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 n0t_u wrote:
Yeah, like with that proud warrior example. They'd keep wanting to get better and better and better and will never be satisfied with their skills; and that's usually when they fall to Slaanesh offering to help them get to that skill level and even then they never will.

As opposed to the Black Templars, who are already servants of Khorne?

Absolutely make it more mature. I mean they've more or less priced out anyone who isn't on salary pay.

 General Annoyance wrote:

"The Codex Astartes is a set of rules. They guide us, shape us as Ultramarines, teach us to hold duty and honour sacred above all. But how we live with those rules is the true test of a Space Marine. And you have failed".

The cutscene in question, if anyone hasn't seen it already. Do I need to say "spoilers" for a half decade old game?


40k needs more characters like that; a lot of literature I've read from the 40k series has been forgotten months later, but the events of Space Marine have always stuck with me. Death, Bolters and explosions won't sell a character for you in 40k, and a lot of writers think that it can unfortunately.

ugh that clip was an abomination of what the Space Marines are .

@OP

I voted other because:

More grimdark? Definately. Exploring more complex themes? Yeah, sign me up. More grey than classic kids' cartoon black and white good against evil? Absolutely. More complicated stories with a better grasp on all of the multi-faceted aspects of psychology? Wonderful.

More cheesecake? Hell no.

"in the grim darkness of the future there is only war!" Is the tagline for the game. Its mindless drones in an endless war, with the occasional heroic figure rising above and doing some insane feat. Do I need to know their hopes, dreams, and aspirations? Do I need to know how they are in the sheets? I don't need this stuff when I play Halo, Doom, Starcraft, Battlefield, etc and I don't see the need for it in 40k. Its a tabletop wargame, not an rpg. I could maybe understand this stuff needing to be fleshed out in the pen and paper rpgs like Dark Heresy but not in a game of moving miniatures and rolling dice.

It just adds nothing to the game. Emotional investment? I play orks, where my models die in the handfuls. I don't have time for emotional investment.

I feel like the game is more of a backdrop for your own personal games with friends. Here are the armies involved and the systems they inhabit, now think of a reason for them to fight and go at it. Complex themes aren't really all that necessary in that scenario.

 Peregrine wrote:

ERJAK wrote:
?????????? What? So the 500 pages of rules and 140 pages of FAQs are catering to kids? That's just silly, excessive RNG may not be good game design, but it's certainly not catering. You ever seen a kid get BFed by RNG? They'll stop playing tabletop games FOREVER over that gak. The game isn't catering to kids it's honestly so confused at this point it doesn't know WHO it's built for anymore.

Yes, it's catering to kids. Not all kids, but the kind of kids that will talk at you for hours about every possible boring detail of their favorite thing. They'll memorize all 500 pages of the rules and love it, because it's so many awesome special rules to learn and so many ways that their bestest army ever is totally going to beat you every game. And the excessive randomness removes as much skill as possible so that even kids, with their poor ability to grasp strategy, can win half the time against older opponents. Sure, the kids will sometimes get frustrated by RNG, but there's so much more RNG that they'll quickly have something to be excited about. It's the same reason why kids enjoy playing games that are literally "roll a die to see how many spaces you move", you get all the excitement of "winning" a real game but no matter how much you suck at it you still get to win.

You're not describing children, you're actually describing every nerd who picks up a game they aren't very good at. Kids aren't madcap memorization machines and 40k's rules are so dry that getting through the whole book is pain for anyone. And if a kid does actually have what it takes to memorize the rules, he probably has the capacity for strategy (which is honestly not terribly complex 'kill scary thing, get on objective' is enough to take an rtt most of the time.)


And you're also wrong about the excessive RNG. Yes RNG can heavily flip a game in 40k and yes there is just tons of it at a casual level but the balance is so bad that it takes a crap ton of effort to get to the point where any dice rolls make a difference. A casual game between riptide markerlight tau and dark eldar jet bikes isn't usually decided by which warlord trait you roll.

Beyond even that, most armies at a competitive level don't actually deal with RNG much, Seize and first turn being the only real constants. Deathstar armies have a massive number of chances to get the powers they want and only really NEED 1 or 2 anyway, save rolls are generally 2++ with a reroll which basically eliminates that 1 lucky shot chance, most stars will also have FNP which is another layer of nope and most have a decent amount of built in redundancy. Shooting armies like gladius, tau, or eldar withh be rerolling almost everything or hitting/wounding on 2s or both with all but invul saves being completely ignored.

So I'm sorry your aspiring champion's plasma pistol got hot and cost you the game that one time, but in general a high level competitive game is determined by army list and player skill far more than RNG even with seizing being a thing.

eh, I'm just here for the violence - I've got other avenues for the sex and other stuff.

I'd like for 40K's writing to back away from the some of the Saturday-Morning-Cartoon models of late and go back to the more sinister aspects of the game; the Space Marines are as much a symbol of what is wrong with the empire moreso than they fix things; being in the Imperial Guard is a death sentence simply waiting for the executioner to show up; the Eldar slip into melancholy as they watch their brethren lost to unending conflict; Orks are thugs and murderers whose only desire is for bloodshed. And the tyranids aren't just going to eat you, they're going to use your flesh and bones to build more of them and their weapons, and your offspring will be slaves to a cult that will bring destruction to your kin on other worlds.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 n0t_u wrote:
Yeah, like with that proud warrior example. They'd keep wanting to get better and better and better and will never be satisfied with their skills; and that's usually when they fall to Slaanesh offering to help them get to that skill level and even then they never will.

As opposed to the Black Templars, who are already servants of Khorne?

Only if they chose to be, they would just be targets for him until then. That's just how they seem to work.

Peregrine wrote:But without love or any other humanizing elements why does the audience care about the poor bystander's death?

I think this comes down to setting vs. personality. In the Judge Dredd series, the personality of Dredd doesn't really matter. What matters is the setting: Mega City 1, the Cursed Earth, the East Megs, the Judges, etc.

Joseph Dredd doesn't really matter, except insofar as he is the strictest, most hardcore judge in Mega City 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbcoOqGKFi8

When you read a Judge Dredd comic, Dredd doesn't matter so much as the setting does. At the end of the day, Judge Dredd is just one face (or lack thereof) among many. He represents the Mega-City 1 legal system in all of its ideological purity. That's it.

At least, until the pro-democracy story arcs...but then, imho, that's where the story starts to break down.

When you get right down to it, Judge Dredd doesn't have "love or any other humanizing elements." All of that is locked behind his helmet. Who knows what his internal life is like? He rarely display any of that, and in the rare events that he does, it's only to show that he values his duty more than he values himself.

In the Vienna story, e.g., when he refuses to see his niece any more after she gets kidnapped because of him:

"You don't understand. I'm a judge. Some day, I too will be killed [in the line of duty]. I've put her through enough."

This is well displayed in the scene with him and cadet Anderson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbcoOqGKFi8

Sure, there's doubt. That's what Anderson is about to say right before she gets cut off. But she doesn't get to say it. And it's completely hidden behind Dredd's helmet. Because ultimately, it's irrelevant to the main storyline. What matters are the lawbreakers who need bullets in their skulls.

For all story purposes, he is anger/law/justice incarnate. "Old Stoney Face." In the words of Walter his robotic servant, "my angry master!"

40k is similar. 40k is all about the setting. It's not about the individual characters. In fact, I find your desire to "humanize" 40k to be completely contrary to what 40k is all about. Commissar Expendable doesn't matter as an individual personality.

The 40k setting is inhuman. That's what it's all about.

If by "Adult orientated" you mean more like the Realm of Chaos books then I'm all for it