I've read Rogue Trader. Frankly, while I think of it fondly in the same way that I think of other 80s sci-fi stuff fondly, I don't think it's as cohesive and well-put together as the current background material.

There are certainly things I think could be done better. Orks, for instance, are jarringly alien as compared to the rest of the setting. They are comedy relief where there shouldn't be any. They fit in well with the original setting, but where everything became more serious, they didn't change enough. The Tau still have the potential to be an integral part of the setting, but for right now they're too clean-looking, too much like a faction from a different game/universe altogether.

Those are just a couple of examples. Overall, though, Warhammer 40k is a brutal, beautifully dystopian vision of a war-filled future. It is a setting with potential for great stories to be told in a variety of different media. Rogue Trader's ceiling was never going to be greater than that of the old 2000AD comics, meaning no disrespect to another property for which I have a lot of fond memories (Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, etc.).

 

The early ed's were great there's no doubt in that, but then GW decided to appeal to the 8+ crowd, don't believe me, read ultramarine fluff and compare it to COD The similarities are not surprising.

For the orks making them into one of the most sadistic races in 40K is easy, you just have to get creative.

 

Agreed, Phoebus.

The Rogue Trader era certainly had its moments, and did very well in capturing the overblown, gothic insanity and weirdness of the Imperium and 40k. (Space Marine and the Inquisition War series anyone?).

Sometimes it's more whimsical, satirical take on 40k worked, othertimes not so much. Some things i'm glad are out- human and eldar procreation, squats, other jarring elements.

3rd edition is when i think it all came together, the 3rd ed rulebook is one of the best for background fluff and a sense of what 40k was, what life in the imperium was like. That could be nostalgia talking though.

Rogue Trader and second edition did produce some truly fantastic supplements however.

 

Agreed, Phoebus.



Sometimes it's more whimsical, satirical take on 40k worked, othertimes not so much. Some things i'm glad are out- human and eldar procreation, squats, other jarring elements.

I am pretty sure that human/eldar hybrids are still canon.

 

I have to admit that as I managed to get myself the realm of chaos books years ago, I have since had a
certain love for the utter randomness and insanity of the warbands they had and it serves as an
inspiration for my forever unfinished chaos marine army. Those books are amazing. I can't imagine how
complicated it must have been to play a large warband of completely unique and random misfits. Kind of
like in the movie "Wizards". Just legions of mutants, monsters, mongrels, demons, mercenaries and
armoured lunatics. Scum of the earth. Luckily chaos is so vast and varied a thing that this all still fits in
just fine, just without insanely many random rules (which admittedly would be fun).

Other than that, I do think it's a shame the black humour isn't there as much anymore and the imperium is
portrayed a bit too kindly these days (they're still not nice or anything). I liked the absurd fascism of the
old material. Of course I like the new stuff and depth of fluff now, but the old stuff does have charm.

 

Have been in two minds about this. As I have mentioned frothingly on more than one occasion on here, I love RT40K, it was my introduction into the hobby and I spent vast swathes of my youth playing it. The openness of the system made for some awesomely individual armies (a friend used to run a Rogue Trader warband that would arrive on the table in converted Huey Hogs....) and the rules allowed and encouraged lists and vehicles like this.

However, with this in mind, the game and fluff needed reigning in and refined quite a lot. Have a browse through the RT40K rulebook and Space Marines are vastly different to how they are in later editions and some of the concepts seem to have been created with the aid of tippex and toilet duck. The game needed the Heresy, it needed the ideas of today to bind the game together.

As mentioned in a previous post, 3rd ed was the version of the 40k universe that seemed to get it spot on. 2nd ed was shiny and non threatening. RT40K had a grim setting but was also hugely, well, mad across the board for much of the fluff, background and scenarios (seriously, check out the scenarios......)

 

(seriously, check out the scenarios......)

That pesky Abdul Goldberg! :threaten:

 

Fun times!

*fires up the jetbike* :good:

 

As others have said, the lore is much more clearly organised and coherent now than it was back in the Rogue Trader-era. I think most people, myself included, look back are the pre-3rd editions with nostalgia rather than truly believing they were 'better'.

I don't exactly agree with all of the lore developments over the last few years and am quite often dismissive of the quality of several BL publications, but its hard to deny the setting is much more coherent now, and maintains a wider scope than it ever has.

 

The coherency is part of the problem. Back in the day the galaxy was filled with wide open spaces where who knows what could be lurking. These days the 41st millenium seems filled in, especially where the warp is concerned.

Chaos used to be this infinite realm that could give rise to anything. Now there are four chaos gods who have a handful of different servant-types. It is lame.

 

Back then we had female space marines.

Wat? No.

pretty explicitly

Something can't be "pretty explicitly". It's either explicit, or it's not. Is there are quote from the DE codex about this?

2nd ed was shiny and non threatening.

Wat? No.

 

Wat? No.

You have no idea what you have just unleashed mate. *starts battering down the hatches*

 

Who really likes the uber-serious tone 40k has taken? Don't y'all think that their is something to the levity of the 80s that made the setting more approachable?

I mean who actually likes whiny emo marines anyway?

 

Who really likes the uber-serious tone 40k has taken?

I do

Do you prefer your Imperium as a monotheistic theocracy where the Emperor is the only (impotent) god or your Imperium as a polytheistic police-state where the Emperor is one god among many?

Monotheistic

 

Veteran, I think you're getting trolled.

Escape while you can!

 

What about the bi sexual trans gender transvestite marines on pg 153 of Rogue Trader!

 

Ultramarines....? :laugh:

 

would most probably be the Emperors children.

 

What Phoebus said, and more bluntly what darkreever said too. It's strange that one minute you should claim 40k is trying to appeal more to the younger and/or childlike audiences, but then complain about the serious and dark tone it has taken on instead of the more gimmick filled days. And just as Phoebus said, that is a wildly sweeping generalisation to say the novels are all trying to appeal to the teenage market, have you even read Eisenhorn, the Night Lords trilogy, Heresy novels like Fulgrim, The First Heretic, Prospero Burns and many others, all of which are intensely adult themed and are on a literacy level that would frankly be lost on most teenagers and I'd wager quite a few young adults.

Your argument for female marines is also beyond retarded. You can't give a page as proof and fact when it contains no such thing and then fall back on the worst and weakest argument in the world of 'if it doesn't say they don't exist...then they do', have you heard of Russell's Teapot, the Invisible Pink Unicorn, the Flying Spaghetti Monster? It's an argument from ignorance, and is about as credible as OJ Simpson.

 

What Phoebus said, and more bluntly what darkreever said too. It's strange that one minute you should claim 40k is trying to appeal more to the younger and/or childlike audiences, but then complain about the serious and dark tone it has taken on instead of the more gimmick filled days. And just as Phoebus said, that is a wildly sweeping generalisation to say the novels are all trying to appeal to the teenage market, have you even read Eisenhorn, the Night Lords trilogy, Heresy novels like Fulgrim, The First Heretic, Prospero Burns and many others, all of which are intensely adult themed and are on a literacy level that would frankly be lost on most teenagers and I'd wager quite a few young adults.

I dunno really how far I'd go praising the literary level of the Black Library novels. They're competently written, but they're just pulp fiction. The best of them are "decent", and a few border on downright silly. In the end, no matter how "adult" you try to theme it, 40K is still a cartoon universe full of pop-culture tropes that try to kill one another.

The reality is that teenagers and young adults love that kinda stuff. Just like a movie being rated R doesn't stop kids from wanting to see them, neither does the subject matter being "adult" in nature stop kids from reading these books. There's a very good reason why sexual themes are more or less forbidden, because Games Workshop knows its audience. And they don't want part of that audience getting caught with something their parents might take away. Especially since parents may be funding their purchases in whole or in part.

Teenagers aren't as dumb as you're making them out to be. Especially the demographic that plays 40K. And they'll eat up mass produced pulp action novels.

 

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

GW definitely tried to make the game more kid friendly, I presume as a sales tactic. However, it isn't more kid friendly right now.

The release of 3rd edition did an awful lot to strip out the more explicit parts of the game lore, and to drastically simplify the rule set.

2nd edition was fairly solid fluff wise. It was still adult without being quite as inconsistent as Rogue Trader. The rules were also more consistent, but still included a massive amount of special rules (a chief target of GW's editors).

Over the ensuing editions, GW has slowly and consistently re-introduced more adult themes and game content, as well as raising the threshold for special rules. Compare the army books from 2nd edition, 3rd edition, and 6th edition and you will see that 2nd and 6th have more in common in many ways than 6th and 3rd.

(I find it an interesting aside that fantasy battle was never as restricted with childish constraints as 40k.)

While I don't particularly like a lot of the black library stuff, it has definitely been a good way for GW to develop a lot of the more mature themes they eschewed, while simultaneously keeping them out of the main books. In essence, allowing GW to prevent the content from being exposed to the basic mainstream audience, while allowing those who were interested to buy it.

 

VS go read Pariah/P.Burns then revist this thread and feel free to hit the edit button on your post/

 

Malus,

I would rep you if I could.

 

All I see in this thread is Gabe Sagan (once again) trying to justify female space marines.

And the old lore, from what I've seen of it, is nowhere near the quality of the current setting. I think the more serious and tragic tones are much better, the idea of the heroes being on the losing side and doom apparent is a refreshing change from all the happy ending sci fi stories dominating the genre.

 

Gabriel, I've seen you on these forums for several years now.

Your line of questioning however is having the same shock factor everyone had when Horus turned. You should not be thinking female space marines might exist or should.

@Phoebus: Why can't you

 

Space marines taken as boys, is partly a rip off of the whole Spartan warrior culture and fluff wise you need to get them before all the bones fully fuse so you can grow them bigger, also it ties in with the whole grim dark theme, to be a savior of mankind you must sacrifice the chance to be a normal man and be apart from that which you protect, it is all part of the 40k tragedy, as a space marine you get all the boosts a normal human would love but not a normal life in which to enjoy them, the whole premise of 40k is that way inclined

 

You make a good point and the tragic element adds to the grimdark. I would counter that spartans were trained universally as soldiers, those that did not survive the training and died were of no major loss to the polis because there were others to take their place. Astartes on the other hand are selected from among the crowd and each one represents a huge investment in the form of the gene seed. Each time a aspirant fails it is a huge loss. The Astartes cannot afford to casually give them away to boys that they have little evidence base their decisions on.

 

You realize that space marines do, in fact, have a fairly extensive process for determining the best candidates to undergo the process right?

 

mmmm, space oranges....

 

SPESS APPELZZ!!! :shout:

Oh dear lord, now I am reminded of Joe Dirt and his "space peanut".:laugh:

As for the female space marine thing, it has been covered multiple times in various threads. Doing so here again is giving that poor dead horse another unnecessary beating.

 

SPESS APPELZZ!!! :shout:

 

"In space, no one can hear you NERD-RAGE!" :ireful2:

 

I believe that in space you can ONLY hear the nerdrage.

And I'm out, because its becoming abundantly clear that no matter what anyone tries to explain to you your not interested in listening and likely never will be. So, yeah, I'm done wasting my time here; to everyone else willing to try good luck beating your heads against the wall.

Welcome to the club. I think lux is somehow breeding....Maybe it's some form of parasite or a fast growing bud.

 

Returning to the madness of RT40k, may I point you in the direction of page 41 - The effect of damage on Dreadnought Suits;

12+ -Bang! The suit explodes killing the pilot unless he can make his basic saving throw or use his ejector seat......

 

How curious...

 

Oh no....