Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 Well since this topic has been hijacking so many other topics I figured it would be polite to actually have a spot for this discussion, instead of being smattered in many other discussions.
 Let the official debate begin...

That was all me. So I guess I'm the next Chris Valera when it comes to threadjacking or being hated on.

Anyway, clean futuristic. Go Tau.

I like the combination of both; regular troopers tend to be pretty clean while the higher-ups get out there.

I'm burned out on gothic darkness and Star Trek utopianism. Give me run-down malaise and I'm happy. Go Road Warrior sci-fi.

I think the Tau provide a good contrast to the otherwise unrelieved misery of the 40K background, so I would be disappointed if they got Dark Gothic?ificationalizatified. However 40K has been generally successful there are cleafly plenty of people around who like the basic Imperial setup, so obviously that doesn't need to change.

Just to throw it out there, I've always thought Orks were not at clownish as the popular perception of them was in 1st and 2nd edition. People look at the funny clothes and guns and don't realize that, uh, they kill and enslave millions... because it's fun. I remember leafing through Waaagh: Orks! for the first time and thinking 'wow, these guys are wacky' until I came to a really graphic pic of a Snakebite Ork stabbing an Imperial Guardsman to death and grinning wickedly. That was what sold me on Orks; this Ork was killing human, prolly a dude with a family, a past, forced to fight against his will or deluded into fighting for the Imperium, etc, etc, but the Ork didn't care, didn't even have the thought of caring about any of that. No guilt, no angst, all joy in the act of ending a life because it's what the Ork does (and the greater the struggle the better).

The great thing about the Ork fluff (to me) has always been that it's not personal. They're not evil. They're doing what they were made for, what they believe in, and what they know is what they should be doing. They dress and act the way they do because, well, they don't care what you think and they're not trying to inspire terror or whatever because if you're scared you might run away and fighting is a lot more fun than slaughtering.

So anyway, when 3rd came out (especially after I got all jazzed with the sweet metal Gorkamorka nobz) I was happy to see that Orks got a bit more of a hard edge to their fluff (or, at least, that the hard edge was more obvious).

I am all for the grit, because that seems like the most likely path forward. I think Firefly is much more likely than Star Trek, of any of the varied robo-japanese ultraclean futures.

If 40k had been a super clean future, it wouldn't have held my interest over all these years. I like a future where everyone is a shade of bad guy. Seems appropriate.

engine

Heres the thing. I don't really see it as all that gothic. And I'm just talking models here. Pretty much the space marines, chaos, DH and WH are the only ones that can be called gothic. And I only say that because of all the cloaks, tabards, and skulls.

Orks - Not gothic, rather mad maxish actually.
Tau - Normal space oddesy, rather futuristic looking.
Eldar - Ok so some of their guys wear cloaks and lion cloths, but thats it. Not very gothic IMO.
IG - Looks like old school WWII with their tanks and the normal infantry guy looks like whatever region he is supposed to be from.
Nids - No gothic there. just bugs.
Necrons - Well the terminator movies sure don't dont help with the idea of gothic. Robots are about as ungothic as you can get.
DE - Now we get a little back into the gothic, but the models are so bad that its hard to take them seriously as dark rather than skinny eldar with a knife fetish.

As for fluff, I couldn't say. I've read the rulebook fluff and all the fluff in the codexs that I own and thats it. Sure the imperium is looking rather bleek, but ork space looks like a fun time if your in the mood for a fight. The necrons have been asleep for forever, not exactly activity usually associated with a culture that embraces the night. And Tau, well Tau are Tau. Speak softly but carry a big stick mentality. We come in peace, but will blow you to hell, if you don't think peace is a good idea.

I like cube monkey's Firefly analogy, except in that future there are both. The military overlords of the galaxy are super clean and Star Trekky, and everyone else is grubbing their way through life. 40K seems like its trying to show that kind of dicatomy. I prefer the mad max style future myself but Im also intriegued by how people get reorgainized after the chaos, which is what the imperium is to me.

I like the TAU too but i would love to see them beat down then fight their way back.

The thing that makes 40k interesting is the clash of archetypes, cliches and memes. So keeping a broad variety is better than focusing on the Imperial-style Grim Darkness of the Far Future.

I always thought of Dark Eldar being influenced more by Hellraiser movies than Gothic.

Only "gothic" I see is the imperium itself in its Cathedrals and way of life ( a exact duplicate of the dark ages after the fall of Rome when civilization was lost ) with its lost technology. I personally found it brilliant. Never could stomach Robotech ( but I did like battletech...but even that had alot of dark in it ) and had pretty much been a fantasy only guy ( long before Warhammer that is ) and didnt get into much sci-fi other than Star Wars movies and Star Trek NG. When I picked up the fluff on 40k I was sold, such a bleak existence adds for so much more story and flavor than an existence where " We have everything we ever could want and if we dont this here machine can make it for us" Genre.

Posted By Jayden63 on 01/25/2006 12:35 PM
Heres the thing. I don't really see it as all that gothic. And I'm just talking models here.

But it has very little to do with the models. I think people mistakenly assume that the "gothic" in "gothic sci-fi" refers to a visual aesthetic. I believe that the creators of 40K meant gothic in the literary sense: "of or relating to a style of fiction that emphasizes the grotesque, mysterious, and desolate" or "characterized by gloom and mystery and the grotesque".

Some other definitions that apply: "barbarous or crude" (sounds orky to me), "old-fashioned and unenlightened".

"Gothic" describes the overall tone of the 40K universe, not just how the various races look or act. Widespread ignorance, violence, hopelessness, and morbidity are central to the game's setting and what makes the 40K universe "Gothic".

But just as there was enlightenment to be found in the East even while Europe wallowed in ignorance during the Dark Ages, so to there's room for enlightened and advanced races in 40K.

Like I said, I havn't read that much fluff/fiction. So from my point of view, its the models that have to convey the feeling of the game. After all during the game, its just my side vs your side. So I don't get the desperate and gloom feeling unless Chaos is on the table.

Maybe I should read more, then again, I've not heard a good review about a 40K based book by anyone who has read them.

Having read a few of the 40k novels, I've started to wonder why exactly anybody would want to be a pleb in the Imperium.

Doesn't appeasr to be a great existance. Bleak future with days spent slaving away in some underhive. I'm surprised that rather than the taint of chaos, mutant, xenos or witch that the Inquisition isn't spending all it's time fighting revolts by the well-and-truly pissed off.

Perhaps we could have Codex: Disaffected and Bored

PLC

(at least with Chaos there would be some excitement - however shortlived)

Sevorin - Have you ever read any of the post-Singularity SF short stories or novels out there? A lot of them are the "here is everything we want, nothing else to do" sort of stories but I find them all quite interesting. I suggest picking up Beyond Singularity . I especially love "Border Guards". That's part of why I think there's a lot more to it than "LOL UTOPIA WUT ELSE IZ THAR NOOB?"

Mattbaby - That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's always better when there is diversity but I feel the diversity's been thrown out long ago. Eldar were no longer the advanced spacefaring race set out to be cool, but are instead a dying race who weep a lot and cry like little girly men. Orks lost their clownish charm; sure, the grim indifference of death to them is appealing, but when everybody else is similar.... And Tau? Well, I'm starting to see the gothic cities in the new art and, lookie here, Commander Shadowsun seems to have been given a baroque and shadowy feel (barring the "LOL HER NAME IS SHADOWSUN D00D").

PLC - Brilliant.

I like where 40k is now, but I don't like the new Catholic Etherals.

But the look they have for each race is good.
Or the idea at least, they could execute alot better

No I havnt Stone, maybe if I get some extra time ( and catch up with the frikking books lying around here I need to read ) I'll grab it .

Mattbaby makes a good point about the eastern enlightenment during that time, but hell look at Japan...that existence was bleak, if though in a different manner. And there was also virtually no contact during that period between those different cultures ( at least major contact like wars etc...No, Im not talking bout the Crusades, I know there was contact there...I wouldnt really put the Arabs of that time into the "enlightened" group ).

So I don't get the desperate and gloom feeling unless Chaos is on the table.

lmao

From the 40k books Ive read, it seems if I had a choice of what group ( army ) I could join or be a part of I'd have to choose Chaos, they seem to have the most fun.
I'm pretty much a noob of Tau, but arent they kinda like Imperium when it comes to the low guy? You're stuck as a worker etc? And Kroot are jsut slaves right? Ya Id have to go with chaos.

But just as there was enlightenment to be found in the East even while Europe wallowed in ignorance during the Dark Ages, so to there's room for enlightened and advanced races in 40K.

That's who the Eldar are, a bunch of super arrogant space kungfu Chinese guys, with pointy ears and slanty eyes
"Why, when you lived in caves and clothed yourselves with skins we were cultured people."

All stereotypes, yeah. That's what makes 40k so much fun, so we can pit Fu Manchu against the space nazi army, alongside savage hillbilly thugz n' psychosatanists

but arent they kinda like Imperium when it comes to the low guy?

I think there's a difference between just holding a job (even if you're assigned one), and being a slave to the Emperor.

In 40K, Imperial architecture is 'Gothic' in the sense of following the style points of the Victorian Gothic Revival, which drew on the original Gothic style of the middle ages.

I like the dark future that most of the races endure but having a contrast of a far more idealistic society in the Tau is fine with me, it adds more depth to the universe and variety. My main problem with the current fluff line is that every "campaign" story pretty much goes like this.

ZOMG! Chaos! We're doomed! 3 months later 4000 Space Marines beat them back.
ZOMG! Orks! We're doomed! 7 months, 12 quadrillion dead Guardsmen, and one (1) commisar arm later they are pushed back.
ZOMG! Tyranid! We're doomed! 3 invasions and many years later, super duper inquisitor diverts them into the orks after 900 quadrillion guard die, doom averted until we figure out a new Tyranid plot line on the next codex revision.
ZOMG! Chaos again! We're doomed! Nevermind, 5000000 x 10^23 dead guardsman and 3000 space marines beat them down eventually and they retreat to the eye of terror with 2 blackstone fortresses that you will never ever ever see rules for in a game of 40k. I'd be shocked if they are even mentioned in the next 5 campaigns.
ZOMG! Chaos yet again! We're doomed! AW sod it... I don't even care at this point.

There isn't much gothy gritty darkness when the good guys win every single time and the bad guys never seem to accomplish anything meaningful. There isn't much suspense when the only variable is how many of an utterly limitless supply of guard are expended in battle before the completely inevitable Imperial victory. There are no real cliffhangers in GW stories or campaigns, and only rarely do they have an actual character die or dissapear or evolve into something new. At least they are kind of trying that in WFB where Eltharion was blinded and is evolving into a new character (yet they still have the old rules for him, smart!).

Who cares about heroes who never have to struggle and never fail? Who cares about villains that are just plain gimpy compared to the heroes? The potential for a truly gritty story is there but sometimes you have to have the freaking bad guys accomplish something and something big to make people care. This doesn't mean you have to eliminate certain army lists or chapters or IC choices or whatever, just do something different for crying out loud.

In a truly gothic environment it's the good guys that should be the underdogs but it's really rarely portrayed that way. The world of wh40k is more like a pretend Gothic world that is too clean for its own good.

Skyfyre hit the nail on the head from my viewpoint. Been saying this for years, something big and drastic should happen! The emperor is a C'tan! Run with it... The Ultramarines break off from the corrupt Imperium! Run with it.. Chaos finally takes Terra! Run with it... Its not gonna kill the game, its going to revitalize it.

necrons finally go on Jay Leno's show! Run with it!
oh wait...no...nevermind
i think that adding more flavour into the older areas would do the whole thing a lot of good...Like making new scenarios that dont count on the darke heretical feel....something more slick.Like new splinter cell armies or simply mercenaries/rogue traders like in WM...Special allies that can be taken in all armies given certain restrictions.

Rafi said:
Just to throw it out there, I've always thought Orks were not at clownish as the popular perception of them was in 1st and 2nd edition. People look at the funny clothes and guns and don't realize that, uh, they kill and enslave millions... because it's fun. I remember leafing through Waaagh: Orks! for the first time and thinking 'wow, these guys are wacky' until I came to a really graphic pic of a Snakebite Ork stabbing an Imperial Guardsman to death and grinning wickedly. That was what sold me on Orks; this Ork was killing human, prolly a dude with a family, a past, forced to fight against his will or deluded into fighting for the Imperium, etc, etc, but the Ork didn't care, didn't even have the thought of caring about any of that. No guilt, no angst, all joy in the act of ending a life because it's what the Ork does (and the greater the struggle the better).

The great thing about the Ork fluff (to me) has always been that it's not personal. They're not evil. They're doing what they were made for, what they believe in, and what they know is what they should be doing. They dress and act the way they do because, well, they don't care what you think and they're not trying to inspire terror or whatever because if you're scared you might run away and fighting is a lot more fun than slaughtering.

So anyway, when 3rd came out (especially after I got all jazzed with the sweet metal Gorkamorka nobz) I was happy to see that Orks got a bit more of a hard edge to their fluff (or, at least, that the hard edge was more obvious).

This was probably the most intelligent and well-thought out comment about Orks I've read, on this or any other forum. Kudos, Rafi.

Posted By Sevorin72 on 01/25/2006 10:17 PM
Mattbaby makes a good point about the eastern enlightenment during that time...

I thought I said that?

Posted By Sevorin72 on 01/25/2006 10:17 PM
No, Im not talking bout the Crusades, I know there was contact there...I wouldnt really put the Arabs of that time into the "enlightened" group

You wouldn't huh?

The Arabs (Muslims, Moors, etc.) having long since conquered mathmatics (including the concepts of zero and the infinite), medicine, and the sciences, enjoyed a very enlightened and prosperous civilization.

Meanwhile, Europe had steadily declined into ignorance and superstition. It was the Crusaders, returning home from Moorish Spain and Portugal with stories of the Arab world, which sparked a new European interest in other cultures and what they had to offer. If it weren't for the Arab world's contributions, the European Renaissance, as we know it, would never have happened, and modern science wouldn't exist.

Have a look: http://www.cyberistan.org/islamic/index.htm

 

The Arabs (Muslims, Moors, etc.) having long since conquered mathmatics (including the concepts of zero and the infinite), medicine, and the sciences, enjoyed a very enlightened and prosperous civilization.

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

I thought that was actually developed by the Romans/Greeks (except for zero), and they just inherited it after the Empire's collapse? 

Posted By jfrazell on 02/03/2006 3:16 PM

 

The Arabs (Muslims, Moors, etc.) having long since conquered mathmatics (including the concepts of zero and the infinite), medicine, and the sciences, enjoyed a very enlightened and prosperous civilization.

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

I thought that was actually developed by the Romans/Greeks (except for zero), and they just inherited it after the Empire's collapse? 

The Greeks made major breakthroughs, but the Arabs, in many ways, refined it. Keep in mind too that as the Greek Empire grew they got many of their mathmatic, scientific, and medical concepts from countries they encountered or invaded such as Egypt, Persia, and India.

And of course after Greece fell to the Romans and Rome fell in turn, there needed to be someone safeguarding all of that learning during Europe's Dark Age. Irish monasteries had a share in the translating and copying of much of the Classical literature, but it was the Arab world that continued to expand the boundaries of that learning as well as introduce it to the European Crusaders.      

Here's some quotes on the subject:

Robert Briffault (The Making of Humanity, London, 1938): 

"The Astronomy and Mathematics of the Greeks were a foreign importation never thoroughly acclimatized in Greek culture. The Greeks systematized, generalized and theorized, but the patient ways of investigation, the accumulation of positive knowledge, the minute method of science, detailed and prolonged observation and experimental inquiry were altogether alien to the Greek temperament. Only in Hellenistic Alexandria was any approach to scientific work conducted in the ancient classical world. What we call science arose in Europe as a result of new spirit of enquiry, of new methods of experiment, observation, measurement, of the development of mathematics, in a form unknown to the Greeks. That spirit and those methods were introduced into the European world by the Arabs."

George Sarton (Introduction to the History of Science, Vol. I-IV, Carnegie Institute of Washington, Baltimore, 1927-31):

"The first mathematical step from the Greek conception of a static universe to the Islamic one of a dynamic universe was made by Al-Khwarizmi (780-850), the founder of modern Algebra. He enhanced the purely arithmetical character of numbers as finite magnitudes by demonstrating their possibilities as elements of infinite manipulations and investigations of properties and relations."

"In Greek mathematics, the numbers could expand only by the laborious process of addition and multiplication. Khwarizmi's algebraic symbols for numbers contain within themselves the potentialities of the infinite. So we might say that the advance from arithmetic to algebra implies a step from being to 'becoming' from the Greek universe to the living universe of Islam. The importance of Khwarizmi's algebra was recognized, in the twelfth century, by the West, - when Girard of Cremona translated his theses into Latin. Until the sixteenth century this version was used in European universities as the principal mathematical text book. But Khwarizmi's influence reached far beyond the universities. We find it reflected in the mathematical works of Leonardo Fibinacci of Pissa, Master Jacob of Florence, and even of Leonardo da Vinci."

No, the word "Algebra" is from al-jabr, meaning "reunion", or "balancing", or "completion". It comes from a Persian book that united Greek and Indian mathematical concepts and expanded upon them. In addition to preserving the philosophy of the pagan Greco-Romans, (largely destroyed by early Christian zealots in europe), the Islamic empires expanded and developed new concepts in philosophy (the concept of the Scientific Method was basically invented in the Islamic world), as well as just about every physical science and medecine.

Elusive: I'm sure what Seviron meant is that what I would have said, had you not said it first.

Yeah, that book was written by the aforementioned Al-Khwarizmi, who was was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer and author, and who was believed to be a Muslim. The full title was al-Kit?b al-mukhtasar fi hisab al-jabr wa?l-muq?balah (The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing).

Posted By MattBaby on 02/03/2006 4:07 PM
Elusive: I'm sure what Seviron meant is that's what I would have said, had you not said it first.

Huh hah learn something every day.

 

 

I love the dark and gothic my self, when I was a little burrito (bout 12) an older friend told me all about Space marines back when they were nothing but frightening and disturbing. That feel and imagery has kept me keen on 40k for years. But I also like how some races outside the imperium still fit nicely by not being gothic like the Eldar and now the Tau.

But now the fluff is heading toward the 'we're all Ultramarines underneath' feel, when I was younger the thought of actually meeting a space marine scared me. Now I figure if I met one he?d just rant some self-righteous crap at me and tell me to eat my greens.

So I think GW should steer the fluff and feel of 40k back to the truly macabre and disturbed where it was conceived. As Elusive71 said the literal term for gothic.

Jayden63 mentioned not reading any particularly inspiring 40k novels, try old school. I recommend Ian Watson?s Space Marine (So old there?s Squats in it) the Inquisitor series he did was a nifty read too.

Fear the wrath of the Star Knight
Commander Usiel