Rogue Trader is here, and the lot of you interstellar rapscallions can thank my friend Dylan for loaning me his shiny new book for a bit. I’ve got it so that I can make a half-assed character generator, but I might as well go ahead and review it while I’m at it. Four-hundred pages of intergalactic gallivanting await!
The first thing you’ll notice is that there is basically no change to the production values of this book compared to Fantasy Flight Games’s earlier releases in the Warhammer 40K Roleplaying line. That’s because it is incredibly difficult to improve upon near-perfection. As before, all of the artwork is astounding, the book feels incredibly sturdy, the paper is very high-quality, and the printing is very colorful and sharp. A smashing success, but we can expect no less from the crew at FFG.
The layout of the book is very similar to the Dark Heresy core rulebook. Things start off with an introduction, then we’ve got a chapter on Character Creation, then the career paths, followed by skills and talents, equipment, psychic powers, and so on. Unfortunately, the organization of content within these chapters is also very similar to that of the Dark Heresy core rulebook.
The best example I can think of this is the Special Abilities section on page 72. Why is each career’s special ability on one page at the end of the Careers chapter? Why wasn’t each career’s special ability included above or below their characteristic advancement chart? Why does the Armoury chapter not contain any information on purchasing items? I’m shopping for new items, I’d like to know how to buy them. Instead of getting this information on page 113, which seems to be a logical place to put such information, you are instead forwarded mid-paragraph to page 270. That’s four chapters later in the book (“Playing the Game” — and yes, this is a massive chapter that covers every action you can possibly take in the game).
Some players are curious about moving their characters from Dark Heresy into Rogue Trader. It’s a simple affair, you simply re-make the character as a rank 1 Rogue Trader character and spend whatever xp is leftover. A rank 1 Dark Heresy character has spent 0 xp out the gate, but is immediately given 400 xp to spend on advancements. A rank 1 Rogue Trader character, on the other hand, has spent 4500 xp, and has 500 xp to spend on advancements. With the new point-buy method of characteristic generation, bringing a Dark Heresy character into a Rogue Trader’s team should pose no problem at all.
The biggest new thing about Rogue Trader, though, has to be the focus on interstellar travel (and in the 40K universe this means the Warp, and lots of bad things) and ship-based combat. The first thing your group will do after rolling characters is determine your starting profit factor and ship points (SP) with a d10 roll. With ship points, you can now assemble the void ship that belongs to the rogue trader dynasty. You’ll determine everything from hull type to weapons to complications (like a haunted ship). Your ship has it’s own quirks, oddities, crew, and history. This is a very fun process that has a lot of potential for an amusing php-based randomizer. I’ll get on that shortly.
The final chapters of the book are exactly what you would expect: a chapter for the game master, three chapters covering the Imperium, rogue traders and the Koronus Expanse, a small bestiary, and a quick sample adventure. While the guys at Fantasy Flight Games made a few blunders in their organization of the material, they have also managed to put together an excellent book (15 chapters and almost 400 pages) featuring a wealth of role-playing goodness that is sure to provide you and your gaming group with countless adventures and immeasurable enjoyment. A must-buy for anyone interested in role-playing in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.
