I've always been a giant fan of the truly epic and awesome Warhammer 40,000 universe, and I was really jazzed when I heard that they had come up with a RPG based in the universe called Dark Heresy. I bought it and was rather disappointed. It wasn't that the game was BAD by any stretch of the imagination, it was simply that it felt small and restrictive. You played as a bunch of acolytes who did whatever their Inquisitor bid them do.
Laaame!
It also did not help that my friends were, at the time, shall we say...
Less than able to roleplay. At all.
Flash forward a few years later and me and my buddy George are hanging out at a Barns and Noble and we find Rogue Trader. We open it up and we're instantly hooked.
It reads, at first, like an expansion and refinement of Dark Herasy's rules.
And then you get to the part where you find out that you play as, shockingly enough, a Rogue Trader. And suddenly the game takes on an entirely new, and entirely shocking tone for a Warhammer 40,000 product.
It gets...
Upbeat.
It gets...liberating. It gets fucking majestic. And it is as though the scales have fallen from my eyes and I suddenly see this massive pool of untapped potential within the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. What exactly IS a Rogue Trader? Well, they are individuals who have what is called the Writ of Trade. This is a document allowing them to move beyond the restrictive structure of the Imperium and strike out into the Void to find riches beyond counting.
A Rogue Trader character starts off richer than most Dark Herasy characters could imagine. You are essentially assumed to be wealthy enough to do something as trivial as buy enough laz guns to outfit a regiment.
But more than that, a Rogue Trader starts off with the capacity to level cities at the snap of a finger...because Rogue Traders start off with spaceships. Building a spaceship is kind of fiddly because you need to keep track of many many stats and how they interact and so on...but the completed ship is a character unto itself. Also it opens up the shamefully fun soft-science fiction nightmare that is Warhammer 40,000 space combat to you the player.
It is the spaceship that does it, really...because suddenly, your games go from this grim and dark adventure over one or two planets, with starships being only a way to get from place to place, to a grand adventure where your starship is your home and every planet is a port of calls.
The game is built around brave expeditions to long dead planets, and to lost colonies of humanity. To find new alien life forms and steal their stuff. To really have an epic adveture.
And this brings me to the tone...
You see, I believe that a lot of Warhammer 40,000 is...missing the forest for the trees. A lot of players and fans spend their time chuckling at the absurd grimdark and the exaggerated nature of the universe, and I really that that ignores a really...amazingly constructed universe.
Like, par down the silliness and lighten up the tone slightly and you suddenly have this dark gothic universe that I find vastly more interested than the RAAAAAAGHDHDHDEATHMURDERKILL that we see in the video games and tabletop game.
And that is the universe that Rogue Trader really presents. Dangerous and deadly, and yet beautiful and massive. Dark and mysterious, with horrors and wonders around every corner.
My friends and I are starting a new campaign, involving three starships voyaging into the dark halo region between the galactic arms in search of treasure and riches and artifacts beyond the ken of normal humanity.
Its going to be fun!
So, if you are interested in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (or are a fan yourself) you can do worse than checking out Rogue Trader.
Assuming you can stomach the 80 dollar price tag!
Laaame!
It also did not help that my friends were, at the time, shall we say...
Less than able to roleplay. At all.
Flash forward a few years later and me and my buddy George are hanging out at a Barns and Noble and we find Rogue Trader. We open it up and we're instantly hooked.
It reads, at first, like an expansion and refinement of Dark Herasy's rules.
And then you get to the part where you find out that you play as, shockingly enough, a Rogue Trader. And suddenly the game takes on an entirely new, and entirely shocking tone for a Warhammer 40,000 product.
It gets...
Upbeat.
It gets...liberating. It gets fucking majestic. And it is as though the scales have fallen from my eyes and I suddenly see this massive pool of untapped potential within the Warhammer 40,000 universe.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. What exactly IS a Rogue Trader? Well, they are individuals who have what is called the Writ of Trade. This is a document allowing them to move beyond the restrictive structure of the Imperium and strike out into the Void to find riches beyond counting.
A Rogue Trader character starts off richer than most Dark Herasy characters could imagine. You are essentially assumed to be wealthy enough to do something as trivial as buy enough laz guns to outfit a regiment.
But more than that, a Rogue Trader starts off with the capacity to level cities at the snap of a finger...because Rogue Traders start off with spaceships. Building a spaceship is kind of fiddly because you need to keep track of many many stats and how they interact and so on...but the completed ship is a character unto itself. Also it opens up the shamefully fun soft-science fiction nightmare that is Warhammer 40,000 space combat to you the player.
It is the spaceship that does it, really...because suddenly, your games go from this grim and dark adventure over one or two planets, with starships being only a way to get from place to place, to a grand adventure where your starship is your home and every planet is a port of calls.
The game is built around brave expeditions to long dead planets, and to lost colonies of humanity. To find new alien life forms and steal their stuff. To really have an epic adveture.
And this brings me to the tone...
You see, I believe that a lot of Warhammer 40,000 is...missing the forest for the trees. A lot of players and fans spend their time chuckling at the absurd grimdark and the exaggerated nature of the universe, and I really that that ignores a really...amazingly constructed universe.
Like, par down the silliness and lighten up the tone slightly and you suddenly have this dark gothic universe that I find vastly more interested than the RAAAAAAGHDHDHDEATHMURDERKILL that we see in the video games and tabletop game.
And that is the universe that Rogue Trader really presents. Dangerous and deadly, and yet beautiful and massive. Dark and mysterious, with horrors and wonders around every corner.
My friends and I are starting a new campaign, involving three starships voyaging into the dark halo region between the galactic arms in search of treasure and riches and artifacts beyond the ken of normal humanity.
Its going to be fun!
So, if you are interested in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (or are a fan yourself) you can do worse than checking out Rogue Trader.
Assuming you can stomach the 80 dollar price tag!