In another thread ClockworkZion made an interesting claim - he said that most people on dakka would prefer a codex with fluff in them. I'd like to put some data behind that claims, since I'm actually not too sure about whether he is right or wrong.
Of course, the implication is that codices would be cheaper without fluff, but we all know GW and it's not impossible that they would sell the codex for the same price despite not having fluff. So please try to keep money out of your decision.
The fluff is nice to read once, i dont want a half a book of wasted space. In fact anymore i am tired of needing multiple different books. i want all the rules in a single book.
I'd certainly be OK if they separated the background from the rules.
But can you imagine how dry and uninspiring a codex without any background or hobby stuff in it would be? You might as well read a tax return
The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
Jidmah wrote: In another thread ClockworkZion made an interesting claim - he said that most people on dakka would prefer a codex with fluff in them.
I'd like to put some data behind that claims, since I'm actually not too sure about whether he is right or wrong.
Of course, the implication is that codices would be cheaper without fluff, but we all know GW and it's not impossible that they would sell the codex for the same price despite not having fluff. So please try to keep money out of your decision.
I didn't say most people on Dakka want fluff, I said:
Despite the more tournament heavy focus of Dakka most players like having the lore in the codexes, and it also serves as a way to introduce new players (or players who are just starting a new army with a faction they never looked at before) to a given faction. The lore tends to give people a bit of grpunding on what the units are, what they do for the faction and generally get a feel for why the faction operates the way it does.
My point was outside of Dakka's crunch bias there are plenty of people who want their lore.
Warmachine has gone without fluff books in a while because honestly they seemed to provide incredibly little value and with something of a return in Oblivion I'm surprised how much I missed them. I think the problem is just that for every game, reading them like an actual book is miserable. What happens isn't really meaningful and it gets repetitive rather quickly.
The thing is, that's not where the enjoyment comes. You flip through the book, see a random spot of art on a random unit, read up on it and get really attached to that unit. Most of the fluff in these books really doesn't matter, but the ones that matter to you make a huge difference, and which pages those are vary quite a lot person to person.
LunarSol wrote: Warmachine has gone without fluff books in a while because honestly they seemed to provide incredibly little value and with something of a return in Oblivion I'm surprised how much I missed them. I think the problem is just that for every game, reading them like an actual book is miserable. What happens isn't really meaningful and it gets repetitive rather quickly.
The thing is, that's not where the enjoyment comes. You flip through the book, see a random spot of art on a random unit, read up on it and get really attached to that unit. Most of the fluff in these books really doesn't matter, but the ones that matter to you make a huge difference, and which pages those are vary quite a lot person to person.
That's basically how I latched onto the beautiful insanity of the Exorcists tank.
The timelines do a lot to get the brain juices flowing too. I was very close to trying to make an Imperial Ghosts army because of the fluff in 6th edition about a planet of the honored dead rising up in spectral form to kick Chaos in the teeth.
I don’t mind something like the indexes, which were nothing but rules and stat blocks with maybe a paragraph of information about the faction as a whole.
At the same time, I do enjoy reading the lore in the existing Codexes, even if at this point it’s 90% cut and paste from the prior four editions.
The base rulebook, however, has gone too far - maybe 8 pages of rules and the rest is a model catalog and snippets of abbreviated lore from other books.
In the end, I’d be perfectly happy with books that were just rules and stat blocks - more index than codex. I can get the lore off the Lexicam or read a novel if I’m interested about the universe.
Maybe it would be better if the lore in every codex and the pictures were of new stuff. I don't think many players are interested in reading the same stories they read for 3-4 editions and look at the same models they had in 2 or more books. The unit lore part could also be put on their site IMO, no one who already owns a codex wants to read for the 20th time what a tactical unit is, but new units or characters just being intreduced to the codex, should have both a lore and rule part.
this way they could easily shave off 30-40 unneeded pages from a codex. The rule books on the other hand seem to be perfect as far as layout and content is. Suck they get outdated fast, and that GW doesn't put out updated ones, but IMO the basic rule book for w40k is much better then most codex they made.
Karol wrote: Maybe it would be better if the lore in every codex and the pictures were of new stuff. I don't think many players are interested in reading the same stories they read for 3-4 editions and look at the same models they had in 2 or more books. The unit lore part could also be put on their site IMO, no one who already owns a codex wants to read for the 20th time what a tactical unit is, but new units or characters just being intreduced to the codex, should have both a lore and rule part.
this way they could easily shave off 30-40 unneeded pages from a codex. The rule books on the other hand seem to be perfect as far as layout and content is. Suck they get outdated fast, and that GW doesn't put out updated ones, but IMO the basic rule book for w40k is much better then most codex they made.
Just because that isn't for the existing player doesn't mean it shouldn't be left in for new players. We shouldn't be catering solely to existing players.
The new player could read the same text on their site, under the model/unit description or at the GW online store.
And for stories they have the warhammer community site. They really don't have to add 50+pages of recycled stuff, specially when sometimes one can firmly see that the writer had to struggle to write anything about a unit or character.
hey why not put lore blurb on the data cards that are added to the models, instead of the copy of the box cover.
IF they sold a cheaper version of a codex with just rules I'd prefer that. While I like the fluff in the codexes it's largely the same thing repeated with a few tiny things added like art colours changed or more of those "Person appears and kills an army" snippets.
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
All rules should be free. Codex should be a luxury product dedicated to fluff, painting, photos, concept art. Could also include collector's guide so you'd know where the hell does that Warlock with laspistol comes from.
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
But that could end up even worse. A new player may read the fluff and expect that the army is going to work the way it is described in the book. If there was no or little lore in the books, they would have to either search or ask. Much better then basing an army on what one reads in a codex as a noob.
Karol wrote: The new player could read the same text on their site, under the model/unit description or at the GW online store.
And for stories they have the warhammer community site. They really don't have to add 50+pages of recycled stuff, specially when sometimes one can firmly see that the writer had to struggle to write anything about a unit or character.
hey why not put lore blurb on the data cards that are added to the models, instead of the copy of the box cover.
A majority of new players don't buy their stuff from the online store.
Shadenuat wrote: All rules should be free. Codex should be a luxury product dedicated to fluff, painting, photos, concept art. Could also include collector's guide so you'd know where the hell does that Warlock with laspistol comes from.
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
But that could end up even worse. A new player may read the fluff and expect that the army is going to work the way it is described in the book. If there was no or little lore in the books, they would have to either search or ask. Much better then basing an army on what one reads in a codex as a noob.
The lore describes army roles, which is what the rules represent. It doesn't mean those units will be great at thkse roles, but no one who reads about Hormagaunts or Incubi is going to think the units are master snipers.
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Shadenuat wrote: All rules should be free. Codex should be a luxury product dedicated to fluff, painting, photos, concept art. Could also include collector's guide so you'd know where the hell does that Warlock with laspistol comes from.
I feel like they could still keep the rules in the books as well because most of us want printed rules in books instead of digital copies, but offering them free as well would be pretty good.
Rules should not be free, unless that's something GW wants to do. No one is entitled to a free product. Hell, no one is entitled to a cheap or reasonably priced product.
Fluff needs to be in the codex for one main reason: new players. Unless you sell datasheets/datacards separately, there simply must be a hook for new players to discover a new army, or a new part of the 40K universe, etc.
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
But that could end up even worse. A new player may read the fluff and expect that the army is going to work the way it is described in the book. If there was no or little lore in the books, they would have to either search or ask. Much better then basing an army on what one reads in a codex as a noob.
It could be worse. But a new player who's read the fluff is very different from a new player who hasn't.
On one end of the spectrum, a Guardian is one of the few surviving members of their Craftworld. They are rare and precious. Each loss is the loss of one of the last poets, philosophers, or basket weavers in the universe. They are in danger, because the stakes of this battle are so high that even that risk is not too high a price.
On the other end of the spectrum, a Guardian is a Guardsman with a shotgun and more skill, for twice the points.
It might not impact who winds up with more VP, but it's certainly impactful on the game. The fluff is what differentiates this game from flip-a-coin, chess, or DOTA (depending on tastes). The crunch is only a small part of the game (tiny compared to fluff to many players; both dwarfed by modelling to others; and all of that dwarfed by social aspects to yet another group).
I think my preference would be fluff in the physical codex, cheaper army rules available digitally that would be kept up to date with errata etc. In the days of constant faq I find it annoying to have multiple references for rules.
Why do you think that reading the fluff is going to impact the unit choices of an army in any shape or form, besides maybe it being part of some big social thing that forces people to play specific units or even armies only in a specific way.
A new player that doesn't know, or care, about the lore will ask questions like what works, what is good etc. The one that read the lore, will ask the same questions, but the chance, that he sees lets say nobz on foot and thinks they are good, because they are described as better in the lore, is much bigger.
Letting lore impact unit choices, is like buying stuff based on advertisment, and think it is the truth.
When I started my army, I thought, that my dudes are going to be good, because they look good and because their codex said they are good, and had all those stories about the cool stuff they do. From time perspective, I would have rather bought something else. I probably would have had more luck and more fun, If I bought stuff at random to be honest.
Breng77 wrote: I think my preference would be fluff in the physical codex, cheaper army rules available digitally that would be kept up to date with errata etc. In the days of constant faq I find it annoying to have multiple references for rules.
We get 2 FAQs for any given army a year. That's hardly constant.
And that's way better than having a three year old faq for a six year old codex.
Daedalus81 wrote: You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
I started with 3rd Ed. Those codexes really just had snippets of fluff- mostly quotes, small sections of fiction, and very short timelines, all integrated into the page layouts for the rules. They also had a lot more hobby material.
I thought it was fine. It was more than enough to whet the appetite for a new player. It gave theme and context to the rules, without involving page after page of dry exposition. If you wanted to really dive into the background for a faction, you had a wealth of other books available.
Breng77 wrote: I think my preference would be fluff in the physical codex, cheaper army rules available digitally that would be kept up to date with errata etc. In the days of constant faq I find it annoying to have multiple references for rules.
well the thing is, GW is not going to put out just codex lore and art in the form they do it right now. The sells would be horrible. Right now, like it or not, a person that wants to use their models, have to buy the rules . this is minimum 1 book every year. On the other hand, you have to want to read the lore to be willing to buy it.
Plus there is that small thing, that if you download a BL or codex lore book, no one cares. But if you play at a store, your not going to be playing for a long time, if you waltz in with a print out of the rules or the rules in straight up digital form.
Breng77 wrote: I think my preference would be fluff in the physical codex, cheaper army rules available digitally that would be kept up to date with errata etc. In the days of constant faq I find it annoying to have multiple references for rules.
We get 2 FAQs for any given army a year. That's hardly constant.
And that's way better than having a three year old faq for a six year old codex.
okey, but it is still like saying that cautarization of a wound post amputation is better, then what was in the past aka patiant dieing without help almost every time. Now if GW updated their rules on a bimonthly basis, and I mean real changes not copy pasting changes they already implemented in other sources, then we could say they are doing a good job. Being less horrible, then really horrible, isn't good.
Fluff is fine in a codex, but the amount of fluff could absolutely be lower. Otherwise I'd be all for two separate prints of codices, one with just rules and the other that most of these people like.
Karol wrote: Why do you think that reading the fluff is going to impact the unit choices of an army in any shape or form, besides maybe it being part of some big social thing that forces people to play specific units or even armies only in a specific way.
A new player that doesn't know, or care, about the lore will ask questions like what works, what is good etc. The one that read the lore, will ask the same questions, but the chance, that he sees lets say nobz on foot and thinks they are good, because they are described as better in the lore, is much bigger.
Letting lore impact unit choices, is like buying stuff based on advertisment, and think it is the truth.
When I started my army, I thought, that my dudes are going to be good, because they look good and because their codex said they are good, and had all those stories about the cool stuff they do. From time perspective, I would have rather bought something else. I probably would have had more luck and more fun, If I bought stuff at random to be honest.
Karol, you're posting with your butt. Stop that.
Narrative is important to a lot of people. It's why we pick the armies we do, latch onto special characters we like (not you Lysander, you're a ponce) and even gives the army it's flavor.
Now crunch can be better or worse, but that flavor is what sells the army to most players. And that's not even getting into narrative players. I talked about a concept army I've considered several times based on a blurb about the spirits of the sead rising up to fight Chaos. That's why this stuff exists though: to inspire players.
okey, but it is still like saying that cautarization of a wound post amputation is better, then what was in the past aka patiant dieing without help almost every time. Now if GW updated their rules on a bimonthly basis, and I mean real changes not copy pasting changes they already implemented in other sources, then we could say they are doing a good job. Being less horrible, then really horrible, isn't good.
Bi-monthly is an unreasonable amount of updates every year. And we've talked about this: just because Grey Knights suck doesn't make the entire game bad.
Shadenuat wrote: All rules should be free. Codex should be a luxury product dedicated to fluff, painting, photos, concept art. Could also include collector's guide so you'd know where the hell does that Warlock with laspistol comes from.
Do the GW finance reports break down mimi sale and other sales ?
I suspect they could go free rules and not really lose money as people would just buy more mini's
but what do I know, all my Warlocks do indeed have Las Pistols
An Actual Englishman wrote: Fluff is extremely important for me but I wish codexes actually advanced the storyline sometimes.
We've been seeing that more in 8th. C:SM talks about the Rubricon and how Marines are volunteering by the metric tons to try and make the transition into Primaris, I found a chunk of lore in Ad Mech where they recently got wind of a planet said to have psychic STCs on it and sent a crud ton of Skitarii, and the stuff from Vigilus has been rolled into books (I assume we'll see the advancements from Psychic Awakening mixed into codexes going forward too).
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
How? It doesn't teachs nearly anything about how the race works, his true motivations, how would be for your army and his soldiers to live in that society. It makes you less inmersed in the narrative of your own faction. Unlike Fantasy, where you could pin poin the origin of your army, all of their motivations, their enemys, the geography that makes them what they are, etc...
Jidmah wrote: In another thread ClockworkZion made an interesting claim - he said that most people on dakka would prefer a codex with fluff in them.
I'd like to put some data behind that claims, since I'm actually not too sure about whether he is right or wrong.
Of course, the implication is that codices would be cheaper without fluff, but we all know GW and it's not impossible that they would sell the codex for the same price despite not having fluff. So please try to keep money out of your decision.
So, here's my take:
I would rather buy a big book of 170 pages of black-and-white datasheets and rules for than a full-color hardback codex with 80 pages of fluff and 70 pages of rules, because I know the fluff and just want to know my stratagems, rules, and would rather buy a $20 index that services half of my armies than 5 $40 codecies.
As for your assertions about keeping money out of it: the Indecies were $20 IIRC, and the Codecies are $40, so that validates the assumption that black and white softbacks with minimal art and lore and maximum rules density are in fact cheaper than codecies.
Even if rules-only single-faction books were each $20, I would still take them over the fancy codecies.
However, I may not care about the fluff section and full color artwork, but prospective new players and people picking up the faction do. The Codex is also an advertising book for the units you could be buying, so it's certainly better to produce them in full color with a lot of a fluff rather than in just index form.
Breng77 wrote: I think my preference would be fluff in the physical codex, cheaper army rules available digitally that would be kept up to date with errata etc. In the days of constant faq I find it annoying to have multiple references for rules.
We get 2 FAQs for any given army a year. That's hardly constant.
And that's way better than having a three year old faq for a six year old codex.
Did I say it wasn’t better? I said it was annoying to have multiple sources so one updated document would be great. Heck I’d pay a subscription cost for one.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @Karol - I’m saying if you want a hard copy of the rules it would be a coded like right now, if you are going for a digital option you can get rules only with no fluff. As I said I could even see this being a yearly subscription thing where for $10 (or some value) per year you get all the updates in one place inst as of buying and carrying all the other books.
Karol wrote: Why do you think that reading the fluff is going to impact the unit choices of an army in any shape or form, besides maybe it being part of some big social thing that forces people to play specific units or even armies only in a specific way.
The entirety of my army is based on fluff and has been since the start.
I certainly didn't pick up a Captain and some Tacs/Devs/ASM when I started due to how they'd perform on the table. And I certainly wasn't "forced" to pick those units - they're what I wanted to take.
I certainly didn't order Eldar in 6E before their book came out due to performance. They were crap at the time.
Crunch is only part of the game. A different size part for different players.
Sigmar's got a pretty good organization for a modern game. Datasheets that are both free and sold as a pack of reference sheets. Army rules that are included in the book, points separated out to be updated later. It's not perfect, but outside of digital solutions its one of the better I've seen. 40k struggles to adopt it simply due to organizational issues created by weapon configurations.
fluff is definatly important, yes tom who only focuses on gameplay and tourny crap and has never read a 40k novel in his life might not care about it, but GW shouldn't cater exclusivly to Tom.
the complaint about repeated fluff is valid (though everyone starts somewhere) but generally there is new stuff in each codex too.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Fluff is fine in a codex, but the amount of fluff could absolutely be lower. Otherwise I'd be all for two separate prints of codices, one with just rules and the other that most of these people like.
I agree with this.
Have one, cheap codex (probably paperback) with just the rules, and MAYBE a few pictures.
Have a second, full price codex with fluff and lots of pictures and the rules and everything else.
Is it weird to think "Maybe there should be fewer rules in the codex"?
I would imagine this game would be a lot better if they dropped all the CTs (and rebalanced accordingly). Lots of stratagems and some special rules also could probably be dropped. You'd save only a little space, but it'd greatly reduce the cost:balance quality ratio, make the game much more intuitive, and probably make it a lot more fun.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Fluff is fine in a codex, but the amount of fluff could absolutely be lower. Otherwise I'd be all for two separate prints of codices, one with just rules and the other that most of these people like.
I agree with this.
Have one, cheap codex (probably paperback) with just the rules, and MAYBE a few pictures.
Have a second, full price codex with fluff and lots of pictures and the rules and everything else.
Personally i would rather they just kept updating the Indexes and released glossy tabletop Imperial Armour type books for the Campaigns....but that ship sailed immediately
For those who want "just the rules" an expanded datacards box would be better. If they laid them out a bit better 9 especially on those with huge empty spaces and included points on them.
The 8th ed Codexes are mostly better as the story has expanded - some of the 6th/7th were very copy and paste from previous codexes.
Bharring wrote: I certainly didn't pick up a Captain and some Tacs/Devs/ASM when I started due to how they'd perform on the table. And I certainly wasn't "forced" to pick those units - they're what I wanted to take.
I certainly didn't order Eldar in 6E before their book came out due to performance. They were crap at the time.
Crunch is only part of the game. A different size part for different players.
My Guard army's original purchasing order wasn't premeditated, but typically responsive to my group's then escalating arms race bringing new and better capability into our armies. I don't buy a lot of Guard stuff now except on impulse buy. I need to acquire a few more Basilisks to really satisfy what I want to have in my collection, but I can't impulse buy basilisks.
My Sisters army was carefully planned, in bi-yearly installments bringing it up from an initial 500 points designed to form a coherent minimum FOC up to 2000, after which it has entered a unscripted state of diversification to have as many options and be able to field any given unit I feel like I want to have in a list.
My Space Wolves army was neglected from the time I got it, but I recently bought shadowspear because I liked the models, and then went in a broke up a lot of my HQ's and Terminators to fit them for modern play.
My Custodes was entirely impulse, because I split Prospero and then bought Talons of the Emperor. Some time after Bike Captains came out, I bought a squad of them too. Some of the original stuff still isn't completed because I don't know what to do with it.
Now, I'm starting Grey Knights, and have a planned purchasing structure up to 1000 points over about a year, which is planned out accounting for a desire to grab a few Space Wolf tank units and new Sisters stuff.
Slayer-Fan123 wrote: Fluff is fine in a codex, but the amount of fluff could absolutely be lower. Otherwise I'd be all for two separate prints of codices, one with just rules and the other that most of these people like.
I agree with this.
Have one, cheap codex (probably paperback) with just the rules, and MAYBE a few pictures.
Have a second, full price codex with fluff and lots of pictures and the rules and everything else.
Personally i would rather they just kept updating the Indexes and released glossy tabletop Imperial Armour type books for the Campaigns....but that ship sailed immediately
For those who want "just the rules" an expanded datacards box would be better. If they laid them out a bit better 9 especially on those with huge empty spaces and included points on them.
The 8th ed Codexes are mostly better as the story has expanded - some of the 6th/7th were very copy and paste from previous codexes.
I wish they had the same dataslates for all of the factions like those included in shadowspear. Similar to the APOC19 cards. easier to carry than a codex.
Very few gamers actually go to read the Black Library novels and of them not all races are equally represented in the lore of the game through those novels and many of the background books (like Libre Chaotica) are one time printings - so essentially one-off productions.
As a result the codex/battletome is the FIRST port of any gamers call for a general immersion in the background of their faction. It makes units warriors and fights; leaders into heroes and builds concepts and ideas into the player for the narrative of the game.
Otherwise all they are is numbers on a page.
If you take out the lore and the story and put it somewhere else there's a very high chance that players wouldn't read it. New players would budget for more models, experienced wouldn't consider it worth investing etc... Basically it would become optional and easily overlooked.
And that would be a huge problem.So many of us get inspiration and enjoyment from even the light lore in the codex/battletome. Often you read of people saying "Yeah the game isn't perfectly balanced, but I love the models and the lore" or "Hey I just made my goblin skyhunter team based off that short bit of story in the battletome" etc...
The codex is a catch all of lore, painting, a bit of modelling, a showcase of the model range and the rules of the game.
I tend to see the "I don't need lore" or "the lore is rubbish now" only from those who have generations of battletomes/codex behind them within one army (or several). So they start to think the lore isn't essential because they already know much of the lore of their faction. However even they get some value from it and in the end the Codex/battletome is there for all - from the highly experienced through to the total novice all the way down to that guy or gal who is just showing a passing interest (for now) and picks up the book to flick through - perhaps even just as far as a store copy. At least until lore, fluff, artwork, painted models, a few alternate paint schemes and such all draw them in.
The codex/battletome, just like the BIG rulebook - works its absolute BEST when its a catch all document. GW can then refine it down with apps and also the smaller printed rulebook for those who purely want the rules. Making the "rules only" optional is far better.
Personally I'd have even more lore and artwork thrown in. Sure I'd love if GW produced two books - one many more pages on pure background, art and fluff and the other on pure rules; but I know that the games fanbase would steadily weaken as more generations would come in without any narrative connection to the game. We could end up with ork players who don't know the importance of the colour RED. Or marine players who don't really believe in the Emperor!
Lore is essential. More modelling/hobby content like days of yore would be good too. “Rules-only” omits so much of the hobby that it’s not something GW will do.
Honestly at this point I have been reading the same copy and paste fluff in most codexs for 20+ years and they main attempts to produce new stuff resulted in the Ward era and Primaris fluff so frankly I would happily go without.
Background info is neccessary. Call it fluff if you want.
Could live with less "marketing-pictures" and I don't need every single unit sold to me per fluff. But the general background of the "Army" should be in and i Heard its possible to get Quality instead of....
Yes. I remember the alternative with pretty much no fluff. They were terrible.
That said, I wouldn't mind army lists set up like the Indexes or Ravening Hordes. Far superior than nickle and diming with trivial differences selling books.
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Bharring wrote: Is it weird to think "Maybe there should be fewer rules in the codex"?
I would imagine this game would be a lot better if they dropped all the CTs (and rebalanced accordingly). Lots of stratagems and some special rules also could probably be dropped. You'd save only a little space, but it'd greatly reduce the cost:balance quality ratio, make the game much more intuitive, and probably make it a lot more fun.
Definitely not weird. Rules bloat has gotten way out of hand (again). I'd be happier with units with 0-1 special rules, and armies with 0-2 special rules. That each little thing is a massive list of special snowflake nonsense is just exhausting to keep track of.
When GW did the Knight datacards, I was hopeful we would get them for all the units eventually. In fact, it baffles me that they have the AoS warscrolls available for free on their website, but not the 40K datasheets. I mean, they already give you the datasheets in the instructions for each kit.
If they would sell datasheet packs, say with a model picture/art and small lore blurb on the back, I’d snap them up. They could still have the full codex for those who are new or want the full lore, but I’ve been around this game for upwards of 30 years, and I don’t need it - I just want the damn rules.
I'd switch those pages with fotos of units with more fluff. Or more special characters. Or narrative missions for the Army like in lotr books. Codizes can't have too much fluff.
Bharring wrote: Is it weird to think "Maybe there should be fewer rules in the codex"?
I would imagine this game would be a lot better if they dropped all the CTs (and rebalanced accordingly). Lots of stratagems and some special rules also could probably be dropped. You'd save only a little space, but it'd greatly reduce the cost:balance quality ratio, make the game much more intuitive, and probably make it a lot more fun.
Not exactly weird. I mean, I already found a way to cut down two unnecessary codices (the Angels) and keeping Relics/Units/Strats in check. It isn't hard like people pretend it is.
Hell I would want to consolidate Space Wolves if it were just as easy. Hell, one of the parts of their traits (the characters consolidation ability) made it into the Successor Abilities you can choose for a custom chapter.
Bharring wrote: Is it weird to think "Maybe there should be fewer rules in the codex"?
I would imagine this game would be a lot better if they dropped all the CTs (and rebalanced accordingly). Lots of stratagems and some special rules also could probably be dropped. You'd save only a little space, but it'd greatly reduce the cost:balance quality ratio, make the game much more intuitive, and probably make it a lot more fun.
Not exactly weird. I mean, I already found a way to cut down two unnecessary codices (the Angels) and keeping Relics/Units/Strats in check. It isn't hard like people pretend it is.
Hell I would want to consolidate Space Wolves if it were just as easy. Hell, one of the parts of their traits (the characters consolidation ability) made it into the Successor Abilities you can choose for a custom chapter.
I feel like rolling most of the Marine books under the C:SM book and putting the special stuff in supplements is the way to take the game in the future. Like I get that people want their separate books, but since most of the shared stuff is in one book that means that keeping that part of the game balanced and updating stuff for all those groups just means updating a single book, while most of the supplement stuff can be left alone as long as they aren't directly putting something into that supplement itself.
Hellebore wrote: I'd prefer they kept the fluff and army lists in separate books, so that I don't have to buy a reprint of fluff to get a new army list
That'd be the split of codex and supplements where most of the subfaction lore is in the supplement that wouldn't need updating nearly as often while the main rules could take up more of the book.
Heck, with keywords they could cram even more into the main book and leave the characters, lore and relics in the supplements.
I couldn't play this game at all without fluff, because I literally only play campaign style. One-off games aren't really my thing. I can generally get a story hook or two out of every sub faction description, and timelines allow me to add flashback episodic battles to create origin stories for relics or warlord traits.
As for rules bloat, for me, there's really no such thing. It's Lego to me. You can build a pretty decent house with fairly basic pieces. But if you want to build something truly impressive, you need a couple of different sets to combine the unique pieces in unique ways. You almost never use every piece in your collection, and some pieces are so specialized that you may only use them once every ten or fifteen projects. But when they work just right in combinations with pieces from other sets, it's like making history for your army's ongoing story.
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
How? It doesn't teachs nearly anything about how the race works, his true motivations, how would be for your army and his soldiers to live in that society. It makes you less inmersed in the narrative of your own faction. Unlike Fantasy, where you could pin poin the origin of your army, all of their motivations, their enemys, the geography that makes them what they are, etc...
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
Heck, if it wasn't for the lore I wouldn't have learned that the boots on Inceptors absorbs impact when they land (allowing them to drop faster) and gives them an extra boost when they take off.
Visually they look a bit like stilts or skid plates but the lore fleshes out a bit about the unit that let's me visualize how they better move about in the setting.
I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
They should be a decent amount of fluffy stuff in any codex, and other books as well.
I mostly just dont want low effort, low quality that some of the books have got. which is a shame, since they do have a rich background to use, and they waste a lot of that.
Fluff all the way. As a new player the last thing I was interested is how good something was represented on the table top.
My first ever army was tyranids because they looked like lizard/aliens things and they were the swarm hive mind aliens that come to devour all..
"Lictor is this chameleon predator alien thing that jumps out and blaps people?" cool im getting one
"Old one eye is this old lonely carnifex thats been left behind by the fleet and just goes around merking anything that comes near?" Neeaaaeato! Im getting one of those"
I would persoanly like more showcase in the codex and a bit on converting and colecting. I like pictures of nicely painted models.
Trip down memory lane the old BRBR from 3rd/4th (with black templars on cover) had all of the rules by which I mean rules for all of the armies plus a ton of pictures and fluff. how many pages was that ? Anyone have one to hand ?
CadianGateTroll wrote: I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the end. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
CadianGateTroll wrote: I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the ends. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
they also happen to be the worst people to play against(in non-tourney style games).
Going to point up at the poll results. Yes they should have fluff, yes even most of dakka thinks so.
It's a huge part of the fun of the game. Particularly when you don't care too much about 'cannon' and have fun with your spin on the general guideline of the game.
That said, as a kid, I read every last bit of fluff in that 2nd ed Tyranid codex. I still remember feeling like 3rd was a bit of a let down in that department, it went from vibrant and weird to grimdork really, really fast.
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
Yeah, WHFB was great. It felt like an actual world instead of some high fantasy acid trip.
Like, you had your fantastical stuff, but it was alongside normal stuff as well, and that gave a nice contrast. I just don't feel that with the newer material.
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
The thing is we do already have some choice. There is loads of fluff from Black Library.
And yet many people don't buy into it. Heck I only started properly reading any of it in the last few years and I've been a GW fan for well over a decade.
When you make it optional you make it something for tomorrow and when push comes to shove many, esp those getting started, are far more likely to buy more models than they are more books. As a result the background understanding of the game would diminish steadily. Lose the lore and you lose one of the connecting points to the game for many people. Heck even the short paragraph or two describing each unit in its setting is fantastic for connecting a player to that model as its imagined. It helps reinforce the imagination for the game and takes it a step away from just being, as another said above, a maths exercise (not that there is anything wrong in that approach of course).
GW has a very smart system with their codex/battletome approach. By smothering the player in artwork, rules, lore, model work, painting etc.. all in one document they hit a broad range of interest groups with the same publication. You could just as easily say lets take out the paint elements and painted armies, we don't need those either for the rules. However I'd bet if you started doing that the number and variety of painted armies would start to drop down because painting would be seen as more optional and gamers wouldn't want to spend more buying the painting promo book on its own.
Rules - all in one book, so buy one book and you can run any army. little snippet of fluff only.
Codexes - all fluff, painting guides, modelling tips, showcases - for people who want the details of their army.
Thus when an edition changes, no army is left behind. The codexes can be updated when new models are released. everything is reasonably balanced from the start of the edition, and stays the same as they release new models with their own leaflets, which are then included in the next edition release.
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
How? It doesn't teachs nearly anything about how the race works, his true motivations, how would be for your army and his soldiers to live in that society. It makes you less inmersed in the narrative of your own faction. Unlike Fantasy, where you could pin poin the origin of your army, all of their motivations, their enemys, the geography that makes them what they are, etc...
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
I'm not complaining about fluff in books. Quite the contrary, I love it. i just saying that the fluff in 40k books has always been of much inferior quality than the one in Fantasy Books.
GW has a very smart system with their codex/battletome approach. By smothering the player in artwork, rules, lore, model work, painting etc.. all in one document they hit a broad range of interest groups with the same publication. You could just as easily say lets take out the paint elements and painted armies, we don't need those either for the rules. However I'd bet if you started doing that the number and variety of painted armies would start to drop down because painting would be seen as more optional and gamers wouldn't want to spend more buying the painting promo book on its own.
they are creating added value system, it is like with painting. If you spend X hours painting your army your less likely to quit, the game then if you never painted a single model at all. mobile games do it all the time, even if your now whaling it up, they make you invest a lot of time to get anything out of a game. And if you spend 200-300 hours playing and building up something, your less likely to leave and more likely to start spending money sooner or later. There is also the thing that people care less for stuff they did not have to pay for. If I go and download a 100 BL books, for free, and there is no real way to punish me for it, my stance on the worth of the lore, is going to be different, if I have to save up for a month to buy a book and at the same time remove money from model spending. Then the investment in to lore and books, becomes something of big value, because I spend money on it. That is also why I think GW was so careful with drip feeding the primaris lore, after the their expiriance with AoS start. There was a serious risk that if they went ham, and just killed off all the classic marines, classic eldar at the start of 8th, they risked their buyers not carring for the new stuff and there for spending less money or even not spending money at all. I mean technicaly there is nothing stoping people from giving their normal marines bigger bases and playing them as primaris marines.
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Sgt. Cortez 780957 10588177 wrote:
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the end. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
yes, but unless you play at home, you can't go in to a store where the owner knows you did not bought the codex for him, and pretend that you left the army book, CA etc at home, but you have those handy print outs with all the rules on them. It is also the reason why store owners don't like digital rules, even if they are original bought from GW. From their perspective it is wasted money, not much different from coming in with a recast army.
I would pay for either, but the current codexes are badly designed.
There need to be an index in the back, or the pages need to have cut outs so you can easily flip through, or colour coding etc.
I have to stick mini post it notes.
Either that or they need to make a quick reference codex just for rules and then have a special edition with all the fluff and art if you want it.
I don't mind the fluff and enjoy it occasionally, but it's a bit of a one off. I buy the codex for the rules and points. I would buy something better if it was available!
I'm not complaining about fluff in books. Quite the contrary, I love it. i just saying that the fluff in 40k books has always been of much inferior quality than the one in Fantasy Books.
Agreed. Some of my favourite warhammer fluff is from the 6th edition (I think) army books where the history presented was described from the point of view of the race itself.
So the description of, say, the events leading up to the Elven schism is very different between the High Elf and the Dark Elf books. In the Dark Elf account, Bel Shannar commits suicide after being shown that his incompetence will lead to the downfall of the elves and the remaining High Elf princes sabotage Malekith's trial in the sacred flame of Asuryan and are the ones who attack Malekith.
I do love a bit of fluff but rules should be free and not coming with a fluff padding/tax. If they absolutely have to charge for a codex/rules, there should be a 'codex light' option that's purely rules so that if I want to just get my army rules for £10 without any pictures, fluff or colourful depictions then I can do that. I've been playing the game for 20 years; I don't need to dole out an extra £15-£30 for fluff that's only minutely changed in the last 15 of that.
Absolutely fluff should be in the books. Most of the reasons have already been stated. It informs new players, gives armies character and sparks ideas for army and list themes.
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
They did do that with Knights when they were first released (6E) - one book that was pure lore, the other had the rules and stripped down lore. That it did not become the standard tells me it must not have sold very well.
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
They did do that with Knights when they were first released (6E) - one book that was pure lore, the other had the rules and stripped down lore. That it did not become the standard tells me it must not have sold very well.
No, it means they weren't making as much money from single sales of the fluff part. That's a massive difference.
This is just me theory-crafting, but:
Think about it. Most people bought a Knight kit because, let's be honest, it's one of the best kits ever that GW released. Of course if you want to use it for a game here and there, you want just the rules. Nobody cares about the fluff for Knights compared to AdMech/Skitarii and Genestealer Cults. Those have been in the background and people wanted to know more. We already know the basic tenets of Imperial Knights, so we just want the rules.
Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Don't even get me started on how bad the Chaos Knight release was. All that was needed was maybe 2 pages dedicated to rules and how to switch keywords, and then maybe an extra ten on the fall of Knights or how they became Renegades. What we have now is basically an insult if you think about it.
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Don't even get me started on how bad the Chaos Knight release was. All that was needed was maybe 2 pages dedicated to rules and how to switch keywords, and then maybe an extra ten on the fall of Knights or how they became Renegades. What we have now is basically an insult if you think about it.
Renegades was pretty weak overall, the new book is better, even if it's lacking some on the knights who serve individual gods.
I, personally, do not need fluff in my codices any more. I have been playing for multiple editions, and I just need some rules for my toys and can make my own stories.
But for new players, absolutely! that is one of the most exciting parts of getting into the game.
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Don't even get me started on how bad the Chaos Knight release was. All that was needed was maybe 2 pages dedicated to rules and how to switch keywords, and then maybe an extra ten on the fall of Knights or how they became Renegades. What we have now is basically an insult if you think about it.
Renegades was pretty weak overall, the new book is better, even if it's lacking some on the knights who serve individual gods.
They really could've handled that with 6 rules for the four Chaos Gods, unaligned, and more "renegade" Knights that function kinda like Freeblades I guess. I haven't bothered to really try and make that work though as I'm so preoccupied with my job and nobody playing anything in the proposed rules forum...why bother?
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Sorry my man I'd take 7th over 8th any day of the week.
