Games Workshop re-released the first edition (titled Rogue Trader) of Warhammer 40,000 to celebrate the game's 30th anniversary. I purchased it upon [re]release, and I'm reviewing it chapter by chapter. This post covers the first section of the very long Chapter 3: The Age of the Imperium.
Chapter 3 is 100 pages long, and I'd expected it to be the obligatory lore section of a rulebook, like the Age of Lost Omens in the Pathfinder 2 rulebook, and like the first half of the Warhammer 40,000 10th edition rulebook. I wasn't exactly wrong, but Rogue Trader takes a pragrmatic approach to conveying lore. The Age of the Imperium delivers a little lore, and then it provides rules on how to roll up a unit of the character type you've just read about.
Aside from the odd weapon that has d3 Attacks or deals d3 Wounds, you don't roll for stats in modern 40k. You buy a box of miniatures, you buy a book or box of cards containing the profiles for those miniatures, you build an army list by spending imaginary Build Points, and then you play the game.
Rogue Trader expected you to buy miniatures and then, in preparation for your game, to roll dice to find out what kind of weapons, special weapons, and special abilities they have. It's a very fun system, which I know because it's coincidentally the way I play Middle-Earth Battle Strategy Game and, for models not listed in the book, Kill Team. I've been rolling stats for wargame miniatures for years because it seemed like the logical way to randomise power levels and to mix up the game.
Obviously, I'm a big fan of the Rogue Trader method, but their version is even better than mine because it does integrate some lore. For some units, you're not just rolling to find out what weapon they're carrying around, you're also rolling to find out whether they're a Psyker, or whether they can located a Warp Gate, whether they're a Mutant or not (technically you flip back to Chapter 2 for that), and so on. Rolling up a unit in Rogue Trader is like an quick-fire version of rolling up a D&D character. Not everything is going to be useful during a combat scenario, but if you're a creative player then everything about a unit informs that unit's behaviour during battle, and possibly how a campaign develops. I've run several campaigns in several different game systems, and post-game maintenance is always one of the most fun stages of the experience because you usually get to cash in XP to upgrade your unit. Think of how much more exciting it would be to have to roll to see whether your Astropath is able to get your ship to your next destination, or whether your next game session is going to be onboard your ship as it's invaded by warp daemons!
I do feel that Rogue Trader doesn't do a great job of clearly explaining how it expects you to structure the playing of the game. One moment, I imagine players sitting around doing a traditional dungeon crawl, and the next moment I imagine a wargame. I guess Rogue Trader was happy for you to do either, or both. I'm not sure that I'd have known how to incorporate a Mutant soldier's especially long ears in what was mostly described as a wargame, so I think the book could have provided more guidance on the intended progression. I [theoretically] lament the people who tried 40k, missed the roleplay for the wargame, and walked away in confusion. It's 30 years later, though, so I guess people eventually figured it out to whatever extent they needed to figure it out. I know that in the few years I've been playing wargames, the way I've incorporated narrative and roleplay has evolved, so maybe it's just a skill you develop when you need to develop it.
The other aspect of the first half of Chapter 3 is all the lore it reveals. I was a little surprise at just how much lore I already know is directly from Rogue Trader. I'd expected the basic structure of the Imperium to have been established, obviously the Space Marines, and maybe a few other factions like Astra Militarum and Adepta Sororitas. For whatever reason, I'd imagines that Adeptus Mechanicus and Adeptus Arbites to have been recent additions. I was incorrect. It's [almost] all here, from the start.
The Imperium is basically identical to its modern description. All of its major branches of power are here, including Astropaths, Navigators, the Inquisition, the Adeptus Arbites, Custodes, Adeptus Mechanicus, and more. The Adepta Sororitas aren't there (one makes a brief appearance later in the book).
I don't know know what's in store for the Abhumans and Xenos yet, but I do know there's no Heretic Astartes or Chaos Space Marines (although the Warp is a thing, and it's full of horrors). It's obviously a work that's still developing, but largely it's the same Imperium of the 41st millennium we all know and love to hate.
It seems that every time I read a chapter (or part of a chapter) of Rogue Trader, I'm surprised by how familiar it feels. This time around though, I think my surprise is at how well preserved the Imperium is. I've been a fan of long-running franchises, from Star Wars to Star Trek and even Lord of the Rings. Invariably, the people in charge decide to go back to the source and plunder it for new content, and in so doing they often abuse the head canons and secret loves of their fans. Games Workshop obviously understands the value of drawing from its own source material, and yet also how to preserve its own history.
Modern 40k is definitely different from Rogue Trader. Space marines are genetically enhanced super soldiers, but from Rogue Trader you get the sense that they're all just brutes from feral worlds, drugged up and whipped into shape. It's different, but also the same. And if you want the exact same, then you can probably find it in Necromunda, which very much leans into the oddball humanity-gone-wrong sensibility of Rogue Trader.
Mostly, 40k respects what's come before, and works with it in interesting ways. The Navigator, for instance, profiled in Rogue Trader is named Lustrum Locarno. They could have borrowed that name and put him as the Navigator in Blackstone Fortress, but what a disappointment that would have been for anyone who had formed a head canon around Lustrum. Instead, the nefarious Navigator in the book is a new character, and the Navigator in the board game is Espern Locarno, obviously a relative of Lustrum.
Modern 40k is still developing the same lore from its earliest book, but it manages to do it in a way that doesn't invalidate the old content.
Header photo of book, glasses, and dice is licensed Creative Commons cc0.