Last I saw of him, he was talking about 40k 7th edition. I haven't see him mention much in the latest White Dwarf while they were covering Adeptus Titanicus, and I would have thought there would at least be some kind of introduction from him. I mean, he is the Godfather of Epic. Is he still around?
With games of the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar being played across the world, and events organisers planning matched play tournaments, Jervis Johnson and Ben Johnson (no relation) from the Warhammer Age of Sigmar design team join us to talk about the game’s optional rules and how they fit into organised play.
Whenever you're reading a GW rule book and it directs you to roll in a table to see which table you roll on to determine which random thing happens, Jervis is there..
Azreal13 wrote:Whenever you're reading a GW rule book and it directs you to roll in a table to see which table you roll on to determine which random thing happens, Jervis is there..
Blastaar wrote:I suspect he was the driving force behind much of the oversimplification as well.
Jervis Schroedinger - simultaneously overcomplicating AND oversimplifying the game since 1987
Azreal13 wrote:Whenever you're reading a GW rule book and it directs you to roll in a table to see which table you roll on to determine which random thing happens, Jervis is there..
Blastaar wrote:I suspect he was the driving force behind much of the oversimplification as well.
Jervis Schroedinger - simultaneously overcomplicating AND oversimplifying the game since 1987
.
Ah, a student of the Jervis Design School, in which randomness and complexity are considered equivalent
Jervis [Jer-viss] Jer-vised, Jer-vis-i-fy, Jer-vis-i-fied, Jer-vis-i-fi-ca-tion –verb 1. to remove options inherent in a list. // 2. to reduce existing sub-lists into a single list. // 3. To triple (or more) the amount of Special Characters in a Codex. // 4. To take away. // 5. To give what isn't wanted nor needed.
Origin: Mid-1980's, England, Nottingham
Synonyms: Bland, Blandify, Codex: Dark Angels (4th Edition)
Antonyms: Codex: Chaos Space Marines (3.5 Edition)
H.B.M.C. wrote: Had to go digging to find this old post of mine:
Jervis [Jer-viss] Jer-vised, Jer-vis-i-fy, Jer-vis-i-fied, Jer-vis-i-fi-ca-tion
–verb 1. to remove options inherent in a list. // 2. to reduce existing sub-lists into a single list. // 3. To triple (or more) the amount of Special Characters in a Codex. // 4. To take away. // 5. To give what isn't wanted nor needed.
Origin: Mid-1980's, England, Nottingham
Synonyms: Bland, Blandify, Codex: Dark Angels (4th Edition)
Antonyms: Codex: Chaos Space Marines (3.5 Edition)
Then again he's also author of one of the best games GW has made(epic armageddon). (and has the sensible idea that tournaments aren't all there is about miniature games like many seem to think...)
tneva82 wrote: Then again he's also author of one of the best games GW has made(epic armageddon). (and has the sensible idea that tournaments aren't all there is about miniature games like many seem to think...)
Yup. And Blood Bowl. And pretty heavily involved in Necromunda. Amazing games.
I appreciate that he’s made some wrong moves, and his style of ‘here’s some guidelines, play silly games’ doesn’t really work with the current tournament-focused online world, but he’s also one of the key figures responsible for the games we all play and the popularity of the hobby as a whole.
Aye, he was responsible for a lot of the games I picked up in my teens and still play 20 odd years later... and thoroughly enjoy. He’s responsible for genius and randumb alike. Shame the internet polarisation machine can only consider him deity or demon... no middle ground permitted, guys!
I suspect he was the driving force behind much of the oversimplification as well.
I owe Jervis a beer then. Best thing to ever happen to 40k.
Agreed. 40K is the best it's been in a long time.
Nice to see people still remember Stillman too he was a bit of a nutter but man did he have a passion for the hobby! Last I heard of him he was a mailman. Go figure.
JohnnyHell wrote: Aye, he was responsible for a lot of the games I picked up in my teens and still play 20 odd years later... and thoroughly enjoy. He’s responsible for genius and randumb alike. Shame the internet polarisation machine can only consider him deity or demon... no middle ground permitted, guys!
He was better as a designer in the past. But really his only sole work of a major game was Blood Bowl. Epic Armageddon has his name on it but is in effect a rehashed combination/ideas from 1st edition (Rick Priestly) and Epic40K (Andy Chambers). When you compare what Jervis has done RP and AC have been much more prolific and generally produced better games (IMHO). The current 40k is basically AOS advanced if you see what I mean and hence I don't really count them as two independent game designs. I think people don't like Jervis because he effectively went 'corporate' whereas RP, AC got out to go and do something they love and be able to drive that, rather than the company drive the agenda.
I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
I think you’re both projecting quite a lot here. Let’s not forget that he’s written a couple of books on the ‘crunch’ side of the rules, and is largely responsible for one of GWs most rules-tight and games systems - Blood Bowl.
It’s certainly true that he thinks there’s a place for a bit of randomness and imagination, and that it’s perfectly fine to come up with house rules or just ignore them when it’s cooler - the ‘RPG’ side of gaming. Maybe at some point he became the only one in the design studio who still wanted to make sure that stuff was there.
‘Hatred of points’
‘Actively hostile to alternative suggestions’
You wanna prove any of that or do you just prefer it to be that simple? The idea that he’s a nefarious anti-rules representative of a largely made-up ‘stupid casual gamer’ straw man is a load of over simplistic rubbish.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Better off? Without Epic and Blood Bowl? What a narrow view you have.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Better off? Without Epic and Blood Bowl? What a narrow view you have.
I meant it would be beneficial if he left GWnow. And from what other posters have said, it does not seem that Jervis was necessary for Blood Bowl and Epic to exist.
My own personal dislike of him is completely anecdotal and hugely specific, but it does tie into other people's criticism of him as being 'corporate' or 'only seeing his way on things'.
This is years ago at a Game Day in the US, when the (then) most recent Codex dropped (maybe SM or DA), and removed the option for Librarians to take Power Fists, and the option for Terminators to deploy via Drop Pods. I believe this was his 5th edition Codex (don't quote me on that as I don't have it to reference)?. I was a bit upset about both, as I had just such a model, and plans for just such a deployment (this was all before I fully embraced the one true way of Orks).
I cornered JJ and asked him about the removal of both options. I pointed out that the conversion offered GW the opportunity for sales of two products (a Librarian, and some SM kit which contained a Power Fist), and the Drop Pod option gave GW the opportunity to sell models (they may have been FW only at that point) to people who may not use them otherwise. It seemed counterproductive, to me, to remove the option, since it didn't appear unbalancing AND it could result in extra model sales.
Jervis gave me a earnest, friendly explanation that the Force Weapon was the iconic weapon of Librarians and it was important to cultivate that iconic imagery and weaponry. He explained that Drop Pods for Terminators were not really well established in the background and their iconic, representative method of deployment was through Deep Strike Teleportation, and it was important to reflect that in the game.
I showed him the picture in the Codex that was just released of Deathwing deploying from Drop Pods. I showed him the metal Chaplain model (great one) with the ''iconic'' Rosarius and Power Fist for sale, and, I believe, featured in the same Codex in a photo. He blinked, asked me if I was sure that the painting depicted a Drop Pod, and moved off.
It just burned me up at the time, and still does now. I mean, I disagree with reasons like "No rules for models we don't make", but they at least are internally consistent (if not actually consistently observed). But for a long-time designer with the company to earnestly explain to a fan something that is directly contradicted by the evidence in the rulebook HE JUST RELEASED, is just grating.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
I think you’re both projecting quite a lot here. Let’s not forget that he’s written a couple of books on the ‘crunch’ side of the rules, and is largely responsible for one of GWs most rules-tight and games systems - Blood Bowl.
It’s certainly true that he thinks there’s a place for a bit of randomness and imagination, and that it’s perfectly fine to come up with house rules or just ignore them when it’s cooler - the ‘RPG’ side of gaming. Maybe at some point he became the only one in the design studio who still wanted to make sure that stuff was there.
‘Hatred of points’
‘Actively hostile to alternative suggestions’
You wanna prove any of that or do you just prefer it to be that simple? The idea that he’s a nefarious anti-rules representative of a largely made-up ‘stupid casual gamer’ straw man is a load of over simplistic rubbish.
Blood Bowl might be their most random game. Random weather, fields, kick off events, cards, ect.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
I think you’re both projecting quite a lot here. Let’s not forget that he’s written a couple of books on the ‘crunch’ side of the rules, and is largely responsible for one of GWs most rules-tight and games systems - Blood Bowl.
I think that might be the first time I've heard Blood Bowl described that way. There's a reason the whole "praise Nuffle" when something actually goes the way you vaguely intended it to go in the game became a meme.
It’s certainly true that he thinks there’s a place for a bit of randomness and imagination, and that it’s perfectly fine to come up with house rules or just ignore them when it’s cooler - the ‘RPG’ side of gaming. Maybe at some point he became the only one in the design studio who still wanted to make sure that stuff was there.
I dunno like, it seems to me that all the competent designers who've worked at GW over the years are capable of giving players both, and that players who don't fetishise one side or the other are capable of enjoying both.
‘Hatred of points’
‘Actively hostile to alternative suggestions’
You wanna prove any of that or do you just prefer it to be that simple? The idea that he’s a nefarious anti-rules representative of a largely made-up ‘stupid casual gamer’ straw man is a load of over simplistic rubbish.
Yes sure, let me just go and dig through hundreds of issues of WD and the Journal to find Jervis' wee editorials and collate the hundreds of examples over the years of people taking that attitude towards anyone who likes a bit of crunch with their narrative while explicitly referencing Jervis's "philosophy" to address your entirely in-good-faith request for proof that you would totally accept were it presented
And the point people are making is not that he's "nefarious", just that he's pretty much the living embodiment of the "GW Studio bubble" - he has the way he thinks things should be, and cannot fathom why anyone could disagree with that, mostly the prospect anyone could disagree likely just doesn't even occur to him.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Better off? Without Epic and Blood Bowl? What a narrow view you have.
I meant it would be beneficial if he left GWnow. And from what other posters have said, it does not seem that Jervis was necessary for Blood Bowl and Epic to exist.
Both games were designed by him, so I would think he was fairly necessary. Without Jervis, I doubt we'd have seen Fanatic / Specialist Games, so both games wouldn't be doing nearly so well even if something like them had been published in the late 80s. Also, I'm glad there's still someone pushing the idea that games don't need to be always serious cut-throat challenges. I don't think I'd want him to be the only designer, but I'm glad he's there to poke things in the way I want every now and then. And he's not afraid to try something rather experimental (Epic 40,000 and then Epic Armageddon, right down to the little game he was showing off at a Games Day a few years ago that it looked like he'd cooked up on the way into work. It eventually turned into one of those ones on the back cover of a White Dwarf).
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
I think you’re both projecting quite a lot here. Let’s not forget that he’s written a couple of books on the ‘crunch’ side of the rules, and is largely responsible for one of GWs most rules-tight and games systems - Blood Bowl.
It’s certainly true that he thinks there’s a place for a bit of randomness and imagination, and that it’s perfectly fine to come up with house rules or just ignore them when it’s cooler - the ‘RPG’ side of gaming. Maybe at some point he became the only one in the design studio who still wanted to make sure that stuff was there.
‘Hatred of points’
‘Actively hostile to alternative suggestions’
You wanna prove any of that or do you just prefer it to be that simple? The idea that he’s a nefarious anti-rules representative of a largely made-up ‘stupid casual gamer’ straw man is a load of over simplistic rubbish.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Mad isn't it, I can appreciate that some people will not like him but saying he should leave now when they dont even know what he is doing at the moment its ridiculous, its a real shame that some people are only capable of seeing in black and white.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Can this article be found online? Or can you tell me which magazine it was in? Not that I doubt you, I just want to read it.
You can see the sort of games he likes by the way he organised the official Warhammer / Warhammer 40,000 tournament in the mid 90s; points awarded for winning games, sportsmanship*, painting, army composition** and the Saturday night pub quiz. winning games was less than 50% of the final score.
* Each person nominated their favourite opponent out of the three they faced. 10 points awarded for each person that nominated you.
** As judged by the event organisers.
Not now, but a few years ago when you needed multiple books for the stats and points values, and then another book entirely for the actual army lists was a bit of a low point.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Not now, but a few years ago when you needed multiple books for the stats and points values, and then another book entirely for the actual army lists was a bit of a low point.
Yup, especially when it first came out as an everything in one book game. Then small books released for new models (such as Shadow and Flame for Dwarves (Balin, Dain, dwarf warriors etc.), more goblin heroes, Radagast etc.) which was fine as they were just adding more stuff and you still had a huge chunk of stuff in the main book.
And army composition was "X points, only 1/3rd allowed to be equipped with bows, off you go!" which became "X points, split into Y warbands, each led by 1 hero, with a maximum of Z normal models accompanying them, and 1/3 of your army can have bows (unless it has special rules saying otherwise)"
I'll disagree. The supplements were probably some of the best stuff they put out (our group still plays through them semi-regularly). And the war bands just tidied things up in the game. But as ever YMMV.
Yodhrin wrote: I dunno like, it seems to me that all the competent designers who've worked at GW over the years are capable of giving players both, and that players who don't fetishise one side or the other are capable of enjoying both.
....
Yes sure, let me just go and dig through hundreds of issues of WD and the Journal to find Jervis' wee editorials and collate the hundreds of examples over the years of people taking that attitude towards anyone who likes a bit of crunch with their narrative while explicitly referencing Jervis's "philosophy" to address your entirely in-good-faith request for proof that you would totally accept were it presented
And the point people are making is not that he's "nefarious", just that he's pretty much the living embodiment of the "GW Studio bubble" - he has the way he thinks things should be, and cannot fathom why anyone could disagree with that, mostly the prospect anyone could disagree likely just doesn't even occur to him.
The point is that, as you seem to be missing, is that a games designer of 30 years experience might, possibly, know that people have differing expectations of a game (as does ANYONE who plays these games for any length of time) and JJ has proven that he does. You won't find any evidence of your claim because you're setting up a strawman.
In the context of a system that has, over the years, become more rules-heavy and 'competitive', his articles are usually ones that say 'hey, that's all good, but you don't HAVE to play that way. You don't HAVE to use the points system, and if something seems unfair you can just house rule it, or do whatever you want, or roll on a random table'. That's pretty much the gist of his articles, and for a few years, his role in the studio (and WD) was to be the guy reminding people of that. Not that all crunchy gaming is bad, just that there are other ways to play that people tend to forget. That's what you'll find in the articles.
The idea that a guy who has written points-based rules systems (and books about game design that extoll the value of points) somehow hates anyone who wants any crunch at all, and can't possibly understand why anyone would want balance, is a massive, massive exaggeration. You're making it because then it's easier to argue against.
He was better as a designer in the past. But really his only sole work of a major game was Blood Bowl. Epic Armageddon has his name on it but is in effect a rehashed combination/ideas from 1st edition (Rick Priestly) and Epic40K (Andy Chambers). When you compare what Jervis has done RP and AC have been much more prolific and generally produced better games (IMHO). The current 40k is basically AOS advanced if you see what I mean and hence I don't really count them as two independent game designs. I think people don't like Jervis because he effectively went 'corporate' whereas RP, AC got out to go and do something they love and be able to drive that, rather than the company drive the agenda.
*tyres screech*
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Jervis was the designer of the original Adeptus Titanicus, not Rick.
And he was a co-designer of the Epic 40,000 system. (Along with Andy Chambers, who later borrowed the ruleset for Battlefleet Gothic.)
And the Epic 40K system itself was allegedly based on an older set of rules Jervis wrote way back, called Heresy.
Here's the relevant quote from the Battles Book, p112, from Andy Chambers's perspective:
"Epic 40,000 [that's the 3rd edition for those who don't know] started out as a system called Heresy which was penned by Jervis Johnson just after he had written Adeptus Titanicus [that's the 1st, original, invented-the-Horus-Heresy game that eventually evolved into Epic]. I played Heresy when I joined the studio in 1990 and rather liked it in spite of being initially horrified by its apparent simplicity. We spent the following six years developing Adeptus Titanicus instead before realising that the Titanicus system was simply too detailed to handle large scale battles. Some streamlining went on in Space Marine second edition but the game still lumbered like the Titans it was designed to portray and the increasing number of unit types (all with their own special rules) slowed the game down further and further with each successive supplement.
"Titan Legions attempted to clarify the game ... but ... the original Titanicus game had become too much of a quagmire for new players to tackle. When the opportunity arose to do a new Epic game we decided to totally revise the game using the old Heresy rules as a starting point." [And it was a bit of a disaster, but they didn't know that at the time of writing.]
None of this contradicts the other points people have made: that Jervis likes to simplify games and aims for 'clean, elegant' rules that seem basic on the surface but hide tactical complexity underneath. In fact, Epic 40,000 ought to be the poster child for this approach (and its general unpopularity) rather than the DA and Chaos codexes in 40K. It's also very much a scenario-based, pick-your-own-rules toolkit kinda game that isn't terribly tournament friendly, unlike the next edition.
Epic Armageddon was a halfway house between Jervis's design philosophy and that of the playerbase, who wanted some more crunch, chrome and flavour.
According to Tuomas Pirinen, Jervis also wrote the Age of Sigmar rules, which are similarly simple yet (so they tell me) tactically complex.
I'm not entirely sure why we're discussing LotR SBG in this thread though. As far as I know, Jervis wasn't involved with that one. LotR was Rick Priestley and later Alessio Cavatore.
With games of the new edition of Warhammer Age of Sigmar being played across the world, and events organisers planning matched play tournaments, Jervis Johnson and Ben Johnson (no relation) from the Warhammer Age of Sigmar design team join us to talk about the game’s optional rules and how they fit into organised play.
Yes he's still with Games Workshop.
That explains so much, especially given his anti-structure article.
Azreal13 wrote:Whenever you're reading a GW rule book and it directs you to roll in a table to see which table you roll on to determine which random thing happens, Jervis is there..
Or one that either doesn't have points or where Elite units are statted in an ineffective manner yet cost twice as much as basic Troops.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Can this article be found online? Or can you tell me which magazine it was in? Not that I doubt you, I just want to read it.
You can see the sort of games he likes by the way he organised the official Warhammer / Warhammer 40,000 tournament in the mid 90s; points awarded for winning games, sportsmanship*, painting, army composition** and the Saturday night pub quiz. winning games was less than 50% of the final score.
* Each person nominated their favourite opponent out of the three they faced. 10 points awarded for each person that nominated you.
** As judged by the event organisers.
I like points, but I can’t disagree that slavishly following rules and points isn’t the exclusive route to fun. People forget this ‘fun’ component. That this article is constantly brought up and ridiculed is kinda sad.
Ghaz wrote: We could have Nigel Stillman incorporating his philosophy into the rules...
I wasn't into Warhammer Fantasy Battles when I was younger, so I didn't know a lot about Nigel, nor the impact he had on the game, but I did play Man O' War. I love Man O' War, even after all these years. Its at the top of my list of prized games. I have never had so much fun with so few minis. Nigel wrote that game, and while you can poke holes in the strengths of the various fleets, the game is silly, fun, creative, and no two games are ever the same, especially in the way ships take damage. For whatever faults Nigel may have, I owe him for Man O' War.
(I only recently got into WFB, and I am starting to see his name on a lot of things, but haven't dived in enough to have any issues with anything yet)
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
As a playtester for EpicA, I agree with a lot of this. However, if it wasn't for the original Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine, I am not sure I would be interested in wargames. My life would have taken on a completely different path lol. When I first started exchanging emails with him back in the day, I was like, 'this guy has no idea how much he has influenced my life.' I did play 40k eventually, but I always treated 40k as my hobby while Epic was my sport.
I have had far more issues playing 40k than I ever had Epic, and while i like the lore and models, I don't feel like 40k is much of a game over the years. I've dabbled in it, but kept my distance, so I don't really know a lot about what Jervis might have done that I liked or didn't. But EpicA was the final nail in the Epic coffin. I know EpicA has its fans, but you had two systems from him that failed to take hold of gamers, and there isn't many people you can blame for that.
There is no doubt Jervis's attitudes have changed over time, and there is nothing wrong with that. I wish he had listened to the veteran gamers while EpicA was in development. Many of us had been around for a long time, and played the game when it was at its peak. Rather than to try and return the game to those days, he wanted to be creative and come up with something new, or in his own words rather, steal ideas from other games, which gave birth to the ridiculous army lists. It isn't what most of us wanted, but he found a following that was big enough to carry EpicA into a finalized rulebook, and even today I hate flipping through that rulebook.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Can this article be found online? Or can you tell me which magazine it was in? Not that I doubt you, I just want to read it.
You can see the sort of games he likes by the way he organised the official Warhammer / Warhammer 40,000 tournament in the mid 90s; points awarded for winning games, sportsmanship*, painting, army composition** and the Saturday night pub quiz. winning games was less than 50% of the final score.
* Each person nominated their favourite opponent out of the three they faced. 10 points awarded for each person that nominated you.
** As judged by the event organisers.
I like points, but I can’t disagree that slavishly following rules and points isn’t the exclusive route to fun. People forget this ‘fun’ component. That this article is constantly brought up and ridiculed is kinda sad.
You know the funniest thing? He was (Parcially) right. In many places, you can only play tournaments or tournament-practice games. Nothing else.
And even in the article he says that he has 0 problems with tournaments or compettiive games and says many of their virtues. But he believes they shouldn't become the end and all of the hobby. But yeah. "Tournamens are horrible and people should stop using points" is much more easy to ridicule and use as a strawman.
And I agree with him. The pinnacle of this hobby (Wargaming) is a long campaing where competitive games, tactical depth and choices both in the campaing and in the battles, beautifull terrain, painting, conversiones, strong narrative, and progresion are mixed to become much more than the sum of his parts.
But the reality of wargaming for many is playing isolated games, sometimes with total strangers, where a tight base line and standard format allows for the best chance of avoiding negative play experiences and for the player to influence the outcome of the game more than random factors.
A situation which, as has been stated on so many occasions, doesn't affect the ability of those in a position to run campaigns, but where the reverse very much does hurt those who don't.
I honestly don't see the appeal of 2nd edition Epic over the later editions. Fiddly, slow, complicated and overly reliant on bits on the table. Epic Armageddon is simply the best representation of Space Marines in the setting that GW has ever published. Titans are a bit bland, but that's another story.
Ghaz wrote: We could have Nigel Stillman incorporating his philosophy into the rules...
When you read the Chariot Wars supplement for WAB, you can see that Nigel was pretty hardcore. He uses it as a thesis to dispute the old Egyptian chronology and in support of the new Chronology AND write some rules for Wargaming with Bronze Age and early Iron Age armies.
Azreal13 wrote: But the reality of wargaming for many is playing isolated games, sometimes with total strangers, where a tight base line and standard format allows for the best chance of avoiding negative play experiences and for the player to influence the outcome of the game more than random factors.
A situation which, as has been stated on so many occasions, doesn't affect the ability of those in a position to run campaigns, but where the reverse very much does hurt those who don't.
You say this but it isn't true. Just ask Auticus about his situation. When one style of gaming becomes so prevalent all the rest are non existant that will hurt anybody that want to play something different. Tryng to do a narrative campaing in a "Only tournament all the time" area will be the same as trying to play Kings of War in a Warhammer only store.
The inverse is true too, of course, but by his nature (Competitive style of gaming is much more easy, accesible, and fast to prepare and play), the plausible scenario that happens again and again is competitive gaming taking over all other styles of play, not the inverse.
Albino Squirrel wrote: That article is completely reasonable and I don't understand how anyone could attack Jervis on the basis of that.
Very easy. Ignore the very reasonable article (I'll point out that is absolutely fine to disagree with the article), make a strawman out of it, put the strawman in place of the article, and burn it while dancing and jumping around screaming about how an horrible CAAC Jervis is.
Interesting article, actually. And, frankly, there's a decent amount of that which I agree with, and if you look at the Warmachine community, you can see that some of the fears presented in that article came to fruition on that game.
Out of curiosity, when was that article published?
Valander wrote: Interesting article, actually. And, frankly, there's a decent amount of that which I agree with, and if you look at the Warmachine community, you can see that some of the fears presented in that article came to fruition on that game.
Out of curiosity, when was that article published?
Nothing wrong with that article at all, but I suspect it's the one that the quagmire of ads called BOLS called a "diatribe",. when it's just an opinion piece.
I've a lot of respect for JJ, and have met him a couple of times back in Epic Armageddon playtest/development days. Hating on a games writer because you disagree with his choices, which he'll happily explain is barking mad. I thought the 'Hellblaster Volleygun on the back of a wagon' was bloody awful but I don't wail on Gav Thorpe....
Ditto, I got to meet him back around 2000 or so at a Canadian Grand Tournament, and I really enjoyed chatting with him at the pub after the tournament was over for the evening.
Azreal13 wrote: But the reality of wargaming for many is playing isolated games, sometimes with total strangers, where a tight base line and standard format allows for the best chance of avoiding negative play experiences and for the player to influence the outcome of the game more than random factors.
A situation which, as has been stated on so many occasions, doesn't affect the ability of those in a position to run campaigns, but where the reverse very much does hurt those who don't.
You say this but it isn't true. Just ask Auticus about his situation. When one style of gaming becomes so prevalent all the rest are non existant that will hurt anybody that want to play something different. Tryng to do a narrative campaing in a "Only tournament all the time" area will be the same as trying to play Kings of War in a Warhammer only store.
The inverse is true too, of course, but by his nature (Competitive style of gaming is much more easy, accesible, and fast to prepare and play), the plausible scenario that happens again and again is competitive gaming taking over all other styles of play, not the inverse.
There's no committee meeting to decide what people want to play. If this is the case then there's a reason for it. If there was an appetite for alternate play styles, then they'd be more common. Well, I say appetite, I'm sure there's lots of people who'd be interested in playing a campaign if it wasn't a massive drain on time and resources, but all ways up, if the practical way to wargame for most people is a tournament style, i.e. a self contained one-off game with a well defined set of parameters, then commercially that's what you should cater to, not make something for a niche and then expect everyone else who's unwilling/able to play that style to fit into it or spend vast amounts of time houseruling it.
MarkNorfolk wrote:Nothing wrong with that article at all, but I suspect it's the one that the quagmire of ads called BOLS called a "diatribe",. when it's just an opinion piece.
I've a lot of respect for JJ, and have met him a couple of times back in Epic Armageddon playtest/development days. Hating on a games writer because you disagree with his choices, which he'll happily explain is barking mad. I thought the 'Hellblaster Volleygun on the back of a wagon' was bloody awful but I don't wail on Gav Thorpe....
Pete Haines.
I say that loud enough to be heard?
Pete Haines was the exact opposite of Jervis Johnson, and his Chaos codex and Dwarfs army book should illustrate that plainly. Nobody on here would bat an eye for saying the guy was bad for the rules, and that the game is a better place for his absence. So how is it any different for Jervis? On one hand you have someone who writes books to spam OP and imbalanced rules solely because they play those armies, and on the other hand you have someone who writes shoddily balanced points values and rules solely to shaft competitive play and to foster to narrative/campaign play which is that writer's preferred method of play.
Then you look at Chambers, Priestley, Pirrinen (Totally butchered the spelling, too busy at work to google), Woods, Cavatorre, and the like, you have people that foster to both play styles without skewing the rules towards one or the other. Anyone who writes the rules differently SHOULD be called out, as it poisons one experience over the other.
Think of it like coffee. You make coffee strong and unsweetened. Why is that? Because you can always water down or sweeten strong coffee, you can't strengthen weak coffee.
...on the other hand you have someone who writes shoddily balanced points values and rules solely to shaft competitive play and to foster to narrative/campaign play which is that writer's preferred method of play.
...Anyone who writes the rules differently SHOULD be called out, as it poisons one experience over the other.
From the actual evidence posted earlier in the thread (itself 15 years old), the worst you can say is that he recognises there's a place for tournament play but prefers narrative play, has written both sorts of rules (including running Tournaments himself), and that some of those rules he wrote are the random/narrative ones that don't work in tournament play.
That's it.
You can absolutely call him out for that. You can call Jervis Johnson out for writing rules you don't like, or rules that aren't tight.
But, again, the argument that he's deliberately trying to shaft competitive play and thus should be called out as bad for the entire hobby is a massive exaggeration, and ridiculously close-minded given the length and variation of his career.
Stop seeing the world in black and white - people aren't usually as bad as you'd like them to be.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
While obviously the tournament hardcorer's "tournament's are all, narrative and open shouldn't exists" view is obviously so much better.
Besides Jervis isn't against tournaments. Just the idea that tournaments are all that is holy and right that is alas so common these days.
...on the other hand you have someone who writes shoddily balanced points values and rules solely to shaft competitive play and to foster to narrative/campaign play which is that writer's preferred method of play.
...Anyone who writes the rules differently SHOULD be called out, as it poisons one experience over the other.
From the actual evidence posted earlier in the thread (itself 15 years old), the worst you can say is that he recognises there's a place for tournament play but prefers narrative play, has written both sorts of rules (including running Tournaments himself), and that some of those rules he wrote are the random/narrative ones that don't work in tournament play.
That's it.
You can absolutely call him out for that. You can call Jervis Johnson out for writing rules you don't like, or rules that aren't tight.
Which is what I did. How is this even remotely anything different?
ArbitorIan wrote:But, again, the argument that he's deliberately trying to shaft competitive play and thus should be called out as bad for the entire hobby is a massive exaggeration, and ridiculously close-minded given the length and variation of his career.
You were around for the launch of AOS, right? You were there when a ruleset was released that was so open ended that it gave birth to maybe a half dozen comps to try to fix it, right? You were there when the game almost tanked and was only salvaged by the release of the General's Handbook, which established points levels and attempted to fit structure back into the game (such as it is, currently), right?
THIS is Johnson in a nutshell, right there. Sip a beer and slide toy soldiers around, this should be the focus of the game. Look at all the rulesets he wrote himself, without committee. How many of those are tight rulesets? How many of those make it difficult or impossible to play competitively? If it's consistent, and he's applying the same methodology to the mainline games, then it most assuredly IS an attempt to make the part of the hobby he dislikes difficult or impossible to play.
ArbitorIan wrote:Stop seeing the world in black and white - people aren't usually as bad as you'd like them to be.
Stop seeing everything as grey in an attempt to ignore malign intent where it exists - when people follow patterns of behavior, they tend to keep following it.
tneva82 wrote:
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
While obviously the tournament hardcorer's "tournament's are all, narrative and open shouldn't exists" view is obviously so much better.
Besides Jervis isn't against tournaments. Just the idea that tournaments are all that is holy and right that is alas so common these days.
And how many TAAC players have you seen? The issue is whether or not a system is being written in such a way as to cater to all groups involved, or whether it is written to make it difficult OR impossible for one group to play the way they want to play the game. Pre General's Handbook, how would you describe AOS, which is one of Jervis' babies? I rest my case.
Blastaar wrote: I don't know if Jervis went "corporate" or not- I dislike him because he only sees his way, has a very narrow view of things, and doesn't consider what anyone else might like in a game. And he has bad ideas. Like his hatred of points, or his focus solely on "telling a story" and what that means to him alone. It never seems to have crossed his mind that people, both competitive and casual, want a balanced game with meaningful decisions to make, and that points are a useful component of a balanced game. Or that whatever happens during the game is part of the story- making the game highly random and telling people to "forge the narrative" doesn't enhance gameplay in any way. As with Alan Merritt, GW (and the players) would be better off without him.
Agreed. And you can see his attitude seeping out into the narrative gaming community via the GW-adjacent bods in stuff like INQ28, where some folk seem actively hostile to the idea that games should have any functionality or complexity to them beyond "move your dudes around, RP a bit, and maybe chuck a 4+ now and again if you fancy getting spicy". Suggest that in fact structured force selection & crunchy rules are entirely compatible with - and in the opinion of many, substantially enhances - narrative play, and the sound of monocles shattering is loud enough you can practically hear it IRL.
And to be 100% clear - if your jam is making pew-pew noises and rolling on random tables all night long, have at it, you do you. The problem is Jervis & his acolytes cannot conceive that there are other ways to enjoy narrative gaming, and many are actively hostile to even the suggestion that other ways could exist at all.
I think you’re both projecting quite a lot here. Let’s not forget that he’s written a couple of books on the ‘crunch’ side of the rules, and is largely responsible for one of GWs most rules-tight and games systems - Blood Bowl.
It’s certainly true that he thinks there’s a place for a bit of randomness and imagination, and that it’s perfectly fine to come up with house rules or just ignore them when it’s cooler - the ‘RPG’ side of gaming. Maybe at some point he became the only one in the design studio who still wanted to make sure that stuff was there.
‘Hatred of points’
‘Actively hostile to alternative suggestions’
You wanna prove any of that or do you just prefer it to be that simple? The idea that he’s a nefarious anti-rules representative of a largely made-up ‘stupid casual gamer’ straw man is a load of over simplistic rubbish.
Blood Bowl might be their most random game. Random weather, fields, kick off events, cards, ect.
Most random game? BB is one of the few games were positioning really matters in ALL sixteen turns. On the other hand, in 40K just make sure you have buckets of dice with rerolls alpha striking the opponent asap and in AoS you pray to get the initiative for the game winning crucial charge.
A fun way to spend an evening with a group of friends who wanted to tell a story through a mini game. Your case is far from rested and not really a case at all.
Jervis was the designer of the original Adeptus Titanicus, not Rick.
And he was a co-designer of the Epic 40,000 system. (Along with Andy Chambers, who later borrowed the ruleset for Battlefleet Gothic.)
And the Epic 40K system itself was allegedly based on an older set of rules Jervis wrote way back, called Heresy.
Sorry I wasn't being clear. I don't consider Adeptus Titanicus as the predecessor of Epic. I consider that to be Space Marine which has both RP and JJ cited as authors. I don't disagree that AM was initially written by JJ but don't really consider it a major game in the same way Epic is/was. The point is that JJ has only one major game under his belt written in the majority by himself and, as pointed out, has significant other contributors in all other games he is generally associated with.
You were around for the launch of AOS, right? You were there when a ruleset was released that was so open ended that it gave birth to maybe a half dozen comps to try to fix it, right? You were there when the game almost tanked and was only salvaged by the release of the General's Handbook, which established points levels and attempted to fit structure back into the game (such as it is, currently), right?
THIS is Johnson in a nutshell, right there. Sip a beer and slide toy soldiers around, this should be the focus of the game. Look at all the rulesets he wrote himself, without committee. How many of those are tight rulesets? How many of those make it difficult or impossible to play competitively? If it's consistent, and he's applying the same methodology to the mainline games, then it most assuredly IS an attempt to make the part of the hobby he dislikes difficult or impossible to play.
I'm not sure whether this was a problem with JJ as game designer or whether it was a problem with him going 'corporate'. GW want to sell models and it needs to favour todays mass market and compete against computer games. Hence you need a quick to learn, fast to play, game. Things like points values actually inhibit this as both some units are valued more than others and it takes time. JJ was involved in a direction that caused the problems but whether that was because he designed it that way or accepted that he had to design it that way is another question.
AoS was a corporate decision... Jervis said that the reason they had to cut soo much from his initial release is because from the upper management, they imposed that the game needed to be 4 pages long. No more, no less.
And I'm sure the "No points" was a management order, too.
Dude, thanks so much for sharing that I remember this being a major theme in White Dwarfs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. That's also when terms like "beardy" and "cheese" came into vogue, I believe. There was this massive disconnect growing between the design studio and the player base. It was really evident in WFB 5th and 6th editions as hilariously overpowered combos were common as dirt. Of course they had always been - it's just that we, the players were changing. We felt so clever when we broke the game in all kinds of horrible fashions to humiliate our opponents. Game design staff were often mortified to see what we were doing to their brainchildren.
Over a decade later, matched play has become the norm as far as I can tell. I recently had the privilege of hosting a narrative campaign for half a dozen players at my local club. Several of them - notably the strongest tournament-style players - had a pretty hard time adapting to skewed scenarios, lopsided forces, surprise events and even objectives that were more important than "wipe out the other guy": one player managed to table his opponent, only to be quite puzzled when I informed him he hadn't achieved his objectives and thus had lost his part of that game.
Interesting stuff to think about. I've found my interest in matched play waning in favor of more narrative experiences. And I don't mean power levels instead of points values - I mean actual hand-crafted scenarios with backstories and such. I've been taking inspiration from strongly narrative board games like Star Wars Rebellion or Pandemic Legacy too. I'll explore this further and see who I can drag along down this rabbit hole
Andy Chambers (via FB) wrote:Plans are afoot to play a battle report against Jervis Johnson for White Dwarf next Wednesday. We're playing the new Kill Team game which Jervis designed and I've never played before, what do you think my chances are like?
You were around for the launch of AOS, right? You were there when a ruleset was released that was so open ended that it gave birth to maybe a half dozen comps to try to fix it, right? You were there when the game almost tanked and was only salvaged by the release of the General's Handbook, which established points levels and attempted to fit structure back into the game (such as it is, currently), right?
I don't want to get into this old argument again, but AoS wasn't broken. I've seen no real evidence that it was tanking (by GW's own admission, it was doing better than WHFB). It didn't need to be fixed.
It was just out of line with the expectations of contemporary gamers. That's not the game's fault. I don't like cilantro. Some people put it on everything. The people's tastes isn't cilantro's fault. With AOS, it was the best tasting game in the world to me. The General's Handbook realigned the game to be more palatable to a different audience, but even then, it explicitly states that there are three ways to play - so they haven't conceded on the no points thing, only allowed for alternatives. Heck, even Kill Team has the three ways to play, and matched play feels like an afterthought compared to the narrative/campaign stuff.
Pre General's Handbook, how would you describe AOS, which is one of Jervis' babies? I rest my case.
I GREATLY preferred pre-GHBAOS. I loved the big books with the narrative scenarios, the thematic but unbalanced abilities and battalions, the lack of points (loved the open war cards), and so on. AOS is now a broader toolbox, where you can create the type of game you want to play - but the way the community interacts with the game is much, much narrower. MongooseMatt has moved on, and we don't get his cool AOS battle diaries. No more campaign books. They add cool stuff to the game like land+air battles or siege battles, and I've never seen a single person mention them. People no longer play with different army compositions, like small, mixed faction armies with non-maxed size units, and instead focus on matched play, 1000pt (or higher) armies, playing the same half dozen scenarios over and over again.
AOS just isn't fun to talk about anymore. It's weird how the game is much bigger, but also much, much smaller than it used to be. Kill Team has become the experience that AOS used to be for me. I guess that was Jervis too, so I should pay more attention to which games he works on.
Whilst I’m currently rehydrating due to extreme salt poisoning from this thread, and don’t agree Jervis should QUIT NOW like some of the bizarre posts here, Jervis did write a quite famous article on why points were bunk and tournaments were anathema to the spirit of the game. Hoisted by his own petard, here. He’s still helped shepherd this universe we love for over 30 years and created some games we’ve played for that whole time. The hatred is silly.
Can this article be found online? Or can you tell me which magazine it was in? Not that I doubt you, I just want to read it.
You can see the sort of games he likes by the way he organised the official Warhammer / Warhammer 40,000 tournament in the mid 90s; points awarded for winning games, sportsmanship*, painting, army composition** and the Saturday night pub quiz. winning games was less than 50% of the final score.
* Each person nominated their favourite opponent out of the three they faced. 10 points awarded for each person that nominated you.
** As judged by the event organisers.
I like points, but I can’t disagree that slavishly following rules and points isn’t the exclusive route to fun. People forget this ‘fun’ component. That this article is constantly brought up and ridiculed is kinda sad.
Is there a name for that, where instead of discussing someone's actual words or actions, you imagine a (usually nefarious) motive, and then attack the person for the motivation that you made up? People seem to do that a lot.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Is there a name for that, where instead of discussing someone's actual words or actions, you imagine a (usually nefarious) motive, and then attack the person for the motivation that you made up? People seem to do that a lot.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Is there a name for that, where instead of discussing someone's actual words or actions, you imagine a (usually nefarious) motive, and then attack the person for the motivation that you made up? People seem to do that a lot.
I don't think so. A straw man is a misrepresentation of opposing viewpoints, not the motivations of those who hold those viewpoints. So, saying Jervis wants to remove points from all GWs games would be a strawman, because it (falsely) attributes a view that isn't actually his and is easy to disagree with. Saying, for example, "whatever Jervis does is bad because he hates tournament players and is therefore a bad person" isn't really the same thing. I guess it's pretty similar, but there seems to be a distinction between disagreeing with an imagined argument (ie "points are bad for the game because they stifle creative play") and disagreeing with an imagined motivation (ie "I want to remove points from the game because I don't like tournament players and want them to suffer").
Albino Squirrel wrote: Is there a name for that, where instead of discussing someone's actual words or actions, you imagine a (usually nefarious) motive, and then attack the person for the motivation that you made up? People seem to do that a lot.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Is there a name for that, where instead of discussing someone's actual words or actions, you imagine a (usually nefarious) motive, and then attack the person for the motivation that you made up? People seem to do that a lot.
Social justice?
No, that isn't what social justice is about. At all. It's about respect for other human beings, and equity.
Andy Chambers (via FB) wrote:Plans are afoot to play a battle report against Jervis Johnson for White Dwarf next Wednesday. We're playing the new Kill Team game which Jervis designed and I've never played before, what do you think my chances are like?
Andy Chambers (via FB) wrote:Plans are afoot to play a battle report against Jervis Johnson for White Dwarf next Wednesday. We're playing the new Kill Team game which Jervis designed and I've never played before, what do you think my chances are like?
Is Andy back at GW now?!?
I do not think so, but they are still old scumgrods*.
*Orkish for favored opponents with some translations being friends.
I don't think so. A straw man is a misrepresentation of opposing viewpoints, not the motivations of those who hold those viewpoints. So, saying Jervis wants to remove points from all GWs games would be a strawman, because it (falsely) attributes a view that isn't actually his and is easy to disagree with. Saying, for example, "whatever Jervis does is bad because he hates tournament players and is therefore a bad person" isn't really the same thing. I guess it's pretty similar, but there seems to be a distinction between disagreeing with an imagined argument (ie "points are bad for the game because they stifle creative play") and disagreeing with an imagined motivation (ie "I want to remove points from the game because I don't like tournament players and want them to suffer").
Misrepresenting that viewpoint by exaggeration, and then inferring the arguer’s character based on those exaggerated views is definitely strawmanning by that definition, and there’s a fair amount of that going on.
I think I know what you’re talking about, though, and I’m not sure if there’s a different name f9r that or if it still counts.
Inquisitor Gideon wrote:A fun way to spend an evening with a group of friends who wanted to tell a story through a mini game. Your case is far from rested and not really a case at all.
Wow, you totally missed the point of the comment. I'm guessing that's intentional as you also omitted the original post you were responding to. The basic gist of your comment is "It catered to my style of play, feth everyone else." in essence. That is pretty much what happened with AOS.
You were around for the launch of AOS, right? You were there when a ruleset was released that was so open ended that it gave birth to maybe a half dozen comps to try to fix it, right? You were there when the game almost tanked and was only salvaged by the release of the General's Handbook, which established points levels and attempted to fit structure back into the game (such as it is, currently), right?
I don't want to get into this old argument again, but AoS wasn't broken.
You DO want to get into this argument again as evidenced by your hard selling of AOS, and how perfect you apparently thought it was at launch.
Sqorgar wrote:I've seen no real evidence that it was tanking (by GW's own admission, it was doing better than WHFB). It didn't need to be fixed.
You must have been on different forms than me. Both on here AND on Warseer you saw reporting constantly of places where the starters were being clearanced, the LTD ED books didn't move, and in general the product simply wasn't moving. They were also comparing the performance numbers based NOT on End Times numbers, NOR on WFB numbers where they were doing well. That, and actual numbers were never produced, just corporate comfort speak. Reread the threads on both forums, they're still up.
I posit this: if it didn't need fixed, and was performing as well as you suggest, then they wouldn't have fixed it.
Sqorgar wrote:It was just out of line with the expectations of contemporary gamers. That's not the game's fault. I don't like cilantro. Some people put it on everything. The people's tastes isn't cilantro's fault.
Yet restaurants enable people to eat the food with or without cilantro. AOS at launch did NOT do that.
Sqorgar wrote:With AOS, it was the best tasting game in the world to me.
To you. So once again, like the poster above, it comes down to your preferred method of play being what matters and screw anyone else.
In essence. This kind of reminds me of a user from Warseer who also had that mindset. Thankfully they got banned, as they derailed DOZENS of threads even going so far as to report false activity in my region solely based on their desire to see the game take off.
Sqorgar wrote:The General's Handbook realigned the game to be more palatable to a different audience, but even then, it explicitly states that there are three ways to play - so they haven't conceded on the no points thing, only allowed for alternatives. Heck, even Kill Team has the three ways to play, and matched play feels like an afterthought compared to the narrative/campaign stuff.
It should have been that way from the get go. A structured game DOES facilitate three ways to play. Open sandbox sans points does NOT. How is this so difficult to understand?
Sqorgar wrote:
Pre General's Handbook, how would you describe AOS, which is one of Jervis' babies? I rest my case.
I GREATLY preferred pre-GHBAOS. I loved the big books with the narrative scenarios, the thematic but unbalanced abilities and battalions, the lack of points (loved the open war cards), and so on.
AOS is now a broader toolbox, where you can create the type of game you want to play - but the way the community interacts with the game is much, much narrower. MongooseMatt has moved on, and we don't get his cool AOS battle diaries. No more campaign books. They add cool stuff to the game like land+air battles or siege battles, and I've never seen a single person mention them. People no longer play with different army compositions, like small, mixed faction armies with non-maxed size units, and instead focus on matched play, 1000pt (or higher) armies, playing the same half dozen scenarios over and over again.
AOS just isn't fun to talk about anymore. It's weird how the game is much bigger, but also much, much smaller than it used to be. Kill Team has become the experience that AOS used to be for me. I guess that was Jervis too, so I should pay more attention to which games he works on.
So we again get to a preferred method of play as far as your opinion goes. Now take that mentality, and apply it to a games designer. THAT is my issue with Johnson. And Haines, Ward, and Thorpe as well.
Sqorgar wrote: People no longer play with different army compositions, like small, mixed faction armies with non-maxed size units, and instead focus on matched play, 1000pt (or higher) armies, playing the same half dozen scenarios over and over again.
AOS just isn't fun to talk about anymore. It's weird how the game is much bigger, but also much, much smaller than it used to be. Kill Team has become the experience that AOS used to be for me. I guess that was Jervis too, so I should pay more attention to which games he works on.
Huh. That's an interesting point of view, and well put. Something to think about.
I've always liked to have points values as a "ready reckoner" - and for the fun of list building - but you're right, a lot of the time games go for "fixed points, straight up fight". And some of the best games I've played were the very opposite of that. Warhammer sieges, Battle of Orks Drift, multi-board games and Warhammer campaigns. So many Warhammer campaigns, with massive troop type restrictions!
And the existence of points values, and tournaments, really does seem to skew everything towards "this is the right way to play". I need to get out of that mentality more often.
The existence of points values doesn't kill that kind of gameplay, it helps it.
You want to create a scenario in which one side has an advantage but that scenario should still be winnable by the side with the disadvantage. Without some system of comparing the relative strength of both sides you are just guessing.
In the LOTR game it had a scenario for the Battle of the Last Alliance. Good side got all the big heroes and men and elves and the evil side got sauron and a lot of orcs. Pointswise the good side had 2000 and the evil had 3000. Good side had to kill sauron to win, evil just had to keep him alive and kill the good heroes. Although heavily skewed against the good side (just like the battle from the story) it was possible for them to win.
Without some means of knowing how much of an advantage one side has over the over, making skewed scenarios can easily become making a scenario one side has no hope of winning.
I don't know if it is possible to box up and sell a narrative gaming experience in a ready-to-use and re-usable format. It's always going to require some dedicated gamers to set it up and keep it going. AOS and 40K both give perfectly good frameworks for this style of play. But you need to get your hands dirty to do it. Instead of "hey let's play 1500 points tomorrow" you need to say "dude I'm writing this awesome scenario. You need to bring 1000 points of cavalry, a wizard, five push pins and a donkey cart."
Then you need to show up with your side of the game, namely, a well-written and interesting scenario and all the other bits and bobs it needs. And you need to talk your opponent(s) through it, explain what's going on, read out the dialogue in funny voices, adjudicate rules queries. Finally you need to ensure everyone has a good time, even if that means secretly throwing the game if it benefits the enjoyment and the progress of the story.
If you're lucky to have the right sort of opponent, they'll love it and will eagerly come back for more. And if you're very very lucky, next time you will be the one told to bring 500 points of snotlings, your new Arachnarok, three scatter dice and a bottle of scotch.
If you're lucky to have the right sort of opponent, they'll love it and will eagerly come back for more. And if you're very very lucky, next time you will be the one told to bring 500 points of snotlings, your new Arachnarok, three scatter dice and a bottle of scotch.
I like where this is going ... some of my most memorable games where survive for X turns in 40k against unlimited nids (Ala battle for Macrage polar fortress type game).... the siege of Terra done in 2nd Edition epic with awesome scratch built Imperial Walls and a effing awesome space port (which who ever controlled it got extra reinforcements from orbit) yeah some good times when GW staff where allowed to run their own sceneros and home brews.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The existence of points values doesn't kill that kind of gameplay, it helps it.
You want to create a scenario in which one side has an advantage but that scenario should still be winnable by the side with the disadvantage. Without some system of comparing the relative strength of both sides you are just guessing.
In the LOTR game it had a scenario for the Battle of the Last Alliance. Good side got all the big heroes and men and elves and the evil side got sauron and a lot of orcs. Pointswise the good side had 2000 and the evil had 3000. Good side had to kill sauron to win, evil just had to keep him alive and kill the good heroes. Although heavily skewed against the good side (just like the battle from the story) it was possible for them to win.
Without some means of knowing how much of an advantage one side has over the over, making skewed scenarios can easily become making a scenario one side has no hope of winning.
I agree with this to a large extent. And that seems to be what 40k's "Power levels" are. "Don't worry too much about the details, you'll probably need 3 of these power level 4 units to take down that power level 12 unit. Ish."
That looks perfect for scenario writing to me. One side has power 50, the other power 75. Does it matter how many storm bolters/rokkits the each side has?
Is that how you've observed 40k being played? Or is it generally played in a "refine the whole list to the nth degree, make the most efficient units you can 50 pts difference will be be critical" tournament style?
Because in my experience, the detailed points system absolutely directed people down the matched play route, even if unintentionally due to time constraints. Once something becomes so prevalent as "The Way Things Are Done", it gets ingrained into your thinking as "The Way Things Must Be" and it can be difficult to break out of that and bring a game group with you. Saying that the default doesn't prohibit other methods of play is true, but it can make it extremely difficult to overcome the inertia of tradition.
Graphite wrote: Because in my experience, the detailed points system absolutely directed people down the matched play route, even if unintentionally due to time constraints.
I'm not sure if "time constraints" is really fair here. "Time constraints" suggests an external factor, as if gamers just don't have the time, man! to sit down and bash out a scenario. I'd suggest it is more an issue of what some/many/most gamers want to spend their time on rather than how much time they have.
Even in the long-long ago when fantasy wargames were basically overgrown RPGs, you had GMs working their asses off to craft a narrative while the bulk of players could barely be bothered to bring their own pencils.
Just Tony wrote:
So we again get to a preferred method of play as far as your opinion goes. Now take that mentality, and apply it to a games designer. THAT is my issue with Johnson. And Haines, Ward, and Thorpe as well.
In fairness though, there is nothing specifically wrong with a designer wanting to write a specific type of game. I believe writers should be allowed to write the stories they want to write, I believe creatives should be allowed to create what they want to create.
If Johnson has a preferred method of play, and writes a game that caters to that, let him. If you don't like it, don't play it. There is no issue. He doesn't necessarily owe you or I anything, just as we owe him nothing in turn.
A Town Called Malus wrote:The existence of points values doesn't kill that kind of gameplay, it helps it.
You want to create a scenario in which one side has an advantage but that scenario should still be winnable by the side with the disadvantage. Without some system of comparing the relative strength of both sides you are just guessing.
Points won't necessarily be an accurate gauge of this though. Firstly, points aren't always equal. Points are often an arbitrary value, in and of themselves, and it can be easily shown that while x points of y might an accurately value in some circumstances. It's hopelessly off kilter in others. Points, and their accuracy is dependent on circumstance, rather than a universal constant. And even if you are using points as a metric of how much player x gets when compared to y, and want to give one an advantage over the other, are you not guessing there as well, just as often as not?
A Town Called Malus wrote:
In the LOTR game it had a scenario for the Battle of the Last Alliance. Good side got all the big heroes and men and elves and the evil side got sauron and a lot of orcs. Pointswise the good side had 2000 and the evil had 3000. Good side had to kill sauron to win, evil just had to keep him alive and kill the good heroes. Although heavily skewed against the good side (just like the battle from the story) it was possible for them to win.
Without some means of knowing how much of an advantage one side has over the over, making skewed scenarios can easily become making a scenario one side has no hope of winning.
This is often no different in 'equal' points based games either. One of my last games of mk2 warmaine had me taking a vlad3 list against goreshade bane spam. In one turn, I annihilated his army. Murder ponies on one flank, grapeshot winter guard and kovnik joe on the other. The lists were the same 'official' value, and his was certainly not a bad list - banes were one of the go-to 'incredibly nasty and ott' units of mk2. But he never stood a chance.
Points-based games have their value - certainly. But they also have their limitations, and I think too many people view points as some kind of infallible dogma that should not ever be questioned. Points don't necessarily make unit values 'accurate', they make them 'official'. That said, the game building involved in narratives gsmes is a learned skill, just like list-building. If you're bad at it, or new, you may very well end up 'guessing', as you say, but the more you do it, the more you understand the games you play and the 'relative' values of x v y, rather than the absolute values, the better you get. It takes time. And like minded opponents. Which aren't always available - sometimes you just want to throw down with a No- nonsense points based game and get on with it.
Just Tony wrote:You DO want to get into this argument again as evidenced by your hard selling of AOS, and how perfect you apparently thought it was at launch.
Not really. I just wanted an acknowledgement that AOS was a game for different tastes, not that it was a bad or broken game.
I posit this: if it didn't need fixed, and was performing as well as you suggest, then they wouldn't have fixed it.
But they didn't "fix" it. They grew it. Everything that was there before was STILL there, completely unchanged.
Yet restaurants enable people to eat the food with or without cilantro. AOS at launch did NOT do that.
The option is always there to simply not play it. AOS didn't need to be "yet another tournament match up" game, but that's ultimately what it became - and I don't really blame GW for it either. They made it one option of many, and rarely talk about it in terms of matched play, but the players made it the only option.
To you. So once again, like the poster above, it comes down to your preferred method of play being what matters and screw anyone else.
Look, I have to ask this. AOS already existed in a manner that I liked. Hell, I LOVED it. It was obviously designed to be an anti-tournament game, in line with Jervis' article posted above. What gives you the right to demand that it be changed to serve your tastes? Why do you think you are more deserving of it than me? What about AOS made it yours?
You call me selfish, but I was simply enjoying what was there, defended my enjoyment of it, and lamenting that it is gone. You are the one making demands for what it should be and how it should be changed. When AOS wasn't for me, I stopped playing and went somewhere else. When AOS wasn't for you, you just sat there and complained and whined and bitched until they made it in your image. And you call me selfish?
EDIT: More importantly, am I not allowed to have a game tailored to my tastes? Does every miniature game on the market have to be the same experience? I'm afraid to talk about the miniature games that I enjoy because I'm worried people like you will start to covet them, and then demand they be turned into something else.
It should have been that way from the get go. A structured game DOES facilitate three ways to play. Open sandbox sans points does NOT. How is this so difficult to understand?
It had structures available to build games - they just weren't points, and I guess, in your head, don't count.
General Helstrom wrote:I don't know if it is possible to box up and sell a narrative gaming experience in a ready-to-use and re-usable format.
Necromunda seems to be doing okay. Kill Team is more narrative than not. The Walking Dead: All Out War has a narrative campaign going through its four expansions. I hear GW's Middle Earth Strategy Battles game is pretty narrative based. Heck, a lot of board games like Arcadia Quest, Imperial Assault, Arkham Horror, etc are primarily narrative based. And of course, you know, every pen and paper RPG ever made.
I'd even go so far as to say that MOST board games are more narrative than competitive. Miniature gaming is the only tabletop game in which competitive play is dominant, and actively squeezing out alternative ways to play. Not playing tournament-style in miniature games is like saying "I play Call of Duty for the story" or "I read Playboy for the articles". People think you are lying or stupid.
If you're lucky to have the right sort of opponent, they'll love it and will eagerly come back for more.
Therein lies the rub. If you ask me, I think the PUG culture is what has come to define miniature gaming (with tournaments being the ultimate version of a PUG). You don't play Arkham Horror with a group of strangers, but for some reason, nobody seems to have a tight group of 40k players to play with. Miniature gamers aren't a family. They are swingers, with tournaments being their key parties.
General Helstrom wrote:I don't know if it is possible to box up and sell a narrative gaming experience in a ready-to-use and re-usable format.
Necromunda seems to be doing okay. Kill Team is more narrative than not. The Walking Dead: All Out War has a narrative campaign going through its four expansions. I hear GW's Middle Earth Strategy Battles game is pretty narrative based. Heck, a lot of board games like Arcadia Quest, Imperial Assault, Arkham Horror, etc are primarily narrative based. And of course, you know, every pen and paper RPG ever made.
I'd even go so far as to say that MOST board games are more narrative than competitive. Miniature gaming is the only tabletop game in which competitive play is dominant, and actively squeezing out alternative ways to play. Not playing tournament-style in miniature games is like saying "I play Call of Duty for the story" or "I read Playboy for the articles". People think you are lying or stupid.
But I do play Call of Duty for the story :( Not Playboy though, Playboy is for boobies.
The examples you mention have stronger narrative potential to them but still rely on the player to craft a story, or on feeding the player a pre-built, single-use story. YMMV of course but I don't fancy playing Imperial Assault's campaign again after we finish the first one because all the twists and surprises will be spoiled. I'm enjoying it immensely as it unfolds, don't get me wrong, I just don't see much replay value in it.
Pen and paper RPGs occupy a special place here I think, because writing your own characters, scenarios and campaigns is the expected norm. There are ready-made campaigns for them of course, but those are not necessarily the default way to play. In fact I guess these types of RPG come closest to what I envision true free-form narrative wargaming to be like.
If you're lucky to have the right sort of opponent, they'll love it and will eagerly come back for more.
Therein lies the rub. If you ask me, I think the PUG culture is what has come to define miniature gaming (with tournaments being the ultimate version of a PUG). You don't play Arkham Horror with a group of strangers, but for some reason, nobody seems to have a tight group of 40k players to play with. Miniature gamers aren't a family. They are swingers, with tournaments being their key parties.
I totally agree. And I believe this means it's up to us, the players, to do something if this is the kind of gameplay we're after. They are not mutually exclusive. PUGers can PUG and narrators can narrate side by side. Narrators just have their work cut out for them to find and maintain a circle of like-minded players. It's hard work but worth it if you enjoy it. I've given it a go at my club and I do believe I have found three or four fellows who would like more of this style of gameplay. I would encourage anyone to do the same. Start up that short, story-driven campaign and see what happens. If you build it, they will come.
General Helstrom wrote: I don't fancy playing Imperial Assault's campaign again after we finish the first one because all the twists and surprises will be spoiled. I'm enjoying it immensely as it unfolds, don't get me wrong, I just don't see much replay value in it.
throw the first mission; if you do that, all the fixed story missions are different.
A Town Called Malus wrote: The existence of points values doesn't kill that kind of gameplay, it helps it.
You want to create a scenario in which one side has an advantage but that scenario should still be winnable by the side with the disadvantage. Without some system of comparing the relative strength of both sides you are just guessing.
In the LOTR game it had a scenario for the Battle of the Last Alliance. Good side got all the big heroes and men and elves and the evil side got sauron and a lot of orcs. Pointswise the good side had 2000 and the evil had 3000. Good side had to kill sauron to win, evil just had to keep him alive and kill the good heroes. Although heavily skewed against the good side (just like the battle from the story) it was possible for them to win.
Without some means of knowing how much of an advantage one side has over the over, making skewed scenarios can easily become making a scenario one side has no hope of winning.
I'm not so sure about that. I guess if you haven't played the game much yet, having the points helps give you an idea, so in this case you'd have an idea of how many more orcs you'd want to have. But if you set the game up and neither side thinks it's hopeless (and they have both played the game before), then it's probably balanced enough. Sure, you might get partway through the game and realize you were wrong, and that really one side was very unlikely to win. But guess what? That happens all the time even with armies of the same number of points. So the points don't actually prevent you from playing a game one side has no hope of winning.
I used to dislike Jervis' ideas but the more I think about it the more I realize he's kinda right. There is way more to the game than equal points, symmetrical missions and competitive focused gameplay, yet this seems to be the only thing that gets focused on.
Wayniac wrote: I used to dislike Jervis' ideas but the more I think about it the more I realize he's kinda right. There is way more to the game than equal points, symmetrical missions and competitive focused gameplay, yet this seems to be the only thing that gets focused on.
I don't think the current way of doing things is sustainable. How many more years can the tournament focus support an entire industry? How many games have lost a sizeable part of its playerbase due to perceived imbalance and unpopular editions? WMH mk3 comes to mind, but I know the last edition or two of WHFB wasn't popular, and 40k was certainly less popular before 8th. It's not sustainable.
Jervis isn't just kinda right. All of GW's success now started with Age of Sigmar. People may scoff at the idea, but 40k 8th is basically a slightly more refined AOS, not just in rules but in purpose and direction. The "three ways to play" started in the AOSGHB and became codified in the big rule book for 40k and AOS2 and even Kill Team. AOS saved GW.
Wayniac wrote: I used to dislike Jervis' ideas but the more I think about it the more I realize he's kinda right. There is way more to the game than equal points, symmetrical missions and competitive focused gameplay, yet this seems to be the only thing that gets focused on.
I don't think the current way of doing things is sustainable. How many more years can the tournament focus support an entire industry? How many games have lost a sizeable part of its playerbase due to perceived imbalance and unpopular editions? WMH mk3 comes to mind, but I know the last edition or two of WHFB wasn't popular, and 40k was certainly less popular before 8th. It's not sustainable.
Jervis isn't just kinda right. All of GW's success now started with Age of Sigmar. People may scoff at the idea, but 40k 8th is basically a slightly more refined AOS, not just in rules but in purpose and direction. The "three ways to play" started in the AOSGHB and became codified in the big rule book for 40k and AOS2 and even Kill Team. AOS saved GW.
Yes, but I think a big drawback was pre-GHBAOS was DOA because people spent too much complaining about "balance" or "what ifs" (e.g. what if my opponent fielded only monsters, what if my opponent fields 500 models to my 50, etc.). I think Jervis' main approach is that the game is way more than competitive tournament lists and tight balance, it's about a story and enjoying the rich lore and source material. And yet, AOS showed that a game without at least pretending to cater to tournaments won't work. The community, vocal minority or otherwise, seem to want an e-sport like game with recognized world championships.
Wayniac wrote: I used to dislike Jervis' ideas but the more I think about it the more I realize he's kinda right. There is way more to the game than equal points, symmetrical missions and competitive focused gameplay, yet this seems to be the only thing that gets focused on.
I don't think the current way of doing things is sustainable. How many more years can the tournament focus support an entire industry? How many games have lost a sizeable part of its playerbase due to perceived imbalance and unpopular editions? WMH mk3 comes to mind, but I know the last edition or two of WHFB wasn't popular, and 40k was certainly less popular before 8th. It's not sustainable.
Jervis isn't just kinda right. All of GW's success now started with Age of Sigmar. People may scoff at the idea, but 40k 8th is basically a slightly more refined AOS, not just in rules but in purpose and direction. The "three ways to play" started in the AOSGHB and became codified in the big rule book for 40k and AOS2 and even Kill Team. AOS saved GW.
Yes, but I think a big drawback was pre-GHBAOS was DOA because people spent too much complaining about "balance" or "what ifs" (e.g. what if my opponent fielded only monsters, what if my opponent fields 500 models to my 50, etc.). I think Jervis' main approach is that the game is way more than competitive tournament lists and tight balance, it's about a story and enjoying the rich lore and source material. And yet, AOS showed that a game without at least pretending to cater to tournaments won't work. The community, vocal minority or otherwise, seem to want an e-sport like game with recognized world championships.
I think the only reason for that was the preceding decades of Games Workshop always focusing on points values. They kind of set themselves up for that. For people that had only played GW games (as he somewhat predicted) for many the only way they knew how to play was to have equal points and a mission with both sides having the same objective. Anyone who has played a historical miniatures game would be completely comfortable with the idea of playing a scenario without needing points. Not many people panic about "what if my opponent brings 500 regiments of the the Old Guard and I only have a few battalions of Landwehr painted!" Well, you would never play such a game. Duh. But if points is all you've ever known, I guess it can take some adjustment.
To be fair, it is a little harder to balance in a fantasy game where things can be SO different in power levels and have so many rules and interactions you'd have to know to have a good idea on how powerful it is going to be in a given scenario.
There were no points in Inquisitor, and people seem to have played that just fine in the spirit it was intended.
Wayniac wrote: Yes, but I think a big drawback was pre-GHBAOS was DOA because people spent too much complaining about "balance" or "what ifs" (e.g. what if my opponent fielded only monsters, what if my opponent fields 500 models to my 50, etc.). I think Jervis' main approach is that the game is way more than competitive tournament lists and tight balance, it's about a story and enjoying the rich lore and source material. And yet, AOS showed that a game without at least pretending to cater to tournaments won't work. The community, vocal minority or otherwise, seem to want an e-sport like game with recognized world championships.
I think it was just a matter of not knowing any differently. I think a lot of older players, or players who had experience in other types of games, didn't quite see the lack of points as quite the obstacle that people who were born and raised in key party gaming.
I'm reading a book about cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) right now. If you aren't familiar with it, it is a type of therapy that identifies certain bad thought patterns (schema) which brains tend to rely on, but which lead to faulty or unhelpful outcomes. They are sort of like thinking fallacies. CBT is about identifying these, and coming up with alternative ways of thinking that are more helpful and productive. Apparently, CBT is as effective at treating depression as drugs and other therapies, with none of the side effects. It's been recommended for my daughter, who suffers from generalized anxiety, but I've seen it suggested for all sorts of things, including Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Here are a few. See how many you can recognize from the arguments about AOS killing WHFB and not having points:
Emotional reasoning - believing that what we feel must be true because we feel it to be.
Polarized thinking - things are black and white, no shades of grey
Overgeneralizaiton - taking one or two examples of bad things and assuming it to always be true.
Jumping to conclusions - self evident.
Catastrophizing - This bad thing is the end the world. It will always be this bad and we will never be happy again.
Fairness Fallacy - We think we know what is fair, but get upset because nobody agrees with us. "People who go through life applying a measuring ruler against every situation judging its “fairness” will often feel badly and negative because of it."
Blaming - It is always someone else's fault. We never take responsibility for our own involvement in our unhappiness.
Fallacy of Change - We believe that we can change others if we force them to change. Our happiness is dependent on what other people think, do, and feel.
Labeling - Grouping opponents together under a label and generalizing about them, their intent, and their beliefs.
Heaven's Reward Fallacy - the idea that our sacrifices and loyalty will ultimately be rewarded, but feel betrayed, bitter, and angry if we feel that reward is not forthcoming.
And so on. The list is much larger, but I just cribbed a few of the more commonplace ones. I believe that it wasn't the lack of points that proved that AOS couldn't work, but that the scheme that miniature gamers use to interpret the industry are deeply flawed and lead them to incorrect conclusions that make them very unhappy, all the time.
I mean, I do some of these too. It isn't a criticism of the people who have these schema. It's just that, unawares to them, there is faulty thinking behind their more self destructive behaviors.
I mostly played campaigns or different 'fun' scenarios with Warhammer Fantasy - lots of them taken straight out of the General's Compendium. The Border Princes campaign, holding your ground against a foe that got to respawn core troops, battles in the ash-choked Dark Lands, a fan-made siege scenario, batteries of war machines vs. raiding parties sent to silence them, a skirmish between watchtower guards and a raiding party trying to prevent them from lighting a beacon, the battle for the gates of Nuln, so on and so forth.
All of these used points as a helpful aid. They weren't always equal-point matchups - a number of them skewed one way or the other or even had a two-to-one advantage for one side, with the difference made up for in objectives, fortifications, or scenario-granted bonuses. During the campaign, some sides had a flat-out advantage due to digging in or bringing up reinforcements. Points are not anathema to interesting 'narrative' gameplay; they are a helpful shorthand and balancing tool, especially useful for people new to a system or wargaming in general who aren't as familiar with what works well, or what has a reasonable chance of stacking up against something else. There's nothing inherently wrong with players preferring to use points, and there's nothing inherently wrong with using points as an eyeball estimate or ditching them altogether if you'd rather work the scenario out another way. The lack of points was only one of Age of Sigmar's many issues as a replacement for one of their flagship games when they rolled it out, and taken in a vacuum, wouldn't have been that bad, but having points in a game doesn't make it badwrongfun.
Spinner wrote: All of these used points as a helpful aid.
But not a REQUIRED one.
I don't care if people enjoy points, prefer points, or can't get up in the morning without their breakfast cup of points - The only thing I want is the explicit admission that points are optional - that they are a CHOICE - and that not having points in no way means the game lazy, broken, or unplayable. That designers are ALLOWED to make that choice if they wish, and if people don't play the game, it is because of their SUBJECTIVE opinion that they don't enjoy the game and not that the game is objectively faulty. That's all. You don't have to defend points because I'm not arguing that points should be removed from any game that has them.
And I'll never get that. You know why? Because gamers are conditioned to believe that points are required. You show them a game without points and all you'll hear is, "Doesn't look like anything to me".
Points are not anathema to interesting 'narrative' gameplay; they are a helpful shorthand and balancing tool, especially useful for people new to a system or wargaming in general who aren't as familiar with what works well, or what has a reasonable chance of stacking up against something else.
The argument has never been against points. I've always maintained that points are a useful tool - one among MANY - but that they tend to have a way of dominating the mindset players have with a game, and ultimately end up reducing the playspace of a game. That is, points have a design cost. A tradeoff. By choosing points, you are saying that you willingly give up something up.
The NOVA pack for Kill Team came out and there was a rule in there that units couldn't climb any terrain more than 2" tall. It greatly reduced the options the game had. That's what points are to me. In the pursuit of "fairness", they end up removing options and experiences that make the game interesting. If my goal were "fairness" (or some approximation thereof), that might be a trade off I'd be willing to make. And for many people, it is. But it isn't REQUIRED. Game designers can choose not to make that trade off, and players can enjoy games like that without fearing insult and ridicule from other gamers (who don't even play the game).
There's nothing inherently wrong with players preferring to use points,
Now say that there is nothing inherently wrong with players preferring NOT to use points.
Sqorgar wrote: Jervis isn't just kinda right. All of GW's success now started with Age of Sigmar. People may scoff at the idea, but 40k 8th is basically a slightly more refined AOS, not just in rules but in purpose and direction. The "three ways to play" started in the AOSGHB and became codified in the big rule book for 40k and AOS2 and even Kill Team. AOS saved GW.
Jervis isn't just kinda right. All of GW's success now started with Age of Sigmar.
Not even kinda right.
The only thing that ties in with the uptick in GW's sales is the release of new, in many cases long desired, mini lines.
While it sticks in my throat to say so, Kirby was right when he said GW was a model company. It wasn't a rule system of any sort, it was the release of the big boxes with HH Marines, GSC etc..
Whether the departure of Merritt or the appointment of Rountree was the catalyst for those releases you'd need inside information to know for sure, but I can categorically state that the release of AOS or 8th is not the flashpoint for the turnaround.
Saved GW might have been a bit much, but there's no doubt that Age of Sigmar was the turning point for GW. The moment when "new GW" was born. And a lot of the success that GW has now is due to the refinement of the principles and direction that started with AOS. AOS was extremely experimental compared to past GW releases, but they've kept the vast majority of it going forward - even things that were initially VERY unpopular at AOS' release.
Those original 4 pages of free rules were a mission statement written in game design, and time has proven that mission statement multiple times over. It set the stage for a new era of Games Workshop, and I think it proves that Jervis was right about everything. They just needed to give you people some point values to make you think you were winning.
The AOS release came at the start of the 2015 financial year for GW. Their 2015/2016 report posted lower revenue than 14/15 and still within the Kirby era.
If anything, the release of AOS actually had a net detriment on GW's performance, and by the time GW was starting to show signs of recovery the first GHB was well on its way, so even if AOS somehow did turn things around, it was only once points were introduced in 2016, which is shown in the 16/17 report.
Nothing you're asserting is borne out by their financial reports.
General Helstrom wrote: I don't fancy playing Imperial Assault's campaign again after we finish the first one because all the twists and surprises will be spoiled. I'm enjoying it immensely as it unfolds, don't get me wrong, I just don't see much replay value in it.
throw the first mission; if you do that, all the fixed story missions are different.
Thanks man, I'll give that a try once we finish our campaign!
I'm not really sure what this thread is about anymore. Jervis still works at GW. I guess if AOS saved Games Workshop that means WFB died for our sins That's not what brought me back to the hobby though. I'm still too salty to touch AOS. Love what they've done with 40K though and especially love how they're engaging with the community now in a way that resembles a business run by grown-ups. I even love their burgers! That pilgrimage to Warhammer World last month was totally worth it. Who cares about what fiscal year this happened.
Maybe I'll start my own thread about narrative gaming. With blackjack. And hookers. In fact - forget the thread and the blackjack!
Azreal13 wrote: Sorry, but the facts just don't support this.
The AOS release came at the start of the 2015 financial year for GW. Their 2015/2016 report posted lower revenue than 14/15 and still within the Kirby era.
If anything, the release of AOS actually had a net detriment on GW's performance, and by the time GW was starting to show signs of recovery the first GHB was well on its way, so even if AOS somehow did turn things around, it was only once points were introduced in 2016, which is shown in the 16/17 report.
Nothing you're asserting is borne out by their financial reports.
After watching Sqorgor tirade on an anti-GHB rant and how super special bestest perfect AOS was on launch, THEN following up with "AOS saved GW", and a splash of "I just want my preferred method of play validated and the OTHER type invalidated", and that sly stab at putting the now-forbidden US politics into this thread, I've decided that no amount of logic and reason will sway them. They are not an AOS player, they are a Disciple of AOS, and the difference is quite obvious.
Just Tony wrote: After watching Sqorgor tirade on an anti-GHB rant and how super special bestest perfect AOS was on launch, THEN following up with "AOS saved GW", and a splash of "I just want my preferred method of play validated and the OTHER type invalidated", and that sly stab at putting the now-forbidden US politics into this thread, I've decided that no amount of logic and reason will sway them. They are not an AOS player, they are a Disciple of AOS, and the difference is quite obvious.
We were just talking about straw man arguments! How lucky we are that we have you here to demonstrate!
But pray tell, if no amount of logic and reason will sway me... of what, I wonder? What exactly is the position that you wish to sway me towards?
Anyway, we'll give it a shot and ask these questions: How did AOS save GW? Do you have any financial/sales reports showing ANY miniature company dethroning GW from the #1 spot, and conversely it returning BECAUSE of the AOS initial release?
Just Tony wrote: Anyway, we'll give it a shot and ask these questions: How did AOS save GW? Do you have any financial/sales reports showing ANY miniature company dethroning GW from the #1 spot, and conversely it returning BECAUSE of the AOS initial release?
Ideologically, it saved GW. It set the direction for each one of their products since, and set the standards that GW, as a company, has come to be known by now. And ideologically, AOS (and 40k) seem to embody the beliefs professed by Jervis in that article that keeps getting posted.
Frankly, I don't know why you guys keep thinking I'm talking about financially, since as a player, I don't care about that kind of stuff at all. Whether GW's statements move up or down is ultimately worthless, as there's no way to know for sure what influenced this change and how much. It's all just speculation, and largely empty. You can say that GW's financials went down because AOS, but can you really say that? Can you say how much?
Financially, I have no idea how well AOS did. Not exactly. It wasn't an abject failure, despite how badly a lot of people wanted it to be. It wasn't a run away success either. But it made more money than WHFB, and had the potential for growth that WHFB didn't have. And it was growing with each new release. It didn't start out perfect, but with each refinement, more and more people were getting into it - especially with the new armies like with the Sylvaneth, Fyreslayers, Everchosen, and Ironjawz. Hell, I think the Stormcast were a lot more popular than people give them credit for here.
The question is, did the GHB turn the tide or not? I don't think we can know for sure. I mean, we can say that public opinion certainly improved, here, but it was already improving. The destruction of WHFB was no longer a festering wound, but a healing scar. Early issues with the AOS setting were getting ironed out as more fiction was released. People were coming up with new structures to define their games, refining games based on wounds/warscrolls and providing multiple point systems - even adding campaign rules (Paths to Glory, Hinterlands). FAQs were released that cleared up various ambiguities in the rules.
The time was right for people to form a second opinion on AOS, and the GHB gave them the excuse to do so. But there's no doubt in my mind that if the GHB had been released a year earlier, it wouldn't have had nearly the impact that it did. People weren't ready to forgive AOS then.
The points thing just became a lightning rod for all the frustrations people had about AOS and GW. It became a Thing. People convinced themselves that points were the only way AOS could be saved, that it was the only way they could ever find happiness - but points weren't the only thing people hated about AOS. They hated EVERYTHING. It was said to be baby's first miniature game. They hated the rules, the stormcast, the setting, the price, the models, the fans, the destruction of WHFB, the campaign books, the battle tomes, the battalions, the silly abilities, the rulebook, GW's handling of it, and every other thing about it.
How did points become the One True Problem from which everything bad about AOS revolved? Easy. It was the only thing which time couldn't heal. All the other things were improving (or at least time had quelled the rage). The stormcast, the rules, the battle tomes, the models, and so on. But it still didn't have points. GW giving AOS points isn't an admission of failure - it was a compromise. They finally gave players what they asked for, after fixing everything else first, and suddenly, they were all out of excuses to dismiss the game.
Points didn't turn AOS into something that it wasn't. It is barely a change. It was just the last in a long line of improvements that made AOS into a more palatable game for a broader audience. And all those improvements ended up making 40k into exactly the game it needed to be. If 40k came out with those rules before AOS was a thing, it would've had an entirely different response. Even a year earlier, the idea that 8th edition would be AOS-ified was told as a horror story to scare children. But because AOS took the time to improve and win people over, it meant that 40k wasn't just starting with more refined rules, it also started with the understanding that AOS took years to build.
40k could've gone in a completely different direction. It could've been real bad, and everybody that had abandoned GW during 6th and 7th would've continued feeling justified in doing so. But instead, it was a resounding success. So I guess AOS didn't save GW. It saved 40k. And in doing so, saved GW.
Just Tony wrote: Anyway, we'll give it a shot and ask these questions: How did AOS save GW? Do you have any financial/sales reports showing ANY miniature company dethroning GW from the #1 spot, and conversely it returning BECAUSE of the AOS initial release?
Ideologically, it saved GW. It set the direction for each one of their products since, and set the standards that GW, as a company, has come to be known by now. And ideologically, AOS (and 40k) seem to embody the beliefs professed by Jervis in that article that keeps getting posted.
Ideologically? In a way, you're sort of right. The Open Sandbox style of composition that was first pioneered in Unbound over in 40K was doubled down upon in AOS. SINCE AOS's faulty start, that method of play is put in as taking a back seat as opposed to being the ONLY method of play. So in a way that you did NOT intend, AOS did indeed save GW ideologically. It made them realize that there at least needed to be a structural base, which ran contrary to what Jervis was preaching in that article.
Sqorgar wrote: Frankly, I don't know why you guys keep thinking I'm talking about financially, since as a player, I don't care about that kind of stuff at all. Whether GW's statements move up or down is ultimately worthless, as there's no way to know for sure what influenced this change and how much. It's all just speculation, and largely empty. You can say that GW's financials went down because AOS, but can you really say that? Can you say how much?
Frankly, financials are the most important part of this equation. If a company doesn't do well, such as Confrontation being clearanced out at retailers and cleared from distribution centers, then the gaming community attached to it does not do well. How many people are still playing Babylon 5's miniature game? Exactly.
For the record, there is most ASSUREDLY a way to know whether GW's financials influenced change in the game systems. The fact that 8th WFB's multitude of problems caused GW to consider simply killing the game before settling on AOS as a replacement is a great example. However, you want an example of financials changing the rules specifically, not totaling out a line, and that is honestly and easy one:
Space Marine Terminators.
Just in case you weren't around during this event, back in 3rd Edition 40K they ran an article in White Dwarf implementing a rules change to Space Marine Terminators, giving them a 5+ invulnerable save on top of their 2+ armor save. The reasoning behind it was given in a rather lengthy blurb explaining how plasma weaponry was becoming highly prevalent in armies specifically to deal with Terminators, and because of the ease of death to said weapons, people stopped running/buying Terminators. They explicitly stated as much in the article, that sales drove the rules change. If that's a good example, which I think it is, then wouldn't the GHB also be a good example?
As far as can we say how much? Enough to put out the General's Handbook. Enough to start putting bundles out that legitimately saved gamers money.
Sqorgar wrote: Financially, I have no idea how well AOS did. Not exactly. It wasn't an abject failure, despite how badly a lot of people wanted it to be. It wasn't a run away success either. But it made more money than WHFB, and had the potential for growth that WHFB didn't have. And it was growing with each new release. It didn't start out perfect, but with each refinement, more and more people were getting into it - especially with the new armies like with the Sylvaneth, Fyreslayers, Everchosen, and Ironjawz. Hell, I think the Stormcast were a lot more popular than people give them credit for here.
Want had nothing to do with AOS's poor performance out the gate. I could want the newest Deadpool movie to fail because of personal grievances/whatever, and it wouldn't matter because the general movie goer liked and supported the film with their wallets. Bottom line is that people didn't warm up to AOS for almost a year after its release, and that'd be a death knell for any other gaming company. GW, however, had the brand power to stave the wound until they could patch it with the GHB.
As far as outselling WFB, are we talking WFB at the height of their sales, are we talking in the trough when they were considering cancelling it, or are we talking End Times when WFB sales almost quadrupled?
And as far as "I think" or "I feel" goes, we're dealing with stats and facts. Your adoration for the rule set is well documented, as is your detestation of the set(s) that came before it. Irrelevant in this debate. Bring facts and not opinions. The LTD ED Army Books for AOS not selling well at all despite having half the production run of the WFB ones that DID sell out has nothing to do with "feelings" or opinions, it is an undisputable fact.
Sqorgar wrote: The question is, did the GHB turn the tide or not? I don't think we can know for sure. I mean, we can say that public opinion certainly improved, here, but it was already improving. The destruction of WHFB was no longer a festering wound, but a healing scar. Early issues with the AOS setting were getting ironed out as more fiction was released. People were coming up with new structures to define their games, refining games based on wounds/warscrolls and providing multiple point systems - even adding campaign rules (Paths to Glory, Hinterlands). FAQs were released that cleared up various ambiguities in the rules.
Setting is irrelevant. Fiction is irrelevant The fact that people WERE coming up with comps so readily states that people were trying to make it work, but it wasn't until an official comp came out by way of the GHB that the ship turned around.
Sqorgar wrote: The time was right for people to form a second opinion on AOS, and the GHB gave them the excuse to do so. But there's no doubt in my mind that if the GHB had been released a year earlier, it wouldn't have had nearly the impact that it did. People weren't ready to forgive AOS then.
The time was right to include all the people who favor structured gaming, the very same people that stayed OUT of AOS because of the lack of official comp or structure. The real deal is that GW didn't think that they'd bleed out more players/customers than they'd take in. This was a major miscalculation as those veteran players were what GW relied on to get new blood into their games in the first place. "Forgive" had nothing to do with it, and yet again caters to the "feels" thing that guides every aspect of your argument here.
Sqorgar wrote: The points thing just became a lightning rod for all the frustrations people had about AOS and GW. It became a Thing. People convinced themselves that points were the only way AOS could be saved, that it was the only way they could ever find happiness - but points weren't the only thing people hated about AOS. They hated EVERYTHING. It was said to be baby's first miniature game. They hated the rules, the stormcast, the setting, the price, the models, the fans, the destruction of WHFB, the campaign books, the battle tomes, the battalions, the silly abilities, the rulebook, GW's handling of it, and every other thing about it.
Okay, once you get away from the hyperbole and reliance on "feels" and the "other side" suffering from "wrongthink" about a game you thought was perfect, you find that they stated that there were a grocery list of issues present. Is it possible that the GHB fixed more than just points? Craziness, right? The real issue is that "Three Ways To Play" became a thing at THAT point when it should have been in there all along. Breeze past that all you want to attempt to shame those that didn't simply play it "your" way, but the fact remains that player involvement and player purchases increased as soon as the GHB came into play and was reviewed.
Sqorgar wrote: How did points become the One True Problem from which everything bad about AOS revolved? Easy. It was the only thing which time couldn't heal. All the other things were improving (or at least time had quelled the rage). The stormcast, the rules, the battle tomes, the models, and so on. But it still didn't have points. GW giving AOS points isn't an admission of failure - it was a compromise. They finally gave players what they asked for, after fixing everything else first, and suddenly, they were all out of excuses to dismiss the game.
lol No, it wasn't just about points. AOS was a completely different game. Period. The points issue was a critique about the game design, along with several others.
What they finally gave was the ability for people who play the game in ways other than CAAC to be able to play.
Sqorgar wrote: Points didn't turn AOS into something that it wasn't. It is barely a change. It was just the last in a long line of improvements that made AOS into a more palatable game for a broader audience. And all those improvements ended up making 40k into exactly the game it needed to be. If 40k came out with those rules before AOS was a thing, it would've had an entirely different response. Even a year earlier, the idea that 8th edition would be AOS-ified was told as a horror story to scare children. But because AOS took the time to improve and win people over, it meant that 40k wasn't just starting with more refined rules, it also started with the understanding that AOS took years to build.
You're half right. Points changed the structure of the forces insofar as restoring a balanced match up (mostly), but the game mechanics stayed the same. And yeah, changing 40K to the exact style of game that AOS was REGARDLESS of which came first would have been disastrous. 40K was already bleeding out because of 7th, doubling down on the aspects of 7th that made the game unplayable would have been suicide.
Past that, we'll ignore you sensationalist hyperbole despite definitely seeing a theme.
Sqorgar wrote: 40k could've gone in a completely different direction. It could've been real bad, and everybody that had abandoned GW during 6th and 7th would've continued feeling justified in doing so. But instead, it was a resounding success. So I guess AOS didn't save GW. It saved 40k. And in doing so, saved GW.
Once again, you're half right. 8th Edition 40K didn't go full AOS primarily based on how turbulent AOS's initial launch and first year went. They basically tried to find the EXACT amount of AOSing that 40K would tolerate, and if sales are any indication currently, they made the right decision to NOT ape AOS completely.
Just Tony wrote: It made them realize that there at least needed to be a structural base, which ran contrary to what Jervis was preaching in that article.
That's such a gross misrepresentation of the article it's not even funny. Given that people might read your dreck and take it as truth, maybe I can save a few of them: in the article in question, Jervis Johnson explains that he enjoys and personally promotes points-structured, symmetrical tournament-style play. He goes on to explain that he feels that this type of play is becoming dominant (as of 2002) at the expense of other, more free-form narrative styles of play which he also enjoys, and that he would like to preserve that style of play somehow before it disappears.
What I'd really recommend is that people actually read the article. It's on page 2 of this thread and it's quite reasonable.
But AOS also did nothing to preserve free-form narrative play.
Narrative play needs more than just a rules system without force limitations. It needs everything that you would put into making a tabletop RPG scenario. It needs a story, it needs scenario structures, it needs to be flexible to account for unexpected events occurring during the game etc.
The AOS rules, as they were released initially, had nothing to help anyone construct a narrative game.
For a warhammer example, the 4th edition 40K rulebook had sections at the back giving advice on ways to run campaigns including different campaign types (tree campaigns vs map campaigns), rules for unit advancement during the campaign, rules for units becoming depleted during the campaign and requiring reinforcement, ideas for how to customise your models to account for their progression through the campaign (warboss acquiring more heads for his bosspole and getting better equipment as he fought in more battles and stuff like that). That book also included the rules for Kill Team, another narrative based system.
You can't just throw out a rules system with no structure and pass it off as a "narrative game". Narrative games need more instruction in order to play them than a pick up game and if you want that style of gameplay to survive then you should put that extra work in to give players the tools and knowledge they need to play narrative based games.
Whilst he seems like an amiable enough chap I think his preferred methodology is very much of the early RPG with a splash of 'narrative' from Historical wargamers when players were expected to hack, bodge and tweak rules to their liking without having everything laid out for them to get the gaming experience they wanted
Unfortunately this doesn't really sell rulebooks and armies, hence the more rigid and regulated systems GW current makes, and of course you can house rule these but thats not really what GW promotes these days
Narrative play needs more than just a rules system without force limitations. It needs everything that you would put into making a tabletop RPG scenario. It needs a narrative, it needs scenario structures, it needs to be flexible to account for unexpected events occurring during the game etc.
The AOS rules, as they were released initially, had nothing to help anyone construct a narrative game.
For a warhammer example, the 4th edition 40K rulebook had sections at the back giving advice on ways to run campaigns including different campaign types (tree campaigns vs map campaigns), rules for unit advancement during the campaign, rules for units becoming depleted during the campaign and requiring reinforcement, ideas for how to customise your models to account for their progression through the campaign (warboss acquiring more heads for his bosspole and getting better equipment as he fought in more battles and stuff like that). That book also included the rules for Kill Team, another narrative based system.
You can't just throw out a rules system with no structure and pass it off as a "narrative game". Narrative games need more instruction in order to play them than a pick up game and if you want that style of gameplay to survive then you should put that extra work in to give players the tools and knowledge they need to play narrative based games.
Just Tony wrote:It made them realize that there at least needed to be a structural base, which ran contrary to what Jervis was preaching in that article.
It had a structural base - it's just the nobody liked it. The 4 pages of rules talked about taking turns putting down models. The campaign books had stories + scenarios. GW's events recommended a number of warscrolls + wounds. It's just that this community lives in fear of power gamers (what if they bring 8 bloodletters? *shudder*) and felt that this structure wasn't strong enough to curb their abusive tendencies - completely unaware that points are where power gamers get their abusive tendencies.
Frankly, financials are the most important part of this equation. If a company doesn't do well, such as Confrontation being clearanced out at retailers and cleared from distribution centers, then the gaming community attached to it does not do well. How many people are still playing Babylon 5's miniature game? Exactly.
But people are saying that AOS tanked, and yet it was never in danger of being cleared out or unsupported. It got more support in its first year than any other miniature game out there. Pretty good for an abject failure that nobody was buying. By your own standards, AOS did well enough. I'm not sure you can make claims beyond that.
They explicitly stated as much in the article, that sales drove the rules change. If that's a good example, which I think it is, then wouldn't the GHB also be a good example?
Of course sales can be the impetus for change, but we can never know how much. Were points added to AOS because the sales were bad, because GW was responding to fan input, or because they felt the GHB's three ways to play was more ideologically in line with their open sandbox design philosophy? Honestly, it was probably all three, but we can't say for sure because we weren't there and GW has never said.
Personally, I think GW is more ideologically driven now than financial driven. I think that was GW's major change, and it was a good one that rewarded them with exceedingly better financials. But the changes GW made were not made out of a cynical attempt to squeeze more money out of the playerbase (like Kirby's years), but out of a legitimate desire to make better games.
As far as outselling WFB, are we talking WFB at the height of their sales, are we talking in the trough when they were considering cancelling it, or are we talking End Times when WFB sales almost quadrupled?
I have to assume that from GW's perspective, it wasn't a comparison to previous years, but to projections for upcoming years. As in, AOS sold better than they expected WHFB to sell in the same time frame. And come on, be honest, you know it is true too.
Setting is irrelevant. Fiction is irrelevant The fact that people WERE coming up with comps so readily states that people were trying to make it work, but it wasn't until an official comp came out by way of the GHB that the ship turned around.
The official comp was based on a fan one. It wasn't even that the GHB gave us something we didn't have, it just put an official seal of approval on it. People didn't need the structure. They needed the permission.
Also, I know a lot of people who would argue that setting and fiction are the most relevant parts of these games.
A Town Called Malus wrote:But AOS also did nothing to preserve free-form narrative play.
Narrative play needs more than just a rules system without force limitations. It needs everything that you would put into making a tabletop RPG scenario. It needs a story, it needs scenario structures, it needs to be flexible to account for unexpected events occurring during the game etc.
The AOS rules, as they were released initially, had nothing to help anyone construct a narrative game.
That's not entirely true. It had 5 big hardback rulebooks, each with a half dozen narrative scenarios. The rulebooks were designed around telling a few pages of story, then a scenario based on that story. You could play the scenarios using any armies, but you could also draw from the story on the proceeding pages in order to recreate these famous battles. MongooseMatt often did, and his battle reports were fun to read. AOS was primarily a narrative game at the beginning.
Force-on-Force/Tomorrow's War does not have a point system at all and it works great as a game. I am sure there are others that do not have a point system as well but those were the first two that came to my mind. Therefore, games do no need a point system to "work".
They are just another tool in a designers (and players) tool box to help them make games.
Also, I think we established that Jervis still works at GW, so maybe we can start a new thread about Points systems and if AoS saved GW.
That's not what brought me back to the hobby though. I'm still too salty to touch