Curious about rogue trader

the search for more knowledge?

Actually the tech priests are indeed included in Rogue Trader and it makes sense why they would. In the book it describes them more as even more zealous and rogue members of the Machine Cult that seek out new machine technology from the ancient civilizations. They seek out these things much like religious artifacts.

Their tech lust seems to drive them to this, though again the ones that would travel with a Rogue Trader are probably ones that are less comfortable with the stagnant beliefs of the tech cult who seem to look down on those that try to innovate and create new tech. They think these ones have massive hubris to think they imagine themselves as more wise than the ancients.

Also they themselves would not be a Rogue Trader, which seem more the captains of a ship rather than just a "space pirate". The Rogue Trader is the one who commands the fleet of his Trading House. The tech priest would be more an advisor and asset to the Rogue Trader with his knowledge of technology. In return the Tech Priest gains the chance to help find new and undiscovered ancient tech to bring back to the Machine Cult.

...I've been reading a lot of the Rogue Trader book in the last few days, and I'm not even to the MASSIVE lore section just yet. That's just all from the character creation and Career Path sections.

yeah, that sounds good to me

In Rogue Trader the Career Path it is called 'Explorator', in case searching that on Google might turn up more info.

I Played a total of 2h of Rogue Trader : We explore some ruins of an ancient civilization, a 100 on the Warp table and paf half a planet destroyed.

That only makes me want to play more. I've gotten through the first portion of the book and I'm like, oh, this percentile system is pretty easy. Then I flipped the page and ran headlong into the crunch of the system. There are so many secondary systems, crafting, ships, house management, etc. After that is a massive section on the lore of the system. Suddenly I'm swimming in an ocean.

If I start up a game no doubt it will start small in scope, using the intro adventure for sure. After that I'll worry about the rest. Definitely if I run a game of this players will be required to have a corebook or corebook PDF. I can't summarize enough of this stuff in How To forums.

that shouldn't be a problem. do you think you need to have a small group of players too?

On average I go with 4 players for my games. Very manageable. I could kick it up to 5 if need be.

The game does encourage a lot of player input : The captain of our ship spends hours with the gm designing the ship and the history of the family.

That idea I like, giving more of the autonomy over that to the players. That is one of my favorite parts of systems based off the Apocalypse World RPG.

An other point i have talked about with a friend : Is it better to know the universe or to let the Gm make us do discoveries. Like in Cthulu : if you can have the best experience if you don't have any knowledge of the universe. It keeps the weird part weird.

I think like Cthulu it would be cool to have players not knowing as much, but rank and file will also let people know how much they should know going in.

Reading some of the Dark Heresy book there are those that know of the horrors of the void, because they are far above the average grunt on planet who only looks to the stars with a frightened sort of religious view of the area outside the dominion of man, but people like a Rogue Trader crew would know these horrors way more because they live and breath on the fringes of the Dominion of Man. They have to be tougher and more aware of what could await them in the swirling voids.

So I think it depends on what your character's history will and should be. A Rogue Trader crew should know more about the dangers in and out of the Imperium, but even then they are those that arrive into places uncharted by the Imperium first, so they are also the ones discovering new threats that even the higher in the Imperium may not know or understand.

so I've been reading up on rogue trader and the techpriest and I'm really starting to love the concept

*prays to the computer and burns incense*
"smacks the side*
*turns it on*

Reading part of Dark Heresy and now Rogue Trader, I'm falling in love with the concept in general. A galaxy where we use incredible technologies that we can't even begin to understand, and we basically see it all as a crazy religion. Did I mention that space is basically a Lovecraftian horror?

Not to mention our God-Emporer is basically a living raisin corpse. Yeah...don't ask, it's a whole thing.

It's all so dreary and drab and gothic, and somehow that is just incredibly unique. I love how on top of all that though the Rogue Trader steps in and he is basically somehow still the foppish swashbuckling captain of a ship. It feels like it is throwing a whole pirates layer on top of the WH40k series.

I'm imagining a really grim dark version of this

From my reading so far...not far off.

so I've started reading the lore... and holy shit... how have I not gotten into this before?

I KNOW RIGHT!!!