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Challenge: Degrimdarkify 40k

"GW says so," is not a good defense or argument of the criticism I levelled at it. Imagine doing that to every piece of fiction ever.

Also, I don't recall making stuff up. The Imperium has a ton of dictatorships in them in the form of planetary governors. They're tyrannies because that's what happens when you give a select few so much power. So you know, I think you just misunderstood me, or just being extremely anal on what dictatorships mean.

Living conditions are shit because they're in a dictatorship, not therefore it is a dictatorship. Like, this isn't hard to comprehend. Democracies can be shit sure, but democracies is building a house on firm solid ground whereas dictatorships is building a house on quicksand. It won't last.

So in the 8k years humanity has faced psykers in the Age of Strife, not one planet decided to properly study them? Not one planet decided to properly train them? Why can't the Imperium train the populace on what the Warp and psykers are? Saves a lot of time and bloodshed instead of sending a regiment of Guards to a place where Daemons popped in. Why don't we hear stories where psykers developed and improved the condition they lived in? Only Prospero did that, and that was because Magnus was a Primarch.

Also I want to see an entire set of novels of people rebelling against the planetary governor, the rebels being able to fend off not only the Guards but also the Space Marines, and the Imperium goes "okay we'll leave you alone, just pay the tithe and send mats".
 
Hykal94 said:
"GW says so," is not a good defense or argument of the criticism I levelled at it. Imagine doing that to every piece of fiction ever.
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Its the truth. GW says so. What more do you want? Thats how it is. Take it up with GW. We can argue all day and it won't change anything or mean anything.

Also, I don't recall making stuff up. The Imperium has a ton of dictatorships in them in the form of planetary governors. They're tyrannies because that's what happens when you give a select few so much power. So you know, I think you just misunderstood me, or just being extremely anal on what dictatorships mean.
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Lol, first you went off as if I was saying that that colony world was wrong for trying to make a democracy even though I never said that in the post.

And said planetary governors donot rule the Imperium. By your logic, cause some tyrants or monarchs are in the UN, the UN is a dictatorship. My definition of dictator is the definition of dictionaries.

Before you go off, I did not say that the Imperium is the UN or vice versa. Just using examples.


Living conditions are shit because they're in a dictatorship, not therefore it is a dictatorship. Like, this isn't hard to comprehend. Democracies can be shit sure, but democracies is building a house on firm solid ground whereas dictatorships is building a house on quicksand. It won't last.
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Nope. This is your actual argument

Living conditions are shit hence you are a dictatorship? Like really?? So if there was a great depression and cause of that one's economy was shit and thus living standards are shit, one is a dictatorship even if one was a democracy? This is the outcome of your argument.
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The bolded part.

So in the 8k years humanity has faced psykers in the Age of Strife, not one planet decided to properly study them? Not one planet decided to properly train them? Why can't the Imperium train the populace on what the Warp and psykers are? Saves a lot of time and bloodshed instead of sending a regiment of Guards to a place where Daemons popped in.
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They actually do train them. Not all psykers go to the golden throne. During the age of strife, planets that tried and helped psykers died or psykers took over with their own tyrannies.

Why don't we hear stories where psykers developed and improved the condition they lived in?
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Most human psyker abilities aren't tuned for such things. Even the eldar had to make a device that let one tap into the warp and just start willing stuff into existence. Also, human psykers are not that precise yet. The lore makes it clear, humans are evolving into psykers but we are not ready for this transition.

We are more likely to drag the galaxy into the warp then anything else.

Only Prospero did that, and that was because Magnus was a Primarch.
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The entire planet was filled with psykers and they had problems of warp predators infesting the planet and Magnus in his arrogance was duped to Chaos. Not a good example here.

Also I want to see an entire set of novels of people rebelling against the planetary governor, the rebels being able to fend off not only the Guards but also the Space Marines, and the Imperium goes "okay we'll leave you alone, just pay the tithe and send mats".
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Unless said force manages to gain a warfleet or join the Tau. That ain't happening. They can rebel and have their rebellion be accepted by the Imperium. The Imperium won't care as long as the tithe continues.
 
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Hey, new argument: I'm allowed to criticize whatever Games Workshops comes up with to justify its fascistic bullshit premises and justifications because they're hacks pandering to their fans who love that shit.

If you're a hack pandering to your fans, I'll build an argument to criticise you for it. :V
 
Okay, I skimmed this thread because it started to irritate me.

The OP asked how you would stop 40k being grimdark. Saying "But 40k is grimdark" doesn't contribute anything. We know the current lore has everything suck and be terrible forever. But the challenge is to change that. Because it's grimdark crap shoved in to justify making the fascist shitsticks be the protagonists and be justified in all their fascism. I feel no particular attachment to it.

Anyway, uhh... more successful rebels who aren't Chaos, have the Imperium be only one of the major human polities, nix the more idiotic pieces of lore for the tau; they weren't eugenicists to begin with in the lore, and the caste system they have going is dark enough as is. Reduce the influence of Chaos, kill the Emperor and have the Imperium be a villain. The "everyone goes to hell forever when they die" thing exists only for grimdark, remove it. Have more people willing to work with aliens, and make that not always be presented as a terrible idea.

Oh, and I would prefer they stopped writing books where Sisters of Battle get slaughtered, but we can't have everything.
 
veteranMortal said:
have the Imperium be only one of the major human polities
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Hell, we were explicitly told within the lore that the Imperium's style isn't the only option. The emperor's Imperium wasn't quite as fashy, though it still leaned that way, and the whatsits... right, the Interex, a multi-species polity with a less strict government, were actually more successful in resisting Chaos. Hell, Chaos felt so threatened by them that they manipulated events via Erebus into causing a war between the two.

What GM says and does with the setting has meaning, unintentional or not. Presenting the Imperium, however terrible, as the only real option for humanity's survival, when the Imperium is a fascistic hellhole, is an implicit endorsement of fascism, circumstances be damned.
 
Keep in mind, this is me pulling from the backround work I've been doing on a faction for a Mental Omega game on GSRPG:

Turn the dial on the timeline a few Millenia: can be anywhere from 44k(which I used for the game backround)-51K(mentioned here, that also works)

1. The Old Imperium collapsed, we'll get into why that isn't apocalypse for all mankind later.

2. The Tyranid Mega-Fleet got fucked by the Emperor, breaking both it and the other Tyranid Hive Fleets up into smaller pieces that(by the time of 'our' era) are more realistically containable for our heroes.

3. We have a period of time where the loyal primarchs all come back, and find a certain something that's below before the Emperor finally dies.

4. The Astronomicon is replaced by a network of the Pharos Devices, not tied to the Emperor and the deaths of a Thousand Psykers a day. This explicitly makes transportation and communication way more reliable and faster.

5. There are now two gods of Mankind; the Golden One, a god built out of what the High Lords and Ecclisiarchy turned the Emperor into and his own darker ideals; and the Enduring Light, a god built out of the goodness of the Emperor and the souls of the fallen Heroes of the Imperium. While these two gods compete, they work together when the other gods(Chaos, Ork Gods, others) try to fuck with mankind and achieve great results, leading to:

6. The Chaos Gods are much reduced in power, relying on a Dark Imperium(Name Pending) formed in the 'Second Age of Strife' for most of thier power and influence on the Galaxy.

7. Two other Imperiums exsist in this time too: First we have the Golden Imperium and Gilded Mechanicus formed from most of Segmentum Solar(Most of Sol was swallowed in the 'Celestial Palace', a Gold Colored Warp Anomaly similar to the Eye of Chaos), this Imperium is more of a riff on the Old Imperium and the asthetics of it as well as the idea of Fascism and meant to be this 'opposing force' to Chaos that is still evil in a word. We also have the New Imperium(Name Pending, using Imperium Secundus sounds 'stealy'), built out of the remains of the old Imperium not taken by the Golden and Dark Imperiums, this state is still harsh by our definitions because it's still a very harsh galaxy(I'll get to that), but it's harsh tones are more down to outward forced acting on a population than the Government being unnecessarily wastefull. The Government is more down to a Federal Oligarchy with limited Democracy in places, no Fascism here(to address concerns raised here). There's also the idea of having both Eldar and Tau citizenry, though that's a bit more of a 'ghost' from the game version...a renewed Eldar Empire for the NI to bounce off of both Diplomatically and in conflicts does sound fun.


there are other ideas, but what do you guys think about these?
 
Hakazin said:
Hell, we were explicitly told within the lore that the Imperium's style isn't the only option. The emperor's Imperium wasn't quite as fashy, though it still leaned that way, and the whatsits... right, the Interex, a multi-species polity with a less strict government, were actually more successful in resisting Chaos. Hell, Chaos felt so threatened by them that they manipulated events via Erebus into causing a war between the two.
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False. You are making stuff up. Chaos never even considers the Interex to be anything at all. All Erebus did was steal magic daggers that were chaos from their museum. Chaos loves irony. If they considered the Interex worth anything, they would gloat all about them or the alien races would say something about them. Nobody does cause they don't matter and never mattered. Infact they were planned to die alongside the rest of humanity.

What GM says and does with the setting has meaning, unintentional or not. Presenting the Imperium, however terrible, as the only real option for humanity's survival, when the Imperium is a fascistic hellhole, is an implicit endorsement of fascism, circumstances be damned.
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Considering that even with this so called endorsement, it still sucks doesn't put it in positive light. As I said, 40k is such a hellhole that fascism makes some sense but that doesn't actually mean its right or everything is hunky dory.

Fernandel said:
Hey, new argument: I'm allowed to criticize whatever Games Workshops comes up with to justify its fascistic bullshit premises and justifications because they're hacks pandering to their fans who love that shit.

If you're a hack pandering to your fans, I'll build an argument to criticise you for it. :V
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Which is fine. I personally just find the setting fascinating and different with interesting ideas. Thats all for my like for it. Nothing deep.
 
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I've given this a bit of thought, and it comes down to one major change: de-emphasize the big picture.

The Imperium is vast. Incomprehensibly vast. So we don't tell stories about the Imperium. We tell stories about people, who are from a little slice of the Imperium. Emphasize the little differences between worlds, how the Ecclesiarchy is more concerned with orthopraxy than orthodoxy, how the Imperium is fractured and dived and spiderwebbed by a hundred thousand cracks. Don't talk about the Imperium, or the Astra Militarum, talk about Captain Hoskar, commanding officer of His Imperial Majesty's Stormlord Black Trident. Don't talk about the Inquistion as a bloc, talk about conclaves, and all the various ideologies, and how Inquisitors can be their own worst enemies.

Chaos doesn't escape this either. The Big Four exist, but they're much less active. Instead, the focus is given to demon princes and the like, all scheming and plotting and sabotaging each other's plans and fighting the other aspects of Chaos as much as they do the material world.

For the Eldar, specific Craftworlds, or aspect shrines, or corsair fleets, or Kabals. Things that are specific and small.

Orks and 'Nids I'm leaving alone, both because there's not a lot of there there, and because they can fit whatever tone we go for with the least amount of changes.

The Necrons get to have more personality. They want to kill the warp, but there's disagreements on how to do that. Some Lords and Crypteks want to slaughter everything in the galaxy. Others delve deep into the Warp itself, looking for ways to burn it out from the inside, using ancient and nigh-magical sciences. Still others feel that the Warp and Chaos wouldn't be a problem if the galaxy was united under proper (i.e. Necron) leadership.

The Tau can retain their innocence and naïveté, but play up that the Tau are making many of the same mistakes other species did Millenia ago. Will the Tau keep being the idealistic good guys, or have they already started their slide towards cynical murderizing?

Emphasize that the galaxy is too big for any one victory to actually matter. That the universe does not care. But you can win here. You can win today. Sometimes, that's enough. Other times, you can do everything right and still lose.

Now, one of the original design goals for the earliest editions of 40K was that because every faction was equally horrible in the lore, players would pick a faction based on how they played. You can't really get "I would play X, but they're evil" when everybody is evil. Aside from Chaos being the designated Evilest of Evils.
 
Stop: Hey
  • Staff Post
    • hey
    Space Penguin said:
    So you admit you are wrong. Thank you.
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    We all get worked up, but at some point you have to draw a line, yeah? I could cite many examples of the missteps you have made in this thread, but of all of them, I'm going to focus on this one. Sufficient Velocity holds a specific place for a kind of argument generally known as "concession accepted", in which one accepts a "surrender" that the debate opponent has not made. This is frowned heavily upon, due to Rule 4; be willing to engage with other users. When the debate turns to these kinds of arguments, you have shown a complete unwillingness to engage with the opponent by imposing a false surrender upon them. This is essentially the ultimate shut-down; no matter what the opponent says, they have now "conceded" to you, and every argument from then on is essentially meaningless. This is toxic to proper debate, which is in direct opposition to what Sufficient Velocity seeks to provide a platform for.

    In addition, as you should know from your infraction history, breaking up a post like you have done in this thread several times in order to address many tiny, individual points instead of engaging with the holistic argument in good faith - spaghetti posting - is frowned upon and also considered a breach of Rule 4. So is simply summarizing your opponent's arguments - presumably made in good faith - as ranting.

    In light of your history and your extremely disruptive participation in this thread, I will apply 50 points to your account, both for this post and your several others. In addition, I am giving you a permanent threadban from this thread.
     
  • Staff Post
    • Hakazin said:
    Hell, we were explicitly told within the lore that the Imperium's style isn't the only option. The emperor's Imperium wasn't quite as fashy, though it still leaned that way, and the whatsits... right, the Interex, a multi-species polity with a less strict government, were actually more successful in resisting Chaos. Hell, Chaos felt so threatened by them that they manipulated events via Erebus into causing a war between the two.

    What GM says and does with the setting has meaning, unintentional or not. Presenting the Imperium, however terrible, as the only real option for humanity's survival, when the Imperium is a fascistic hellhole, is an implicit endorsement of fascism, circumstances be damned.
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    The Imperium is not fascist, it is feudal.
     
    You know, if you make the empire a liberal democracy with a divine patron who does not need psyker sacrifices ... This will not make Warhammer less grimdark . I would even say it will make it more grimdark, because now it's not an evil regime that is sinking in agony. It is a good Imperium which in fact is a democracy that dies in torment.Just imagine how awful it will be for people when they are attacked by orcs, tyranids and chaos. It will be much closer to home.

    Simply you can make the Imperium winners ... But then you need to remake all the other races ... In short in the end you can stay with something quite different from WH40000
     
    Perhaps you should distinguish between culture and form of government? If you replace all aristocrats with democrats throughout the Imperium, they will still all kill psykers, mutants and heretics. It's just that now people elected by the people do it, maybe people live better. But fundamentally this does not change the culture.
     
    Ivar said:
    Perhaps you should distinguish between culture and form of government? If you replace all aristocrats with democrats throughout the Imperium, they will still all kill psykers, mutants and heretics. It's just that now people elected by the people do it, maybe people live better. But fundamentally this does not change the culture.
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    Yep. The culture would still be fairly fascistic. Just as fascism isn't exclusive with feudalism, it's not exclusive with certain forms of democracy. Putting aside comparisons to current American politics, Italy under Mussolini was technically still a democratic government, if only on paper. Mussolini even ran elections which he ran in and campaigned for. Which, I might add, resulted in some pretty amazing political advertisements. I mean, tell me that picture doesn't look vaguely 40Kish.
     
    Hakazin said:
    Yep. The culture would still be fairly fascistic. Just as fascism isn't exclusive with feudalism, it's not exclusive with certain forms of democracy. Putting aside comparisons to current American politics, Italy under Mussolini was technically still a democratic government, if only on paper. Mussolini even ran elections which he ran in and campaigned for. Which, I might add, resulted in some pretty amazing political advertisements. I mean, tell me that picture doesn't look vaguely 40Kish.
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    I have more faith in GW artists. And there are not enough skulls, gold and strange crap to make it WH.

    But in general, in order to make everything less grimdark you need either to make it possible to win over the destructive forces ... Or to make them not destructive. In fact, you can make a script "Funny memetic orks defeated all and changed the reality." And we are not talking about not the funny slave-owning orks.

    That is, in the happy future of 40,000 years there is only war. And all are happy with it. This setting will be pretty mad by our standards. You do not have to change much the orks, chaos, tyranids, necrons and some other races. But the Eldar, the Humans and the Tau will have to change into something more capable of enjoying a constant war. Can each faction be able to indefinitely resurrect soldiers and death on the battlefield does not exist? The whole universe is a huge Unreal tournament for Azathoth?

    In any case, I'm not sure that this will solve the problem. Although I do not know whether it is possible to combine wild militarism and the glorification of war with equality, democracy and universal happiness. Because honestly, Warhammer is not a universe where you can be a pacifist.
     
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    Ivar said:
    have to change much the orks, chaos
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    Ummm... I super beg to differ. The fact that writers go out of their way to make Chaos completely horrible puppy eaters on an objective level is one of the key facets of overblown grimdark.

    What if Chaos was actually valid to an extent? If the posited good aspects of the Chaos gods actually meant something and there were reasons why someone would want to Chaos it up aside from being a screaming maniac or a zealot? I could easily envision a version of the setting where Chaos and the Imperial Creed was closer to an ideological conflict than some fight against clear, obvious evil. Guys like Magnus and the Thousand Sons already have semi-understandable reasons for doing what they do. You just need to weed out a couple of the screaming, ass-fucking, blood drinking maniacs from the Canon and focus on some of the more sympathetic aspects that already exist in fluff.

    There's plenty of groundwork already for shit like this. GW just doesn't capitalize on it because they want Chaos to be super edgy villains for the Imperium to fight and for edgy kids who want to play the villains to play instead of a faction on parity with the Imperium.
     
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    I always thought it was silly that 40K portrays it as needing a extreme brutal government to function, as if there's no other solutions.
    Though I think some 40K fans like it like that. The Imperium and Space Marine fans seem to be the biggest part of the fandom, perhaps. Or maybe the biggest whales or one of the most vocal parts.
    Granted not everyone agrees. I know some want less Marines and more Eldar or Sister's of Battle, though some fans want even more Marines and even less Eldar and other groups.
     
    Reveen said:
    Ummm... I super beg to differ. The fact that writers go out of their way to make Chaos completely horrible on an objective level is one of the key facets of overblown grimdark.

    What if Chaos was actually valid to an extent? If the posited good aspects of the Chaos gods actually meant something and there were reasons why someone would want to Chaos it up aside from being a screaming maniac or a zealot? I could easily envision a version of the setting where Chaos and the Imperial Creed was closer to an ideological conflict than some fight against clear, obvious evil. Guys like Magnus and the Thousand Sons already have semi-understandable reasons for doing what they do. You just need to weed out a couple of the screaming, ass-fucking, blood drinking maniacs from the Canon and focus on some of the more sympathetic aspects that already exist in fluff.

    There's plenty of groundwork already for shit like this. GW just doesn't capitalize on it because they want Chaos to be super edgy villains for the Imperium to fight and for edgy kids who want to play the villains to play instead of a faction on parity with the Imperium.
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    It´s a parody show, but Magnus here raises some very valid point about the nature of the Chaos gods.
     
    To be honest as far as the imperium military forces go goes I admittedly prefer the guard to either the sisters of battle or the space marines though I admit I do have a little bit of a soft spot for the Blood Ravens as I always did like dawn of war and liked the mystery aspect that nobody knows who their Patriarch was and what legion they had been founded from.
     
    sapphirenebula said:
    I always thought it was silly that 40K portrays it as needing a extreme brutal government to function, as if there's no other solutions.
    Though I think some 40K fans like it like that. The Imperium and Space Marine fans seem to be the biggest part of the fandom, perhaps. Or maybe the biggest whales or one of the most vocal parts.
    Granted not everyone agrees. I know some want less Marines and more Eldar or Sister's of Battle, though some fans want even more Marines and even less Eldar and other groups.
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    There are 40k fans who want even more space marines? Why? Even from a purely Watsonian perspective, that's just insane. There are a total of around a million loyal marines in the entire galaxy, and they already have no less than five codexes, more if you count chaos marines. For reference, the B.E.F, one army of one country on one planet, had an average of 2 million in the field at any time during WW1. The Space Marines are borderline militarily irrelevant in-universe.

    Alane1 said:
    To be honest as far as the imperium military forces go goes I admittedly prefer the guard to either the sisters of battle or the space marines though I admit I do have a little bit of a soft spot for the Blood Ravens as I always did like dawn of war and liked the mystery aspect that nobody knows who their Patriarch was and what legion they had been founded from.
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    Personally, I tend to see guardsmen like WW2 Soviet grunts-more or less ordinary people fighting, knowingly or unknowingly, for evil bastards against an even bigger bunch of evil bastards because it's that or dying messily. It's certainly a more interesting dynamic than "WE ARE SPESS MAHRENS TEH EMPRAHS PASTEL COLOURED BRAINWASHED FURY"
     
    I love Space Marines. My introduction to them was via Captain Titus of the JUSTMAKESPACRMARINES2 Ultramarines. But dear Lord there's way too many of them. Give the Dark Eldar or Sisters more love.
     
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