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In most stories the humans win but why?

I think it is because the Imperium is the game's focal point. And obviously at the point of the Imperium is the Space Marines and humans. It allows for insane acts of heroism and a pretty good read.

Because we're awesome.

Because heaven forbid Xenos win a few!


Gw would implode in on itself if the favoured sons, the marines, lost!


GW blindly supports its #1 model range at the expense of every other race.

Because writing a book from the perspective of a Xenos is hard.
Because when writing a book you need
1) a build up where you explain the lay of the land and introduce the characters
2) a turning point where our hero gets into trouble
3) his fight back to power and ultimately his prevail over evil.

You think you want to read a book where the other side wins for once, but you don't. With a few exceptions no one likes a book where the antagonist wins. (remember the antagonist can be the good guy if the hero of the book is the bad guy. That's not a problem.)

We always want our protagonist to win. And since it's easier to write a book that you can get into where the protagonist is something that resembles you in some way, most books have human protagonists.

It's because of how writing works.

We can't effectively tell the story from a deamon or a tyranid and, as it were, dead men tell no tales.

Go ahead and step away from the computer for a second.

Now pull up your character sheet. I'll wait.

Okay, now go to the section labelled 'Race'. What's listed there?

Aha, really. I think you'll find that most of the users of Games Workshop's products also selected 'Human' as their race when they were creating their character. That might have something to do with the bias.

Because what we know of the 40k universe is written and archived by the Imperium, which has either lost reports or has "convenient;y discarded" them.

because the stories were written by humans

pretre wrote:Go ahead and step away from the computer for a second.

Now pull up your character sheet. I'll wait.

Okay, now go to the section labelled 'Race'. What's listed there?

Aha, really. I think you'll find that most of the users of Games Workshop's products also selected 'Human' as their race when they were creating their character. That might have something to do with the bias.

The discrepancy there is that they didn't select "subrace: genetically-enhanced superhuman", yet this is the faction within humanity that are GW's biggest focus by far. Not the rank and file Imperial Guard soldiers. Thus disproving your inference that GW caters to what fans can most easily relate to.

Ulthanashville wrote:Thus disproving your inference that GW caters to what fans can most easily relate to.

This is going to sound like a typical unsubstantiate claim, but GW have, on several occasions, stated that this is why they focus on non-xenos factions in the fluff.

Subrace is largely irrelevant. The fluff focuses on the plight of Humanity. This is because the target audience for the product is... You guessed it! Humanity.

The fact that there are 'superhumans' in the fluff only shows the appeal of larger than life characters in popular fiction.

Angels of Death789 wrote:In most stories the humans win but why?

Are we talking about Games Workshop, or fiction in general?

Because if we're talking GW... yeah, not so much. Plenty of Pyrrhic victories, a few outright defeats, and quite a lot of downer endings. There aren't a lot that I'd look at a say they finished with a clear cut 'win' for team sapiens.

Ulthanashville wrote:

pretre wrote:Go ahead and step away from the computer for a second.

Now pull up your character sheet. I'll wait.

Okay, now go to the section labelled 'Race'. What's listed there?

Aha, really. I think you'll find that most of the users of Games Workshop's products also selected 'Human' as their race when they were creating their character. That might have something to do with the bias.

The discrepancy there is that they didn't select "subrace: genetically-enhanced superhuman", yet this is the faction within humanity that are GW's biggest focus by far. Not the rank and file Imperial Guard soldiers. Thus disproving your inference that GW caters to what fans can most easily relate to.

Thus disproving absolutely nothing. People like Superman because you can relate to him. A super-blob wouldn't fare as well. You think people can't relate to these guys just because they are genetically enhanced? They are still human. We can relate to all sorts of things with humans. Getting into the mindset of the hive mind however, is not something we're very good at.


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Portugal Jones wrote:

Angels of Death789 wrote:In most stories the humans win but why?

Are we talking about Games Workshop, or fiction in general?

Because if we're talking GW... yeah, not so much. Plenty of Pyrrhic victories, a few outright defeats, and quite a lot of downer endings. There aren't a lot that I'd look at a say they finished with a clear cut 'win' for team sapiens.

Except of course when Matt Ward writes anything.

AND THEN HE KILLED THE GREATER DAEMON WITH HIS BARE HANDS! And that's why he is now a 50 point non-character paladin. They've all done this. Totally.

Because most of the fluff seems to be from the Imperium's point of view.

The Imperium just doesn't like to tell the stories about the battles were the orcs came and took out a whole regiment of the imperial guard and a marine company with just a... MESSAGE CENSORED BY THE INQUISITION

Purifier wrote:Except of course when Matt Ward writes anything.

AND THEN HE KILLED THE GREATER DAEMON WITH HIS BARE HANDS! And that's why he is now a 50 point non-character paladin. They've all done this. Totally.

And Draigo'd.

If you want to read a good 40k book where the humans loose and the book being written from the point of view of the humans, go read "Dead Men Walking"

Why would I want to read something about the humans losing?
I get enough of that gak in real life

Angels of Death789 wrote:In most stories the humans win but why?

Because some of the humans are descendants of Americans. And Americans are the best thing ever.

Angels of Death789 wrote:In most stories the humans win but why?

A few reasons

1st, they're typically the protagonists and thus, win, though not always. 40k the "good guys" lose a lot more often than most universes. A good book though to read would be Dead Men Walking, if you want a book where stuff goes all wrong and the moral is "in the 40k universe, life sucks and then you die", read that.

2nd, because Marines.

3rd, humans are 2nd only to the Orks in total numbers in the galaxy (the Tyranids haven't shown their true full size yet) and are far more organized and powerful as a whole, making humanity the most powerful faction in the galaxy with more resources, troops, ships, etc to throw at a problem than anyone else.

4th, most of the authors don't write stories from a xenos perspective.

Because bolterporn sells.

Also because they aren't even trying.

Count the number of BL books, for example, with humanity as the heroes.

Now count the books that have non-humans as the primary..

Yeah..

It's entirely possible to write stories from a nonhuman perspective, though it does actually require a modicum of writing talent ...

Especially since most of the nonhuman races are startrek nonhumans - same shape, similar mental framework, different prosthetics, and possibly a quirk that's readily understandable by humans.

The Nids and possibly Daemons (but less so, as they seem to think in a similar manner to humans in most fluff) would be the only ones that would be a major challenge to write from their perspective. There are plenty of other SF stories out there written from a non-human viewpoint.

Eldar- Snooty human ascetics with pointy ears- see Elves - Stories written from this POV all over the place..

Orks - Violent green thuggish humans - I've read plently of thuggish stories, just paint em green and remove the sex drive motivation.

Tau - These guys are practically human in mindset, but caste based. It's not like stories wrtitten from a POV within a caste society are all that rare. Read historical setting Indian or Chinese literature. Applying this caste system to their philosophy of the Greater good isn't that hard. The rest is skin colour and hooves

Dark Eldar - See Eldar, but lose the ascetic, and replace with vampire overtones and sadistic tendencies. Sadistic vampire evil gits are a staple in literature.


The main reason GW writes about SM mostly is that their target audience likes to imagine themselves as a 12 foot tall badass in impenetrable armour, with a rocket-launcher machinegun and a chainsaw for a sword.. It's really not that complex. Wish fulfilment. That's why so many BL books boil down to 'and the space marines arrive and kill everything in a cinematic fashion, maybe losing one or two guys for drmatic effect/vengeance hook.' .They don't need to reload, except when cinematic, they don't need a supply chain most of the time, and they get to kill hordes of baddies with a Judge Dredd scowl, while calling each other Brother and spitting out pithy fanatical catchphrases, just like most action heroes (but with a giant bowl of Fanatic'os added).

GW/BL isn't Great Literature. It's more like a comic book or Graphic Novel (comic book for adults ). And that's how it should be.

Eisenhorn and Ravenor are pretty much the only examples of GOOD BL writing I can think of....

Sure, many of the other stories are fun, but certainly aren't anything you'd read unless your a fan of 40k already.

Mohoc wrote:If you want to read a good 40k book where the humans loose and the book being written from the point of view of the humans, go read "Dead Men Walking"

Dang it! You might want to spoiler warning that for people who haven't read it yet.

SCvodimier wrote:Because what we know of the 40k universe is written and archived by the Imperium, which has either lost reports or has "convenient;y discarded" them.

This more than people thimk.

If you ever read the 3rd edition rulebook, it is essentially an Imperium of Man Primer. In fact, even the 3rd edition codex's were written as an imperium "guide" to the xenos. The IoM's strongest weapon in the never-ending war is propaganda, and GW played to this for a long while.

Ps, read Helsreach, or Rynn's world. when humans fight orks, humans never win.

When was the last time you were a non-human? Many compelling novels of the nids (chomp, chomp, run, pheromone), orks (smash umies!), and the tau(?) have never been written, mainly because it is difficult to see a race through our translarion of their thoughts and languages, if any at all.

Generally, in high fantasy or sci-fi literature, the humans are the underdogs either in number or ability. They are derided my allied races with better powers or lifespans, etc. Eventually, the determination and resourcefulness of the humans trumps the bad guy...

Not gonna lie. It really weakens my faith in human intellect that a question like this need be asked.

The Mad Tanker wrote:

Mohoc wrote:If you want to read a good 40k book where the humans loose and the book being written from the point of view of the humans, go read "Dead Men Walking"

Dang it! You might want to spoiler warning that for people who haven't read it yet.

10 pages in, you get the idea that this is how it ends.

The title really should give it away

Ascalam wrote:Because bolterporn sells.

That's why the most popular series are Gaunt's Ghosts, Ravenor and Eisenhorn, none of which feature marines.

Ascalam wrote:
Also because they aren't even trying.

Who aren't?

Ascalam wrote:
Count the number of BL books, for example, with humanity as the heroes.

Now count the books that have non-humans as the primary..

The primary what? Antagonists? Bar a couple of ork encounters in Gaunt's Ghosts, humans are pretty much always the enemy too. Bare in mind the horus heresy is people vs people.

Ascalam wrote:
It's entirely possible to write stories from a nonhuman perspective, though it does actually require a modicum of writing talent ...

That and the ability to essentially make up an entirely different emotional perspective, and expect your reader to go along with it.
Name me a single sci-fi/fantasy book that features non-humans as the protagonists (hobbits don't count since they're rural English peasants).

Ascalam wrote:
Especially since most of the nonhuman races are startrek nonhumans - same shape, similar mental framework, different prosthetics, and possibly a quirk that's readily understandable by humans.

You mean anthropomorphic?

Also lol at you failing to notice one slight difference - the fact that they are emotionally completely unlike humans. If you don't regard emotions as important to the charectors in a story...I think we're done here.

Testify wrote:
Name me a single sci-fi/fantasy book that features non-humans as the protagonists (hobbits don't count since they're rural English peasants).

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Path_of_the_Eldar_%28Novel_Series%29