>>94816064
Just give the party the chance for small, visible results: Evil might still rule the world with an Iron fist at the end of the day, but the party saving this family farm from bandits made a little boy have hope for a brighter tomorrow,

and should the party come back later in the region, they'll get a warm welcome

>>94816064
The alternative is fucking depressing
I recall a LotFP game where the PCs ditched the cure for a plague in return for stealing everything they could and fleeing. When their hireling started to cough, they shot him full of arrows and rode off into the night.

>>94816271
This pretty much happened all the time when we tried to play/GM WHFRP 1.
There was no point in joining the plot.
All danger, no actual reward or even any actual chance to make a difference.
Players just took what few Gold Crowns they could find and went somewhere else.

>>94816064
Setting up expectations is an important part of gaming. If I tell you this game will be a high fantasy epic adventure, and then the whole scenario takes place in one crappy little hamlet that you have to protect from a pack of wolves, then you've got a right to be pissed with me.
With regards to a grim setting, you should take pains to explain the basic conceits of the universe to your players first, and what they could reasonably expect their characters to be capable of achieving. In a super hero game, I can reasonably expect saving the day to be *possible*, even if it isn't guaranteed. In a Game of Thrones RPG, I have to understand that virtue doesn't protect my character, and that cunning and intrigue is often deadlier than naked force.

>>94816064
Of course your don't want to make the world a better place. You don't care. You don't even play games. You just wanted to post a picture of an ass you found on /tg/ for some godforsaken reason.

>>94816456
The worst part is that it's not even a quality drawing of an ass or a nice ass. It's AI slop ass. Not even very good.

>>94816064
Play games.

>>94816064
>isn't the heroism of making the doomed attempt enough?
No, that's just moral masturbation with a helping of suicide.

>>94816064
>isn't the heroism of making the doomed attempt enough?
If the attempt is doomed why even try? If you can never make a difference why even play? What fun is there in always being on the losing side or having to cowardly run away? What sort of excapism makes you feel worse than reality already does?
Grimdark is garbage

>>94816064
>I mean, isn't the heroism of making the doomed attempt enough? Do they genuinely expect that to work so easily?
Gee, it'd almost be like it'd be a fantasy to see things work out so easily. Which is what a lot of tabletop gaming is. Like for real, I get your point, but some players like the idea of seeing their hard work leaving a lasting impact on the setting, and that's fine. It doesn't work for every setting, but unless it's biting your chaps that bad as a GM, then there's no reason not to throw them a bone every so often if they actually did more than just loot everything not nailed down and murdered everyone before slinking off to the next kill zone.

>>94816064
For a lot of people, the appeal of playing a TTRPG is the ability to enact plans and make choices and have an impact on a complex and evolving situation/world.

If the environment around the players starts in grimdark state, and they can't do anything about it, whats their motivation? What are they supposed to engage with? They are basically told to stand in a box and not touch anything, just sit there and have dirty water dumped on them for fun. The optimal move in a grimdark world is to disengage and avoid everything you can, and thats BORING.

>>94816064
> Do they genuinely expect that to work so easily?

I mean... honestly? Yeah.
For a lot of 'grimdark' settings, the grimdark nature is top-down enforced by author fiat. It doesn't actually make sense for the world to be that way, or for people to make those decisions. But they are forced to by the author to do so in order to MAKE the setting grimdarker. This naturally clashes when you introduce players, who are not controlled by such authorial (in this case, the GM) intent, and thus can act in ways that make the world better as opposed to worse. Which they will naturally want to do, because the world being grimdark doesn't BENEFIT them but at least the part of the world they are in being safer and more stable DOES.

For an example of grimdark being stupid, lets talk about 40k. 40k is full of surface-level excuses for why the setting has to be as shit as it is, which don't hold up under scrutiny and which could be remedied in short order if only people in the setting were not irrationally dedicated to actively making their lives suck more. As an extremely simple example, AdMech doctrine makes no sense and would be impossible to enforce. You simply cannot police every living person to make sure that no one else knows how to fix their tractor without calling space monks 15 years away to send a guy to do it for you. Technological knowledge naturally disseminates, and the moment it does the Imperium's need to rely on the AdMech crumbles and Terra would be strongly motivated to make sure that it does. An Imperium not bogged down with the dumbshit Admech would have had 20,000 years of technological progress since the start of the Great Crusade to deal with its problems.

It's an unsustainable, obviously self-sabotaging, and extremely disruptable system. The only reason that the AdMech haven't already been kicked out is because the narrator says it can't be done. No other reason.

>>94818588
For further example of how the AdMech are stupid, consider this: according to the timeline, the DAOT was around 8000-11,000 years AD. It has been 20,000 years since the start of the great crusade.
The fact that so much knowledge was lost is no longer an excuse for their stagnation. A single planet, bombed back to subsistence farming, lost out in the galaxy undiscovered by the imperium, would already have bootstrapped its way back to being DAOT levels of tech-strong totally on its own by now. They've have twice as long as Earth needed to do it the first time, even if they have literally zero surviving tech knowledge they would have had plenty of time to do so. Even a small amount of surviving artifacts or records would only accellerate that.

Modern 40k should be *tripping* over new human worlds with tech that makes their own look like children's toys.

>>94816194
This. Fixing the world with a single quest might be implausible, but the PCs should be allowed at least small victories even in the bleakest of settings. At the end of the day, it's the people you know that matter.

>>94818588
>>94818609

Brother, let me ask you something - what do you do if your phone stops working or your computer? Alternatively, if you're in IT, what do you do if your car stops working? Maybe you're some kind of exception, but while everything in 40K is stupid, your example sucks because people lack specialized knowledge and what they do in their chosen field seems like witchcraft to the outsider.

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>>94816064
... ok?
Next time write a blog

>>94818588
>You simply cannot police every living person to make sure that no one else knows how to fix their tractor without calling space monks 15 years away to send a guy to do it for you.
Bro this happened IRL.

You need to give them some sort of tangible 'evil' incarnation that is defeatable. Can one person/team end slavery? No. Can one person/team kill -a- notorious slaver? Absolutely.

You need to put a name to the evils of the setting.

>>94819177
I could name any number of things that could cause my computer or car to malfunction or stop working that I would be able to fix myself, though there is obviously a line crossed at some point where you need to either seek a specialist or it becomes necessary to replace the broken machine in part or in total. But at no point does that become magic.

The thing that 40k never really bothers to answer is where the line is. I am dumbfuck farmer on an agri-world thats not important enough to have the AdMech breathing down my neck every moment of the day. I drive my tractor over a nail and blow a tire. Do I know enough to replace the tire on my own? Because if not then that's absolutely laughable, not just in terms of my ability but that this is supposedly the way the world works and we still expect this to be a galaxy where literally anything gets done. Even if I don't know how to do it in that exact moment because its a novel problem for me, its a simple enough problem that anyone can figure it out win a couple hours so long as they have the tools. It isn't a complicated puzzle.
But if I CAN replace the tire on my own, we've taken a fundamental step towards the AdMech not actually having a stranglehold on technology. If I can replace a tire, I know that broken parts get replaced. I can likewise comprehend that I should replace a broken window, or a broken axel, or a drive belt. All of which will happen frequently enough that unless the AdMech keeps a techpriest stationed on my farm I have to solve this myself or there is no farm.
If I know how to fix my tractor, where is the switch that flips in my brain that says that only mysticism and candles and braziers of incense can fix a Land Raider? If the AdMech has to have a dude standing literally behind me watching my every movement to make sure I don't accidently learn something about the tools I am using every day, how are they supposed to do the same the other quintillion people in the Imperium?

>>94819284
You're ignoring how ridiculously complicated the space tractor is. It's not a matter of replacing a fan belt. It has an emergent pseudo-mind in there, for one thing, and plenty of redundant systems that allow it to function out of the box on virtually any planet with a surface to stand on. Maybe if given sufficient time (which you never get, since you are a slave with half or less of the lifespan you could theoretically get) you could become quite adept at diagnosing and repairing this one specific tractor. But an AdMech doesn't understand how to fix one tractor; they're highly educated in the physical sciences as well as a whole mess of ritualized routines for diagnosing and repairing machines that go far beyond currently understood sciences. It's cloistered monks maintaining quantum computers through rote instructions passed by oral tradition, times a thousand.

Anon's right, you chose the correct setting and the absolute worst possible example. Stick to production models or something. The Imperium wastes its landmass to insane degrees since it tries to have every planet specialize.

>>94820247
I think that the level of contortions you have to go through to preserve the status quo there is evidence in my favor, actually. You have to make the tech more complicated than it really is and the person using it as dogshit-dumb as possible, because the moment someone who isn't a lobotomized mongrel man used something that isn't conveniently cthulutech he might LEARN something about it and the AdMech cannot survive in a universe where that is true.

The Imperium includes worlds of a wide array of tech levels, from advanced hive cities to dudes fighting with flintlock weapons. All built on STC technologies, that were explicitly and intentionally designed so that even non-experts could build complex machines from raw materials. thats what STC templates *ARE*, instructions for colonists to use to bootstrap their tech level from whatever they have in their pockets to spacefaring civilizations. And the effectiveness of this is shown in the fact that even teams of slaves from medieval-tech tier planets can still build a spaceship *by hand* with enough time.
In a setting where all of the above is true, I flatly reject your hamfisted premise than even the lowly tractor is a mysteriously ineffable black box that actively and intentionally defies explanation to its user. Thats the setting tone trying to enforce itself against all logic speaking.

>>94820623
STCs were intended to be made by completely automated factory systems (constructors). While STC technology is easy to use and maintain, that isn’t really the part the admech struggle with. A lot of shit can’t be made anymore because they can’t produce the prerequisite components or lack the machinery.

To your other point, simple machinery like autoguns and tractors are pretty much made on-world with little to no meddling from the admech

>>94818588
Except you've given a perfect example of exactly why the actions of the PCs won't be accomplish anything.
If they're in enough of a position of authority to try and start a technological revolution, causing any actual disruption would require decades. You aren't getting the 20,000 years of technological progress just because your PC decides that was a dumb decision. The stagnation already happened.

>>94819284
So first of all, I do want to make it abundantly clear that I fucking hate 40k as a setting. It's juvenile, it's poorly thought out, it's Br*tish, it attracts the worst kind of autist - the list goes on and on. I take umbrage with your example. Yes, Space Farmer working on an agriworld is going to know how to replace the Space Tire on his Space Tractor. That is not the purview of the Adeptus Mechanicus (oh right, the dog latin also pisses me off). What IS the purview is anything beyond something that requires more than "several" steps.

It's like the modern IT infrastructure. Theoretically all we want the users to do is to just do the job on their machines and if the machine stops working, they summon a techpriest - someone from IT - to fix the problem for them. Except that's retarded for two reasons. One is that it requires a bloated IT department and two, it fosters dependence on the IT staff where ANY problem with the computer, even one outside the auspices of the IT dept. are going to be ticketed. Which is why most companies expect a basic level of computer literacy - knowing what the difference between a single/double/right click, checking to make sure cruise control is off, etc.

For the faggots at 40k, since their idea is to make everything as grimderp as possible "bloated staff" and "fosters dependence" is the goal. Because Margaret Thatcher or something. God I hate the British. Also, don't forget:

"In summary, seasoned Sociopaths maintain a permanent facade of strategic incompetence and ignorance in key areas, rather than just making up situational incompetence arguments. This is coupled with indirection and abstraction in things asked of reports. (...) When you want to use them in engineered “failures” that give you the outcomes you want, you give them autonomy in areas where they are weak."

>>94821594
The problem arises from the fact that the AdMech's stranglehold on technology is, like everything else in 40k, described purely in sweeping absolutist terms. There isn't room in that language for the farmer to be allowed to change the tire on his own, if he tries he's a tech heretic and a hundred skitarii drop out of the sky on him at instant speed to kill him and anyone who knew him because maintaining the LARP has priority over even survival.

>>94824074
You're making up dumb scenarios and blaming 40k.

>>94816064
>Do they genuinely expect that to work so easily?
In a game? Yes. It helps so we can deal with your kind later in a civil manner instead of giving you a permanently out body experience like we should, you parasite.

>>94820623
Bro, you clearly have surface level understanding of 40k if you don't know the difference between a Standard Template Construct and a STC Template. Seems you are just retard sperging because you have anger issues.
>>94824074
Point proven.

>>94816064
Glad you live such a cozy and carefree life that you don't need some escapism.

>>94826392
>the difference between a Standard Template Construct and a STC Template
Care to explain it then to another anon?

>>94826750
NTA but like everything else in 40k, its a term that was designed in vague terms originally, meant different things when different writers briefly elaborated on it later, and eventually settled into a common definition that is what it means *now* but that doesn't always line up with older lore before they decided what canon was, nor with how people colloquially refer to it.
Supposed canon is that the Standard Template Construct is the AI driven computer itself which makes and stores the designs, acting as both an archive of all of the best past ideas and how to make them (and all of the tools you need to make along the way to make the parts, etc) and the ability to design new things if you ask it to. The designs themselves are the Templates, which have sometimes been printed out and preserved in some fashion for future generations to find and use even if the computer itself is long since gone. Books and fans alike often refer to these templates as 'STCs' themselves, even though thats inaccurate.
Further confusing matters is that some books refer to certain Forgeworlds having 'STCs' which are make-anything machines so long as you give it the right instructions, and the Templates are those instructions so once you find one you can just pass copies around to your forgeworlds and immediately start mass-producing that thing. This is a relic of the old vague lore.

tldr: anyone who tells you that they are objectively right about what STC means is having to ignore at least some amount of canon to select their preferred headcanon from the pile

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>>94827418
I appreciate your explanation, anon. Please have this gif as a token of gratitude.