My game of Rogue Trader has been going rather well so far, with the PCs getting up to all sorts of hijinks in the last adventure, and the players getting a good handle on their personalities.
They've played through Forsaken Bounty merged with the intro adventure in the main rulebook, Vaults of the Forgotten and have just startedthe somewhat longer Lure of the Expanse.
During this time they've created a bitter rivalry with House Fel, set about a salvage operation of the Emperor's Bounty, fought off a Rak'Gol attack and destroyed four enemy vessels. Not too shabby I think.
The party even managed to get one over on the Kasballica Mission! Having discovered the mysterious (and dangerous) crystals at Egaria Omega they didn't want them falling into the hands of the Kasballica.Fortunately the only people who knew about them were the PCs, the archaeologists (who wanted them hidden too), and the Kasballica agent Leerus... who the PCs flushed out of an airlock, blaming his death on the Rak'Gol.
Using the Rak'Gol attack as a cover they moved the dig site far away, taking the crystals with them and keeping the Kasballica well in the dark.
They also earned the respect of the Crow Spirits, saving Badb Ra's life (albeit by chanswording off her leg to pull her free of the maze city, but still...)
The Liege's Ball on Footfall had some particularly hilarious roleplaying:
- all the PCs who ate the disgusting food on offer (for bonuses to social tests) failed to digest properly and suffered some penalties.
- Tian, the party's psyker, has a particular hatred for Lady Ash, Fel's psyker consort. Whilst trying to talk to her he got in to an argument with Fel and Djanko Scourge, resulting in a challenge to eat the more disgusting foods. After some macho talk Tian realised eating the deep warp eel would be a bad idea, and George (the Explorator) created a distraction - by punching a nearby partygoer across the room.
Tian took the opportunity to hurl his appetiser across the room as neither Fel nor Scourge would dare call him a liar.
- Willow, the Sister Hospitaller, flirted shamelessly with Jeremiah Blitz (deducing he may be the man Murderin' Dave is after) and got a lot of useful information out of him. She then got rather charmed by Abel Gerrit in return.
- George managed to win over Aoife Armengarde through their shared love of Eldar weapons and duelling, a valuable contact for the group at this early stage.
- James, the ex-Navy Captain, has been having plenty of.. success (ahem) with his relationship with Mademoiselle Charlabelle, and has successfully established a line between personal and business matters.
Things look like they should be very interesting in the near future: They're going to try and ally with Charlabelle and Gerrit in pursuit of the Dread Pearl - a wise move given the calibre of their competition - and possibly even rope Blitz into things.
They've earned the ire of Fel and Scourge, and Feckward (and his brothers) are old foes of the family.
The plan is that Bastille will die off camera in the final space battle (his cruiser plunging to earth as a final apocalyptic set piece), leaving his now defunct holdings up for grabs. I'm also changing the location of the planet linked by the webway to Rain, so if the PCs escape the Dread Pearl they'll be 'nearby' and can hopefully find and repair the abandoned colony and its communications gear. That will also provide a base of opperations for them and an initial holding as well.
