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so one of the intersting things I keep thinking about is how people complain the story isn't grimdark enough, only to be countered by people saying there needs to be some hope for the grimdark to be grim and dark.

How much hope do you like in your 40k? No right or wrong answers, just personal oppinion

A glimmer? Like it should be possible to win overall, but it’s just out of reach. But individual heroes can have solid resounding wins. Tactical victories, even if the strategic situation is bad.

Not every win needs to be a pyric victory. You can run abound and put out fires. Get a little piece of the universe settled down. Of course while you were working on that, 2 more popped up. But you did win that one fight.

It’s just that there are always more, hence the grim dark.

A slant I find interesting about the 40K setting is the idea that the Imperium is a dominant force in spite of its own incompetence. Especially considering that its enemies are too busy fighting each other / themselves to really threaten the Imperium.

The idea that the Imperium is constantly at the brink of collapse and every Imperium victory is a pyrrhic victory has got boring over the years.

So yeah, I guess I like the idea that the "good guys" are doing well, which is sort of Hope.

Eh.

I like my protagonists and antagonists to have hope - that perhaps, one day, their grand plan will come to fruition and Unlimited Rice Pudding forevermore.

But the setting as a whole must be nihilistic to be 40K. We the players, with near god like knowledge of the ins and outs know nobody is really gonna win this. Because it’s a near eternal stalemate.

The Imperium is fighting on too many fronts to bring its colossal forces to bear properly. Orks are too anarchic. Eldar too prone to heavy losses. Tyranids are incredibly slow moving. Necrons? Well their leaders are mostly insane and so on.

But, that individual Guardsman, Boy or Guardian or what have you? They must have some degree of hope they’re gonna survive and prosper from this horror. Exactly what they hope for won’t be the same - the Ork is arguably just as happy to get perished in a fight than win a fight and get ‘Arder as a result.

But the hope of total victory and galactic dominance must exist.

This is why I’ve enjoyed Guilliman’s return. The Emperor’s Shining Son. One of the original architects of the Imperium as it is. The supreme Statesman and capable of besting pretty much anything in the universe one on one - yet he’s utterly powerless to even begin sorting out the rot of the Imperium. He of all the Primarchs came closest to fulfilling the intent of the Great Crusade, with the 500 worlds of Ultramar serving as an example of just what might’ve been. And he embraced The Imperial Truth. He returns a few thousand years later, to find his father’s works cast down and mankind wriggling about in the detritus by its own greed and ignorance. Yet he carries on. He won’t, arguably can’t, do anything else. He’s back to being a tool of war, despite his many, many other manifest talents.

I think of the 40K galaxy as analogous to global nature, just zoomed out to macro level. There are no winners or losers, its an endless jungle where there is constant struggle for survival. the success of one species is at the detriment of others. But it tends to even itself out over time.

Can we hope to best the forces of nature and end the cycle? I think not. So, what is "hope" now?

Hope, hmm, not sure I need hope in 40K. I just want the Imperium to be properly evil and because of that strengthen its enemies. Is there hope for humanity in 40K? Not under the Imperium. Maybe under the Tau. Maybe as Chaos Renegades for a short time. Maybe on a feral world that's mostly out of reach or too unimportant for the Imperium to ask for a drastic tithe.
To me the grimdark aspect of 40K comes from 1) the Imperium being the worst possible government of humanity and the best thing for its enemies, especially Chaos and 2) all efforts for a better government failed so far. So maybe there can be the hope that the imperial government and belief gets overthrown or reformed, but every reform got stuck (as we can see with Guilliman right now) and every rebellion either got crushed or turned to Chaos. Does it have to be like that, though? If you want your 40K nihilistic the answer is yes.

If it's there on a personal level I'm good with it.

Most people don't set out to be evil vicious expletives, and as long as there are characters who are good in the sea of awful then that's enough.
But it really does need to be a sea of awful. ADB did that really well IMO where he would show the smaller people with their tiny grasp of happiness or hope among the crushing weight that is the 40k universe.
Octavia being enslaved to the Night Lords but still finding love, even if we know the end of her story is likely not a good one.
The two Stormtroopers from Helsreach who bring each other joy, even when the end of their story is once again brutal.
I once saw a comparison where ADB's writing is described as building up these characters for readers to love, then ripping out the reader's heart and eating in front of them when he inevitably gives them a horrible finale.

That's 40k at its finest IMO and that's what the level of hope should be. Personal, important and ultimately torn away by a cruel god who laughs at your pain.

Well-put, Gert.

To me, the fun of a grimdark setting is largely in watching it continue to chew up the light. Which you can't do if, y'know, there's no light.

Tragedies are way more fun when there's a good ending in sight and then things, *tragically*, go in a different direction. If everyone is a miserable bastard and stays that way the whole time, you end up with a boring, static story. That's why a lot of the arcs of the legions in the HH work. The rubric of Ahriman is fun and tragic and makes you go, "noooooo!" It wouldn't be nearly as much fun if Ahriman just... intentionally turned his brothers to dust to be a dick or whatever.

I also feel it doesn't *just* have to be on a personal level. The ynnari are a pretty good example of this. The ynnari are all about hope. You've got disparate branches of the family tree putting aside their differences, sacrificing themselves heroically, going on desperate missions, all for the sake of that distant glimmer of hope. Going forward, GW could choose to say that they fail or that it was all some cruel trick the whole time or have any number of other horrible things happen, but it's way more interesting watching all those characters strive towards a hopeful ending.

One of the problems with pre-ynnari eldar was that lack of hope. Your craftworld is in danger so you have to sacrifice X% of your population trying to stop it? Yawn. Either things go badly and you're *still* a dying population with no hope, or things go well and you're a dying population with no hope that will just have to suffer through survival mode a little longer before the inevitable conclusion.

I think people often make the mistake of thinking that occassional good endings (at least temporary ones) somehow prevent bad endings from coming around later. But to me, one is usually really important for the other. It's not about the story ending with flowers and rainbows; it's about building up something worth knocking down later.

Like, a lot of 40k stories try to play up how bad it is to be a chaos marine slave, but then we see how a lot of imperial slaves are in basically the same situation, and it kind of takes the teeth out of chaos invasions.

Like. Oh no! The planet has been taken over by chaos. Maybe 10% of the planet's population will even notice a difference. How terrible.

I think the less hope you have in the setting, the less sense the animosity with races like Eldar and Tau works in the eternal war vibe they want to have going on. The more desperate things like Tyranids or Chaos become, the more trite wars with more rational races becomes.

There’s also the unique power and perspectives of individuals.

Consider an Inquisitor. To borrow from Starship Troopers? We’re in this for the species, people. The strategic loss of Planet A, to spare Planets B, C, D and E can make sense on the wider galactic stage, and so some of the horror can seem necessary and dare I say it, even arguably necessary.

But then there’s the Dr Strange/Tony Stark issue. They remain….Just Men. And so they’re prone to miscalculating and making things a whole lot worse by listening solely to their own authority and preferences.

Yet for the solider? There has to be hope of today’s victory leading to tomorrow, and enough cumulative victories bringing an end to a war and their survival. Otherwise, where’s their motivation?

 Nevelon wrote:
A glimmer? Like it should be possible to win overall, but it’s just out of reach. But individual heroes can have solid resounding wins. Tactical victories, even if the strategic situation is bad.

Not every win needs to be a pyric victory. You can run abound and put out fires. Get a little piece of the universe settled down. Of course while you were working on that, 2 more popped up. But you did win that one fight.

It’s just that there are always more, hence the grim dark.

This, I just finished reading Damnation of Pythos and it was such a slog. And part of that was because every step the characters took to resolve their situations was almost immediately countered, which made for a very frustrating read.

There needs to be some hope and some sense of accomplishment in order for there to be a compelling story.