History AlternativeCharacterInterpretation / TableTopGames

** [[http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558798/Pelor_the_Burning_Hate Pelor The Burning Hate]] is a reinterpretation of Pelor, Neutral Good god of the Sun, Light, Strength, and Healing. It manages to remain consistent with everything attributed to Pelor, while explaining his every action and trait as actually evil in disguise.

** Abyssals: Death-obsessed omnicidal maniacs, or... eh, there's not much room for an alternate interpretation here.
*** ... Or the tragically corrupted and repentant shells of people that might once have been heroes.
** Everyone ''always'' ignores the Lunars. Most of the world sees them as raving, flea-bitten beastmen who squander their lives fighting each other over territory, mates, and bragging rights, when they aren't attempting to burn and destroy civilization to usher in total chaos. This is actually a deliberate ruse to appear less of a threat, so that the Dragonblooded and Sidereals don't try seriously hunting them down like they did the Solars. While many Lunars might fit the stereotypes if you squint real hard (and some even if you don't), for the most part they're a band of misunderstood heroes honestly trying to protect the world from itself and actually fighting to prevent Chaos. There are various factions devoted to protecting the world in the way they think most important, either by preserving (and improving) ancient knowledge, defending nature (and thus the Mother Earth Goddess) from ruination, patrolling the borders of the world to keep Chaos at bay, seeking to reinstate the Solar Exalted as kings of the world (a highly controversial idea among Lunars), or experimenting with isolated human civilizations in an attempt to come up with a viable alternative to the Realm's corrupt brand of civilization. In general, yes, the Lunar Exalted think the current order is corrupt and needs to go -- but they're not so stupid as to do that unless they've got something better to replace it, and they've given a lot of thought about ''how'' to do the replacing without destroying the world in the attempt.\\

** Autochthon: Noble champion of the little guy? Or the supergod equivalent of those Columbine kids, murdering his peers because they picked on him?

* Coming up with new interpretations of Franchise/CthulhuMythos entities seems to be a particular focus of tabletop games that use Mythos elements. ''TabletopGame/DeltaGreen Countdown' dedicated a sizeable chunk of its wordcount to a reimagination of Hastur, and ''Trail of Cthulhu'' has a list of Mythos entities and potential reinterpretations (aligning them with the fundamental forces of physics, for example).

*** In a late 2nd Edition book (when the cosmos was significantly different), ''Guide to Hell'', it was suggested "Asmodeus" was the false face put forward by one of the primal beings of Law, an aspect of the archetypal World Serpent, the fallen ancient god [[{{Zoroastrianism}} Ahriman]]. This introduced the interpretation that he was no mere Satan figure (which he had previously embodied) and made him something more ancient and terrible, [[SealedEvilInACan imprisoned in the Hells by the very laws he helped write into the cosmos]] and plotting to shatter those laws so he might reforge them for his own ends. 3rd Edition's ''Manual of the Planes'' continued to hint at his secret nature, but never went very far with it. (In this case, Asmodeus's counterpart as the other half of the World Serpent was Jazirian, the goddess of the couatls. She's mentioned so rarely that some bits of fanon have filled in the gaps with her own Alternative Interpretation, making her the ''logos'' to Asmodeus's great Lie, and that she may even have died between 2nd and 3rd edition - another bit of fanon from that is that her discorporate essence is behind the Words Made Flesh of the illumians in ''Races of Destiny''.)

** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). The Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, the core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountered monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later [=WotC=] could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.

** The Orks were given one InUniverse by the Eldar philosopher Uthan the Perverse, who argued that they were the pinnacle of creation and merely regarded as crude by everyone else despite their clear strength and enduring nature.

*** InUniverse, the application of this trope towards Alexander Kerensky caused a split within the Clans between the Crusaders and the Wardens. Did he want his descendants to conquer the Inner Sphere and re-establish the Star League by force, or did he want them to watch over the Inner Sphere until they were ready to restore the Star League themselves? In truth, he probably didn't want the [=SLDF=] to return to the Inner Sphere at all.

** The Tyranids. Are they advancing on the galaxy purely for the sake of invading it... or are they running away from another, greater threat?

**** The truth to this question resides with the sword he carries. There are theories that Farsight is now an Eldar puppet due to the Dawn Blade being rumored to be one of the swords of Vaul, one of the only weapons that can permanately kill a C'Tan. In addition, the blade looks very much Eldar in design (see Wraithlord sword).

*** Are they merely [[JerkAss jerkasses]] seeking to preserve their own race at the expense of everyone else, or [[TheAtoner atoners]] doing whatever is necessary to stop the threat of Chaos and the Necrons? The last dying gasp of a decadent race, or the only hope against threats that the younger races do not fully comprehend?

** The Tyranids. Are they advancing on the galaxy purely for the sake of invading it... or are they running away from another, greater threat/

** The Emperor himself, especially during the Horus Heresy novels. Was he a good man who didn't grasp the psychology of those without godlike power? Was he a bad father to many of the Primarchs because he didn't know how to be a good one, or because he didn't realise he ''needed'' to be a father at all? Was the Heresy the result of a failure, or a part of his plan? Is the religious fanaticism of the 41st Millennium a betrayal of his secular philosophy, or was he planning from the beginning to institute his own religion once all others were crushed? If the latter, was it a plan to ascend to full godhood and defend humanity from the Dark Gods, or just a power trip? Or was he just an asshole?

*** The Inquisition: are they, as Ciaphas Cain ('''Hero of the IMPERIUM!''') once calls them, "the Emperor's pet psychopaths" or are they heroic individuals shouldering an impossibly weighty burden and forced to make the cruelest decisions imaginable? Canon is that they can be one or the other; some are evil, some are good.

*** Are they merely [[JerkAss jerkasses]] seeking to preserve their own race at the expense of everyone else, or [[TheAtoner atoners]] doing whatever is necessary to stop the threat of Chaos and the Necrons. The last dying gasp of a decadent race, or the only hope against threats that the younger races do not fully comprehend.

** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, an alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in, or are they two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named, if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.

Within chapters: NightLords? Psychopath butchers, or self-sacrificing heroes who enforced the Imperium and were rewarded by MaliciousSlander? The Dark Angels? Covering up their primarch's decision to sit out the Literature/HorusHeresy or shamed, attempting to atone for the treachery of their members?

** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.

Right now, the answer looks like "It depends on the Primordial." Some were really that awful. Kimbery turns out not to have changed much by becoming a Yozi, and was just as much of a mood-swinging psychotic MyBelovedSmother who alternated between loving the Lintha and her other creations and showering them with her favor and hating them for real or imagined slights against her and tormenting them back when she was a Primordial. The Dragon's Shadow was a treacherous ManipulativeBastard who is strongly implied to have intentionally orchestrated the Primordial War and whose primary change upon becoming the Ebon Dragon was actually being ''better off than he was as a Primordial'' -- he now embodies the dragon he was once the mere shadow of, and is one of the most powerful and influential of the Yozis. She Who Lives In Her Name destroyed 90% of Creation [[RetGone at the conceptual level]] in what amounted to a temper tantrum upon being defeated and imprisoned, and was against the existence of free will from the start -- The Dragon's Shadow convinced Theion (now Malfeas) that free will was necessary, and he convinced She Who Lives In Her Name to allow its existence.

* ''MagicTheGathering'':

* This happened a lot in the ''TabletopGame/OldWorldOfDarkness'':

** Nowhere did it stand out more than in ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension''. When the games began, the mystically oriented Traditions were the good guys fighting a war of ideology against the all-powerful Technocracy, who tried to "smooth out" the bumps in reality through extermination of all supernatural creatures. As the game went through multiple revisions, however, the flaws and in-fighting of the Traditions began to come to the fore, and it became possible for the player characters to be a group of young, idealistic Technocrats trying to reform a corrupt monolith from the inside.\\

And there's the ever continuing problem of getting the players to not just be AlwaysChaoticEvil since they are called demons. Some go for BloodKnight types, some go for manipulative Al-Pachino-From-Devils-Advocate types, and almost all of them miss the point of the game. The expanded power sets (Lore of Violation anyone?) doesn't really help with this.
** Pretty much all the Changing Breeds have different interpretations of each other as regards their roles in service to Gaia (or whichever of the Earth/Moon/Sun trio they prefer), but then you have Hunters, who are... unprecedented, to put it mildly. Of all the supernatural creatures in the World of Darkness, they have no lofty litany to pass down or any apparent connection to anything but the bizarre calling of the Heralds, and even they have no idea what the Hell it means. The only ones who seem to have a clear idea of what they really are, are the Nagah, the were-serpents: [[spoiler: They're the last sign that Gaia has abandoned all hope in her shapeshifting Children, because Hunters are what she has chosen to replace them as her protectors.]]

*** It even gets meta -- one of the most common trends in GMing Paranoia is to reference the name of Alpha Complex, and create other complexes with other computers. Some players even conjecture this was intended by the designers all along.

**** Actually, if you read his book, Nagash the Sorcerer, its made pretty clear he enjoyed the pain of others and wanted power for powers sake. He entombed his own brother alive so he could take his throne and feed his brother's wife a drink made (unknown to her) from her murdered son's blood. He was a malicious, petty, monster. The closest thing to benevolence in his reign was...he reclaimed his city's glory by sacking another city and killing every living thing he could find, whether they were soldiers or civilians.
** Tomb Kings: Total dicks who want to take over the world and "kill" each other for power or lost souls doom to never again find peace, and trying to bring their once great empire to life?

** There's also the connection to 40k as well as the origins of Sigmar: Is the Warhammer World simply another "Feudal World" in the 40k universe, two completely unique settings that only have the chaos gods in common due to corporate laziness, or alternate dimension to the 40k universe that the Chaos Gods occasionally take interest in?[[note]]Originally the fluff indicated that the Warhammer World did exist in the 40k universe, but as time went on this was dropped and outright retconned in certain material.[[/note]] There is also the possibility that Sigmar is one of the two lost primarchs who were never named if it is indeed set in the 40k Universe.

**** There is a fan theory that the Etheral's are the last ditch effort of the Old Ones to save the universe by helping create an Empire that could unite all of the races against Chaos/Tyranids/Orks/Necrons.

Within chapters: NightLords? Psychopath butchers, or self-sacrificing heroes who enforced the Imperium and were rewarded by MaliciousSlander? The Dark Angels? Covering up their primarch's decision to sit out the HorusHeresy or shamed, attempting to atone for the treachery of their members?
**** For several years, the Dark Angels were very notably part of this genre because it wasn't clear whether Lion El'Johnson or Luther was the actual traitor. It goes a step further because it was also possible there was no traitor faction and the conflict was bred purely from paranoia. The HorusHeresy series did remove the doubts of what actually happened though.

* In the latest edition of ''DungeonsAndDragons'', Asmodeus usurped his position from [[NoNameGiven He Who Was]], his patron deity. A lot of text tries to portray He Who Was as a benevolent deity, but angels are supposed to be extensions of their patron deity's will. How did Asmodeus get so many angels on his side? Perhaps He Who Was wasn't as squeaky clean as he's made out to be. In fact, HHW might have been the god of ambition, and the reason he had so many usurpers following Asmodeus was because of their ambitious nature. (HHW is [[{{YHWH}} one letter away]] from being a VERY SignificantAnagram...)

* The Dark Powers in the DungeonsAndDragons {{Ravenloft}} campaign setting are usually interpreted as being evil, since they are the [[GeniusLoci presumed masters behind the eponymous Demiplane of Dread, a place of evil and horror]], but it is also possible that they are good, and use Ravenloft as a prison for the worst villains and monsters in the multiverse. If the cage sometimes seems a gilded one, remember that each of the major villains trapped there are also given curses [[CoolAndUnusualPunishment appropriate to their crimes]].

** The problem is, almost none of the villains trapped in Ravenloft are actually major (only Vecna/Kaz and Lord Soth, all long gone from Ravenloft, were bigshots before going there). Dark Powers pick people whom they can make to suffer beautifully, not those really dangerous or really heinous. Snatching a guy who murdered his brother to steal his fiancée out of love, when ''DungeonsAndDragons'' is chock-full of people whose job description amounts to killing and torturing innocents ForTheEvulz? On the other hand, core domains of Ravenloft often are relatively safe places to live, compared to what is normal to [=DnD-land=]. Commonly encountering monsters are weak enough to remain in hiding, instead of rampaging and assaulting openly, and there is a comparative shortage of insanely powerful psychopaths on the loose. To be fair, it's not like TSR and later WotC could denude their other campaign settings of all their good villains. Also, the Dark Powers may just not have the power to take all the really major villains from all over the multiverse; it's not like the Dark Powers have ever been portrayed as omnipotent, even within Ravenloft. Maybe they're just doing the best they can. Also, the fact that Ravenloft is in some ways ''safer'' for the average person than the typical campaign setting, what with the lack of lots of randomly rampaging monsters, may be further support for the idea that the Dark Powers are good.

*** Are they merely [[JerkAss jerkasses]] seeking to preserve their own race at the expense of everyone else, or [[TheAtoner atoners]] doing whatever is necessary to stop the threat of Chaos and the Necrons. The last dying gasp of a decadent race, or the only hope against threats that the younger races do not fully comprehend.

* BattleTech as a whole (At least up until the Jihad) seems to have been an exercise in creating ACIs, all depending on what faction you decide to side with. Except for a few unambiguous [[KickTheDog puppy-punters]] like [[TheCaligula Romano Liao]] or [[RoyalBrat Katherine ]][[EvilPrince Steiner-Davion]], most characters can have several Interpretations.

*** Are they merely [[JerkAss jerkasses]] seeking to preserve their own race at the expense of everyone else, or [[TheAtoner atoners]] doing whatever is necessary to stop the threat of Chaos and the Necrons. The last dying gasp of a decadent race, or the only hope against threats that the younger races do not fully comprehend.
*** Further complicated by the

* ''Android'' does this with the player characters. Are they honest detectives searching for a murderer, or corrupt investigators striving to frame the person they happen not to like? The fiction says one thing while the game mechanic says another; the incoherence is so strong that a fan mod for the rulebook was released to alter it.

** Alhoons are mind flayers that have undergone a version of [[OurLichesAreDifferent lichification]], [[EvenEvilHasStandards utterly abhorred by traditional mind flayer society]]. However, some have pointed out that becoming an alhoon not only frees a mind flayer from the need to [[BrainFood eat brains]] outside of ForTheEvulz, but it also makes the mind flayer effectively immortal. Consider that elder brains devour their mind flayer servants under the pretense of making them immortal, and the abhorrent nature of the alhoon takes on a very different light: monster of monsters, or DefectorFromDecadence?

*** Further complicated by the Harlequins (who aren't technically Craftworld Eldar) - the ultimate fighting force of the Eldar and last/best line of defense against the forces of Chaos, an introverted and secretive sect more concerned with maintaining Eldar history/myth than with protecting the galaxy, or monsters who take some perverse joy in liquefying their enemies and have sold their souls to the Laughing God for amazing power?
**** All of the above. Though the last one is mainly because the Harlequins also recruit from the Dark Eldar...
**** A lot of complications arise because the Harlequin are an Eldar faction that pre-dates the schism between the Craftworld and Dark Eldar.
** The Necrons: Merciless overlords leading endless legions of undead robotic minions to purge the galaxy from lesser lifeforms and use them as cattle for cruel scientific experiments or the tragic half-mad governors of an ancient advanced civilization who lost their souls in order to cheat death and are attempting to reconquer what was rightfully theirs, while still holding honour and loyalty high?
**** Further, there are more than a few indications that only the Necrons or the Orks are actually capable of stopping the Tyranids, of those two the Necrons are arguably the better choice, because simply spawning billions and billions of orks until they form a pile big enough to stop the hive is... Somewhat sub-optimal... and so crazed hyper-science is a better choice. In addition, their plan to seal off the materium from the immaterium, while having some rather major consequences for space travel, ''does'' solve the whole problem with Chaos being infinite and unstoppable. And since there are other ways of moving around the universe if you're smart enough to see them, it's not that bad of an idea. [[spoiler: The Emperor was trying to do this a long time ago and there's an opening to the webway under the golden throne. So it can't be THAT bad of a plan.]]
** Chaos: AlwaysChaoticEvil in every sense? Or, the final bastion of free will and impulse in a universe which seems to actively work to crush all original thought and indeed, the very idea of hope? They're the ones with the big ugly demons, whatever they are.
*** Chaos isn't good nor evil. It simply is a reflection of Mankind's desires, dreams, and thoughts.
*** The Chaos Space Marines: Vile ravagers in every possible sense, worse even than the ruthless Imperium? Or simply those that, in those dark days, cling to whatever powers they might in order to give themselves a glimmer of hope for bettering their own lot in life? Both?
*** Far more often, the latter seems to occur, the majority of the Chaos Space Marine characters who appear are utterly heartless, often outright sadistic, mass murderers that are only interested [[ItsAllAboutMe amassing power for their own benefit]] and [[ForTheEvulz causing as much death and destruction they can while they're at it]].
**** Abaddon the Despoiler: An [[MemeticMutation armless, brainless]] GeneralFailure who could never topple the Imperium or the only person who could unite Chaos against the Imperium. Were the Black Crusades complete and utter failures or merely setting things up for a final assault against the Imperium?
***** Both points can be well argued, since smaller scale Black Crusades that have no effect on the status quo have succeeded, but on the other hand, Abaddon is trying to break the defenses of the 2nd most heavily defended sector in the galaxy, and has deal with the fact that armies he fights against are much better organized than his.
*** The Chaos Gods: Khorne is as much strength and honor as he is bloodshed and violence, Nurgle is as genial and loving and the comfort of the weak and the poor as he is corrupting and pestilent, Slaanesh stands for joy and pleasure to all the senses through art and form as much as outright hedonism, and Tzeentch, while a capricious schemer, could also be said to stand for hope and innovation. These are factual aspects of the characters; they embody positive and negative traits at once.
**** Khorne, for all the supposed honor his about, tends to make people forget that in the current setting, he's utterly heartless. His honor really boils down to the fact that he's picky about how his minions fight, but wrecking mass destruction and slaughtering mass of innocent people that can't fight back, he's got no problem with that. Slaanesh being about joy the sense, is a depraved sadist that nearly exterminated an entire species because he felt good doing it.
*** Tzeentch: brutal, traitorous Magnificent Bastard who simply wants destruction, just trying to survive, or enacting a Machiavellian plot to destroy the other Chaos Gods as a ploy to save the sentient races of the galaxy, bringing him into well intentioned extremist territory. Or he could be as caring as Nurgle, except less caring towards his worshipers than the races they originally came from? Truth be told, we know far less about Tzeentch than the other gods, and GW intends to keep it this way, so really, any character interpretation is possible.
**** Tzeentch is supposedly trying also make sure nothing ever changes because he can't scheme if any of his schemes ever work.
*** The Chaos Gods could be every interpretation at once. They're ''chaos'' shaped from the hearts and minds of everyone. They're probably [[MadGod insane enough]] to fit each one: Nurgle [[PapaBear loves his followers]] as much as [[DespairEventHorizon despair]] and [[BodyHorror disease]], Tzeentch schemes [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans for a better]] and [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans worse galaxy]], [[Khrone is an honorable BloodKnight who happens [[AxCrazy to love slaughter]] and Slaanesh wants [[SenseFreak pleasure]] at [[EthicalSlut our benefit]] [[DepravedBisexual and peril.]]
*** The Alpha Legion joined the traitor Space Marines because they were convinced that it would ultimately serve the Emperor's main goal of stopping Chaos. They were presented two options by a group of Xenos capable of predicting the future. If the Emperor won, the galaxy would end up in its current CrapsackWorld state (which is what ended up happening). If Horus won, ultimately his guilt would cause him to take actions that would cause humanity to go extinct, removing the main "food" source for Chaos in the galaxy. Alpha Legion ended up siding with Horus in favor of helping the Emperor's goals rather than preserving the Emperor's life and dooming his goals. Since it ultimately didn't work out for them, there are a lot of different interpretations of their actions.
** The Orks: Overtly homicidal maniacs, or merely extreme thrill-seekers looking for a "good time", or machines build to fight something that has long passed and fighting anyway?
*** All of the above...
*** Also, are they truly a race of homicidal maniacs that would make Charles Manson seem well adjusted, or are they the OnlySaneMan in a universe bent on destroying every last shred of hope?
** The Dark Eldar: Torturing people and draining their souls. Is this hedonism or necessary for their survival?
*** There really isn't an alternate interpretation, they love it and they need it.
*** Alternate Interpretation: They are Eldar who avoided being consumed by Slaanesh, but were not fortunate enough to develop a way to fully sever the link to the Bright God as their bretheren did via the Craftworld's Soul Stones, the Exodite's World Spirit, or Harlequin's Protection of Cegorrach. So corrupted and debased by their link to Slaanesh, they are now little more than her puppets, enslaved to her dark desires. Possessing little strength of their own, they painfully await the birth of Ynead and their final release.
*** It was (at least at one time) seriously suggested that the Dark Eldar blood-sport was more akin to the villagers from the story of St George and the Dragon. Slaanesh wants souls, and they made a bargain to keep feeding her and in exchange she doesn't come and eat them all up at once. It's a deal with the devil, but as the last (or so it seemed) remnant of a doomed race preserving themselves even if it won't last forever is of prime importance, because they know that eventually Slaanesh will fall. In the generations that have followed, the original reasons for killing have been forgotten, they simply know they must kill and torture to survive. And when you're civilization is built on blood shed its really really hard to hold back the tides of any other form of debauchery. Which leads us to today where in constantly foisting off the touch of Slaanesh the Dark Eldar have ended up with so many similarities to her worshipers that you can't tell the difference. When gods are real and tangible and absolutely want to eat your souls you really don't have a whole lot of choice but to play ball. It's either independent evil under the shadow of death, or death and soul rape. Urgh.
** Tyranids: Hungry, or deliberately trying to eat everything? Do they not realize that other species are sentient, or simply not care? Are they just an extragalactic HordeOfAlienLocusts consuming every natural resource they can use, or are they running from something so terrifying that the entire biomass of multiple galaxies turned into organic death machines would not be enough? Out of control bioweapon? They did kill off the Squats, so they can't be ''all'' bad.
*** All of the above? Actually no, they are just simply a swarm of insects. Intelligent, but they still don't give a damn.
*** Killing off the Squats: a great service to us all or the most terrible crime since the Heresy?
** Possibly one of the biggest ones in the whole of 40k is the Emperor. Is he... the guiding light of humanity in the darkness, a weakling corpse barely a shadow of his former self, or simply planning a comeback? Was he an idealistic crusader who wanted to establish an era of hope and strength for humanity, or a mass-murdering tyrant who ruthlessly crushed all opposition and was willing to exterminate entire non-human species in order to establish his own rule? [[WellIntentionedExtremist Were his actions]] [[GoodIsNotSoft justifed]] [[KnightTemplar or not?]] Did he genuinely desire the destruction of religion in an effort to impose his will upon the free thoughts of man, or was it only in order to guide a newly psychic humanity to a future free of chaos? We may never know...
*** It's unlikely that anyone will get a clear answer. GW uses the Emperor (as a character) very sparingly, and so very little about him is known. Suffice to say, a massive amount of 40k depends on exactly how much the Emperor knew...did he deliberately scatter the Primarchs or was he the victim of a terrible accident? Did he deliberately choose to die at Terra or was it an accident too?...
*** Alternatively, the Emperor of Mankind is us. He's humanity, with all its [[HumansAreGood pros]] [[HumansAreFlawed and]] [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters cons]]. He's the paragon of humanity trying to save us from [[CrapsackWorld the cruel universe it lives in]] and the tyrant trying to elevate us to [[AGodAmI absolute power.]] Most of all, he is our strive to continue. [[CrapsackWorld When faced with the worst possible worlds]], we will resort to the grim necessity needed to not be destroyed. '''The Emperor Protects.'''
----

* In ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', are the Garou noble warriors who serve as the last, best hope against the [[GodOfEvil Wyrm]], or childish thugs who waste so much time fighting among themselves that they neglect their common enemy? Are they a race of [[TheAtoner atoners]] who are coping with the consequences of their ancestors' bloody mistakes, or potential tyrants who would dominate humanity again if given half a chance?

* One of these is raised by the main rulebook of ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}} XP''. Friend Computer is usually portrayed as unhinged, a little bit stupid, gullible, and ruthless. One brief section of XP suggests an alternative: Friend Computer is 100% sane and sees through all the evasions and deceptions, but has concluded that deceit, fear, ignorance, horrific inefficiency, and all the other perks of ''Paranoia'' are the very quintessence of human nature and has decided to do everything necessary to nurture these traits, using ObfuscatingStupidity.
** The rulebook also suggests that the GM should always have another layer. Okay, the [=PCs=] find out that Friend Computer is being controlled by evil mutants from Beta Complex, who are actually being controlled by a group of High Programmers back in Alpha Complex, who were set up by Friend Computer as part of a paranoid sting operation, but this plan was added into Friend Computer's memory banks by aliens from Pluto, who are actually just psychic projections of TheIlluminati, etc. In short, in Alpha Complex, everything has an alternative interpretation.