Just curious if anyone here has actually played the Rogue Trader RPG.
Rogue Trader looks frikkin' amazing. I'm not much for the WH40K universe - I do like some of it but not enough to delve deeply into it - but there's something about this that appeals to me.
I'm wondering what your experiences are playing it, if any. I've barely scratched the surface of the core rules book but so far it looks fantastic.
I have Dark Heresy and Deathwatch.
They're beautiful books with lots of info. I picked up a used lot of these to check it out, figuring I'd at least get some interesting reading out of it.
Having owned Warhammer Fantasy RPG since the 80s, I can say with assurance that all these 40K RPGs use the same system as that one did. It's fidgety as hell, since your character consists of mainly a long string of D10 stats (with a few on a D100 scale) similar to the tabletop minis game. However, there are more of them but that's not my problem with it even though the 1-10 scale is more simplistic than most.
The biggest problem is that everything else (skills, abilities, spells, etc) utilize those stats but modify them, or only do something with them in specific circumstances. So your character sheet ends up with a large amount of entries, each of which has a special description of it's own. Yes, even Skills - they don't have their own rating like most RPGs, but modify something else. This wasn't too much of a problem in WFRP because it didn't have a huge amount of these. But the 40K ones seem to have a LOT more, mainly due to a wider range of special tech and the abilities to use it. It's exceptionally bad for all the extra special abilities of the Space Marines in Deathwatch. And that's just the base superhuman Marine stuff.. there is more depending on which Chapter each is from. I think you could eventually get around to memorizing the more common ones but it's definitely more special ability rules to deal with than most.
I wouldn't complain about all those little exceptions and specials if the system gel'd well. I have doubts whether it does, although I've not attempted to play any of the 40K RPGs yet. I have something against rolling a d10 to solve most things, yet still have to sort through loads of aforementioned special cases & modifiers. Simple yet still clunky to some extent.
However, if you absolutely must have a 40K RPG then this is the only show in town. From the bits I've seen, they have lots of info. I picked them up more with the idea of running small skirmishes, tabletop style but with more detail. Like an ongoing Space Hulk series in action RPG format.
I had quite a bit of Deathwatch stuff at one point, but it was an absolute brute to run. The sheer number of stats and modifiers just becomes a swamp that bogs the whole game down. Too bad, because it had some interesting ideas, there were just way, way, WAY too many of them.
Quote from: Arctic Blast on July 15, 2015, 01:25:50 PM
I had quite a bit of Deathwatch stuff at one point, but it was an absolute brute to run. The sheer number of stats and modifiers just becomes a swamp that bogs the whole game down. Too bad, because it had some interesting ideas, there were just way, way, WAY too many of them.
Yeah. Each skill, ability, implant, or non-weapon piece of equipment is like it's own little special rule.
I had hoped they ditched the old WFRP system for these latest GW RPGs but they remained the same and even more fiddly.
There is a "lets play," thread somewhere on rpg.net using Rogue Trader that is an absolute blast to read. Sold me on the game and that has never happened before.
RT is the wh40k game I would love to play.
^ Is this the one, DC?
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?511151-Actual-Play-Rogue-Trader-These-are-the-voyages-of-the-starship-Banshee
No. Sorry I can't dig for it as I'm phone posting.
No worries, this one looked kind of interesting from briefly skimming the first post. I just need time to read it.
Found it!
Look for "Into the Maw..." by DiesIrae (sp?) in the Actual Play section.
A seriously good and entertaining read.
Alright! Thank you sir.