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This is coming from a post I saw on Facebook. I don't want to dog pile the person who posted it and gak up their notifications but it's a personal bugbear with me so I need to rant.

Basically the gist of the post was "It's 40k, who needs realism." Well the answer is everyone. 40k being a fictional setting does not excuse it from ignoring the natural laws of the world its set in (in this case our own world but in the future).
You can bend the rules with magic and SCIENCE! but you still need rules in place because otherwise there is no limits and you end up with a problem that shonen manga like Dragonball Z has where everyone is constantly powering up higher and higher and things become predictable and nothing has any meaning. You don't see space marines exceeding their limits and going Super Geneseed 3 because they're super angry. They're as strong as they are and they have to operate within that. You don't just have them punching planets to death because that would be silly.

Keeping your setting grounded and believable (by which I mean you don't read something and go "well thats bs") requires that you adhere to what makes that particular setting "realistic" so that it remains consistent. Even if you have an emotion dimension where the rules of reality don't apply is still in it's own way a facet of the realism im the setting because the warp has its own defined rules.

If you start saying stuff like "lol it doesn't matter its a game with space supermen fighting magical daemons" (which i've seen on several forums including this one as a counter point when discussing sculpts and such) then you remove any sort of framework on how the setting works and leave the game open to whatever dumb crap people can think up. Want to have a loyalist Primaris Lt. mounted on the back of a genestealer infected Bloodthirster armed with a volcano cannon who works for the necrons? Sure, why not? It's not like 40k is a realistic setting right?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this honestly. Probably that just because a setting is fantastical does not mean that you have carte blanche to invent whatever nonsense you want. Most good settings and writers know this. Unless it's Age Of Sigmar as that seems specifically designed for the designers to make up whatever gak they want.

40k has always worked best when they had keep the setting grounded within itself.
With limits and rules that the setting had follow.

I think it’s why the setting is such a joke now. It’s more bad super hero movie than 40k really should feel.
And honestly why space marines are so lame now in the modern setting. There is allways a bigger better space marine that can take what ever is out there is the feeling I get.

The setting just feels like the people running it, really do not understand it well. They cannot let it flow natural and they do not have the understanding to subvert it’s own tropes.
So they leave it up to nostalgia to keep it going.

 Sim-Life wrote:
This is coming from a post I saw on Facebook. I don't want to dog pile the person who posted it and gak up their notifications but it's a personal bugbear with me so I need to rant.

Basically the gist of the post was "It's 40k, who needs realism." Well the answer is everyone. 40k being a fictional setting does not excuse it from ignoring the natural laws of the world its set in (in this case our own world but in the future).
You can bend the rules with magic and SCIENCE! but you still need rules in place because otherwise there is no limits and you end up with a problem that shonen manga like Dragonball Z has where everyone is constantly powering up higher and higher and things become predictable and nothing has any meaning. You don't see space marines exceeding their limits and going Super Geneseed 3 because they're super angry. They're as strong as they are and they have to operate within that. You don't just have them punching planets to death because that would be silly.

Keeping your setting grounded and believable (by which I mean you don't read something and go "well thats bs") requires that you adhere to what makes that particular setting "realistic" so that it remains consistent. Even if you have an emotion dimension where the rules of reality don't apply is still in it's own way a facet of the realism im the setting because the warp has its own defined rules.

If you start saying stuff like "lol it doesn't matter its a game with space supermen fighting magical daemons" (which i've seen on several forums including this one as a counter point when discussing sculpts and such) then you remove any sort of framework on how the setting works and leave the game open to whatever dumb crap people can think up. Want to have a loyalist Primaris Lt. mounted on the back of a genestealer infected Bloodthirster armed with a volcano cannon who works for the necrons? Sure, why not? It's not like 40k is a realistic setting right?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this honestly. Probably that just because a setting is fantastical does not mean that you have carte blanche to invent whatever nonsense you want. Most good settings and writers know this. Unless it's Age Of Sigmar as that seems specifically designed for the designers to make up whatever gak they want.

Without seeing the original post, I want to make a case against "realism," specifically the Ultra-realism demands that I've seen in recent years on this forum and others, especially in terms of Imperial model design. For someone like myself, who really really enjoys the classic marine, Land Raider, Rhino, Drop Pod, etc., even if they are not super realistic (such as flat side armour, for instance), the demand for models to be "uber-realistic and look like they can actually function," has taken something away from that aesthetic that attracted me to the faction in the first place.

Obviously, aesthetic differences are personal preference, but so then, is realism. You make a solid case for not being DBZ levels of going "Super Mega Ultra Emperor-Saiyen Level Omega" in time of ultimate crisis. But that is only one extreme example. The argument can be had down to the micro-level details such as - "Space Marines are a futuristic super-soldier army, they should not be wearing bright colours and waving swords" vs the classic depiction as Knights in Space with Guns and Swords. Or even the macro-level details - "Titans literally cannot work by physics so should be retconned away in favour of high-altitude strategic bombers! Its more realistic."

While your extreme example of DBZ 40k is solid, and impossible to argue against, "Its 40k, who needs realism?" sums up a lot of the setting. As mentioned, iconic groups like Titans, are staples of the setting that breathe unique character into the setting, and were created on the basis of "because its cool." Again, there is a limit to that, but in certain cases, there is also precedent for one-off Super-Saiyan Ultimate type gak. Like, for example, a half-remembered story in my head about a Salamanders psyker (Alpha+ level) flying off into space and bisecting a ship with a mental sword? Fricking crazy! But again, not outside the "realistic" relevant to the rules of Alpha+ psykers, who are more or less Gods.

On that note, realism is relevant to the viewer. Is it "realistic enough" to have super soldiers like the Space Marines but have them die like chumps in Starship Troopers or Aliens, despite all their advanced training, gear and biology? Or is simple putting a loose cap on their power (They can potentially shrug off an autocannon hit but a lascannon will still vaporise them?) as the Black Library writers do, with only the most absurd feats being taken off the table, such as backflipping Terminators and Tau beating an Ork in hand-to-hand? Maybe even to some, Space Marines or Tau or Orks themselves are too unrealistic entirely, and should be scrapped or radically overhauled to make them more realistic, less superhero, less Gundam, less football-hooligan and changed into grim, gritty generic monsters?

Its a difficult question but I don't think it can be answered by simply saying "realism everywhere." There does need to be that element of being able to invent new aspects, new factions, new abilities, new threats, to keep the setting fresh. Some of the stuff already in 40k is bonkers enough that the majority of things would be fine. The Hrud, for example, a species that can accelerate time to the point that a human would be a skeleton before he even got close to hitting it. Is it too hard to stretch and say "Alien race A is human-like but has muscle mass and density per cubic centimetre that is far more efficient that humans. They can output a force nearly 30 times what a given human can exert, and manipulate gravitons to allow them to fly.. Worse, when under life-threatening stress, they can tap into the Warp to increase their powers exponentially, manifesting a fiery aura. There seems to be no limit to how many times they can do this, able to call upon multiple levels of this power to reach a godlike status."

There, DBZ, using power of the Warp, to fit in the rules of 40k.

Realism in a lot of fictional settings often takes a secondary role to the themes and ideas that the writers want to portray. That's as much the case in "literary fiction" where the setting is ostensibly the real world as it is in "genre" fiction. Whether that's good of bad is entirely a matter of readers' opinions.

A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

Maybe in our world giant energy hammers don't make any sense and why hit a tank with a sword when you can fire something much more powerfull. But in Warhammer 40k those things are supposed to work, to be tactically usefull and even more powerfull than many ranged weaponry. Of course based in the premise than this is basically Science Fantasy, and that it looks cool. But thats still being internally consistent.

The only things I have seen that aren't internally consistent in recent years are the advances of the setting because many of them were based around retcons. But thats abound to happen in any commite and multinational driven fictional universe. Warcraft, Star Wars, Super Heroes universes, Final Fantasy, no one is safe.

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

This - the setting should be true to itself. It should clearly establish the rules by which its universe functions and then aim to preserve those elements.

Also lets not forget that in any work the author/director/artist focuses the view and attention of the beholder in certain directions. These on their own can present a skewed view of the world setting that doesn't encompass everything that is to be known of that world and setting. They show enough for it to retain internal consistency and enough to make it work, but they aren't going to go into the full physics and chemistry of the setting. Nor into every minutia of background detail - its just too much.

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

Exalted and /thread.

I enjoy realism in the way characters act, the way that they react, and the way that they think and feel.

When it comes to broader strokes, like science and military tech, I'm not quite as picky. So long as an author keeps their 'rules' consistent within their own works and consistent with any works they are directly connected to (like The Emperor's Gift and the Abnett works it connects to, f'rex), I'm generally okay with it.

The setting already requires some pretty huge suspension of disbelief, given the inherent magical nature of it, plus the numerous science-defying conceits which are baked into the foundations of the franchise, plus decades worth of material which has been overtly retconned or quietly contradicted and forgotten about.

So for me personally? When I'm reading Black Library material I'm more interested in identifiable characters and interesting arcs to them, and I try not to get hung up on the set dressing too much.

 Nerak wrote:

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

Exalted and /thread.

Agreed.

40K is not, and has never been, a 'realistic' sci-fi setting. It is not "our reality but in the future". Our reality does not have a wacky magical parallel twin universe made of 'emotions' that reflects back and amplifies the worst impulses of people in the 'real' world. Nor does it have an immortal wizard secretly guiding human history. Nor have human genetics been mucked about with by ancient aliens to make us eventually evolve into wizards / anti-wizards. The mentally ill are not being whispered to by literal daemons from the wacky physics-defying parallel universe.

The occasional references in the fluff to characters and events from 'our' history are just meant to be a joke.

40K was originally meant to be a wider fantasy universe (with cheesy 1980s pop-sci-fi elements) in which the WHFB world could exist. It's evolved beyond those origins, but the idea that it was ever meant to be grounded in anything like the real world is nonsense.

As far as social science it seems very realistic most of the time. The science of a fictional world has to be logical within the world it exists. If we are told something works in a certain way, then it should work like that. Having stuff of the same kind work different depending on who writes a book or story breaks immersion really fast.

 Duskweaver wrote:

 Nerak wrote:

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

Exalted and /thread.

Agreed.

40K is not, and has never been, a 'realistic' sci-fi setting. It is not "our reality but in the future". Our reality does not have a wacky magical parallel twin universe made of 'emotions' that reflects back and amplifies the worst impulses of people in the 'real' world. Nor does it have an immortal wizard secretly guiding human history. Nor have human genetics been mucked about with by ancient aliens to make us eventually evolve into wizards / anti-wizards. The mentally ill are not being whispered to by literal daemons from the wacky physics-defying parallel universe.

The occasional references in the fluff to characters and events from 'our' history are just meant to be a joke.

40K was originally meant to be a wider fantasy universe (with cheesy 1980s pop-sci-fi elements) in which the WHFB world could exist. It's evolved beyond those origins, but the idea that it was ever meant to be grounded in anything like the real world is nonsense.

Or DOES it???

Our reality does not have a wacky magical parallel twin universe made of 'emotions' that reflects back and amplifies the worst impulses of people in the 'real' world.

What is social media?

Karol wrote:

Our reality does not have a wacky magical parallel twin universe made of 'emotions' that reflects back and amplifies the worst impulses of people in the 'real' world.

What is social media?

This is my favorite post you've ever made.

To the subject of the OP:

"realism" in any fictional setting is objective, but it is important that it EXISTS, the reader UNDERSTANDS what the rules are, and that the setting STICKS TO THOSE RULES.

When those rules are broken, they need to be broken either rarely, or with very strong reasons for doing so. Otherwise, the audience will not follow and not be able to figure the new rules out, and you will risk disengaging the audience.

In my eyes, this "establish the rules" is most important in three genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror, because you don't have the standard rules of "base reality" to fall back on, much of the time. In a horror franchise, the "rules of the monster" are probably the most important aspect of the sucess of the franchise. You need to establish them as organically and as quickly as possible and you need to SERIOUSLY LIMIT the amount of times your monster breaks those rules. That is how you create an iconic horror character. Freddy Kreuger can get you if you go to sleep. The Predator seeks out strong quarry because he's a futuristic big game hunter and will pass by the weak and injured. It's best if your monsters communicate what their rules are just by their appearance - 40k does this super duper well in their Chaos creature designs IMO. Look at the daemons of the four chaos gods, you can probably figure out what their shticks are at a glance.

In Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the importance of rules shifts to the setting, and especially to each aspect of the setting that deviates from the reality we know. In Star Wars, it was not important to explain the laser guns and aliens and space ships, because people had seen enough science fiction at that point to be familiar and could just be presented those things as if they were normal and commonplace, and they were accepted. What needed establishing was the unique aspect: The Force. it was vitally important that Obi-Wan Kenobi exist in star wars to slowly establish and explain the Force, the Jedi Knights, how it worked and what it was used for.

In 40k, the two aspects that to me are the most important are: 1) What is the warp, how does it work, why is it a threat, and 2) If this is super duper far in the future, why does it feel so low-tech?

You have to establish, and stick to, the idea that the imperium is essentially a technological dark age. This is one reason why primaris stick in my craw so much. SO MUCH OF THE SETTING is grounded on the fact that the imperium has technology, but it's in the service of a fearful, superstitious regime.

Right now I"m painting a huge commission of the new sector imperialis terrain, and I have to say, it captures that aspect of the setting so perfectly. There are these massive, imposing statues, and you can see they're rigged up on the back with wiring, lighting, and speakers, as if the statues are supposed to have glowing eyes and booming voices to command the populace of the world. Where you have one of the statues crumbled and broken, the skeletal understructure is exposed and you can see the fancy gilded parts are just plated on to a cheap underwiring, and the face is rigged up with lights and technological artifice. You look at those details, and you instantly "get it", you know what they're for and you know what they indicate about the people that built them.

That's the aspect of 40k that made me fall in love with it: That showing without telling, the subtle little touches that draw you into the setting.

One of the many things i lik about 40k was while its not realistic, its grounded juuuuuust enough, and/or based on enough real world aspects that you could imagine it potentially being possible 20,000-40,000 years + in the future.

Like imagine trying to explain or showing an assault rifle to a caveman. Its not so crazy to think some kind of bolter or lasgun is possible in another 30,000 years or so. Or how we have prototype exo suits now and kevlar, is something like power armour that crazy to imagine being around in again, 30,000+ years? Cyclonic torpedoes that destroy planets? Well we have nukes now, so its not a massive stretch this think we could invent something worse.

So while 40k is insane, OP, fantastically grimdark and over the top, its key is that the suspension of disbelief isn't that hard, because the stuff in it is somewhat recognisable. There are somethings that dont fit that pattern, like the warp for example. But isnt that just a representation of Hell from many religious books? Angels, demons etc are all concepts we are familiar with regardless of our beliefs.

I think the key part to this realism vs fantasy thing boils down to a single word - relatability.

How easily are we able to relate to the world that is being created? The easier we relate to that world, the easier we accept the things that don't make sense.

As another has said, you consistently bend or break the rules defined by the setting, the less people can relate to it and the less they will accept that universe.

It doesn't mean everything needs to be hyper-realistic, just that they follow their own rules for their world and stay consistent.

Every universe has to have rules, this is internal consistency, so even though 40k has gods, magic and ultra tech, it still has the basic rules of gravity, time etc. These rules can be bent or broken in very specific circumstances but the majority of the time they must be followed, otherwise you get a universe that does not make any sense, current 40k is breaking a lot of these rules with the primaris marines and it's a bit jarring.

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

That sums it up really well.

Maybe it's because 40k looks like it's sci-fi that some people expect it to be realistic? I can understand why they'd be disappointed, since almost nothing in this universe holds on if you really look into the science behind it.

In the end, 40k is quite like Star Wars: fantasy in space with some pulp sci-fi elements. Whether it's a lightsaber or a power fist, you're not supposed to care about how it really works, just what it can and can't do. These can cut through armor plating. They can't shoot fireballs. Not because there's any "science problem" with shooting fireballs, but because it'd be bull

Deadshot wrote:Or DOES it???

No.

The Laws of Thermodynamics, as we know them in our reality, are not compatible with the existence of the Warp as portrayed in 40K. And we would absolutely have noticed by now if the Laws of Thermodynamics were wrong.

Karol wrote:What is social media?

OK, fair point.

You cannot use it as a source of infinite energy to do anything useful like manipulate people into appointing you the most powerful man on Earth or anything like that, though...



Oh crap.

 Sim-Life wrote:
(in this case our own world but in the future)

Last time i checked we didnt have psykers or the warp.

Its fine for some aspects to be grounded in realism, it makes for good stories. but so can fantasy. it depends all depends on the person telling the story. if talking about game mechanics some things need to be gutted to make a function "game" otherwise sure you can make a Simulation but its not for everyone.

 Galas wrote:
A speculative fantasy universe doesn't needs realism, it needs internal consistence.

I think that the word people are looking for is 'verisimilitude,' or simplified above, 'internal consistency.'

To reference an argument from a long time ago, a BFG player was complaining that since starships have guns on both sides, they should be able to roll over and fire all their guns on one flank. When countered with, 'capital ships in 40K are big, ponderous, massive vehicles, usually kilometers in scale and millions of tons in mass. Expecting one to do a barrel roll fast enough to shoot like that isn't realistic.' the response was, '40K isn't realistic,' like that was some sort of clever retort.

Star Trek and Dragonball Z are both fictional, but that doesn't mean that having Picard and Riker suddenly start leaping around, charging their ki, and shooting energy balls wouldn't be 'wtf' level of unrealistic, because it directly contradicts Star Trek's internal consistency of what is possible and what characters can do on all sorts of levels.

 Duskweaver wrote:

Deadshot wrote:Or DOES it???

No.

The Laws of Thermodynamics, as we know them in our reality, are not compatible with the existence of the Warp as portrayed in 40K. And we would absolutely have noticed by now if the Laws of Thermodynamics were wrong.

Karol wrote:What is social media?

OK, fair point.

You cannot use it as a source of infinite energy to do anything useful like manipulate people into appointing you the most powerful man on Earth or anything like that, though...



Oh crap.

"As we know them in our reality."

Pur scientific laws function a certain way, based on one specific set of knowledge that we have gathered. Its entirely possible, in theory, that the Warp exists. Its highly unlikely, almost impossible, but not impossible. There is always the tiniest sliver of possibility that curret science is wrong, or that we are missing a key piece of information.

Verisimilitude is good, but I really think a lot of people miss (somehow, I don't know how it is possible) that 40K is supposed to be surreal anachronistic mess, where style will always triumph over realism. Some internal consistency is good, but crying about the ground clearance of a Leman Russ tank or a heroic marine officer not wearing a helmet is just missing the point.

Prefering a model to wear a helmet is crying about it apparently, nice

 Bobthehero wrote:
Prefering a model to wear a helmet is crying about it apparently, nice

Just glue the fething helmet on. No need to have a fit every time they release a unhelmeted model, as this happens like at least once a month.

 Crimson wrote:
Verisimilitude is good, but I really think a lot of people miss (somehow, I don't know how it is possible) that 40K is supposed to be surreal anachronistic mess, where style will always triumph over realism. Some internal consistency is good, but crying about the ground clearance of a Leman Russ tank or a heroic marine officer not wearing a helmet is just missing the point.

I think there is a certain point where everything becomes subjective.

Sure, 40k is an intensely unrealistic setting and sure, style does triumph over substance, but I can also sometimes understand the complaints when you get something like, for example, the new primaris captain guy.

His fluff is like "he's the sneakiest sneaker to ever sneak, no enemy has ever heard his stealthy approach and lived!"

and they modeled him standing straight up, pointing, and bellowing at the top of his lungs.

My initial gut reaction to that, no matter what universe we're talking about, is always going to be "oh. That's a stupid thing." He conveys about as much subterfuge and stealth as your average pompous imperial guard officer with his bright heraldry, puffed out chest and "having toilet difficulties" facial expression.

That's not a point where you're obviously breaking the rules of internal consistency in the setting, but it's also not a point where you're doing yourself any favors getting your audience to suspend their disbelief.

It's all subjective, at that point. And at that point, it's also disingenuous for either party to be bringing up the "rules of the setting" because there's just not any real justification that either party is in the right or in the wrong. You're just arguing opinion. In mine, I think they brilliantly captured the essence of a sneaky primaris marine with the librarian, and utterly and hilariously flubbed that concept with the captain. Others are free to think that the captain fits in perfectly with the 40k setting. it only becomes dishonest when one of the two of us starts trying to argue that the other is objectively wrong.

 Sim-Life wrote:
This is coming from a post I saw on Facebook. I don't want to dog pile the person who posted it and gak up their notifications but it's a personal bugbear with me so I need to rant.

Basically the gist of the post was "It's 40k, who needs realism." Well the answer is everyone. 40k being a fictional setting does not excuse it from ignoring the natural laws of the world its set in (in this case our own world but in the future).
You can bend the rules with magic and SCIENCE! but you still need rules in place because otherwise there is no limits and you end up with a problem that shonen manga like Dragonball Z has where everyone is constantly powering up higher and higher and things become predictable and nothing has any meaning. You don't see space marines exceeding their limits and going Super Geneseed 3 because they're super angry. They're as strong as they are and they have to operate within that. You don't just have them punching planets to death because that would be silly.

Keeping your setting grounded and believable (by which I mean you don't read something and go "well thats bs") requires that you adhere to what makes that particular setting "realistic" so that it remains consistent. Even if you have an emotion dimension where the rules of reality don't apply is still in it's own way a facet of the realism im the setting because the warp has its own defined rules.

If you start saying stuff like "lol it doesn't matter its a game with space supermen fighting magical daemons" (which i've seen on several forums including this one as a counter point when discussing sculpts and such) then you remove any sort of framework on how the setting works and leave the game open to whatever dumb crap people can think up. Want to have a loyalist Primaris Lt. mounted on the back of a genestealer infected Bloodthirster armed with a volcano cannon who works for the necrons? Sure, why not? It's not like 40k is a realistic setting right?

I'm not sure where I'm going with this honestly. Probably that just because a setting is fantastical does not mean that you have carte blanche to invent whatever nonsense you want. Most good settings and writers know this. Unless it's Age Of Sigmar as that seems specifically designed for the designers to make up whatever gak they want.

It's a game. A pastime for people to throw their money at, have a few laughs and spark a hobby. You absolutely can put Suriken guns on a Grey Knight, who is mounted on a custodian jet bike, paint it up and play with it. You may not find many opponents that will accept it, but you will find some and that's perfectly fine. In the past two weeks I've seen more community members getting angry because some sect of the community at large doesn't want to play the game the way they want them to than I can ever remember seeing since I started. To people who want more, there are a whole host of other miniature games out there in the world. Go exploring, have fun and find your place. These constant whine fests are getting really old, and I've already axed two FB 40K community groups today because I'm sick to death of all the crying and self righteous moaning about Primaris or whatever. I'm honestly hoping their will be an exodus from 40K to other systems soon so that the rest of us can roll in peace.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson wrote:

 Bobthehero wrote:
Prefering a model to wear a helmet is crying about it apparently, nice

Just glue the fething helmet on. No need to have a fit every time they release a unhelmeted model, as this happens like at least once a month.

Here here. The helments from the mini marines work perfectly for this, as do shoulder pauldrons. This complaint has been the worst since Shadowspear was fully revealed. I'm so sick of hearing about it when there is a 100% solution to the issue for those who think it is an issue.

It's the lore that means the most to me in this hobby and I'd say 8/10 of us will relate.

Macabre Galatic wrote:
It's the lore that means the most to me in this hobby and I'd say 8/10 of us will relate.

Personally an aesthetics man my self. if it looks cool il probably get it.

the_scotsman wrote:
You're just arguing opinion. In mine, I think they brilliantly captured the essence of a sneaky primaris marine with the librarian, and utterly and hilariously flubbed that concept with the captain. Others are free to think that the captain fits in perfectly with the 40k setting. it only becomes dishonest when one of the two of us starts trying to argue that the other is objectively wrong.

Not that I really care one way or the other. The over-the-top nature of 40K is one of the things I like about it. So, if it's realistic, great. If it's not realistic, great. I'd rather just have fun. That said, the Librarian may look very stealthy... but he's holding a very brightly shining power sword while using his psyker power. I have a feeling that those power swords hum, buzz, or crackle which would give away his location audibly. And, it'd be like holding up a flare when trying to hide in darkness. Again, it's over the top, so it doesn't really matter. But, the Librarian definitely isn't modeled as being sneaky. Had his sword been turned off and sheathed, then yes! But, not with it out and glowing.

SG

 ServiceGames wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
You're just arguing opinion. In mine, I think they brilliantly captured the essence of a sneaky primaris marine with the librarian, and utterly and hilariously flubbed that concept with the captain. Others are free to think that the captain fits in perfectly with the 40k setting. it only becomes dishonest when one of the two of us starts trying to argue that the other is objectively wrong.

Not that I really care one way or the other. The over-the-top nature of 40K is one of the things I like about it. So, if it's realistic, great. If it's not realistic, great. I'd rather just have fun. That said, the Librarian may look very stealthy... but he's holding a very brightly shining power sword while using his psyker power. I have a feeling that those power swords hum, buzz, or crackle which would give away his location audibly. And, it'd be like holding up a flare when trying to hide in darkness. Again, it's over the top, so it doesn't really matter. But, the Librarian definitely isn't modeled as being sneaky. Had his sword been turned off and sheathed, then yes! But, not with it out and glowing.

SG

Then again, the game the models are in usually represents just the most heated skirmish clash of the forces involved, where the psychic ninjacommando is in full surprise murder mode. He might have been very sneaky half an hour ago and the month before that, but now the action starts and the swords get drawn.