I will admit to having a certain morbid fascination with the universe of the 41st Millenium. But isn't playing an agent of the Inquisition the sci-fi equivalent of playing a jew hunter for the gestapo? Is it wrong bad fun?

Naw, the gestapo would blanche at the things an inquisitor would do without blinking or thinking twice.  Even the gestapo had oversight and superior officers to worry about.

I dont understand the hate of mystery tourism. Lots and lots and lots of books and movies are made every year where you watch a person or group go through something terrible, where nothing positive happens or is learned, where you watch people struggle and die / divorce / go to prison / suicide / whatever, the end. I love a lot of sad movies / war movies.

What is the big deal with someone wanting to have a sad or depressing rpg? It goes right along with their sad books and sad movies.

Don't forget sad songs. I love sad songs. But I don't think Dark Heresy is equivalent to a sad song or movie. In those things, you sympathize with the sufferer. In Dark Heresy, it seems, you join in with the tormentor.

Doesn't it depend on how your group runs it?

I find Dark Heresy quite entertaining, but would probably only play games that were more focused on investigation and action rather than horror and terror.

I don't think it's misery toruism so much as FUCKING METAL!

Quote from: David Johansen;474087Naw, the gestapo would blanche at the things an inquisitor would do without blinking or thinking twice.  Even the gestapo had oversight and superior officers to worry about.

Unless you're going the Indiana Jones type of Gestapo, they generally didn't have to worry about Ancient Artifacts, Space Aliens, and Daemonic creatures from the Warp trying to eat/destroy/corrupt them, either.

WH40k is a screwed up world. Men are forced to choose the lesser evil, to serve the greater good.

Nah, the RPG is about investigating bad guys and stopping evil forces from destroying the world.

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of gray morality there, but its not like they are abusing innocents for no reason - they go after people intent on doing evil (or, in the more gray case, people who could very easily become a conduit for great evil because they can't control their powers).

So what if the player are RPing the abusers? Seriously. I give that a big, "so what." I enjoy the occasional horror movie. Sometimes, I root for the bad guy. In Texas CSM - The Beginning, I cheered with everyone else when Leatherface jumped off the porch and started chasing down the damsel. Good shit. Interesting to watch.

I enjoy watching depressing movies and I enjoy the feeling of sadness when bad things happen in them. I like playing sandbox games where I run around blowing up cars and killing cops. Sometimes, I like to RP an asshole and throw innocent people in jail as part of what he does, blow up innocents to kill the bad guy, choose between saving my comrad and shooting the villain, and I like to think and talk about it later, because it is interesting.

Generally speaking, I like to play the hero. The slutty do-gooder rogue and the ass-kicking paladin are my favorite characters, but I'm not going to sit here and act like I don't get it. The bad wrong fun how dare people think they are performing art or learning about other people's pain over analytical self praise bull shit is very irritating.

In a nutshell, misery tourism is fairly unique to RPGs because it involves making yourself feel bad as a goal. (Thus the original coinage, onanistic misery tourism.) The distance between creator and audience in a movie or book is an important difference.

Dark Heresy, Inquisitor, and the like seem to be ironic to me, or atavistic depending on your viewpoint. (Ironic = getting off on seeing what a bunch of schmucks the imperials are, possibly complemented by watching them get their just deserts. Atavistic = fantasizing about freeing yourself from modern morality and getting off on smashing things and hurting people.)

Jgants suggests it's antiheroic, i.e., the Inquisitors are engaged in an unpleasant task but aren't bad, all things considered.

None of these are misery tourism.

Haven't played Dark Heresy, though I've been meaning to check it out. Based on what people have said here it sounds like a game that lets you play bad guys (or characters who walk the line). I wouldn't call that misery tourism. My understanding is misery tourism is all about emptathizing with the suffering people in a setting. As someone who runs a lot of evil character campaigns, they are really more about gallows humor and not about empathy ( think mafia movies or vader's behavior in Empire).

Quote from: AnthonyRoberson;474086I will admit to having a certain morbid fascination with the universe of the 41st Millenium. But isn't playing an agent of the Inquisition the sci-fi equivalent of playing a jew hunter for the gestapo? Is it wrong bad fun?

No. PCs have agency in DH, whereas true misery tourism requires minimal agency.

Every game of Dark Heresy I've ever been involved with has dealt extensively with the moral ambiguity of the Inquisition and its members. I'd consider a DH game that didn't to be thematically lacking.

I don't think RPG's are unique when it comes to having the goal to make you feel bad. The movie, "The Fountain" makes me feel bad. I still love that movie because I enjoy the feeling.

Cash's Cover of Hurt by NI|/| makes me feel bad. I still love his cover.

That's just scratching the surface. There is a massive number of movies, music, paintings, and T.V. shows who's goal is to make you feel worse and to empathize with horrible situations.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;474137No. PCs have agency in DH, whereas true misery tourism requires minimal agency.

Every game of Dark Heresy I've ever been involved with has dealt extensively with the moral ambiguity of the Inquisition and its members. I'd consider a DH game that didn't to be thematically lacking.

What does having 'agency' mean?

Inquisitors just can't run rampant, killing anything they want. They will eventually be taken to task by somebody, especially if they screw with the wrong person, such as a high-ranking noble or priest. Politics do enter into it. Sure, they have nigh-limitless authority, but if they "go to the dark" side, other inquisitors can and will try to take them out. Dark Heresy isn't about being an all-powerful asshole so much as having the needed resources to stop very, very bad things from becoming even worse.

You can play a homicidal asshole, but that's really missing the point. If I had a player who abused his authority as an inquisitor, I'd have to question his motives and if I knew how he was beforehand, I wouldn't run it for them.

What doesn't help is that the WH40K setting is all-too-often portrayed as bleakness with a thick coating of misery, which all-but kills it for me. Dan Abnett did a wonderful job showing just how much light there is in the grimdark of the setting, which saved my perception of WH40K.

Sure, there are awful, sick, horrible things out there and the Inquistion faces them more than any human should. However, without a semblance of good and positive, what's the point? Popular WH40K has stayed stuck in its miserable point-of-view and hasn't "grown up", at least for me, but in my games, that's not the case and I have enough shiney-happy so that when the shroud does fall over things, it's that much darker.

One very cool part of Wh40K is that it isn't as black and white as it's too-often shown to be, which leads to so many amazing role-playing moments, such as when you have to balance the lives of billions of countless more.

And since I can say this here, DEAL WITH THERE NOT BEING FEMALE SPACE MARINES, RPG.NET ASSHOLES!!!