Ok the very subtext to this forum says it all Join the Brotherhood...I was just curious because from what I know of Space Marines there really is no chapter for females and as far as I know none serve along side marines. I know there is like some sort of all Female group (forget the name), but this doesn't seem to lend it self to the possibility of getting a single female into a group of all male soldiers.

So whats the deal?

Volomon said:

First of:

Dear FFG, this forum needs a FAQ. Two items would need to address the question of gender and of whether Deathwatch actually allows for roleplaying or only shooting.

Now to answer your question:

It's a man's RPG as much as an Amazon RPG would be a female's game. It's possible to combine it with female PCs from Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader. But there are no female Space Marines officially and if you want them you need to house rule them into your game.

Alex

Well fill me in the fluff is Deathwatch purely from the POV of a space marine squad? I'm not 100% sure what the Deathwatch's purpose is, why for instance wouldn't a Sister of Battle be possible in the Deathwatch.

The Deathwatch is a Space Marine Chapter made up of Marines from different Chapters.

A Sister of Battle cannot be a Deathwatch Marine any more than a Marine can be a Sister of Battle.

BYE

That said, with a little work, a 40k roleplaying game adventure, written using rules from both Dark Heresy and Death Watch would allow for a battle brother and Sister of battle to fight side by side as player characters.

But in truth, a better choice would be an Ordo Xeno's inquisitor.

Ofcause, there is no reason that female players should not play a Space Marine, just as a male player can play a sister of battle.

But, the setting recognises only male Space Marines and Female sisters of battle.

As for what the death watch is, it is the chamber militant of the Ordo Xenos, the wing of the Holy Inquisition, which deals with the threat of the alien. As the chamber militant, the death watch is a special knightly order of marines, drawn from every chapter, and tasked and trained to fight the Xenos. They perform a variety of roles, from acting as honour guards to inquisitors on ambassidorial missions, to kill teams tasked with the destruction of alien incursions on human worlds, to the castodians of watch keeps, from when they look down upon ancient and dead worlds, on which sleep dead gods of ages past, watching for signs of their return, and armed with arrays of atomic and virus weapons, ready to bombard the planet below, should the resident cthonic horror wake.

In short, the death watch are humanities greatest heroes, who are our first and last line of defence against the fickle alien.

As stated above, this is a question that puzzled many a gamer. It has been dealt with in great, painful detail. If you check through this games' (or any other RPG-oriented WH40K for that matter) forum, you will find a long history, tradition even, with fighters for or against girls in power armor. That, in the end, is what it boils down to. The more, hrm, conservative stance is that SM are all-male and the Sisters of Battle, while a force to be reckoned with, are not really on-par with the SM. The other, more liberal stance, is that since you purchased the game you can do whatever you want and, if needed, find legitimacy / pseudo-science argumentation / fluff for that as well. The stances are seemingly unconsolable.

Here are some links to the threads that went through the whole thing:

House rule 1 with girls

House rule 2 with girls

Latest (of the many) Discussion on "the female problem"

Hope this gives you some of the needed angles.

Happy Gaming

Ariolan

zombieneighbours said:

Absolutely. And I think that once DW is out, the opportunities for an Acolyte or Throne Agent Cell to travel on a Rogue Trader vessel with Deathwatch escort could make for a great game.


And remember, whenever someone complains about a lack of female Space Marines, ask them if you can have a male Sister of Battle. Male Sisters of Battle... even saying that sounds stupid!!!

BYE

What is the obsession with female Astartes? In any case women can play the game, but they would play male Space Marines. I've played plenty of female characters in my time, it's a fun change up now and then & some of my favorite 'roles' have been distaff.

Those who really want to play a female PC may want to investigate running a Soritas character from the DH Inquisitor's Handbook, just level them up a bit.

Never had people complain about sex restrictions in Macho Women With Guns the RPG.

Oh boy, here we go again.

And lo there was to come a third stupid thread about sex/gender and Space Marines.

And the Emperor raged and gnashed his teeth upon the Golden Throne.

And his Angels of Death, the Adeptus Astartes, marched forth to destroy the topic once and for all.

While the noble Sisters of Battle were left to wonder what the **** was wrong with playing one of them.

And the Emperor did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs, and sloths, and anchovies, and orangutans...

Blood Pact said:

Yeah but only the Battle-Brothers would gain their knowledge. No fair! ;-)

Alex

In a way Astartes are hermaphrodies, anyway. Creating gene seed is essentially an asexual reproduction process, though with a lot of 3rd-party assistance to get it from 'parent' to child'.

But to make a serious reply, Sisters of Battle, or really any female of the Dark Heresy (or Rogue Trader) careers can easily fit their way in to a Deathwatch series.

In the case of the former, the woman can simply be a Throne Agent, or even an Inquisitor herself, which means she not only has the authority but the independence to act on their own and with the Deathwatch for whatever reason. They don't even necessarily need to be from the Ordo Xenos, since an agent of the Inquisition could find all kinds of cause to work with, or call upon, the Deathwatch. While a Rogue Trader could have some Marines on their ship with them, as a part of their obligation to the Imperium, or be working for the Inquisition themselves, since the RT careers aren't necessarily restricted from DH.

And Ariolan, yeah the stances really are irreconcilable when you start throwing around things like "the female problem" in regards to those of us who merely want to play the game true to the setting material.

And to pre-empt the inevitable comment about using XY females, cause I've seen it several times... well I hate to be the crass one this time (AK-73 will be mad that I stole his job) but in the real world, being an XY Female is a genetic flaw. I'm sorry if anyone here doesn't like reading that, I have no problem with any member of our GLBT rainbow, but XY Females wouldn't need to go through horomone therapy or have their ovaries removed if it was an entirely healthy way to be born. And with that out of the way, I'll get to my primary point, which is that the Space Marines aren't likely to begin accepting people with genetic flaws.

H.B.M.C. said:

You fail fluff. They'e called Frateris Templars.

Edit: and, amusingly enough, this thread bares out my point about how any discussion of the possiblity of female marines is treated. Rather then say 'How might this happen without breaking fluff?" you get a hoard of fluff nazis in here screaming that people who want such a thing shouldn't play the game.

While we are at it why cant I be a Ratling Space Marine? Or a Ogryn Space Marine?

Sorry, just pushing the debate in a wrong direction.

Personally I like the fluff as it is, if I were to do anything with the overall fluff it would be remove space marines fromit completely. And the Tau.

BaronIveagh said:

Well, it stands to reason that there is no female chapter which has successfully implemented the whole SM conversion, else the Imperium would almost certainly employ that.

The only way I can see female space marines is when they are unauthorized (or an authorized covert program) and not all of their implants don't work properly. How much fun would this be to female gamers though? The only way I can see it work half-way for the girls is if some of their mutations have serious drawbacks (more susceptible to the warp?) but also offer sometimes greater powers than the marines.

That way female players won't feel like second-class (only unauthorized), not being worse than male SMs only more volatile and thus dangerous.

Whether a female chapter was covert or unauthorized would depend on what role a female should play between the males. If the GM likes the idea of a girl initially posing as a marine, go for the unauthorized stuff. Otherwise introduce the guys to that covert SM program. And they get to attached to the Deathwatch because of their being susceptible to the warp then I guess.

Any other ideas? Anyone?

Alex

The Frateris Templars were not the equivalent of Sisters of Battle in way. They were the army that existed for the Ecclesiarchy prior to the Decree Passive. They no longer exist. The Frateris Militia however refers to "rabble" roused by the demagoguery of priests and usually have little better than mob weapons. This sort of thing is done occasionally for Wars of Faith.

I fail to see the point in this thread.

Lore: There are no more male Frateris, there are no female space marines, there are however sisters of battle.

House Rules: Do whatever you want.

It is your choice...

Hesporos said:

I'm with you. We just keep seeing the same words being spoken again and again. There really ought to be some sort of FAQ, but I suppose nothing makes me read these threads other than my desire to see the train wreck again.

BaronIveagh said:

Frateris Templars haven't existed in the setting since the age of apostasy. The Brides of the Emperor, the founding members of the Adeptus Soriatas, where absorbed into the reformed eclessarchy by inquisitorial decree, to perform a far reduced primerially defensive role, and replace the Frateris Templars. So no, he didn't fail at fluff.

Now, i am sorry, but no one here, to my knowledge has said that you cannot play the game with a female marine if you so desire.

All anyone has said is that the setting does not support it. Which is entirely accurate, because the setting doesn't. The guy can have female marines, and if he wants, he can have inquisitors who keep pet genestealers, which curl up on his bed and keep him warm, or have the emperor stepping out for a walk in the new forest each morning, or anything else he want, but he won't be playing in the setting as written, and I am ill equiped to advice you or he, on your writting of the house setting 'Inquisitor fluffy's magic fun time.'

Fluff nazis indeed...*Shakes head.*

I have several fluff nazis in my group. I've come to eventually just tell them to shut up because just because they haven't heard of anything like that in the fluff, it doesn't mean it can't/doesn't exist. Before someone takes this out of context, I am not saying that this justifies female marines or male sororitas or what have you, so please do not put words in my mouth.

How lax a stance on the fluff is differs from person to person. There is no solution that will please everybody. All you can really do is find what works for you or your group and tell anybody who says you're doing it wrong to go brood elsewhere.

Being a little bit of a fluff nazi myself I will say this, the game is yours do with it what needs doing to have fun, thats why we play in the first place. That said, what gets to me is the people trying to retcon their way around it, basically wanting to be "cannon" while having things like girl marines and so on, thats what gets me effied off, accept that its not in setting and I'm fine with it.

UncleArkie said:

There are even entirely in cannon ways of dealing with the issue of a desire to include female power armour wearing super soldiers into the game. For instance, a kill team might raid what they believe is a cold trade orbital around a newly discovered secret, only to discover it is a logican facility. After killing the biologisians and the gene-warping xenos from the planet below, the inquisitor comes aboard and discovers a female with similar proportions and augmentations to a marine, but which uses novel genetic augmentation. On scanning her for infomation, he discovers that she is a former Soriatas, but that she is not alone, and the logicians escaped with a number of her fellows. On waking her form stasis, he could discover her faith in the emperor, and offer her a chance at redemption, by shaving her head, and becoming a sister repentia, and to seek death by hunting down her fellows, along side the marines. While such a character would not be a space marine, it is a way one could, in moderate keeping with the setting, play a female character with the same stats, though you'd probably be about and inch from being splatted by the marines in the party who'd view you as a vile abomination.

zombieneighbours said:

The point was that at one point there were both. His assertion that it was the same as female space marines (which supposedly have never existed) is not supported by fluff.

And, IIRC, they are now the (questionably heretical) Chantry Guards of the Temple Tendency. (Diciples of the Dark Gods, pg 35)

I still like the idea of a Cursed Founding Chapter that become female as their geneseed mutation. It fits the setting (and is actually a fairly grimdark sort of body horror, since most people's identity is tied to gender) and is not as likly to bring down Inquisitorial wrath as many of the other mutations to arise out of that founding.