SlimeTheGreat said:

Personally I perfer Ben Jonson to William Shakespear, but It seemed an apropriate addition.

aethel said:

Because they were way too much beloved by the kind of people who wanted to play the dragon in D&D? In all seriousness, I am sure there are a lot of people who would do a fine job with them, when contained in the appropriate game and setting / power level for them (as already eloquently articulated by others in this thread).

Indeed. This was really only the point that I was trying to make. I have played with people whom I feel hardly have the ability to RP a real human being...

aethel said:

As far as RP-worthy, well that's in the eye of the beholder. I have 0 interest in playing one. The wiggle room I would have to work with to develop backstory and personality would not allow me to develop the kind of character I like to play.

And now that is an argument I can understand. It's an argument based upon personal interpretation, rather than suggesting that it is not possible for anyone.

aethel said:

Please don't call me 'he.'

Fair enough. Way to go for breaking the gaming mould!

Wu Ming said:

I lack the code saavy of Kage2020 so I am not even going to attempt to deal with the currently wonky quote system.

All I do is go into the HTML code and then type the following: (blockquote)(b)Wu Ming said:(/b)(br /)(br /)some quoted text(/blockquote). It all works after that, but of course you have to replace the () with <>. 

Wu Ming said:

Personally I am of the opinion that the concept that a majority of people have reagarding marines is completely incorrect.

Which was indeed my point. Even a "normal human" in the 40k universe is going to be sufficiently different from post peoples' interpretations of reality that they're going to be very difficult to play.

Wu Ming said:

THAT's what my angst is about.

On my behalf, thank you for taking the time to articulate what I described as 'angst.' Much appreciated.

Kage

Kage2020 said:

This is such a depressingly obvious point to me, but is completely missed by DH.

The people of the 40k 'verse are simply going to be fundamentally different from us today.

Physically, morally, psychologically...and yet DH basically says, 'ok, they're just like you...um...except Medieval...in space.  Got it?  Good.  Now go kill stuff...'

Physically?

Well the average Imperial citizen sure isn't going to look European.  Given that High gothic was a fusion of Pacific languages and English, i'm thinking a wierd mix of Asian, and White.  Sort of coffee-skinned Polynesian looking...as a baseline.  Add in 1,000,000 differnet worlds and the endless environmentally inspired genetic mutation that will inspire...who knows?

Morally?

Its clear the average Imperial citizen has a fundamentally different moral compass...yet DH gives us NOTHING on that absolutely vital part of roleplaying a character in the Imperium.  I'm fond of the idea of an Imperial baseline, against which lots of local variations might be measured...but for sure that baseline isn't going to be much like modern Western liberal democratic values...

Psychologically?

Who knows?  I mean look at the environment the average Imperial citizen lives in!!  Surely we should be roleplay people like Winston Smith?  Or Lenina and Bernard?  I can't see many Imperial citizens being phycologically familiar to us today...yet, again, DH gives us nothing to work on in forming a 40k personality to roleplay...

Unless of course in 38,000 years of development of the like seen in the 40k background, Imperial citizens are essentially just the same as us...which i find incredibly unlikely....just look at the physical, moral and psychological changes between you and your grandparents...how different are they?

What about between a European and an African person?  Differences?

What about between us and the ancient Greeks or Romans?  Do we share the same morality as the Aztecs?

Hey!!  I derailed a SPESH MAAHRINE thread away from the marines!     Do i win a prize?

Nile said:

Because You can't Role play a Space MArine. You can only play it. The only thing he would do is to kill, kill, kill then kill again and kill and survive to all the interestings characters who would have brought life to the game. Isn't it? the goal is to play a ''normal'' human that can die in a sigle shot of a pistol. Because I think The goal of dark heresy is to play in a dark grimm atmosphere. WTF A space marine would do our of his chapter, working with vile acolytes? There is also the dark watch thing. wouldn't it be less interesting if there were space marine everywhere.

''No need the Inquisiton everyone! we got space meeriiinneees!''

Victus said:

I fundamentally disagree.

Victus said:

It's been stated before, but, theoretically, a role-player can indeed play a Space marine.  You may not be able to or have the desire to, but they are just as roleplayable as anything else, especially in 40k.  Lets face it, all the Arbiters are is hard-asses who stay in their little fortresses worshiping some law books until it's time to put on the old riot gear and bust some heads for the Emprah.  Not very roleplayable?  How about the GunNuns who, when not repenting or praying are purging everything in sight?  What about the Tech-Priest who really just wants to be a cogitator and has the emotional depth of one (and right brain to boot)?  What about Space Ninjas who do nothing but pine away for the next time they get to spray-paint themselves black and go on a kill-spree for someone with their cloths literally painted on? 

Let's face it, nothing in 40k has all that much depth.  Most all things in 40k's cannon have one depth and one depth only, and that's the killing everything in site while looking cool depth.  It's up to the players, GM, and, well, DH line to actually supply some depth to these ideas we have been handed.  Space Marines are no different.

I can actually see a lot of potential in roleplaying Space Marines.  Heck, I would love to run a SM campaign exploring the psychology of the Marine vs who they once were.  Possibly a split game with sessions jumping back and forth from the characters as their feral warrior selves eking out an existence on what ever world they came from to the characters as Space Marines and the endless battle that is their life.  Play it off as the SM's remembering hazy snippets of their former lives now and again 9for some plotish reason) and see which wins out through rp, the character as he was or his conditioning.  Something like that.  Lot of potential.

Though, i would agree, if your running an out of the box DH game 9the +i+ and all0 then they wouldn't fit but they are far and away not unroleplayable.  They might not be your cup of tea, but a good roleplayer can roleplay just about anything and a good GM can find a way to bring out the human element in any story.

Kage2020 said:

Iconic or not, I find Space Marines rather overused (but that might just be me being bitter being the only non-space marine TT player I've ever met :p). 40k material that doesn't involve crazy emphasis on space marines is a welcome change.

Personal feelings aside (as aside they can come in a post that, obviously, express personal opinions), there are several issues with playable space marines.

First, they don't scale well. If a game starts out with the players being relative grunts (as the Dark Heresy setting is inclined to do), you're pretty much out of luck. People don't become space marines when they are cool enough. You're either chosen early, or you're not chosen at all. That's it. It's not something you "advance" into.

Secondly, they don't really play well with others if you want to stay remotely close to lore. They don't walk around on planets with their buddies and have a chat with the locals, poke their noses in some potential heresy and generally go about their business. They hang out in monestaries practicing the best way to kill stuff, while waiting to be sent out to kill said stuff. So while a group of space marines might be fine, a mixed group makes little sense.

Thirdly, it's simply not in the scope of Dark Heresy, and I'm glad they were left out. If Rifts has taught us anything, it's that including both vagabonds and glitter boys is inherrently flawed. :) Of course, there's two sides to this. On one hand, Space Marines are giant, mindless (yet inhumanly intelligent), bio-engineered behemoths of destruction. The finest fighting force the Imperium has ever known. One marine is worth hundreds of regular troops. OBVIOUSLY outside the scope of Dark Heresy. On the other hand, the TT game doesn't really display them as that much more powerful than everyone else, in which case you could just roll reasonably well on your feral world guardsman, stuff him in a suit of power armour (without the stupid civilian power supply) and voila! Insta-space marine well within the scope of Dark Heresy.

So, either totally impossible or totally doable.

On a final note, I disagree that you can't roleplay a space marine. Lore seems pretty conflicting on this, and I'd have no issue with it. In fact, from a role-play perspective it could be interesting.

The only way I would let my players play a marine is as a short burst-high voilence mission where everyone plays a member of a death watch kill team. I'd make their characters before hand, they'd complete the mission but ultimately they would all die.

That way i could throw them up against something really big and nasty with out (a) killing of all their characters they have worked so hard on developing and (b) not have a Total Party Kill on turn 1

Here's the gag: As we all know, Marines in the TT game have to be balanced for game play. Marines in WH40K fiction and flavor text are freakin' death machines. The problem comes when you have to balance the flavor -something that tends to have more impact, at least in the minds of players of RPGs than other games- against a ruleset that already provides a soldier-y role: the Guardsman. Ideally, I'd like a book with the DH rules for Marines and the kinds of threats that they face. It's up to GMs to allow/disallow various rules, and the big ol' tag of "You may use this book at your GM's discresion." goes a long way towards that.

A Marine supplement could find a great deal of use, especially considering that it could be it's own book, akin to a smaller version of DH, providing the different 'jobs' Marines do (Infantry, Scout, Dev/H. Weapons, Chaplain, Assault, Tech Marine, Librarian, etc.). This also opens the door for Chaos Marines as a viable enemy in a "pure" SM campaign.

Although I personally wouldn't mix Marines in a group of DH Acolytes on a long term basis (maybe as a short-term plot device... maybe), I would strongly consider a scenario where the Marines get called in due to whatever the Acolytes uncover. Afterwords, the players take over the Marines for the next section, as the Acolytes either leave the planet, hide or otherwise go inactive for the duration.

Luddite said:

Not quite... Good sir!  I figure Inquisition has "no" use for the common drone but infact they seek these free thinkers and "radical" indeviduals which of course are the players who tend to bring their "current times" mind set in to the game...   

Deathwatch marines, it must be said, would, I think, provide for a much more interesting RP experience than yer average Space Marine. The Deathwatch will obviously rely heavily on inquisitorial investigation, and will rely on chapter politics, inter-chapter politics. There's no question about it, that Space Marines are going to have less flexibility in roleplay than acolytes, but that doesn't mean that their range wil be as limited as most people think. Having said that, I'm dying to see how they'll balance space marines, since someone with t40 and power armour is almost literally invulnerable to lasrifle fire. While i would have no interest in playing a space marine, subject to change once I see more material, I'd love having some official rules to create them, as the opportunities for using them as NPC's would be fantastic.

Deathwatch marines, it must be said, would, I think, provide for a much more interesting RP experience than yer average Space Marine. The Deathwatch will obviously rely heavily on inquisitorial investigation, and will rely on chapter politics, inter-chapter politics. There's no question about it, that Space Marines are going to have less flexibility in roleplay than acolytes, but that doesn't mean that their range wil be as limited as most people think. Having said that, I'm dying to see how they'll balance space marines, since someone with t40 and power armour is almost literally invulnerable to lasrifle fire. While i would have no interest in playing a space marine, subject to change once I see more material, I'd love having some official rules to create them, as the opportunities for using them as NPC's would be fantastic.

Nuttunen said:

Indeed.  Of course the Inquisition seeks out those individuals with 'something extra'.

But thats different to my point; which is, there is nothing in DH about the nature of Imperial society and culture. 

We are all products of our socio-cultural environment and influences.  To roleplay a character, it's rather important to have at least a basic understanding of that environment.

DH, and indeed 40k in a wider sense, doesn't provide any indication of the nature of Imperial society or culture to allow a roleplayer to form the character of an Imperial citizen.

We are, as i said, left with a lazy mix of 'modern person with with a handwave at a Medeival mindset (whatever that is)'.

Luddite said:

Well if you read between the lines (some times the actual lines)...   Common folk have poor education (if any) mostly illiterate (much like me).  Have deep rooted habit of Servitude. Head filled with propaganda. Monotonous repetitive jobs (promise of better tomorrow, chilling with the emperor in after life drives most on?). Fear, hate & blissful ignorance.

But yeah...  Sorta hard to define/set a standard when there are actually as many cultures as there are imperial worlds...  

:(

One thing I like so much about the DeathWatch is that instead of having each player have a home world, they would have an original chapter.  I think people are underestimating the number of differences that can be found between chapters, especially ones with long established histories.

A DeathWatch squad made up of former Blood Raven, White Scar, Iron Hands, and Aurora chapter space marines would play a hell of a lot differently from a squad made up of three Ultramarines and a Blood Angel.