crisaron said:

Then no offence, but you have bad players then. Just because you haven't had a male player play a female character convincingly doesn't change the fact that I frequently see it done well at my local university RP society, same with women playing male characters. Also, why would it "not be in [a woman's] normal nature to play a matcho"? It's a character, how they act normally, outside of the game, has nothing to do with how well or not they can play a fictional character.

I really do think there is a lot of false generalisations about what men and women do here, and it's pretty sad to see it from roleplayers, who in my experience are usually a fairly accepting, unbigoted group of people.

If you want to believe women players can't play male warrior/knight characters, or vice versa, go ahead. Doesn't make you any less incorrect.

MILLANDSON said:

Sorry dude, there is no right and wrong here and I am happy for you that you feel all good with your gaming group, I have had this one for over ten years with boys and girls coming and going.

As far as I believe new female players (which is gettign freaky rare at my age) should not have to put up with the "fluff says it should not", an experienced one may like to but at the same time may not want to always( or at all) play guys (just like we have all seen little boys play girls to make different and yes, 20 years ago I did too when I tough it would be funny to play cross genders) and that should not stop a gaming group either on the basis that fluff says.

Anyway said and resaid enjoy your DW game dude.

I play RPG to socialise not fluff war with other or rule lawyer.

aka_mythos said:

Hmm... the problem is the radical extreme to which we're altering the tissues. There are a thousand little things that have to be tweaked as well (acid proof teeth, for example) If we went down the aventue of genetic re-engineering, why implant organs at all? If you have a virus that advanced that this is possible, why not just design it so that the body grows these new organs naturally?

The other problem is chronic rejection. Even if you can get the subject past the initial stages of implantation, which usually kill the recipient somewhere between instantly and a week or so afterward, over time the body rejects the new tissue anyway, filling the blood vessels with muscle fibers in an attempt to cut off the alien organs. This is one o the reasons that even in the rare successful xenotransplant, they usually have to have the organ replaced again after a fairly brief time.

I'm not sure where you're getting that these are genetically cultivated for implantation into the subject. If anything they'd be carrying genetic information for the Space Marine that grew the progenoid, not the neophyte being implanted.

If the two marines were closely related, this would be advantageous, but for random people, it might actually make the procedure even harder.

In all honesty, you're looking at tens of thousands of failed implants for each successful implantation. But lets reduce that: lets say that three fail for each success (far greater success then fluff permits). A space marine only produces two progenoids. This means that no space marine chapter would ever be up to strength after their initial engagement in combat, and most would die out in a few years, because they would never be able to produce sufficent geneseed to make up lost numbers.

Wow this is really going nowhere.

If you want to be a female space marine then play one.

If you want female space marines in your game then let them.

If you want me to let female space marines in my game, tough. Its not how I read the fluff.

If you want GW to change their IP for you own personal belief, tough. Not going to happen.

They dont have female options in Deathwatch, which ties more into my displeasure of the 40K verse being 3 games instead of 1. If Deathwatch was a supplement for Dark Heresy, then the game would not have to shoehorn in Assassins and Inquisitors and Sisters of Battle for females to play.

Essentially if you want to play a female with available RAW you have to own Dark Heresy and Ascension and start at Rank 9 or have Rogue Trader and start at rank 5 (or whatever).

I wont tell you you are wrong for letting female space marines in your game. Dont call me sexist or wrong for not letting them exist in my game.

Fluff says they dont exist. Or cant exist. Fluff is the setting. I like the setting. I follow the fluff. Its a common ground me and all my players have access to and knowledge of. If i change something I have to let everyone know the changes. Then I have to adjust for the changes that makes in itself to other aspects of the game. And once I start changing the fluff, the setting, I have just set a precendence that the setting is mutable and nothing is guaranteed to be the same in the game as is in the setting. Next thing you know players are wanting to play an Ork who is seconded to the Deathwatch.

There are no space marines. There is no warp. There is no emperor. There are no chaos gods. Orks do not exist. Women are genetically equal to men. Those are all facts.

In the end it is the modern worlds constant need for equality that is fueling part of this debate. If this game came out in the early 80s no one would care. I am all about equality but see little use in its application here. Its a vrakkin game.

And I see and understand fully well the argue that female PCs should not be penalized in strength, speed,and stamina/endurance in the game asthey long ago were in original AD&D 1E. But truth be told, if women are exactly equal to men physically why is it that in the US Army Physical Fitness Test women have a lower requirement to pass the Push Up event and are allowed more time to pass the two-Mile run event?

In the end there are differences in men and women, from chemical balances in the body, to upper and lower body strength to which side of the brain has more active use in social encounters (in general, according to Meyer-Briggs Personality Type Testing, women are more introverted and empathic while men are more extroverted and direct. It is not a 100% law or rule, its just a general result of 30 years of personality testing performed based on ther test they developed basedon Jungs finding).

And for some reason, women cant make use of the geneseed. Make up some excuse why they can now, even if it is as simple as "no one tried until now!"

Perhaps the campaign you run can be exactly that. The first female space marines ever made!

Peacekeeper_b said:

I think it bears repeating: Pendragon didn't allow for female knights in its rulebook but I think (not sure, never owned the game) they brought out a supplement with which females could be played. (Not sure if that book sold or not though.) They realized a desires of female players and decided to help them a bit along without compromising the basic setting which is what the basic rulebook dictated.

Alex

Blood Pact said:

problem with this is that a true Astartes would not work beside her. She would be viewed as an abomination that way and probably killed. While Deathwatch accepts from any chapter, some could care less about sending a Battle Brother. Try being with the Inquisition and telling the Space Wolves or Dark Angels they need to comply. They are just as likely to vaporize the messenger as send a reply.

ak-73 said:

While that may be true, Games Workshop would not do that. It would "compromise their setting" to do this.

It's a nice notion that another company would cater to the other half of the human population in such a way, however Games Workshop is VERY defensive of their IP, and making this kind of change would necessitate completely re-doing a lot of hard work that went into creating the IP into what it currently is.

Therefore, I don't foresee this happening anytime soon. Perhaps if they were to do marketing research that would suggest that more females were into tabletop wargaming and THEN they found out that a vast majority of those players wanted to play Space Marines but didn't due to their being no female Space Marine armies... well, then they would consider it.

Otherwise, I'm pretty sure it's safe to say for the time being (on this day the 12th of August, 2010 at 3:29 PM EST) that they are going to stick with only males being Space Marines. It's worked up until now, and will continue to work in the foreseeable future.

BaronIveagh said:

BaronIveagh said:

Other than that whole tens of thousands of years advances in medical science and genetics. Look at our advances in the last fifty years. I have no doubt tissue rejection will be dealt with in the next ten thousand years.

crisaron said:

What is funniest is that you think what matters is that they fail.

Very clearly that my experiences, along with MILLANDSON's, do not jell with yours. I have see a fair few very well played cross gender characters, with some of them being amongst the best characters I have seen played full stop. One such PC was so well potrayed that i literally couldn't tell if the player was playing a man, or a woman in drag, which was exactly what the player was aiming for, as she was exploring gender ambiguity, in the style of shakespearian gender bending. One of my own faverate characters was a terrestrial exalted sorceress, who only ever appeared in public, heavily shrouded and masked(the mask made her voice sound like the rasping voice of a demon), leaving only behavioural and body language cues as to gender. Everyone seems to feel that i had pulled it off.

But putting those experience aside, it isn't the success that matters, it is taking pleasure from the attempt that matters. Frankly, I have seen enough players over the years fail either as an actor, roleplayer or stratigist, to realise that what matters is that you have fun in the attempt to portray your character beleivably, attempt to get inside your characters head, and rise to challanges regardless of success. You can fail at all three, and still have a good time trying, as can the rest of the group, as they do the same.

Incidentlty, i have meet a fair few woman who are more matcho than i am. So i don't really buy that either.

crisaron said:

If i have a player, male or female, who is uncomfortable playing a Death Watch Space Marine, as layed out in the setting, frankly i am not going to run Death Watch. Just like i am not going to run wraith the oblivian for someone who is profoundly uncomfortable with death ,or vampire with people who arn't really sure about homo-erotic theme, blood, and playing monster.

I have two other 40k roleplaying games i can run for such a person, and the rest of the group.

Peacekeeper_b said:

Using physical characteristics, perceived or real, of the actual player, to make a case why they have to content themselves with characters of lesser prowess is, ahem, interesting.

I really hope my gamemaster doesn't read up on those ideas and makes me play the hopelessly out-of shape, myopic, not too fight-worthy dad that I am - instead of the lithe and agile Eldar that I had in mind.....

would you suggest using personality inventories to find a suitable character class ? Nice, Ultima computer games did something wayyyy back with the character selection process when you answered the gypsy's questions...

Still, on the off-chance that not all players fit the demanding scheme of military psychological and physical profile, I hereby petition my game-master to exempt, at least myself, from any such rule, should he decide to adopt it.

Darq said:

Except that genetic engineering is heresy (unless authorized by the high Lords of Terra, such as Alphiel Strain soldiers), science is horribly debased and ritualized, and the few times that we ever see a hospital in 40k fluff, the majority of them have had a level of care somewhere between 1860 and 1920. The most modern of them was in an Ultramarines novel and was a converted Leviathan command vehicle where they had what sounded like 1950's levels of medical technology.

Occasionally things like ersatz bacta tanks turn up, but have absurd levels of rarity and are more then likely archeotech. It's flat out stated that the processes to produce a new space marine are ritualized rather then understood, and frequently cause developmental abnormalities in the organs.

Tissue rejection has only appeared once or twice in fluff, granted, but at the time surgeons only seemed to have the vaguest idea of what was transpiring. Given the tendency toward augmatics in the Imperium, it may, in fact, be largely unknown outside magos biologis.

As far as the argument that real does not equal 40k, I point out that why have humans at all? Why not play a game where the only race choice is anthopomorphic mice? (there is such an abomination, and the reasons that sane men do not play it are many)

The real reason is that it's the players common frame of reference. Good science fiction/science fantasy/fantasy has pretty much the same rules as the real world with a few exceptions. If you fall off a building in D&D, the results are exactly the same as if you fall off a building in the real world, unless a diety/wizard saves you. The problem is that 40k tries to not have this common ground and then claim to be science fiction/fantasy. Rule of Cool can only get you so far, and the holes people keep getting into are where Rule of Cool and frame of reference do not match up.

For good roleplaying, one must have a certain suspension of disbelife. The problem is that, unlike some other games where you can gloss over the holes, 40k likes ot do things like throw the laws of gravity and motion out the window on occasion. Everything men build is made of unobtanium, except that they're simultaniously a backsliding universe of cassocks in space. There's a point where paradox overloads suspension of disbelife. 40k likes to violate that point with a volcanocannon on occasion. I might point to a single mek on a bike killing a titan because he thinks he can. If we follow this train of logic, there's no reason that any ork cannot destroy the universe at random because he thinks he can.

Rank 9 DH characters and Rank 4-5 RT characters are of lesser prowess?

What are you smoking, and where can I buy some?

I'm sorry, but if the arguement keeps coming down to "SPESH MARENS r da besht!" and that playing anything else sticks you with a 2nd class character (thus relegating female characters to always be 2nd class)... well, you're just not going to get me to accept what you're saying as being the least bit credible.

Blood Pact said:

The problem is that's level 1.

They go UP from there. An acended DH character might equal them, but an RT character will only be on an even keel for 3-4 levels before they max out. Admittedly, you're going to once again start butting heads with how this system has problems at the higher end, just like WH does, but that's what a GM who's glib and nimble on his feet is for, not rule writers.

BaronIveagh said:

Frateris Templars were also banned+disbanded under the whole framework that established the Sisters of Battle as the Chamber Militant of the Ecclesiarchy/Ordo Hereticus.

Fail harder.

Oh, and by the way?

For your second point?

It's because people who want female space marines don't come in here saying "How might this happen without breaking fluff?". They come in hollering about how it's sexist or it discourages women gamers and how stupid it is that the "Battle Brothers" don't let women into their ranks. People get sick and friggin' tired of the same old crap, and it's why threads about Female Space Marines on Dakka/Warseer always end up locked. The people who want female Space Marines resort to name calling and calling the fluff bullcrap, etc then hollering about unfair treatment when people respond in kind to their crummy ideas.

P.S. I also fixed your spelling errors for you.

Kanluwen said:

To be fair, the people who hate the idea of female space marines start the name calling other trolling techneques just as often as the pro-female marine groups posters. The few who actualy want to discuss how it might come about just get buried under the noise from the two fanatical sides.

Quicksilver said:

You must not actually visit many forums, huh?

The general commentary from the pro-femmarine side seems to be "IF THE EMPEROR COULD MAKE MEN SPACE MARINES, HE WOULD ALSO MAKE WOMEN MARINES!"-and generally sticking their fingers in their ears and humming loudly when someone points out that the gene-seed and other modifications are specifically designed for the male body, not the female body. There's also the constant pointing out of "There's two missing Chapters" or "Slaanesh did it!".

Which pretty much is the fluff equivalent of saying "Supernazistormvampires" for an occult themed WWII game.

Or, at least, not the same forums you do.

I never said the pro-female marine fanatics never start the flames, just that the pro-all male fanatics do just as often.

Maybe. It's possible.

But I still contest you're just not actually reading the threads, or you're a very pro-female Space Marine person.

ak-73 said:

Just so you know, the core Pendragon rulebook covered female warriors, at least in the fourth edition. I'm afraid that earlier editions have gone the way of the Dodo when I left England. It mentions a number of warrior women, how to handle women fighters in play, an offers unusual non-traditional ambitions for women (Boadicea's Daughters and Freija's Women).

So, yeah, they're covered. On the other hand, they're also in the context of "how they could work" rather than "force them into the mould of a bionetically enhanced killing machines."

That might be significant. It might not. I'll allow you to make up your own mind.

Kage

I wouldn't call my self Very-pro female marine. There are several in this thread that are far more pro-female then I am. But if the OOC situation warrents it (which is quite unlikely anyway), I'd include them for the sake of gameplay. I beleve there are enough holes in the fluff that they can be jurry rigged in without a major retcon of the 40k universe.

As for my reading history, well I can't exactly provide documentation, so you'll have to take me, or not, at my word. As for female marines, I think I can guess which way your opinion lies.

Ah, Kanwulen. What happened? Frazz or Wintermute finally ban you for trolling that you're showing up here?

See, Kan here likes to troll any female space marine thread he sees. As you can see.

And, point of fact, if you'd read Disciples of the Dark Gods, they do still exist. I like how, as usual, you didn't bother to read the thread.

My spelling is my own concern. It's hard to spell check the way they have this board set up.

BaronIveagh said:

Those in glass houses should avoid throwing stones.

BaronIveagh said:

You rather free with the declerations of fail, especially when you get thing pretty wrong yourself.

If i where coming to this thread fresh, and had to say who i thought was a troll. choosing between your posts and Kanwulen's i'd choose you, so how about you calm down a touch, and stop throwing the names around, along with the innaccurate claims of fail.

BaronIveagh said:

First off: Are you kidding? Frazzled loves me. I amuse him greatly when it comes to dealing with the heathen masses of Dakka. And Warseer's full of the trash that can't make it on Dakka without slinging crap around in defending their points(see above post I'm quoting).

So, where can I find "Disciples of the Dark Gods"? Because I'd love to know the exact timeframe and setting of it. Sounds like it may be something actually worth reading. Or probably another fanwank piece like the Sisters fandex that continually shows up.

Post-Vandire, the Frateris Templars were banned, banned, banned, banned from being an actual established military unit. Do they still crop up? Sometimes. But then they're untrained rabble given weapons and pressed into service for those ever so lovely 'Wars of Faith' that you and Melissia love to mention as some kind of evidence that Sisters of Battle are some kind of highly trained warriors on par with the Adeptus Astartes.

PS: It's not trolling when I point out your idea is full of fail and requires a complete reinvention of established canon to bring in one thing that really isn't necessary.

Kage2020 said:

Hey it's Kage. Fantastic. I've always loved your fluff debates!

And you pretty much just nailed it on the head with "how they could work rather than force them into the mould of a biogenetically enhanced killing machine".

I really don't understand the obsession with "if there's a female in the group she has to be a super-powerful Space Marine just like everyone else!". Well, okay maybe I do. It's the same mindset as "I don't want to be the Cleric for the party!" that sometimes crops up.