Warhammer 40k General thread

[Arthur Frayn]

They aren't "value neutral".

They take away from what makes the SM unique, they take away from what makes SoB unique, they require multiple substantial retcons, there is no indication that the models would sell, they would not make the world any better, nor is there any story you could tell with a female space marine that you can't with a male, and several that fall more flat. You don't even get the diversity in the model line you want because you're just asking for yet more space marines.

It's a bad idea for the same reason the Primaris were a bad idea, except with the Primaris you at least had ostensibly cooler-looking truescale models.

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See like, this is an actual argument that's not just a blanket "You are Wrong" and/or "I don't like it so there". I disagree with a lot of it, but kudos to actually spelling it out, though you still haven't answered how "fiction is fictional" and/or "fictional worlds exist at the whim of the author" is wrong somehow.

I can see the argument for how FSM would take away the "uniqueness" of the SM. Honestly I find @Delirium and @BossFight's arguments that making the Imperium "more inclusive" covers up the fact that the Imperium is intended to be the worst regime humanly possible, with the Space Marines intended as the grim adamantium boot being pressed into the face of humanity, and how including women in their ranks undercuts the fascist imagery of the Hardest Men Being As Hard As Possible. The Imperium are the bad guys, and putting a rainbow on the bolter (so to speak) kind've misses the point. At the same time I'm very much sympathetic to the idea of wanting to have more options for army building, role play, and narrative opportunities afforded by female Space Marines and don't think there's a strong counterargument for that beyond "I, me, personally don't want them for <reasons>".

But like, beyond that point ("The Imperium whole schtick is toxic masculinity") pretty much everything else is just that you personally don't like it because a) by your own admission you don't like retcons and b) pretty much everything else rests on unfounded assumptions. "The models won't sell, so we don't make them" is circular logic - we have no way of knowing if woman Space Marine models wouldn't sell, so using that a point in favor of their non-inclusion is a non-starter. It's hypotheticals either way.

And like, fucking lol at the idea that "You can't tell a story with a female Space Marine you can't with a man". Like, first off that's obviously silly because a woman's experience is categorically different from a man and I can think of a bajillion ways a "Lady Space Marine" story could spin out, and moreover if male and female Space Marines are interchangeable storywise then we're back to them being value neutral with their inclusion/absence resting entirely on personal preference.

Like, it'd fine if you don't want girl space marines, but don't try and spin it out like your personal preferences are some objective standard to which everyone has to hold.

 

[Rgal]

Throwing in whatever "fun" thing you can think of does not make for good stories.

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Bullshit. Almost everything makes for good stories.

Although, now that I think of it, there aren't any good stories based on Space Marines being a boy-only club. I wonder why.

Also: I did not pull that shit out of my ass and even went out of my way to cite the specific posters.

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Don't care. I am not a tyranid hive mind synapse, the things I post only need to be consistent with other things I post.

Mutation in Warhammer is usually seen as a sign of chaos corruption. Geneseed in particular is carefully monitored and any chapter that deviates from its initial genetic template beyond the norm is usually just killed or allowed to die.

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Considering that "the norm" includes things like Red Thirst and Black Rage, I'd say any hypothetical stable-for-female-marines geneseed strain would be approved without much ado.

 

[bluntblade]

Uh, I responded to your post which mentioned minority representation in order to re-state my point that fiction is fiction and thus can be changed whenever in order to support the story. I thought your argument, rooted in "You can't change 40k and there are other ladies in other groups!", was mistaken and stated as such.

Pretty cut and dry, not sure why you keep pressing this line of questioning like it's a gotcha or something.

And okay but like, why are they not needed? If adding female Space Marines is a value neutral proposition then it doesn't matter either way if they're included.

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I suppose for me, there's some sort of appeal to the monolithic thing of it just being a bunch of blokes (as well as the brute utility of just using the easiest receptacle for the gene-seed, because if there's one thing 40K likes to remind us, manpower is rarely at a premium). But at the same time I really have no strong opinions on this and am continually a bit puzzled that it attracts so many arguments.

 

[IfIhadaHammer]

-Squats were a human offshoot to begin with so I don't know who was telling you they'd hate them because xenos
-The League are explicitly in a tense relationship with the Imperium
-The AI are kept secret
-Nobody ever claimed that bringing back the Squats was a moral imperative
-You really haven't seen anyone talking about how dumb it is that the Leagues are considered neutral with the Imperium?

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-Yes, that's the point, people were telling me all human offshoots should hate xenos
-yet they don't automatically hate them because of the DAoT
-People absolutely claimed an alternative human civilization to the imperium was a moral imperative or at least, they did in the way someone did with female space marines that you're massively stretching the intent as to call it a "moral imperative" (seriously, all they said was the setting shouldn't be designed around pleasing the worst parts of the fanbase, you took that to mean as anyone who doesn't like female space marines, and not, you know, the anti-sjw misogynist homophobic types)
-Nope, and certainly not the people who were lecturing me in that thread. Its probably happened elsewhere but it is not at all the big complaint I've seen elsewhere about the Leagues, and that's that they need to look a bit more dwarfy.

Mind, I don't think you bringing up a list of the many justifications of how something previously considered setting breaking works is quite the counterpoint you think it is.

 

[Tithed_Verse]

What would female space marines add that the sisters of battle don't?

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It would add female space marines.

Sisters of battle are not space marines. Space marines are space marines. I want a jacked up, uber-muscular, cybernetically mutilated superwarrior, part of a long-standing martial tradition with extremely high death rates among the recruits and an unerring focus on destroying the emperor's enemies, but that doesn't worship the emperor religiously instead seeing him more as a father figure to their mother figure.... that happens to have a flatish-chested boob plate.

And a vaguely female face that mostly looks like a squashed thumb.

What's so wrong with that?

(I also want male 'Brothers of Battle')

 

[HalfTangible]

(seriously, all they said was the setting shouldn't be designed around pleasing the worst parts of the fanbase, you took that to mean as anyone who doesn't like female space marines, and not, you know, the anti-wonderful person misogynist homophobic types)

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Their entire criteria for 'chud' was 'they don't like female space marines'. I went out of my way to get another definition and did not beyond 'Trump supporters'. They went on to compare the existence of an all-male 40k faction to Harvard school segregation and have spent the last several pages making moral judgements on GW, the decision to have all-male space marines in the first place, and the Warhammer community as a whole. Including multiple statements that if the community didn't like female space marines it doesn't deserve to exist.

So yes, they meant 'anyone who doesn't like female space marines'.

Mind, I don't think you bringing up a list of the many justifications of how something previously considered setting breaking works is quite the counterpoint you think it is.

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My entire point is that it *isn't* setting breaking so the comparison is nonsense.

 

[Tithed_Verse]

1. Because I'm the aggressor here.

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2. Their entire criteria for 'chud' was 'they don't like female space marines'. I went out of my way to get another definition and did not beyond 'Trump supporters'. They went on to compare the existence of an all-male 40k faction to Harvard school segregation and have spent the last several pages making moral judgements on GW, the decision to have all-male space marines in the first place, and the Warhammer community as a whole. Including multiple statements that if the community didn't like female space marines it doesn't deserve to exist.
3. Including multiple statements that if the community didn't like female space marines it doesn't deserve to exist.
4. My entire point is that it *isn't* setting breaking so the comparison is nonsense.

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1.I mean, yes. You are. You are acting exactly like the people who chase women and minorities out of hobby stores.

And I mean exactly.

It's such an exact replica of that behavior pattern that it's giving me earnestly unpleasant flashbacks. (Amusingly those are the same behavior patterns as people who chase women, nerds, and minorities out of sports)

2.Excuse me, I'm the one who compared desegregation of education with this, and I did not use the word Chud, that was someone else. I don't even know what Chud means. Please keep people straight in your head. @stratigo is the one who likes that word.

And yes, I do feel like gaming is a 'segregated' space, exactly because of people who act like you are acting here. And yes, I do feel like you're defending this segregation because it is tradition, just like (say) Harvard did.

3.No, I said if it falls apart because of the inclusion of female space marines it doesn't deserve to exist. That's a slightly different statement. Please pay attention. The slightly different word usage imparts a different meaning. I would prefer if it not fall apart, but if the inclusion of female space marines is the straw that breaks the 40k community's back, then yes, it should not exist.

4. Before it happened it was setting breaking. Now it's not. Before it happens female space marines are setting breaking. After it happens you'll defend them the same way you just defended the squats.

 

[Kuja]

While I understand where the 'inclusivity goes against the Imperium's fascist thematics' argument comes from, I personally reject it for two reasons. The first is that 40k isn't just a story or a setting, but also a game (a series of games really, on the tabletop and video games). People should enjoy playing games. More people should enjoy playing games together. Playing games should be fun. If people want to have fun playing female space marines I see no reason to deny it. The Imperium being fascist doesn't stop the space marines from being ethnically diverse, (and we already reject the arguments of the self-identified Austrian painter brigade) it shouldn't stop them from being gender inclusive as well.

The second reason is that there's already a game setting out there that proves it can work - it's called Battletech. Battletech has female mechwarriors, female elemental troops, female pilots, female heads of state, everything...and the militarist Mechwarrior clans and the feudalist Inner Sphere powers are every bit as awful as the Imperium. Arguably worse, since the Imperium can point to bullshit Chaos magic as a reason their setting is so terrible, whereas the grimdarkness of the Battletech setting comes from it being a perpetual 1940s warcrime factory (in space) based purely on the horrible nature of human beings.

But going back to the RPG well once more (because it's the thing I've got the most familiarity with) if I'm running a Deathwatch game and one of my female friends asks to play a female Ultramarine, I have three options-
1. I can tell her no, women can't be space marines, play a male character.
2. I can spend the effort to find a middle ground to let her play a female character that's tough enough to fight alongside the space marines (but still isn't one).*
3. I can...just let her play a female Ultramarine.

Space marines are the face of 40k - they always have been, going all the way back to the days of Rogue Trader and Space Crusade. GW has diversified its lineup in the name of expanding the game, but it hasn't stopped the space marines from being the mascots of the setting. Let's not kid each other, here. Pointing to other armies that receive a fraction of the space marines' airtime and saying 'well why can't you be happy with...' has long struck me as the thematic equivalent of a condescending pat on the head and a 'girls can't play baseball.' It's fine to have space marines that are all-male. It's fine to have space marines that are all-female. It's fine to have space marines that are a mix. But people should at least be given the option, you know?.

(*= I was witness to watching a DM try to split the difference on this once, running a mixed Deathwatch/Dark Heresy game where we had two space marines (myself and another player), and two non-space marines consisting of a commissar (my wife) and a rogue trader. The two non-space marines were jacked up with awesome gear and resources to keep parity with the Astartes so it would be a fair game. They then proceeded to get the living shit beaten out of them by tangling with the same threats that the space marines handled ably. By the end of the game the commissar was pretty much openly handed a set of terminator armor with a rotator cannon so that she'd stop almost dying in every encounter, likewise for the remaining player. Just playing four space marines would have been a much cleaner option, and it was a strong incentive for me to make that move in my own game which followed.)

Sisters of battle are not space marines. Space marines are space marines. I want a jacked up, uber-muscular, cybernetically mutilated superwarrior, part of a long-standing martial tradition with extremely high death rates among the recruits and an unerring focus on destroying the emperor's enemies, but that doesn't worship the emperor religiously instead seeing him more as a father figure to their mother figure.... that happens to have a flatish-chested boob plate.

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Quoting this as a jumping off point, my wife requests that I notate something in particular: librarians.

If you want to play a cool armored space combat wizard, the Sisters of Battle don't have them. The Sisters of Silence certainly don't.

EDIT: wording

 

[Orm Embar]

dial it down a notch Looks like this conversation is getting a bit heated. Topics like inclusivity in gaming can touch on politics, but remember to keep the discussion relevant to 40k and avoid casting aspersions on your fellow posters. I'd prefer not to have to start handing out threadbans.

 

[Parth]

It would add female space marines.

Sisters of battle are not space marines. Space marines are space marines. I want a jacked up, uber-muscular, cybernetically mutilated superwarrior, part of a long-standing martial tradition with extremely high death rates among the recruits and an unerring focus on destroying the emperor's enemies, but that doesn't worship the emperor religiously instead seeing him more as a father figure to their mother figure.... that happens to have a flatish-chested boob plate.

And a vaguely female face that mostly looks like a squashed thumb.

What's so wrong with that?

(I also want male 'Brothers of Battle')

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No they're not, they're just normal humans who through sheer willpower and faith fight alongside space marines on the battlefield.

Adding female space marines is just going to take away from how badass the sisters are.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9V0bOB8sXQ


As for what is wrong with it, you yourself said that your reason is that you just want them.

That's not a good justification for doing things, especially business decisions.

 

[Tithed_Verse]

-snip-

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Honestly, I don't get the argument that having female space marines would make the sisters of battle less badass. I don't really see any logical connection there. It feels like you're saying 'If A then B, C, therefore B'. I just don't agree.

As for business decisions, there is clearly thirst for female space marines, and adding them would just be another retcon in a steaming mass of retcons. There's literally no reason not to do it.

 

[Landb]

I would actually seethe if female space marines became a thing. Currently, when GW tries for better representation (which it's pretty clear they are doing, at least on the BL side of things), it also forces them to focus on something other than Astartes occasionally. Female Space Marines would just mean... even more Space Marine stuff. That's without even getting into how it'd inevitably lead to the Sororitas getting even more neglected as part of their appeal gets looted by a new Astartes variant, as if that faction and people who like them haven't been put through enough bullshit.

I'm cool with people doing it in their personal RPG sessions or what have you, but unfortunately the idea doesn't exist in a vacuum and I see zero universe in which it wouldn't suck if GW made it an official thing. Female Custodes, on the other hand...

 

[Eliar]

If whatshisface 10000 year old Archmagos can sit on a slightly improved space marine formula that is miraculously used to solve the corruption and mutation problem of the existing space marine chapters there is absolutely no reason he or some other living relic that was derping around deep in some lab did not apply the Space Marine procedure on women and met with success.

The moment What I Say Goes demigod Guilliman gives the ok it is not heresy.

I have to agree tho adding yet another Imperium subfaction whne so many wait their turn for an update sounds pointles./

 

[Night]

The second reason is that there's already a game setting out there that proves it can work - it's called Battletech. Battletech has female mechwarriors, female elemental troops, female pilots, female heads of state, everything...and the militarist Mechwarrior clans and the feudalist Inner Sphere powers are every bit as awful as the Imperium.

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Hey, even on their worst day, most BattleTech factions don't come close to being as fucked-up as the Imperium. Some of the more demented Coordinators and Khans of the Jaguars would love to, but they can't actually pull it off.

RE: Female space marines

Fine, I guess? It's not a heroic choice to try to become a Space Marine, it's a horror story, you lose a decent chunk of yourself at an age when you're stilling trying to figure out what your self is. (Like, you could try to construct a transition allegory out of it, but nobody has because again, horror story.) GW loves to insist on calling them post-human because in a very real way Space Marines are less than us, even as they are also better as warriors. If they happen I will give it a resounding "okay" and move along, but I don't really see the victory for inclusion here in saying women too can be conned into giving up much of what they are at a time when they're still trying to figure out what they are.

 

[Old Guard]

Frankly, if adding female space marines causes 99% of the community to leave and the WH40k community to collapse, the community never should have existed in the first place.

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Lol, GW is going to collapse long before 40K does.

Their current business model is doomed, and that doom isn't far off. I expect the setting and game of 40k to far outlast GW.

All those wanting female space marines are barking up the wrong tree, it isn't GW you need to convince, it's the community that basically amounts to a "male space" that you need to convince.

Currently, the majority of the fanbase doesn't see why there should be female space marines. From what I've seen around the community whenever this ripples across the internet, it generally boils down to, 1. The female representation of other factions, to include all female factions, already existing in the game/setting, 2. When considering that the female portion of the player base, it is incredibly small compared to the male portion of the player base, and frankly won't really increase even if you did introduce female space marines, 3, No one will care if you do up a custom female space marine army (I've seen exactly two ever, and both were amazingly well done) and play at your FLGS with it.

Sprinkle in a handful of legitimate misogynists who actually just hate women.

 

[Parth]

Honestly, I don't get the argument that having female space marines would make the sisters of battle less badass. I don't really see any logical connection there. It feels like you're saying 'If A then B, C, therefore B'. I just don't agree.

As for business decisions, there is clearly thirst for female space marines, and adding them would just be another retcon in a steaming mass of retcons. There's literally no reason not to do it.

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Yes I know you don't agree.
That's why I'm trying to explain it to you.

Let's try again.

Your entire reason for wanting female space marines is because you want them.

I'm telling you that I do not agree with your reason. Because it's a bad reason.

It took 22 years for the sisters of battle to get plastic models, the fact that it took them that long is a pretty clear indication that the thirst for female space marines isn't enough to make a business decision on.

Secondly, I'll explain the logical connection to you.

The lore already has a problem with space marines being shown as being the ultimate heroes, everything else exists to die so that they can save the day.

The sisters have taken the worst of it.

Adding female space marines isn't giving females representation, it's adding even more space marines to the game, which is just drowning out everything else.

Including in the meta as everything that is cool and badass about the sisters is once again drowned up by female space marines showing up.

Do you understand it now?

 

[Konradleijon]

what about Farseers powerful eldar pychics? maybe if they didn't get worfed in the lore.

but i don't think people should be asking for female space mariens and more like GW should pay more attention to the Tau, Eldar, SOS, SOB.

 

[Tithed_Verse]

-snip-

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So, what I get from this is you agree that space marines are drowning everything else out and are the most important faction, at least to GW.

You think that somehow not having female space marines will stop this?

I don't understand why you would think that.

I think that this is inevitable and that's why we need female space marines.

Someone else said it well when they compared it to women having softball vs men having baseball.

Oh, and the poor performance of sisters of battle unit sales is not indicative of the potential sales of female space marines because sisters of battle are not space marines.

 

[Wade Garrett]

Hey, even on their worst day, most BattleTech factions don't come close to being as fucked-up as the Imperium. Some of the more demented Coordinators and Khans of the Jaguars would love to, but they can't actually pull it off.

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"Smoke Jaguars? The Combine? Mediocre."
Thomas Marik, Master of the Word of Blake

 

[Arthur Frayn]

No they're not, they're just normal humans who through sheer willpower and faith fight alongside space marines on the battlefield.

Adding female space marines is just going to take away from how badass the sisters are.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9V0bOB8sXQ


As for what is wrong with it, you yourself said that your reason is that you just want them.

That's not a good justification for doing things, especially business decisions.

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But like, how so? Functionally female Space Marines would be identical to their male counterparts. Like, given how genetically engineered they are I think literally the only difference (in-universe) would be the genitalia, and given Space Marine's lifestyle that's basically a vestigial organ regardless. Gameplay-wise all it would amount to is a handful of un-helmeted head sculpts.

There's still plenty to differentiate the Sisters of Battle from their hypothetical Space Marine sisters - like, just in terms of iconography and visual presentation they're pretty different. The Space Marines are grizzled, centuries-old (possibly older) badasses who literally only live to fight, while the Sisters of Battle (as you point out) are religious fanatics who draw strength from their religious fervor and sheer triumph of the will to carry the day.

It's really not hard to imagine presenting things so that Space Marines (man, woman, or otherwise) give the Sisters of Battle the side eye for being a little too fervent and fanatical ("Look I love the Emperor too but y'all need to touch grass"), while the Sisters look at Space Marines as a just-this-side-of-necessary evil who are just one bad day away from falling to Chaos (or whatever). Play up the fact that Space Marines are bio-engineered terminators with no real free will, with the Sisters insisting that "true humans" are the deciding factor between salvation and damnation. If you want to differentiate them aesthetically even further, you can play up the Warrior Nun schtick with the Sisters and really go all out with the grimderp monster Catholicism stuff.

At the end of the day 40k is a balls goof tabletop game and attendant setting, "I think X is cool and want to see it in my favorite game" is a pretty bog standard response to uh, pretty much anything. Again, where I think this shit trips up is spinning personal preferences out into objective standards. You, personally, don't want to see women Space Marines, but that does not mean that the lack of women Space Marines is some kind of moral good or that your position is somehow "objectively" correct.

 

[Parth]

So, what I get from this is you agree that space marines are drowning everything else out and are the most important faction, at least to GW.

You think that somehow not having female space marines will stop this?

I don't understand why you would think that.

I think that this is inevitable and that's why we need female space marines.

Someone else said it well when they compared it to women having softball vs men having baseball.

Oh, and the poor performance of sisters of battle unit sales is not indicative of the potential sales of female space marines because sisters of battle are not space marines.

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The sister of battle performing poorly in sales is a good indication of how female space marines would perform.
Can you prove that there's a demand for female space marines?

And no that is not what I said at all.

I said

Adding female space marines isn't giving females representation, it's adding even more space marines to the game, which is just drowning out everything else.

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How exactly you managed to glean that from what I wrote I don't understand.

The bottom line is that a space marine is a space marine, it doesn't matter if you're adding males or females, the game has enough.

 

[IfIhadaHammer]

It took 22 years for the sisters of battle to get plastic models, the fact that it took them that long is a pretty clear indication that the thirst for female space marines isn't enough to make a business decision on

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Er, that is not the proof you think it is, because now that sisters of battle have plastic models and support, they're one of if not the best selling non-marine faction.

 

[Delirium]

GW failing to support the model line of the SoB for 20 years is because GW is biased, not because there was no demand for it, hence why it crops up so often as a cultural touchstone. I've met so many people who have some variation of the 'said I would never play again until plastic sisters and was free for 15 years until they pulled me back in' origin story.

 

[stratigo]

No they're not, they're just normal humans who through sheer willpower and faith fight alongside space marines on the battlefield.

Adding female space marines is just going to take away from how badass the sisters are.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9V0bOB8sXQ


As for what is wrong with it, you yourself said that your reason is that you just want them.

That's not a good justification for doing things, especially business decisions.

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Consumers wanting something is the only rational basis for a business decision. GW would have to weigh how much some consumers want it verse how much some others don't.

Lol, GW is going to collapse long before 40K does.

Their current business model is doomed, and that doom isn't far off. I expect the setting and game of 40k to far outlast GW.

All those wanting female space marines are barking up the wrong tree, it isn't GW you need to convince, it's the community that basically amounts to a "male space" that you need to convince.

Currently, the majority of the fanbase doesn't see why there should be female space marines. From what I've seen around the community whenever this ripples across the internet, it generally boils down to, 1. The female representation of other factions, to include all female factions, already existing in the game/setting, 2. When considering that the female portion of the player base, it is incredibly small compared to the male portion of the player base, and frankly won't really increase even if you did introduce female space marines, 3, No one will care if you do up a custom female space marine army (I've seen exactly two ever, and both were amazingly well done) and play at your FLGS with it.

Sprinkle in a handful of legitimate misogynists who actually just hate women.

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GW's business model isn't doomed.

Also, I doubt you have a pulse on the majority of the GW fanbase.

I mean the biggest hurdle to more female fans are how shitty so many male fans are. Female space marines would decrease the number of those shitty fans and lower the barrier to entry for women into the hobby.

Yes I know you don't agree.
That's why I'm trying to explain it to you.

Let's try again.

Your entire reason for wanting female space marines is because you want them.

I'm telling you that I do not agree with your reason. Because it's a bad reason.

It took 22 years for the sisters of battle to get plastic models, the fact that it took them that long is a pretty clear indication that the thirst for female space marines isn't enough to make a business decision on.

Secondly, I'll explain the logical connection to you.

The lore already has a problem with space marines being shown as being the ultimate heroes, everything else exists to die so that they can save the day.

The sisters have taken the worst of it.

Adding female space marines isn't giving females representation, it's adding even more space marines to the game, which is just drowning out everything else.

Including in the meta as everything that is cool and badass about the sisters is once again drowned up by female space marines showing up.

Do you understand it now?

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It took 22 years to get sisters not because sisters wouldn't sell. Sisters have sold gangbusters. They're a huge mover of product. It took 22 years cause, well, it took 22 years for enough arseholes to stop blocking a sister's release with many of the same justifications that are blocking female space marines.

 

[Night]

The sister of battle performing poorly in sales is a good indication of how female space marines would perform.

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They don't perform poorly in sales. Like, they did better than Eldar before support dropped. They are actually top three and usually second now.