I don't get the arguments for bioessentialism

[Scribe]

"Uh we have good guys in the Imperium, how do we do that?", and it's a bit of a mess.

The issue is trying to push this narrative at all. The Imperium is the bad guy lol.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah with, no insult to you, is the most awful and weird era, because it's when, for entirely corporate profit-seeking reasons, they sucked almost all the humour and charm out of the setting, and started bizarrely trying to spin the Imperium of Man as "just doing what they had to", even though any closer analysis of the text showed they were mostly still demented theofascists who were their own main problem. But a lot of people, especially Americans of a certain age (mostly younger than us, but not all) got their start in that era, because it's also when (for the same corporate profit-seeking reasons) GW started marketing a lot more and lot more effectively in the US. I believe (but do not have harder proof) that these strategies were seen as being aligned, though that proved mistaken in the longer-term.

RT and particularly 2E clearly had the more enduring vision, because by 7E things were slowly starting to swing back around ("nature is healing"), and by late 8E/early 9E were basically full-on back in basically the same territory as 2E, right down to armies last seen in 2E having returned (Genestealer Cults and Squats/Votann being the biggest examples). The Imperium also gets a more interesting portrayal, with some actual "points of light" with saner people and the Custodes and some of the Marines trying to genuinely make things better, but the bulk of the Imperium is still theofascist hell (in direct disobeyance of the Emperor's orders!) and the books don't try and spin it like they did (imho) in 3/4/5E.

I suppose I always got the black comedy/satire of the setting throughout my active play era, so I never saw what they were presenting as any kind of endorsement. I'm not responsible for what a bunch of despicable people think. There are no "good guys" in 40K. Thought that was the point. Grimdark satire.

 

[Umbran]

I feel D&D increasingly made creatures similar to each other...

The "humans in funny masks" complaint has been around since the 80s. YMMV.

 

[Alzrius]

I suppose I always got the black comedy/satire of the setting throughout my active play era, so I never saw what they were presenting as any kind of endorsement.

The entire presumption that "if you portray something evil in your work of creative fiction, and don't issue a disclaimer about how you don't agree with it, then you're endorsing it" is an incredibly toxic idea that has inexplicably become the default presumption for a particularly vocal minority of fandom.

I don't think Jeff Lindsay (author of Dexter) endorses serial killers, or that Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad) endorses cooking and selling meth, or that the writers for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit endorse sexual assault. I give the same benefit of the doubt to people who write fantasy and science fiction, regardless of how grimdark it might be.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I suppose I always got the black comedy/satire of the setting throughout my active play era, so I never saw what they were presenting as any kind of endorsement. I'm not responsible for what a bunch of despicable people think. There are no "good guys" in 40K. Thought that was the point. Grimdark satire.

I remember when the Tao were first released they seem to have accidentally just made them the unironic good guys, and every attempt to dirty them up since has been met with either "still miles better than anybody else" or "that's imperial propaganda, I'm ignoring that."
Also confused me that they were constantly called the weeaboo faction despite the Eldar stuff looking more anime than the Tao's Mechwarrior / Real Robot aesthetic ever did.

 

[Cadence]

I think this post might've been largely missed- it's a good example of how a TTRPG could handle it differently than DnD:

Can't see what was quoted. Can you give the name of the game and which mechanic I should Google?

 

[BrokenTwin]

Can't see what was quoted. Can you give the name of the game and which mechanic I should Google?

In Burning Wheel, the non-human ancestries are all driven by a different emotion. Elves by grief, dwarves by greed, orcs by hatred. This is mechanically reenforced, with different results depending on how much your PC attempts to go again their "nature".

I own the books but haven't played it, so I can't comment on the fine details.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I remember when the Tao were first released they seem to have accidentally just made them the unironic good guys, and every attempt to dirty them up since has been met with either "still miles better than anybody else" or "that's imperial propaganda, I'm ignoring that."
Also confused me that they were constantly called the weeaboo faction despite the Eldar stuff looking more anime than the Tao's Mechwarrior / Real Robot aesthetic ever did.

I never saw the Tau as good guys. They utilize mind control and other indoctrination techniques to control conquered peoples. They just don't focus primarily on violent solutions, and they have a better PR department than the other factions.

 

[Umbran]

I don't know why they complain about that though. We're telling human stories for regular humans.

So, for many, we are not "telling stories", so that doesn't generalize.

Star Trek does this of course and it's not because the writers can't come up with alien aliens, it's because they're telling human stories. When Star Trek has alien aliens the story usually centers around our protagonists dealing with it rather than from the point-of-view of the alien.

But, that doesn't really work when one of the PCs is the non-human, and reasonably expects to be as much the center as the humans.

It's why I'm a big fan of choosing a species based on what kind of story you're trying to tell. Sure, you could just do it with a human, I guess, but what's Tolkien or Star Trek without a little of the fantastical?

1) Even if we are telling stories, maybe claiming to be akin to be comparable to some of the most prominent examples of genre stories may be... a little lofty?

2) As above, Tolkien and Trek are fully authored fiction, without a player at the table who has a right to be as important as anyone else.

 

[Necropolitan]

I thought what 4th Edition D&D did by having Tieflings all be descendants of Humans from the empire of Bael Turath who made a deal with Asmodeus was interesting.

It meant every Tiefling had a common national origin at some point in their family trees.