RangerWickett
Legend
I've been in a Rogue Trader campaign for over 6 months now, and I'm really loving the game. I'm sure part of that is the mad genius of our GM, who has synthesized just about every sci-fi inspiration and is very flexible in letting us do any sort of crazy thing we could imagine. But the concept of the game itself is pretty amazing.
Instead of playing a small group of scrappy heroes fighting your way up in the world, you start as the 'command crew' of a half-mile long space ship with a crew of thousands. Your captain, the 'Rogue Trader,' possesses a warrant of trade, giving you permission to conduct business throughout and beyond the Human Imperium.
The universe sucks. The term they like to use is 'grimdark,' because neither grim nor dark alone describes how wretched the place is. Everyone wears skulls as adornment; it's just fashion. Robots are forbidden, but you can get away with the letter of the law by chopping off some poor prisoner's head and jamming it atop a mechanical body, because that's a servitor, not a robot.
The human imperium is overseen by massive space bureaucracy and inquisition, which if they find hints of heresy might send in a cadre of power-armored space marines to cleanse a whole city, or might just obliterate a planet from orbit, turning the surface to glass.
To travel the stars, you don't have warp drive or hyperspeed. Your psychic navigator plots a course, and then you tear a whole in reality and fly into Hell. Priests chant prayers to protect the sanity of the crew as damned souls of dead relatives try to tempt you into opening windows, and you constantly hear claws scratching the hull.
And you're part of what makes things suck so much, because you're fabulously wealthy, motivated mostly by a desire for profit, and unbeholden to almost anyone. You have resources far beyond what any D&D character ever could even conceive of having.
For instance, last session we bought three fighter squadrons, and then almost immediately ended up losing one of them when a demon-possessed torpedo was fired at our ship. We launched fighters to shoot it down, but then the demons possessed our fighters.
Earlier, to smuggle a heretek (someone who uses forbidden technology) aboard our ship, we had him sneak into a spaceship graveyard the size of a continent, and we just bought the whole thing and towed a few hulks up to orbit.
We're pretty sure our captain is the result of a millennium of breeding to produce a perfectly foolhardy and daring leader. He once cut a portable singularity in half with his power sword, and we just bought a new ship for the sole purpose of ramming enemies.
We came across a planetary blockade where every incoming ship was being scanned for contraband, so we snuck down to the planet, hired a few thousand prostitutes, and set up a space brothel in our spare ship so we could make money while waiting in line. And whenever our spare ship got near the front of the line, it would sell its place to someone stuck at the back, and switch places.
Me? I got possessed by a demon, which pulled a grenade and had it go off in my hand. That was fine, though, because we just chopped off my mangled arm and replaced it with a better one. On a whim I once announced I was interested in boomerangs, and three military contractors soon thereafter sought arms contracts with us for exploding boomerangs, poison mono-filament edge boomerangs, and remote-controlled homing boomerangs. We're still seeking buyers.
This game is insane, and the scale is hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. I love it.
Instead of playing a small group of scrappy heroes fighting your way up in the world, you start as the 'command crew' of a half-mile long space ship with a crew of thousands. Your captain, the 'Rogue Trader,' possesses a warrant of trade, giving you permission to conduct business throughout and beyond the Human Imperium.
The universe sucks. The term they like to use is 'grimdark,' because neither grim nor dark alone describes how wretched the place is. Everyone wears skulls as adornment; it's just fashion. Robots are forbidden, but you can get away with the letter of the law by chopping off some poor prisoner's head and jamming it atop a mechanical body, because that's a servitor, not a robot.
The human imperium is overseen by massive space bureaucracy and inquisition, which if they find hints of heresy might send in a cadre of power-armored space marines to cleanse a whole city, or might just obliterate a planet from orbit, turning the surface to glass.
To travel the stars, you don't have warp drive or hyperspeed. Your psychic navigator plots a course, and then you tear a whole in reality and fly into Hell. Priests chant prayers to protect the sanity of the crew as damned souls of dead relatives try to tempt you into opening windows, and you constantly hear claws scratching the hull.
And you're part of what makes things suck so much, because you're fabulously wealthy, motivated mostly by a desire for profit, and unbeholden to almost anyone. You have resources far beyond what any D&D character ever could even conceive of having.
For instance, last session we bought three fighter squadrons, and then almost immediately ended up losing one of them when a demon-possessed torpedo was fired at our ship. We launched fighters to shoot it down, but then the demons possessed our fighters.
Earlier, to smuggle a heretek (someone who uses forbidden technology) aboard our ship, we had him sneak into a spaceship graveyard the size of a continent, and we just bought the whole thing and towed a few hulks up to orbit.
We're pretty sure our captain is the result of a millennium of breeding to produce a perfectly foolhardy and daring leader. He once cut a portable singularity in half with his power sword, and we just bought a new ship for the sole purpose of ramming enemies.
We came across a planetary blockade where every incoming ship was being scanned for contraband, so we snuck down to the planet, hired a few thousand prostitutes, and set up a space brothel in our spare ship so we could make money while waiting in line. And whenever our spare ship got near the front of the line, it would sell its place to someone stuck at the back, and switch places.
Me? I got possessed by a demon, which pulled a grenade and had it go off in my hand. That was fine, though, because we just chopped off my mangled arm and replaced it with a better one. On a whim I once announced I was interested in boomerangs, and three military contractors soon thereafter sought arms contracts with us for exploding boomerangs, poison mono-filament edge boomerangs, and remote-controlled homing boomerangs. We're still seeking buyers.
This game is insane, and the scale is hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes. I love it.
