"Rogue Trader" Topic

A friend and I have recently started playing the old Rogue Trader rules and rediscoverd a really fun game. I was wondering if anyone knew of some sites that may have some of the older material available. Thanks!

ebay but be prepared to pay highly for it.

Rogue Trader is the only thing you need for a good game.

If you mean support, you can go to any warhammer 40k site and cannibalise...

If you are after the 80s minis, then... Be prepared to be ripped off. Most folks think they're selling Kruegerands or Platinum.

Not sure what sites to recommend as I haven't looked for RT stuff for a while - but it's still better than the current 40K! What is worth doing is looking for old issues of White Dwarf on ebay and so on, issues 93 to about 120ish are pretty useful. I have every issue from 94 onwards (somewhere) and can remember a great scenario in one of the early issues, plus an IG army list (issue 109 I think) and at some stage there was a SQUAT list, before the GW capitalist pigs killed them off ;-)

I run one of the last remaining Rogue Trader and 2nd Edition sites on the net. Also my site has a very active message board with fellow Rogue Trader players where you can get tons of support and scenario ideas, all sorts of stuff. Stop by and check it out.

link

McCragge

I've got two copies and I'll sell them for $10.00 each if you pay shipping.

tabletopwarrior@aol.com

McCragge, a friendly word of advice: do ask the Editor to pull your post out before the GWestapo storm your site!

I'm impressed that so far no-one has made that VERY ANNOYING spelling mistake that is all too common lately, as in 'rouge' for 'rogue'.

Sometimes you even see it spelled that way on ebay, and I occasionally wonder if the seller is sitting there wondering why he isn't getting many bids!

Make up too heavy maybe? Too much rouge.

Well, Bob, as you can clearly see...

We are of the Old Guard.

Those were the times! No spelling mistakes, except for those on the book, silly art, great games and us, a bunch of year tounger, ready to wage battle anywhere!

O, Brother, Where Art Thee?

Bob, loosen your stays mate. There are far worse out there...

And anyway, rouge is technically a typo rather than a spelling error.

I think Bob corrected me for that 'heresy' once in a message board. He must patrol the lists looking for 'heretic' who spell Rogue as 'Rouge' or potatoe as 'potato'!

Interesting website, this thread inspired me to pick up my old copy of Rogue Trader. Just curious, its the one and only GW product I've ever purchased, has the universe changed all that much since 1st ed? I had thought they just had deleted a few races and added a few others.

The rules have become more like
warhammer Fantasy Battle - large units etc etc - it's not bad, but far from brilliant - IMHO that is. The new races - Dark Eldar, Tau and Necrons aren't too bad - but I preferred the old IG and I can't believe they discontinued the Squats. Aside from the universe is kind of the same. It's more of a colourful kiddie orientated game now, but hey, if you have the old rulebook - who cares? ;-)
The old figures had more character as well I fell, although the standard of the new ones is better (still no squats). You don't get marines with shuriken catapults anymore either, and other such things. Oh the joys of looking back through rose tinted spectacles. I remember it's faults as well though. I once had a unit that according to therules could drop blind/smoke grenades each turn - but they could see through it and the enemy couldn't,so I was able get the whole squad from one side of the battlefield to the other without any damage (ok, it was beardy but nothing compared to the guy I was playing against!)

"I think Bob corrected me for that 'heresy' once in a message board. He must patrol the lists looking for 'heretic' who spell Rogue as 'Rouge' or potatoe as 'potato'!"

I did? I don't remember.....normally I don't bother as there are far too many 'rouges' out there by the time I see it. I dunno, this time I tried to compliment people on NOT messing it up and I get hammered for it :} BTW it's not just WH that suffers from the make-up problem, as I've also seen the old 2000AD Rogue Trooper boardgame misspelled the same way. Must be a GW thing.

Bring back the Squats!! (and I'm not talking about how I feel after todays lunch, either)

Ahh, the nostalgia. I just uncovered my WH40K Chapter Approved Book of the Astronomican from 1988. The book with the Space Wolves scenarios and the army lists.

I can't believe that book is 14 years old! The binding is as broken as the day I bought it :)

Sometimes I think I can almost hear the whispering restlessness of my Squat army waiting to be released from their box of exile!

I love Rogue Trader! Still play some games of it now and then :) The only books I am missing are "Ere We Go!, WAAAGH!, and Slaves to Darkness.

Goldwyrm - would you be interested in selling the Book of the Astronomicon??

Rouge Trader and Blood Angle, anyone?

Maybe GW could call the magazine Rouge Dwarf- oh smeg, they might get confused with Red Dwarf!

The Mutton Vindaloo Beast would be a formidable opponent, only the Squats would have the lager to kill it.

Set buzzokoids to kill,stuff and mount! (Ok I can't spell).

Demonic- Sorry. I can't bear to sell the Astronomicon. I actually still have almost all my old WH40K stuff and that's a lot of stuff. I've always been a hoarder. I'm 31 and still have the Marx WWII plastic figures from my "early" childhood!

The only thing I regret parting with is 3 Ambull figures I traded for a Kenner Star Wars Landspeeder that I cut up to make an Eldar hover transport.

I just flipped through my old copy. I have to admit I still prefer the mechanics of SG2, but it was interesting to read. There's even a bit where it suggests using other company's minis *gasp*. Did GW ever say why they killed off the slann, jokero, squats and others? I checked the GW website and it looks like the only armies from the original are marines, Eldar, and orcs. Seems a pity.

I like the idea of a space slann (as opposed to the current version), but the designs were awful!

I had an Ambull and a Zoat which I've done a cut and paste job to resulting in super beast a bit like the Cthugua (spell?) in the film 'The Relic'.

Slann, Ambulls, Zoats - I think they went with the Squats into the big space ark of good ideas we don't want anymore and sailed into the void - more's the pity

I didn't know people still played Rogue Trader anymore, great. I just stopped playing WH40K when it got too stupid, but this thread is great and I found a few sites out there supporting Rogue Trader.

But it is like everybody have just waited for a chance because after I mentioned to some friends that I was digging up my old RT stuff, they all jumped into the same boat to my surprise.

…and I have opened a section for it on my site as well link

As it happens, the jokero come up in both Codex: Necrons and ][nquisitor. They haven't really changed, they're just not common enough to rate an army. The slann also come up in Codex: Necrons. Codex: Orks mentions the squats as having been "flattened" by Waargghh Ghazkhul in a piece of fluff fiction.

I'd like to see the squats brought back as the race of angry renegades seeking revenge on the imperium for ducking out when the green skins showed up.

I hate the third edition rules with a passion though...

Johansen

I never heard about the slann thing, but I don't pay much attention to 40K since 3rd ruined it. Interesting, the slann were the first 40K race GW pulled the plug on, the minis are really difficult to find.

Rabban, o you the most innoble of the Harkkonen line, they were in the Rogue Trader background!

The Slan who drew like the Aztec and gave birth to many a race! The Voices from the Void, who suddenly fell silent!

And yes, their more primitive cousins never abandoned their tribal ways...

Therefore they got stuck in the Old World.

I sold both my copies. Now there are two more out there who can play.

Hi Rogue Traders,

I was wondering if anyone might want to help me in my own RT-Web reconstruction effort. I have a good bit of RT converted to Word format, but I am looking for scans or other electronic copies of the following pages/chapters:
69. basic weapons
75. close combat weapons
82. heavy weapons
87. very heavy weapons
89. grenades and missles
97a. mines
97b. support weapons
100. vehicles profiles
114. armour profiles
116. robot profiles
119. dreadnought profiles
120a. bionics
120b. miscellaneous

135-174. race descriptions

203-207. warp creatures

207-216. alien creatures

217-219. alien plants

I would appreciate any scans from the above areas, and would happily forward any finished word documents to those that have any interest in the project. My address is bobbymock@netzero.net.
Thanks

Bobby Mock - can't do scan easily but could dig out my old RT book and photocopy the pages for you - any good?

I have just got hold of some old WD's and have the original Ultramarine list and hte robot rules if anyone is interested? I am still trying to locate the issues with the IG and Squat lists in.

Thanks aliensurfer, email me at bobbymock@netzero.net, and we can figure a way to get the photocopies to me. I got rid of my old RT stuff on ebay last year, because I though I had copies of the important things. I was wrong. When I started working of my RT-traveller crossover, I found that I should have copied more items. After I found the Battle Bible, I decided that RT needed something like it and now I am in a pickle unless I want to go back to ebay and purchase my old stuff back.

Speaking of scans of RT – any Astronomicon owners out there (HINT Goldwyrm HINT) willing to do scans of that? Purely for private consumption!

Gee, what is it here? A case of group think? Was just talking to the guys about dusting off RT, and play in 15mm.

Now now… the book is old by SciFi gaming standards, but it is verfy much copyrighted.

That said, there's really nothing to stop you using the current rules (which are MUCH better written) to play old skool scenarios.

I'd say I agree with Maxxon's take on (C) so I won't be sending out scans of a GW book even if I had the time to scan it (which I don't). Sorry folks. btw-I picked up a second copy of 40K-RT in good condition at this past Historicon flea market for $5. USD I imagine one could find the other books out there for a reasonable amount as well.

I do have to disagree about using the current rules though. The old rules included a lot of weapon varieties and options now absent in the new rules. That and the original 40K background is a big part of the flavor for me. As long as players don't try to cheese the points chart for special models everything old is still good..

Yeah, sometimes I think I should never have sold my Rogue Trader book, but with the current way 40K is now I'd rather forget I ever played the game at all.

Flaws and all Rogue Trader and 2nd edit was 40K at it's best.

With all due respect to the copyright holders of material that is obsolete by their own standards and over 10 years old:

You can find scans of RT books in irc channels. Just go to a irc search site and look for wargames or rpg channels. If you're unfamiliar with irc, then download a client program called mIRC and have a look around the 'net for instructions on usage.

Rogue Trader products are no longer available for sale. If one has a moral objection to downloading a scan of such material, perhaps one could purchase some 4th edition material at a GW store as way of a "donation" to GW for use of their older and obsolete material (as ridiculous as that sounds).

Also, considering that the target market for GW product are 14 years olds, I don't think that anyone (apart from lawyers) would have any objection to some old(er) farts "dusting off" RT for the odd game here or there.

And if anyone did have an objection, i'd tell them to get a life.

Actually, there was a officially tolerated copy of RT on the net for years. the guy was slowly scanning the book minus the artwork for everyone to use. GW knew of it and tolerated it. The project only stopped due to the guy losing interest.

Thanks,

John

Hmm… in RT, Marines had bolters, Orks had bolters. Even tyranids had bolters.

Imperial Army had lasguns, so did Eldar guardians…

Yeah, there were a few gimmick weapons, but by and large the weapon variety was IMHO less.

"Yeah, there were a few gimmick weapons, but by and large the weapon variety was IMHO less."

I disagree. Conversion Beamers, Webguns, graviton gun, neural disruptors, Jokaero Digital Lasers, Lascutters, Virus, Haywire, smoke grenades, blind grenades, Rad grenades, Hallucinogen grenades, antiplant, choke, knock-out gas, photon, Psyk-out shells, scare gas, stasis, and tanglefoot shells to name a few interesting weapons.

In terms of equipment there were rad suits, rad counters, syn-skin, phase field generators, immune, infravision, Frenzon, grav chutes, power field generators, bombots, suspensors, powerboards, bio scanners, energy scanners, robots with flow chart programming, and Imperial Guard/Marine Jetbikes.

Weapon effects and ranges varied much more in the old game. They covered all kinds of effects which could be translated to grenades, missiles, and rockets. I believe it was more detailed. A question on every players mind was, did you equip your force with the right countermeasures, especially if you played non-powered armor troops who were vulnerable to all kinds of battlefield gas and radiation effects. The near environmentally invulnerable Space Marines were effected by Haywire grenades, powered armor having a tech level 6 and being fried on a d10 roll of 1-5, effectively trapping the marine inside.

You could if you wanted to scan of the pages and give them as a .pdf file to any one that wants them. As long as this doesn't leave this thread, GW might know it's going on, but how are they going to know who's trading what to who?

Yes, it's piracy. But frankly if it's out of print and they have no desire to make money from it. I say they can go to hell.

Or at the very least copy the important stuff equipment and troop stats and dump the fluff.

RT is freely available in PDF format on P2P networks such as eMule. the legality of downloading in cases like this, they made good money of it way back when (and rightly so!).

Current WH40K may be in some ways better, but only Rogue Trader can give old timers that warm fuzzy feel ;-)

I could list all the wargear in various codices, but that's really beside the point.

What you listed ARE the gimmick weapons! You don't see an army equipped with webbers for example.

Apart from the grenades, which are much more abstracted in current rules, most of the weapon effects you cited are recreated in one form or another.

Besides, much of the stuff you listed has serious play balance issues in RT… I have no desire to see support missiles with virus warheads ever again.

@ maxxon – RT was a skirmish RPG so the balance issues were down to a bad GM. It wasn't an out and out wargame until much later on which is where it didn't really work properly anymore with people powergaming (vortex grenades, need I say anymore?).

What Bugstomper said. Balance issues were addressed by a GM or by discussing the forces before the game. That goes for any game.

I guess what can be seen as a Gimmick weapon I see as different levels of tech that spanned all types of weapon effects and allowed for interesting scenarios. Webguns or graviton guns for example were not something purchased for an entire army. They were not common in the background. If that happens in a game that sounds like a player problem. Even something as horrifying as a Support missile with Virus could be defeated by counter measures if a force was susceptible (going from vague memory- perhaps immune injections or sealed suits?) or virus was ignored if the force wasn't affected. I often played Imperial Guard and took a calculated risk not always protecting my force from NBC effects. Even if I lost my entire army to a virus or got barraged by rad grenades I still had a fun time.

Playing forces equiped with nothing bu gimmick weapons could be fun. How about giving everyone webbers or having a gas & virus weapon only war?