N0-1: At no point have I said that every last one of them does. I only quoted existing fluff that every 21st founding chapter that currently survives has some form of mutation. And that we're missing... 25 chapters (approx) of that founding that we have no names for whatsoever or any indication of what mutations they have. (Havn't bought the Badab book yet, my book budget was tight and I had a choice between DW and Into the Storm or Badab.)

Kallador: they dealt with it by the women playing guys. It's unknown how much of the decision was GW insistence and how much was author/editorial preference.

HBMC: It's nice to know I get up your nose. However, you do pretty much the same thing on every thread on this subject, no matter who posts to it, so it can't just be me. And as far as 'All Space Marines Are Male' being an absolute of fluff, I have another fluff phrase for you:

"Everything you've been told is a lie."

You know, one of the central underpinnings of 40k fluff? The fact that the supposedly canon fluff itself is not reliable? (or the built in Author Saving throw that's used to justify the occasional radical retcon.) The same thing that's used to brush off fluff that's not fluffy anymore? Half eldar astropaths, Space Marine Inquisitors, IG Jetbikes... squats, anyone?

This IS a setting where fluff is supposedly composed of half truths and outright deceptions, after all.

And, most things say nothing at all on the subject. The only places the male 'requirement' is mentioned is: The Index Astartes artical, and the DW Corebook. (that I've been able to find, granted, since it's not in the current codex)

As far as FSM in fluff: Other then the woman turned into one (somewhat) by a daemon in Storm of Iron, (CSMs did not notice the difference between her and the man she replaced other then to state that she seemed deadlier for some reason.) I can't think of anyone else that arguably turned into an FSM.

I've asked people, including a GW employee, 'if a peice of fluff, such as creation of a space marine, does not appear in a new codex, where a new version of that fluff is written, does this trump previous WD/Codecies/GW licensees?" With out exception the universal answer was 'yes'. As soon as I said 'female space marines' the GW employee clammed up, and the 40k players I talked to started screaming (granted YES! and NOOOOoooo! were about equal).

Edit: DAMMIT: Exark beat me to the 'Everything ...is a lie' quote.

BaronIveagh said:

She didn't turn into a female CSM, she got possessed by the daemon that was in the armor, thus becoming an unbound daemon host, that happens to be in CSM armor. An unbound daemon host is far more deadly than a CSM.

UncleArkie said:

Yeah I know, I actually stated that right under my "Why are we on page 28?"

ItsUncertainWho said:

Well, I won't dispute that a unbound daemonhost is more dangerous then a CSM (with teh possible exception of Khornate Berzerkers with chain axes). The point was that no one noticed that it wasn't the man she replaced until they found his dead body. (mind you, the warp can do pretty much anything, so making a daemonhost 'seem' like a CSM might not be difficult.)

Peacekeeper_b said:

**** that will teach me to read peoples posts. Note to self don't work and read forums at the same time

UncleArkie said:

Don't worry about it, you're not even close to the first in this thread to do it, and most certainly won't be the last.

BaronIveagh said:

Thats very true.

Exarkfr said:

Nope, gender never came up. But then, it doesn't in games with any of the gamers I know. Sometimes people decide to play alternate gender characters, everyone rolls with it. It's just never been an issue.

Of course, one could point out that the aforementioned suggestion of "maturity in the group" is little more than a subjective judgement on what worked for their own individual group. I've worked with a group that has 10+ years of roleplaying "maturity" and another with a similar amount. The latter I would consider the "immature group" despite their proclivity for angsty Vampire the Masqeurade games, while the former with their "tiresomely gamist" use of the AD&D rules (as many followers of GW hobbyism would have it) produced the most wonderful of stories and memorable of games. Of course, I'm being subjective here but, well, isn't that the point?

I still remain suspicious of trans-gender characters. I have yet to meet someone that can carry it off. I look forward to the time that someone can convince me that they can as we work through character generation.

Kage

Even as a GM, and thus, required to pull off all sorts of characters, I struggle at times to 'think female'. As a male, my first subconcious act on entering a room is to determine the enterences and exits and evalutate threat. I'm told by a reasonably reliable source that the my counterpart scans the faces and body language of the people in the room to judge emotional state and evaluate threat.

The thought processes are similar, but not quite the same.

As far as other RPGs go: it's actually interesting to post to 40k boards and compare them to non-40k boards.

Example:

D&D/OWoD/SR/WFRPG

Q: How can I do 'non canon item x' and not break canon?

Typical A: Helpful Answer, possibly extensive discussion with minimum nerdrage (male drow leaders, 'good' always evil monsters, familer spirit focused spellcasters, changes in edition)

40k (and, startlingly, only 40k. V:tM when White Wolf was actively trying to smother OWoD wasn't this bad)

Q: How can I do 'non canon item x' and not break canon?

Typical A: OMGWTFBBQ, max nerd rage, sweeping statements that to even bend canon in the slightest is to destroy the game, etc. (gender of space marines, patching up 40k plot holes, radical inquisitors, changes in edition)

So, what causes this?

(Seriously, it's not just me, personally, since I know that particular snarky reply is obvious, but something I've seen on every board, in threads I never even posted in.)

I think that we might begin to see the "good anthropologist" vs. "good roleplayer" arguments come out after that...

Kage

It might be a interesting debate. I have a hard time fitting my mind into the mental landscapes of people of my own gender a century previous due to the changes in culture, let alone a different gender entirely.

Personally though, I think it more likely that we'd see a flare up of the 'rollplaying' vs 'roleplaying' debate.

UncleArkie said:

No, I'm not breaking the rules. I am electing to rewrite a single sentence so that I can provide the option to use female characters using the rules in the Deathwatch game. Any other way requires additional purchases - either of hypothetical future releases in the Deathwatch line, or of non-Deathwatch lines which still don't allow the characters to function mechanically as Deathwatch characters. Changing that one line fixes it all.

And my "silly semantic moment" is actually a strong point (that allowing female Space Marines is the easiest way to open the Deathwatch game to female characters). That you can't refute it and instead try to belittle and insult, is a sign of desperation and it makes you look rather stunted, intellectually speaking.

HappyDaze said:

I am just wondering whats wrong with using a little creativity? As I stated many, many times in this debate I find the solution of just having girl marines un-elegant, to just go "oh its a spacemarine and its female" is just too easy and it breaks the logic of the setting.

Not being able to function within the rules or settings of a society is the sign of stunted intellectual growth and inability to accept the parameters of ones surroundings ie. Sociopathic behaviour.

But I trust that being the intellectual giant that you are that your already aware of your own shortcomings?

I mean isn't it more fun to exercise said "towering" intellect instead of just doing what you do which is "brute forcing" the problem of group composition?

So now that we have had yet another round of personal attacks, shall we get back to having a debate or are you just going to belittle and insult your fellow forumites until your out of toys to lob out of the pram?

UncleArkie said:

While I agree that the solution is not the best one, and that we need to move on with the debate rather then have personal attacks, this sentence riles me a bit: historically, many of those judged to be great men and women refused to accept the 'parameters of ones surroundings'.

After all, if man was ment to fly, he'd have been born with wings.

That said, the rest of it, I largly agree with, and let us dispense with the personal attacks (including mine against HBMC) and move on with the debate.

BaronIveagh said:

Sounds good to me after all having wings would have made me the blood angel primarch . And I am all for making wings.

UncleArkie said:

At least he was the good looking one. I'd rather not be Mortarion, for example....

HappyDaze said:

You are breaking a basic rule of the setting that doesn't have an effect on game mechanics. Still, you are changing the way the setting works. If you want to include female characters there's the easy way and the hard way. The easy way is buying either Dark Heresy + Ascension or Rogue Trader. The hard way is making something up yourself with the stuff in the Deathwatch core rulebook. That can lead to crazy ideas that stretch the setting without completely breaking it. For example a female tech-adept of the Crucible Resolviate who is testing a new type of power armour that is based on a reverse-engineered Tau stealth suit. The profile is very similar to that of a Space Marine. Throw together an advancement path based on the tech-marine and you're good to go.

HappyDaze said:

Tsk, personal insults. If you play in a setting you have to stay within its rules. "Wouldn't it be great if Kirk could use Jedi mind tricks?", "The Rebels in Star Wars should research Federation shield technology, the turbolasers of the Empire couldn't penetrate it." and "Harry Potter should stop using a wand, since he is obviously what D&D would call a sorcerer." are all non-sense. If you don't like a setting, don't play in it. Sure, it would be easier and less expensive for you if there were female Space Marines, but then it wouldn't be the grim dark future of Warhammer 40k.

BaronIveagh said:

What can I say, the ladies find Sanguinius irresistible

Mjoellnir said:

What a strange perspective on what makes the 40K setting 40K.

Heck, the vast majority of the population of the Imperium never even see a (male) SM in their entire life time, whole generations go by who don't even see a SM from birth to death. Before the release of DW for example, Calixis Sector had (very nearly) no SM presence whatsoever within it's borders - almost no one in the sector will have seen a SM before. But because a GM chooses to ignore one bit of canon it's no longer 40K. That baffles me.

(Again I personally see no need for fem-marines. Indeed the thought of female marines of any similar stature to male SMs seems a bit icky to me - call me shallow, if I'm going to have female warriors in a game I'd rather they were hawt - no brick-xhouse built mountains of muscle. I just don't see the limited possibility of some kind of semi-hazy-canonical fudge as the end of the setting. That's madness imho.)

EDIT - Actually thinking about that, the physical bulk a fem-SM would need to be comparable in strength etc to a stock male Astartes ... does that not actually bring into question the rationale for bending canon to include them in the first place? If they are so unfeminine in scale, build, and form ... what makes them more appropriate for girls to play than male SMs?

Wow, thirty pages already...

I admit, I didn't read every page in this thread, so forgive me if someone eles brought this up, but, why does anyone want female Space Marines? If it is because their female players only want to play characters with feminine personalitites, then Deathwatch is definitely the wrong game for your group- there is absolutely nothing feminine about genetically engineered super-soldiers blowing away hordes of xenos. Try Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader- plenty of room for both masculine and feminine personalities there.

Seriously, thirty pages... yeesh...

Heh, I see page after page of self-congratulation and patting each other on the back and it passes by with little comment. A thread that tackles a "core concept" receives such flak? There's probably a message there.

Oh, and again, there are nor female Space Mariens in Kage-verse and I'll kick a player in the goolies (or ovaries) if they suggest that I should include as such.

Kage

Adam France said:

Well, one, how so? (Since canon marines in the DW book are back down to the large and bulky but human sized marines of 1st and current ed, as opposed to the 7-10 foot tall ork sized marines of 3rd ed). Though, I grant, they would be some very large women.

And, I also don't understand why people seem to think that space marine genitalia makes for an underpinning of the setting.

What makes 40k, 40k, IMHO:

Ten Billion is a Statistic

Apathy Killed The Cat

Atop a Mountain of Corpses

It Got Worse

Big Brother Is Watching

Bling of War

Body Horror

Crack is Cheaper

Canis Latinicus

World Half Empty

Crapsack Universe

High Octane Nightmare Fuel

Nightmare Fuel Station Attendent

And.... those are pretty much my view of 40k. Basically, if you're alive, you're screwed, and if your dead, you're screwed. It doesn't seem to make a difference what gender, or even species you are, so... no I don't see male space marines as having any meaning what-so-ever in the context of the game. If it did, they'ed walk around with armor nuts attached to their power armor.

I will, however, say this: they probably don't grow those muscles with testosterone. If they did, there would be a lot more power armor with breasts.

I will give you this moment to squick.

It'd have to be something like a myostatin inhibitor to directly cause their muscles to bulk up and increase in strength. Which works on men or women pretty much equally.

UncleArkie said:

The solution of simply allowing female Space Marines is, as you state all too easy to make. This simplicity is actually part of the elegance of the solution, since it requires the fewest new mechanics (none). An inelegant solution is one that requires significant alteration to game mechanics or that requires porting in additional mechanics from other lines (often with significant alterations too).

The change also doesn't break the setting's logic. It might break a theme, one that some - such as yourself - value, but that doesn't make it core point of the setting. Rewrite any of the Space Marine novels with coed Chapters and give the book to someone unfamiliar with WH40K. I assure you that they will probably not feel any differently towards the novel than they would have with the all boys club version. The only ones that will object are those that somehow feel being exclusively male is the heart of what it means to be a Space Marine, and that all of WH40K is centered on the Space Marine. I don't accept those points as the keys to what makes WH40K what it is.

The sociopathic behavior angle you suggest has no bearing. A work of fiction is not a society. Those that i play with are a microcosm of society, and I'm working with the fiction to help it better fit with what my group would like to see.

As to "brute forcing" this solution, i think you're mistaken. The approach i'm taking requires the rewriting of precisely one sentence. After that the Chapters are coed and no rules changes need be made. The vast majority of the fluff is untouched as well, save that you may wish to make a few of the named Space Marines female. This is much more of a scalpel solution than brute force.

As to the remainder of your post, sure. Debate away.

tl;dr

Female Space Marines = No.

Sure they were in Rogue Trader TT but then again, so were Squats.

There's even a little box in the DW Rulebook that says "No female Spess Mahreens"

So please stop discussing this because you're all boring me and there are better things for this forum to be used for.

/endrant