games

I remember talking to a proto-chud about 40k roleplaying (we were playing Rogue Trader (the Dark Heresy one, not OG 40k) at the time), and he was very invested in extremely thick clear lines between the Imperium and the rest of the 40k. The society from top to bottom must be puritanical. I was "apolitical" at the time and I pointed out that in the context of roleplaying it's vastly more interesting if there's constant fraternisation on the borders, corruption in the society (even if you accept that, say, the Tau are bad, but just from a human interaction standpoint), and not every military officer is a frothing at the mouth zealot.

Looking back, he wanted 40k to be a model society (as it were) and was also very invested in the "humanity fuck yeah" thing that feels like a fascist dog whistle in sci-fi circles.

(side note 1, he also decided at some point while GMing that regular Imperial citizens shouldn't even know about the Inquisition. I pointed out that this would make it impossible to use their authority. He changed it for the planet his story was on. TBF that did make our acolyte job harder. In hindsight, he could have meant that like... Noble houses and the Imperial Navy and general higher eschelons of society do know about the Inquisition, but like a factory worker on a hive world doesn't necessarily. That would actually be pretty interesting and make the Inquisition a more illuminati-esque faction in Dark Heresy)

(side note 2, he was always personally invested in being a person with special secret knowledge that not many other people knew, and attempted to accrue social clout this way. This applies both to science knowledge but also to holocaust denial later on)