DBWI: Dark and Gritty Warhammer 40K

Given how light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek the whole Warhammer 40K universe is, I was kind of wondering what it would look like if it had taken a darker and grittier turn. True it has a lot of dark comedy there, but I was thinking dark in a more serious way.

Do you guys think it's plausible, and what sort of effect would it have on the franchise as a whole, such as Black Library?
 
Well for a start I think they would design a Rhino that looked like it could hold 10 Space Marines

As for the Black Library - I doubt very much that we would see Inquisitor Cortez - um - pursuing Eldar Corsair 'Skirt' across an entire crusade and I suspect that Abaddon would be portrayed as a ruthless warlord rather than a hapless megalomaniac - "I would have got away with it if it were not for those pesky Astartes"

Also I suspect that Space Marines would have an alternative method of producing new Space Marines other than 'ahem' liaisons with the Sisters of Battle

And lastly the Guardsman's Lasgun would be portrayed as an effective weapon and not a 'Torch'
 
Ok, going out on a limb here, but if dark and gritty might they not have chaos infiltrators? And they then might need something like a counter-intrusion agency. Heck, just for fun, maybe something like the spanish inquisition. There's that classic monthy python scetch... allways made me smile.
 
Given how light-hearted and tongue-in-cheek the whole Warhammer 40K universe is, I was kind of wondering what it would look like if it had taken a darker and grittier turn. True it has a lot of dark comedy there, but I was thinking dark in a more serious way.

Do you guys think it's plausible, and what sort of effect would it have on the franchise as a whole, such as Black Library?
I can't see it working really. After all given that the franchise is aimed mostly at teens if the story line got too dark then the "Moral Majority" would be up it arms. By essentially making it like a Star Wars "Space Opera" it widened the appeal to girls too. I mean, if they had made it more like Alien or Aliens (Alien II) then the principal market is going to be older teens with no social life - how is that going to work as a business model???
 
Maybe make the Orks a bit more menacing and make them less obviously a pastiche of WWI Germans.

grobgoff1.jpg
 
Maybe make the Orks a bit more menacing and make them less obviously a pastiche of WWI Germans.

grobgoff1.jpg
Not happening; they were drawn over by Warhammer Fantasy, where they also represented a sort of Hun... just not the German type of Hun. It was weird that they decided to make them more militaristic and stereotypically German of the Hogan's Heroes variety and less barbaric and Chavvy, though given the setting it makes sense.

You'd probably need a different writing crew for 2E. The silliness began creeping in after the Rogue Trader days, where they originally had the setting more of a swashbuckling "adventure" style game and never really stopped.

As for the whole Astartes on Sister thing... blame the writers being awkward manchildren that write their horrid fetishes into books (I'm looking at you Goto and your terrible, terrible works involving Slaanesh's stuff). Cortez was written better after the dark days of the early 2000's, though the whole Cat-girl thing was weird as hell. And honestly, the fact that the imperial guard are kind of useless makes sense; they were patterned partially off Return of the Jedi Stormtroopers. The Mechanicus were also very mad science oriented since 3E; I mean, the Fabricator General had that terrible fake German Accent and everything.

The introduction of the Tau as bluemen who became obsessed with old Japanese anime transmissions you guys have to admit was funny, though GW did get into trouble at one point with Sunrise a few times, especially with Farsight being a very obvious Char wannabe.
 
I think it would take away from the whole setting. 40k's thing is that it KNOWS its being silly, its still a good game platform if horrifically over priced but it's never really taken itself seriously. Its basically Rambo 3, a parody of itself, merrily poking fun at the 'Grim Derp' of Judge Dredd and the like.
 
I think it would take away from the whole setting. 40k's thing is that it KNOWS its being silly, its still a good game platform if horrifically over priced but it's never really taken itself seriously. Its basically Rambo 3, a parody of itself, merrily poking fun at the 'Grim Derp' of Judge Dredd and the like.
Oh yeah, the fluff for the Arbites. My favorite bit involving them was the Armageddon Massacre; that series of misfortune based on fucking up how the law was supposed to be carried out reminded me so much of another system known as Paranoia it brought a tear to my eye.

Speaking of Rambo 3; Catachan Devils were entirely based on that version of the series.
 
Oh yeah, the fluff for the Arbites. My favorite bit involving them was the Armageddon Massacre; that series of misfortune based on fucking up how the law was supposed to be carried out reminded me so much of another system known as Paranoia it brought a tear to my eye.

Speaking of Rambo 3; Catachan Devils were entirely based on that version of the series.

Oh totally! That and the whole "Attention Citizen!!!" stuff the Arbites spew -
isn't a parody, its just perfect.

And yes totally based the Catachan's on Rambo 3's Rambo, even down to the rule that you can't put them in the same Valhallan's.
 
Was it the Valhallans or Vostroyans that made fun of the Soviets by making them happy big guys whose main specialty is throwing enough men into a battle to win? The unit with that one Commissar who literally said to his men "Don't worry men, the enemy shall run out of men long before we do! We can't possibly lose with those odds! Now charge!"
 
I think it would take away from the whole setting. 40k's thing is that it KNOWS its being silly, its still a good game platform if horrifically over priced but it's never really taken itself seriously. Its basically Rambo 3, a parody of itself, merrily poking fun at the 'Grim Derp' of Judge Dredd and the like.

Agreed, it is strictly played for laughs. I can't see how it could get dark and gritty without taking all the fun out of it.
 
Agreed, it is strictly played for laughs. I can't see how it could get dark and gritty without taking all the fun out of it.

Fair enough. I suppose that's why they got rid of the race-that-shall-not-be-named. They didn't fit with the style they were going for, so they ended up getting squashed by the Squats. These days GW refuses to acknowledge that they even existed in the first place.
 
Question is, would Ciaphas Cain stories be incredibly depressing, or would they stay the same and become the funniest part of the canon?
 
Fair enough. I suppose that's why they got rid of the race-that-shall-not-be-named. They didn't fit with the style they were going for, so they ended up getting squashed by the Squats. These days GW refuses to acknowledge that they even existed in the first place.
You mean those HR Giger rip-offs, right? Zoats I think they were called or something. Eh, I dunno who'd wanna play a mindless race anyway; it's why they made the Necrons very much akin to their counterparts in Fantasy from the beginning, with a few extra "twists" to make them fit better.
Question is, would Ciaphas Cain stories be incredibly depressing, or would they stay the same and become the funniest part of the canon?
Probably more the latter if it went dark I'd say. Ciaphas' main role was as the straight man, and the writers would probably have kept him that way.

Hey, remember the time the Eldar of Ulthwe fell for their own 8 millenium trap in Dawn of War's later expansion packs? That and the Librarian of the Blood Ravens deciding to try and become a champion of Khorne from the base were two of the funniest moments I got to play, and it was what got me into the series.
 
Oh yeah, the fluff for the Arbites. My favorite bit involving them was the Armageddon Massacre; that series of misfortune based on fucking up how the law was supposed to be carried out reminded me so much of another system known as Paranoia it brought a tear to my eye.

Speaking of Rambo 3; Catachan Devils were entirely based on that version of the series.

Paranoia? Talk about a game that is dark and gritty. It is like Oceania from 1984 is run by a computer with a healthy dose of McCarthyism and the worst bits of BNW mixed in. You start out with 6 clones and run around trying to avoid getting wacked by the Int Sec Secret Police or bombed by the Armed Forces as the computer commands it to attack the city and make it seem it is from outside to keep the oppressed citizens in line. It is truly a horrific setting with no sense of humor in it. With luck your Troubleshooter rebels (You find troubling lackeys of the computer and shoot them) might survive a few games before getting wiped out.
 
Paranoia? Talk about a game that is dark and gritty. It is like Oceania from 1984 is run by a computer with a healthy dose of McCarthyism and the worst bits of BNW mixed in. You start out with 6 clones and run around trying to avoid getting wacked by the Int Sec Secret Police or bombed by the Armed Forces as the computer commands it to attack the city and make it seem it is from outside to keep the oppressed citizens in line. It is truly a horrific setting with no sense of humor in it. With luck your Troubleshooter rebels (You find troubling lackeys of the computer and shoot them) might survive a few games before getting wiped out.
And that's what made Armageddon Massacre such a fun bit; it took that idea and made it into the best bit of black comedy I've witnessed in years. "You didn't say the magic word" indeed.

Speaking of which, Fantasyflight's Only War aped a bit of Paranoia's mechanics, namely the notion that you start with multiple characters in the wing (reinforcements rather than clones) and to some degree the ranking system is similar in that the longer you serve and especially the higher your station the more you could order and access yourself. It's a fun high-lethal game though rather than the very grim Paranoia; but both are good games if you want to get your players used to having characters die or if you wanna play the incompetent stormtroopers; the extra splats for that game also made it so you could play as the grunts for other nations; the Ork one being very fun indeed.
 
You'd probably need a different writing crew for 2E. The silliness began creeping in after the Rogue Trader days, where they originally had the setting more of a swashbuckling "adventure" style game and never really stopped.
You'd probably achieve this by not having Terry Pratchett come aboard in 1987 - once he'd got established in the writing team for 2nd Edition's backstory he was probably the main driving force in pushing 40k towards the tongue-in-cheek writing style and diverting away from the more grim and serious WHFB. Pratchett had said in interviews before his death last year that he was at a crossroads then - the first couple of books in the Rincewind series are well regarded now but never really found a market and so turning his attention more to sci-fi comedy let him make a fresh start, though of course he wrote a couple more Rincewind and Wizzard stories when gaps in his 40k writing duties left time for side projects.

Maybe if Colour of Magic/Light Fantastic do better in the shops, then his umming and ahhing over the offer from GW[1] results in a no? We know Pratchett regarded his 'discworld' as unfinished business, and occasionally hints of that peek through into the 40k universe such as the vague references to invading star turtles in the Darker Millennium supplement, so if discworld had paid the bills it may have become his full time outlet.

[1] OOC note: http://wargamestuff.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/terry-pratchett.html
 
Last edited:
Take away Pratchett and yeah that would probably drive it into being gritty grimdark, he was the driving force behind the tongue in cheek humor that made the game popular and then remained, sure it went a bit too silly with some of Ward's stuff that was more a parody of itself than the subtle blend of humor that Pratchett applied . So yeah remove Pratchett and we'd have a very different 40k.
 
Top