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So, huzzah evil and down with star wars? That's not the summary I was expecting from 'inspiration and historical reference'


Perhaps list some of the inspirations and do more with history than 'atrocities are fun if you don't take them seriously.'

@Voss
Personally, I enjoy the dark and cruel aesthetic of 40K.
I've always been a fan of villains and I am of the minority population who cheer for the bad guy, whether in fiction or real-life media.
OJ Simpson, Charles Manson, the Unabomber - they all have a fan club..
I think many of us who indulge in the 40K universe have an appreciation for things of a cynical nature.
Basically formatted, anybody who indulges must have some mindless appreciation for war at the very least.

With that being said I don't entirely agree with the narrative of the OP.
I've never seen the Emperor as a tyrant or mass-murderer.
The Imperium is not without its flaws, and clearly there are questionable ethics performed under the cloak of righteous intent to push the agenda of mankind onward.
But evil? I don't think thats a fair label for the Imperium.

@Voss: I tried to keep it limited in length, as an introduction to outsiders and as a slam-down against people branding 40k as something nefarious rather than innocent fun.

This is not a down with Star Wars post, but using the more well-known Star Wars to show where 40k go a lot further with nuances. I very much like Star Wars, and there are a lot of similarities between SW and 40k. At the end of the day, much of what I like with SW is done better in 40k.

I could go on for many hours about the historical basis for 40k, but that would not be conducive to keeping the length down. I am sure that you as someone in the know is well aware of it. As an example:

The setting reminds a lot about late antique Rome. Check off swollen bureaucracy, Imperial tyranny, decaying empire, increasingly many enemies pressing in on all sides, complete with legionary reorganization. It also draws heavily upon the Middle Ages and Early Modern centuries, as well as many of the worst aspects of the 19-20th centuries, not least the two World Wars.

I can go on for way too long, but at the end of the day 40k draws heavily upon human history, in a way which makes it a lot more enjoyable than most other settings out there. Of course, it also draws heavily upon some good aspects of other settings, which only adds to the quality experience. 40k is rarely original, but mostly of good quality.

@Frag the Commissar: As to evil: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. "We shall measure thee on thy deeds." I love how 40k is built ambiguous, so that it invites discussion and different interpretations.

Addendum:



Cheers!

People consider that the empire is evil ?

Karol wrote:
People consider that the empire is evil ?

Read some Necromunda stories.
Thr Imperium is neither good nor evil as a whole, but it cares little to nothing for the individual. In addition it has a huge amount of social enequality. From upperclasses who live a life of pure luxury and can live for many hundreds of years. Down to thd masses of serfs who toil in the filth of industry and who might never see the light of day and are lucky if they make it to 30.

Chaos and Genestealer cults have no trouble recruiting from the downtrodden who have no hope of a better life

Karol wrote:
People consider that the empire is evil ?

Are there people who consider the Imperium to be good? If there are they never read the rulebook...

It won't be long before people come here with their dnd classifications of lawful evil and that stuff, but I won't go into it.
The Imperium is a hellhole and the reason why Chaos has so many followers. Chaos is also the reason why every Progress or Revolution towards a better society in 40K will fail. That's a nice dialectic I like about 40K. Though many people seem to read the Imperium as "it has to be like that, if the Imperium was a nice democracy like we have Chaos would destroy it", which I find worrysome as it legitimizes the fascism of the Imperium. And historically it's also wrong, fascism failed and was brought down by democracies.

Speak after me:

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 Overread wrote:

Karol wrote:
People consider that the empire is evil ?

Read some Necromunda stories.
Thr Imperium is neither good nor evil as a whole, but it cares little to nothing for the individual. In addition it has a huge amount of social enequality. From upperclasses who live a life of pure luxury and can live for many hundreds of years. Down to thd masses of serfs who toil in the filth of industry and who might never see the light of day and are lucky if they make it to 30.

Chaos and Genestealer cults have no trouble recruiting from the downtrodden who have no hope of a better life

Yes, another words it is a normal life, only instead of living in a house that has 11 floors, the house has 333+1 floors. I only read one necromunda story, called lasgun wedding, and I haven't seen anything evil as far as empire goes. Maybe it is in other books, it is hard to be sure after one book about anything.

Are there people who consider the Imperium to be good? If there are they never read the rulebook.

Now I don't own the core rule book, but I did read it, and I own my codex. I also read a few books, I read nothing that would point out that the empire being evil. Seems like a normal country we have now, only it is much bigger and in state of war.

I see IoM as evil too. But that's a big reason why I love 40K - NONE of the factions are "good", they are all evil, nobody is innocent. The cynic/nihilist in me likes this, but I'd never want to live in such a world IRL.

Wasn’t the tag line in 2nd ed “in the nightmare future of the far future, there is only war”? The Imperium is a feudal, fascist dystopian hell and I struggle to think how you could read anything from any of the books and not come to that conclusion.

Can't tell what's going on in that initial image as it's just a wall of tiny text, but yeah, if your takeaway from 40K is "the Imperium are the good guys!" you're doing a spectacular job of not paying attention and missing the point. The opening text of every 40K rulebook since Rogue Trader make it pretty clear what the deal is.

 Frag The Commissar wrote:
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But evil? I don't think thats a fair label for the Imperium.

Um. Nope, the imperium taken as a whole is absolutely evil regardless of the metric you measure them by.

 Nazrak wrote:
Can't tell what's going on in that initial image as it's just a wall of tiny text, but yeah, if your takeaway from 40K is "the Imperium are the good guys!" you're doing a spectacular job of not paying attention and missing the point. The opening text of every 40K rulebook since Rogue Trader make it pretty clear what the deal is.

Yeah, the Imperium is genuinely awful.

Genocides (not just of aliens, but of their own people), religious intolerance, horrific living conditions for so much of the populace, suppression of information and communication, complete unwavering theocratic dictatorship: the only "good" thing I can identify about the Imperium's social/welfare policy is that they seem to be utterly uncaring of race/gender - which is of little consequence when the balance of wealth and power is so obscenely skewed. Are there good, well-meaning people within the Imperium? Once you get past the whole "kill the aliens!" part, perhaps, sure, but the empire itself? Evil, unquestionably.

The Imperium is not good or acceptable. They are the prime example of what *not* to be.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Speak after me:

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Yes, absolutely, satire.

The satirical humor in the 40k setting is the portrayal of the imperium as a heroic entity while it does absolutely everything the worst monsters of current human history do magnified by a scale of millions.

Its made clear time and time and time again that a huge reason for the dire situation humanity is in is because of the total inability of the various "good" or even "self serving" factions to ever work together to fight the various existential threats like the orks tyranids and chaos.

To misquote Churchill, the Imperium is definitely the most evil faction apart from all the others.

8th ed rulebook, literally the very first thing written there wrote:
For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor of Mankind has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium, for whom a thousand souls die every day, for whom blood is drunk and flesh is eaten. Human blood and human flesh – the stuff of which the Imperium is made. To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable.

@Karol I mean no offense, but... are you a troll?

If you're talking about historical inspiration for 40k a lot of the basics in the old days were dressed-up sci-fi WWI/WWII. This is a setting populated by tracked tanks, dumb-fire missiles, shell-firing artillery, lightly-armoured APCs, relentless large-scale land warfare, peaked caps, greatcoats, gas attacks, and loads of skull/eagle iconography. Communication and coordination are tricky, plans may be ruined by the lack of timely support from other branches of your military, and people go on and on about how great the Commandos (Space Marines) are ignoring the fact that they need backup from the regular army to actually hold ground. If you're looking there are a lot of visual references (Land Raider = WWI heavy tanks, Leman Russ = Sherman, Thunderbolt = P47, that kind of thing).

It's been diluted a lot since with the slow loss of historically-inspired game mechanics (random reserves, barrages, pinning, vehicle facings, etc.) and the introduction of things like guided missiles you'd expect from a sci-fi setting but don't fit in with the historical theme, but I do think it's telling that the first thing that Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestly did after leaving GW was go make a 28mm WWII wargame.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
If you're talking about historical inspiration for 40k a lot of the basics in the old days were dressed-up sci-fi WWI/WWII. This is a setting populated by tracked tanks, dumb-fire missiles, shell-firing artillery, lightly-armoured APCs, relentless large-scale land warfare, peaked caps, greatcoats, gas attacks, and loads of skull/eagle iconography. Communication and coordination are tricky, plans may be ruined by the lack of timely support from other branches of your military, and people go on and on about how great the Commandos (Space Marines) are ignoring the fact that they need backup from the regular army to actually hold ground. If you're looking there are a lot of visual references (Land Raider = WWI heavy tanks, Leman Russ = Sherman, Thunderbolt = P47, that kind of thing).

It's been diluted a lot since with the slow loss of historically-inspired game mechanics (random reserves, barrages, pinning, vehicle facings, etc.) and the introduction of things like guided missiles you'd expect from a sci-fi setting but don't fit in with the historical theme, but I do think it's telling that the first thing that Alessio Cavatore and Rick Priestly did after leaving GW was go make a 28mm WWII wargame.

As I recall, the 3E rules were a last-minute rewrite of Priestly's personal WW2 set, wasn't it?

 Stormonu wrote:
...As I recall, the 3E rules were a last-minute rewrite of Priestly's personal WW2 set, wasn't it?

I don't know specifically but I would be completely unsurprised.

...I kind of want a version of 40k built for Bolt Action activations now.

As for the pop influence Dune, Foundation and 2000AD, sure, but the crazy and cynical 80' (and around) as a whole : Moorcock, Alien, Terminator, DnD, (cyber)punks, Thatcher(ism), heavy metal, etc...

 AnomanderRake wrote:

...I kind of want a version of 40k built for Bolt Action activations now.

Maybe have a look at Bolter Action ? Nothing official and never tried it, but seems it could do the job.

The Imperium is definitely evil, that's the whole point of the setting. The Imperium is rotten to the core, corrupt and uncaring. Its an exaggeration of the worst aspects of humanity and the worst aspects of various regimes throughout human history, right up to the present day.

The in universe perspective is that not all the individuals are bad/evil but the society is and anyone trying to improve the situation are ultimately fighting an unwinnable battle, which is what makes it GrimDark.

The only thing the imperium has in its favour is that if you're human it is better than the alternative (Chaos/enslavement by xenos, painful death by xenos etc).

The Imperium is horrific, evil, degarded and corrupt - It is a society that willingly sacrifices 1000 souls to feed the carrion-lord on the golden throne every single day. Anyone not following the mandated religion can be summarily executed. Its elite fighting force is abducted children that are subjected to horrendous body-horror physical modifications and indoctrinated into becoming soldiers with a failure rate of the transformation process will in excess of 50%. It is ruled by bickering houses in a Feudal system designed to perpetuate their own power and the Main imperial military force, the imperial guard is made of levies and conscripts where the value of a soldiers life is many times less than the value of their equipment, and whose primary purpose is to die by the tens of thousands. It is expendable cannon fodder orders of magnitude greater than any loss of life in all the wars of mankind throughout our entire history. This is the status quo and any attempt to make things better is ultimately futile.

All of this and more, and yet it is still better than the alternative.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
...As I recall, the 3E rules were a last-minute rewrite of Priestly's personal WW2 set, wasn't it?

I don't know specifically but I would be completely unsurprised.

...I kind of want a version of 40k built for Bolt Action activations now.

Been there, done that. It's trivially easy to play 40k with BA activation style: just count the number of units on each side, throw colour coded dice or tokens into a bag and fiddle a bit with psychic powers only lasting until the end of the round instead of specific phases next turn, decide if units strike in melee every time they are drawn into combat or only once per round etc. and off you go. For each token of your colour drawn in succession, you can make a mini-turn with all phases included with a selected unit (though I prefer drawing tokens until the colour changes and then making one mini-turn with all the selected units at once, so you can still coordinate assaults and such). If you like, you could add an extra activation for Characters so they could order units around them on their turn.

Works like a charm, much fun has been had.

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Speak after me:

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Yes, absolutely, satire.

The satirical humor in the 40k setting is the portrayal of the imperium as a heroic entity while it does absolutely everything the worst monsters of current human history do magnified by a scale of millions.

Its made clear time and time and time again that a huge reason for the dire situation humanity is in is because of the total inability of the various "good" or even "self serving" factions to ever work together to fight the various existential threats like the orks tyranids and chaos.

actually that is just the meta satire, there is also alot of singleline satire:
Take Ghazkull aka Thatcher marget in ork form.

Heck the entire orkline was once brown, and have you seen some glyphs.

Tau, with a caste system of ultra advancement but at the same time extremely restrictive policy?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Stormonu wrote:
...As I recall, the 3E rules were a last-minute rewrite of Priestly's personal WW2 set, wasn't it?

I don't know specifically but I would be completely unsurprised.

...I kind of want a version of 40k built for Bolt Action activations now.

3rd was based on a WW2 set, and the actual SciFi rules written for 40k meant for 4th became Starship Troopers later

yet Bolt Action itself is based on 40k with re-worked moral (aka pinning mechanic) so it is not really a problem to use the BA activations 1:1 for 40k (done that, works fine) and stay ~1000 points

Two quick observations:

Warhammer 40'000 is a comedy dressed up as a tragedy.

My step-brother, at age 11, earlier this year pointed out that this artwork looked like a mix between Mad Max and Star Wars. He is not acquainted with Warhammer 40'000 yet, and his summary of that Imperial Navy battleship's aesthetic is the best description to outsiders that I've ever heard anyone come up with for 40k. I've seen a lot of good descriptions of the 40k setting, but nothing as concise and accurate as his observation.

Aash wrote:
All of this and more, and yet it is still better than the alternative.

I'd disagree that it's better than the alternative, honestly. Death is one of the alternatives, and it still might be better than living in the Imperium. This is a society where if your child is born with a physical deformity, they're likely to be killed with a religious justification. And, of course, they're filling the environment with all sorts of pollutants as the industry that feeds their war machine operates without regard for human life.

Living under the Tau is probably better, and I don't even like the Tau very much. Nonhumans like the Tau and Eldar, and maybe even Orks, seem like the real protagonists of the setting. Humans in 40k fill the same narrative niche that Skaven did in WHF; a society that is perverted and corrupt beyond all redemption.

A note on the elite of elite of elite Imperial orders being exclusively female or male:

40k plays on archaic strings. It's better worldbuilding by being more archaic by having the exclusive elite warrior orders mimic monks and nuns and be separate. Female Sisters of Silence and Sororitas on the one hand, and male Astartes and Custodes are much better worldbuilding ploys than mixed orders of Astartes and Custodes. You don't mix monks and nuns and retain an archaic impression.

This is one example where GW has stayed a lot truer to the spirit of 40k through all these decades, than one would expect. Kudos to GW for playing the right strings to build their setting, where so many others would have fallen for outside pressure and muddled the setting.

Of course, the elite monks and nuns situation does not apply to the Mechanicus/Titanicus (who cares little about fleshly matters) or the ragtag plebeian hordes of Imperial Guard (where any setup conceivable, such as mixed or separate regiments, or just male or even just female regiments will happen somewhere depending on local culture). Neither does the Inquisition need it, since it's such an excentric individually focused organization. Sororitas/Astartes and Custodes/Sisters of Silence is the relevant arena. They are the big shining warrior orders.

And they ought to feel archaic. This isn't the Dark Age of Technology, but the regressed, myopic and parochial Age of Imperium, where things often do not make sense and weird traditions are king. There is a good reason why Games Workshop in the 1990s abandoned the idea of female Space Marines and gave the Sisters of Battle a true remake into their very own cool thing. And the setting is all that richer for it.

Cheers

Female SM aren't a thing because the models didn't sell back in ye' olden' dayes'. Sales make lore. If GW thought making SM a gender-neutral organisation would get them cash money, then they would do it in a heartbeat. I have yet to see a single explanation including "gene-seed doesn't work with women" that can't easily be changed to set up the inclusion of non-male SM. The only explanation that consistently has merit is "the Emperor thinks girls are icky".