Warhammer 40K and CthulhuTech - Grimdark showdown

[SpaceMarine93]

Okay, this had probably been discussed before somewhere in the forums - or not, but I would like to bring about.

Many people on this forum must had heard, if not know thoroughly, the two most well known examples of the most bleak and grimdark cross genre / cross medium fictions ever created by Man: Warhammer 40000 and CthulhuTech. And since we all know what they are about (if not, look it up in TVtropes), I will not elaborate further.

But I want to know, of those two pieces of fiction, each claiming to be bleak and grimdark in every way, shape and form and every trope in it driven up to 11 and beyond, which one ultimately is far more grimmer, darker, edgier, gorier and more terrifying than the other? What are the reasons why they are so? And what else is there that is possibly far more bleaker, darker, edgier and more horrifying than any one of them?

[Shroom Man 777]

The day when the stars were properly aligned was the most important day for the Old Ones in R'yleh.

For the Imperium, it was Tuesday.

[Highlord Laan]

I have trouble seeing Cthulhutech as grimdark due to the friends I play with. "Anything will die if you pump enough weaponized plasma into it" "Mine is the rail cannon that will shake the heavens" and such things. Warhammer 40k is seen as a much more hopeless setting at my table, mostly because that sense of hopelessness is embedded into almost every iota of every segment of the entire gaming line.

[Nephtys]

C-Tech's pretty grim and dark. The military situation is bad, and worse as the second Mi-Gou mothership is coming. The Eldritch Society's really fighting a losing, uphill war with no victory possible really. Oh, and apocalypse is barely averted like three times in the last 'year'. But then again, most people live pretty decent lives which do not involve horrible death or soul eating.

40k's grimmer and darker for most people, since it's just skulls and chainsaws and stupidity like that. But there's apparently hope of victory because the Emperor is magic. Even if it's really barely anything. Of course, that's small consolation when the next five trillion people are routinely sacrificed/slaughtered/posthumously venerated or whatever daily.

It's a matter of scale. There is no victory even remotely possible in CT, while there's a last minute divine intervention possible in 40k at least. But on the flip side, people actually get sunlight and happiness in CT, while most everyone in 40k is clearly a horribly suffering peasant on a planet made of plutonium by-products.

[Highlord Laan]

Yeah, CTech is pretty hopeless. It's just very hard to get that across to Exalted and Rifts players that have a universal dislike for WoD like defeat-snatched-from-victory bullshit.

[fgalkin]

CTech? The "Shoot the scary alien thing with plasma" CTech?

Fuck that, CoC all the way.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Xon]

Cthulhutech loses due to massive concentrated stupidity. Seriously some of the more recent rulebooks make the various factions less competent than RL African nations.

[Imperial Overlord]

frigidmagi said the setting lost a lot of grim-dark credibility when he saw how small the C-tech military was compared to its population. When you're facing annihilation by cosmic horrors you should at least mobilize like a nation in WW II.

[Xon]

The original source book had all types of wondertech like viable nanotech, cheap plentyfull 3d printers/nanofabricators etc, and unlimited energy via D-Engines. Then you have gems about the NEG healthcare system is like a worse-case Americanized view of the British NHS. And homeschooling is permitted despite the omnipresence of cults, but that's ok thier anti-cult task forces take utterly no safeguards to ward off known threats like dreamwalkers (but the dreamlands got eaten!, oops plothole) or a bunch of other pants-on-head retardedness.

This post by EarthScorpion, really puts how god damn brain damaged the later sourcebooks get.