People always forget that other completely viable, marine equivalent combat option the imperium has that would work-

The female ogryn.

MKX said:

Lol, the female squat in exo-armour. ;-)

Alex

I Used Syndala (the Calidus Assassin in Final Sanction) and Racked up a Death Cult Assassin to level 9 for a Female player - She kicks serious ass and can hands down hold her own with the SM's.

ak-73 said:

I suspect it's because many games don't give individuals equal billing- the GM has to structure adventures and stories with the characters in mind or else people get left in the dust and don't get to contribute. And please folks, I'm not accusing anyone here of that, this is from my own personal experience. A lot of adventures are rigid and simply require skill x, y, and z to complete, and if your character is better in those areas you'll steal the show. There isn't specializing and contributing, there is 'who has the biggeset gun' and the adventure is over.

Well.. this issue recently came up in my own group (6 person team, 2 female players who were NOT keen on the idea of playing male characters) and it turned into this big argument of why female space marines can't exist, sexual favoritism and blah blah blah. As GM I took it upon myself to look into a solution that would satisfy everyone. I wasn't just gonna up and bend the rules of the 40k setting to make two of my players happy, but I wanted a win-win.. my desire to keep canon pure while giving them a female character option.

What I came up with is this: The first issue against female marines is the genetic enhancement. Since the organs and gene seed of space marines are keyed specifically to male zygotes (and thus I assume stem cells) attempting to do the implanting of the 19 specialized organs would result in.. well.. death. The second issue is recruitment itself.. Space Marine chapters recruit seasoned warriors from the cultures in question.. war children really.. gangers and feral youths and viking boys. By and large males are far more likely to be warriors, criminals and hunters in human cultures the galaxy over. Even if there was a potential female candidate she'd be one for maybe one hundred or even one thousand equally skilled and likely physically stronger male counterparts. So the issues we must get around are genetics and recruitment.

The solution I came up with was this.. one would need to have a second founding chapter.. one that diverted thousands and thousands of years ago to be a chapter of females. The gene seed, the organs, the chemicals.. the entire cocktail of genetic enhancement keyed to female zygotes instead of male zygotes. This would be done due to the fact that the chapter in it's ancient origins chose a home system with a feral recruiting world that had a.. well.. distinctively amazonian culture where the women were the hunter-killers, warriors, craftsmen and so forth. To be able to recruit and survive as a chapter the genetic enhancements had to be keyed to the recruitment base they'd be working with: A base of warrior women.

So there we have it.. a second founding with amazonian space marines, the whole chapter exclusively female for the same logical reasons as other chapters are filled exclusively with males: Gene seed and recruitment. They're still totally vicious superhuman warriors, still driven to purge the mutant, alien and heretic. I got to keep respect for the canon and science of the setting and they got female marines. Now unfortunately I've been charged with converting space marine models and painting respective chapter colors on em.

Hopefully this might serve to help your situation.

Xeldrakka said:

There is a huge, and mostly dead, thread on the FSM issue (there are many of them) that take this idea and couch it in slighly tolerable fluff terms. Many on the forums think anything approaching this as heresy, but if you have some fluff puritains in your group and FSMs is the way you're heading, it's worth a quick read, as some of the ideas presented may alleviate some of the pain (but it will never take it away completely).

Charmander said:

Ha! The resulting conflagration from orbital based weapon systems would alleviate all pain too...

Nothing says Heresy like FSM...

ak-73 said:

That's because Rifts is given a combat system that (while making logical sense) breaks down into a ridiculously brutal game of "getting the first shot." For every group I hear about that swears by the game, I also get a horror story about how one real lously dice roll can get an entire group to put the game down and never touch it again. Rifts has some brilliant lore, don't get me wrong, but the fact of the matter is the system is unforgiving and the weapons list is loaded with ray-guns that even the most psychopathic Space Marine would consider overkill. Making everyone on somewhat equal footing means that if player X gets particularly attached to their character, one bad roll isn't necessarily the end of the world.

Xeldrakka said:

Like I said, I'm apathetic about the whole issue. However that is a pretty good start for what I'd want to see as a GM if a player asked me to allow it.

Don't get me wrong, I had no intention of originally entertaining the idea. I am well aware of fluff and such and do attempt to keep things pure.. and amongst my players that has been exceptionally difficult because I play with a bunch of entitled pricks who think they should be able to have everything they want the way they want it, and this issue was no different. Truth be told I'm already looking to axe the Deathwatch campaign over this issue alone, let alone some other cry baby of mine who spent half a session derailing the character creation process because he couldn't be a wulfen Space Marine.

I figured this was about the only viable option I had, as it retained at least some level of fluff purity. Not that I exactly comprehend why the concept itself is heresy, but I am sure you'll explain it to me in clear and irrefutable terms.

Tis been a long day. Anyone here running a game online?

I'd like to be apathetic to the issue, but my hand has been forced.

Xeldrakka said:

Guy by the name of Mudshovel is running the intro adventures on RPOL; not sure if he still has space for new characters. Sorry to hear that your players are making you pull your hair out... Yeah I thankfully only have one or two of those in the groups I've gamed with so far. Wulfen Space Marine.... yeah, I'm pretty sure I don't want to know about that one.

Xeldrakka said:

1) Tell them no - its your game. <== that's a period

2) Point out the door to them - they may feel free to take it.

3) Get yourself some new players that aren't entitled pricks. Seriously - if they were your friends they wouldn't put you in that position. Its a lot of frikkin work running any RPG game. When they run theirs, they can do it any way they want. When they are in yours they **** well better respect you and the work you put in. If not TRUST ME there are plenty of people looking for a good game who would be willing to.

Wolfen Space marine... right... I would have said sure, let him roll it up and then have a squad of Space Wolves show up the first game and haul him away to that special place they lock Wolfen up: "Hope you enjoyed that char - roll up another one"

Darq said:

I'm a huge supporter of things like FSMs if it fits and if the motives of playing said FSM are good (someone is actually uncomfortable with portraying the opposite gender, the group wants to explore the societal/political consequences of such a major taboo in their 40k universe, etc.) but it's the people that want to play something outside the rules to they can feel unique (the guy that insists on playing a DH character when it doesn't fit the campaign, but because everyone else is playing a SM- or vice versa). Come on people, create a personality and backstory that's creative and inventive to make your character different, stop trying to force nonsense like Wulfin or the like into every character. </Rant>...sorry, just that your group sounds an awful lot like my group used to be just a year or two back .

Xeldrakka said:

Well:

a> It's the God Emperor's work that was altered to accept the female half of our species... that might get you virus bombed or something. Heck, they're really touchy about even the somewhat faulty geneseed as it stands.

b> Technology tweaked outside of the Adeptus Mechanicus really, really annoys them. And even if you had Tech Adepts working with you, they probably didn't get permission from Mars, so they'll be declared heretecks or something like that. That tends to be a death sentence.

c> It's the Inquisition, what a show! See point a, though I'm sure you probably could convince a radical Inquisitor that this is the only way to ensure you have 100% effectiveness from the species for the Imperium's Holy Warriors... or they might slap you and tell you Sisters of Battle.

Course, I should ask, is it really important to the ladies in your group that they play female characters? I don't even think there's rules for flirting in Deathwatch...

Anyway, I'm running a Deathwatch game on Sundays on Second Life....

Why is it hat people get so pissy about fluff? I mean the core game was a hobby game, where youmade hte models look teh way you wanted, and painted them the way you wanted. Offical GW tourneys welcomed a few FSM chapter players and a Khorne possessed Tau army... Why? They looked neat, these players were passionate about their own themes, and they wrote their own fluff to explain why? They also spent hundreds of dollars and countless man hours preparing them. So I think the same courtesy could go to people you really want to play a game that normally would not otherwise.

I seem to recall about 20 years ago a novel about a FSM who was the daughter of Abbadon. She hunted her father down to slaughter him because she was appauled at the heresy of his crimes. She also felt she would have to reprent for all eternity to make up for his treason. I also recall many other female marines and other such things running around. Hormaguants with flak vests and lasguns. Fairmir, Zotes, Squats, Straight up Space Elves. A 5th god of Chaos meant to slay other gods of Chaos... So what if the Ministry of truth came and wiped the slate clean. Remeber the rule books have always been and always bee reference and guidelines to share an activity with friends. There is no offical ruling, no governing body that will come knocking on your door if things get changed.

At the expense of sounding rude, could we get a lock on this thread please? This debate has gone on long enough and it's not going generate any further insight. Furthermore, the OP neglected to mention two critical pieces of information that would have saved us all a lot of work: 1) Do the players in question mind playing male characters? 2) Do they usually play something particularly combative in Dark Heresy or stick with less violent careers like the Adept, Tech-Priest, or Cleric?

If one: Hand them the character gen rules for Deathwatch and tell them to say hello the twenty-five year RPG culmination of a company of British nerds who were probably wedgied and shoved into lockers in high school. Then proceed to write the campaign so that everyone does something they enjoy part of the time. Whether it's killing stuff, solving puzzles, or diplomacy, have a balance according to what your players enjoy. A campaign of non-stop fighting bores the majority of players... regardless of gender.

If two: Adjust the XP totals accordingly, ask the questioned players if they would like to play Explorers or Throne Agents (but not both,) hand them the appropriate books, and tell them to they have X amount of experience to build the character concept they want to play, possibly recommend a few careers that would be particularly useful to a Kill-Team the most often (or the minimum of what a RT crew charged with chaffeuring the kill-team around would need to function,) then write the campaign so that their characters do stuff beyond cower behind the big brave Space Marines. If a campaign requires the occasional application of knowledge and smarts beyond what a Librarian or Tech-Marine possesses, then a Sage or a Magos PC could be on loan to the kill team through the Inquisition or Ad Mech. Stealth? Watch Captain Gee-M briefs the party on a mission to eliminate a key Tau commander codenamed "lolpwned" and level the military base he's overseeing. Temple Assassin PC will be sent along with the party to kill lolpwned while the Marines create a diversion by attacking said military base. Afterwards, the higher ups discover the two work well together and the Assassin finds herself assigned to the squad on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. Much tactical xeno-slaying later, she's pretty much just "one of the guys" amongst that cluster of battle-brothers.

There, question answered. And a lot easier then rewriting nearly thirty years of fluff and holding back comments about 40k fluff purists.

Psion said:

At the expense of sounding rude, who are you to tell us what we can or can't discuss?

The idea behind this thread is obviously one that needs to be further explored or else people wouldn't keep bringing it up. People want to find a way to share a game (and setting) they enjoy with their friends and family who happen to be female. It was a design flaw from the start that the game doesn't offer some way to do that "out of the box" without a little gender-bending.

Now, I'm not endorsing space marines with boobs, but something more than a (faulty) sidebar about incorporating characters from other systems was definitely called for. There are plenty of co-ed 40k organizations out there that could have been tapped for this role.

In other words though often repetitive and plagued by immutable opinions, this discussion is important for the future of the line.

Timberboar said:

Because the OP's question is missing key information (player's preferences, disposition towards playing the opposite gender) and we are making the solution infinitely harder then it has to be. That and there are plenty of options to sidestep this discussion that also have the benefit of improving the game's depth beyond the simple hack and slash the OP was suggesting.

Psion said:

On the other hand, and with the caveat that I don't really care, what's the point of locking a thread that at least some people are finding merit to? It's not as if there is a huge volume of discussion going on at the moment...

Kage

If the discussion is so meritless, why did you post 2000+ characters with your perception of what would be best for their game? Why should the thread be locked after you have had the final word in the debate?

Kage2020 said:

Well, it seems as if DW doesn't spark the imagination of too many people right now. Any guesses to why that may be?

Alex

ak-73 said:

Are we really at this again? I think both sides of the debate should leave it be. Suffice to say you will not convince each other of your rightness just your ability to do whatever you wish in your game.

ak-73 said:

Most of the rules questions have been answered, and most of the debates have calmed down, and everyone is running their games? I don't see a lot going on in the DH forum either, at least a lot that's interesting....

It's actually an interesting question with regards to forum usership, especially since that doesn't actually bring in like/dislike of the system or any of those typical arguments (so let's not go there). I have no idea. The trend seems to be that there is a flurry of activity before the game released, a product of a slow build up following advertisement of release, and then the normal complaints about the game that are rigorously defended and then... Not a great deal to be honest.

I also find it more intriguing that, rightly or wrongly, the universe seems to engender more than perhaps its fair share of... nerd rage. This last is more than likely because of the nature of the universe and how it is written, but the silence? I don't know, maybe it's Christmas, 1914, and we're on the Western Front...? Yes, YES... There are a few bars of music I hear, a sudden burst of song and then...

... V blows up the Old Bailey.

It never ends well.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

Well, how about leading by example then? You're invited to post an idea or two of yours in the Mini-Dump topic. Or if someone has an interesting mission report about a mission they have ran, please post it. Doesn't need to be long. Right now I'm looking for more inspiration.

Alex