lurkeroutthere said:

He couldn't have done that, for several reasons:

1. Basing his military might on the dreaded Silica Anima would have put him at odds with Mechanicum, and for all his might, he needed to stay on good terms with them.

2. No programming can match the creativity of a living mind, and creativity in problem solving is paramount for spec ops-style soldiers.

3. He needed his most vital battle force as independent from anyone but him as possible, and Marines (that can be produced on the fly if need arises) were much better suited for that than cyborgs (which would need complex assembly lines, something he couldn't have set up without Mechanicum interfering with the production).

Also, I can hardly see taking the best killers humanity offered and turning them into indoctrinated, acid-spitting giants with ceramite bones as "elevating humanity". It's not like he planned to pull all humanity to Astartes level, no. He was perfectly content with humans being where they are and keeping all the cool toys for those most loyal to him. He was a tyrant, and not really of a benevolent kind.

lurkeroutthere said:

What logical leaps?

1. The Emperor needs supersoldiers to carry out his masterplan.

2. He needs those supersoldiers to be absolutely loyal to him and completely focused on their job.

3. He needs those supersoldiers to be extremely mobile and detached from the conventional command structure.

4. He needs those supersoldiers to be as resistant to the temptations of Chaos as possible without compromising their usefulness as elite spec ops.

5. Sex drive is potentially detrimental to points 2-4.

6. Sex drive serves no useful purpose for them, as he's already figured out how to reproduce them asexually.

7. Seeing potential cons and no pros, the Emperor excises sex drive from his supersoldiers.

Meanwhile, you operate on a completely baseless assumption that the Emperor wanted his zealous supersoldiers to experience sex as part of life's joys, despite him:

1. Being a huge ****.

2. Carrying out a convoluted masterplan that was concerned with humanity as a species but not with any human in particular.

3. Selecting candidates for his supersoldiers based on loyalty and aggression, rather than appreciation of life.

+++++Considering all I see are actors starring in a paid commercial, I can even see them being so happy about getting a lavender enema.+++++

Well quite, but THQ still made an 'I am a Space Marine!' commercial, and for a while there my part of the net was full of 'I am a Space Marine!' ads, which kind of implies that they think being a Space Marine is something people aspire to.

+++++By the way, how do you feel about your avatar beig a nigh-sociopathic mass murderer that zealously adheres to a Nazi-like ideology?+++++

Being the hardest man in a universe of hard men is pretty aspirational. (And being the jackbooted enforcer of an arbitrary moral code can be pretty rad. See Judge Dredd. Probably best not to examine that to closely. Or make sure to keep it a fantasy.) Being a eunuch on the other hand is a hard sell.

+++++This may shock you, but some people are less concerned about self-insertion and more concerned about perceiving the fictional world through the lens of it's hypothetical inhabitant.+++++

Usually I'd agree, but this is Space Marines. Space Marines are a special case. I'll play a thirty something mother of three with cancer next week. But when I am doing Space Marines I want to be playing the coolest bald bodybuilder in powered armour I can manage.

Space Marines is where I come when I want this sort of thing. If I am looking for adolescent power fantasy, Space Marines are my medium of choice. I think it is a role they are uniquely suited for.

Cause I dunno, if you don't have an irrational love of Space Marines and an urge to break ****, why Deathwatch? You are going to be fighting a lot of inertia to give the characters any personality at all! Classically, Marines don't do anything but fight. You have to work to get as much roleplay out of it as even the most roleplay lite session of DnD. At least dungeons and dragons characters hang out in the tavern and hit on the bar wenches between dungeons! Why not play friggin Pendragon? Knights do everything Marines do (principally accumulate Glory) but they also own, manage and improve castles and estates, do romance, get married, have children etc. etc.

I mean, do you want the characters to have no more personality than Kurt Russel in Soldier? Give us something to work with here!

AluminiumWolf said:

There is a vast difference between 'being the hardest man in a universe of hard men', and the post you are actually responding to. This isn't about testosterone, it's about religiously-driven xenocide on a vast scale.

*****************

Wait...why...why don't YOU play Pendragon? You literally just solved your own problem. This is obviously not the game for you, despite the fact that you have no concept of the subtlety of matters of religious ideology and the challenging of beliefs (even when those beliefs mainly revolve around war), apparently believing only in the dichotomy of SHOOT STUFF and SCREW STUFF, because apparently screwing things is the only way to have a personality. Your comment about wanting to play a Duke Nukem clone was extraordinarily apt.

Marines having sex requires less logical leaps? Can you explain that, please?

Y'know... after you've stopped critiquing other poster's imagined sex lives by way of a tool of debate.

Morangias breaks down the logic pretty well, to my mind.

AluminiumWolf said:

Go back and read my comments again. I'm not reiterating. In short:

Supporting evidence of your theory = none.

Supporting evidence of theory that they are sterile = lots.

So, the core of your argument based purely on the fact that you don't want to roleplay a guy who can't get down with the ladies and that you are assuming that everyone else who plays the game shares that view? And that's why it's so intractable and in defiance of any supporting evidence? Essentially for someone to be 'hard' they have to be able to get hard as well?

You keep coming back over and over to the idea that removing a character's wee-wee makes them devoid of personality. Is that how you'd play your character? You've been roleplaying with him for ages, and suddenly there's an unlucky crit, and you pick up the chem-geld talent for free... and what? Your character now has no personality? Why does personality link to sex drive?

Being a eunuch isn't a hard sell at all to players who don't have sex on their character's agenda. It's not a hard sell to players who don't need their characters to be their fantasy-paragon-self, or who aren't channelling their younger selves sticking it to the jocks at school. It's really not a factor, unless sexuality is on the player's minds in the first place. Maybe it's just us, but we've been playing DW for quite a while now, and not a single in-character reference to women, sex, or sexuality has been made; so why would it bother such players that their fantasy character can't participate in an activity that clearly none of them care about?

AluminiumWolf said:

Sure, and Old Spice Guy can actually turn tickets to diamonds. Commercials can't lie, can they? And it's not like they shamelessly ripped off a WoW commercial, so clearly they had an important message about the content of the game.

AluminiumWolf said:

...so, playing a Nazi-like omnicidal maniac is a fantasy? And on that note, you keep using the word "eunuch" in a derogatory manner, like it was a flaw of character rather than a horrible mutilation inflicted on hapless men in barbaric times. Not cool.

AluminiumWolf said:

You do know there are novels about Adeptus Astartes, right? And they are chock-full of varied, strong personalities that often clash. Just because their whole life revolves around war and religion doesn't mean they are drones. Deathwatch is also the place where you see the most of Astartes' characters conflicting, due to the nature of this meta-Chapter. It's when those conflicting Chapter beliefs come up in a tense situation, when the Battle Brothers have to choose between their personal pride as Chapter X and their success as a Kill-Team, when Deathwatch is at it's best.

But hey, they have no sex life, so clearly they must be boring drones, right?

Morangias said:

To be fair, the Old Spice Guy might be the Emperor, so that'd be no big deal.

Also, in honor of Siranui's post, I'm tempted to add that a 1 on a to-hit roll against a player is a crotch-shot.

In the spacewolves army book there is a tale that some spacewolves found a planet far off the beaten warp where they became involved with alluring females. cant remember it clearly. In my eyes Space wolves have thier normal sexual urges (See Ragnar). The childern that they would produce would most probably be normal children. I have no idea about the other space marine chapters. Space Wolves brawl, drink get laid and have been responsable for making beer and beards fashionable since 30000. They seem to be the happiest Marines of em all. Even though its been alleged that they have the hardest job: Killing other Spacemarines.

I suppose there is no hard rule. If you want to play a sexually sterile superman be my guest. I for one will have it vary from chapter to chapter. The Templars for one would have no sex cause of thier monastic life. Mainly because of choice and not castration. A woman being captured by the Emporers Children would be another thing.

+++++Commercials can't lie, can they?+++++

I'm just saying that whoever made that commercial was trying to get people to think that being a Space Marine was a pretty cool thing to be.

And if that is what they want, I would suggest that ensuring that a Marines reproductive organs remain intact and functional is the way ahead.

+++++It's not a hard sell to players who don't need their characters to be their fantasy-paragon-self+++++

I agree, but ESPECIALLY when it comes to Space Marines, I would say that that constituency is going to be a non-trivial sector of the audience. Enough that it is worth considering what they will make of things.

It is an oft repeated truism that roleplaying characters tend to be either an idealised version of yourself or an idealised sexual partner. And to be honest I'm not much interested in challenging this when it comes to Space Marines. Maybe on another day, in another game.

+++++so, playing a Nazi-like omnicidal maniac is a fantasy?+++++

Yes. It is like being the ultimate bully. It isn't the kind of fantasy that makes you a better person for having it, but there it is.

As you say, being a eunuch makes you a victim, which is a different thing entirely.

(And the precisely how Nazi like they are thing is up for debate. A lot of the fluff these days would aim at Noble Defenders of Humanity. I personally try to retain as much of the oppressive regime as possible (if only to provide opportunities to act like a COLLOSAL ******* to people), but if you didn't want to the case could be made that The Powers That Be think that is okay.)

Wait! There is a quote for this!

+++++Only the insane have strength enough to prosper. Only those that prosper may truly judge what is sane+++++

40k is a psychopaths paradise. If you are not an omnicidal maniac, 40k is a terrible place to live. But if you are, there is no where you would rather be.

+++++Wait...why...why don't YOU play Pendragon?+++++

It doesn't have Space Marines. Duh. :0)

I tend to react to this dilema by trying to hammer as much of Pendragon as possible in to a Marines life.

I have read a lot of Marine stories, and I think most would be improved by some Courtly Love, hunting with hawks, squires, castles, jousting and the odd Grail Quest.

I suggest turning the Watch Fortress in to a knights estates. Are the serfs producing enough ore for the manufactorium? Do you want to build extra gargoyles on the chapel or extra defence laser batteries? (also shades of covenant creation from Ars Magica).

I agree that there is a lot you can do with monks (well, rip off Cadfael and The Name of the Rose at least), but the stories tend not to work that angle very well. I don't think I have read about a decent theological debate in an book.

So having girlfriends is a real chance to give at least some Marines some much needed motivation beyond killing stuff.

>>I'm just saying that whoever made that commercial was trying to get people to think that being a Space Marine was a pretty cool thing to be.

>>And if that is what they want, I would suggest that ensuring that a Marines reproductive organs remain intact and functional is the way ahead.

I'm just going to go out on a limb and assume that when THQ sat down to come up with that ad, the concept of "We want players to know they still have their ding-a-lings" was not a part of the design, or at the very least not a focus of the ad.

Maybe it's because I'm sick of the "sex in gaming" dicussion period, because every game has it regardless if it's shagging dragons or elfs or orks or robots or whatever, but I really don't see the point of the discussion here in a game about Space Marines. Sure, they probably still have their junk, but they likely don't care about sex because it's a distraction from their purpose and devotion. Not to mention the technical issues of the Black Carapace and Power Armor (I mean really, how often do you think these guys take that armor off, let alone to shag in it. I mean they would need a techpriest handy to ensure it gets back on right.).

I just think hilarious we're even discussing this, or that some people are so adamant about it that they feel without sex you can't have any personality (especially when you claim early on that, by involving sex in games, you're more "mature".) If you want your games to involve marines porking some wench on a feudal world, I can't stop you, but I'm going to play Deathwatch, not the Book of Erotic Fantasy.

(Sorry about the double post, totally borked the quote system)

Gone for two days and I miss two pages. Good work guys, let's see if this one can be longer than the previous Marine + Wang debates!

Siranui said:

Stupid choices when you're chasing tail are totally different than ones that would cause battlefield problems in adult men. The atrocities and the like committed in war are all due to the urge to impregnate women. Well, directly anyhow. I can list of plenty but that heads down a rabbit hole quite different than this one.

Siranui said:

Right, which brings my prior question back- why bother chopping bits off at all if it won't do you much good anyhow? Also, you don't see the guard going to worship slaanesh because they have genitals. If the urge to mate was such a giant hole in the plan, you'd think something would be done to fix it. Also, Fulgrim isn't even a person any more, he's possessed by a daemon, so the better question is why doesn't that daemon 'do' that stuff?

Back At Morangias, trying to get through the crap quote system:
"It's not the goal here to reach a consensus, methinks. But humor me with this: what does the Emperor gain by leaving Marines sexually functional? For all I know, he was a control freak with a master plan, so just saying he didn't consider the issue doesn't fly by me."

You can have it either way, again, it's kind of inconclusive, but again if you're going to be a control freak with a master plan, why build humans, where the only emotion/drive/desire you remove is procreation? Why stop there? There are SO many other things that we do that are bad.

" I've never seen lust being used to motivate the Space Marines, so presumably it's by design as well."
Or it's not part of the fiction that they created, aimed at a younger audience. In recent books though, where the audience is a bit older (meaning not the codexes), you still have a fictional focus around the warrior aspects. The books, some of them well written, are focused on combat because that's what the readers are looking for in most cases. Or it's a topic GW has said "just leave it alone, guys" which I find equally likely given how excited boards seem to get when it's brought up.

"**** can be motivated by things other than lust, but it's usually lust that drives armies to ****** the beaten populace. And, if you excise the sexual drive entirely, **** doesn't really become a vehicle of gratification, even if it's initially driven by non-sexual needs."
Well, there is a lot of devicive research on the topic, but a lot of battlefield **** and murder comes from the dehumanization and domination of a populace. Again, you have the guard to compare to, and if this emperor was such a control freak why didn't he do something to the guard at the time, which turned into a huge force during the great crusade? The war spilled out from the capability of the 20 legions, and they needed the guard to back them up, so you're injecting a whole lot of imperfection into the field, and you have to think he saw that coming as well.

"As for Slaanesh, sure, lust isn't the only way to fall into his grasp, but it's a way nonetheless, and removing one whole venue of temptation makes sense, especially since it serves no other useful purpose in his asexually reproduced supersoldiers."
Then why not do things to suppress pride and ego. What is it about depriving someone of those that would make them such a terrible warrior, when removing the genitals is known to take a lot of the base agression from a man?

"As for Khorne, the whole idea of Space Marines was to avoid prolonged wars"
Again though, why not build super weapons that were less-than-lethal? The only real reason that makes sense (to me) is because it doesn't fit the setting, and the setting was all about war, and war isn't as glorious when your armies of super soldiers are armed with super webbers, giant stun guns, and stasis chambers.

"Compared to others, it's quite easy to remove, and again, removing it can only have positive effects on the performance of the troops."
But it isn't that easy to remove. With it you remove a lot of things bilogically that make men, well, men. Without it you have to replicate and replace a lot of the chemicals that are involved in the whole process.

"It being, it really doesn't make sense for genetically enhanced supersoldiers organized into quasi-monastic knightly orders and having on average a whopping 15 minutes of free time per day to feel sexual urges, assuming there was any way to remedy the issue permanently (and I believe it was well within the capabilities of their creator to remove that)."
To me, the quasi-monastic lifestyle and lack of free time would be what would suppress and reduce the sexual urges. Despite recent (read:perpetual) news on the Catholic church, not all orders of men engage in nothing but closed door sex.

@ Siranui: " because it removes the issue of a certain kind of war crime from the table"
No, it does not- you can **** someone with a lot of other things, such as a power fist. If you're about dominance and agression, you can still do terrible, terrible things to people.

"and mostly because I don't want front line combat soldiers getting all gooey and doing stupid things because they were thinking with their d!ck!"
Right, so they think with something else (pride, self-importance, lack of fear and reason, etc.) and can still muck things up

Siranui said:

There is evidence that they don't make kids, however I don't think there is as much evidence that says they're gelded. In fact, the books indicate Ragnar develops feelings for an Inquisitor. So either cutting them off doesn't always work, or they don't cut them all off.

And in general your interpretation of the tragedy involved with being removed from the genepool is actually a pretty interesting one to me. I on the other hand take the opposite approach, and treat them like the paladin or priest, who is challenged because they are denying themselves in order to be closer to the Emperor. To me, making a knowing sacrifice is more interesting than making an unknowing one.

WittyDroog said:

True, but at the same time I think that there would definately be no mention of Marines being penilely challenged. If they were given a list of Marine facts that is not one that would ever, ever make the cut. As it were.

AluminiumWolf said:

Well like I said, I don't think (nor care) that anything has been surgically removed. I don't think it's far fetched, however, that through the gene-seed process it doesn't grow with the rest of the body (A bit like shrivled nuts and steroids) because your dinger serves you no purpose to your personal survival nor does it make you any stronger than the gene-seed already provides. Top that with the complexity of their armor I just think that Marines have no motivation to have sex whatsoever. I mean a Rogue Trader has all the reasons in the world to go Kirk on a couple of green-skinned babes, but a Marine doesn't.

+++++I don't think it's far fetched, however, that through the gene-seed process it doesn't grow with the rest of the body (A bit like shrivled nuts and steroids)+++++

Thing is, that doesn't exactly strike me as making Marines cooler. Steroid abusers don't generally advertise any side effects it may have. Space Marines whole reason for existing is to be as cool as possible to fourteen year old boys and men who have more in common than they should with fourteen year old boys.

If an element isn't making Marines cooler to their target audience, For Gods Sake Why Are You Bringing It Up?

AluminiumWolf said:

I disagree. You're wrong.

See, I can make statements without supporting evidence as well. But that's pretty pointless, isn't it? So unless you point me to a research showing how people can't really like their Marine characters unless they're lean, mean sexual machines, I'm going to dismiss your anecdotal evidence and "truisms" and ask that you actually talk about something measurable. Like, for example, how reasonable is the assumption that Space Marines are sex-capable in light of published game lore.

AluminiumWolf said:

Huh, maybe if you tried not treating Deathwatch as a guilty pleasure, but rather as a serious game about serious topics that it is, you would have less issues with the condition of your PC's dong.

AluminiumWolf said:

Yes. In our world, where it causes all kinds of problems with one's body and makes one the victim of prejudice. None of this applies to Astartes, whose body is shaped by influences more powerful than hormone imbalance, and who aren't seen as humans at all, and thus aren't judged by the same standards.

AluminiumWolf said:

Oppressive totalitarian dictatorship. Propaganda everywhere. War as the only possibility of growth. Entire production geared for keeping the war machine running. People oppressed and murdered for the slightest deviation from established behavioral norms. Genocide under the banner of species' superiority. Skulls everywhere.

I'll give you that, it's not just Nazism. Imperium takes all the worst ideas humanity ever had and turns them up to eleven. But that it's a crapsack totalitarian regime with no value attributed to human life and even less value attributed to all other forms of life, can't really be argued.

AluminiumWolf said:

May I remind you, we're still speaking of a world you say you can only enjoy as a self-insertion fantasy. That's pretty disturbing if you ask me.

AluminiumWolf said:

So, to sum up, your ideal Deathwatch game is where you get to play a bastard lovechild of Lobo, Duke Nukem and Lancelot, killing dudes and returning to base for rest and romantic drama?

I'm sure somewhere out there there is a game that entails all this. This game definitely isn't Deathwatch. Maybe it's time to stop fooling yourself?

EDIT:

@Charmander:

I feel like this is going nowhere. I've already given answers to all the questions you keep asking.

Look, does anyone seriously think that GW will ever put out anything that says 'Space Marines have no willy'?

I'm not just imagining that would be a profoundly stupid thing to do to their biggest cash cow am I?

>Little Timmy is painting his Space Marines during the lunch hour<

>Along comes Little Jimmy<

LJ:- 'HAW YOUR LITTLE MEN HAVE NO WILLY!

SPACE MARINES HAVE NO WIL-LY SPACE MARINES HAVE NO WIL-LY'

LT:- 'SHUT UP!'

etc.

+++++serious game about serious topics that it is+++++

Dude, it is a game about Space Marines. GW books are fully the equivalent of Mills and Boon for men. I love em, but this is easy reading at its easiest.

AluminiumWolf said:

Space Marines have a lot of elements that don't make them cooler, unless you find xenophobia and genocide to be "hip".

WittyDroog said:

I honestly think you are going to be disappointed by peoples answer to this.

'An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded' is a pretty cool line.

Again, I'm not saying this is a model on how to live your life, but it can be... Attractive.

Anyway, we don't often see Marines doing genocide. I don't think I have read about Marines slaughtering non-combatants.

AluminiumWolf said:

AluminiumWolf said:

Even if the whole world is a hastily glued mess of trying to recast a classic Tolkien-esque fantasy setting in space, just to sell more miniatures, and even if none of the authors doing novels is exactly Dostoyevsky, it's still a grim world where you can't walk five steps without stepping onto something controversial. DW being a roleplaying game only pronounces that, because you're experiencing the world from a very intimate perspective. Now, there are two ways to cope with it.

1. Accept that in the light of moral and ethical values of our world, you're playing a complete monster, distance yourself from your character and appreciate the unique opportunity to examine many controversial topics in a safe, pretend environment.

2. Gloss over the idiosyncrasies of the pretend world and have the power trip of your life as a Catholic Space Nazi in Power Armor.

I'm not saying #2 is objectively inferior (except maybe a part where one enjoys being a Nazi, but we're all professionals here, aren't we?). But when you're dismissing the parts of the world that don't play directly into your power fantasy, maybe you shouldn't criticize the world for lack of story hooks and/or RP material?

Regarding the rest of your post: unless you actually work at GW's sales department, your opinion on how GW should advertise their product has no bearing on the content of said product, which I'm encouraging you to discuss once again.

And yet them having sex is more attractive? Personally I find it more interesting that they are beings who are devoted entirely to sacrificing themselves on the altar of battle because of radical ideologies and conceits. Space Marines pride themselves on rising above the primitive emotions of man, from fear to lust (naturally hate is very advantageous for war). I don't think that Marines eschewing sex somehow makes them less cool. If I was still 13 maybe...

Ugh. If I had a picture with me and Matt Ward it would probably be a pair of cops dragging me away post-assault...

AluminiumWolf said:

The idea that to be cool and the ultimate warrior one has to be a man in form and virile function is a little outdated, don't you think? To the point of being right up there with 'they should also be white'.

...

You get an IP for chem geld, I believe. Therefore it makes you more insane... and stronger, by your quote...

...

I think you might be reading the wrong books, then!

Marines have plenty of motivation beyond killing stuff. Protecting their home-worlds, honour, ambition, piety...

WittyDroog said:

WittyDroog said:

About a week ago, I'd have defended the guy on the basis of me loving his new 'Cronz codex.

Now, First Founding reminded me of Blood Angels flying Librarian Dreadnoughts, so he's still fair game.

WittyDroog said:

This.

Morangias said:

"Librarian Deeadnoughts" is what the police report would have listed under my final statement.