A rogue trader puts the player in a position of increased power in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, somewhere between a governor, a ship captain and a nobleman. The game constantly asks you to make choices about what kind of Rogue Trader you want to be, and some of the options presented are completely objectionable. This is actually great because I'm a big fan of RPGs where you can be a villain. A rogue trader even goes a step further than most other games in the genre; you can't just be a bad guy, but an unspeakably petty tyrant who makes scenery-chewing villains like Cruella DeVille seem downright reasonable and level-headed.
The 40K setting is defined by a certain basic brutality that isn't there in other science fiction galaxies; this is a place where people, instead of computers, delegate work to lobotomized criminals called servetors. The state executes citizens for crimes such as 'enjoying history books' and 'having funny mouths'. But a Rogue Trader has the ability to set the rules for everyone around him; their holy scripture is signed by the God-Emperor himself. If you choose, your Rogue Trader can be a benevolent and friendly individual who protects those under his command.
Or, if you prefer, you can do everything you can to be the absolute worst boss in the Koronus Expanse. At one point, my faithful right-hand steward, the Seneschal Abelard, approached me and told me that thanks to the events of the tutorial, there were a bunch of orphans on board. The seneschal said a word from the prestigious Rogue Trader would mean a lot to these orphans.
To my horror, one of the options I could choose was to refuse and explain that I didn't see the point in talking to those orphans; it would teach them that they deserved it attention And sympathy. It takes a certain amount of guts for a developer to include RPG options that could be summed up with “Fuck those kids,” but I appreciate the opportunity to go there.
In another instance, I spoke to my ship's navigator. The Navigator is needed for faster-than-light travel on any Voidship, and they organize themselves into noble houses. My navigator, Cassia, asked about the fact that I had thousands of crew members who spent their days singing, chatting, joking and shouting. Why, she asked, hadn't I done what was expected of the nobility and simply removed all their vocal cords? Once again, I was surprised to find an option where my Rogue Trader enthusiastically agreed that the riff has had it too good for too long and it's time to remove some vocal chords.
When it comes to “big” decisions, A rogue trader offers one three paths: Dogmatic, a traditional Emperor enthusiast and Imperium fan; Heretical, someone who enjoys chaos and murder; or Beeldenstorm, the mentality closest to the 21st century mentality. I found many of the Iconoclast choices perfectly reasonable, but incredibly boring. But there are countless smaller decisions, like the one above, that don't fit into this system. Here I am free to make whatever choices I want, and some of them happen to be major war crimes. My favorite RPGs are the ones with a lot of options, and Owlcat Games didn't disappoint.