N0-1_H3r3 said:

This. A million times, this.

There's a lot here that's problematic, or that doesn't seem to actually have anything to do with what I said. Therefore, I shall deal with it section by section.

Jude Order said:

"Just cater to whatever they want"

Show where I said that! I'm not giving anyone extra attribute points, fate points, etc. Furthermore, I'm not sure what's actually WRONG with running a game in the way that makes it most comfortable for my players. In fact, unless discomfort is specifically a part of the game's premise (such as an effectively run horror game or something) I think it's kind of a failing for a GM to make their players uncomfortable. I shouldn't even have to explain this.

"Because I think they're an oppressed minority."

Well, no. Firstly, the term 'minority' isn't strictly accurate. However, women as a whole are a subaltern group, and this is a matter of demonstrable fact. I could start producing statistics and so forth to prove it, but considering your response to me I'm not sure how well facts and reason are going to play with you. Let's just go with "you have no clue what the hell you're talking about."

"Worst reasoning in the thread... That's just dumb."

Oh no, I am pierced to the heart by your uncanny analysis. No, wait, that's not true. What actually happened was that I'm being insulted by precisely the sort of person I'd prefer to have avoid my games like the plague! Perhaps you've done me a favor, by demonstrating how an attitude of fairness and inclusiveness will act as a repellent toward people who think sexism is awesome.

...

Okay, seriously now. Let me bust it down for you. The GRIMDARK future is fun because it's a fantasy. Baby-eating Tyranids, constant war, horrible Orks blowing up everything on your planet because they like explosions, Dark Eldar running around eating people's souls...this is awesome because it's not real, it's not even close to real, and it's frankly pretty laughable. On the other hand, women actually do get excluded or disadvantaged from a lot of things in the real world (Yes, seriously, they do, do not make me start dropping ****-tons of hyperlinks in here to prove it, because I honestly expect basic cultural literacy from y'all.) And, having spoken to a lot of female potential players, many of them don't like having something that sucks for them in real life brought up in a game.

In much the same way that, had I been drafted and had to go to Vietnam, playing RECON (Vietnam RPG from Palladium, discarded the palladium system for something much more lethal) would probably not be my idea of a good time. Others may disagree, but that's how some of my female players see it, and I'm inclined to agree with them. After all, THEY ARE IN A BETTER POSITION THAN ME TO KNOW how badly women are discriminated against, and how much it bothers them to have to put up with it in-game. I can't be intellectually honest if I attempt to second-guess them in this matter.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

This is pretty sensible. I think it's better to just retcon them in as a fairly typical thing, otherwise it looks way too much like a Special Snowflake PC. I really dislike those, as a matter of personal preference.

Had a response, but decided to delete it. lol me

Lol, this is really funny. A topic about females in Deathwatch that became and advocate about females in real world.

Just to state my view point. I see it like this; either make your homegrown rules, or deal with all male product (and by all male I mean about the fact that Space Marines are male). I guess the only way you can introduce a female in DW is through a female Inquisitor that gives the orders.

Officially the females aren't in any disadvantage in 40k universe. But i guess you can debate that.

Here is how we are doing it. Within lore there is a special sector of the inquisition that was created after the horus heresy, its one and only purpose is to study space marines and find effective ways to kill them; with emphasis on overcoming geneseed advantages. The reason as has been said before in this topic , Space marines aren;t human. In fact the best way to describe them is a mutant, a divinely created mutant but mutant none the less. The Inquisition doesn;t see humanities defenders when they look at Space marines, all they see are potential traitors who will plunge the imperium into another massive civil war.

Flash forward to the 38 millenium(this is now my made up lore), the inquisition has been constantly experiementing on gene seed trying to unlock its secrets; when through accident or determination the way to generate a female space marine is discovered. Now at first the Inquisitors involved think well thats neat lets make her into to dog food now. When one of them says "Wait I have a cunning plan".

Fast forward to 40 millenium, the female space marines chapter is up and running being funded and backed by the Inquisition. This chapter is huge, far larger than chapters are permitted to be. As far as the female marines are concerned they are the defenders of humanity fighting against the enemies of man. Unofficially, the female space marines exist outside of Imperial space, indeed the astronimcan can barely be seen where they fight. This chapter does not defend planets but rather goes out into the far fringes of the galaxy finding and killing the vile Xenos and hunting for choas infested worlds. You see the Inquisition does not care about the femal chapter but rather they are trying to find the answer to an interesting question. Are female marines more loyal than males, do the changes made to both female bodies and female gene-seed make them more restistant to the taint of the warp.

Two of the first Primarchs have been erased from history. I am not saying that they were female primarchs, I am saying that the Inquisition can easyily forge documents and say behold we have found the birth place of the lost primarch and he was a she. Thus if female marines have any loyalty advantage the Inquisitors behind this experiment will try and phase out male chapters and replace them with female. And as time goes on slowly change history to suit their needs.

The Wyzard said:

Thank you sir. But i think we disagree on one thing. I like my Players to have special characters. I enjoy running the off the wall group with a team that consists of a tau, an eldar, a tyranid (yes as a player character), a living saint, a deamonhost, and the inquisitor that lead this team. Now I have heard the fanboy complaints and have to say that I am glad i upset the fanboys because that group was great. Everyone played their character like a character and not a cut out from the wargame codex. But yes Wyzard I agree one player with an out there character the rest of the group cant keep up with will kill a game faster than a moody fanboy or a rules lawyer.

Personally, I don't like the idea of female Adeptus Astartes. Not because I necessarily care about canon, I diverge from canon on a number of things and even for the most hard core canon adherent, its hard to completely stick to in in ones own RPG.

No, I don't like it because I like my 40K to be sexist. I think part of the entire point of Warhammer 40K is to be politically incorrect and if you think it should be egalitarian, then I think that you don't get 40K. Now, as many have said, 40K isn't that sexist in most regards and with other Imperium organizations, but as I said, I don't always adhere to canon and in my conception of the Imperium, its vastly more sexist than as portrayed in most of the books - at least many more aspects of it are. Racist (against human races/ethnicities, not xeno species) too.

As for women having to face sexism in real life, that may be and I don't see a point in arguing how different a man's life is than a woman living in my area of the world or how much of an issue sexism is or isn't. I will say though that I have to face the ubiquitous presence of political correctness in my daily life from school to work to entertainment to media to politics and I don't want a bunch of self righteous ideologues forcing their dogma into my hobbies just like they have every other aspect of my life.

That being said, if I were running a Deathwatch game and had somebody who really really wanted to be a female Astartes, I would let her (or him) do so. Not for any ideological reason or to right any alleged social injustice, but because the job of GM is in large part to make players happy and if it means that much to a player then I should probably try to accommodate that player's wish - unless I think they just want to be a special snowflake*. It will diminish my fun somewhat in that it makes the universe slightly different from my ideal version, but for the running GM a small point of fluff is less important to enjoyment of the game than a player's character.

If I were persuaded to allow it by an enthusiastic player, the way I would do it is to have female marines from the very beginning - meaning that there always have been female Astartes and that though they may be in the minority, they aren't exceptionally rare or heretical. My ideal situation if I was running a Deathwatch game and had someone who wanted to play a female character would be to persuade her to play a different type (Sister of Battle, psyker, Inquisitor, etc.) instead.

* I faced a somewhat similar situation once when running a Vampire LARP. One player wanted to be a secret Tzimisce vampire in a Camarilla game. Well, I hate the special snowflake thing that seems to be so popular in RPG and since I was thinking about making changes to the setting anyway, I declared that the Tzimisce Clan had a presence in the Camarilla and he could be open about his Clan affiliation. He was extremely unhappy about this decision of mine, presumably because he wanted his special snowflake Tzimisce.

I'm just wondering whether there were threads mentioning annoyance (or whatever) about the Inquisition Handbook since you could play Adepta Sororitas and that there was not a direct male equivalent in that book? It's really not going to be that hard to "balance"as much as I hate that termcharacters in the varying power levels that allow access to all the player and PC sex/gender combinations.

Surely?

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Having one gender-limited character type in an RPG is not as grating as having an entire RPG which is gender-limited. Also, there were a number of non-Sororitas "fighter" type PC classes in IH, so it's not like there was even any particular party role that was barred to a given gender of PCs.

Also, speaking as a dude, I don't get discriminated against based on gender a lot in real life (there's a few contexts in which it happens to me, but they're rare), so it doesn't bug me much if there's an in-setting reason for some given character type to be female-only (viz: Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.) Given that women face much more wide-ranging and pervasive discrimination in real life, I'm inclined to sympathize if it's a bigger deal to them. Especially when (viz: Deathwatch) it's the only PC type presented in the game.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it. Of course, since there's nothing to stop a gender-male taking on the role of a PC-gender female, or vice versa...? Seems to be a case of trying to cause fire by making a whole lot of smoke.

Of course, YMMV.

Kage

The Wyzard said:

I think that I would be more convinced by your argument if you didn't advocate a double standard based on events that I and my gaming group have nothing to do with and may or may not experience.

The Wyzard said:

So if there were a game that was about Sisters of Battle and only sisters of battle men in your game would have to play women because theyre not discriminated against very much?

Sergeant Brother said:

Be fair. I gave two or three reasons why it wasn't as much of a problem; that's only one of them.

Jude Order said:

I'm not going to reply to you further until you can learn to stop putting words in my mouth.

The Wyzard said:

OK, sorry, you're right. It was something that bugged me about your argument, though ultimately, I would allow someone to play a female Space Marine if it was extremely important to that player, though ideally I'd prefer not to.

Sergeant Brother said:

It's actually kind of a weird topic, and vastly beyond the scope of this thread, but I can't really criticize anyone for disliking double-standards as a matter of instinct.

I used to argue strongly against them (in undergrad I was a strident and effective critic of hate-crime laws specifically and, as another example, differential physical fitness requirements for female police or soldiers, etc.) So, I'd be hypocritical if I said something to the effect of "You should be totally cool with double standards!" Or different standards for different groups, or however you want to put it.

I changed my mind from a hard-line stance against them some time between my first and second year in law school, though, and now I see some value in them, when carefully applied. The reasons for that, though, are vastly beyond the scope of this thread and probably something that FFG doesn't want to see a flame-war erupt over (a sad possibility.)

Anyway, you can PM me if you want to get into the topic (as can anyone else). I won't be offended in the least if nobody does, of course.

I don't know and don't care how a topic like ths got to 17 pages but for crying out loud GET A LIFE.

Astartes are males, period. It's a well known fact for all that knows ever a little of the settings and if you don't agree with it GO PLAY SOMETHING ELSE.

It's an rpg folks, and while the golden rule apply to any game some things are just bloody silly, this whole thing been one of them. It has nothing to do with feminism or other REAL things, it's just a bloody game, get over it.

Cam I suggest a thread hijack about recommending good beer. Dear Lord, if you want female SM have them, if you don't, don't, it's your game and your mates/partners.

By the way I like Guinness

Lucius Valerius said:

Oh, okay.

So I'm to assume you're telling people that they're not allowed to do whatever they want with a ROLEPLAYING GAME, which are designed with giving its players the ability to do whatever they want in mind?

Lucius Valerius said:

And yet, you took the time to read at least some of it and posted yourself.

The irony, it is strong here.

The Wyzard said:

Well, I do like to get into discussions on that sort of thing, unortunately, lately I've been in so many internet arguments that I'm a bit burned out on arguig over *** so I think I'm going to have to respectfully declines. Though I do have one question. If a male player in a game you were running said that he really really wanted to play a male Sister of Battle (a Brother of Battle as it were) and wanted to change fluff to make it allowable, would you let him?

Sergeant Brother said:

My answer to that would be no, but I would let him use the career path to play a crusader just like I will use the marine rules (if it makes sense) to let the girls play say skitarii or what not. What I don't get is the need to attatch the Space Marine suffix to every character in the game, just use the rules, come up with something different that fits the canon, like say an Imperial Assassin or something else.

Interesting...I kind of like this approach and it might be an avenue I take in my own game.

Cailieg said:

I'd prefer my group played their characters according to the background they provided, in the setting that has been presented, without some 20th century notions regarding equality or the perceived lack thereof. The setting is 41k, not 2k, and some theories about equality have been changed to reflect that.