Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is a long, story-driven role-playing game with online co-op for up to six players. You and up to five friends share a campaign and a party of six characters, travelling through the Koronus Expanse and fighting its threats in turn-based battles. It is a shared campaign, not a versus mode, and it gives one player a more central role: the Lord Captain controls the final dialogue and story decisions, while the rest of the crew can vote and take charge of other characters. Co-op is online only, with no local split-screen or LAN option.
A crew crossing the Koronus Expanse
You begin aboard a huge voidship with the title of Rogue Trader, a powerful explorer granted broad authority to travel beyond the settled worlds of the Imperium. The Koronus Expanse is a remote region of space where the void is dangerous, settlements compete for power, and discoveries can lead to wealth or trouble. Your retinue brings together Imperial subjects, psykers, an Aeldari, and other companions whose loyalties and pasts are rarely simple.
The campaign alternates between conversations, exploration, and combat. You travel between systems, land on planets and stations, meet people who need help or stand in your way, and decide what your dynasty will do with its influence. Quests can send you into a settlement’s crisis, a sealed facility, a hostile ship, or a place where the local powers are hiding more than they admit. The story reacts to the Lord Captain’s choices, so a conversation may be as consequential as a firefight.
That makes the co-op structure unusual for a party-based RPG. There is one Lord Captain, not six equally important protagonists. One player makes the final calls in conversations, story events, and certain decisions about the ship or where to go. Other players can read along and vote on dialogue options, but their votes are advice rather than a shared ballot. The Lord Captain can also control who enters some locations and how the crew is assigned. If your group wants every player to shape the narrative directly, that limitation matters; the game keeps story authority with one character even when the whole crew is present.
The arrangement does not leave the other players with nothing to do. The host can distribute the available companions among the group, and a player can control more than one character. Those characters can move through areas, interact with objects, take skill checks, enter battles, level up, and manage their own equipment. In exploration, a character’s abilities matter for tasks such as noticing clues or opening a door. The game does not always select the most capable character automatically in co-op, so the player controlling the right specialist needs to activate the relevant check.
One party, six sets of hands
The six-player limit matches the largest active ground party. In a full group, each person can operate one party member during a fight; with fewer friends, control can be shared out differently. The cast includes story companions with distinct backgrounds and abilities, and more companions join as the campaign progresses. The adventure opens with the Lord Captain alone, so not every player has a character to control from the first moments. The early story brings additional companions into the group, while the mercenary system lets you create custom characters for friends. Up to two can be created in the opening area; additional mercenaries can be made later aboard the ship.
Custom mercenaries offer a way for a friend to build a character instead of taking a story companion, but they do not come with that companion’s personal story. The trade-off is between a bespoke character and the quests, conversations, and relationships connected to the established cast. You can also transfer control of the Lord Captain to another player, or assign several characters to one person. The campaign can be played with changing attendance: other players can join or leave while the host continues the same save.
Character growth gives the crew plenty to discuss between fights. The Lord Captain’s origin, homeworld, background, and archetype shape their abilities and dialogue options. Companions arrive with their own identities and specialties, and each character can develop through attribute choices, talents, weapons, armor, and equipment. A close-range fighter, a precise shooter, a support-focused Officer, or a psyker with dangerous powers can all contribute in different ways. You are not locked into a multiplayer class queue, and the group’s combat party need not look like a set of fixed MMO roles.
The equipment and loot systems also give each player a reason to pay attention outside their own turn. Party members share an inventory and cargo, and everyone can browse vendors and the trade empire’s management interface. The player controlling a character handles that character’s equipment and level choices, while the group can compare the gear found on a mission. Looting is shared as part of the campaign rather than a race between separate teams. The ship provides quieter stretches for checking equipment, advancing character builds, and dealing with the business of a Rogue Trader dynasty.
Tactical fights where position matters
Ground battles use turn-based, grid-based combat. Characters move across a battlefield, take cover, fire weapons, use abilities, or close with enemies in melee. Cover can be partial or more protective, but smaller pieces can be destroyed. Position also changes what a shot can reach: a move that looks safe may block line of sight, and the game lets you preview a character’s view and ability ranges before confirming movement.
The weapons have different shapes and consequences. A single shot may punch through a target and hit something behind it; burst fire covers a wider line; flamers and shotguns threaten a cone of tiles. Some heavier attacks push targets into obstacles or other enemies. These effects make the battlefield more than a row of health bars. Enemies may bunch up, hide behind cover, or threaten a fragile ally, and the six-character party gives each player a different part of the fight to handle.
Combat actions also build Momentum as your party damages or defeats foes. At high Momentum, characters can unleash Heroic Acts, powerful abilities that can swing a battle. When the party has been battered and Momentum falls, Desperate Measures become available, but they carry a cost. A psyker’s powers add another risk: frequent use can disturb the veil between reality and the Warp, bringing a dangerous backlash. The systems turn a long encounter into a shifting contest over positioning, resources, and when to spend a particularly strong ability.
Friendly fire can make an attack dangerous to the people standing near its target. A shot can pass through an enemy into someone behind it, and area or chain effects can catch a companion in the fight. Co-op gives the party more people making choices during the same tactical encounter, but there is no separate player-versus-player objective. The group is still one crew facing the game’s enemies, with an occasional teammate caught in the wrong line of fire.
The voidship changes the rhythm
Between planetary missions, your ship carries the crew through the systems of the Expanse. The star map is a web of routes and points of interest rather than a set of disconnected levels. Travel can lead to encounters, discoveries, and new threats, while landing parties handle situations that require boots on the ground. The ship also gives the campaign another progression layer: you manage equipment and decisions tied to the vessel and your trade empire.
Space battles play differently from ground combat. The voidship is one shared vessel, and every player can use its systems during a fight. That shared control means a player may command a weapon or ship ability while another is considering the next move; the game does not assign each co-op participant a permanent ship station. Outside battle, many exploration decisions are still part of the Lord Captain’s narrative role, though crew members can vote on options and interact with vendors when the ship reaches them.
This contrast between ground-party tactics and a single shared ship is a useful part of the game’s group identity. You move from a close battle where several characters act independently to a larger-scale encounter where everyone operates the same craft. The crew also spends time aboard the ship between missions, meeting companions, hearing their perspectives, and watching a decision affect the dynasty’s position in a region. The story remains the spine of the campaign, with the battles and ship systems adding other ways to participate.
Online setup and practical limits
Rogue Trader supports up to six players in online co-op. One person starts or loads the campaign and opens Cooperative Mode; friends can join through an invitation overlay or by entering the host’s server ID after selecting the same server region. The campaign follows the host’s save.
On Windows, players using Steam, GOG, and Epic can play together through the server ID, so a group does not have to use one store client. Mac co-op is limited to Mac-to-Mac play, with additional restrictions depending on the storefront. The Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass versions do not cross-play with the Windows versions from Steam, GOG, or Epic. Paid DLC also needs to match across everyone joining a session; cosmetic packs have different sharing rules. That is worth checking before someone buys an expansion for a campaign already in progress.
The technical side is a real consideration for a game this long: desynchronization or disconnects can interrupt a turn-based fight or force the group to reload, even though the developer has shipped co-op fixes. This is not a quick drop-in mission that ends when one battle is over: your friends are joining a sprawling campaign with dialogue, travel, equipment screens, and long fights between its major story turns.
Rogue Trader suits a group that wants to share a dense, choice-driven CRPG and is comfortable with one character having the final word on story choices. The guests still get meaningful control over companions, combat, equipment, and the ship’s battle systems, but the game’s social balance is intentionally uneven. If your group would rather make every major decision together, treat the Lord Captain’s final authority as the main question to settle. If that arrangement fits, the six-person party gives you a full crew to bring through the brutal, strange reaches of the Koronus Expanse.