I thought that was obvious and completely uncontroversial:

The Jews = Chaos
The Soviets = Tyranids
The Urban Proletariat (without appropriate racial consciousness) = Orkz

:hatsoff:

Quote from: Koltar;474170And You're WRONG.

 There are LOTS of Good Guys in Real Life!!

They're known as Police officers.

I take it you haven't actually met many real cops.  Or soldiers for that matter.  For every "good guy" cop/soldier I bet I can find 2 that are corrupt, 5 who just like the rush / power trip, and 10 who could care less and just want to stick around long enough to get their pension.  

And I say that as someone who has a significant portion of his family in the law enforcement and military fields.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;474195The whole thing to remember about the 40K universe is that it was written by Brits.

It's really a bit of a silly heavy metal piss take. Gross gallows humour is where it's coming from. Or where it was originally - I don't know the rpg, so FFG probabaly changed some things and treated the setting more seriously than it deserved.

Here's something that annoys me every time the 40K universe is brought up.  Yes, way back when the original thing was written, that stuff was true.  However, it hasn't really been that way anymore since at least the early 1990's.

The wargames, the books, the video games, etc, have changed the universe away from the silly heavy metal half-joke half-satire thing and made it into a real SF universe.

So please, for the love of god, could people stop judging the setting based on 20+ year old outdated book.

Quote from: Melan;474201Well, taken with a straight face, Warhammer40k is definitely Nazis: The RPG, down to the flimsy justifications of "men are forced to choose the lesser evil, to serve the greater good" and "its not like they are abusing innocents for no reason", which are right out of the SS songbook, and someone who could quote Goebbels or Heydrich chapter and verse could find the exact equivalents where they admit they are doing terrible things on the Ostfront because they have to. Chaos is a literal Evil for the Warhammer universe, and an existential threat to humankind. Which, after all, is not all that different from the danger The Jews were supposed to represent for the Third Reich et al. (These are also standard excuses of the RIFTS Coalition States of America, who are similar nazi stand-ins, and also fan favourites.) Simultaneously, Wh40k is also a satire of these attitudes, and may make for a great game if you run it like Gruntfuttock suggested.

Of course, most fans of the setting, who are after all 14 years old boys or the equivalent, miss both the downright nasty themes and the satire.

It is on the level of ironically dressing up as an SS officer for a costume party. It is in bad taste, but not socially dangerous. And let's admit it, those are some snappy uniforms.

Again, morons who somehow missed the 20+ years of setting development should probably just STFU already.

Dark Heresy is very clearly written to be "Eisenhorn: The RPG" and Eisenhorn was barely even an anti-hero (I'd say he qualifies more as a tragic hero).

My sources are the Ian Watson novels (which are written by a real writer instead of Fan McHack, and it shows) and some of the earlier books, yeah, so I am mostly talking about that era, and the setting may have changed since then. I don't know why that matters, though. Star Wars has also changed with The Phantom Menace, but that doesn't retrospectively apply to the qualities of The Empire Strikes Back, or even Return of the Jedi (although those ewoks are pretty suspect). With an evolving, canon-based intellectual property, you have to accept that not everyone will look at it at the same stage of the "metaplot" or "setting evolution".

[therpgsite]So fuck off.[/therpgsite]

Quote from: Koltar;474170And You're WRONG.

 There are LOTS of Good Guys in Real Life!!

They're known as Police officers, Firefighters, paramedics, Doctors, Nurses....various first-responders and emergency workers.

Also the men and women in the military are quite often the GOOD GUYS in all sorts of situation.

Also, Red Cross volunteers, Salvation Army workers...and oh yeah bodyguardsw at Plannened Parenthood clinics that escort women in past angry protestors......folks who join the Guardian Angels or similiar neighborhood watch groups in their home towns....


- Ed C.

None of that proves anything and is totally conjecture.  If every single one of those people were really "good" in real life all the time nothing bad would ever happen.

I happen to personally know a great many folk in those professions you named.  You're just shitting those words out because that's how society wants you to feel about those professions, but in reality they are just like everyone else.  Fucking period.

While we're on the same subject, most Inquisitors SAVE more worlds than they destroy.

So that makes most of them them better (more "good"?) than first responders in so many ways.

This thread is filled with heresy.

Also, I just wanna run this past you, in light of recent comments.

This saturday I'm going to see a buddy of mine.

He's in the county jail for a few more months.

He was picked up driving drunk, and already had a breathalyzer machine rigged into his pickup.  What a fuckup.

He's a combat paramedic for the S.W.A.T team.

Quote from: Blackhand;474258Also, I just wanna run this past you, in light of recent comments.

This saturday I'm going to see a buddy of mine.

He's in the county jail for a few more months.

He was picked up driving drunk, and already had a breathalyzer machine rigged into his pickup.  What a fuckup.

He's a combat paramedic for the S.W.A.T team.

Good to know.

Quote from: Blackhand;474258Also, I just wanna run this past you, in light of recent comments.

This saturday I'm going to see a buddy of mine.

He's in the county jail for a few more months.

He was picked up driving drunk, and already had a breathalyzer machine rigged into his pickup.  What a fuckup.

He's a combat paramedic for the S.W.A.T team.

LOL

Just in the last few months around here we had the cop who used his squad car to drunk drive to the bar with his two drunk groupies, the cop who was photographed sleeping in his squad car, and the cop who was arrested for breaking into a guy's house and stealing his dogs.

Quote from: Blackhand;474258Also, I just wanna run this past you, in light of recent comments.

This saturday I'm going to see a buddy of mine.

He's in the county jail for a few more months.

He was picked up driving drunk, and already had a breathalyzer machine rigged into his pickup.  What a fuckup.

He's a combat paramedic for the S.W.A.T team.

Cops, doctor, soldiers and paramedics are all people like the rest of us and with all that entails. But when you are in a bad situation there is nothing like being helped by a good cop or good paramedic. Going back to the original point koltar was trying to make I do agree with his fundamental observation that there are plenty of good people out there. That doesn't mean they aren't flawed (everyone is flawed). In my own life I feel the good people I know far outweigh the bad.

Quote from: jgants;474262LOL

Just in the last few months around here we had the cop who used his squad car to drunk drive to the bar with his two drunk groupies, the cop who was photographed sleeping in his squad car, and the cop who was arrested for breaking into a guy's house and stealing his dogs.

The point you're missing is that those stories because they break the norm.
The News in most cities is defnied with "If it Bleeds, it Leads" ...NOT All the Good stuff going around here all the time that WE at station or Newspaper think you will find boring.

At least 50% to 85% of police, Firefighters are on average GOOD people doing their best to do the right thing.

Getting back to DRAK HERESY/ WH40K - its a mostly evil universe with corrupt and vile people in it. There are no Good Guy factions or groups at all in that universe. If I ever contemplated running anything in that universe I'd have to create a new group/faction for my players just so I wouldn't have to take a mental/spiritual shower after and during every game session.

- Ed C.

Tau are technically the commies in the 40k universe, they even have the commie style motto's and such in their codex.

Interesting thing is they are also probably the closest to good guys the 40k setting has(if you ignore the stupid retcons Gw made to try to make the space marines seem better), i'd also say your avarage imperial guardsman is pretty much neutral on the good/bad axis as they're generally the poor gits sent to fight a war when the marines are busy elsewhere.

Quote from: Koltar;474287The point you're missing is that those stories because they break the norm.
The News in most cities is defnied with "If it Bleeds, it Leads" ...NOT All the Good stuff going around here all the time that WE at station or Newspaper think you will find boring.

At least 50% to 85% of police, Firefighters are on average GOOD people doing their best to do the right thing.

I agree there are good people (though as Brendan says, they are flawed).  I disagree they are the majority (I'd say the majority are "neutrals" just doing a job).


As for DH, the more morally questionable aspects of the setting shouldn't really come up in play anyhow unless the group wanted to include them.  There's no reason why you can't just play it as a straight-up investigation of evil cultists game ala Cthulhu in Space.  Kind of like how gamers ignore the social evils of pretty much every genre they play in.

I love the 40K universe, simply for its hugely militaristic asthetic. Really, its just fuckin' cool in my book.

If you can't think of ways to run a campaign of "good guys" in the 40K universe, that's a lack of imagination on your part, not a flaw in the setting.

I always thought it was very macho in a kind of Verhovan like way too.

Even relatively non combatant characters in the artwork look like they could beat the shit out of you.

Quote from: Koltar;474287There are no Good Guy factions or groups at all in that universe.
- Ed C.

Incorrect sir.  Saying all Inquisitors are bad is like saying all people on Earth are bad, except there's probably more Inquisitors.  There are entire cabals of Inquisitors who think the current state of the Imperium is about as far from the Emperor's vision as you could possibly get and want to bring the whole thing down and rebuild.  The you have the Sensei, the literal descendants of the Emperor who share some small measure of his power and work for the good of humanity, and as such are usually branded as criminals and heretics by the Imperium.

Dark Heresy is definitely an Abnettian Inquisition and not a Watsonian one.