In response to the anthropology and culture comment.

Pallomides said:

I might point out that during the periods where conqureing armies of a 100k were in vogue, it was a crime with a sentence of death for a woman to wear a man's clothes or learn to read. A particularly gruesome and public death, I might add.

For quite a few centuries, women were murdered for having thoughts above their station, usually in cruel and brutal manners. I might refer to a 15th century discourse on torture which advised that a woman's breasts be cut off and forced into thier mouths as a forcible reminder of thier role as mothers.

The principal problem of course was the women, unlike men, had little to nothing to fight back with. Denying sex was a legal excuse for ****. Defying your husband or borthers was punishable ranging from the brank to mutiliation to exicution. A woman under arms was to be put to death on the spot in some places.

Sure, there were a few who managed to struggle up out of the dark, however, this was the exception as opposed to the rule.

If you want to make a comparison to 40k, legally women were on a level with hive mutants for a long period, and still are in some places.

Pallomides said:

Just because there was none doesn't mean that women are less prone to violent acts then males. In my experience, they seem to be about on par. Hell, the only person I known to be arrested for drunken brawling was female, not male.

As pointed out above, no female armies simply means that, through recorded history, they weren't given as great of a chance to commit atrocities as males were. Whether they would order and institute such atrocities or not given equal chance and under the same circumstances is unknown and untested, though given certain empowered females throughout history and what they had done in their name, I'd hazard a guess that not much would have changed no matter the gender of the one calling the shots.

What I meant was an army of 100000 (or even just 30 000) women murdering and pillaging thier way across the lands.

Pallomides said:

The Mongols of the Golden Horde had female soldiers and they were more cruel then the men because they felt they had to live up to the standard set by the men. Also in many Middle Eastern cultures before the advent of Islam there were female warriors because there had to be, a wandering tribe could not afford to not have women able to fight. Then Islam put down the female warriors and subjugated them, it was necessary to weaken the men’s resolve, Mohammed had his soldiers take out the women first so the men lost the will to fight (history people leave out for some reason). Make sure you read history on your own instead of just assuming you learned it all in school. Too many people make that mistake now-a-days.

The European view on women actually came out of the catholic churches attempts to do away with female church leaders, which had been permitted in the church before Gregory 'the Great', who's haterd of women is well known at this point.

Ironically, this led to the martyrdom of several saints. Go figure.

Pallomides said:

Sorry, I could not find an army of exactly 100 000, but will 800 000 do?

"Some societies have chosen to not allow women to fight for their countries, while others have used women to fight in their wars as frequently as men, such as 800,000 women who served in the Soviet military during World War 2, of which nearly 70% saw front line action[1]. " - Wikipedia

As for the pillaging part...

"War crimes perpetrated by the armed forces of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991 include acts committed by the regular army — the Red Army (later called the Soviet Army) – as well as the NKVD, including the NKVD's Internal Troops. Many of these incidents occurred in Central and Eastern Europe before and during World War II, and involved summary executions and mass murder of prisoners of war and mistreatment of civilians in Soviet occupied territories. Although there are documented cases of such incidents, no International Criminal Court or Soviet or Russian tribunal has ever charged any member of the Soviet armed forces with war crimes." - Wikipedia

Polaria said:

Shush. We're not supposed to know about that. I'll throw in the Picts, the Gaels, the Vikings, the Mongols, the Sarmatians (who were actually quite famous for it during the roman era) and according to some sources, the Huns.

Well, every rule has its exception.
I could imagen a female Space Marine (for inspiration look at the Halo series, there are female Spartans).

Okay it is not exactly canon but than again it is your game.

Options:
* A woman on a feral world surpassed all males in physical prowess (could yield a female Marine)

* Crusader Sister of Battle (Still allows for 36.500xp worth of growth)

* A female Inquisitor (Still allow for 36.500xp worth of growth)

I don't now how powerful the Space Marines are compared to mere mortals but an I think a creative GM can easily adapt.


GrtZ,

Santiago...

Can't believe this discussion has reached 11 freakin pages...

Polaria said:

Notice:

"Of which nearly 70% saw front line action".

Serving does not mean you actually did diddly. Your number drops from 800,000 to 560,000.

Of which a very large amount were employed as snipers or vehicle crews, not actual "front line" infantry.

Just sayin'. Your facts and assumptions are wrong.

Kanluwen said:

They did in fact see front line action, as in line action, as in shoot them or bayonet them. Also your assertion that somehow being a sniper puts a soldier out of harms way, in WW2 especially (a time when sniper range was half what it is today), is not correct. In fact during WW2 it was one of the most dangerous jobs, because you were alone in a bell tower or a tree. The enemy would just get a tank or artillery to blow you away and they had snipers of their own. And women had to fight in Russia because all the male soldiers were dead or elsewhere when the capital and other cities of Russia were invaded. There wasn’t time to get the women out of the way, they picked up a rifle or died in the streets. Women up till about the 1200’s served in all manner of soldiering in all different countries (The Mongols with the Golden Horde most notable, but mainland China also, the Aztec and Incan people, most middle eastern cultures till Islam arrived, and the natives of most nations before ‘modernization‘ told women they were weak and couldn‘t do anything as well as a man). Just saying. I don’t trust wikipedia as far as I can toss it and his facts may be wrong as in specific numbers, but it’s still a true statement. His assumption isn’t wrong because it‘s not an assumption, the statement is fact. Women have seen front line action and did see it in Russia during WW2 and other places. And lets not forget Vietnam, when female Vietcong were just as deadly as male soldiers (do I need to cite specific examples of ‘prostitutes‘ leading American GI‘s to their deaths, no, if you deny this read any paper from the time period and you‘ll find a story about this; or any credible book written by a soldier or combat journalist of the day). True the NVA didn’t have female soldiers but the Vietcong did make use of anyone they could get and that story is repeated today the world over when citizens go to war.

Sorry I ranted a little; but I get passionate about military history, it was my major after all, lol

Kanluwen said:

Having personally interviewed several WW2 veterans who have actually seen and killed female russian soldiers in actual combat I really don't have to assume anything. To put these things into perspective you have to remember that the density of troops per square-mile was several dozen times higher than in modern wars and in many of the WW2 combat-situations the troops were packed really tight together with so-called "rear echelon" troops like transport vehicles, battalion HQs and such located only a few hundred meters behind the frontmost foxholes. If you served in anything below the level of divisional / corps HQ there was a very real chance that in case of enemy breakthrough you ended up suddenly being in "front line" no matter what.

Polaria said:

Calling bull on that. Everything I've been told is that there's very few Eastern Front German veterans who're still alive, and the vast amounts of them who still are were pulled from the Eastern Front and reassigned before the major Russian breakout, which is when you'd have actually seen females on the frontline.

And as for the person saying that "snipers are frontline" because of the range of the rifles...yeah, no. Snipers serve a very specific role, which is not readily considered frontline combat due to the nature of the work(which at that time was more akin to an artillery observer or a forward air controller ).

Kanluwen said:

I wasn't saying snipers are front line soldiers. I was making two different points. Sniping is dangerous and you kill people while doing it, which makes it a combat role, (not front line I wasn’t and am not saying that) was one point. By the way, sniper rifles have gotten better. Just snapping a scope on, say, a Springfield didn’t increase its range only the accuracy; meaning you still had to be in range (you confusing WW2 tech and modern tech I think) they didn’t make “Sniper rifles” they had rifles and you put a scope on it. Whereas a modern day sniper rifle, say a Dragunov, has a much greater range than an M14 carbine meaning you can be much farther away.

And the other point which I thought was fairly clear in Everything else I said, what that they literally fought on the front line, as in riflemen. Their cities were under siege, Nazis were killing men, women and children in the streets, they fought and kill or they didn’t fight and died. But you either didn’t read the rest of my post or you are choosing to ignore it as you also blew off my reference to the Mongols, Aztecs and Vietcong.

And I “might” call bull on the other person’s post as well, but I have read letters (translated of course) from Russian soldiers and even from German officers on the Russian front; it wasn’t the focus of my study about WW2 but I didn’t omit it. It all could have been hyperbole (I mean American’s in Korea were accused of eating Korean babies by the North Koreans) but I’ll take them at their respective words.

Edit: Also we don't know how old Polaria is. Polaria Could be a 57 year old reporter who's parents are German and has inteviewed many WW2 Vets from all sides, just saying, we don't know.

TCBC Freak said:

*facepalm* I guess I was being too vague with the statement:

It doesn't matter about the current engagement range versus the engagement range of sniper rifles then. Really, it doesn't.

Both then and now tend towards the sniper infiltrating into enemy territory to actually go to work, targeting officers and leadership.

Specifically, even with the "limited range" on the Mosin Nagants that the women in question would've been using, they would have been striking from concealed or prepared positions aiming at seemingly defenseless targets before moving from the original firing point.

Sure, there'd still be danger involved. However it wasn't in straight firefights and the smarter snipers(read: the ones who actually lived past Stalingrad and Kursk) held off their shots if the target was too heavily surrounded or armor/air support was in the area.

Concerning the OP's original question....Sure females can be marines in YOUR game.Not sure what the concern is unless you need FFG to put a sentence in the end of the book that states this.The great thing about our hobby is we can change the rules if we dont like them.The RPG police wont come to your house if you have a female marine i swear!!

Kanluwen said:

In the RAF women flew the planes to fighting crews during the battle of britain, unarmed(the weapons weren´t ammunitioned and not trained in their use)

TCBC Freak said:

I'm actually getting closer to 40 now. The interviews I mentioned took place more than decade ago when I was serving in military and we were tasked in helping military academy historians in recording the tales of WW2 veterans. The people whom I talked to had been 18 to 20 at the time of the war and thus were born between 1919 and 1927. Yes, they were old but still alive.

One of the stories about female russian fighters happened the following way:

A group of soldiers had infiltrated across the no-mans land, which was a mere 100 meter strip of land between the trenches, and assaulted russian trench-system during early morning hours. When getting closer to one of the reinforced wood shelters situated in the trenches the group of soldiers took fire from pistol fired from doorway of the shelter. They proceeded to grenade and assault the the shelter just to find out that it was russian company HQ and the soldier they had just grenaded was a young female in NKVD captains uniform.

Of course when I heard it this had happened more than 50 years ago and the witness was 18 at the time of it. Still, I don't see any reason why it could not have been true. It wasn't exactly rare for company and even battlalion level command-staff being located right in the foremost trenches. Also, many of the after-action reports from the military archive actually seem to confirm the presence of female russian soldiers right in the front line. Yet again, I do not see a reason why they would specifically mention female combatants in after-action reports if they had not indeed been there.

As for the role of russian snipers I'm afraid the movie "Enemy at the gates" and such might give people a somewhat distorted view. The most typical tactical application of the snipers in russian infantry during WW2 was actually using them as "company level fire support" which means that they would have been situated in the front trench-line together with machine guns and other light-arms fire support. This would put them literally into the same foxholes with the front-line infantry. Also, quite unlike modern snipers these fire-support snipers would not usually have any special equipment apart from scope on their rifle. They used the same improvised camoflage as anyone else and worked without spotters typically at ranges of 100 to 200 meters.

Yes, in addition to this there were divisional level sniper support who were usually tasked with scouting, reconnaisance and specific elimination of enemy officers and such. These guys and girls (the ones the movie tells about) were actually a huge minority among the snipers in those days and in many times they could not operate effectively in large battles because of the sheer volume of men involved. You have to understand that it wasn't at all unlikely for russian infantry to put a battalion of 400 to 600 men in charge of a section of front-line trench which was only 500 meters in lenght and facing a similarly manned enemy across a no-mans land of mere 100 to 200 meters. There isn't much room for sneaking about or fancy infiltration when you are facing one enemy combatant per each meter of front-line.

miles1739 said:

This is my take. If I have a female player (for example) who doesn't want to play a guy, I'm going to adhere more to making my game fun than sticking to canon. I care more about what makes for a good experience at my table than the long history of 40k.

The Wyzard said:

I really wish more people felt this way Wyzard.Good call on your part!

miles1739 said:

I'm like a freakin' Inquisitor mixed with a Commissar! lol, I'm all about keeping it true to the 40K world, but so are my team, they all want to feel like they are there, but that's the great thing about RPG's. If you are a hardcore freak about the setting like us or just a laid back pack of players who don't really care so much about the setting it doesn't matter. We can all have fun with it.

The Wyzard said:

I'm pretty sure that my group will want to play DW and I'm also quite sure that the female players will want to play female characters. However, I know my players well enough to be quite sure that none of them (not even the female ones) want me to "bend the fluff" and thus I will have to come up with a few female character options that they can play alongside the Adeptus Astartes brothers... Luckily its not *that* hard to do since Adepta Sororitas and Adeptus Astartes are pretty much the *only* gender-exclusive organizations in the whole Imperium.

I'm thinking of giving them a choice of a few pre-made concepts like Inquisitorial Psyker, Imperial Guard Walker Pilot and Imperial Assassin. And no, they don't need to be "balanced" in MMORPG way, they just need to work in the RPG setting.

This goes back many many years and is from a guy who left GW in the mid 90's.

the story is I meet some GW guys at Bris-Con (in the late 80's) and ran a non canon Chapter of Marines past them, it was one of the missing First Founding Chapters, in the first few generations their showed up a anomaly in some strains of the chapters Geanseed that allowed it to be implanted in to Females, the failuere rate was exceedingly high limiting the number of Female Marines to little more than a dozen among the many thousands in the Chapter, the Chapter was lost in Warp Storms during the Heresy Era reappearing just before the 2nd Founding, but where not included in it (most folks think they are a 2nd Founding Chapter). Today the Chapter and the few founded from their Seed each boast fewer than a half score Female Marines each if they contain any at all.

The Female Geanlines soon stabilised after presenting it's self (apparently they originated with the Progenitor and don't express from Male coded Geenseeds), but today the Female Geanlines are dieing, as Seed is lost in battle and those harvested are starting to fail at an even grater rate.

Other picurailities of the Chapters Seed is it tends not to take in those with the Psychic mutation and retards the Psychic development of those it dose meaning the chapters few Libraians weild less power but do so with more skill.

All this was OK'ed by a guy no longer with GW before much of the Canon was established, so conciser it Non-Officially Authorized, and likely Retroconed out, but it's your loophole if you want Female Marines. the First Chapter's name was "Night Dragons", but it has a few (very few) Child Chapters.

Yes, 5 pages over a non-issue IS sad.

1. There are NO female space marines.

2. DeathWatch is a diviso of Ordo Xenos a.k.a. The Inquisition

3. You CAN have a female Dark Heresy character

Conclusion: You CAN have a female character who is an Inquisitorial Agent (or full-blown Inquisitor) in a DeathWatch game. To add irony, she may actually be IN-CHARGE of all them sweaty mens.