Have you ever been a part of a campaign where The Empire are the good guys?

In my own setting the main empire are generally good guys

>malazan campaign
What did you do.

Been running a couple of campaigns in a setting that is basically the picking up the pieces after the BBG got defeated.
Mapping the frontier, going prospecting, that kind of thing.

Yes

Coming from the guy saying you should align yourself with aliens with hooves, no noses and red eyes.

Yes they're weird looking.

At least they're not degenerate fanatics with a genocide fetish.

The imperium winning is nearly as bad as chaos winning.

The emperor was a bro, but every part of the imperium since his death is complete shit.

The tau are the good guy faction.

Orks are funny, but that's all they have going for them.

Nids are fun to play as but they're obviously a plague on the universe.

Eldar are kindof good guys but they screwed up and doomed the universe

Doing a game right now where a friend and I are establishing the first dwarf empire. Somehow, our first alliance was with goblins.

You'd rather be with someone who would sterilize and brainwash you?

That being said, the only good faction in 40k is none of them. Just be independent.

They've said that vidya is noncanon

In my main setting, The Empire are the only real proper nation with a consistent and effective bureaucracy and administration. The other major civilizations are an extremely loose confederation of city-states and a bundle of satrapies that have either absolutely no oversight from above or arbitrary and often counterproductive mandates that are enforced with extreme prejudice.
The Empire is kind of thought-police-y, with the main culture/ethnic group crushing native practices of conquered groups and imposing their religious order to aid unification, but The Church that The Empire claims to conquer in the name of is actually pretty chill and even tacitly backed the (losing) reformist faction during a schism in the recent history of the setting.

I prefer to not think if any singular nation as being Homogeneously Good. Every nation has good, bad, and all manner of people in between work for them. Sometimes this leads policy that is helpful to everyone, sometimes a regime that is harmful to everyone, and sometimes a polity that favors pursue the greatest common good for their own people over that of other tribes.

As such, I prefer to not try to label any empire as such, since an Empire is not a singular entity, but rather are all individual groups and individuals united in a singular common tribe, ie the metaphor of the fasces.

That being said, regrettably I've only played a game in Golarion, which is trash where all the empires are evil save for the divine matriarchy in NotAfrica.

However, if I ever get the chance to get together my homebrew system, I do plan on the major Imperiums to be primarily focused of the greater common good, which city incredibly altruistic and connivingly vile individuals all scatter across the echelons of power, with the Emperor himself being a middleground fellow akin to a cross between Alexander the Great and Gwyn the Lord of Sunlight.

I ran that campaign.

The Sol Empire was run by the Elves, and was essentially Not!Rome to the invading Orcs' Not!Gaul. The biggest knock against it was that only Elves could be considered Patricians, and everyone else was a Plebian (and some races, especially Orcs, couldn't even be that) but despite the institutionalized racism the cities' cultures were the most cosmopolitan in the world. It was a prosperous and safe point of light in the endless darkness of the rest of the world.

The campaign itself was pretty memorable as well, mixing military strategy and political intrigue and ending with the party fighting against overwhelming odds on the capital's walls.

Erikson went both ways though. The Malazan empire under Surly's rule went to hell, and under Kellanved's rule they were too busy conquering everything ever, though it was generally a decent place that treated it's conquered territories well.

On the other hand, you have the Empire of Lether. Fuck that entire continent.

FUCKING COMMIE HERETIC SCUM.

>campaign takes place in Fantasy not!Australia
>distant humanocentric Empire ostensibly claims the place, but mostly runs trade outposts, some resource extraction, and exploratory expeditions
>PCs play monster race locals whose careful balance of ancestral lands and inter-tribal pacts are shattered by the interlopers
>not!British East India Company exploits this friction to divide and conquer
>PCs unite the disparate tribes, drive out the interlopers, and with a Sea Giant king at their head, set off to punish the Empire
>Arrive at mainland, are summonsed to the emperor
>"You're the one that united not!Australia? Oh praise the gods you're here! Save us from the invading Illithid slavers! Here, have all the resources and troops you could possibly need."
>MFW

Yes I'm American.

A political system is only as good or bad as the ones who control it

TES

I doubt you were alive back then.

What vidya are you talking about? The brainwashing thing was in a rulebook.

Yes, but in other campaign they weren't.

The whole thing is too vast to be always a good thing. We like it more this way.

Ah. Yes. According to the imperium sources they're castrated brainwashed fodder.

The tau sources (dark crusade vidya notwithstanding) paint a very different picture of what is like being a human in the tau empire.

>inb4 Stormkeks

Yell all you want about freedom, but an independent Skyrim/fractured empire benefits only the Thalmor in the long run. Divide and conquer, that's their strategy.

I don't think you can necessarily judge an empire on how good it is by its foreign policy. Sure that empire might be chill to its neighbours and not invade, but it could have high taxes, corrupt officials, things of that nature that make it a generally not nice place to live in. Sometimes even if the empire is always in a conquering mood they can still be better than the alternative if what they're invading is (for example) mud huts that would benefit from the rule of law and trade networks of the empire.

Where did this kingdom = good, empire = bad meme even come from? Would empires be less stigmatized if Nazi Germnay and the German Empire were never a thing?

As usual, Germans ruin everything for everybody.

>The Emperor was a bro
You know he wanted to genocide every alien race and only seeked human supremacy, right?

user, you might had a point in previous editions, but now Tau brainwash, sterilize and treat non Taus like 2nd class citizens, why you ask? because this 40k and we can't have good guys.

You know there's a reason we call them human rights and not sentient rights, right?
I bet you're also against bullfighting and forcefeeding geese for pâté. Faggot.

Who said?

Bulls and geese are sentient but not sapient

>Where did this kingdom = good, empire = bad meme even come from?

Well, the villain has to be seen as powerful to work as a plausible threat. Making him the head of a large state is an easy way of doing that. A large state is almost always an empire, whereas kingdoms can be small and weak. And of course, the empire must be evil, to make you sympathise with the protagonist. It's a basic storytelling technique that pops up a lot - because it works.

>Would empires be less stigmatized if Nazi Germnay and the German Empire were never a thing?

No, because the 'evil empire' would be a thing with or without ze Germans. It exists because it's an effective storytelling technique. Even when the evil empire in a story is directly based off an actual empire, I see British and Roman more often than German. Let's face it, the German Empire wasn't much of an empire, it never had the impact other empires did since it was so short-lived.

>so short-lived.
The HRE would like a word

British, Spanis and Roman empires were pretty evil. You have to commit many atrocities and war crimes to keep huge empire in power.

>Where did this kingdom = good, empire = bad meme even come from? Would
Kingdom=Good, more or less comes from fairy tales.

Empire=Bad is Art imitating life. Because Empires have this tendency to invade/conquer or at least exploit their less powerful neighbors.

>Romans
>Evil
I want Germanics to leave

I want slavers and degenerates to be hanged

Don't you have decidedly non-consensual interspecies erotica/snuff to watch, romefag?

And picts and celts and franks and North Africans and greeks and everyone else they subjugated and enslaved and butchered?

Rome was a large evil empire. It accomplished some impressive stuff, but also a great deal of despicable acts.

I played in a campaign where the empire was quietly gearing up to doing some serious conquesting in the name of progress and order, to bring stability to the region around it and possibly gain troops for an invasion they'd gotten wind of was coming from across the sea.
Turns out the OTHER nations and city-states in the area had gotten the same message, and when the empire sent out its decree of annexation it was met pretty universally with cries of "oh thank fuck" and "what took you guys so long?".

This is great!

It's true that they do that for the more recalcitrant species they come across, but many who join and serve wholeheartedly are so denigrated.

I do wonder whether it is an officially recognised order of treatment, a general policy or a reactive process.

>You'd rather be with someone who would sterilize and brainwash you?

You act like those are both things that the Imperium doesn't do too. When the Imperium does it, they call it Chem Gelding. Its generally treated as equivalent to castration.

There is nothing bad that the Tau Empiure has done that the Imperium has not done more horrifically on a larger scale and for less cause.

>tau
>goodguy

No. Saying this as a Tau fag. Tau are the orwellian faction

Again, depends on your national and historical background. For some peoples and traditions, Empire is pretty much a istant "good guy" whatever that means. Sure, the Romans had some peculiar traditions, slavery and conquered or tried to conquer everything they could, but they are ROMANS dammit, like, Greatest Civilization on Earth.

Education and schools work, son.

I'm a huge Romeaboo so yes, more often than not.

In the Cain book The Greater Good the commissar meets a 2nd or more generation human who whole heartedly believed in the philosophies of her Empire and genuinely wanted diplomatic discourse.

Cain books are non-canon.

And we have stories of human guardsmen living happily with blueberry waifus. So what? Are you going to cherry pick your non-canon now?

You'd make a great Greek slave for Roman masters

Not sure why you think the Greeks were slaves. The Greeks were probably the only group the Romans considered on par with themselves

I acknowledge your suggestion that the Imperium sources could be intentionally misrepresenting the Tau for propoganda reasons, but the reverse goes for the Tau sources as well; you can be skeptical and dismiss it as positive propoganda written by the all-controlling Tau overlords.

Greeks was much sought slaves for their skills in fields of medicine and such.
Still live of Greek slave was better than most people in the world could get.

Plus slavery in roman times is seen as much more evil than it was

Are you trying to claim there was no Greek slaves? Slavery was a thing in Greece.

Yes, because the Dominion have unlimited resources at their disposal.

Everyone played the same ballgame back then.
Egyptians,Greeks,Persians,Celts,Germans.

Rome just had better game.

Well the certainly weren't bad guys. They were a bit cunty to the little states near them but compared to the zombies and beastmen they were pretty kind.

It was either greeks or romans that treated slaves as mere objects, while the other one gave them some rights. I can't remember which one, but this might be the right thread to ask.

Yeah and there were Italian slaves. There were also Greek slaves in Greece before Rome even conquered it. Among conquered peoples, Greeks were undoubtedly treated the best in the Roman empire

No. Always unto tyrants.

Both. Neither.

It varied hugely from place to place and over time and the reasons for the enslavement.

>▶
Romans. Roman law was quite interested in slaves and even their well being. As a slave you still had some rights and could file a complain against your master in some cases.
Most of it depended on how you become a slave in the first place.
Still slave was considered as "speaking machine".

And last thing, Roman Empire lasted over 1k years, so all things were changing over time, so without specifying some time you can't really tell how was the slavery in roman times.

Yeah sure, Romaboo. Celts fattened eels up with slaves like Romans did.

It mostly applied to house slaves. Slaves working in the fields and mines enjoyed short hopeless lives.

>Spanish
Come on, we weren't that bad. Just a tiny-weenie corrupt and later even more incompetent due to inbreeding.

Also genocide i guess...And stealing, loads of stealing.

Can't forget the illness we brought to the new world...

I say we were pretty standard.

If the Imperium wins they will exterminate all spacefaring Xeno races, except some might be allowed to live as independent protectorates that acknowledge the Imperium as their better - the same deal Eldar were offered by the Emperor. With humanity being a psyker master race Chaos would be weakened to the point where such a totalitarian system would not be needed anymore.
Tau literally can't win, because they will get steamrolled by the faction that will achieve their win condition, which will happen soon. But lets pretend they somehow do it. Then they will subjugate other Xeno races under their strict and direct rulership, with no major advancements possible, and exterminate all those that won't accept it. Even the Tau will still be forced to live in a strict caste system so that the Ethereals can keep their control over them. Chaos will be an ever present threat because Tau lack any kind of tools to combat it effectively.
Chaos, not Chaos worshippers mind you, wins by getting the Emperor killed. If he dies then all reality will be destroyed and replaced by only Chaos.

Well to be fair, fish food is the only thing that those pig-fucking unwashed Celts are good for.

You are not the most likeable person

And?

Empire implies an inherently expansionist policy.

>believing all emperors are tyrants

Who, the guys who actively collected skulls?

Pulla, get back in formation!

True, but later law against slave abuse applied to all. How effective it was I can't really say.
Main thing that affected slave life was supply and demand, the lower slave number on the market, the better their living condition was.

Lastly short and hopeless life was meant form most of free society as well.
Not to mention latter invention of serfdom, where peasant was a slave but in the name.

Which brings us o the topic of good kingdom and bad empire.
Kingdom often holds morally high ground against slaver empire, but it does not stop good kingdom form extensively using serf yo work it's fields. Talk about hypocrisy.

>The tau are the good guy faction.

You do not understand the Tau if you think this is correct. They are "less bad" than the Imperium is although I personally am a Human Supremacist so fuck xenos but they have a ton of skeletons in their closet.

Also, the Imperium became what it is because of millennia of xenos betrayal, corruption from within, and Warp-fuckery that have nearly wiped out all of mankind on multiple separate occasions. The Tau have yet to go through any of that, the closest being the Hive splinter fleet they BARELY survived.

Just stop, Romaboo

I want to have a Star Wars-esque space opera setting where the Empire doesn't kick dogs while they goose step to the beat of a Sith Lord.
To hold together during the Not!Clone Wars, the Definitely Not Galactic Republic had to militarize and get their shit together. The Force equivalents weren't sold out according to keikaku but instead became a part of the Empire's military. Corruption drops in response to the CIS equivalent's relevant grievances, but they don't rejoin because the empire is a military state now and they're afraid things will get worse rather than better.
So now the Empire is in stalemate with a suffering economic power that hates their guts and is slowly lining up reasons to attack them, while the Empire is suddenly flourishing due to a tremendous drop in corruption, a technology boom from the war, and a recruitment drive for all able Force Users by the government bringing Imperial funding and tech to backwater worlds that have built a growing economy on it.

Ah yes, the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither Holy, Roman, nor an Empire.

Bitch, get in formation!

I'm currently in a campaign where "the empire" are good (or at least on the decent side of neutral) guys in the process of becoming bad guys after the emperor got shanked. The party is pretty much trying to minimise how bad things actually get (but failing because the scope of this shit is kind of out of our grasp), while also pursuing more personal objectives.

I want this meme to die already.

Underrated

It's not like that example you are citing is necessarily monolithic, either. By and large they are clearly sort of bastards, but it's not universal. You also have reasonable and cultured members of Imperial society, and the royal family. His sister for instance. Their father is an old horse trader and probably a bit of a bastard too, but he's a calculating one. He can clearly be reasoned with.

Still, the only reasonable solution to the way things are in their world would be the dismantling of the Empire, or radical reform, such as extending citizenship to all intelligent beings, freeing of slaves, and a whole lot of other stuff, probably.

All of which will make big parts of the aristocracy and other people absolutely howl and be fuel for the civil war that's shaping up.

Which works fine for what they want to do because the Empire as it is is clearly negative and having Bad Bad Men who want to keep slaves and thuggish brutes backing them up provides plenty of targets for the JSDF and Itami's crew to righteously gun down.

But they weren't.
Just cause you call yourself or someone else something doesn't mean it is the truth. Just like how the ERE was the real roman empire, but the vatican couldn't have that so they started calling them either byzantines or greeks.

19th century nationalists, mostly

There are no good guys user. Only the one's who lived and the one's they've killed to keep living.
[Spoiler] long live the emperor[/spoiler]

At the time of the naming, they controlled Rome, and their emperor was crowned by the pope.

Holy. Roman. Empire.

At it's inception the HRE was all those things

The Emperor was crowned by the pope and was able to appoint bishops (until Canossa that is).

At it's inception Rome was part of the Holy Roman Empire

And It clearly was an Empire, the Emperor ruled over Kings as well as lower nobility.

And once/if the Imperials win, widespread genocide followed by the same error wide suffering they already have, but bigger.

Imperials winning is nearly as bad as chaos winning.

I didn't say the tau are going to win. I said they were the only good faction, and that the next good faction was eldar, but the eldar screwed up and doomed the universe by inventing chaos

>Imperials winning is nearly as bad as chaos winning.