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1hadhq wrote:To a certain degree of sinister is neccessary to fit? But how much is enough to gain entry into 40k?

The deliberate choice of violence as the most practical solution to any problem is likely the minimum threshold. As factions, every faction in 40k meets that standard. (But it is a wargame, after all.) I think all of the factions go beyond this threshold, however, into more stridently sinister territory. As always, I maintain that the IoM is "good" because it's persepctive controls. Aliens are indeed "evil" simply for the sake of being alien, and all that.

No, Aliens are antagonists, for the sake of being alien (read; strange) and humans are protagonists for the sake of being human (read: relateable with similar and realistic emotions and motives)

Evil varys from species to species, and faction to faction, but almost all the novels and fluff are written from a human perspective, even if it is a MUAHAHAHA diabolical, red painted designated villan prospective of, for example, an inquisitor examining the tau and evaluating their extermanateability or fabius bile vivicecting an eldar. Even fluff written by random conscript #5529 detailing the horror of a necron invasion in the Necron book (not saing that any of this ever happend, just examples) is written by humans for humans.

Also; http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MostWritersAreHuman

No. I mean "evil." Considering the issue from within 40k, I have always been a staunchly monodominant puritan

I think lack of grimdark is why we don't have squats anymore.
So all we have to do is re-grimdark them and they're back in, magically regurgitated by the nids!

Seriously though, every race has a case of the grimdarkies and if it didn't they'd get eaten by nids and retconned!

Frankly, I like playing good guys. While, the 40K universe is certainly grim and brutal, I think it still allows for good guys, and if it didn't then I wouldn't like it. If everyone were equally screwed up, then why would I bother rooting for one side instead of the other? I can certainly appreciate the "coolness" of each faction and would love to get models from all of them, but I can only really connect with white knight types. But of course trying to be a good guy in 40K means fighting a pretty hopeless cause. You do what you can but you'll never be able to stop the overwhelming tide of gak

If there are any real 'good guys' in the 40k universe, it'd be the Orks, in my opinion.

Think about it. They're not killing out of a hatred for other races, or because they're serving the needs of some dark god (which seem to be in plentiful supply in the 41st millennium).

The Orks are just spoilin for a good fight.

infinite_array wrote:If there are any real 'good guys' in the 40k universe, it'd be the Orks, in my opinion.

Think about it. They're not killing out of a hatred for other races, or because they're serving the needs of some dark god (which seem to be in plentiful supply in the 41st millennium).

The Orks are just spoilin for a good fight.

Oh come on that's like saying axe-murdering psychopaths are OK because that's their nature. It's not like Orks go around with boxing gloves and paint ball guns.

infinite_array wrote:If there are any real 'good guys' in the 40k universe, it'd be the Orks, in my opinion.

Think about it. They're not killing out of a hatred for other races, or because they're serving the needs of some dark god (which seem to be in plentiful supply in the 41st millennium).

The Orks are just spoilin for a good fight.

Yeah, so their mass butchery is 'good' because they enjoy it? They're a race genetically programmed for evil. Just because they don't know anything else, it doesn't make their actions any less evil.

My counter-question to the OP would be: how could any faction survive without embracing the grimdark?

Let's say you have the Peace, Hope and Love Brigade on planet X. They don't expand across the galaxy, believing everyone has a right to self-determination and would never see violence as a solution to any problem. Eventually, one of the following will happen:

- Part of a hive fleet will show up and consume all biological matter on the planet, leaving scant evidence that PHLB ever existed.
- An ork will arrive, and slaughter everyone on the planet for their amusement
- The will arrive, and "liberate" the planet (for the glory of the Emperor!) They won't even need the , as there won't be any resistance. The most outspoken pacifists will be labeled as heretics and dealt with accordingly. Oh, and if all the latent psykers will please filter toward this line, we have you booked on a flight to Terra. One way. You get to meet the Emperor!
- The will exterminate all of the PHLB, as part of their pet project to rid the universe of all life.
- Blood for the Blood God? tables PHLB in two turns
- The find themselves a whole planet full of slaves for new and exciting hedonistic endeavors
- The show up, "reeducate" and assimilate everyone they can, kill the rest. (I'm sure anyone who's seen the movie "Hot Fuzz" can hear The Greater Good being repeated in the background...)
- The discover that in some far-distant possible future, the PHLB actually convince everyone to love each other and there is no more 40k for us to play, so they influence one of the above factions to do what they do best.

So, I guess my thought on it is: could a faction be created in 40k without death and evil? Yes.
Would they survive as part of the storyline without slowly falling towards grimdark? No, they'd just become fodder for one of the other factions' fluff.

A little OT, I suppose, but I really like this aspect of 40k. In other games, when it comes to debates on morality and righteousness, it comes out looking like this:

Paladin: Die necromancer, you are an evil scourge and must be cleansed!
Necromancer: You caught me. Was it the army of animated corpses I raised from your hometown, or all the skulls I'm wearing?

I think the 40k universe is a lot richer, in this respect, because we often see players getting into debates over who the protagonists are! I think a lot of people seem to see the IoM as the protagonists (which I tend to agree with, especially since I field an IoM army), but look at the SMs - to borrow from my example above, they're covered in skulls. And I think we can all agree that the IoM has committed plenty of deeds that, whether you find them justifiable or not, are definitely not good.

If they were to make (and keep) a true white-knight faction, then suddenly you'd be thrust into the situation a lot of other games are where a lot of people play the "good" guys, a handful of people embrace the fun of being the "bad guys", and the rest take some non-committal, neutral stance with their faction. Suddenly you lose a lot of the richness of the universe and the friendly rivalry and debate among the players.

tavoittamaton wrote:My counter-question to the OP would be: how could any faction survive without embracing the grimdark?

Let's say you have the Peace, Hope and Love Brigade on planet X. They don't expand across the galaxy, believing everyone has a right to self-determination and would never see violence as a solution to any problem. Eventually, one of the following will happen:

Fighting in self defense is not evil. Your Peace, Hope and Love Brigade is what's sometimes called "Stupid Good".

Maurin wrote:

infinite_array wrote:If there are any real 'good guys' in the 40k universe, it'd be the Orks, in my opinion.

Think about it. They're not killing out of a hatred for other races, or because they're serving the needs of some dark god (which seem to be in plentiful supply in the 41st millennium).

The Orks are just spoilin for a good fight.

Yeah, so their mass butchery is 'good' because they enjoy it? They're a race genetically programmed for evil. Just because they don't know anything else, it doesn't make their actions any less evil.

Evil implies a moral decision. Races such as the tyranids and orks are not evil because they are amoral and have no concept of good and evil so cannot make a choice. To actually be good or evil you have to be able to choose your own actions with knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.

AlexHolker wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:My counter-question to the OP would be: how could any faction survive without embracing the grimdark?

Let's say you have the Peace, Hope and Love Brigade on planet X. They don't expand across the galaxy, believing everyone has a right to self-determination and would never see violence as a solution to any problem. Eventually, one of the following will happen:

Fighting in self defense is not evil. Your Peace, Hope and Love Brigade is what's sometimes called "Stupid Good".

Killing is evil. Killing in self-defense is a justifiable evil.

Sorry if the PHLB didn't come across as the spoof it was intended to be.

Trickstick wrote:Evil implies a moral decision. Races such as the tyranids and orks are not evil because they are amoral and have no concept of good and evil so cannot make a choice. To actually be good or evil you have to be able to choose your own actions with knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.

Orks might not care about right and wrong, but they understand the underlying principles. That just makes them sociopaths, not innocents.

tavoittamaton wrote:Killing is evil. Killing in self-defense is a justifiable evil.

Really? How about killing in defense of others? Has a guardsman who shoots a Khorne Berzerker to stop him murdering an innocent child committed an evil act?

Trickstick wrote:

Maurin wrote:

infinite_array wrote:If there are any real 'good guys' in the 40k universe, it'd be the Orks, in my opinion.

Think about it. They're not killing out of a hatred for other races, or because they're serving the needs of some dark god (which seem to be in plentiful supply in the 41st millennium).

The Orks are just spoilin for a good fight.

Yeah, so their mass butchery is 'good' because they enjoy it? They're a race genetically programmed for evil. Just because they don't know anything else, it doesn't make their actions any less evil.

Evil implies a moral decision. Races such as the tyranids and orks are not evil because they are amoral and have no concept of good and evil so cannot make a choice. To actually be good or evil you have to be able to choose your own actions with knowledge of the difference between right and wrong.

I disagree. What the Orks do is unquestionably evil. I don't know how you define killing for fun as anything but evil. However, that doesn't mean that they are ultimately guilty for the sin. They act without knowledge, and thus not truly guilty. The Old Ones bear the true responsibility for the atrocities of the Orks. That being said, like any animal trained to attack people, the Orks need to be put down for everybody's sake.

Also, while Guants and Gants may have no capacity for moral reasoning, the Hive Mind certainly does. This is still somewhat complicated, as the Tyranid race seems to be utterly incapable of peaceful coexistence with any other species-group (a mirror of 40k humanity, to put a finer point on this discussion). When answering the question of "us or them," is "us" necessarily a less laudable answer than "them"? Again, 40k is the very pinnacle of fascism and fascist moral rhetoric.

Even at the level of the hive mind itself I don't really see anything evil. It's a predator, it sees everything else as prey. Pretty cut and dried. No subjugating others to bend them to your will, no wanton torture and suffering to slake the soul-thirst within and no totally half-baked 'duh emprah said so' morality. Just eating and being eaten.

From a monodominant perspective, that is what humankind must do.

AlexHolker wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:Killing is evil. Killing in self-defense is a justifiable evil.

Really? How about killing in defense of others? Has a guardsman who shoots a Khorne Berzerker to stop him murdering an innocent child committed an evil act?

I realize my statement is controversial, so let me explain.

My argument for why killing is always an evil act comes from how we, as humans, deal with the taking of a life:
- You won't have to look far to find fictional or real-life accounts of people whose waking and dreaming moments are plagued by memories of the life they took, even if it was completely justified (ie self-defense, protecting innocents, loved ones, etc).
- People who are not moved in this way are considered socially-dysfunctional aberrations, whether they take the form of a violent sociopath or a cold-hearted killer.
- It is not until taking many lives that otherwise normal people reach a point where they are no longer affected by it.

We, as a (Western?) culture, feel that it is normal for someone to undergo anguish when they take another life. Yet we don't expect the same anguish if that person were to help an old lady across the street, feed a homeless person or rescue people from a burning building. Why? Because those aren't evil actions.

What it comes down to is the fact that something being justifiable, necessary, or even right doesn't make it good. Moreover, you can commit an evil act, say a guardsman who shoots a Khorne Berzerker, in order to achieve a good outcome, saving the life of an innocent child. But this doesn't make it any less evil, it just means that you can easily rationalize and justify it.

I think we can agree, however, how amusing it would be for GW to codex a new faction that could only attack if an enemy unit had fired upon/assaulted deployable innocent children units, or if they had been subject to enemy fire/charge.

Anything that makes you feel guilty or morally uncomfortable is wrong? That's very problematic. for example, many people may feel guilty about their sexuality but that's less to do with the morality of sexuality itself than with the prejudice inherent to local custom.

I think you'll find that Western Culture allows for people to take life in defense of their own lives and the lives of others (in jurisprudence as well as ethics and moral philosophy) and that the question of how such acts are dealt with as a matter of psychological health is quite separate.

tavoittamaton wrote:I realize my statement is controversial, so let me explain...

There is more to morality than gut feelings. You cannot assume something is evil just because it offends your sensibilities, or not evil because it doesn't.

On preview: what Manchu said.

SumYungGui wrote:Even at the level of the hive mind itself I don't really see anything evil. It's a predator, it sees everything else as prey. Pretty cut and dried. No subjugating others to bend them to your will, no wanton torture and suffering to slake the soul-thirst within and no totally half-baked 'duh emprah said so' morality. Just eating and being eaten.

Except that actual predators don't destroy an entire populace- they pick off the lame and ill taking only what they need. What GW did with the tyranids is take a black hole and give it (multiple) legs so it could go around murdering things.

It's still the same predatory/prey relationship, it's just on a much bigger scale. Tyranids haven't destroyed the entire galactic populace, just the weaker planets. The strong ones seem to do a lot of killing Tyranids even in their own fluff.

SumYungGui wrote:Tyranids haven't destroyed the entire galactic populace, just the weaker planets.

Only because they cannot (so far) ravage the stronger ones.

tavoittamaton wrote:

AlexHolker wrote:

tavoittamaton wrote:Killing is evil. Killing in self-defense is a justifiable evil.

Really? How about killing in defense of others? Has a guardsman who shoots a Khorne Berzerker to stop him murdering an innocent child committed an evil act?

I realize my statement is controversial, so let me explain.

My argument for why killing is always an evil act comes from how we, as humans, deal with the taking of a life:
- You won't have to look far to find fictional or real-life accounts of people whose waking and dreaming moments are plagued by memories of the life they took, even if it was completely justified (ie self-defense, protecting innocents, loved ones, etc).
- People who are not moved in this way are considered socially-dysfunctional aberrations, whether they take the form of a violent sociopath or a cold-hearted killer.
- It is not until taking many lives that otherwise normal people reach a point where they are no longer affected by it.

We, as a (Western?) culture, feel that it is normal for someone to undergo anguish when they take another life. Yet we don't expect the same anguish if that person were to help an old lady across the street, feed a homeless person or rescue people from a burning building. Why? Because those aren't evil actions.

What it comes down to is the fact that something being justifiable, necessary, or even right doesn't make it good. Moreover, you can commit an evil act, say a guardsman who shoots a Khorne Berzerker, in order to achieve a good outcome, saving the life of an innocent child. But this doesn't make it any less evil, it just means that you can easily rationalize and justify it.

I think we can agree, however, how amusing it would be for GW to codex a new faction that could only attack if an enemy unit had fired upon/assaulted deployable innocent children units, or if they had been subject to enemy fire/charge.

So by what you're saying as long as you feel guilty about it it's evil?

Manchu wrote:

SumYungGui wrote:Tyranids haven't destroyed the entire galactic populace, just the weaker planets.

Only because they cannot (so far) ravage the stronger ones.

Sounds a bit like natural selection to me, just happens to be Tyranids naturally selecting the weaker planets by the rather expedient method of getting their nethers handed to them every time even in their own fluff. No evil, just hunger.

(I still play Hive Fleet Leviathan because one day I will eat the golden throne and prove to every SPESS MUHREEN out there that his precious bag of bones has been long dead)

AlexHolker wrote:There is more to morality than gut feelings. You cannot assume something is evil just because it offends your sensibilities, or not evil because it doesn't.

purplefood wrote:So by what you're saying as long as you feel guilty about it it's evil?

Manchu wrote:Anything that makes you feel guilty or morally uncomfortable is wrong?

Individual vs. Group Morality, Group Morality as a standard measure, and the use of inferential reasoning

Manchu wrote:That's very problematic. for example, many people may feel guilty about their sexuality but that's less to do with the morality of sexuality itself than with the prejudice inherent to local custom.

If you weren't a moderator, I'd assume that you were trying to win cheap points by leveraging a controversial topic.

The difference between Sexuality and Killing, a better comparison, and changing cultural norms

Manchu wrote:I think you'll find that Western Culture allows for people to take life in defense of their own lives and the lives of others (in jurisprudence as well as ethics and moral philosophy) and that the question of how such acts are dealt with as a matter of psychological health is quite separate.

"Allowing" something is not the same thing as considering it a "good" or "evil" action.

SumYungGui wrote:(I still play Hive Fleet Leviathan because one day I will eat the golden throne and prove to every SPESS MUHREEN out there that his precious bag of bones has been long dead)

Die xeno scum If you couldn't defeat the ultrasmurfs you definitely won't see the golden throne

SumYungGui wrote:Sounds a bit like natural selection to me, just happens to be Tyranids naturally selecting the weaker planets by the rather expedient method of getting their nethers handed to them every time even in their own fluff. No evil, just hunger.

This is one view of the Imperium as well, called monodominance.

Much to the Chagrin of Killrazy this is yet another "are Tau Evil/evil enough thread". To quote myself from here http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/331567.page

"That is debatable. There is a belief, and I don't neccessarlly subscribe to it myself, that the Tau's existence breaks the suspension of disbelief that all works of fiction require but more specifically the one that 40K requires. The is a mini-Dakka-meme that's overused a lot called GrimDark. You will see somebody ask a question like why does so-and-so do this or why is so-and-so so bad? And you will get the inevitable response "because its GrimDark" which is kinda funny but I don't really like it because it shows a clear reduction in thinking.
40K has created this interesting cycle of violence and suffering that's supposed to parable/parody our own world. Repressive organizations do bad things to people until they rebel by doing even worse things that in turn requires the establishment to crackdown and be even more repressive - and so the never-ending cycle of dystopanism grinds on. That's the very theme of 40K. If the Tau don't require this then why does anyone? It's a potential universe breaking issue. Anyways, as others would put it "Taus bad for GrimDark". "

Like I said I don't neccesarily subscribe to that school of thought now. Well more like I don't subscribe to it after the introduction of the Tau, after them it was no longer "WHO CAN BE THE MOST EVIL" but 'HOW THE HUMANS GONNA DIE NOW" or perhaps more accurately "How will the Imperium fall".

40K is completely human-centric. On the Tabletop IG maybe the only race that can fluff-wise ally with any other faction. Be they representing actual IG, Traitor Guard, genestealer cults, Human allies, Human auxilleries etc. etc. Even the most OTT monolithic super-evil armies have actual human troops! Genestealers and Pariahs. 40K is the tale of the humans

If there's one thing that all the fluff constantly reinforces its that The Imperium is held together by prayers and Duct Tape. Whether its enternal implosion or external invasion a dozen possible empire-killing things happen every week.

So what's my point here? That the Tau represent a truly unique threat to The Imperium . The threat of liberty

When ever there is a poll to see who is the biggest threat to The Imperium the Tau often finish in the bottom 2. However, The Tau took over 20 worlds in a day without firing a shot. How many of the other races can say that? Giant slobbering monsters of doom is just par for the course for The Imperium. Although each one may be more monsterous an slobbering than the last the Imperium is a war-machine and knows how to deal with that. But the threat of a better "Quality of Life"? How will The Imperium survive that?

ANYWAYS, that's the longest post I've ever done by far and my thesis on how 40K is the Tale of the fall of The Imperium and not who's grimdarker.

What happened to the original intent of the Tau back when they were coming out? (mid 3rd edition what I was playing regularly)

They were refreshingly good in the whole world of grimdark. The greater good was actually the greater good -- not "join us or die" but "join us because together we are stronger than we are apart"? Reading the 4th ed Tau codex sure didn't give any kind of evil feeling that I remember, but its been a while.

Anyway, I voted I wanted my faction to be good -- not necessarily because I need to play the good faction (though I like to) but more because there should be at least one altruistic faction in the universe.

@ Endgame:

its not a Tau/anti-Tau thread, but I got the idea to ask for the level of evil neccessary in a faction 0f the 40k-verse since a argument was made
that any faction "not evil enough" would be hated. I for one think thats nonsense.

So, the question at hand is If evil is mandatory and how much of it must be there to make a faction believable.

You liked the impression of 'good' you have got from your chosen faction in its first appearance.
(Now, GW did add "join or die", so blame them.)

The votes seem to indicate a preference of :

- a) factions able to vary from good to evil, more shades of grey...
- b) factions are all able and known for evil, none shall be purely good.

It looks like we deem 40k a dark place, where evil is everywhere ( but good may be too ) and therefore the factions can't be free of bad guys in their ranks.