to work with.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;453099The core of Rogue Trader though, isn't so much about a small group of space bros broing it up as it is about a ship, and in 40K, a giant ass ship with thousands of people with all sorts of skill sets and resources to draw on. You happen to play some of the more interesting people who make decisions for the ship, but you're really as much a servant to it as it is to you.

Beautiful post over all, especially the closing line here.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;453099He asked a really interesting question "So, how would this game have been different if we'd been a rogue trader crew instead of SMs?" and the only response I could think of was "I don't think this premise would have even worked as a rogue trader game because of the ship. You'd just hose the Titan from orbit and teep down a regiment of guys to do the actual capture [of Titus Hyle]."

Yes, exactly. Another thread I bookmarked long ago, with quite some effort from players and GMs to try to think around that problem and provide in-game rationalizations (rather unsuccessfully, in my view). - Edit. Also, I found the Ciaphas Cain novels to provide several (if satirical) responses to the problem - e.g. his famous line that if you don't display good leadership towards the troops, the first bullett you're going to take in a fight will come from behind you. The hilarity of him trying to avoid exposure to and direct contact with the enemy at all costs, and always ending up in exactly that position. Which is of course impossible to engineer in a RPG unless you railroad the PCs. Every. Bloody. Time.

Quote from: CRKrueger;453103Ghost, the answer to "Why doesn't FFG do (whatever)? is "GW won't let them."

GW doesn't care about RPGs at all.  They are a "toy soldier company" as one founder was quoted as saying.  Dark Heresy sold out the week it was released, GW closed down Black Industries anyway.  Why?  Because they couldn't care less about RPGs, to them the only possible value of an RPG is to sell miniatures and Codices to RPGers.

Too much information about the official 40k setting or racial info in a book means someone doesn't buy that from GW and that people might look to the RPG for setting info instead of the wargame.  It's been that way for decades.

I understand all this, but I really don't buy that GW aren't letting them do things sensibly. I would if there were no sources for info on eldar, orks, whatever at all, but they exist officially, it's just they are scattered all over the place. So GW are obviously allowing FFG to create eldar and orks and even dark eldar, as well as chaos, tau and tyranids. You can even play kroot or orks!

But wothout seeing that license there's no way to be sure what the reasons are.

Quote from: Windjammer;453116Yes, exactly. Another thread I bookmarked long ago, with quite some effort from players and GMs to try to think around that problem and provide in-game rationalizations (rather unsuccessfully, in my view). - Edit.

I would have preferred to run RT as a firefly scale premise, rather than controlling a ship with a crew in the tens of thousands. It's just mind boggling to conceive. Is any Lord Captain going to risk beaming down and leaving his ship in charge of 40,000+ slaves/servants/swabs? Even on the Serenity with it's crew of a handful Mal is constantly reminding everyone it's HIS boat.

40k is a bit different than Firefly.

Personally, I wish Dark Heresy was more like Father Ted.

Quote from: Blackhand;45312840k is a bit different than Firefly.

RT is the one game out of the three that I don't have, and it's kind of what's holding my hand regards to it. In the sense that on a premise of flying around and doing trade and stuff, as a role player, I imagine either doing some smuggling with a relatively (mostly PC) small crew a la Firefly, or commandeering a big ship a la Entreprise. I don't "feel" RT on that line at all.

Reading Pseudo's post, there seems to be some kind of confusion going on in the game itself.

I'm another who would probably get along better with a Rogue Trader campaign based around a smaller ship/crew... or a big ship/crew with the PCs as members of something like Prime Directive's 'Prime Teams'... rather than the actual bridge crew.
But I suppose that wouldn't be a proper Rogue Trader operation any more... it would either be pirates/smugglers, operating outside of Imperial mandate... or some other sort of Imperial operative who needs a ship and freedom to use it, but not an army to back him up.

Either way, shouldn't be too hard to make it happen on the table... but it won't ever be 'Chapter Approved'.

Quote from: Windjammer;453116Another thread I bookmarked long ago,

That thread includes realisation of the pecularities of RT that really should have been used by the game's writers. I'm posting this particular reply even though it's got nothing to do with DW because it has actually made me reconsider giving up on RT (though it's a bit late now!).

The idea of a ship of tens of thousands is insane, perhaps even by gaming standards, because it's just so hard to comprehend.
But then you factor in the dark ages in space vibe that 40k has, which to most everyone else is probably obvious.
Then it occurred to me that you aren't a RT aboard a big spaceship; you are the liege lord of a travelling citadel in space - a fief ship - like a mercantile Camelot (though perhaps less noble ) parading through the warp. As such the crew aren't just spacebound seamen, they include their families and the relevant support infrastructure.
So you don't have farmers tilling the fief, you have farmers tilling the hydroponics bay that feeds the ship. You then have onboard bakers and cooks to prepare the food, milk the cows (!) and such. You would probably even have an inn aboard ship to serve food and give rest to the crew between shifts. You would have a chapel to give the crew a structure and a routine as they work in the name of the RT and give praise to the God Emperor. You would have servants working to toll the bell and take confession, reporting to the Seneschal (or whatever) PC.
There's probably even a marketplace. Here you the RT could lease space to travelling merchants to help run the ship as well as sell off some of what he finds. When the ship docks at Port Wander, peopel come aboard to trade at the marketplace just as crew go ashore.
An entire feudal fiefdom in space almost like a medieval Babylon 5 (which is only a few times larger than the average RT ship).
The RT and his crew (the pcs) are the kings and his knights in the keep (the bridge). Sometimes they come into town and mingle with the crew, perhaps hosting social events - like a joust or an archery competition. Who knows Robin Hood of Eldar could come aboard and win the competition if the RT is evil like the Sheriff of Nottingham. Maybe there's an entire deck that the crew know as 'haunted' that's off limits because that's where the kroot contingent that serve the Lord Captain live.
You could have a PC group similar to that of Camelot in Merlin, where the ship is really in the hands of the Lord Captain character's father, the elder of the dynasty who's on his last legs. He himself is a more intolerant, harsh figure, though respected by the crew. His son, the player Rogue Trader (Arthur, by comparison) is more loved by the crew and has leave to lead all the away missions in prepartion for his due inheritance of the ship.

Im sure this is all quite obvious to everyone else, but it has made me want to play the game now.

That is an interesting take on it... it hadn't occured to me to look at it that way but it does make sense. Kinda changes my outlook on RT too...

You're right, Ghost, that's pretty much exactly what a RT campaign should be like.  If you look back at the original RT, they didn't normally have a single ship, they had fleets.  Take the idea of a "fief in space" and now spread it around an entire fleet and you get a medieval Battlestar Galactica.

That makes a RT trader campaign a perfect place for troupe play.  You want to do Firefly?  A fleet like that would need lots of scouts, spies, independent agents etc. to do minor deals and gather information.  You want to do Deathwatch?  If the RT finds a world that needs to be conquered to be brought back into the Imperium, use the DW rules with normal Astartes - Templars, Mentor Legion or a team of Raven Guard to spearhead the attack.