Rogue Trader

Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay expands into new territory with Rogue Trader, a new roleplaying game experience set in the grim darkness of the 41st millennium.

In Rogue Trader, you can explore the universe of Warhammer 40,000 like never before. Vast fortunes await on the edges of the galaxy, if you and your fellow Explorers can muster the courage to find and claim them. Renown and riches reward the bold, but the unwary find only anonymous deaths. A Rogue Trader who can wrest profits from a dangerous universe through luck, cunning, or sheer force of will enjoys something few humans in the 41st Millennium even know—a life of adventure and true freedom.

Such a course, however, is often fraught with peril. Foul aliens, pernicious raiders, and even other Rogue Traders stand in your way on the path to greatness. Your wits, luck, skill, and courage will be tested to their utmost limits. To survive is to face even greater challenges—and to wield even greater power.

The lure of the unknown draws you toward a wealth of possibilities:
• Explore the uncharted regions of the galaxy
• Buy and sell entire worlds
• Battle pirates for control of valuable trade routes
• Discover the ruins of an alien civilization, the first step on a path towards a legendary prize…

 While Rogue Trader focuses on a different aspect of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, the rule system is compatible with Dark Heresy. If you choose, characters from Dark Heresy can easily be integrated into a Rogue Trader campaign or vice versa. The Rogue Trader core rulebook provides all the rules necessary to enjoy a complete roleplaying experience in the grim darkness of the far future.

Rogue Trader ships are ancient relics equipped with priceless technology and function as one of a Rogue Trader dynasty's most important heirlooms. In the far reaches of unexplored space, they become micro-civilisations inhabited by an array of colourful individuals.

Play as a Rogue Trader

“I claim this world in the name of the Emperor of Man and his Imperium. I bring justice and truth for the loyal; punishment and death for the guilty.”
–Ansellion Aquairre, captain of the Caelestis Imperium

You can take on the role of a Rogue Trader, the bearer of a sacred Warrant of Trade that empowers him to journey beyond the boundaries of the Imperium. Whether you live the life of an outlaw privateer, or as a scion of an ancient noble line, as a Rogue Trader you have power and the tools to challenge all rivals for supreme control of the riches lurking in the uncharted reaches of space. 

Your ship will take you to new worlds. You will acquire great wealth, and fame or infamy will follow in your footsteps. You will discover ancient and forgotten mysteries and search out the unknown to find lost human worlds and never before seen celestial phenomena. You must survive the dangers of space, not only the threat of vacuum, cold, and deadly radiation, but the things that lurk in the dark void between stars that man was never meant to find.

Play as a Navigator

“To gaze into the Warp is to look into the abyss. To understand insanity itself is to become insane. Worst of all is the knowledge that while you are gazing upon it, the warp is looking back at you.”
–Kartr Hollis, Nobilite Emissary

You can take on the role of a Navigator, bearer of a special mutation that allows you to steer a spaceship through the raging tides of the warp. Only a few amongst uncounted trillions in the Imperium can boast of such power. Rogue Trader ships must defy the dangerous tides of the warp—a treacherously random, unstructured dimension of energy and unfocused consciousness. Only the unique talents of a Navigator enable the ship to successfully utilise the warp to make jumps between points thousands of light-years apart.

A Navigator walks with pride and caution, the descendant of the most rarified of all Imperial nobility. Secrets and intrigues attend you—those of the warp, and those more natural to societies of men. The Navigator must guide a path through both worlds, with the fate of thousands of souls resting upon your continued success.

Play as an Arch-militant

“Man is a total weapon. The mind sees the target, the heart hates the foe, the will commands the muscles to aim and fire. Mankind united in war has greater purpose than men united in peace.”
–Tannen Mortaber, Bounty Hunter

You can take on the role of an Arch-militant, a veteran of hundreds of battles. You might be a bounty hunter, a soldier, or a bodyguard—no matter how you were trained, you are a puissant and relentless predator who knows few equals with your chosen tools of war. You hone the art of destruction to a keen edge, and have survived long enough to earn your title amongst the cold and uncaring void between stars.

Perhaps you are seeking a challenge to your warrior skills, or tracking criminals fleeing Imperial justice. Perhaps you find fulfilment in destroying the ancient enemies of Man: aliens, daemons…and worse. Whatever your cause, an Arch-militant provides the muscle and the battle-honed instincts necessary for survival beyond the Imperium’s borders, for the void eagerly devours the naive and the incautious.

Play as an Astropath 

“I am soul-bound to the Emperor, and through His Grace, I speak across the voids.”
–Arradin Vykis, Astropath

You can take on the role of an Astropath, a human gifted with strong psychic abilities. Soul-bound to the God-Emperor, you are capable of casting your thoughts across the interstellar void, able to send telepathic messages over unimaginable distances. Far more than a mere messenger, an Astropath can focus the power of his mind to blast a foe with telekinetic force or divine the future from the pattern of cards in the Emperor’s Tarot.

While perhaps not as strong as other, unfettered psykers, your soul is armoured against the dangers of the warp, and your presence is invaluable on a voyage light-years beyond the reach of any mundane communication channel.

Play as a Missionary

“To bring the Emperor’s Light into the darkness; to bring the unknown to a greater understanding of Him on Earth; this is my calling.”
–Luminorem Majoris Trent Skaltos

You can take on the role of a Missionary, clothed in rich robes such that no dark place will ever be without the Emperor's Light. You carry with you the faith and spiritual certainty so needed by lesser men, and with but a word can restore the lost to righteousness. You are the spiritual leader for thousands of souls aboard the Rogue Trader’s ship, and it is your voice that can silence a mutiny with a single prayer.

Where goes humanity, so too must go the Ministorum and the teachings of the Missionaria Galaxia. Your faith is your strength, and you armour yourself with the blessings of the God-Emperor—shielded against fear, warded against daemons, strengthened against the heretic. Your goal is to spread the Imperial Creed until all humanity is united under the Emperor.

Your mandate is to go beyond the borders of the Imperium, to explore the unknown reaches of space, to seek out riches beyond measure, and to risk all to gain everlasting glory or eternal damnation. You stand at the threshold of unlimited opportunity. Stake your claim.

In a roleplaying game (RPG) you create an alter ego, a fictional character that is your avatar within the game world. Perhaps you will create a lethal soldier, wise scholar, or inspiring leader of men. Then, you and your friends direct your characters through a series of adventures. Imagine a crime drama, adventure film, or war movie, except that instead of passively watching the story unfold, you control one of the characters, making his decisions, selecting his actions, and even speaking for him. The decisions of you and your fellow players directly affect the events of the story.

How can you affect these events? How do you decide what happens? That is the role of the game. Roleplaying games such as Rogue Trader provide a framework of rules that describe how to design your character and operate him within the game. Rules can cover situations like shoot-outs, chase scenes, or week-long investigations. Often, the rules require you to roll dice when performing an action, with some results indicating success and others indicating failure. While the rules provide structure and guidelines in the game, dice add an element of chance. After all, success would not seem so sweet if there were no chance of failure. Jumping from one rooftop to another becomes much more exciting when the slightest misstep (or bad dice roll) may result in your character falling into the alley below.

At first, RPGs like Rogue Trader may appear to have a lot of rules. However, you’ll soon see that the rules are actually quite simple, easy to remember, and often very intuitive. To adjudicate these rules, each game has a Game Master, or GM. The GM is you, or one of your friends, chosen by the consensus of your group. He does not control a lone character during the game. Instead, the GM runs the game, presenting the story and the myriad situations that come with it. He controls the people your character meets in the game, controls the encounters and strange occurrences that shape your decisions as to your actions, and is basically both the game’s referee and narrator.

All of the other players control characters within the world around which the story resolves. These characters are known as the Player Characters (PCs). During the game, the players describe the intentions and actions of their characters to the GM, who then decides, based on the rules, whether those actions succeed or fail and how the characters’ words and deeds affect the game’s story.