Mortifactor81 said:

I'd actually say that suggesting she should play a girl instead is extremely condescending. If she's fine with playing a male character, let her play a male character. Saying "no, actually, here's a girl you can play instead, different from the rest of us", you are treating her differently from the rest of your group, and suggesting that, due to her IRL gender, she isn't capable of playing a Space Marine.

Let her play a Space Marine - don't go around treating her different because she's a woman.

The final lock on the Omega Vault opens, the final chamber starts to unseal itself, by the time the door starts to open the Commander of the Watch himself is present along with members of the Inquisitorial Enclave for this momentous event. The door slowly opens the massive mechanisms groaning loudly under the weight of the massive door and the long period of inactivity, as the door finally opens far enough to see inside the room is filled with stasis pods, thousands of them, all the size of a Space Marine. Those who enter quickly realise that there is an entire Space Marine legion in stasis, such a large number of Space Marines could surely turn the tide of many wars raging across the Galaxy.

As a Watch Commander walks up to a stasis tube and wipes away millennia of ice to see inside at the occupant he recoils in shock, nearly tripping over. As everyone rushes over to see what could of given such a combat veteran, a veteran who has seen more battles then most of the men in the room, such a shock; nobody is prepared for what they see in the stasis pod, through the small window of wiped away frost a fully formed Space Marine can be seen, although this Space Marine is unlike any before him: for he is a she.

Who's to say there couldn't be a female Space Marine chapter kicking about, there are all sorts of Gene Seed deformaties, why couldn't one be that the Zygotes no longer work in a male host. Either through continued experimentation or random chance. As has been said more times then I can count in this thread alone there are large numbers of chapters we don't know about and if people can make successor chapters for Space Wolves (which goes against cannon in quite a large way) then why can't someone make a female chapter if they want?

While I love the idea that one of the Space Marine Chapters has experienced a radical mutation in the gene seed that causes all neophytes to have a complete sex change by the time Black Carapace is implanted, I have another idea.

The Ordo Xenos is insanely secretive, like all orders, so it's quite possible they have a stealth division, unknown to the Deathwatch, were Sisters of Battle in their much lighter power armor, use stealth and technique rather than brute force to overcome alien forces. The Sisters Exterminatus are tasked with eradicating alien threats before they begin or, if they cannot, retrieving evidence of infestation and actually initiating Exterminatus. Playing a character who may already be responsible for the death of a whole world gives female players a scope on par with the Space Marines of Deathwatch.

This gives the female player a unique status, and also side objectives: like snatching the McGuffin while the big boys lay down the thunder and cause a distraction.

A recent Dark Heresy supplement gives all sorts of cool options for SoB Specilaties similar to the class choices in Deathwatch. I'll be happy to write up some conversions to space-marine scale power levels if anyone is interested.

Well a woman can RP a male space marine. If she wan'ts to play a female character try either an SoB, a veteran inquisitor or assassin or sanctioned psyker. She'd need to be on a power level equivalent to the marines and also bring something to the group that is worth while (probably skills and a 'human' side...)

wow so not reading through 4 pages of sexist nonsens to see if anyone has pointed this out. The part about all space marines are male is fluff. It has no game mechanic whatsoever. Impact on the game mechanics = nil. So what is the problem? If you want to go all out you could give -5 to Strength, + 5 to agility for female SM's.

Fezzek said:

Hmmm, how do you know it's "4 pages of sexist nonsense" if you haven't bothered to read it, or is anybody who doesn't like the idea of female Space Marines now automatically labelled sexist?

Yes the "all Space Marines are male" thing is fluff, but the fluff is probably the main reason that Deathwatch is popular. Take away the 40K fluff, that a lot of us have grown up with, all what you have is a very ordinary rule system....fun fun fun.

To me, the real sexists are the GMs who believe a female player would be too dumb / not cool enough to only be able to role play a Space Marine.

I have a female player in my Deathwatch game. She never even considered not playing an Astartes, and she loves her Space Wolf Rune Priest to death. That said, had she expressed any amount of consternation at the idea of not being able to play a female SM, I would have pointed out the fluff of the source game- which, to be fair, has been there from the very beginning for Space Marines and is kind of important to their position as warrior-monks/space knights- and before we go into the 'shield maiden' argument, that's what the Sisters are for. If she still wanted to play female, I would offer her the option of an Ascension level character or even a leveled Rogue Trader career character. A female Space Marine would be my very last resort, and I would have to have full agreement from all of my other players that they would be okay with it before I would even consider allowing it.

One more thing: Here's the trick to the "Lost Legion/Chapter" excuse: the gene-seed is designed to only work on males. If a female Marine or Chapter (or Legion, I won't discount that) turned up, they'd immediately be suspected of mutation. Look up the Cursed 21st Founding of Space Marine Chapters for examples of what happens when Marines mutate.

Gaire said:

You say that like it was a goal and/or that somebody can't be arsed to modify the way gene-seeds work. I feel that the latter of those is the best way to explain the canonical lack of female Space Marines. Being slightly misogynistic and scientifically regressive, I don't see the Imperium bothering much with exploring ways to get around the initial gender limitations. It wouldn't be anti-canonical if somebody did do such a thing though. There are many secrets in the WH40K universe and sometimes knowledge gets lost for a while.

By the way, implying that being female would ruin a warrior-monk/space knight image? Kinda sexist.