This post is the first in a series that will relate to you the tale of my first roll20 campaign and my first attempt to run any RPG whose title didn't begin with the word Dungeon and end with the word Dragons. I have been running this campaign for quite a while and have enjoyed it more than any other campaign i have ever run. That probably has something to do with the excellent people i have played this campaign with.
This first post is just about the system and an introduction to the premise of the game. You could consider it my review of this rule system but if that is what your looking for perhaps you should look elsewhere.
SYSTEM: War-hammer 40k: Rouge Trader
MECHANIC: 1d100 percentile dice rolling
CAMPAIGN STATUS: ongoing
PLAYERS: 4+GM
CAMPAIGN STATUS: ongoing
PLAYERS: 4+GM
The players take on the role of a Rogue Trader, a kind of legal space pirate, and his/her command crew. This may sound simple, and you may be imagining a campaign playing out like a season of firefly or star-trek but if you are then you don't know Warhammer 40k. the lore of the 40k universe is to big to summarize here but in short:
The smallest space going ships in 40k have crews upwards of 20,000 a cruiser could have 200,000 crew easily, and though they arn't represented in the rules, a battleship's crew could populate a small nation. There is no light speed in 40k either. In order for ships to travel faster than the speed of light they have to tear open portals to another dimension where non of the laws of physics or time exists and pass through. It just so happens that this dimension is hell, literally. Deamons are trying to posess people. There is a holy inquisition and a psychic emperor and aliens that make the xenomorph from Alien look cuddly. Everything in Rogue trader is massive terrifying and ambitious including the players, characters, goals and rewards.
Imagine that President Teddy Roosevelt was put in charge of Darth Vader's giant capital ship from The Empire Strikes Back, Now imagine that all Teddy wants to do in life is get rich, get drunk, get more rich and have some fun. Then imagine that space-captain-playboy Teddy Roosevelt hires Han-solo, Boba-fett, a 16th century Spanish inquisitor, spike speiegel from cowboy bebop and River Tam from firefly to be his bridge crew. Now pretend that teddy and his crew are all dressed like pirates from Disney's Treasure Planet. Finally, in your mind, play the theme-song from your favorite sci-fi series but make it metal. That is Rogue Trader in a nutshell
For those of you who don't know of, or haven't had the pleasure to experience, this system I will try to describe it to you. Rogue Trader is a gargantuan, twisted, self-contradicting mess of excellent ideas, poor design, simple rules, inconsistent art and a fascinating setting. All of this is wrapped up in a labyrinthine rule book in which you will rarely find the rule you are looking for but, on every page of which you will find a dozen ideas and plot hooks that make up for it.
The basic mechanic is simple, but is often complicated by exceptions and a disorganized rule-book layout. Every stat that the characters have is a number between 1-100 and represents a percentage chance of success. if you have 35 strength then your character has a 35% chance to succeed a strength challenge. You roll a hundred sided dice (or two ten sided dice). If you roll under your stat you succeed and if you roll over it: you fail.
Since I began using this system I have played other games built on the same rules and have learned that all the War-hammer 40k RPG's really shouldn't work . At first glance you see systems which say "there are rules for everything"; however, as soon as play begins you realize that there definitely aren't. the nature of the game and the universe create situations that cannot be easily represented with the rules provided. Often i am left having to choose between cutting sections out of the rulebook or forcing awkward rules onto awesome situations.
So in short the system plays like the universe it tries to present, complicated, fun, daunting, grim and clunky. Which is also perfect for me, because i like to make content for my games, and hack them so that they work. running this campaign has been a lesson all its own on homebrew rules and hacking systems. (but that is a different post entirely)
My Rogue Trader campaign is the only campaign that i have run using these rules that has survived. I credit this with the players who i have run this campaign with. We are a group that just gels well. We all love the system and the setting dispite all it's flaws. We just have a lot of fun.
So i have told you about the game's system.
In Pt. 2 I will begin the tale proper. The tale of a ship, a crew, a galaxy of opportunity and a string of bad luck that never ends. The tale of a Wretched Joanna.
The basic mechanic is simple, but is often complicated by exceptions and a disorganized rule-book layout. Every stat that the characters have is a number between 1-100 and represents a percentage chance of success. if you have 35 strength then your character has a 35% chance to succeed a strength challenge. You roll a hundred sided dice (or two ten sided dice). If you roll under your stat you succeed and if you roll over it: you fail.
Since I began using this system I have played other games built on the same rules and have learned that all the War-hammer 40k RPG's really shouldn't work . At first glance you see systems which say "there are rules for everything"; however, as soon as play begins you realize that there definitely aren't. the nature of the game and the universe create situations that cannot be easily represented with the rules provided. Often i am left having to choose between cutting sections out of the rulebook or forcing awkward rules onto awesome situations.
So in short the system plays like the universe it tries to present, complicated, fun, daunting, grim and clunky. Which is also perfect for me, because i like to make content for my games, and hack them so that they work. running this campaign has been a lesson all its own on homebrew rules and hacking systems. (but that is a different post entirely)
My Rogue Trader campaign is the only campaign that i have run using these rules that has survived. I credit this with the players who i have run this campaign with. We are a group that just gels well. We all love the system and the setting dispite all it's flaws. We just have a lot of fun.
So i have told you about the game's system.
In Pt. 2 I will begin the tale proper. The tale of a ship, a crew, a galaxy of opportunity and a string of bad luck that never ends. The tale of a Wretched Joanna.
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| The Wretched Joanna a Turbulent Class Heavy Frigate (deck plan, drawn in paint) |
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