/40krpg/ 40k Roleplay General

I've had one hell of a Big Reveal in our last Rogue Trader game and I'm going to half-share-the-story-half-ask-for-advice.

We are a group of four - a SLIGHTLY heretek explorator (me), a missionary, a void-master, and a rogue trader (by class anyway). The last guy is the young son of the actual Rogue Trader, now "learning the trade" on a smaller ship his father acquired. We were tasked by the Rogue Trader with assisting his heir.

Now the actual Rogue Trader (an NPC) is a very secretive and supposedly paranoid man mostly communicating through trusted agents. Few people have met him in person - not a single member of our group has had the pleasure. And that includes his own son, who was sent off to get educated on an imperial world when he was several months old and barely heard from his father until he was ordered to join him about two years ago. Even with that he's yet to meet his father face-to-face, as far as I know.

Anyway I have discovered that the actual Rogue Trader has been dead for several decades and an AI has been impersonating him ever since. Also the rogue trader's 'son' was born at least ten years after his father's death.

Only the void master (who is a good friend of mine) and I know this at the moment. Advice?

>yfw exploring spacehulk
>yfw find dead genestealers
>oh fuck not genestealers
>yfw keep finding more and more dead genestealers
>something clearly killed all the genestealers
>find a quite insane Radical Inquisitor with his Slaaneshi Daemonhost toasting each other's good health while the Inquisitor attempts to bind him further and the Daemon tries to get Inquisitor drunk enough to let his guard down enough to break free
>bonus points if bar is reminiscent of The Shining
>further bonus points if the Daemonhost serves the drinks

A Sororitas sect derived from a mission that got lost in the Warp, and are now quite profoundly insane (since they literally cannot be corrupted) and now consist of voidborns descended from the Sororitas and the male crew?

In case recipients didn't see them.

MEGA guy is fucking gone, son. He's never coming back.

How to build up relationships between PCs and NCPs in Dark Heresy? All the missions have the players running around the sector, and given their own inherent fatalism due to the setting about everyone/thing dying, I don't know how to make them make those connections.

>now quite profoundly insane
>now
They aren't to begin with?

Sororitas are in fact EXTREMELY sane.

They start out at zero IP like pretty much anybody else, user.

Use the leverage of your knowledge to make the AI do whatever you want, lest you call the Mechanicus and they descend upon it with furious vengeance. Better yet, just do it anyway.
A.I. in 40k are NOT to be fucked with.

Make them care out of character if they insist on being nihilistic edgelords. Have the NPC fill a role they don't very well. Then get him in peril, or captured, or hurt. See how quickly they get sentimental.

It helps if they can help with stuff that's inconvenient, can't seriously contribute to combat, but can run/hide/fend for themselves when combat happens. That helps keep them from being too annoying, useless, or stupidly broken.

pretty much this, fuck AI, but you might want to find out whos behind it first (if anyone besides the dead trader, I mean, the kid came from somewhere though, right?) if you can,lest some wizened old Heretek suddenly shoot you all in the back with 20 lasguns, each on the end of a Mechadendrite some sunny afternoon

Just to clarify, I think the AI doesn't know that I know its secret. I've learned about it through a couple of more heretikal tech priests who sort of assumed I was in the know after I tricked them into thinking I was closer with the Lord Captain than I really am. I know they have been doing some sort of maintenance on it.

To blackmail the AI I'd have to come into contact with it which could be very dangerous. Other than that I'm considering ratting it out to Mechanicus higher ups immediately, sharing the info with the rest of the group, or just keeping quiet about it entirely.

If I do share it with the group I'm wondering if I should redact the shadiness of the origins of the RT's 'heir', since HE might react unpredictably...

I'd say call it in and wait for the robot cavalry, but keep the "10 years" thing to yourself until you can find out more.

you might want to figure out where the kid came from, as in, is he a clone or something?

if he doesn't share the Trader's blood line that could create issues as to who the true heir is, something a more clever man may find a way to circumvent somehow so as not to lead to open conflict but still walk away with the fleet

might want to keep a gun handy in case the kid freaks out when he learns something, if your DM is good at subterfuge they may be playing you against one another

Fairly up to date duplicate available in /40k/ general's list.

What do you guys do for inspiration? My last DH campaign just finished, and I suppose I should start making plans for another one, but it went REALLY off the rails, and while I enjoyed it, it's left me a little burned out.

The kid's background is that he's a ridiculously pampered lad always surrounded by servants, food tasters, guards, unwilling (and not allowed) to get his hands dirty or interact with riff-raff much. All supposedly by the instruction of his paranoid father who wasn't on particularly good terms with the rest of the dynasty and went to absurd lengths to shield his designated heir from any danger.

So yeah who know how he'll react. The player seems to have fun playing up his character's haughtiness, disdain for plebs, and bafflement by ordinary things he never got to do.

8 hours of masturbation.

The reason I'm even considering waiting a bit is the fact the AI has apparently done fuck all (just some exploration) in its 40-50 years of activity so a while longer might not hurt. I'm considering digging deeper on my own but setting up a sort of "dead man's switch" that would inform the authorities if I were incapacitated.

Plus my character is the type to want to take the AI apart personally rather than let others do it or just blow it up.

Choose what sub-aesthetic of the universe you want to focus on, and watch a couple of movies that are related to that.

My favorite thing to do with Rogue Trader is take a mundane thing (workers striking, hostile takeovers, insider trading, timeshares, etc) and blow it way out of proportion by setting it in grimdark 40k. It seems to work.
Not sure how to apply it to Dark Heresy though.

Color me retarded but I actually can't find Genestealer stats in Enemies Without.

It isn't actually called a genestealer explicitly. ctrl+f for "brood" and you'll easily recognize it as a "delete 1d3 acolytes per turn" genestealer.

you should knock him down a peg

It's a joke, fanatical devotion can be a symptom of insanity or brainwashing.

Is it possible to have a Gellar Field malfunction in such a way as to cause it to instead of creating a bubble of realspace within the immaterium allowing a ship to safely pass through it unmolested, it instead creates a pocket of immaterium within realspace?

Best scenario I can come up with for this is that the gellar field failed mid-transit but somehow reactivated shortly before returning to realspace bringing with it all the warp that had enveloped the ship between those two events.

Unless if it was intentionally sabotaged to do such a thing, no.

find more time for 40k to be even more fucked up

no campaign goes perfectly, a good DM is open ended and can adapt

did you win?

what does he do without all his retainers?

Oh.

OH.

Holy mother of fuck, that is a ridiculous critter.

It is supposed to be able to threaten space marines in terminator armor.

Does anyone else find scrambler rounds really weird fluffwise? Not quite sure what they're supposed to be or what exactly causes them to have Recharge in-universe (especially since you can still do, say, full auto ten-bullet bursts without a pause, but if you single-shot you need a pause between each bullet).

I'm fluffing them as some kind of drug bullet (ie a hallucinogen version of tox rounds), and I guess the Recharge is some kind of thing where the hallucinogen is two drugs mixing before firing, and they need to mix just before firing because... it goes inert after a little while or something?

Soon my players will face genestealer from enemies without. I'll get you the fight story time shortly after /40krpg/

look up the Ganymede Contagion.

Now that I think about it, there are so few enemies that a group of 4 acolytes could take on if we look at it from a tabletop perspective.

Anyone knows the background music? youtube.com/watch?v=s8klnCoAEi0

That would depend on how you run your campaigns. It seems you're doing a world-hopping Campaign, you'd want to have your NPCs either also worldhop, or return to locations to have static NPCs show up.
You then want to make sure your NPCs do things. The issues of the campaign ought to influence their lives in some way.

Probably because the tabletop operates on a higher powerlevel than the RPGs usually do. Stuff like that would be more at home in a Necromunda game than a 40k one.

Well, no, it crashed and burned. They got into an argument with the Inquisitor, killed him, spun a soap bubble about how he was "gravely wounded" in their latest raid on a heretic nest, took over his "Medical care" as an excuse to keep him in seclusion, and just tried to carry on as if nothing had happened.

That, of course, didn't work for long, and the campaign ended with them being chased by half a sector fleet and scuttling their own ship to avoid capture.

So does crashing and burning from easily preventable idiocy count as winning?

>murderhobos

well I hope they at least learned

could be an interesting start to a BC campaign but damn

REEEEEEEEEEEE TABLETOP AND RPG ARE SEPARATE TABLETOPFAGS GET OUT REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>m-muh tabeltopkek

Given that respirators still protect against scramblers, I guess they release a small gas cloud upon impact.

It's only winning if they get away with it temporarily. My players highlight of a campaign about a huge Slaaneshi tech-heretek invasion of a whole sector was killing an Inquisitor who kept annoying them. In the middle of a huge planetary invasion of a Heretek forge world they saw this Inquisitor get her leg hacked off and knocked off an orbital platform into space and thought;
>Better safe than sorry
and injected air bubbles into her blood-stream as she froze in space.

A mix of excitement at being allowed to do things and annoyance at sometimes having to do thing, coupled with a tendency to still (try to) boss everyone around.

Also he still does have servants/subordinates around; he commands a Sword-class frigate given to him by his father.

you mean heresy robo dad

We all want to have such dad. Especially blackies

Yes.

Although the kid might just be something as heretical.

I call dibs on clone

They did get away with it, but only temporarily. Eventually, other people said Inquisitor had dealings with went looking for him when he hadn't gotten in contact in a while (About 8 months IC time, about 6 sessions). They were not very convincing , and that led to the ruse being uncovered.

sure it's an AI and not a Cawl Inferior?

What do you guys use as a combat map?
I've got this thing I made to save time, since half the encounters I wind up having to make up on the fly. I use lego pieces for cover, but inevitably someone knocks something over and we have to figure out where everything went.

My group wants to use Currency instead of Availability for obtaining gear I remember I saw once a Thrones to Availability rarity conversion chart for example Extra Rare is X amount of thrones. I've tried looking and googling for it with no luck, can any please help me find the chart in the books, or tell me if it actually never existed.

Tell them to suck you soft.
Availability is in place for a reason: trying to calculate the cost in thrones by taking into consideration the rarity of the item, the value of thrones on each world you visit, the likelihood of you finding it in the time you have, etc, are not worth the GM's time. Your players are just having trouble with a system that isn't gold coins.
In Dark Heresy, your ability to obtain things reflects your Inquisitor's ability to use his influence and call in favors.
In Only War, it reflects your superiors deciding what you're worth giving.
In Rogue Trader, it reflects the ridiculous amount of wealth (planets, spacecraft,) at your disposal.
In Black Crusade, it reflects your reputation and your ability to intimidate others into giving you things.
At no point do thrones play a major part of Availability.

It's like when my friend who'd only ever played D&D, came to a Rogue Trader session, and the first thing he did was demand a hiver scum's wallet. The amount of thrones people have is a negligible factor in your ability to acquire things.

I don't care about your arguments, currency FEELS right and that's all that matters.

>The amount of thrones people have is a negligible factor in your ability to acquire things.
Are they, though? Imagine you raid a drug dealers den on suspicion of heresy and loot what amounts to five kilograms of the finest driven, unstretched snow. That's gotta be worth something for bartering purposes to buy another five crates full of grenades.

Tell them to fuck off with that idea

One thing to remember is that Silica Animus can interface and overcome most forms of Imperial technology.

>shinji get inside the frigate
>I hate you heresy robo dad!

That's what you use the trading system for - you trade it for a bonus to an acquisition, and fluff wise maybe you just sell it and use the raw dosh, or maybe you find this one addict adept and give him the drugs in exchange for him fiddling with some paperwork, or some other method.

The strength of Influence is that it's fairly wide and general, so you can explain acquisitions using whatever makes sense for the characters and situation - it's a measure of reputation, influence and all kinds of resources, not just Thrones.

LOL guys, I've never PLAYED the tabletop, it was just an idle thought. I like having my players fragile.

But I'm probably in the minority here.

GM from last thread, the guy asking for advice on letting a players gf play a Sister of Battle

Ok, so, I have more information. I talked with both the player and his gf. Shes super excited to get into rp, but 40k IS an acquired taste, and not something I'm going to force on anyone, at the same time, I'm not going to be an asshole and tell anyone they can't play. I am, shockingly, one of those GM's that doesn't always tell players they can't play what they want. I let a guy play a space marine in a Rogue Trader game a long time ago, and it was totally fine.

But, as I said, I talked with both, as well as everyone else in the group, and the idea was fine with everyone in the group. The gf (who apparently does know 40k) is totally cool with playing a Sister (in love with the idea, apparently).

What are some good ideas to justify having one working alongside a squad of Imperial Guard?

Who are the squad's regiment deployed against?

Haven't decided. Originally the campaign would focus on opening invasion of Fourtheden in the Spinward (Severan Dominate). Planet of wheat and farms, half of which has become dark eldar playground. Campaign allegory for D-Day+1944 France.

I've also been considering setting the campaign in the Jericho Reach, either against the Stigmartus or Tau

Well the Dominate would probably be on the Ecclesiarchy's shitlist anyway, what with their perverted version of the Creed, so they might lend aid beyond the usual attached priests. Could be a place to start, if I remember the OW fluff right.

All it really takes is a bit of nefarious origins or a horror show behind the curtain sort of deal.

>Timeshares on a pleasure world?
Xenos brainbug cult is infecting people as they sleep, and finding new renters is how they spread amongst the nobility so goddamn quick.
>labor strike
Cult driven. Oppressed workers start forming their own worker's cabals. 1d10 are normal, disgruntled but still dangerous groups. 1d5 have supposed cult leanings, but all but one are fake cults and just empty bullshit. The one true cult does its best to further its particular aims (pick your Chaos god faction) while pinning it on one or two of the others.

I once made a kind of wealth currency for RT. It worked ok but the extra work load it put on me burnt me out rather fast. I only used it for the purchase of big things like ship components or rare weapons like power swords. I also made lists of items for sale by various merchants throughout the expanse with special events taking place where really rare items could be bought and sold.

Play the first edition then.

What would be the best cult arcana to take for a Thousand Sons legionary? Raptora shield is great, but the powers suck. The Corvidae ballistic skill reroll is great too, but the powers turn you into a buffmonkey.

What's the most powerful school of psychic powers? I'm building a character that was supposed to be focused on pyromancy, but I want to know what some more optimal builds might be.

Which line?

I don't but that's a neat trailer. I can't believe it took me this long to realize Genestealer Cults have a heavy Lovecraft flavor.
I sorta don't. Generally, unless it's a low level game, I leave a whole session for working out a fight (including build up and denouement).
I either use terrain and 40k minis, or I draw it out on graph paper in advance.
Right now, the 40k games I run are all super high level, so if there's a fight that's a foregone conclusion I usually just resolve it with a few rolls. Four hive gangers with stub guns aren't squat to the cyber-assassin who's mulched Traitor Legionaries 1v1.

Anyone know of any systems that can do 40k RPG more narratively than the official FFG gamelines do?

I was thinking of doing a Rogue Trader game with FFG Star Wars rules, but if there's something better, or even a more narrative way to do the existing system, I would appreciate that.

roll20

Ballistic skill reroll is redundant when you have so many bonuses. The shield boost is always great, aand seriously boosts survivability.

Does anybody have an OEF version of The Lathe Worlds, or Faith and Coin?

>needing a system to play narratively

autism speaks

Starting up a campaign soon in Only War. The GM and I are well versed in 40k, another player has a decent idea of how the setting works but the other three players have no experience with the world whatsoever.

What would be the best way to get them involved? We thought of having a pre-campaign session where we bring everyone up to speed but we're worried it might put them off if we pull out a massive info dump on them. The other idea we have is to give them a real basic it's Catholic Starship Troopers description and ease them in over time. We do have copies of the Infantryman's Uplifting Primer and the Munitorum Manual so we were thinking of using them as table props that they could refer to as they wanted/needed, like new recruits using them for real in game.

Since wacky rogue trader stuff is a topic, I'll share this story of mine which I made into a screencap.

A pre-campaign session shouldn't be a problem if you dump only as much info on them as their ignorant characters living on their measly planet would know

Yeah, we could sort of combine the two. Do the info session to serf-level knowledge then hand them the Primers and let them figure the rest out themselves, including whether or not they can actually take an Ork in hand to hand combat in three easy to follow steps.

I know there is a cleaned up version of Faith and Coin, it wasn't added in it's own mega to OP?

It wasn't. We keep telling you that MEGA guy is fucking dead, and the mega is never going to be updated again, so there will ALWAYS be these questions.

No, I mean it's own link. I remember someone saying they were adding it to the OP pasta, did it get lost?

Here is your F&C OEF:

mega.nz/#!NNQjxTLb!IVEklUVbSSYUHNKKq3T_4_rl3jN82sfdlDhqW7c4jkQ

Sound's like an awesome start for a brand new compain about group of dipshits becoming a pirates. They should have pretty high infamy and it can help them get around in the criminal underworld. Maybe some bosses will respect them simply because they survived being chased by the of the sector.

Well, if you want a pre-campagin session, put them through IG boot camp.

I'm just making my own framework in Maptool. It is still shitty but at least half of Dark Heresy features are coded and automated. Combat is fully automated my players just need to get thru my shitty design. Making it is really easy with maptool macro codes.