What element needs to increased in 40K (horror, scifi, fantasy)?

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**Farseer Faenyin**

More Sci-Fi is my vote since 'more practical and less fanboi fluff' wasn't an option.

**Desubot**

Would like more DODODODOOOOOOMMMMRIIDDDEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

A return to a more silly and fun 40k where crap wasnt srsbusness.

Otherwise more Sci fi

**Bobthehero**

More consistency!

I personally like the srsbusiness angle, YMMV, I guess.

**Ashiraya**

I think the ludicrous power scaling needs to be further emphasised.

I am firmly of the belief that Guardsmen infantry have two roles in storytelling. The first is to provide contrast; by dying in millions to everything they show how grim the situation is.

What this does is also highlight the OPness of many other things, like Marines and Eldar, but importantly it also helps highlight just how heroic the poor little bugger who fights through mortal fear, the deaths of his/her companions and unbelievable odds to see the mission through is, fighting on for the sake of his/her friends, family, and Imperium.

40K would not be 40K to me without either the mind-blowingly powerful supersoldiers who stride through enemy fire as if it was little more than rain, or the little men and women who end up among the biggest heroes thanks to luck and honest human courage.

**Meade**

HORROR!

If it were up to me, Orks in particular would be subject to change, into something more horrifying and brutish and less cute/funny. The creatures originally described by Tolkien, are more my speed... like a debased opposite form to Eldar. I get the humor, but IMO, it just clashes with the flavor of the rest of the range.. or what it has become and the way it is developed in the lore. The Orks depicted in Black library books are a bit closer to the tolkien ones.

Chaos occupies the role of creepy lovecraftian horror, while Orks and renegades occupy the role of Brutish, reaver type horror. What if for example, Orks in 40k were originally a breed closely related to Eldar, but in a desperate attempt to win a cataclysmic galactic war, tampered with their genetic material to produce a super-being that could essentially grow like fungus, partially psychic with access to a collective memory "100th monkey effect" and breed/survive in any environment and at ridiculous speeds... but it turns out that over time this is not so great for cosmetic experience and being born underground from slime, and with no potential for love, only the thrill of causing pain has a nasty effect on the psyche.

But really all three elements could be emphasized. There is no reason Horror can't be sci-fi and lovecraftian (take Aliens genre for example) and there is no reason horror can't be fantasy (adult version of Tolkien). All three elements can co-exist really. Even a little steampunk can be mixed in there too.

The cartoon comedy clashes. When you have one faction of minis in cartoon proportions and another in normal proportions, it makes me sad. I don't hate on stylized cartoon type stuff but IMO it is better suited to it's own little self-contained universe. Then again, if it were up to me all minis would be made in a universal, TRUE scale so we could interchange between ranges and base it off reality (be creative with clothing, weapons or w/e) and leave the weird proportions out thank you very much.

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Wyzilla wrote:

Spoiler:

[spoiler]

This is an Iron Warrior. If he fails to notice you, you are blessed and may die a painful and short death at the hands of the current enemy, Orks, Guardsmen, Tyranids, or maybe another Janissary. Or maybe you'll survive, continue to eat the paste made from the ground up bodies of your fellow human slaves of the Iron Warriors- the dead and the sickly. Maybe you'll live long enough to rise up the ranks of the Janissary force, slowly bleeding away all empathy and sympathy as you learn the most effective way to survive is to torture and brutalize your own men into action to ensure an Iron Warrior doesn't immediately execute you for failing to meet their exponentially increasing standards. Or maybe your commanding officer will simply shoot you to make an example out of you to motivate the men and ensure that he isn't executed by the Iron Warriors.

Or maybe he will notice you, deciding that your pitiful existence has somehow offended him. Maybe he'll simply back-hand you like the pathetic wretch you are, pasting your thoughts against the wall behind you, spilling out your futile hopes and wishes for all to see in their raw, organic form. Or maybe he'll decide a true example needs to be made to terrify the mortals- impale your hands on meat-hooks and lower you into a pit of molten slag by a centimeter for each ten seconds, maybe even electrocuting you as you are slowly lowered into the molten pool of metal. Or maybe he'll decide that his cape of raw human flesh needs mending, and decides to skin you live with his combat knife for all to see as true nudity is exposed, removing the epidermis and chucking a gibbering chunk of muscle on the ground to be picked up and churned into food for the rest of the men while the Iron Warrior stitches your hide together to complete his fleshy garments. Or maybe he'll decide that daemon technology of his requires sacrifice, and that you must be slowly sucked clean of all blood by servitors to then be washed over the possessed technology, ensuring that you survive the process to feel limbs go dry and watch as your life force washes and feeds the cursed machine.

So no, Chaos is indeed perfect as it. GW simply needs to stop beating around the bush and straight out reveal the favorable pastimes of Chaos Space Marines and Cultists of Chaos.[/spoiler]

Still better than being caught alive by DE.

Mr Morden wrote:
Sadly GW seems to moving more and more away from female characters in the tabletop game even as they are prevelant in the actual BL fluff..............

Really ? I thought BL was even more marine-centric than GW, reaching FW levels !
Anyway, as long as GW will remain marine-centric, will never come even close to parity.

**Furyou Miko**

The prevalence of female characters in the Black Library is hardly a recent trend.

Anyway, Orks, funny?

What's funny about an eight foot tall giant with a jutting lower jaw full of tusks the length of your hand, running screaming towards you with a meat cleaver, screaming his "WAAAAGH!" so loudly that you feel it more than hear it? He knocks your best friend flying with a backhand and raises his enormous blade over his head, and you realise in that last moment, the split second between looking up into those piggy, red eyes and that jagged shard of metal crushing your plasteel body armour and carving you in half, you realise... that it's not a battlecry. The Ork is laughing. As your body starts to realise you're dead and shut down, the last thing you hear as you pray for the Emperor to take your soul is... "OI! Where's da REAL Fight?!"

If you think Orks are funny, you should take a walk through Bristol on a match day, where they have an armed police presence on the streets and coaches of fans of the rival team are escorted to and from the stadium under armed guard to prevent fights breaking out.

**Ashiraya**

^ Ironically, I chuckled at your post.

**Daba**

Meade wrote:
What if for example, Orks in 40k were originally a breed closely related to Eldar, but in a desperate attempt to win a cataclysmic galactic war, tampered with their genetic material to produce a super-being that could essentially grow like fungus, partially psychic with access to a collective memory "100th monkey effect" and breed/survive in any environment and at ridiculous speeds... but it turns out that over time this is not so great for cosmetic experience and being born underground from slime, and with no potential for love, only the thrill of causing pain has a nasty effect on the psyche.

That's already true.

**Furyou Miko**

Well, apart from the Eldar part. They were made from the extinct Krork.

**Meade**

Daba wrote:

That's already true.

pretty much yeah, because I know the background lore but what I'm saying is that it can be tuned to a more sci-fi type explanation (technobabble) and also reflect the tolkien background more (stronger Eldar link and opposite to Eldar). In 40k AFAIK they were supposed to come from another breed separate from the eldar but also created by the old ones (perhaps... 40k has confused fluff at times).

What is emphasized at the moment is that the Orks have a warpmagic, but it's a zany warpmagic all to their own (they seem to exist apart from chaos and ruinous powers), and I think they could me made more malevolently intelligent but at the same time blinded by rage at their fate and their naturally aggressive nature. Also, they could be more like reavers from Firefly.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Furyou Miko wrote:
The prevalence of female characters in the Black Library is hardly a recent trend.

Anyway, Orks, funny?

What's funny about an eight foot tall giant with a jutting lower jaw full of tusks the length of your hand, running screaming towards you with a meat cleaver, screaming his "WAAAAGH!" so loudly that you feel it more than hear it? He knocks your best friend flying with a backhand and raises his enormous blade over his head, and you realise in that last moment, the split second between looking up into those piggy, red eyes and that jagged shard of metal crushing your plasteel body armour and carving you in half, you realise... that it's not a battlecry. The Ork is laughing. As your body starts to realise you're dead and shut down, the last thing you hear as you pray for the Emperor to take your soul is... "OI! Where's da REAL Fight?!"

Okay I'll bite....

-they look like apes, apes are funny.
-they have cartoonish over-exaggerated features and weapons.
-they talk in cockney English accent. In space.
-they wear pirate hats.
-they are kind of bad at everything (building vehicles, shooting weapons) yet somehow always succeed in their task through zany luck.. classic slapstick humor.

yes, they are also brutal creatures, that you should be afraid of. I suppose in a real life situation I would be very afraid of an Ork, but also then again I would be thinking to myself, why is this space alien talking in a cockney english accent, WTF I must be tripping.

I realize that what makes these games great is that you can do w/e you want with your miniatures, and there will always be that person who makes a (perhaps slightly dickish) move towards comic relief, like Mexicrons, Angry Marines, Pink Necrons, etc. Yes I realize this miniature plastic men we are talking about. That's all cool in my book but then again when I'm watching a movie like Aliens or Prometheus I want my humor subtle and dark thank you very much, rather not have a space alien wearing a pirate hat. Or, I can choose to watch Star Wars and then I can watch Family Guy star wars. Or, play D&D then play munchkin. I don't want both at the same time. I want to keep my foods separate on my plate and NOT HAVE THEM TOUCH EACH OTHER.

**Furyou Miko**

Orks... do not speak in a cockney accent.

**TheNightWillEnd**

I'd definitely be into a bit more sci-fi. While I respect the mix of tones and genres that 40k inhabits, I am drawn to sci-fi for its visions of what might be possible in the future, and some of the weird outdated technology that bounces around 40k consistently bugs me. Vox-casters that only work within shouting distance?

**Furyou Miko**

That's a problem with the Guard codex. Vox Casters in the Elysian army list have the secondary function of letting you utilise a ground scanner in short-range lock mode from anywhere on the battlefield (as long as both the ground scanner and the squad using it have a vox caster). Otherwise the scanner bonus is limited to 12" range.

**Troike**

TheNightWillEnd wrote:
Vox-casters that only work within shouting distance?

That's probably more of a gameplay thing rather than a fluff thing. BL novels for example probably have voxes that are as good as they should be.

**Dakkamite**

I'm a diehard Ork player, and if they changed from what they are to something more like Meade's vision I'd sell my army and never look back.

If I want srs business I have 101 other games and a dozen other 40k factions alone, but if I want psychopathic idiot savants in pirate hats screaming WAAAAGH at the top of their lungs, where the hell else am I going to find that?

**happygolucky**

I would like to see more horror in the IOM part, its just too much "Chaos is the evils" and therefore people have the Impression that the IOM is the good guy in 40k..

I would like to see the true imperium. The neglectful imperium. showing more of how the IOM treats its citizens in a horrible manner and maybe, just maybe showing Chaos as more of a liberator than the evil red-headed children from mars..

**Furyou Miko**

Well, in some ways, the Imperium is an enlightened, liberated culture.

Sexism, racism, homophobia, in the general sense none of these exist in the Imperium.

The Imperium does not care if you are a straight white male or a black lesbian, so long as you can serve.

The Imperium does not care if your parents are siblings, as long as you can hold a gun and point it at the enemy.

The Imperium does not care, because nothing matters except that you can help it survive.

**Troike**

I think it's plenty obvious how grimdark the Imperium is, what with their hellishly cumbersome bureaucracy and indifference to human suffering and death. They just come off as sort of good due to many if the other factions being so much worse, and probably also because they're the protagonists of the setting.

Also, showing Chaos as a liberator wouldn't really be accurate, unless it was in-universe Chaos propaganda. Chaos is really much more oppressive than the Imperium, as you're giving your mind, body and soul over to an uncaring god to toy with as it pleases.

**Meade**

Dakkamite wrote:
I'm a diehard Ork player, and if they changed from what they are to something more like Meade's vision I'd sell my army and never look back.

If I want srs business I have 101 other games and a dozen other 40k factions alone, but if I want psychopathic idiot savants in pirate hats screaming WAAAAGH at the top of their lungs, where the hell else am I going to find that?

warmachine?

**Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl**

Yeah. Join us trollblood players for fun and profit.
Though the trollkins are actually less psychopathic and more good guys, especially the more goofy ones like Borka. But it is still the same kind of mix of violence and goofiness.

**Jehan-reznor**

I voted Horror but it needs more sex, as soon as GW finds out that sex sell, nipple armor will be back!