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I first started playing WH40K the year it came out (I was even at the Earl's Court Toy Fair where Bryan Ansell first displayed the game publicly that year... I know it was either 83 or 84), and the game had a lot more of a Hard Sci-Fi feel to it, but with a sort of Asimov's Foundation feel to it (from the period just after the First Seldon Crisis when they turn technology and science into a religion).

But during the 1990's, with the rise of Steampunk, the game turned into Skirmishing Napoleonic's in Space Suits.

But even the early stuff still had a comic book feel to it, and I have always wanted a set of 40K minis that were designed to look more Hard Sci-Fi.

Well... Now that. I have the tools to do so, I have been thinking about producing exactly that:

A line of Sci-Fi miniatures that are based upon the design motifs of WH40K, but with the Space Marine armor a little less bulky, and more realistic, the vehicles less like WWI tanks, and with some actual design sense to them (this would, of course, mean that the vehicles would have fewer weapons on them, in most cases), and with rules that allowed more variation between weapons (With the original 40K, there was no difference between the. Laser Canon carried as a squad support weapon, and the Laser Canon mounted on a Predator, just as one example).

And Zoats... Bring back Zoats for the Tyranids' main troops, along with the Termegants... Those used to be the only troops for the Tyranids. Nothing wrong with some of the newer ones. It would just be nice to see the Tyranids have more mainstream technologies as well as the biotech.

MB

 
I would certainly like to see more Hard Sci-Fi vehicles.  I like most of the 40K infantry, except the weapons are too big in many cases, and some other aspects are OTT, but most pretty good, particularly the rank-and-file guys.  But the vehicles, for the most part, kinda silly and stupid.  I would love to see your designs for more hard Sci-Fi vehicles.  I have a few designs of my own I could show you. 

But the biggest problem with 40K is the rules.  They are terrible.  I'm actually working on an alternative rule set for 40k.  They share some aspects with the game "Tomorrow's War", which is a pretty hard Sci-Fi rules-set.  Maybe we could work together? 

I've always thought of 40k as being more of Science-fantasy, rather than Science-Fiction, even back in the early days. Although yes, it has definitely gone more in that direction over previous years.

Have you thought about looking outside of the 40k universe? Something like Mercs or Infinity is a lot more 'hard' sci-fi, with the latter in particular a hell of a lot of effort has gone into extrapolating from current technologies and social/political developments and imaging how those might have developed in the next 200 years.

Mantic's Deadzone also actually reminds me a bit of earlier 40k, the 'Ork' figures and background especially. Although, of course there is nothing to stop you getting some old Rogue-Trader era miniatures and trying them out with a more recent ruleset!

++EDIT++ As Thirdeye has said above, yes if you want squad-level sci-fi skirmish, 'Tomorrow's war' is probably as 'hard' sci-fi as it comes.

 Pacific wrote:
I've always thought of 40k as being more of Science-fantasy, rather than Science-Fiction, even back in the early days. Although yes, it has definitely gone more in that direction over previous years.

Have you thought about looking outside of the 40k universe? Something like Mercs or Infinity is a lot more 'hard' sci-fi, with the latter in particular a hell of a lot of effort has gone into extrapolating from current technologies and social/political developments and imaging how those might have developed in the next 200 years.

Mantic's Deadzone also actually reminds me a bit of earlier 40k, the 'Ork' figures and background especially. Although, of course there is nothing to stop you getting some old Rogue-Trader era miniatures and trying them out with a more recent ruleset!

++EDIT++ As Thirdeye has said above, yes if you want squad-level sci-fi skirmish, 'Tomorrow's war' is probably as 'hard' sci-fi as it comes.

Well.

To be honest 40k should get away from being stupid looking and go back to its rouge trader routes.

Thirdeye wrote:
 
I would certainly like to see more Hard Sci-Fi vehicles.  I like most of the 40K infantry, except the weapons are too big in many cases, and some other aspects are OTT, but most pretty good, particularly the rank-and-file guys.  But the vehicles, for the most part, kinda silly and stupid.  I would love to see your designs for more hard Sci-Fi vehicles.  I have a few designs of my own I could show you. 

But the biggest problem with 40K is the rules.  They are terrible.  I'm actually working on an alternative rule set for 40k.  They share some aspects with the game "Tomorrow's War", which is a pretty hard Sci-Fi rules-set.  Maybe we could work together? 

Overall, I agree that the figures are fairly well designed.

What I am talking about doing is altering them to produce actual human proportions (even if a little The Incredible Hulk like in their physique), and making slight alterations to the armor so that it would be actually functional (there are plug-ins for Maya that allow this to be tested on a rigged figure, which is what I use as a base for digital sculpting, before 3D printing the masters, to produce the production figures in metal or resin).

And the vehicles would get things like shocks on their road wheels, tracks that did not wrap around the vehicle (making them impossible to repair in the field), weapons that actually fit in the chassis or turret and leave room for their crew (or the machinery that operates them), appropriately designed lifting surfaces for aircraft, appropriate designs for armor and crew placement, appropriate designs and placement for passenger compartments.

Forgeworld nearly does this stuff, and produces models that are light years ahead of GWs.

And... As for rules.... The original Space Marines from Fantasy Games Unlimited (produced five years, at least, before WH40K/Laserburn - Laserburn was Bryan Ansell and Rick Priestly's original Sci-Fi rules, which had basically everything that was in 40K... But I digress)... Space Marines was an AWESOME Sci-Fi set of rules for miniatures, but it came out during a period when Sci-Fi miniatures were just too few and far between, and had yet to capture the imagination. It was designed as a skirmish set of rules, roughly equivalent to 40K in force composition.


And, for larger games, there is Striker, and it's sequel, Striker II. The former is for Company to Battalion sized games, and the latter for Battalion to Division sized games. Both tend to frustrate most gamers, because they use a premise that is based in "Fog of War," where the player takes on the role of his Force CO, and often finds that he just cannot do what he wishes with his troops 100% of the time! due to the constrictions of the Command-and-Control rules, which constrain the behavior of units.

However... If you have designs for vehicles... I would LOVE to see them, and if you could produce them in 3-view, I could probably even produce them pretty easily (Vehicles are dead easy to do digitally).

PM me for an email address.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:
I've always thought of 40k as being more of Science-fantasy, rather than Science-Fiction, even back in the early days. Although yes, it has definitely gone more in that direction over previous years.

Have you thought about looking outside of the 40k universe? Something like Mercs or Infinity is a lot more 'hard' sci-fi, with the latter in particular a hell of a lot of effort has gone into extrapolating from current technologies and social/political developments and imaging how those might have developed in the next 200 years.

Mantic's Deadzone also actually reminds me a bit of earlier 40k, the 'Ork' figures and background especially. Although, of course there is nothing to stop you getting some old Rogue-Trader era miniatures and trying them out with a more recent ruleset!

++EDIT++ As Thirdeye has said above, yes if you want squad-level sci-fi skirmish, 'Tomorrow's war' is probably as 'hard' sci-fi as it comes.

I have seen both Mercs and Infinity.

The whole point, though, is to use the WH40K background and imagery.

For instance, since you mention Orcs...

Instead of the GW style of Orc, use the Tom Meier style of Orc (see his work either from the Ral Partha Fantasy Collector's Series from 1979, or his newer work from the early 00's from Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures.

That style of Orc would make an excellent Hard Sci-Fi styled Space-Orc.

The issue I am asking about is NOT about the rules set (I was among the first couple of dozen people on the planet to play the original 40K, in the early 1980s), but about producing miniatures (I can sculpt fairly well, and did in the 1980s for a short period (I was dead during the 1990s, so did nothing, and have been working doing Architectural Sculpture (when not in school - again) since the early 00's, but the company I was working for changed their business model and left me with a lot of very expensive software to use for my own purposes).

So...

I am trying to see what sorts of models people would go for, and if the genre of 40K would be popular if shifted to a hard Sci-Fi setting (or Harder... at least update it to a Korean war genre, rather than Napoleonics to WWI genre).

MB

What you're saying regarding design is right on the mark.  I would also want ball joints on joints like ankles, shoulders, wrists, for better posing and life-like stance.  A pup-style Shuriken would be nice. 

Here's a link to some stuff I did a long time ago.  It's mostly conversion kits for exiting GW kits.  Navigate the albums on the left.

http://s9.photobucket.com/user/23skdu/library/?sort=2&page=1

There is no better rule set for 40K than the one I'm working on.  No brag, just fact.  A set of awsome minies and kick-ass rules would be a great combo. But guys want to use the stuff they already have too. 

What I like in the 40k aesthetic is the grimdark, which the other popular hard-sci fi games currently seem to lack. I find that this makes their aesthetic, on the whole, unremarkable from one another. They tend to be too generic. Whilst by no means bad models in themselves, I would not instantly be able to tell you whether a model was either Mantic or Infinity for example. It's mostly in the armour where the generic aesthetic begins to creep in- the lots of small plates and straight lines jumps out to me as not particularly original. Compare Mantic Enforcers to Infinity Combined Army or PanOceania for example. Even if the proportions of a SM is a little comical, it is at least distinctive!

So to keep a hard sci-fi 40k model interesting, tone down the comic book style, but don't touch the grimdark!

Thirdeye wrote:
What you're saying regarding design is right on the mark.  I would also want ball joints on joints like ankles, shoulders, wrists, for better posing and life-like stance.  A pup-style Shuriken would be nice. 

Here's a link to some stuff I did a long time ago.  It's mostly conversion kits for exiting GW kits.  Navigate the albums on the left.

http://s9.photobucket.com/user/23skdu/library/?sort=2&page=1

There is no better rule set for 40K than the one I'm working on.  No brag, just fact.  A set of awsome minies and kick-ass rules would be a great combo. But guys want to use the stuff they already have too. 

I can see that we had similar ideas for SM Bikes.

Although mine is Epic 40K, and a grav bike (see attachments).

And... <Bragging Rights> I was the first person to ever run an OGRE Miniature tournament, in Dallas Texas in 1979/80 (Literally the day the miniatures came out). OGRE is another game I want to Retcon, so that the design work is more Modern and Realistic (which, unfortunately, would mean getting rid of the GEVs, since they are not practical as Combat Vehicles, and only as Support Vehicles - and they aren't that fast over land. But they can be easily replaced by Attack Helicopters. .

But I know what you mean about the joints on the 40K figures being clumsy for posing.

Ball joints would not exactly be the solution, but it is on the right track.

For Battle-Dress or Powered Armor suits, a ball joint is in the right direction, and what you want is similar to a ball-joint, but which is limited in its axes of rotation slightly in the tilt and rotate axes (swiveling the foot is only in about a 15º direction, and tilting only about 7º. But with proper knees, that gives WAY more freedom than you would expect (most of the positioning of our feet comes from the rotation of the Tibia and Fibula, and not from the rotation or canting of the Tarsuls around the talus)

But for Shoulder, Hip, and Abdomen, a reversed ball-joint would be perfect..

MB

I think you'd have to completely rip apart the 40k background to make it hard sci fi, depending on how hard you'd want to make the setting. Chaos and Xenos would change dramatically in style, as well as ship designs. It's not a bad thing, hard sci fi inspired 40k sounds awesome,but I don't think it's quite Thunderbolt Mountain inspired.

 God In Action wrote:
What I like in the 40k aesthetic is the grimdark, which the other popular hard-sci fi games currently seem to lack. I find that this makes their aesthetic, on the whole, unremarkable from one another. They tend to be too generic. Whilst by no means bad models in themselves, I would not instantly be able to tell you whether a model was either Mantic or Infinity for example. It's mostly in the armour where the generic aesthetic begins to creep in- the lots of small plates and straight lines jumps out to me as not particularly original. Compare Mantic Enforcers to Infinity Combined Army or PanOceania for example. Even if the proportions of a SM is a little comical, it is at least distinctive!

So to keep a hard sci-fi 40k model interesting, tone down the comic book style, but don't touch the grimdark!

You could still make something like this:



Grim Dark by simply adding smaller details that make it look darker. Its not hard. I mean you can still be aero dynamic and still make it look cool with grmdarkness by adding those small details seen on 40k vechiles.

I think you'd have to completely rip apart the 40k background to make it hard sci fi, depending on how hard you'd want to make the setting. Chaos and Xenos would change dramatically in style, as well as ship designs. It's not a bad thing, hard sci fi inspired 40k sounds awesome,but I don't think it's quite Thunderbolt Mountain inspired.

Not really you just would have to redesign them in such a way that makes sense. But still standing with the grim darkness of the far future. You just have to be careful with the designs and drawing them. We are only used to the current models.

Well it depends on the definition of hard sci fi you're using. If we're going with hard means exploring real scientific concepts against the grim darkness of the far flung future... Then there foes the Warp. Not a bad thing if that's the definition you're going with, just something to consider.

BeAfraid wrote:



I can see that we had similar ideas for SM Bikes.

Although mine is Epic 40K, and a grav bike (see attachments).

And... <Bragging Rights> I was the first person to ever run an OGRE Miniature tournament, in Dallas Texas in 1979/80 (Literally the day the miniatures came out). OGRE is another game I want to Retcon, so that the design work is more Modern and Realistic (which, unfortunately, would mean getting rid of the GEVs, since they are not practical as Combat Vehicles, and only as Support Vehicles - and they aren't that fast over land. But they can be easily replaced by Attack Helicopters.

MB

Those OGRE vehicles were pretty cool. My friend uses them for Epic Eldar vehicles. Who designed them?   

How about some samples of your own work.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Asherian Command wrote:


You could still make something like this:



.

That some cool stuff there. Who's the artist and does he/she have any more examples?

I wouldn't call early 40k "hard sci-fi" either. A bit more grounded on 1970s-80s euro comic book aesthetics, perhaps. More like Moebius and Chris Foss' concepts for Jodorowski's Dune, less like Blanche and Goodwin's unique "Hyeronimus Bosch meets Enki Bilal" take on sci-fi of the 1990s-2000s, but certainly not "hard" either way.

I would definitely be interested in some more "realistic" designs. More grit, less gothic. Space marines are an obvious choice, but I'd also like to see your take on some xenos, Eldar in particular.

A hard science fiction version of the Eldar would simply attempt to explain their technology and go more into their failed attempts to prevent their race from dying.

40k is Science Fantasy, and I hope it stays that way. I'd have no interest in "hard sci-fi" 40k; there are plenty of other games that already exist to cover that genre.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

BeAfraid wrote:


Instead of the GW style of Orc, use the Tom Meier style of Orc (see his work either from the Ral Partha Fantasy Collector's Series from 1979, or his newer work from the early 00's from Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures.

That style of Orc would make an excellent Hard Sci-Fi styled Space-Orc.

Those Orcs, IMO, look terrible, and I'm having trouble understanding how they in any way, shape, or form are at reminiscent of a "hard sci fi" Orc.

I mean, if you can really even have a "hard sci fi" orc, I imagine it would look more like this:

 Asherian Command wrote:

 God In Action wrote:
What I like in the 40k aesthetic is the grimdark, which the other popular hard-sci fi games currently seem to lack. I find that this makes their aesthetic, on the whole, unremarkable from one another. They tend to be too generic. Whilst by no means bad models in themselves, I would not instantly be able to tell you whether a model was either Mantic or Infinity for example. It's mostly in the armour where the generic aesthetic begins to creep in- the lots of small plates and straight lines jumps out to me as not particularly original. Compare Mantic Enforcers to Infinity Combined Army or PanOceania for example. Even if the proportions of a SM is a little comical, it is at least distinctive!

So to keep a hard sci-fi 40k model interesting, tone down the comic book style, but don't touch the grimdark!

You could still make something like this:

I could totally make something like that.... and that is pretty much what I had in mind for some of the forces.

Grim Dark by simply adding smaller details that make it look darker. Its not hard. I mean you can still be aero dynamic and still make it look cool with grmdarkness by adding those small details seen on 40k vechiles.

I think you'd have to completely rip apart the 40k background to make it hard sci fi, depending on how hard you'd want to make the setting. Chaos and Xenos would change dramatically in style, as well as ship designs. It's not a bad thing, hard sci fi inspired 40k sounds awesome,but I don't think it's quite Thunderbolt Mountain inspired.

Not really you just would have to redesign them in such a way that makes sense. But still standing with the grim darkness of the far future. You just have to be careful with the designs and drawing them. We are only used to the current models.

Exactly....

MB

I think hard sci fi needs to be defined if this thread is totally achieve much. Hard sci fi has a particular meaning, focusing on scientific and technical accuracy based upon current understanding, which drastically alters the scope of 40k. A lot of the Fantasy elements disappear. It's not simply an aesthetic change, it's a background one as well. And background will drive aesthetic. It sounds like a fun exercise, but to keep much of 40k the same I think the best that can be achieved is basically pop sci fi... Probably Mass Effect esque.

The issue is in Hard Sci-fi it would no longer be 40K, the setting we know and love is built around space fantasy and if you went to hard, "future science" you'd rip away so much of the setting that you might aswell be starting from scratch.

 Asherian Command wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I've always thought of 40k as being more of Science-fantasy, rather than Science-Fiction, even back in the early days. Although yes, it has definitely gone more in that direction over previous years.

Have you thought about looking outside of the 40k universe? Something like Mercs or Infinity is a lot more 'hard' sci-fi, with the latter in particular a hell of a lot of effort has gone into extrapolating from current technologies and social/political developments and imaging how those might have developed in the next 200 years.

Mantic's Deadzone also actually reminds me a bit of earlier 40k, the 'Ork' figures and background especially. Although, of course there is nothing to stop you getting some old Rogue-Trader era miniatures and trying them out with a more recent ruleset!

++EDIT++ As Thirdeye has said above, yes if you want squad-level sci-fi skirmish, 'Tomorrow's war' is probably as 'hard' sci-fi as it comes.

Well.

To be honest 40k should get away from being stupid looking and go back to its rouge trader routes.

Yes, it should go back to its "rouge" trader "routes". definitely. what does that mean though ?

Rick Priestly is busy working on a hard sci-fi game at this very minute, have a look!

http://www.warlordgames.com/gates-of-antares/

Gates of Antares isn't hard sci fi either. The closest thing I think is either the Ad Astra spaceship combat games, or Tomorrow's War.

When most people thing "Hard Sci-Fi," they tend to be trapped into thinking that this only applies to the a cosmology of the universe in which we currently inhabit.

But really the term just means "Is based upon a foundation of principles, theory, and law, which provide for a consistent ontology for the world: It operates by knowable, consistent rules."

While it is true that 40K could not be a "Hard Sci-Fi" in this universe, it could be if one defined its own universe.

And, before anyone says "This is already what 40K has: It's own Universe."

That is technically true, but factually false as it applies to the definition.

Currently 40K is built upon a collection of Kludges: one-time or one-use "rules" that apply to nothing else.

It has no consistent and uniform rules that apply to everything, everywhere.

If one were to posit some sort of field, associated with the Warp, which provided a dualistic universe (one where Cartesean Dualism, or some other form of Property Dualism was true), then one could create a "Hard Sci-Fi" universe for 40K that was consistent with much of what we know about it, but where the look and design elements were more realistic.

This might mean that some troops still had things like purity seals. After all, if one posits that property dualism is true, then "Soul stuff" is just another physical element of this universe, and it can be stored, manipulated, or used to create effects just like we might use sodium or lithium ions as a means to generate power and do work.

Only in the case of the "soul stuff," the energy it created to do work would operate on the world with rules that were different than Newtonian and Einsteinian Physics, but still just as consistent (and this "Soul Stuff" might even alter the rules of Newtonian or Einsteinian Physics in knowable and consistent ways).

THAT would be just ONE possibility for creating a "Hard Sci-Fi" version of 40K.

Others exist as well.

And, we might not even need a universe where Property Dualism is true, given some of the advances we are making in the Neurosciences, and Nanotechnologies.

Things like Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation have given us the ability to alter someone's consciousness, and even their thoughts.

fMRI has allowed us to "read" a person's mind, and to tell what a person is going to do up to. ¼ minute before that person is even aware that they are going to do something.

Eventually, Nanotechnologies will allow us to literally "Get inside someone's head," and to influence every aspect of their brain (thus either turning them into a superman, or a zombie - or someplace in between... To say nothing of the other things possible).

Given these advances, we could easily imagine a universe in which a highly developed Nanotechnology existed, and the Nanites self-replicate. The culture that developed this Nanotechnology collapsed, leaving only a few people able to interact with the Nanites, but with the nanotechnology still pervading space-time.

This could give rise to a religious order that knows how to control basic functions of the nanotechnology, or even how to augment people with it on a specific, pre-programmed level.

But they do not understand at all what the technology is, other than doing specific things obtains specific results.

Like I said.....

LOTS of possibilities.

That's still not hard sci fi. You basically want a consistent universe, which is something every 40k fan, probably every fictional series fan, dreams of.

Your ideas are interesting. Nanotechnology was a large part to make the 40k universe hard sci fi on rpg.net. Interesting thread accessible with a quick Google. There are many possibilities, the next massive discovery could be made today in someone's garage. However using the word nanotech instead of magic doesn't work change much. We're looking at hard fantasy, where the magic has repeatable, verifiable results, first example off the top of my head is the cosmere setting developed by Brandon Sanderson.

It would be interesting to explore 40k through both the hard sci fi and fantasy lenses.

Zond wrote:
That's still not hard sci fi. You basically want a consistent universe, which is something every 40k fan, probably every fictional series fan, dreams of.

Your ideas are interesting. Nanotechnology was a large part to make the 40k universe hard sci fi on rpg.net. Interesting thread accessible with a quick Google. There are many possibilities, the next massive discovery could be made today in someone's garage. However using the word nanotech instead of magic doesn't work change much. We're looking at hard fantasy, where the magic has repeatable, verifiable results, first example off the top of my head is the cosmere setting developed by Brandon Sanderson.

It would be interesting to explore 40k through both the hard sci fi and fantasy lenses.

I guess that is a definitional issue, but yes.... Consistency is important, and hugely lacking in 40K. As is a basic justification for most of the mechanics (such as why the Scientific Method fails so often when even a Religious Hierarchy to suppress it would fail to do so, because they would be dependent upon that method to suppress that method).

I remember talking to Bryan Ansell about the 40K universe at the WorldCon in Brighton in 1985, and he said that he envisioned the 40K Empire as a sort of longer lasting version of the Foundation, during it's period immediately after the first Seldon Crisis.

While that makes for a compelling setting, it ignores what happened with that religious hierarchy after only a few hundred years:

People figured out it wasn't magic and Science was re-discovered despite the attempts of the Religious Hierarchy to suppress that knowledge.

Having studied the sciences quite a bit (Cybernetics and Cognitive Sciences, UCLA), I found it very hard to imagine a world or universe in which a population consistently failed to gain the upper hand against a scientifically backwards population, no matter how outnumbered).

There are ways to fix that problem, but not many that will last 10,000 years.

Still.... Yes... A consistent and believable universe would be preferred.

MB.