Poll: Is 40K serious?

[Dawns Gate]

I find 40k quite comical. It's full of super xenophobia, epic racism, and super weapons. If it is serious the people at citadel/games-workshop are messed up people.

 

[Bravo 21]

about 30 percent of the time I can take it seriously enough, but the resto f the time. I can't take it, or just about anything else seriously.

 

[Sir Thomas Sean Connery]

Absolutely.

The only thing about the universe I find a bit silly at times is the Orks. The accents/lines and names can be rather silly.

Also, I really don't get all the people saying Chaos is goofy. Maybe I just don't get it, but in my opinion 40k is one of the most dark, depressing and BEST Sci-Fi universes ever created.

Oh yeah, as many have said, DO NOT base your idea of the universe off the Video Games. Read the Lexicanum, one of the RIGHT books or just the Codexes.

 

[darthotaku]

you can use it for either. I recently wrote two pieces of fanfiction on it. one was serious "die for duty or live and betray what you stand for" thing and the second was evil space knights using heavy metal music to fight psychotic chicks with rocket launchers.

it really works either way

 

[Ordinaryundone]

One thing you HAVE to keep in mind with WH40k, no joke, is that everything is happening on a scale that is absolutely unimaginable to the individual human being, in both size and descency.

That's no excuse. Even with "scale that is absolutely unimaginable" factor taken into consideration people are still people and so are their needs. Everyone needs to eat, drink, sleep, defecate and so on. You can't just throw away http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs and replace it with fanatical love for half-rotten carcass, greater good or something... That's what economy is mostly about - i mean, providing, managing and stuff.

But thats the thing, in this setting the standard of living for most people in the Imperium is abysmally low. They eat food that is mass produced on a scale McDonald's would be envious of (and is very probably made of people). And the entire culture surrounding the Imperium, the one that everyone grows up believing and following to a tee, states that your own personal welfare and happiness is completely irrelevant and that you should work and sacrifice for the good of the Imperium and the Emperor. That's their social creed, their religion, everything. That doesn't mean that they don't do the same stuff people now do. They have jobs, they have families. There are artists, musicians, criminals, whatever. But its all part of a seething biomass that, frankly, the High Lords of Terra would sacrifice in the blink of an eye for some advantage of humanities enemies. And the people being sacrificed would sigh, say "The Emperor Protects" and go along with it. That's why the Guard has such a great recruitment rate despite being pretty obviously suicide. Its 3 meals, a cot, and a uniform, which is a lot better than what most people can expect.

Think of all those old stories about King Arthur and his knights, or Robin Hood, or any other sort of folkore. We hear all about the heroes, and the soldiers, and the kings and whatnot, but never about the peasants. Why not? I mean, peasants are important. Without them the entire kingdom would fall apart. But by the very nature of being peasants, they are both expendable, easily replaced, and utterly trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Such is the life of your average Imperial citizen. Wake up at 5:00, quick recaf as you run toward the local Administratum office. Oh shit, 5 minutes late because your foot was crushed by a malfunctioning servitor. Too bad, 20 lashes. The Emperor demands. Have to work through lunch because some Munitorium drone didn't carry a decimal and now the Valhallan 203th Tank division has 800,000,000 pairs of socks. 20 more lashes because it was probably your fault somewhere down the line. Go to church. Why aren't you going to church more? Your superiors are noticing these things. Back to work till late on the sock issue. Stop back in church for a confession session, couldn't hurt. It does hurt, priest gives you 20 lashes for breaking your foot on the Emperor's time. Go home, eat dinner (Soylen Viridians, yay!). Kids are sick, but you don't get payed this week because of a planet-wide paper shortage. Go to bed, wake up, do it all again.

Doesn't sound terribly interesting, does it? Needs are met, but it all exists to keep the wars going. And if our unfortunate scribe above happened to die on his way to work the next day, no one would mourn him. He'd be immediately replaced, and the big machine would keep on turning.

 

[dickywebster]

I will admit theres times when im not sure if the books are messing with me or themselves, but otherwise its not that silly, beyond been war on such a scale that it can be supported b the shear number of births and all.

 

[Febel]

Oh yes, and there is some division in opinion regarding the seriousness of things in the 40K universe, just look at the very first reply I got.

I don't seek to condemn 40K for being silly (in my opinion) but rather I am curious as to how many people take it all in straight faced and hold it up as sensible and serious fiction (Hence the poll)

The way I see it the game was originally designed to be unashamedly silly and way over the top in terms of GRIM DARK. Over the years they've expanded on the setting making it more well rounded and slightly more sensical which I think leads to the current situation which is a certain number of people do take it seriously (HOLY SHIT CHAINSAW SWORDS! THIS IS FUCKING AWESOME!) and others who recognize its silliness and like it because or possibly in spite of that (Chainsaw swords? That's fucking ridiculous. And kind of awesome...)

 

[aksel]

Am I the only one who thought he meant the figurines, not the video game?
Also, I never got into 40K, but instead kept painting and playing around with Fantasy.

 

[fates_puppet13]

40k is serious
but its also highly camp in the same way 300 was

oddly enough i like 40k but disliked 300

 

[Del-Toro]

Imperial Guard- these guys are less about taking the piss, and more just straight up showing how much it sucks to be a grunt. We in Britain still have a lot of cultural shame over World War I, and the elitist, out-of-date generals who got hundreds of thousands of our own troops killed through incomeptence. The 'Tommy' is an archetypal figure of the average soldier who is conscripted into the army, given shoddy inadequate equipment, then forced onto the battlefield against hundreds of thousands of enemies. The Imperial Guard are, very simply, the Tommies of WWI presented in a future conflict. They're not meant to be as humourous or ridiculous as the Spess Mareens or the Orks, but they still have that biting element of satire, highlighting the sheer senselessness of war.

At the risk of sounding like a Xenophobic git, I honestly think a lot of the misunderstanding comes from the fact that Americans don't really get British snarky sarcasm or satire.

As a Canadian Guard player (mostly Cadian Shock Troopers, like how Canadian Corps was The Empire's Shock Army in WW1), I can say with some certainty that the satire extends into the gameplay. It's set up so that you have to play like one of those asshole generals rather than one of the good ones. I've done both, sticking to cover, taking advantage of weaknesses, committing only when I know I can win, just basically trying to win without having masses of my troops drop , and I always lose those games. Every time I've abandoned cautious tactical thinking and remembered that I have reserves I've won. You Brits are good at that type of thing.

It's a cultural thing, North Americans do their humour one way and Britain does it's humour another, if you're looking at satire from a different cultural context then you probably aren't going to pick up on it too easily.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Maybe, but you've got a thoroughbred brit here who is as confused as the OP- a childhood spent playing the game and thinking it one big hilarious joke has recently been called into question- the recent Space Marine game being of the reasons, along with the fluff in the 5th edition codexes.

Actually, Star Wars and Star trek kind of exemplify what I was talking about in regards to Americans and Brits. Trek and Wars are both sci-fi series that are fundamentally American, and as a result they're both very earnest and serious. They both involve large-scale warfare, ridiculous sci-fi mumbo-jumbo, etc, but everything is played absolutely dead straight. Mass Effect is another one, even though it's more Canadian than American. The fundamental concept of millenium-old machines coming from another galaxy to harvest and wipe out sentient life is fundamentally a bit stupid, but Bioware play it absolutely straight.

Games Workshop, being a fundamentally British company, play it differently. They've taken fundamental ideas of Sci-Fi, and played them for the really dark laughs. Human's extending a galactic wide Empire? It's going to be the most horrible, repressive Empire imaginable. Faster-than-light hyperspace travel? It's going to involve travelling into a warp-realm full of unimaginable horros and nastiness. Relations with other alien species? Humanity's own xenophobic nature will ensure that we never so much as think about living long and prospering with another alien race. Warhammer 40K in a way deconstructs the sci-fi presented in things like Star Wars, and presents them in a more pessimsitic yet-still-humurous fashion. Even hacks like Matt Ward can't get rid of that fundamental parody at the heart of the series.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. It's interesting to see the comparison of popular American and British sci-fi. If you look again, both Star Wars and Star Trek have happy, bright undertones about thow everything is better in the future. The Federation is essentially a paradise for it's citizens, and Star Wars, at least the movies, has the good guys winning through friendship and similar.
Then 40k comes along, and shows a much more depressing future, where humans hate everything.

 

[JesterRaiin]

Doesn't sound terribly interesting, does it? Needs are met, but it all exists to keep the wars going. And if our unfortunate scribe above happened to die on his way to work the next day, no one would mourn him. He'd be immediately replaced, and the big machine would keep on turning.

Sorry, can't agreee with that suggestion. It's your WH40k and if you're happy with it then by all means, have fun.

As for me, i can't accept this vision. It may be ok for some mad country hidden behind steel curtain, but not for 40 000 years old empire spanning over distances measured in thousands of lightyears. Half of that Imperium shouldn't neither know about some "crusade" taking place God-Emperor knows where, nor really care. "Really... Orks ? Living, animated corpses ? There are no such things. It's superstition".

 

[MadMechanic]

Warhammer 40 is meant to be satire
snip for space

Give this man an internet. (Although I'm not sure about the American argument)

You can see this from some of the names given to characters.
Inquisitor-Inspector Obi-Wan Watson Cleaseua Holmes from RT days.

Or the Ork Gazzgul Thrakka (spelling?) - an Ork warlord who brutally attacked industrial/factory planets.
Full name: Gazzgull Mag Urk Thrakka. The 'Iron Ork'.
Anyone who can't see this is a jab at Maggie Thatcher has something wrong with them. Especially given the time this character was written into the background.

Whilst recently the books have become more serious and GrimDark (bad Mat Ward, bad!) - not all of them have. Forge World's writing team still gets it. In one of the background stories for a loyalist marine chapter the 'good guys' of the Imperium crush an 'evil' and 'misguided' democracy.

 

[Denamic]

Warhammer is over the top on purpose.
Take it seriously?
Don't be so serious.

 

[Liquid Paradox]

if the stories were novels instead of handbooks for the table top games

There are all kinds of 40k novels. Seriously, there's as many Warhammer 40k novels as there are Forgotten Realms novels.

On topic:

The economy is broken. This is nothing new... There are literally millions of imperial worlds in the galaxy, and the powers that be don't really give a shit about most of them. Throne Gelt is the standard currency for the layman, where Nobles and Rogue Traders and other more prominent figures simply demand what they want, and if they are influential enough, they get it. The main arm of the economy is a pseudo-communist world tithe, where every world has it's own specific tithe, depending on what the world itself has to offer. An aggri world provides food, a forge world provides weapons or whatever it can produce. A world with massive, sprawling hive cities usually have a human tithe. Like I said, it's a fundamentally flawed system, but there is an economy, and it's brokenness adds to the setting.

 

[Trololo Punk]

Does it need to be taken seriously? Is it supposed to be taken seriously? Maybe, but i don't, and still really enjoy what I have experienced from the 40K Universe.

 

[AlphonseRomano]

I like it and all but here's the thing for me, it seems like they went a bit too far with a lot of the mythos and as a result the whole setting feels a touch cartoony. But that's probably just me.

 

[Korolev]

I can't take it seriously, because frankly, it takes itself too seriously and incorporates mystical elements. I know that it is an off-shoot from the original Warhammer, and as a result, it has to have semi-mystical elements, but it was when they introduce the immortal, thousands of years old psychic emperor (who apparently was Jesus in a past age) that I couldn't stomach it anymore. I'm a fan or hard-sci-fi. Warhammer isn't hard-sci-fi.

It has some interesting ideas. I do like the grim atmosphere. But it's too unbelievable. Chaos Gods? I know they say "they're from another dimension", but again, it's too fantasy-esque for me. I've never really liked Fantasy.

Warhammer 40K has its fans, and they shouldn't feel ashamed of their love for their fiction. Again, they have a few interesting ideas, and it suits the table-top game very well. It's just not for me. It's too over-the-top and brawny. Now, I can deal with over-the-top and ultra-brawny stuff, but only in an ironic way, like with Gears of War. Warhammer asks me to take it seriously, and it takes itself WAAAAAAY too seriously for me to enjoy it. Rather than just being another fun space-marine filled war-fest, it's actually trying to be "deep" and "storied", and while it should be applauded for trying its best.... well, the results speak for themselves.

Look, it's alright. I don't hate it. But seriously, I want you to think and remember this: In 10 or 20 years, look back at Warhammer 40K. Chances are you'll know what I'm talking about when I say it's not especially "deep" or "meaningful". Remember that.

 

[Stoneface]

[quote="MadMechanic" post="9.318116.12961268"

Whilst recently the books have become more serious and GrimDark (bad Mat Ward, bad!) - not all of them have. Forge World's writing team still gets it. In one of the background stories for a loyalist marine chapter the 'good guys' of the Imperium crush an 'evil' and 'misguided' democracy.[/quote]

What are you on about? Forgeworld is ridiculously dark, take the 'Siege of Vraks' book for example. That was not only pointlessly boringly grim, but it went on for like 600 pages. And you'r example at the end, whilst an amusing concept, is I bet swamped by a 300 page discription of people being disembowelled.

Besides (and this is in response to other posts) saying that 40k novels cover both sides of the spectrum, both the wacky and the dark, isn't a compliment, it just means that the GW have so many different writers of different competency levels working for them that they can no longer keep the universe consistent in any way shape or form. I say this as someone who enjoys playing the board game wit ha few friends, but realises the back story is hopelessly soiled.