Warhammer 40K's story, how is it even remotely appealing?

[Fell]

Because Ork Space Pirates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TQWz1_uSNU

 

[spartandude]

warhammer 40k story? its a universe with a tonne of stories in it. some are shit and others are fantastic

 

[Dethenger]

I honestly don't understand the appeal either, though this of course means I've never played it. I just remember lurking in a Spartan II VS Warhammer 40k Space Marine thread on B.net, and even the hardcore Halo fans were saying "this isn't even a question, the Spartans would get demolished." Everything I read about the Space Marines just reeked of a 13 year old boy going "ooh, ooh, and he can also shoot lasers and fly, and smash buildings with his pinky!"

 

[NortherWolf]

I love Dawn of War, I enjoy some parts of W40K a good deal. I even read a W40K book I liked.
That said...The setting is fucking stupid and a large chunk of it's fans take the shit too seriously while the another chunk claims "No one takes it seriously"
It takes everything idiotic in the Fantasy Edition and drums it up until we're talking Epic Movie-level of dumb, adds "Black" as the universal colour and then ads spikes and "sex".
I put "" around sex because yeah...Rape Futanari Demons and a Hermaphrodite God(dess) seems to be the type of sex we're going to touch.
It's like reading about drow in Forgotten Realms and rolling your eyes at the BDSM "Feminist" society thought up by some socially starved dudes forty years ago.

However, I like Space Elves and Communist Space Weeaboo Chinese E.T's.

 

[VeryOddGamer]

"So like, EVERYONE is at war with EVERYONE! And everyone is more BADASS than everyone else! They have spaceships the size of planets that blow up EVERYTHING! And there are these guys called the DOOM STAR KILLERS OF DEATH DOOM who drive tanks bigger than mountains! With BADASS spikes!

Well, that's exactly why I think it's so appealing. It's just so damn ridiculous and immature it becomes fucking awesome.
Okay, I haven't played the tabletop game myself or read any of the books, so all of my knowledge comes from Dawn of War and Tv Tropes, but still, the ridiculousness is why I like it.

 

[DTWolfwood]

I find the setting fascinating because there is nothing else like it out there. What other Sci-fi, fantasy setting is there where the whole premise is focused on it being as bleak as possible.

Also like that the behaviors of the Human Race in general is an overexaggerated version of human nature (minus reasoning.) The way the Imperium is structured on the Tabletop is similar to the WWII era Soviet Armies. The Space Marines is what happens when you give the Spanish Inquisition space armor and unlimited power to do as they please.

Simply put, the exaggeration is what i find appealing.

If you like your setting to be more grounded, I can certainly see why the WH40K universe seems ridiculous. Well that and the fact it is RIDICULOUS lol

P.S. the miniatures are just wonderful to behold. If they could make the Tabletop version of the game into a Videogame, like they did for Magic the Gathering, I would throw soooooo much money at it!

 

[willsham45]

The law of 40k is meh at best and pritty silly most of the time but it does what it needs to. It gives you how many is it 7-8 armies reason to fight each other with enough background that it works, I guess.
It is always been tweaked and all that so what ever, Just take it as it is. Anyway I find it easier to just look at the small scale and try and make a premise from that.

Why are marines fighting guard? Well the guard cheated at a game of poker and it just excoriated, Why are the orks and the tau fighting over here? Well the orks stole a shiny tau experiment and the tau would much rather they did not.
etc.

But at the end of the day the reason I have not played warhammer in donkeys years is completely different. The cost, Time and the fact every time I get the new rule book they update it.

 

[Jamous]

I find it just pretty fun really. The intrigue of the plotting, seeing how things unfold, it's all good fun. The setting isn't all that appealing, but I like things with as much nice little bits of lore like 40k. Also, good fun to play.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

While I love the games, I merely view the setting (or story as you called it) as a backdrop for all the stuff that happens in the games. Mind you, I'm now talking about the ACTUAL TABLETOP GAME, not any of the video games. It's somewhat amusing to think up some backstory for the scenarios.

There's some genuinely original and even funny stuff in the universe. Not much, but some, like the Shokk attack Gun which fires small green men through a wormhole to appear inside their enemies. The over the top -ness makes it possible for the devs to just cook up one crazy scenario after another.

But I would say WH40k's universe is one of the most diverse and detailed sci-fi universes out there, and to that I tip off my hat. The only way to make the video game stories actually interesting would be to go straight-up camp, like MovieBob has said about Twilight.

 

[A.A.K]

Why's it appealing?
Depends on what you're looking at specifically.

If you just look at the setting, people like it because everything is established. Aside from minor-details, it remains a constant.
Abaddon is trying to conquer Cadia, because it's the foothold he needs for a victorious crusade, but it'll fuck up anyway because of the crucial flaw in Chaos - the guy who runs the Chaos Space Marines is a soldier, not a strategist or a tactician.
The Dark Eldar are building an empire that is Commoragh; manipulating, constructing and reconstructing webways and portals and furthering/strengthening the race through torture and deceit. The hook? No one knows how big the DE truly are. How massive the city has grown in 10 millennia, the true powers that be and all that.
If every Ork tribe and faction united, they could own the galaxy. If they decided not to fight, even for a couple of generations - they could grow psychically; but their primitive and violent nature, impedes them from greatness.
I could go on and on, but the established story keeps people interested. They can fantasises, write and rewrite, and create their own versions.

There's also a deep history 40k, stretching back to the rise of the Necrons, the birth of Slaanesh and the subsequent fall of the Eldar, the God-Emperor who advocated faith and science and is now all but dead... Gives people legends and tales of greatness and tragedy. Stuff that the tales of history have been written of.


Like it's been said here already, you've made your mind on the topic...but those are just some reasons why people like it so much.

 

[Locutus9956]

-snip-

Yeah I wasn't clear, but I'm aware its a tabletop strategy game, and I don't mind that as it looks fun enough.

But I'm not talking about people who find the game fun or cool looking, I'm talking about the people who take the story 100% seriously.

But either way you have a point.

Well speaking as an avid tabletop gamer and long time fan of Warhammer 40k, personally it's exactly that grim sense of doom and over the topness that is interesting precicely because it's just a bit different to most other settings.

However I should also note I don't even in the slightest, take it seriously. The 40k universe is a bit of fun nonsense, it's not meant to be taken seriously imo and folks who DO actually worry me slightly.... (frankly though I'm of the opnion that anyone who takes ANY fantasy/sci fi setting seriously to the point they cant see the funny side needs to get a life somewhat

 

[teebeeohh]

because the setting is what is so super dark, the story of warhammer books/games is usually on a smaller scale with characters who have qualities that make them interesting. this almost creates its own tropes, there are so many space marines/inquisitors who brought down exterminatus on worlds without a second thought but are haunted for centuries to come. and not every faction is super grimdark evil, the orcs are walking, talking comic relief and the tau are kinda sorta good and are surprisingly tolerant for the 40k universe and are not in any immediate danger of falling to chaos(unless someone feels the need to retcon the ethernals into being agents of chaos, thus making everything the tau do evil).
and when you get deeper into the lore the only factions that are evil for evils sake are chaos and the dark eldar, even what happened to the necron is kinda tragic.

 

[Megalodon]

The Eldar aren't a female only faction. The Guard allows women in but they're usually segregated into separate units. I don't understand why there are no female Space Marines; in a setting where contact with the warp can result in mutations that cause spontaneous combustion and bony blades to grow on the forearms why can't it cause a mutation to gene-seed that grants sudden viability when implanted in women?

Isn't it because Spacemaries are supposed to be cloned from from 12 originals and not born?
Someone more into this needs to clear this up.

Anyway I heard at one time that a lot of the Warhammer Lore is the results of the outcomes of tabletop matches at events. Is that complete bullshit or is there some truth in it? If it is true then it kinda explains the disconnect between story and premise Warhammer has going for it.

Either way there is a distinct difference between premise and story here. I like the premise. The combination of technology and mysticism in a grimdark setting is at the very least interesting even if it limits the individual chars that can be made (a spacemarie is such a defined archetype that it is hard to make them different).

Space Marines aren't cloned. They are children implanted with additional organs grown from the progenoid gland, which is one of the implants and matures in living Marines to be implanted into the next "generation". Implantation in females results in rejection, in a similar way to incorrect organ transplant in reality, except deadlier, becase 40k.

Some of the Lore is, the Third War for Armageddon fluff is essentiall lifted from the results of a worldwide campaign in the late 90's. They stopped letting campaign influence background after Eye of Terror/Storm of Chaos, as those campaign were producing setting braking changes that they needed to fudge. But some elements of gamesbecome fluff. For example, Cold Steel Ridge was a battle freatured when they deveolped the apocalypse expansion, in this game the Tyranids beat the Ultramarines. This battle went on to feature in the background of the next Tyranid Codex.

 

[TwiZtah]

-snip-

While I get the logic behind this statement it still baffles me. This is less "Chocolate or Vanilla" and more "This universe literally breaks rules that writing instructors put down to avoid making poor stories"

It's a deliberate mish-mash of all the common sci-fi cliches ramped up to 11, and set into a highly stylised universe that runs purely off rule-of-cool philosophy.

Everything about the universe is exaggerated to the point of ridicule, but yet it's played 100% straight and given this permanent gritty filter through which everything is interpreted. The whole thing is kind of a self-referential joke, and yet intrinsic to that story is the idea of a neverending war, of people being trapped between space horrors and their own genocidal government, a universe where a not only your body is at risk from a gruesome death, but your soul from an eternity of torment if you gain the attention of the wrong people.

There's a tragic seriousness and depth of grey/grey morality, hope in hopeless circumstances, people having to deal with inevitable annihilation, that runs underneath the fun, campy WAAARGing and space-elves. It's the constant integration and interaction of this over the top ridiculous universe played for laughs and the more base exploration of helplessness and vulnerability in a hostile, hopeless universe.
Basically it's Scrubs with giant mechs.


Oh, I also forgot that I love reading the fanon that gets created as people try and justify the crunch gamerules of the tabletop game and make them consistent with the lore, which leads to the decision that Creed is some sort of military genius that can hide 300 foot titan walkers behind a small bush: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Creed or their decision that the chaoticly evil and insane "Kharne the Betrayer" was actually a really nice guy: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Kharn

The problem I see with WH40K is that everyone is grim and dark, ALL THE TIME. This makes them just whiny bitches, not characters you can relate to.