Unusualsuspect said:

The only problem is that the genes that trigger the development of prefferred characteristics (like increased muscle growth, high testosterone levels and increased aggressiveness) in space marines recide in Y-chromosome. This is, by the way, true for all mammals. For example, the reason why beef comes from ox not cow is because due to Y-chromosome the ox gather much more muscle mass much faster and thus make better beef. This is also the reason why at highest levels of muscle-strenght-oriented sports men get better results than women. Hard training can make anyone tough, but when everyone trains hard genetics start to make serious difference.

Emperor may be several things, but he is not stupid. Thus, when creating space marines he chose Y-chromosome instead of XX simply because he knew Y-chromosome already carries all the preferable traits his warriors will need. All he has to do is to the best of them and enhance them to superhuman levels.

Now, here comes the catch: In addition to making humans bigger, stronger, more aggressive and make them grow cojones Y-chromosome does come with a rather nasty disadvantage. Its carriers are particularly susceptible to mutations. This is because if in XY setup (men) if a gene in the Xs or the Y gets mutated there is no backup. Whereas XX setup (women) always have identical backup in the other X if a single gene (or a sequence) in the other X gets damaged.

The lesson of the story: If you want to make big, badass warriors, choose men.

If you want to make not-so big, not-so-badass people less easily corrupted due to mutation, choose women.

Ever wonder why Emperor guided the things in such way that the keepers of purity (Daughters of Emperor) were all-female organization?

Ever wonder why space is filled with chaos/renegade/just-plain-gone-strange marines?

So, you don't understand...

It's not a matter of science... it's a matter of faith!

Doesn't matter of X or Y chromosome, or if the Emperor can change his gender scientifically or by magical means!

We talking in a dark universe, human are ruled by faith, not science!

Emperor have chosen his sons, they are male, and no one can change this! This is the Emperor Word!

If then a radical Inquisitor create a Female Astarte for his purpoise... (shoes hunting??) this is another thing, but is a heresy!

I don't think some people realize that female Space Marines are not a "will they be playable" scenario, but a hypothetical "I know it's not possible but I don't mind straying from canon" personal preference scenario.

Artemesia said:

When any Gamemaster starts any campaign he or she will be elevated to the High Overgod of all Gameverse. He is responsible for describing the players what their characters see, feel and experience. In effect he is responsible for creating and depicting the kind of world where players want to play the game. This is a huge responsibility and should be handled so. If majority of the players don't mind twisting lore to include female space marines, or if they even want it, then it will be GMs responsibility to find a solution to how to cater to players without twisting his own vision beyond what he wants and is capable of believably implement. If majority of the players want to stick to "no female space marines" canon, but one or several want to play female characters the GM is equally respocible of finding a workable solution without going too much against the players wishes. Its all about what works for you.

I know I will never run a campaign with female space marines and I know my players will understand and accept it if I still retain the chance for female characters in the game overall. I also know that if I did include female marines or did not allow female characters at all some of them would be extremely disappointed. Thus, any campaign I will run is most likely to feature Adepta Sororitas Celestians, Inquisitorial Stormtrooper female sergeants and / or female Imperial Guard walker pilots serving side-by-side with Deathwatch.

keltheos said:

Lightbringer said:

In 25 years of RPG's (OMG I am getting OLD) I have played many characters in many games. From that first Fighter that I rolled up with my little brother (he got DnD basic and expert box set for Xmas and man did I wish that was my present..), my characters have been places and done things... travelled the depths of the Underdark, died a lot in the Tomb of Horrors, hunted Sabbat across the east coast, raged and howled at the moon, became a were-cat in Japan, bounty hunted in a galaxy far far away, slayed vampires in Sunnydale, hunted Demons in LA, killed a Witch King on Middle Earth, survived a zombie apocalypse and (most recently) rooted out HERESY in the Calixis Sector before becoming a Rogue Trader Captain.

In all that time, whether I played a girl or a boy was never an issue or required much thought.... I don't know how other people come up with characters but when I come up with a character I dont think "Oh I have to play a girl" first... its usually oh I want to play an Assassin and then move on to the interesting stuff like back story and stats and maybe at some point think, oh this one is a "he" or "she".

I think of it this way... Space Marines aren't really men. Yes they were born men, but once they become Space Marines they become something more that is way beyond mere gender. So no, I dont have any issues with lack of female characters or any particular desire to play a female space marine - cause that would be just silly.

Seriously people - if I am trying to create a legion of super warriors - of course you are going to choose the biggest, hulkiest body frames you can find... its only logical. The day the 40K-verse feels a need to be politically correct is the day I put away my dice for good.

And finally, its not who you are that's the issue - its what you do. Space Marines are equal opportunity warriors. It doesn't matter if you are a male or female genestealer... you will still be just as dead.

Ravia Khadis Praetor said:

Well, Imperial Guardsmen haven't been able to strap their Penal Legionarres full of explosives on the tabletop for a while now...

I jest, I jest (I hope, anyway). But I do think people are taking the inability for a space marine to be female as some sort of personal slight or misogyny where it really isn't. If you want to see misogyny go play F.A.T.A.L. or something along those lines.

I didn't see a lot of people complaining that one couldn't play DH with an eldar or a space marine or a catgirl or whatever. At least not those who actually understood the setting decently. It's just that the lore (at its baseline anyway) doesn't work that way. Female space marines are just another one of those "40k doesn't quite work like this" retrictions IMHO. You can't build a one-winged angel with anime hair and a bustersword with inbuilt gun in DH, and you can't build a female space marine.

40k isn't a PC place by any means, but I don't think the designers were going "lol -4strength" in their heads while designing space marines.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to stop you homebrewing that the Emperor returning or Roboute Gulliman thawing out or anything like that. But I will say it's going majorly against the established fluff (secluded warrior monk brotherhood and all that) and in my opinion it hurts the setting more than it helps.

If anything, the cynic in me is somewhat stumped by people who go "Your a girl so you have to play guuuurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl characters" and vice versa. If anything, wouldn't they be perpetuating stereotypes moreso than anyone else?

The Hobo Hunter said:

Well, I didn't get Dark Heresy because:

a) No Eldar in there. (They are in the Inquisitor game of GW which is theoretically pretty much like Dark Heresy with big miniatures and more combat.)

b) No Space Marines. (Didn't mind because I waited for Deathwatch)

c) You're playing a bunch of expendable pawns.

The Hobo Hunter said:

To be honest: I'm a man and I'm playing men. Playing women (what I have to do sometimes as a GM) feels weird to me. When I started roleplaying I met two men playing women. Both turned out to be transsexuals. Both are really nice people, but since then I'm wondering a bit every time I see someone playing a character of the other gender. It took some time to realise that in MMORPG's many men play women "because they don't want to stare on a male butt while playing".

Nojo509 said:

Lots of great discussion here, but I think *some* of you didn't understand my question. Probably because of how I asked it.

What I'm really asking is:

Could a player who, for any reason, wanted to play a female character of any kind (doesn't have to be a space marine), play one in DW using only the RAW?

If they include a section on "how to incorporate DH and RT characters" then the answer is yes. If it's only space marines, then the RAW will probably say no.

Nojo509 said:

It's a fairly safe bet that the mechanics of the game will be **** near the same as Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader with a few SPHESS MAHREEN tweaks. So, yes, I'd say you could play a female character in Deathwatch with the rules as written. Ascension's going to make **** near everything possible now.

Nojo509 said:

My answer is that you will not be able to play a female character in a Deathwatch campaign using the DW core book alone; however, you will be able to run a game that includes both Deathwatch Space Marines and female characters from one of the other two 40k RPGs since they all use the same core system and cross-game play was intended to be possible from the start.

Something else occurred to me while reading this thread. You know, Space Marines get to choose who they initiate into their ranks. They can be very selective, and choose exactly the type of person they want, and choose who gets to inherit the gene, and who does not.

Much of this is because Space Marines don't have kids.

If you had Male and Female Space Marines, I'd imagine they could have genetic progeny that would be Space Marines, genetically full up. That kind of kills the ability to choose the biggest and baddest on the block with all the psych profiles and traits that you want in your chapter, if you have to worry about a bunch of kiddies that already have the geneseeds in them and are going to grow up just like Mama and Papa.

GreyLord said:

The process of becoming what they are leaves Space Marines sterile. I'd assume the same would happen to females.

Nojo509 said:

The easy answer is: Yes. Roll a Space Marine. Name it Aemilia, or whatever you like. Presto, a female character! It's not like different genders have different stats, so it's up to you to decide if 40k canon is relevant or not for your own campaign. A female SM wouldn't be canon, as many have already pointed out. Then again, there may be interesting themes to be found while exploring this less trodden path. Make it a Jeanne d'Arc story, or let yourself be inspired by the (admittedly few, as far as historical records go) medieval women who took up arms and fought as knights, side by side with men - sometimes but not always hiding their true identity.

FFG will most likely include a section on how to import chars from the other two games. Even if they don't, it'll be real easy to transfer them yourself.

I know I might offend some people here but I will never have female space marines. If you think of the cleanse & purge doctrine of the space marines and general fact that its males who have the higher capacity for violence, mass murder & sanctioned genocide it makes sense that there are no female Space Marines. Its part of the male genetics, just look at history. Not that I would have a problem in my Group but if some female would want to play along she would be Sorritas. Check out any statistic on murder & violence = its males.

Neither shall I. It gives the Space Marines character that they do not allow women into their ranks beyond the fact that the process meant for converting a man into a Space Marine only exists for males (though I did read somewhere that it was once possible to do so for women, but is now lost). It builds great esprit-de-corps that is part of the heart and soul of what it is to be a Space Marine, and a soldier in general. Besides, there is a place for women throughout the Imperium, most particularly among the Inquisition and the Adeptus Sororitas. To Hell with Political Correctness.

Wayfinder said:

Well, anyone who knows anything about 40k lore knows that in 'the grim darkness of the 40th millenium' they don't really believe in political correctness, lol

Pallomides said:

It's culture, not genetics. go read a genetics book and a book about antropology.

Well not so with my female players - they flat refused to play men; not matter how powerful.

Based on Ascension, I don't think giving out any amount of XP is going to put a Sister of Battle in the same league as Space Marine.

@kerrahn

Well, anyone who knows anything about 40k lore knows that in 'the grim darkness of the 40th millenium' they don't really believe in political correctness, lol

But there's lots of political correctness! For starters, the Senate of Terra in charge of making Imperial politics is always correct.

@fimarach

Based on Ascension, I don't think giving out any amount of XP is going to put a Sister of Battle in the same league as Space Marine.

So... I take it you already had a look at Death Watch to find out which league Space Marines actually are?

Artemesia said:

I belive that has been retconned. Actually, a lot of the creation of a space marine has been retconned depending on what you read. Further, unto those who say there has never been a female space marine after 1st edition, I'll point you to the Storm of Iron novel, where a woman becomes a CSM after selling her soul to Khorne for revenge. He does not make her a male, though does make her more powerful.

1) There were never female space marines in 1st ed

2) The woman in storm of iron doesn't become a space marine. She kills the marine and puts on his armour which is infused with warp energy from Khorne thus it bonds to her. She gets no organs or implants.

Hellebore

1) Excuse me 'female adventurers in Space Marine power armor which somehow works for them without the black carapace and are labeld 'space marine' on the slotta and sold as Space Marines in addition to thier appearance in the Adventurers line."

2) Achem. If it kills like a CSM and screams Blood for the Blood God like a CSM and none of the CSMs noticed she was not one of them. In addtion: how is it different from the process they used in Dead Sky Black Sun where they used daemons and slaves to make instant CSMs.

BaronIveagh said:

www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Image:Female_Warrior_Jayne.jpg

www.collecting-citadel-miniatures.com/wiki/index.php/Image:Female_Warrior_Gabs.jpg

These are the only female models I can find that wear vaguely power armouresque armour. I can't see 'space marine' written on the tab.

And even if it did, GW have produced a Chaos Toilet, ork goff rokkers (orks playing electric guitar with mohawks), an ork santa and most recently, a White Dwarf in a space suit carrying a snotling dressed in a Grey Alien outfit.

So given that the only background describing the gender of marines unambigiously (for the last 20+ years) has said male only with no mention of female space marines, I would take a female marine model as seriously as an ork santa of which there was no background at all, or goff rokkers.

Pretty much every Imperial model in the RT book could wear power armour. Arbitrators had a 5% chance of getting power armour, Astronomica and mechanicus members had a 50% chance of getting power armour, inquisitors 70%, Navigators 40%, Space marines start standard with power armour, Rogue Traders had a 70% chance, assassins 40%, and any abhuman that filled one of the above could wear power armour as well.

So power armour, in RT, was far more common than today and could be worn by anyone.

So a space marine is anything that acts like a space marine in any given scenario? Well that's the lamest definition of a space marine I've ever heard and sounds like a pretty pathetic attempt to reinforce a flimsy argument. She didn't have any geneseed, no extra organs. She put on magic armour. The entire book revolved around STEALING geneseed. If you only needed slaves and daemons to create marines then the entire premise of the book falls apart. Chaos marines lose all their marine organs (which ARE the definition of what a marine is) and just become daemonically powered humans in magical armour.

Hellebore

So give me an example of the mass murdering conquering army of 100 000 women in the history of this world?