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One should not discard the fact that a game designer can and will use the lore to explore and present philosophical concerns they have or to highlight social problems they may see.

Consciously or unconsciously.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The heart of the topic is how having females/ women in such an outfit may or may not deter female gamers

I am wondering why you cannot see how this is directly related to having male and female characters dressed differently…

Dark Severance, are you really comparing historical games that are accurate to an history that is completely independent from the wish of the authors to fictional games where the lore is literally anything the authors wants it to be?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
A fictional scenario without the same grounding in history would not have the same argument.

I gave both a historical example and a non-historical example. A fictional lore/history still has the same argument. For one thing if everything was equal there wouldn't be war or conflict in the first place. That is what happens when two societies have different perspectives, point of views and environments creating that conflict. Fiction isn't any different than non-fiction, except one of them isn't real which means they wouldn't and shouldn't have to conform to certain concepts and ideas. It is fiction. That also means that doesn't stop anyone from creating their own "fan-fiction" and rewriting or changing things, but you shouldn't expect those companies to accept that fan-fiction and have to create products to match them.

Now a game can become adaptable to show growth by expanding its base with future expansions or updating the lore. If a new chapter was added with a different set of views and beliefs in the lore of that story. They couldn't go back and say, "everything you read was wrong, there really was women in the units and we'll update the lore to become politically correct now."

Well they could but that creates a whole different version, basically becomes a "reboot". Star Wars did it when they threw out expanded universe. The Star Trek remakes completely changed what previous Star Treks and set up. DC and Marvel have all sorts of reboots... which is one of the reasons I stopped reading half the comics in the first place. Decisions were made to change and update their stories to be politically correct. They should have simply incorporated new additions or made other characters adapt and change point of views to show that change instead of just reboot.

A certain game company could also easily say "women and men" do serve in those units, they are however indistinguishable from each other especially since they all wear helmets. The only way to show they were different would be to do a unhelmeted head swap and put a female head on them (which is suggested and people do). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It satisfies both discussions. It is realistic because in soldiers, you wouldn't want people to distinguish men and women from each other for various reasons. You also want the army unit to function without any boundaries or lines, hence most are helmeted soldiers that are the bread and butter... they are all the same, simply soldiers, not women, not men but soldiers. Current lore and everything could still fit in without rebooting.

However once we got to head swaps. Then it became, well why can't we do more. That isn't enough, now we have to have a realistic female (despite that two armored units indistinguishable would be realistic) alternate sculpt. They want something that they can identify with, that isn't 'manlike' in nature.

They could also come out with completely new units that embrace a new ideology. I don't think they will, but that is probably how I would handle it. That is in fact how new units that were primarily men serving, would have conditions changing as time progresses where women do start to be allowed to serve in those units.

 Dark Severance wrote:
A fictional lore/history still has the same argument.

Well, that is completely false. The argument was “That is how it was, we are not responsible for it and we cannot change it”. In a fictional setting, it becomes “That is how we decided it would be, we are responsible for it and we could change it if we wanted to.”

 Dark Severance wrote:
They couldn't go back and say, "everything you read was wrong, there really was women in the units and we'll update the lore to become politically correct now."

Oh the nice PC boogieman. They have multiple ways to do it, you just don't like them. And they could simply get it right the first time…

 Dark Severance wrote:


A certain game company could also easily say "women and men" do serve in those units, they are however indistinguishable from each other especially since they all wear helmets. The only way to show they were different would be to do a unhelmeted head swap and put a female head on them (which is suggested and people do). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It satisfies both discussions. It is realistic because in soldiers, you wouldn't want people to distinguish men and women from each other for various reasons. You also want the army unit to function without any boundaries or lines, hence most are helmeted soldiers that are the bread and butter... they are all the same, simply soldiers, not women, not men but soldiers. Current lore and everything could still fit in without rebooting.

However once we got to head swaps. Then it became, well why can't we do more. That isn't enough, now we have to have a realistic female (despite that two armored units indistinguishable would be realistic) alternate sculpt. They want something that they can identify with, that isn't 'manlike' in nature.

I'm not entirely sure how this is a bad thing, though. Considering that, well, the Imperial Guard is in fact mixed gender. I don't think anyone is arguing that Space Marines should be mixed, or that there absolutely can not be any male (or female!) only units. Actually having variety in units that are, by lore, mixed though would be pretty great.
I'm also 100% with Hybrid here. Wyches are fine because both are treated equally. It's only bs if only the female combatants are required to wear high heels (or the guys have to go as chippendale mock-ups.) Yes, Elves are androgynous, that makes it easier, but you need to sculpt the bodies either way, so why not have a 3/7, 4/6 or 5/5 split in IG boxes? It's not like the current Cadians and Catachans aren't horrendous anyway. I mean, honestly, they don't look suited for human beings of either gender right now.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
Dark Severance, are you really comparing historical games that are accurate to an history that is completely independent from the wish of the authors to fictional games where the lore is literally anything the authors wants it to be?

I highlighted the important part of that statement. In my previous post I did give two examples. The reason I included the historical example is because most authors write using real world examples and fiction is stylized from non-fiction. In the case of the Queen's Guard there is a direct relation and correlation with how some fiction authors created their fictional game worlds. I also gave a fictional example to highlight the imperfections of that universe as it was created and serves as a ground basis behind portions of the conflict that happen in the game.

You are right that the fictional game can be anything the author wants it to be. I don't disagree with that. However you are asking for them to modify their fictional world, to create something you want. There isn't anything wrong with that either. Not everyone likes the same books, writers, or even movies. That comes from differences in preferences. I am saying the Dark Elf example isn't valid because they represent what is written and how the lore of those backgrounds were created. Could that be updated, absolutely. Will they update it? I doubt it but one could hope but then again that is in part one of many reasons I don't play that particular game as much as I used too.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
They have multiple ways to do it, you just don't like them. And they could simply get it right the first time…

It is kind of hard to get it right the first time when the game was created, at that time it was created, that those units were stylized after a particular military unit that actually didn't allow women in them... hence why they were created as they were. It was fiction mimicking reality at that time.

It isn't so much that I don't like them. I don't like reboots. There are many ways to do it. It is more along the lines you don't like they aren't doing that or anything at all... which is valid. I have no effect on that whatsoever.

As I said earlier newer games in today do a better integration and representation because they are newer, there are more things to stylize and create the fictional worlds from. They can also do additional new chapters and stories, talking about a completely new unit under those divisions. The easiest method though would be that they are indistinguishable from each other, offer alternate unhelmeted head swaps and then make minor modifications to Lore. There are a few other ways they could do it... but again I have no effect on that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Korraz wrote:
I'm not entirely sure how this is a bad thing, though.

It isn't a bad thing. I think there should be alternate head sculpts although they probably won't do it as there are already bits on the market that meet that demand. When we talked about alternate head sculpts. It was then brought up why can't they do alternate body sculpts like they do with Dark Eldar which have equal representation. They have that equal representation because of the lore.

Alternate sculpts for space marines does increase costs. If they simply just did a chest swap, it could be done. But if they base it on the Eldar/Dark Eldar examples then it would just be boob plate chests. Then we end up going around again the discussions. It becomes why boob plate, why not stylize the body differently, then update legs/arms and now we're getting into a whole new sculpt vs just an alternate chest and head. Then it is the discussion if Dark Eldar/Eldar is really a good thing, yes they can be considered dressed similar but now we're back to boob plate which was the initial started for part of this thread.

If you really want to get to the heart of when someone will include alternates of something. It really comes down to, will there be room on the sprue for it. Then if there is room, what do they put there... as it is highlighted and explained by Ludo. I snip'ed out the whole post and just kept the example of what I mean.

We must try to find the best set up between mould cost and miniature cost (simple: more moulds mean easier production, but moulds are expensive; using fewer moulds with miniatures that we do not require the same number of makes production more difficult and therefore more expensive per miniature). For that purpose we need to know how many of which miniature we need to produce, and how to pack them.

What I can promise you is that we will try to optimize production. If we have space on the moulds, we will add a miniature even if that stretch goal is not reached.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
The heart of the topic is how having females/ women in such an outfit may or may not deter female gamers

I am wondering why you cannot see how this is directly related to having male and female characters dressed differently…

Dark Severance, are you really comparing historical games that are accurate to an history that is completely independent from the wish of the authors to fictional games where the lore is literally anything the authors wants it to be?

Answer to question A is because the examples we have and talk here for example the mobile brigadas are not dressed differently, they are sexualised (and that done equally) but they dress the same.

Answer to type B is because fluff is a creative endeavor and is used to express the author's ideas fears and concerns, most of it is based in reality and discusses concerns that are present in real life.

As for the really interesting retcon discussion, I hate retcons, fluff evolution is one thing retcon is a double edged sword with handle been a blade too waving it with the finesse it requires is a form of art rarely seen.

 Korraz wrote:

 Dark Severance wrote:


A certain game company could also easily say "women and men" do serve in those units, they are however indistinguishable from each other especially since they all wear helmets. The only way to show they were different would be to do a unhelmeted head swap and put a female head on them (which is suggested and people do). There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It satisfies both discussions. It is realistic because in soldiers, you wouldn't want people to distinguish men and women from each other for various reasons. You also want the army unit to function without any boundaries or lines, hence most are helmeted soldiers that are the bread and butter... they are all the same, simply soldiers, not women, not men but soldiers. Current lore and everything could still fit in without rebooting.

However once we got to head swaps. Then it became, well why can't we do more. That isn't enough, now we have to have a realistic female (despite that two armored units indistinguishable would be realistic) alternate sculpt. They want something that they can identify with, that isn't 'manlike' in nature.

I'm not entirely sure how this is a bad thing, though. Considering that, well, the Imperial Guard is in fact mixed gender. I don't think anyone is arguing that Space Marines should be mixed, or that there absolutely can not be any male (or female!) only units. Actually having variety in units that are, by lore, mixed though would be pretty great.
I'm also 100% with Hybrid here. Wyches are fine because both are treated equally. It's only bs if only the female combatants are required to wear high heels (or the guys have to go as chippendale mock-ups.) Yes, Elves are androgynous, that makes it easier, but you need to sculpt the bodies either way, so why not have a 3/7, 4/6 or 5/5 split in IG boxes? It's not like the current Cadians and Catachans aren't horrendous anyway. I mean, honestly, they don't look suited for human beings of either gender right now.

It's important to remember, as Dark Severance has pointed out elsewhere (I think), all design choices come with benefits ant drawbacks. Let's say that you go the Kingdom Death route, and you have completely different sculpts for males and females: male legs, torsos, arms and heads, and same for females.

While now you do have some very nicely differentiated male and female figures, you also have the problem that you've limited the universality of the figures. What I mean by that is something that Mark Mondragon dealt with when he was designing his female Stormtroopers: the male and female can only diverge so much before they can't use the same accessories like weapons and so on.

If you have males and females with separate arms, then the only points of connections (by and large) with weapons have to be the hands. While that fine for medieval style hand weapons like swords, axes and so on, it's much more problematic with rifles, crossbows and any other weapon that needs to connect with either the shoulder, upper arm or chest. Mark had to make design compromises in order to make his females compatible with the pre-existing accessory kit. Any similar endeavor would have to do the same; the more options, the more design time is needed to make sure that things are interchangeable, the more costs.

All of this, of course, is downstream from a question that has to be asked: do people want mixed gender boxes at all? I'm not saying that in the sense of why have male and female, but asking if people really would prefer that the company determine the ratio, or themselves. Mixing the sculpts in a single box not only makes each box more complicated to cut and design, but it means that people that want, for example, all female Wyches now have to buy more in order to get what they wanted.

As I recall, when I made my DE, I wanted my Wyches to be all female, but they are (I think) split 7:3 female: male torsos. The Kabelite unit is split the opposite way, 3:7, so if you wanted 10 female wyches, you had to buy a box of Kabelites. Which I did, ending up ultimately with 10 female Wyches and 10 male Kabelites. Now, one may object that this is exactly what GW wanted, the problem with that is... yeah, I know, and it pissed me off then, and now I don't buy GW stuff.

I would have much preferred being able to buy all female wyches, and all male kabelites, and deciding if I wanted to mix the torsos, rather then the reverse. Is that just me? Who knows. But when you mix in the box, the question always is "what is the right ratio?" Should we really assume that people buying line troopers by the dozens want a 50:50 split? What if they want their troopers to be uniform, and now, in the interest of having sexual differentiation, they don't have that anymore either for male or female.

This is not to say that any one of these points is dispositive, but only to point out that creators are taking huge risks with any or all of these choices.

Keep in mind I'm not against seeing alternate women designs and sculpts for existing games. I would love to see a modified space marine that is a female sculpt sexualised or even non-sexualised honestly doesn't really matter to me. I would honestly like to see more women miniatures in WH40K besides outdated SoB sculpts. One of the reasons I tend to play Eldar and Dark Eldar because they do have women sculpts and I identify more with them then the men. I would probably play SoB if they had more updated sculpts.

The question was asked why don't they or why don't other companies have equal representation in those regards with miniatures. There is the economic factor in more designs means more costs. There is the lore/history factor, is that an accurate representation of what was written for those game universes. Doing a complete alternate models is different than providing alternate heads or chest piece.

I'm not against having other options and would like to see more, that was never in question. I also understand the differences between what I want may not be what others want and ultimately those are those companies decisions. I can either support or don't support them. Whether I agree with their final decisions they make or not.

 Korraz wrote:
I don't think anyone is arguing that Space Marines should be mixed

GW was found ways to wedge anything they wanted into the game, like Tau to get some Gunpla enthusiasts into the game (arguably). They could just make one of these expansions sets that they like to do now, just for a completely new chapter that lives in a death world where the male population isn't enough to replace losses -> magic of storytelling -> for some reason (heroic battle and sacrifice!) they get a favour from some Forgeworld/mechanicus types who make it possible for women to become Space Marines. Of course the process is really, really hard and they are the only chapter who (officially) has access to that technology. There is your mixed SM chapter that is just as unique as all the other new special characters (Hello Muderfang from Omnicide!). They change the lore whenever they want for any reason they want so why should that be impossible? When the Predator Annihilator kit was introduced they justified it with barely three paragraphs of "Space Wolves need more lasers" and that was it.

Just drop small separate sprue with some female heads into the campaing box with all the other stuff (chapter specific shoulder pads transfers, whatever) and sell the sprue individually over the online store (if you want just the heads for your own chapter but don't need the campaign box). People can buy the box and use helmeted/male/female heads to their chosing. If they don't like women mixed with their Marines they can just put the extra heads into their bits box or throw/trade them away like all the other bits they shake off a sprue.

Wolf tails are more or less only useful for Space Wolves (or similar chapters) and they put half a dozen on a sprue but a sprue with a few female heads could be useful for any chapter if a player is interested in mixing them in with the rest. If it's reasonably successful they could make different sprues (viking women, greek/roman hairstyle for Ultramarines, barbarians, …anything really) and if it doesn't work then it was still a cheaper experiment than AoS and can be relegated to the background radiation of the 40k universe like all the other obscure RT era stuff.

One small sprue that could bring in new (Space Marine) players and be an upgrade that might be interesting for some of their huge Space Marine fan base. People are already complaining about them retconning things when it happens. What's one more chapter among a thousand?

Somebody already had a similar idea:
http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/index.htm
http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/galleryHQ.html

The cynic in me might guess that SoB were GW's experiment in to female models without disrupting their existing lines and they didn't make enough off them to justify pursuing it.

The Xenan Free Legion were an all-female IG Regiment that GW produced models for a very, very long time ago.

Never heard of Xenan Free Legion, nor can I find any pics or information, what was their story?

I disagree, the fluff of the entire space marines is that the emperor himself could not make the female body work (witch is a ridiculous excuse from a biological standpoint but hey this is 40k) so having a random mechanicus inventing what a god entity could not is quite a leap.

GW has set themselves in the corner with their fluff and innovation ectr ectr must be explained with even more ridiculous excuses, oh we found this, oh the space wolves who do not care did a non sanctioned stuff that worked, oh we had it in the inventory just never used it, whatever, on some cases though as the above hand-waiving it simply does not work.

If you want female space marines the entire 40k fluff needs retcon, a move I am sure neither GW nor the fans want to happen.

Other than that, in 40k imperioum is an equal opportunities employ the do not care what gender you are, you will die for the emperor without any special privileges or protections GW could and should try to make more female models in their lines if they cared and if they thought a simple headswap would be enouph.

Given the fact Jess is adamant on the silhouette dogma (something that has served him well all these decades) I doubt he would ever settle with a simple headswap for human female troops, TAU were an unknown so they could and did make it a headswap, eldar are androgynous but still human enouph so they did it with a head and boobplate swap there is no way GW will ever make female guards, mechanicus ectr without making them having a female silhouette.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Answer to question A is because the examples we have and talk here for example the mobile brigadas are not dressed differently, they are sexualised (and that done equally) but they dress the same.

The men wear huge, extremely thick armor. The women wear skin-tight armor.
How can you say they dress the same?

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Answer to type B is because fluff is a creative endeavor and is used to express the author's ideas fears and concerns, most of it is based in reality and discusses concerns that are present in real life.

You may be confusing “expressing fear and concerns” with “mimicking” here…

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I disagree, the fluff of the entire space marines is that the emperor himself could not make the female body work (witch is a ridiculous excuse from a biological standpoint but hey this is 40k) […]
If you want female space marines the entire 40k fluff needs retcon, a move I am sure neither GW nor the fans want to happen.

If there was female space marines, it would mean that basically one line from an article from WD in 1988 would be retconned. That's… not exactly “the entire 40k fluff”, given how it has no bearing on basically anything else. And yeah, that line has been rewritten a few times, most notably on some RPG dedicated to marines. But it was never used as a plot device for ANYTHING, as far as I know. Even the stupid, stupid, STUPID omophagea is more relevant to the universe as it is a plot device in some stories.

Also, making female space marines is clearly a case of just alternate heads and different use of pronouns in the fluff, given how thick the armor is.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Answer to question A is because the examples we have and talk here for example the mobile brigadas are not dressed differently, they are sexualised (and that done equally) but they dress the same.

The men wear huge, extremely thick armor. The women wear skin-tight armor.
How can you say they dress the same?

Because they dress the same, the sexualisation of the model does not mean they do not wear the same outfit.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Answer to type B is because fluff is a creative endeavor and is used to express the author's ideas fears and concerns, most of it is based in reality and discusses concerns that are present in real life.

You may be confusing “expressing fear and concerns” with “mimicking” here…

No I do not, please do not try to twist reality to fit your viewpoint.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I disagree, the fluff of the entire space marines is that the emperor himself could not make the female body work (witch is a ridiculous excuse from a biological standpoint but hey this is 40k) […]
If you want female space marines the entire 40k fluff needs retcon, a move I am sure neither GW nor the fans want to happen.

If there was female space marines, it would mean that basically one line from an article from WD in 1988 would be retconned. That's… not exactly “the entire 40k fluff”, given how it has no bearing on basically anything else. And yeah, that line has been rewritten a few times, most notably on some RPG dedicated to marines. But it was never used as a plot device for ANYTHING, as far as I know. Even the stupid, stupid, STUPID omophagea is more relevant to the universe as it is a plot device in some stories.

Also, making female space marines is clearly a case of just alternate heads and different use of pronouns in the fluff, given how thick the armor is.

You might be misunderstanding the importance of fluff and fluff integrity, what led me to leave 40k was Andy Chambers Necrons, a single book that retconed the entirety of 40k fluff especially warp and chaos, not rules, not prices, not stupidity of models design, but fluff degradation, other have left because of this too, a shakeup of fluff to a product line that is the face of their flagship product and the company itself in its most basic level is not something minor its an earthquake of great magnitude that will rub a lot of people in the wrong way, not because they are misogynists, but because fluff is important and maintaining the integrity for such people is really important too, in the case of marines when it is clearly stated that the Emperor could not do it, for good or evil, it is out of touch for everybody.

Would I like a reboot of the 40k fluff to be more in line with rogue trader and updated to a modern era including visuals? sure, there are two problems, I am sure the core of the GW customers do not want it and secondly I do not have faith in GW pulling it off.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Because they dress the same, the sexualisation of the model does not mean they do not wear the same outfit.

They don't dress the same. Some have super-thick armor and some having skin-tight armor. You can repeat the same thing over and over, but unless you tell me those are aliens and the male ones actually looks exactly like this without armor, they don't dress the same at all.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
You might be misunderstanding the importance of fluff and fluff integrity

Sure. Whatever. There has been way, WAY bigger retcon, that GW survived perfectly. You are telling me that retconning a single line of useless fluff would be out of the line, when GW just canned the entirety of the Old World to replace it with something completely different?
What about that time GW retconned Ophelia IV into Ophelia VII? How hardly did it hurt the integrity of the setting?

I had thought there was a really bad female imperial guards sculpt that was a women in a tank top with a grenade launcher(?). I had found it yesterday when I was trying to find other female miniatures that GW had officially created based on their lore. It said 10% of Guard soldiers are are female. I can't seem to find it anymore. I did however find a cosplay giving a realstic representation of a female Cadian, which would show a real example of an indistinguishable miniature that was just a head swap if translated to miniatures.

When we talked about making their own miniatures earlier to fill a gap. I did find someone who did just that, they also take commissions it seems. They created their own set of female Space Marines, Eldar and other soldiers a few years ago. You can read about it here.

I thought the whole process of how a space marine was created was highlighted in multiple sources. I believe semi-recently there was a novel that also went over the process in more detail of how the body is transformed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Creation_of_a_Space_Marine

This process is the heart of a space marine. Any time you make major changes to lore, you risk alienating existing player-base and fans. It is rarely a good brand and business decision to do that. Sometimes it pays off but most of the time it does not. The best solution would be for them to create a new chapter and creation process. Over time the old process, though works for many of the chapters, had complications... and a new process was created. Through detachments those could eventually be integrated into other chapters. That would be better method to grow and adapt. That would be the better method without just throwing out all the canon. However I doubt they would entertain either idea, at least for space marines, for other races and imperial guard probably but they seem stuck on what a Space Marine is.

Given Cadians all wear helmets except for squad leaders... would you realistically see any difference at all unless you exaggerate the more feminine features on the rest of the model?

 Dark Severance wrote:
I thought the whole process of how a space marine was created was highlighted in multiple sources. I believe semi-recently there was a novel that also went over the process in more detail of how the body is transformed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Creation_of_a_Space_Marine

90-99% of this article is a direct re-transcription of the WD article I was talking about ^^.

 Dark Severance wrote:
Any time you make major changes to lore, you risk alienating existing player-base and fans. It is rarely a good brand and business decision to do that. Sometimes it pays off but most of the time it does not.

Well, it did not stop the MASSIVE necron retcons…
And again, this is certainly not as big a change as people make it out to be.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
I disagree, the fluff of the entire space marines is that the emperor himself could not make the female body work (witch is a ridiculous excuse from a biological standpoint but hey this is 40k) so having a random mechanicus inventing what a god entity could not is quite a leap.

"Hey, check out this cool STC printout we found! Shame that it only works on this one planet due to a genetic quirk though."

That took me all of five seconds.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

Spoiler:

 Dark Severance wrote:
I thought the whole process of how a space marine was created was highlighted in multiple sources. I believe semi-recently there was a novel that also went over the process in more detail of how the body is transformed.

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Creation_of_a_Space_Marine

90-99% of this article is a direct re-transcription of the WD article I was talking about ^^.

 Dark Severance wrote:
Any time you make major changes to lore, you risk alienating existing player-base and fans. It is rarely a good brand and business decision to do that. Sometimes it pays off but most of the time it does not.

Well, it did not stop the MASSIVE necron retcons…
And again, this is certainly not as big a change as people make it out to be.

Changing Marines is huge, even though it might only be mentioned once somewhere obscure "no girls allowed because biology" it would still be a huge change to tell people "oh, by the way, half your previously male army is female now, please cross out all references of battle brothers and change it to battle siblings".

Anything is possible. If GW wanted, Abaddon could be a High Lord of Terra tomorrow and all of the Chaos Space Marines could denounce Chaos and rejoin the Imperium in an effort to fend off the allmighty Tau. It would take them all of ten minutes and a paragraph.
But I don't think there's really a need for that. I honestly don't see anything wrong with having gender-specific factions, they add variety to the world. I love me some Sisters of Sigmar and always wished that they spread out from Mordheim and became a presence in the Empire.

Good video here where he actually goes into women in armor.


TLDR:

male armor vs female armor is almost identical, and you couldnt really tell. Towards the end she wears mail, roman plate, full plate, ect, and as we can plainly see boob plate is not needed, nor is any major modification.

[quote=easysauce 681771 8546640 8db2026d12e1e74e47074f749d377399.jpg
male armor vs female armor is almost identical, and you couldnt really tell. Towards the end she wears mail, roman plate, full plate, ect, and as we can plainly see boob plate is not needed, nor is any major modification.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
We know that already, the question never was if realistically there would be any difference, there would not be any, the question was why bother if there is no difference, even the model ranges celebrated for their representation of women, Victoria and now "Heroines in sensible shoes" kickstarter sexualise the models to emphasize the fact the model is female not male.

Congratulations, you've demonstrated how nonsensical it is to the word "sexualize" to mean "make recognizably of one gender or the other".



A human figure wearing leather armor, boots, recognizably of one gender while wearing realistic armor. The rest of the figures in the line use similar "somewhat more padded than a the armor tailored for a man" appearances.

Two of the big objections to the 'boob plate' are:
1. It's the worst possible thing you could do to the armor, if you were actually trying to make it functional.
2. It's unnecessary and unrealistic.
3. The combination of those factors is that it's jarring, and destroys the immersion.

A little bit of extra padding in the chest isn't going to hurt anyone, and gives a profile distinguishable from the male profile. Armor designed to crack sternums gets people killed and ruins the illusion.

In other words, it's the exact opposite of the Rule of Cool, it's the Rule of This Looks Dumb. It's the same sort of situation that happens when someone tries to design fantasy armor, gets confused and produces a dress or bikini.

 solkan wrote:

Congratulations, you've demonstrated how nonsensical it is to the word "sexualize" to mean "make recognizably of one gender or the other".

Oh I am sorry I never realized its completely natural for chain mail and scale mail to bulge



And leather armour to be soft enough to separate the breasts with shoulder straps



Have a better word, educate us.

The two big objections mean nothing to those that do not care, worst possible solution? realistic? I thought we were passed that stage when we discuss of making each gender visibly distinct, a practical realistic armour is as it has been repeated many times already the same as a male armour and if you fancy fielding male looking figures and naming them with female names, the world is indeed your oyster there is an amazing selection out there, now if you would like to have something that looks like a female, realistic is definitely not the option.

The question from there on is at what level you want the differentiation to stop, rule of cool, rule of dump are subjective and mean nothing to anybody but the observer, chain mail bikini are cool for some dump for others and indifferent for most.

Look I understand you read bikini armour battle damage, nice site, I cannot take the authors seriously on many of their articles, some of their articles have merit and many miss the point and go on their own meaningless crusade.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There is a huge difference between having models that look different


both are equally dressed, both are reasonably/ realistically dressed, both are equally sexualised and easy to tell apart.

And models that are "realistic"

The two on the left are female, I guess?

Who really wants the latter? and if you do it already exists name your male models females.

When you take a look at what sexualisation actually means, you also see why it certainly applies to models like that disastrous mobile brigada (that boobplate, WTF) but has nothing to do with armor like what solkan showed, which shows a realistic sex difference without in any way sexualising the model.



If solkan's model is sexualised, then every person you meet on the street is sexualised, and I hopefully should not need to explain why that is not the case.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Changing Marines is huge, even though it might only be mentioned once somewhere obscure "no girls allowed because biology" it would still be a huge change to tell people "oh, by the way, half your previously male army is female now, please cross out all references of battle brothers and change it to battle siblings".

Except you wouldn't need to tell people anything about whether their army are half women or not. They would just know that the Chapter Mistress of the Wolf Angel Fists is Augustina Haravina, who gained her rank after the previous Chapter Master was killed by Chaos Lord Methronic Barbarus, or something like this. Which would just mean that it would be perfectly compatible with canon that their home-made chapter is 100% male, 100%, or anything in between, and they can choose for themselves.
I am not fooling myself though, there are still going to be a very few people that will be extremely pissed by the change. I just don't really care about them, and I don't think they matter financially in the long term. Too few in numbers, too angry about any change, and also usually will throw a big fit but keep playing, and after a while will get used to the new version of things and will throw a fit if it is changed back…

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Mobile brigadas were the same suit of armour, yes, male brigada is thicker, female brigada is thinner this is due to the sexualisation of the miniatures to be different, this does not change the fact their armour is the same, it is shaped the same way it has the same silhouette, if you cannot understand why one is thinner and the other is thicker and why this is irrelevant, I may as well start giving up hope on you understanding it, I am guessing Victorias Tannenburg Fusiliers were different armour too in your eyes, because the females sure were thinner fatigues and the shirt is quite bulgy.

You seem pretty annoyed. One of those armor is definitely extremely thick, the other is definitely extremely thin.
I looked at the Tannenburg Fusiliers, pictures just below:

It looks like similar clothes that look different because they are worn by people with different bodies.
That is VERY different from the Brigada because, unless those are aliens, the differences cannot be explained by the differences between the bodies below the armor.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
On the other hand WH40K is their bread and butter if they do anything wrong with it anything that will alienate the fans they are a dead company, so AlmightyWalrus you can create an excuse in 5 seconds (though I have to inform you Space marines were never part of STC, but Emperor's original research spawning at least a millenia) good for you, I am sure GW can too, how well will this be received by the customer base? how willing are they to risk their flagship product? they can't afford to "play" with something that its lore generates a bit more than half their income.

Newcrons. Bigger retcon. Now C'tan are enslaved rather than masters. HUGE retcon. In your 40k.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Who really wants the latter? and if you do it already exists name your male models females.

It should be obvious by now what people want. They want the female models to look different when given the type of armor worn, it would be realistic to have them look different, and they want the female models to be the same when it would be realistic that they look the same. Because going out of one's way to show the difference will make the designs look dumb.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
I am not fooling myself though, there are still going to be a very few people that will be extremely pissed by the change. I just don't really care about them, and I don't think they matter financially in the long term. Too few in numbers, too angry about any change, and also usually will throw a big fit but keep playing, and after a while will get used to the new version of things and will throw a fit if it is changed back…

I don't think that group is nearly as small as you think it is.