Im up to blood of baal in terms of reading the fluff in the PA books.
Was it me or was it a bit uninspired?
Several books setup scenarios and then simply left them completely hanging.
Others were a bit too imperium on the backfoot -> reinforcements come in from X -> battle turned.
And others had fairly dodgy premises for the fighting.
Are GW planning some sort of super final fluff book to tie this altogether or were the books simply background for setting scenarios or narrative missions to?
Yeah, so far the involvement of space marines basically deflated all narrative tension for me.
Blood of the Pheonix? TBH I couldn't care less about ynnari gak, so whatever.
Who's fighting? Oh, nids and BA? I know who wins.
Oh it's a big plot between the Thousand Sons and the GK and DA are trying to stop it? Already know who wins.
I am curious to see how The Greater Good goes, but I can already tell you which faction is going to win in War of the Beast and whatever one the Deathwatch end up in (probably spider war)
I gave up after the fantastic mix of plot holes, stupidity and mehness that was Phoenix Rising. That did not include any phoenix rising, falling or doing much else of note.
I think I sorta gave up on new fluff for me eldar a while ago, so I did not go into it with much excitement.
The price killed it with the models so it was sour very fast there ;(
Apple fox wrote: I think I sorta gave up on new fluff for me eldar a while ago, so I did not go into it with much excitement.
The price killed it with the models so it was sour very fast there ;(
You do realize you could've just bought the book itself, don't you? Or do you just need some excuse to keep going on about the box set?
Most campaign/supplement fluff has just been mustach twirling saturday morning cartoon villains verses the always underdog saturday morning cartoon hero that somehow manages to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat because plot armor. There is never anything at stake. Main characters are never in any danger. This shouldn't be new to anyone.
Ratius wrote: Im up to blood of baal in terms of reading the fluff in the PA books.
Was it me or was it a bit uninspired?
Several books setup scenarios and then simply left them completely hanging.
Others were a bit too imperium on the backfoot -> reinforcements come in from X -> battle turned.
And others had fairly dodgy premises for the fighting.
Are GW planning some sort of super final fluff book to tie this altogether or were the books simply background for setting scenarios or narrative missions to?
Its background.
I feel like GW should have been clearer that the PA stuff is all happening BEFORE where 40k is currently set. Its exploring what happened during the 100 years of the Indomitus Crusade after the rift opened. We know no more primarchs show up, theres no major character deaths or faction shifts etc. The fluff is only there to provide narrative hooks and such. 40k fluff has always been more about providing things to base ideas around than a consistent narrative.
Ratius wrote: Im up to blood of baal in terms of reading the fluff in the PA books.
Was it me or was it a bit uninspired?
Several books setup scenarios and then simply left them completely hanging.
Others were a bit too imperium on the backfoot -> reinforcements come in from X -> battle turned.
And others had fairly dodgy premises for the fighting.
Are GW planning some sort of super final fluff book to tie this altogether or were the books simply background for setting scenarios or narrative missions to?
Its background.
I feel like GW should have been clearer that the PA stuff is all happening BEFORE where 40k is currently set. Its exploring what happened during the 100 years of the Indomitus Crusade after the rift opened. We know no more primarchs show up, theres no major character deaths or faction shifts etc. The fluff is only there to provide narrative hooks and such. 40k fluff has always been more about providing things to base ideas around than a consistent narrative.
Is it? I was under the impression that the rift was causing more psykers to be created, hence "psychic awakening".
If its supposed to be between now and the fall of Cadia, GW really didn't do a good job of showing it. They could have at least said at the very beginning, when they were teasing it, that the books take place in the past, instead of leading people to believe that new stuff was going to happen and crazy warp stuff was on the way.
To be fair, most GW fluff for the last ten or twelve years has been underwhelming and uninteresting, since the end of 4E/early 5E. There's a serious lack of imagination and increasing emphasis on "and then they slew all their enemies righteously" or the like.
Same with the artwork increasingly looking like stuff out of Leagur of Legends or WoW.
Vaktathi wrote: To be fair, most GW fluff for the last ten or twelve years has been underwhelming and uninteresting, since the end of 4E/early 5E. There's a serious lack of imagination and increasing emphasis on "and then they slew all their enemies righteously" or the like.
Same with the artwork increasingly looking like stuff out of Leagur of Legends or WoW.
But didn't you hear? If you preferred a rich setting to a sub-par story-line you hate progress and improvement!
I think expecting *Good* Black Library is a bit much (although its a mistake I've made before) - but they used to be able to spin a narrative, even if it was just "remember this unit? remember this character? He's fighting that here".
The books describing the Damocles Gulf war at least... told a story? Sort of from outbreak to conclusion.
The fluff in PA1 by contrast is dire. Ynnari get ambushed by Slaanesh daemons. Ynnari get ambushed by Dark Eldar. Ynnari get ambushed by yet more dark eldar - again!. As usual for a dying race, loads of people die every paragraph with no obvious consequence (there may be infinite sub-dimensions containing infinite True Kin but not sure about everyone else.)
We get brief tour through the Craftworlds and Commorragh, say hello to some Harlequins and Corsairs only to set up and end a fight that... doesn't matter, because Saturday Morning cartoon villains will always be back next week.
The Gathering Storm books were better than this I think. Not dramatically better - but they had... something to them in a plot sense.
The main hook is the little side comments in all the books which may or may not hint at future releases. But yes, buying the books for the fluff would be a mistake.
I really liked the lead up story about the GSC for the Greater Good, there is a lot of potential in this book, I am maintaining low expectations but am still hopeful.
Rippy wrote: I really liked the lead up story about the GSC for the Greater Good, there is a lot of potential in this book, I am maintaining low expectations but am still hopeful.
Agreed the Tau based stories were actually interesting but when most of the books have no room for much else besides dozens of pages of slightly altered marine datasheets I guess they could not be bothered to write much fluff.
Rippy wrote: I really liked the lead up story about the GSC for the Greater Good, there is a lot of potential in this book, I am maintaining low expectations but am still hopeful.
Agreed the Tau based stories were actually interesting but when most of the books have no room for much else besides dozens of pages of slightly altered marine datasheets I guess they could not be bothered to write much fluff.
Yeah having three non-marine factions which are all mostly made up with nobodies will be interesting, a lot of good potential for interesting and fun stuff. Almost putting money on marines rocking up last minute to save the Guardsman though.
Vaktathi wrote: To be fair, most GW fluff for the last ten or twelve years has been underwhelming and uninteresting, since the end of 4E/early 5E. There's a serious lack of imagination and increasing emphasis on "and then they slew all their enemies righteously" or the like.
Same with the artwork increasingly looking like stuff out of Leagur of Legends or WoW.
But didn't you hear? If you preferred a rich setting to a sub-par story-line you hate progress and improvement!
Good thing it was never an either-or choice with GW. Setting was and still is as wide as atlantic and as shallow as Jervis's game balancing skills and the less said of the stories the better
I've only bought "Faith and Fury" and "Ritual of the Damned" Had F&F been good I might have been tempted to buy the others for the fluff but well....
yeah F&F was insanely weak. it didn't tell a story, it set up 3 fights that... I dunno GW COULD address later but likely won't. (unless they use a SOB focused PA book to return to said conflict)
Ritual of the damned was a little better, heck it's the makings of a decent BL story if you handed the events off to the right author.
I haven’t bought any of the PA books, yet, but from reading what everyone has said they sound like a total rip off and really GW should have put it all in one book. People seem to be getting little value from each one individually unless your desperate for some new rules to make your army more competitive
BrianDavion wrote: I've only bought "Faith and Fury" and "Ritual of the Damned" Had F&F been good I might have been tempted to buy the others for the fluff but well....
yeah F&F was insanely weak. it didn't tell a story, it set up 3 fights that... I dunno GW COULD address later but likely won't. (unless they use a SOB focused PA book to return to said conflict)
Ritual of the damned was a little better, heck it's the makings of a decent BL story if you handed the events off to the right author.
Not really since Ritual ended with "OH NO THEIR SPACE SHIPS HAVE ORBITAL LASERS WHO COULD HAVE FORESEEN THEM HAVING SUCH A WEAPON?"
Automatically Appended Next Post:
mrFickle wrote: I haven’t bought any of the PA books, yet, but from reading what everyone has said they sound like a total rip off and really GW should have put it all in one book. People seem to be getting little value from each one individually unless your desperate for some new rules to make your army more competitive
I'd be pretty pissed if I had to buy a €50 book to get 6-8 pages of rules (unless I play Space Marines). The way they've done them is much better unless you suffer from really severe FOMO or complitonism in which case its kind of on you.
I've only read F&F so far, and while there was a lot of moustache-twirling and deus-ex, I actually appreciate the open-ended nature of the story - they set up narrative hooks that allow narrative players like myself to feel like they are playing "in" that setting.
Contrast with Vigilus, which is "finished" (other than reports of smaller skirmishes), making the setting more of a future-history one. If you want to take part in the Vigilus setting, you're either fighting one of these current ancillary skirmishes, or you are playing a "historical" battle as part of a larger war that you already know the outcome of.
I liked how the Night Lords fluff in Faith and Fury depicted them as they should be: reavers luring ships into traps so as to loot and pillage them before dispatching their crews in heinous, bloody fashion. All while not relying on any daemonic crap.
Of course then the Space Mongolians show up and turn the tables because: SPACE MARINES!
Fething gw.
The story should have ended with the White Scars showing up to the asteroid field only to find a graveyard of derelict ships floating in a sea of frozen corpses. The Night Lords long gone, having accomplished their personal goals, and left the other Chaos warbands to their fate. Because they never gave a feth about their grand schemes in the first place.
But then the mighty space marines couldn't be portrayed as the rescuing Saturday morning cartoon heroes could they?
Apple fox wrote: I think I sorta gave up on new fluff for me eldar a while ago, so I did not go into it with much excitement.
The price killed it with the models so it was sour very fast there ;(
You do realize you could've just bought the book itself, don't you? Or do you just need some excuse to keep going on about the box set?
The models where most of the reason for my interest, the seperate book is a waste of money if I not even excited for what’s in it. Fairly clear.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I liked how the Night Lords fluff in Faith and Fury depicted them as they should be: reavers luring ships into traps so as to loot and pillage them before dispatching their crews in heinous, bloody fashion. All while not relying on any daemonic crap.
Of course then the Space Mongolians show up and turn the tables because: SPACE MARINES!
Fething gw.
The story should have ended with the White Scars showing up to the asteroid field only to find a graveyard of derelict ships floating in a sea of frozen corpses. The Night Lords long gone, having accomplished their personal goals, and left the other Chaos warbands to their fate. Because they never gave a feth about their grand schemes in the first place.
But then the mighty space marines couldn't be portrayed as the rescuing Saturday morning cartoon heroes could they?
honestly I felt the Night Lords vs White scars bit has some really intreasting potential, both are fighting in stelath based hit and run raid styles etc. it makes for a fun dynamic.
So has the Psychic Awakening actually resulted in some sort of change to the game with regards to psychic powers etc. The only rules I have seen are still very much around shooting, saves and buffs, stratagems etc. Any new awesome psychic powers revealed?
mrFickle wrote: So has the Psychic Awakening actually resulted in some sort of change to the game with regards to psychic powers etc. The only rules I have seen are still very much around shooting, saves and buffs, stratagems etc. Any new awesome psychic powers revealed?
Some factions have unlocked new psychic powers, but the campaign isn't about getting more psychic stuff so much as the human race (primarily) becoming more psychically active and the other factions having to deal with having stronger warp presences etc.
Gadzilla666 wrote: I liked how the Night Lords fluff in Faith and Fury depicted them as they should be: reavers luring ships into traps so as to loot and pillage them before dispatching their crews in heinous, bloody fashion. All while not relying on any daemonic crap.
Of course then the Space Mongolians show up and turn the tables because: SPACE MARINES!
Fething gw.
The story should have ended with the White Scars showing up to the asteroid field only to find a graveyard of derelict ships floating in a sea of frozen corpses. The Night Lords long gone, having accomplished their personal goals, and left the other Chaos warbands to their fate. Because they never gave a feth about their grand schemes in the first place.
But then the mighty space marines couldn't be portrayed as the rescuing Saturday morning cartoon heroes could they?
But the whole thing is set during the time when the Astartes were just starting to get primaris upgrades so of course they're going to feature heavily in the narrative.
Also, the fluff is about setting up theatres of war so you can have Your Dudes fight where ever you want and given that most people that play 40k play space marines (for some reason) they're going to have to be present all over the galaxy.
First book was a massive let down. Most of it was stuff I already knew, and I was very, very disappointed at how little there was anyway.
The others have improved. They're still not great, but there is a sense that something is being built toward. What that might be? I dunno. But suspense is something I for one enjoy.
I'm just hoping the capstone might be something like 9th Ed.
I think the problem is that the majority of PA seems to take place in the past and not the present, so by definition they can't do that much in the timeline that would affect anything too significantly in the present.
By far the worst of them is the Eldar PA book, as it actively regressed the Ynnari plotline by taking the 5th cronesword into Slaanesh's palace, thereby forcing them to have to resort to a galaxy wide Aeldari suicide pact in order to defeat Slaanesh at this point. This is underscored by the very poorly written fight with Shalaxi Hellbane, where you have the whole Ynnari crew fight her and basically get their asses handed to them until they win by the skin of their teeth and then goes full anime villain saying "That wasn't even my final form".
Ratius wrote: Im up to blood of baal in terms of reading the fluff in the PA books.
Was it me or was it a bit uninspired?
Several books setup scenarios and then simply left them completely hanging.
Others were a bit too imperium on the backfoot -> reinforcements come in from X -> battle turned.
And others had fairly dodgy premises for the fighting.
Are GW planning some sort of super final fluff book to tie this altogether or were the books simply background for setting scenarios or narrative missions to?
Its background.
I feel like GW should have been clearer that the PA stuff is all happening BEFORE where 40k is currently set. Its exploring what happened during the 100 years of the Indomitus Crusade after the rift opened. We know no more primarchs show up, theres no major character deaths or faction shifts etc. The fluff is only there to provide narrative hooks and such. 40k fluff has always been more about providing things to base ideas around than a consistent narrative.
Is it? I was under the impression that the rift was causing more psykers to be created, hence "psychic awakening".
If its supposed to be between now and the fall of Cadia, GW really didn't do a good job of showing it. They could have at least said at the very beginning, when they were teasing it, that the books take place in the past, instead of leading people to believe that new stuff was going to happen and crazy warp stuff was on the way.
carldooley wrote: Maybe it is a 'campaign' that will\can be resolved either with user submissions or at a GP (does GW do that anymore?)
I hope not.. i hated the last time... chaos vs the imperium... end result... killed Eldrad?
Didn't GW ignore the actual results and went with what they wanted?
yea, that was the point, asking for player input will unlikely affect the outcome and they will just do what they need to in order to keep things going.
next part is more for the OP here. It would be cool to get some changes going but how to do that without occasionally killing off a character that somebody loves? then if you do kill them off what happens to the model? do you give it legacy model status or stop selling it? a lot of tau and imperial guard should be dead by now, how is pask somehow everywhere in guard armies, is shadowsun being fed rejuvination treatments? Creed, Yarrick and Straken surely would have given to old age by now along with some of the inquisitors
Ratius wrote: Im up to blood of baal in terms of reading the fluff in the PA books.
Was it me or was it a bit uninspired?
Several books setup scenarios and then simply left them completely hanging.
Others were a bit too imperium on the backfoot -> reinforcements come in from X -> battle turned.
And others had fairly dodgy premises for the fighting.
Are GW planning some sort of super final fluff book to tie this altogether or were the books simply background for setting scenarios or narrative missions to?
Its background.
I feel like GW should have been clearer that the PA stuff is all happening BEFORE where 40k is currently set. Its exploring what happened during the 100 years of the Indomitus Crusade after the rift opened. We know no more primarchs show up, theres no major character deaths or faction shifts etc. The fluff is only there to provide narrative hooks and such. 40k fluff has always been more about providing things to base ideas around than a consistent narrative.
Is it? I was under the impression that the rift was causing more psykers to be created, hence "psychic awakening".
If its supposed to be between now and the fall of Cadia, GW really didn't do a good job of showing it. They could have at least said at the very beginning, when they were teasing it, that the books take place in the past, instead of leading people to believe that new stuff was going to happen and crazy warp stuff was on the way.
carldooley wrote: Maybe it is a 'campaign' that will\can be resolved either with user submissions or at a GP (does GW do that anymore?)
I hope not.. i hated the last time... chaos vs the imperium... end result... killed Eldrad?
Didn't GW ignore the actual results and went with what they wanted?
yea, that was the point, asking for player input will unlikely affect the outcome and they will just do what they need to in order to keep things going.
next part is more for the OP here. It would be cool to get some changes going but how to do that without occasionally killing off a character that somebody loves? then if you do kill them off what happens to the model? do you give it legacy model status or stop selling it? a lot of tau and imperial guard should be dead by now, how is pask somehow everywhere in guard armies, is shadowsun being fed rejuvination treatments? Creed, Yarrick and Straken surely would have given to old age by now along with some of the inquisitors
It’s fairly easy to have a huge campaign in the 40k universe dictated by user submissions. Even with repercussions on the setting if done with care and thought.
Every system can be important, and still be only small in a galaxy. Campaign could be a highlight peace each November over 4 years and still effect the setting as a whole only a small point.
Throw in some custom character's, no special ones In the game. Players can build from the normal charecter kits if they want. Could be a fun event
I feel like GW should have been clearer that the PA stuff is all happening BEFORE where 40k is currently set. Its exploring what happened during the 100 years of the Indomitus Crusade after the rift opened. We know no more primarchs show up, theres no major character deaths or faction shifts etc. The fluff is only there to provide narrative hooks and such. 40k fluff has always been more about providing things to base ideas around than a consistent narrative.
Whaaa? Is this definite? I thought it was set in current days?
If not that does certainly explain why it feels like a "narrative history story(ies)".
one thing is that no matter what the changes are, it's never eneugh, some people claim that chaos hasn't had any "signfcigent wins" for god's sake!
the great rift and imperium nihlus aside that's just silly.
Codex Death Guard basicly has the death guard destroying the Minotaur chapter's geneseed. this is a storied Marine chapter well known by the players, and featured in some FW books.
the Ultramar world of Iax, long described as a gem in the crown of Ultramar (the planet was first mentioned back in the 2nd edition ultramarines codex) gone..
but stuff like this people dismiss as "unimportant because it won't make a differance" nevermind that generally speaking 40k is too big a setting for victories for ANY side to make much differance to the greater scheme of things (and when those fights come up 99% of the time it'll lead to "a lot of people dying, everything of value at the target being destroyed, but nothing really changing" ya know.. grim dark
I don't know how popular an opinion it is, but I really don't like a lot of the directions that the fluff has been going in. Things like technological advancement and "hope" just do not sit right with me. I liked the decaying, horrible mess that was the Imperium. So I pretty much ignore everything after the 13th Black Crusade started.
Then again, I can just play games in my preferred time period and ignore all of the new stuff.
BrianDavion wrote: one thing is that no matter what the changes are, it's never eneugh, some people claim that chaos hasn't had any "signfcigent wins" for god's sake!
the great rift and imperium nihlus aside that's just silly.
Codex Death Guard basicly has the death guard destroying the Minotaur chapter's geneseed. this is a storied Marine chapter well known by the players, and featured in some FW books.
the Ultramar world of Iax, long described as a gem in the crown of Ultramar (the planet was first mentioned back in the 2nd edition ultramarines codex) gone..
but stuff like this people dismiss as "unimportant because it won't make a differance" nevermind that generally speaking 40k is too big a setting for victories for ANY side to make much differance to the greater scheme of things (and when those fights come up 99% of the time it'll lead to "a lot of people dying, everything of value at the target being destroyed, but nothing really changing" ya know.. grim dark
yeah it's almost like 99% of the literature outside of the various factions' codexes are books about loyalist space marine victories, that couldn't have anything to do with peoples' perceptions.
The minotaurs? Seriously? Can we not find a significant space marine defeat for any of the 15-20 chapters that currently have actual rules in the game to make your case, even tucked in to a codex for a bad guy marines chapter?
GW also looooves to make sure all the defeats/losses are stuff we've never heard of or stuff that's been briefly mentioned that's right NEXT to the big important thing, and all the wins are the named characters and chapters that exist in the game.
Oh no, not the minotaurs! Not the Knights of Blood! Not the world right next to fenris! Not the fifth moon of Ultramar! All these terrible imperial defeats! Chapter Master Slanglesmith, introduced 12 minutes ago, has perished horribly!
Automatically Appended Next Post: The heroes will always win in 40k. It's baked right into the fluff. Look at the fluff for every single one of the bad guy factions:
Necrons: When killed, they get warped back to the tomb world. This means named characters can die.
Chaos/Daemons: When killed, they can be recreated by the chaos gods whenever narratively conveneient. Named characters can die.
Tyranids: When killed, they can be respawned by the Hive Mind whenever convenient. Named characters can die.
Drukhari: When killed, they can be respawned by the Haemonculi. Named characters can die.
Orks: Ork Docs can revive orks who have been beheaded, bisected, chopped up or otherwise dispatched. Named characters can (effectively) die.
Genestealer Cults: Have no named characters, so they can just be totally disposable. however, the same character "tropes" spawn in each cult, meaning any number of primuses, maguses etc can be killed while changing nothing.
now the shiny happy good guy heroes:
Imperial Guard, Tau, Eldar, Space Marines: All cannot be brought back if they die, meaning they will basically only be killed when GW no longer wants to make their model, as was recently the case for color sargeant whatshisface, the most signficant imperial death of the entire fall of cadia saga.
the sole exception on the imperial side is Saint Celestine, making her the designated imperial whipping girl whenever we want to pump up a big baddie before they get their ass handed to them in single combat by a space marine.
Nailed it. the game has fundamentaly changed to Marines are heros and heros never die.
Having played since Rogue Trader came out, i saw it coming with the introduction of the named heros.
You can not be a wargame in a dark universe if the "heros" never die.
Its now the good guys always win.
Trickstick wrote: Oh Emperor, has the 40k plot become professional wrestling? I just have this weird Heel/Face idea in my head now.
I think the entire idea of 40k having "good guys" is stupid. Even at best they should be doing horrible things because they are forced to.
There is an obvious distinction between how gw treats factions with a heroic bright clean aesthetic vs the factions with an evil dark spiky aesthetic.
Which factions have "killable" named characters just highlights how suspenseless it makes the narratives they construct.
Its a bit like the star wars prequels or prequels in general. Oh god who is gonna win this fight, obi wan kenobi or Shlabooboo Glankledonk, bad guy ive never heard of?
I'm still annoyed about General Grievous. They introduced a cool character in III, and they kill him off. Ditto with Dooku. It was pretty unceremonious too.
Trickstick wrote: Oh Emperor, has the 40k plot become professional wrestling? I just have this weird Heel/Face idea in my head now.
I think the entire idea of 40k having "good guys" is stupid. Even at best they should be doing horrible things because they are forced to.
There is an obvious distinction between how gw treats factions with a heroic bright clean aesthetic vs the factions with an evil dark spiky aesthetic.
Which factions have "killable" named characters just highlights how suspenseless it makes the narratives they construct.
Its a bit like the star wars prequels or prequels in general. Oh god who is gonna win this fight, obi wan kenobi or Shlabooboo Glankledonk, bad guy ive never heard of?
Except that's not where the dramatic tension in.... jesus christ 99% of movies comes from. you know damn well that in most movies the protagionist isn't going to die. the intreasting point is HOW they get out of it. it's the same with novels. you don't go into a novel that is an ultramarines novel, and expect the novel to end with "rock falls and everyone dies" when gak like that happens, it's a suprise because it's outside the norm. we don't see Abaddon losing in the end in his novels eaither now do we?
Trickstick wrote: Oh Emperor, has the 40k plot become professional wrestling? I just have this weird Heel/Face idea in my head now.
I think the entire idea of 40k having "good guys" is stupid. Even at best they should be doing horrible things because they are forced to.
There is an obvious distinction between how gw treats factions with a heroic bright clean aesthetic vs the factions with an evil dark spiky aesthetic.
Which factions have "killable" named characters just highlights how suspenseless it makes the narratives they construct.
Its a bit like the star wars prequels or prequels in general. Oh god who is gonna win this fight, obi wan kenobi or Shlabooboo Glankledonk, bad guy ive never heard of?
Except that's not where the dramatic tension in.... jesus christ 99% of movies comes from. you know damn well that in most movies the protagionist isn't going to die. the intreasting point is HOW they get out of it. it's the same with novels. you don't go into a novel that is an ultramarines novel, and expect the novel to end with "rock falls and everyone dies" when gak like that happens, it's a suprise because it's outside the norm. we don't see Abaddon losing in the end in his novels eaither now do we?
I dunno man, I've been watching a lot of Tarantino recently. . .
The problem is they write stories around these named characters. They'd have a lot more freedom if they wrote about not-them. It would also make the universe feel larger, because not everything that's published would be about those same people.
Except that's not where the dramatic tension in.... jesus christ 99% of movies comes from. you know damn well that in most movies the protagionist isn't going to die.
Maybe in american movies. In asian and slavic cinema the main hero often ends up dead, dead inside or loses everything at the end of the movie. The how stuff happens, doesn't really matter that much. Everyone knows how the system grinds you down, don't even have to be an adult to know it. people want distinct heroes and villains , and realistic settings. And not the gulliman and primaris save everyone. that is why I liked the PA4. the imperials don't achive a thing, but lose draigo, stern and the new DA primaris captin.
This is why I really like the Ian Watson Space Marine book. the main characters are nobodies. They're just some kids who wind up as scouts and later marines. Two out of three don't make it, and the last remaining guy is not the most sympathetic of people. And overall it has zero bearing on the galaxy.
Also a Zoat pulls the head off one of them, which is great.
The point is that settings are larger than characters and shouldn't be constrained to them
And 40k is not a protagonist-led narrative. You aren't choosing between playing Voldemort or Harry Potter, you're choosing between playing a force of death eaters or Dumbledore's secret army.
40k is a game where you choose a faction to play. You aren't told when you look at what you want to get that 'those guys are the main characters and these guys are the mook chaff they pose on after slaughtering them'.
Each faction is sold to you as equal to the others. If GW wants to continue down this limited character centric path, they need to rebrand their game along those same lines and admit to people that their armies aren't equal and won't ever be treated as such.
The notional mortality of factions seems like a weird criticism because do any of the named characters from evil factions actually die?
I mean... "Evil Chaos Lord Dave" might die - but Ahriman doesn't. Tbf not bothered reading Evil Ritual book, so if he does this is a bad example, but I doubt it - and same for other named characters. Ghaz might *lose* at the close of the upcoming book, but I think there is a zero percent chance he ends up *dead*. In practice he won't even lose, rather just go *Zog this, I'm out.* Logically though he can't very easily win, because if he does then all the Space Wolves are dead. (I guess just some of them could be, but...)
The counter argument though is that... in grand meta terms, no, Chaos never does win. And yes, only something like Terra or Macragge matters. Because people vaguely care about them. I've vaguely invested in the Ulthwe Craftworld. I don't really care how many freshly invented Eldar Craftworlds are nomed by aliens or Slaanesh or Dark Eldar or whatever.
I mean... Chaos had Cadia for a few weeks, months. But look, RG is back now, and lo, the Imperium is bigger and badder than ever.
Yes its split by the rift - but that doesn't seem to matter. Chaos can conquer and raze ten trillion planets we have never heard of - or are small occasional mentions deep in the fluff - and so long as the Imperium can turn up with exactly the same resources (or in fact, better Primaris) next year, it doesn't matter. It doesn't impact the story because those planets might as well not exist. Chaos conquering them or not hasn't changed anything. We don't even get maps showing conquered Chaos territory - we just get "Chaos woz here, until it wasn't"
I mean I'm happy for GW to prove me wrong - but all those *is 40k a setting or a story" were in vain. Its a setting, we just moved the dial forward 100 years to allow for Imperial tech to improve a bit and gain some new characters.
The Eldar are still dying, the Tyranids are still on their way, the Necrons are still waking up, and both Orks and Chaos are bouncing round the galaxy krumping planets and then getting krumped by the Imperium as the plot demands.
I dunno man, I've been watching a lot of Tarantino recently. . .
The problem is they write stories around these named characters. They'd have a lot more freedom if they wrote about not-them. It would also make the universe feel larger, because not everything that's published would be about those same people.
More of an aside but I'd also like to see GW doting on special characters rulewise.
Watch GW throw a massive curveball in the future after all the PA books are done.
They put out a new campaign book. It has a huge prologue in which it details how all the major characters that aren’t in plastic kick the bucket from dying in battle or Rubicon failure. Some characters have heroic last stands while others are unceremoniously gutted.
Yeah, they absolutely are. Off the top of my head, kharn got killed in the last campaign where his model got released, magnus died in gathering storm, swarmlord died in his whole intro story, urien died in the last fluff piece I read with him in it...classic fluff conclusion to a story arc is the hero just barely prevailing over the bad guy.
Im gonna go with Karol on this one: it is narratively much more interesting if I don't know the main characters are going to make it at the end. Give me Pathologic over Assassin's Creed 12 please. GoT seasons 1-4 over 5-7.
Trickstick wrote: Oh Emperor, has the 40k plot become professional wrestling? I just have this weird Heel/Face idea in my head now.
I think the entire idea of 40k having "good guys" is stupid. Even at best they should be doing horrible things because they are forced to.
Oh god the wrestling comparison makes too much sense.
The Alpha Legion's whole deal is basically that Vince McMahon bit he did with Austin.
The Sanguinator basically RKO'd the Avatar.
The Blood Angel and Necrons tag teamed against the nids.
Now I just want Ghazkull to German Suplex a Knight and for Al'rahem to go all Iron Sheikh.
Ooooh! The Orks are the Dudey Boys, and Cypher is Edge! That makes Vulkan Dude Love, and the Russ is either Mankind or Cactus Jack? Robby is Kurt Angle
Trickstick wrote: Oh Emperor, has the 40k plot become professional wrestling? I just have this weird Heel/Face idea in my head now.
I think the entire idea of 40k having "good guys" is stupid. Even at best they should be doing horrible things because they are forced to.
There is an obvious distinction between how gw treats factions with a heroic bright clean aesthetic vs the factions with an evil dark spiky aesthetic.
Which factions have "killable" named characters just highlights how suspenseless it makes the narratives they construct.
Its a bit like the star wars prequels or prequels in general. Oh god who is gonna win this fight, obi wan kenobi or Shlabooboo Glankledonk, bad guy ive never heard of?
Except that's not where the dramatic tension in.... jesus christ 99% of movies comes from. you know damn well that in most movies the protagionist isn't going to die. the intreasting point is HOW they get out of it. it's the same with novels. you don't go into a novel that is an ultramarines novel, and expect the novel to end with "rock falls and everyone dies" when gak like that happens, it's a suprise because it's outside the norm. we don't see Abaddon losing in the end in his novels eaither now do we?
Outside of their proper novels (and even there, you have to be picky) I haven't seen good story/IP/fluff/lore come out of anything from Games Workshop in years. The entire Vigilus series was...well, fething dreadful when it came to storyline. The pieces of PA that I have read have been superficial drivel.
The feeling of "we're pumping out boring crap to make money" is extremely strong in every thing I'm seeing lately. You can feel the "must sell the following kits" just oozing out of every paragraph and sentence. Ham-fisted confrontations taking place solely because X and Y armies came up on the model release schedule and thus they have to be crammed into a conflict regardless of where/why, etc. etc. etc.
Codex writing and material has become steadily worse and worse since 2nd edition (probably still the high water mark for quality of writing/story/plot, etc.).
Maaaaan. Remember those cool teaser trailers with the Inquisitor and the spooky Eldar guy?
I was SO hyped for that. I thought there was gonna be some kind of wild narrative-follows-a-group-of-named-characters-through-various-warzones kinda deal, maybe add a few new characters for neglected factions pursuing them, and generally get a bit deeper into 40k than previously, as with vigilus, which was as far as I was concerned, kind of a re-hash of dark imperium with it's chaos vs imperium matchup + some other xenos. I really loved those teasers, and it feels like such a waste that they simply dropped them, with no comment about what they meant, especially with the whole "what is Psychic Awakening?" article that seems to be a meek response to how much it's been getting panned by fans.
Instead, we've been getting a Space Marine victory lap, more primaris marines and "oh crap, we make alien models, too?!!?!".
I just finished reading my copy of Ritual of the Damned, and the background was pretty damned banal I have to say, and there wasn't any artwork that caught my eye. I was also disappointed to find only a single battle scenario. I feel like I just paid EUR 35 for litanies, and combat doctrines, and some Primaris data sheets that I'm not going to use. As a narrative driven player, I'm feeling a bit of buyer's remorse now. :(
They already said in their own articles the PA books are codex upgrades for the factions. They simply lied about PA being a campaign or really story driven event. It was simply about selling power to shift books, that is all. The cake is a lie.
Ginjitzu wrote: I just finished reading my copy of Ritual of the Damned, and the background was pretty damned banal I have to say, and there wasn't any artwork that caught my eye. I was also disappointed to find only a single battle scenario. I feel like I just paid EUR 35 for litanies, and combat doctrines, and some Primaris data sheets that I'm not going to use. As a narrative driven player, I'm feeling a bit of buyer's remorse now. :(
Their narrative atm makes me wish for a nuclear winter.
Hellebore wrote: Imo any model special character should be postumous.
This. A hundred times this.
Give us a new Ragnar Blackmane model and at the end of Saga of the Beast, have Ghazghkull KILL HIM ! That would actually make these damn books worth reading. Honestly, I haven't read anything interesting from GW for at least 10 years, maybe more. Eldrad dying was somewhat surprising and cool, but of course it was retconned....
I want some bad guys winning ffs, because this is all getting REALLY stale.
Hellebore wrote: Imo any model special character should be postumous.
This. A hundred times this.
Give us a new Ragnar Blackmane model and at the end of Saga of the Beast, have Ghazghkull KILL HIM ! That would actually make these damn books worth reading. Honestly, I haven't read anything interesting from GW for at least 10 years, maybe more. Eldrad dying was somewhat surprising and cool, but of course it was retconned....
I want some bad guys winning ffs, because this is all getting REALLY stale.
Sadly, it seems like the only guys they're willing to kill are models OOP, as the recent DA Primaris Captain replaced Balthasar who was the original DA captain of that company who technically had a model in Dark Vengeance. Outside of that though, sadly we're in a state of 40k limbo for most SC's, which they have a ready made excuse with the f'ed up timeflow thanks to the Great Rift.
It just feels like no thought is being put into the lore-side of the entire series. There are no proper stakes, and no changes, just some WWWF style fights that lead nowhere. Except for a few rules I get from each book I have buyer's remorse from start to finish.
Eldarsif wrote: It just feels like no thought is being put into the lore-side of the entire series. There are no proper stakes, and no changes, just some WWWF style fights that lead nowhere. Except for a few rules I get from each book I have buyer's remorse from start to finish.
At least I can name all my models now...
yeah I mean if the lore was intreasting and good I'd happily buy the PA books for armies I don't have, but the lore is just weak
Hellebore wrote: Imo any model special character should be postumous.
This. A hundred times this.
Give us a new Ragnar Blackmane model and at the end of Saga of the Beast, have Ghazghkull KILL HIM ! That would actually make these damn books worth reading. Honestly, I haven't read anything interesting from GW for at least 10 years, maybe more. Eldrad dying was somewhat surprising and cool, but of course it was retconned....
I want some bad guys winning ffs, because this is all getting REALLY stale.
For all the fantastic writing GW have done over the years, the unbeatable plot armour of SC's frequently undermines it all. How many more times does Calgar need to be "on the brink of death" ?
Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models. Or at least done something interesting with them, like have them revolt or something. I remember at the start of 8th I wondered if Calgar would become embittered by daddy returning and taking all responsibility and glory away from him. Of course he didn't. He lined up for his Primaris upscaling and was happy to feature in a minor conflict Bobby couldn't be arsed to deal with.
Thinking aloud - the SW fan base would likely revolt if Ragnar was actually killed and removed from the fluff in the next PA. And therein lies the problem. Most people would like to see story progression, until it means their favourite character bites the bullet.
I mean, regardless of PA fluff, in the current lore and most recent timeline, shouldn't pretty much every IG character have died of old age if nothing else? I mean 'Sly Marbo' could be a moniker that a badass Catachan chooses to take up (if they have to keep him around) and Yarrick is basically an Ork so he will only die when they let him die. How are some of these other geriatrics still going?
Ultimately I think GW have misplaced 'progressing the timeline' with 'progressing the story/setting' and they seem confused on whether 40k is a setting or a story first. The only notable difference in the current 40k setting is the fact that Bobby G has returned and that's a stretch.
The setting and the overarching plot is still exactly the same as before the Great Rift. Humanity still exists in a careless, callous Imperium that's still 'one second to midnight'. Daemons still appear. Orks still WAAAAGGGHH! The Tau are still a young and naive race. The Eldar are still either perverts or virtually extinct. The Necrons are still waking up. The Tyranids are still just tendrils of something larger. Even the main players on stage are the same. Hasn't the timeline moved like hundreds of years (or is it thousands?) and GW didn't even have the cahones to kill off those characters that should have died anyways. They'd rather invent these stupid rationales for why these players are still on stage and haven't simply perished from old age. That should've told us all we need to know about how willing GW are to progress the 40k story and/or setting.
40k fluff has consistently gone downhill IMO for some time, I think it initially started with the change from necrons into space tomb kings (was mat ward to thank for that?). And then the cawl and primaris debacle made things worse. Only Necromunda and specialist games is consistently putting out great lore. I pretty much love everything about the re imagined Necromunda from its aesthetics to a new take on all the original gangs.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models. Or at least done something interesting with them, like have them revolt or something. I remember at the start of 8th I wondered if Calgar would become embittered by daddy returning and taking all responsibility and glory away from him. Of course he didn't. He lined up for his Primaris upscaling and was happy to feature in a minor conflict Bobby couldn't be arsed to deal with.
Thinking aloud - the SW fan base would likely revolt if Ragnar was actually killed and removed from the fluff in the next PA. And therein lies the problem. Most people would like to see story progression, until it means their favourite character bites the bullet.
I mean, regardless of PA fluff, in the current lore and most recent timeline, shouldn't pretty much every IG character have died of old age if nothing else? I mean 'Sly Marbo' could be a moniker that a badass Catachan chooses to take up (if they have to keep him around) and Yarrick is basically an Ork so he will only die when they let him die. How are some of these other geriatrics still going?
Ultimately I think GW have misplaced 'progressing the timeline' with 'progressing the story/setting' and they seem confused on whether 40k is a setting or a story first. The only notable difference in the current 40k setting is the fact that Bobby G has returned and that's a stretch.
The setting and the overarching plot is still exactly the same as before the Great Rift. Humanity still exists in a careless, callous Imperium that's still 'one second to midnight'. Daemons still appear. Orks still WAAAAGGGHH! The Tau are still a young and naive race. The Eldar are still either perverts or virtually extinct. The Necrons are still waking up. The Tyranids are still just tendrils of something larger. Even the main players on stage are the same. Hasn't the timeline moved like hundreds of years (or is it thousands?) and GW didn't even have the cahones to kill off those characters that should have died anyways. They'd rather invent these stupid rationales for why these players are still on stage and haven't simply perished from old age. That should've told us all we need to know about how willing GW are to progress the 40k story and/or setting.
I guess you hit the nail on the head.
in way though i think it is worse. it's the same stalemate we had before except supposedly even worse. ( i honestly think they should've killed off abbadon and replaced him with any other of the runners up.Huron is just more capable in many ways.)
Juvenat treatments. If you can afford it people in the Imperium can live for hundreds of years. Ciaphas Cain is about 200 but looks like hes in his 40s or 50s.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models. Or at least done something interesting with them, like have them revolt or something. I remember at the start of 8th I wondered if Calgar would become embittered by daddy returning and taking all responsibility and glory away from him. Of course he didn't. He lined up for his Primaris upscaling and was happy to feature in a minor conflict Bobby couldn't be arsed to deal with.
Thinking aloud - the SW fan base would likely revolt if Ragnar was actually killed and removed from the fluff in the next PA. And therein lies the problem. Most people would like to see story progression, until it means their favourite character bites the bullet.
I mean, regardless of PA fluff, in the current lore and most recent timeline, shouldn't pretty much every IG character have died of old age if nothing else? I mean 'Sly Marbo' could be a moniker that a badass Catachan chooses to take up (if they have to keep him around) and Yarrick is basically an Ork so he will only die when they let him die. How are some of these other geriatrics still going?
I think an even more pressing question for them (and many others) is 'how have they not died from some stray bullet or artillery shell or orbital laser or Tyranid plague or by damage/destruction of the spacecraft that was transporting them etc.?'
I know that some characters in 40k have effective immortality by some means or other but many - especially the human ones - don't.
I don't think you can have a grimdark setting where every named character has impenetrable plot-armour.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
Orks don't die of old age, they just keep growing stronger until killed.
You all hit upon the reason they should never have allowed named pre-made characters to be playable.
It used to require both players to agree to use those named guys.
They cant sell the special over priced figs if they die, so they wont die. Thus 40k becomes Hero hammer, heros never die.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
I think you missed my point. I'm not so much bothered by the fact that the 'normal' human characters have survived for so long in the setting. I'm more bothered by the fact that if GW keep telling the same story, in the same setting, with the same characters, nothing has changed. Like at all.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
Snikrot was actually killed of in a White Dwarf battle report (Battle of Glazer's Creek II).
I fully expect GW to ignore the fact that they did that, but still...
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
Snikrot was actually killed of in a White Dwarf battle report (Battle of Glazer's Creek II).
I fully expect GW to ignore the fact that they did that, but still...
"Boss" Snikrot seems very alive according to the last Ork codex. But did Glazer's Creek come after it?
Why are people so surprised that the Imperium wins? They are the defacto "good guys" in the story.
Do people really look at 40K as being some kind of high class science fiction? It's Marvel Comics in space at best, Saturday morning cartoons at worst. Neither of which is bad by the way.
An Actual Englishman wrote: Its a shame GW haven't taken the opportunity to kill off more of the special characters that have old or outdated models.
So let's start with Ghazghkull, Mad Dok Grotsnik, Badrukk, Zagstrukk and Snikrot - all fall under at least the "old" model category, for given values of old, and last I checked Orks didn't have an equivalent of rejuvenat to keep people alive.
I think you missed my point. I'm not so much bothered by the fact that the 'normal' human characters have survived for so long in the setting. I'm more bothered by the fact that if GW keep telling the same story, in the same setting, with the same characters, nothing has changed. Like at all.
When I started playing the game, it had basically been the same story for decades. Black Crusade = Fail, return to stage one and plan the next one.
Now we have primarchs returned, the galaxy is split in half. Hundreds of worlds have been lost, whole chapters were wiped out to the last man. We have new technology, new marines and old foes. The Eldar are changing and following a new banner and god.
Seems new and fresh to me. Again, don't look at 40K as some glorious A+++ quality scifi. It's cartoons at best. Enjoy it for what it is.
Togusa wrote: Why are people so surprised that the Imperium wins? They are the defacto "good guys" in the story.
Do people really look at 40K as being some kind of high class science fiction? It's Marvel Comics in space at best, Saturday morning cartoons at worst. Neither of which is bad by the way.
.
No I look at it as a game setting where the company sells you a faction of that setting and advertises them as all on an equal footing.
You can't have it both ways. It's either a setting where each faction is a threat and you have genuine neutral choice, or it's a narrative with protagonists and everyone else are mooks to kill.
So long as GW are honest in how they sell you the game I dont really care which one is true. But they have to choose because at the moment it's being developed as a narrative and sold as a setting.
Hellebore wrote: So long as GW are honest in how they sell you the game I dont really care which one is true. But they have to choose because at the moment it's being developed as a narrative and sold as a setting.
I don't think GW know what they want to sell the game as, genuinely. They go from pushing the setting to the narrative back to the setting again so quickly it's hard to keep up. It's like they want to be masters of both without realising that in mastering one they forgo the other.
that or they're just doing incremental changes in the setting with story elements and don't want to massivly change everything. which is the proper way to do it. which also answers why the Imperium wins so often in the stories. the IoM is the "champion of the status quo" a win for the Imperium is a win for changes not happening to the setting. so of course they win more often then not. and the higher the stakes, the more likely the IoM is to win.
Hellebore wrote: So long as GW are honest in how they sell you the game I dont really care which one is true. But they have to choose because at the moment it's being developed as a narrative and sold as a setting.
I don't think GW know what they want to sell the game as, genuinely. They go from pushing the setting to the narrative back to the setting again so quickly it's hard to keep up. It's like they want to be masters of both without realising that in mastering one they forgo the other.
I would be very interested to see some actual customer behaviour data on purchasing habits around this.
There's a lot of conventional wisdom about imperial being more popular, and arguments that support makes them popular.
What I'd be interested in is longevity of popularity, especially when it came to xenos armies. I think that the enthusiasm for an army will be affected by it being ignored and sidelined by GW while all their marketing materials promote imperial armies and marines.
I can see people originally choosing an army entirely on the perceived cool factor only to give up on it due to support apathy.
Whereas marine armies get continual material to consume, keeping their collectors happy for years and maintaining faction. Loyalty.
Basically to be faction/brand loyal in Warhammer for xenos armies is to be something of a hobby masochist, like a sports player refusing to change their gear brand despite no updated or replacement hear being offered for years at a time and they doggedly stick to worn out shoes. It is of course also a gradient amongst xenos armies over which is ignored more, but it's less noticeable than the quantity 9f stuff marines have chucked at them.
GW have actually already designed game around a one sided factionalism. Space Hulk made it clear that you were the marines and you tested your skill by seeing who could win with the marines the most. GW could easily do that with 40k. Everyone chooses a marine chapter as their avatar in the game. And people can buy every other army as a bargain bin bulk order of NPC mooks you use to fight each other...
Or you know, they could sell their factions as equal and actually supper them that way...
Didn't Creed get "lost" on Cadia? He was a named character, but I don't see him on BattleScribe anymore. Is there another datasheet that he can represent?
Ginjitzu wrote: Didn't Creed get "lost" on Cadia? He was a named character, but I don't see him on BattleScribe anymore. Is there another datasheet that he can represent?
last I heard he's like Tycho "dead but his rules are still in the codex"
BrianDavion wrote: that or they're just doing incremental changes in the setting with story elements and don't want to massivly change everything. which is the proper way to do it.
Why is this the 'proper way to do it'? There were some pretty big setting changes with End Times to AOS launch and that has swelled in popularity incredibly.
Perhaps now is the time to do things differently and with more innovation.
Hellebore wrote: So long as GW are honest in how they sell you the game I dont really care which one is true. But they have to choose because at the moment it's being developed as a narrative and sold as a setting.
I don't think GW know what they want to sell the game as, genuinely. They go from pushing the setting to the narrative back to the setting again so quickly it's hard to keep up. It's like they want to be masters of both without realising that in mastering one they forgo the other.
I would be very interested to see some actual customer behaviour data on purchasing habits around this.
Spoiler:
There's a lot of conventional wisdom about imperial being more popular, and arguments that support makes them popular.
What I'd be interested in is longevity of popularity, especially when it came to xenos armies. I think that the enthusiasm for an army will be affected by it being ignored and sidelined by GW while all their marketing materials promote imperial armies and marines.
I can see people originally choosing an army entirely on the perceived cool factor only to give up on it due to support apathy.
Whereas marine armies get continual material to consume, keeping their collectors happy for years and maintaining faction. Loyalty.
Basically to be faction/brand loyal in Warhammer for xenos armies is to be something of a hobby masochist, like a sports player refusing to change their gear brand despite no updated or replacement hear being offered for years at a time and they doggedly stick to worn out shoes. It is of course also a gradient amongst xenos armies over which is ignored more, but it's less noticeable than the quantity 9f stuff marines have chucked at them.
GW have actually already designed game around a one sided factionalism. Space Hulk made it clear that you were the marines and you tested your skill by seeing who could win with the marines the most. GW could easily do that with 40k. Everyone chooses a marine chapter as their avatar in the game. And people can buy every other army as a bargain bin bulk order of NPC mooks you use to fight each other...
Or you know, they could sell their factions as equal and actually supper them that way...
I completely agree with your expectations around purchasing habits but I think it's a bit off topic and you've kinda misunderstood me.
I don't think GW know if they want 40k to be this cool setting where anything can happen and we make up our own stories with our armies in this sandbox universe or whether they want it to be a story driven narrative such as the Horus Heresy. I don't think they can master both. If they want to be story driven, we need to see actual progression and change. By changes - I don't mean a big tear across the galaxy that changes the galactic map but otherwise nothing else, nor do I mean new units that just so happen to have been kept on ice for ten thousand years. I want to see the characters in the story develop or die and be replaced by others. I want to see the consequences of changes to the setting. Real things like the death of a known character, an Imperial civil war, the destruction or change of an entire faction, anything that breaks the status quo really.
This is what piqued my interest in 8th most. It seemed that there would, for the first time ever, be actual changes to the lore and/or the setting. I'm still waiting.
Ginjitzu wrote: Didn't Creed get "lost" on Cadia? He was a named character, but I don't see him on BattleScribe anymore. Is there another datasheet that he can represent?
last I heard he's like Tycho "dead but his rules are still in the codex"
I thought I'd heard Trazyn had "tee lo carbonited" his ass, but in terms of rules, I can't find him anywhere on BattleScribe.
Ginjitzu wrote: Didn't Creed get "lost" on Cadia? He was a named character, but I don't see him on BattleScribe anymore. Is there another datasheet that he can represent?
last I heard he's like Tycho "dead but his rules are still in the codex"
I can't find him anywhere on BattleScribe.
Creed got kidnapped by Trazyn, it was Colour Sergeant Kell who got killed.
About the character dying thing: If I remember the WM/H facts correctly, they evolved / changed / killed their main characters - witch was represented with different minis and profiles, but you could use all incarnations of a character legally, in terms of listbuilding and playing (ofc just one character with that name, not multiple incarnations at a time).
BrianDavion wrote: that or they're just doing incremental changes in the setting with story elements and don't want to massivly change everything. which is the proper way to do it.
Why is this the 'proper way to do it'? There were some pretty big setting changes with End Times to AOS launch and that has swelled in popularity incredibly.
Perhaps now is the time to do things differently and with more innovation.
.
yeah but there's a big risk of taking something people lvoed and destroying it by doing massive setting changes. for example, what if they did a massive change, had the Orks launch their greatWaagh. had Ghaz destroy a buncha worlds, and then get killed in a counter offense, Orks are then destroyed as a faction etc and GW's only response if you write them an email asking about the future of your army is "guess you should choose a new faction"?
Nibbler wrote: About the character dying thing: If I remember the WM/H facts correctly, they evolved / changed / killed their main characters - witch was represented with different minis and profiles, but you could use all incarnations of a character legally, in terms of listbuilding and playing (ofc just one character with that name, not multiple incarnations at a time).
The reason for suggesting they are all posthumous is it disentangles them from the current setting and means people aren't invested in their actions affecting the world As they already have.
The model can be enjoyed as a character and a unit but wirhout that dragging narrative weight that has IMO adversely affected the current setting.
BrianDavion wrote: that or they're just doing incremental changes in the setting with story elements and don't want to massivly change everything. which is the proper way to do it.
Why is this the 'proper way to do it'? There were some pretty big setting changes with End Times to AOS launch and that has swelled in popularity incredibly.
Perhaps now is the time to do things differently and with more innovation.
.
yeah but there's a big risk of taking something people lvoed and destroying it by doing massive setting changes. for example, what if they did a massive change, had the Orks launch their greatWaagh. had Ghaz destroy a buncha worlds, and then get killed in a counter offense, Orks are then destroyed as a faction etc and GW's only response if you write them an email asking about the future of your army is "guess you should choose a new faction"?
What? They don't need to squat a faction to be innovative or to do setting changes.
Couldn't they just replace all of the named datasheets with generic names? Like, instead of Azrael, just have a datasheet for a Chapter Master, with all of Azrael's rules. And every Dark Angels successor chapter can now have their own Azreal, while naming him whatever they please?
Instead of Commissar Yarrick, just allow Lord Commissars to buy Hero of Hades Hive, Iron Will, Power Field, storm bolter and power klaw for 65pts.
If they go that route they might as well scrap special characters all together and just allow you to build generic characters however you'd like. Sort of like in earlier editions, really.
That kind of a goes against the whole, no new model, no new rules. And no new rules for models we no longer make. If people could make their own characters, GW would either have to give options for the characters, or worse we end up like AoS where characters are stuck in big boxs of units, and if you take them you end up with 2-9 wasted models, just to get a characters.
BrianDavion wrote: that or they're just doing incremental changes in the setting with story elements and don't want to massivly change everything. which is the proper way to do it.
Why is this the 'proper way to do it'? There were some pretty big setting changes with End Times to AOS launch and that has swelled in popularity incredibly.
Perhaps now is the time to do things differently and with more innovation.
.
yeah but there's a big risk of taking something people lvoed and destroying it by doing massive setting changes. for example, what if they did a massive change, had the Orks launch their greatWaagh. had Ghaz destroy a buncha worlds, and then get killed in a counter offense, Orks are then destroyed as a faction etc and GW's only response if you write them an email asking about the future of your army is "guess you should choose a new faction"?
What? They don't need to squat a faction to be innovative or to do setting changes.
they don't need to but I've seen it happen in other games. what happens is that if they get into the pattern of "big exciting events" they need to keep making every event more exciting. and eventually that means factions dissapper. now 40k due to all the factions having their own mini's it's less likely, but still it's all too easy to destroy someone's fav part of the setting
Ginjitzu wrote: Didn't Creed get "lost" on Cadia? He was a named character, but I don't see him on BattleScribe anymore. Is there another datasheet that he can represent?
Creed is limited to Cadia. Select that regiment and he'll appear.
Creed isn't dead, and in fact they don't quite specify it was the necron who took him. I've read some wild speculation and who knows ? He may one day be back and we were played for fools all along.
No, but perhaps he should be. I mean if Black Library were to kill him off and the rules writers were to just rename the Lord Castellan Creed datasheet as a Lord Castellan, would the game be any worse off? Would Lazarus's model have sold any less if his datasheet had been named Inner Circle Primaris Master instead?
I mean, I suppose one could also argue that the rules are fine, and that it's me who should just say that my Inner Circle Primaris Master is called Ted, but for rules purposes, he's using the Lazarus datasheet.
Either way, nothing about the rules should hold back the fiction from letting characters die, but it does, and the fiction is suffering from it.
I mean, would the game be any worse off if they just got rid of all named characters ? If they had a robust build a leader, probably not.
The model has been sold for a long time, some people like their named characters and have used them in lots of games, Creeds one of them. Could you use him as a standard commander ? Sure you could but some people like their named characters why should guard be the ones that sacrifice their characters where other factions just live forever seemingly ?
They either need to make it like game of thrones and give most named characters a real problem staying alive or keep them around past death for those who love them still.
The issue is GW are consistently inconsistent with how they handle these things but I always am against people losing their characters or tools in their respective tool boxes. Just for the sake of narrative, which really has been really meh for awhile now. Especially when it was always about the setting before and less flowing stories that constantly evolved and had to keep moving forward.
Frankly nothing is worse than them moving it all forward and writing themselves into a corner because they don't have one unified vision. Which for GW I'm worried for because they can't even keep parity with army rules in communication let alone have a set goal for story aims.
AngryAngel80 wrote: why should guard be the ones that sacrifice their characters where other factions just live forever seemingly ?
I was just using Creed and Lazarus as examples. I think they should get rid of all named characters; from the datasheets I mean, the lore is something entirely different.
I don't think renaming the Tor Garadon datasheet would take anything away from Tor Garadon the character, after all, one could still name their Brother Captain, Tor Garadon and lose nothing. All of which is small beans of course, because the logic works both ways, but still...
Yeah killing characters just to kill them is cheap but sometimes they can have a huge impact used a bit more than it currently is in 40k.
I mean if they are going to kill off named characters that's fine but do it across the spectrum and not just to non space marines, which I feel like would happen more. As well I'd not care if they got rid of them in model form so long as they give you ability to make the same abilities in character form so the interesting game mechanics are still there even if its not creed creed for instance.
BrianDavion wrote: killing characters is, honestly cheap, it has some inital shock value but eventually people just kinda shrug. GOT taught us that
In some settings and stories that's undoubtedly true.
But 40k is a Grimdark setting that emphasises the enormity of the galaxy and the threats to humanity. Few other works - even galaxy-spanning ones like Star Wars - have anything on 40k's sheer scale, where billions of lives are fed into the meat-grinder just to keep humanity alive for a little longer. You have hive fleets that devour entire worlds, you have Necron invaders that can appear from nowhere and gradually reduce the surface of a planet to dust, you have weapons that can destroy entire worlds outright, you have chaos daemons that can corrupt people and turn them into twisted abominations, you have immense titans doing battle with one another on the surface of contested worlds.
This is a setting where life is supposed to be incredibly cheap and where you could die a gruesome death at any time from any of a thousand different (but equally horrifying) means.
However, this is completely undermined by the myriad of heroes all running about with impervious plot-armour.
40k is a setting where heroes should not only die - they should regularly die meaningless and inglorious deaths.
AngryAngel80 wrote: Yeah killing characters just to kill them is cheap but sometimes they can have a huge impact used a bit more than it currently is in 40k.
I mean if they are going to kill off named characters that's fine but do it across the spectrum and not just to non space marines, which I feel like would happen more. As well I'd not care if they got rid of them in model form so long as they give you ability to make the same abilities in character form so the interesting game mechanics are still there even if its not creed creed for instance.
They do kill non-Sm characters. All the time. As I pointed out in another thread - every non-"Good guy" faction in the game has some kind of resurrection mechanic, and GW does make use of it to kill them off. Daemons and chaos characters are just "banished" when killed. Drukhari can be resurrected. Tyranids can be rebirthed. Etc.
BrianDavion wrote: killing characters is, honestly cheap, it has some inital shock value but eventually people just kinda shrug. GOT taught us that
In some settings and stories that's undoubtedly true.
But 40k is a Grimdark setting that emphasises the enormity of the galaxy and the threats to humanity. Few other works - even galaxy-spanning ones like Star Wars - have anything on 40k's sheer scale, where billions of lives are fed into the meat-grinder just to keep humanity alive for a little longer. You have hive fleets that devour entire worlds, you have Necron invaders that can appear from nowhere and gradually reduce the surface of a planet to dust, you have weapons that can destroy entire worlds outright, you have chaos daemons that can corrupt people and turn them into twisted abominations, you have immense titans doing battle with one another on the surface of contested worlds.
This is a setting where life is supposed to be incredibly cheap and where you could die a gruesome death at any time from any of a thousand different (but equally horrifying) means.
However, this is completely undermined by the myriad of heroes all running about with impervious plot-armour.
40k is a setting where heroes should not only die - they should regularly die meaningless and inglorious deaths.
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
BrianDavion wrote: killing characters is, honestly cheap, it has some inital shock value but eventually people just kinda shrug. GOT taught us that
In some settings and stories that's undoubtedly true.
But 40k is a Grimdark setting that emphasises the enormity of the galaxy and the threats to humanity. Few other works - even galaxy-spanning ones like Star Wars - have anything on 40k's sheer scale, where billions of lives are fed into the meat-grinder just to keep humanity alive for a little longer. You have hive fleets that devour entire worlds, you have Necron invaders that can appear from nowhere and gradually reduce the surface of a planet to dust, you have weapons that can destroy entire worlds outright, you have chaos daemons that can corrupt people and turn them into twisted abominations, you have immense titans doing battle with one another on the surface of contested worlds.
This is a setting where life is supposed to be incredibly cheap and where you could die a gruesome death at any time from any of a thousand different (but equally horrifying) means.
However, this is completely undermined by the myriad of heroes all running about with impervious plot-armour.
40k is a setting where heroes should not only die - they should regularly die meaningless and inglorious deaths.
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
Too far in either direction is bad. If everyone is constantly dieing then people never have a chance to become attached to characters. If no one ever dies then there's no tension and everything is meaningless.
My favorite bl series is ADB's Night Lords trilogy. If Talos and the boys had lived in the end it would have taken away that feeling of csm fighting for a bitter, hopeless cause. It wouldn't have been as satisfying. There needs to be a balance.
I've heard the opposite complaint about GOT way more often - that the story in the later season became driven by the characters rather than the characters being driven by the setting.
An ideal example of that would be Princess Natalie Dormer, who over the course of the show went from "hot seducey lady trying to get with various kings" to a kind of virginal saint type character when the fires of religious fanaticism were being whipped up in the capital.
Geopolitical forces being bigger than individual heroes was 100% of the initial appeal of GOT and people only tired of it when it went back to the safe fantasy territory of Great Man Theory.
That absolutely also applies to 40k. Part of the appeal of the setting is that the greatest bad-assest heroes of the settings are all fundamentally caught up in this vast system. The age of great heroes has come and gone and all that's left of the greatest hero of mankind is a molding corpse in a chair kept technically alive by continuously escalating sacrifice. The biggest baddest daemon heroes are ultimately puppets of the chaos gods.
At the risk of getting sidetracked, the GoT writers have admitted that they started to write the characters around the actors, in order to show them off.
My main complaint (out of many mind you) was that characters started to have ludicrous levels of plot armour in that show. I would have loved it if in the big battle with loads of characters, half of them would have died in the first five seconds because they were at the front. That sort of mass death can be very impactful.
Imagine if you could mirror a pre-battle planning scene with a post-battle recovery scene, but with so many places unfilled because of all the dead characters. I don't know if you could pull something like that off in 40k though, it seems better suited to the screen.
Trickstick wrote: At the risk of getting sidetracked, the GoT writers have admitted that they started to write the characters around the actors, in order to show them off.
This happens in everything, because people like characters more than a setting, and typically can't disassociate "characters" from the actors playing them on TV.
Not really sure I'd say GoT's claim to fame was geopolitics>characters - certain characters had "plot armour" from the start. The issue is that it was vaguely well written, rather than "uh... we want this scene, not sure how to get there, just film it anyway, no one watches for the dialogue or plot or anything but CGI fighting CGI."
Which is why I'm not sure how killing people off helps anything.
I can understand people thinking its ridiculous that Cato Sicarius single handedly kills three C'Tan while surf-boarding an Avatar of Khaine.... but if he - and everyone else - had a 50/50 chance to die every story, the results just going to you don't care about anyone, because everyone will be toast in two years at most.
I mean lets say in GoT they properly cleaned house of all the main characters at some point in seasons 5/6. No Dany, Jon, Tyrion, Sansa, Arya etc. They are all dead, and we are now following the adventures of... random new person from the North, and the South, and the East and whatever for a few years. It might be good, it might be bad, but most likely you are just alienating your fan base to no gain.
It was like when they killed off Eldrad. The collective (such as it was) cry of Eldar players was "wot?" Eldrad was essentially... our guy. The only Eldar character to have had any significant writing, popping up in White Dwarfs etc. Yes there was the Phoenix Lords but they were never really given much beyond being Exarch+1s.
It didn't take the wider 40k story or Eldar story/faction or other characters forward. You were not left thinking "wow, 40k is Grimdark, anything can happen." It just made Eldar into a faceless NPC faction. And as a result very unsurprisingly it got almost immediately retconned.
I mean everyone has their views though. I hate Vect for instance - although I know other DE fans love him. I think he's a tedious narrative black hole that prevents anything interesting storywise happening to the Dark Eldar. The result has been no special characters, no data entries, and a slow devolution of the story to "what's Vect doing? Nothing, but, uh, just as planned?" I can see much more fun with a grab bag of dukes and ladies and marquises jostling for power. (This might change if Vect got a super cool model, but its been decades, its not happening.)
BrianDavion 785394 10721379 wrote:
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
I don't get why people think that got had too many character kills, durning the Xth-XIth century in middle europe worse stuff happened. siblings killing each other, mothers druging children from other wifes, sons castrating fathers. Kings invited to peace meetings, running nude from assassins from a sauna being caught by peasents and getting nailed to the gate door. Women that were ex wifes of dukes drawn nude through the streets of capital while being whipped durning winter. And then their fathers and family starting a litteral civial war that even the king and his army couldn't stop. And later on the monogls came and burned city after city, killed Henry the Second, and mounted his head on a spike. started the siege of his capital in legnica, with defenders being led by his wife. And it only stoped because the mongolian leader died and they had to go back for new leader election. and this is just 150 years, before that people were less civilised and there were purges of entire populations.
BrianDavion 785394 10721379 wrote:
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
I don't get why people think that got had too many character kills, durning the Xth-XIth century in middle europe worse stuff happened. siblings killing each other, mothers druging children from other wifes, sons castrating fathers. Kings invited to peace meetings, running nude from assassins from a sauna being caught by peasents and getting nailed to the gate door. Women that were ex wifes of dukes drawn nude through the streets of capital while being whipped durning winter. And then their fathers and family starting a litteral civial war that even the king and his army couldn't stop. And later on the monogls came and burned city after city, killed Henry the Second, and mounted his head on a spike. started the siege of his capital in legnica, with defenders being led by his wife. And it only stoped because the mongolian leader died and they had to go back for new leader election. and this is just 150 years, before that people were less civilised and there were purges of entire populations.
Because fiction is not reality.
In real life, there are no characters or heroes. In a story, you want readers to learn about and become emotionally invested in the characters, and if you kill them repeatedly then people don't form attachments.
That said, i think 40k should stick to a setting and not a narrative. It's a wargame, and the story is about Katherine's plastic soldiers versus [Katherine's Friend's] plastic soldiers, not whatever grand narrative involves heroes.
BrianDavion 785394 10721379 wrote:
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
I don't get why people think that got had too many character kills, durning the Xth-XIth century in middle europe worse stuff happened. siblings killing each other, mothers druging children from other wifes, sons castrating fathers. Kings invited to peace meetings, running nude from assassins from a sauna being caught by peasents and getting nailed to the gate door. Women that were ex wifes of dukes drawn nude through the streets of capital while being whipped durning winter. And then their fathers and family starting a litteral civial war that even the king and his army couldn't stop. And later on the monogls came and burned city after city, killed Henry the Second, and mounted his head on a spike. started the siege of his capital in legnica, with defenders being led by his wife. And it only stoped because the mongolian leader died and they had to go back for new leader election. and this is just 150 years, before that people were less civilised and there were purges of entire populations.
Because fiction is not reality.
In real life, there are no characters or heroes. In a story, you want readers to learn about and become emotionally invested in the characters, and if you kill them repeatedly then people don't form attachments.
That said, i think 40k should stick to a setting and not a narrative. It's a wargame, and the story is about Katherine's plastic soldiers versus [Katherine's Friend's] plastic soldiers, not whatever grand narrative involves heroes.
Well said. If you want 40k narratives go to Black Library, not your fething codex.
That is not true at all. Throughout history there are countless people who are heroes. Sure, it's just because they are the ones that happened to survive; no one remembers the people who randomly die before they do something great. Even if it is just blind luck that someone was in the right place and didn't get shot somehow, that's how you become a hero.
BrianDavion 785394 10721379 wrote:
and how long can they keep that up before people stop giving a gak? if you over do the "LOL GRIM DARK NO HOPE LOL" you go to grimderp where no one cares and it becomes a cliche parody. (see all the jokes about GOT's killing characters off)
I don't get why people think that got had too many character kills, durning the Xth-XIth century in middle europe worse stuff happened. siblings killing each other, mothers druging children from other wifes, sons castrating fathers. Kings invited to peace meetings, running nude from assassins from a sauna being caught by peasents and getting nailed to the gate door. Women that were ex wifes of dukes drawn nude through the streets of capital while being whipped durning winter. And then their fathers and family starting a litteral civial war that even the king and his army couldn't stop. And later on the monogls came and burned city after city, killed Henry the Second, and mounted his head on a spike. started the siege of his capital in legnica, with defenders being led by his wife. And it only stoped because the mongolian leader died and they had to go back for new leader election. and this is just 150 years, before that people were less civilised and there were purges of entire populations.
Because fiction is not reality.
In real life, there are no characters or heroes. In a story, you want readers to learn about and become emotionally invested in the characters, and if you kill them repeatedly then people don't form attachments.
That said, i think 40k should stick to a setting and not a narrative. It's a wargame, and the story is about Katherine's plastic soldiers versus [Katherine's Friend's] plastic soldiers, not whatever grand narrative involves heroes.
Sure, Alexander The Great, Ghengis Khan, Caeser, Boudicca, Musashi Miyamoto, Charlemange, Christopher Lee, Rasputin, Wu Zetian, Cleopatra and many more besides were all just utter nobodies. Nothing compelling or interesting about them at all.
and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
The thing is that 40k has precedent for people enjoying it with out special characters.
It was only after 3.5 Ed and the explosion of black library that GW started pushing characters in the game more.
As form eldrad's death the issue with that was one of factional imbalance. He was one of very few Eldar characters, while marines had dozens and were in no danger of losing any of them.
The irony with tying the story to your characters is that it can't advance without them being around. They literally become the hub on which the story turns.
When before people could make their own chapter master for the Ultramarines, now they can only do it historically because Calgar will never die.
Those factions are now frozen in time, rehashing the same stories with the same characters.
There have been dozens of chapter masters and there will be dozens more. But we will never get them.
Similarly there are dozens of potential non imperial characters out there but GW doesnt make them so the storyline threads all fall back onto individual characters.
When the imperium takes action, you have a huge range of characters to divvy up the work to. When the Eldar do something, it's always Eldrad, or now yvraine. Part of the reason people generated anti Eldrad memes is because he is everywhere doing everything. And why? Because GW wanted character driven narrative and they also didn't want to expand the non imperial faction character lists out to spread load.
Like the token women in an action movie, they are left representing every character trope for their Demographic and often generate backlash at all the skills they are required to carry as a result.
Large chunks of 40k are now locked into being unchanged because of the existence of undying characters and believability starts diving.
There have been some characters created with narrative immortality like the Phoenix lords. But that feature was balanced in their narrative by being wanderers, not really affecting their racial narrative and showing up only at fated battles. In that space them not dying is irrelevant and it builds out of a mythos that make sense. The tragedy of their resurrections also feeds into this.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
Lord Solar Macharius is hardly a Mary Sue.
Although the term is often misused these days. A true Mary Sue is supposed to be perfect to the point of absurdity. Sometimes people use the term even for characters that have failures and decent development arcs, just because they do cool things and are quite powerful.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
You're joking right?
not really, sometimes truth is stranger then fiction. hell I once remember a forward to a WE Johns story where he outright said "one of the things that happens in this book I would never have written about dismissing it as unrealistic bs, except I met a guy who it actually happened too"
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
You're joking right?
not really, sometimes truth is stranger then fiction. hell I once remember a forward to a WE Johns story where he outright said "one of the things that happens in this book I would never have written about dismissing it as unrealistic bs, except I met a guy who it actually happened too"
No I meant you were joking about gw basing characters on some of those people or elements of them. You know they've already done that right? Macharius is Alexander the Great. Guilliman borrows from Caesar. Jaghatai Khan. C'mon.
BrianDavion wrote: killing characters is, honestly cheap, it has some inital shock value but eventually people just kinda shrug. GOT taught us that
No. Killing cheap characters is cheap. Killing well established, important characters can add huge emotional intrigue to a story. See Ensign Haskell vs Mufasa.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
You're joking right?
not really, sometimes truth is stranger then fiction. hell I once remember a forward to a WE Johns story where he outright said "one of the things that happens in this book I would never have written about dismissing it as unrealistic bs, except I met a guy who it actually happened too"
No I meant you were joking about gw basing characters on some of those people or elements of them. You know they've already done that right? Macharius is Alexander the Great. Guilliman borrows from Caesar. Jaghatai Khan. C'mon.
people accuse Gulliman of being a Mary Sue and the other two names you mentioned are in the background and not the foreground. (BTW I'd argue Gulliman is more augustus then Julius ceaser in background, agreed?)
Technically, a Mary Sue should be an introduced character and proxy for the author, whom continually outshines the established characters, while only ever incurring the admiration of said characters. Also, Mary Sue actually tends to die at the end, which flies in the face of what many of us are complaining about regarding modern 40k.
Either way, even if we agree to a much broader definition of Mary Sue, as someone without any character flaws, I don't think it's fair to characterize Guilliman is one. Guilliman seems to draw a lot of ire simply for being competent, and sane in a galaxy of balls-to-the-wall lunatics.
And no, I'm not an Ultramarine fanboy; always hated their blue armour.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
You're joking right?
not really, sometimes truth is stranger then fiction. hell I once remember a forward to a WE Johns story where he outright said "one of the things that happens in this book I would never have written about dismissing it as unrealistic bs, except I met a guy who it actually happened too"
No I meant you were joking about gw basing characters on some of those people or elements of them. You know they've already done that right? Macharius is Alexander the Great. Guilliman borrows from Caesar. Jaghatai Khan. C'mon.
people accuse Gulliman of being a Mary Sue and the other two names you mentioned are in the background and not the foreground. (BTW I'd argue Gulliman is more augustus then Julius ceaser in background, agreed?)
So the Emperor is Caesar and Gulliman is Augustus? Yeah I see it.
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Ginjitzu wrote: Technically, a Mary Sue should be an introduced character and proxy for the author, whom continually outshines the established characters, while only ever incurring the admiration of said characters. Also, Mary Sue actually tends to die at the end, which flies in the face of what many of us are complaining about regarding modern 40k.
Either way, even if we agree to a much broader definition of Mary Sue, as someone without any character flaws, I don't think it's fair to characterize Guilliman is one. Guilliman seems to draw a lot of ire simply for being competent, and sane in a galaxy of balls-to-the-wall lunatics.
And no, I'm not an Ultramarine fanboy; always hated their blue armour.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
You're joking right?
not really, sometimes truth is stranger then fiction. hell I once remember a forward to a WE Johns story where he outright said "one of the things that happens in this book I would never have written about dismissing it as unrealistic bs, except I met a guy who it actually happened too"
No I meant you were joking about gw basing characters on some of those people or elements of them. You know they've already done that right? Macharius is Alexander the Great. Guilliman borrows from Caesar. Jaghatai Khan. C'mon.
people accuse Gulliman of being a Mary Sue and the other two names you mentioned are in the background and not the foreground. (BTW I'd argue Gulliman is more augustus then Julius ceaser in background, agreed?)
So the Emperor is Caesar and Gulliman is Augustus? Yeah I see it.
Actually I'd say his adoptive father Kornor was more Caeaser. Powerful beloved leader of the people? check. Slain by a rival who resented his growing power and authority? check. his adoptive son and heir initiates a campaign of vengence against the killer, and then ends up as the uncontested leader of the people? check and check.
In real life, there are no characters or heroes. In a story, you want readers to learn about and become emotionally invested in the characters, and if you kill them repeatedly then people don't form attachments.
That said, i think 40k should stick to a setting and not a narrative. It's a wargame, and the story is about Katherine's plastic soldiers versus [Katherine's Friend's] plastic soldiers, not whatever grand narrative involves heroes.
we are very attached to people being killed, every city has at least one monument to people that got shot by Russians or the Nazis, and for bigger cities, there are more, and there are plates on houses to comemorate slaughters of civilians, plus we have nationalist fest. In families people remember to purges and people that died 50-60 years ago too, and we have to go to light candles on their graves on the dates of their birthdays, the day they died and on the day of all saints.
In school everyone has to read books about the various massacers, wars etc.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
If they did it right no one. Most of histories notable people are as known for their failures and short comings as their great deeds and accomplishments. You can make a long narrative of a characters rise, success, failures and eventual deaths. How grand would stories be of those like Caesar , Napoleon , Boudica was mentioned by someone. What good are the stories of historic figures without their failures as well ? Just because someone rises far doesn't mean they don't fall equally far based on pride, age, making mistakes, bad luck a combination of all of them. That is what makes those historic figures interesting, memorable and strong in their ways yet human in their short comings and ends.
GoT started to jump the shark and just kill people for no reason, seemingly out of no where for no real gain. Go beyond the call to make Mary Sues, then have someone do what you expected someone else to accomplish just to be like " Didn't see that coming did ya ? " They made the characters act out of character for no reason than to die, or make mistakes or lord knows why. There was a myriad of reasons why people began to dislike the series and it wasn't because people were dying too much.
Most 40k characters end up like Mary Sues because the writers are bad at letting a story start, move and end.
Like for instance, I have said I like Creed. If he had died in the fluff, I would have hated it but I felt he had a suitable last stand, as any good hero should. He would have died with his men fighting till the last and such an end is a good thing. He didn't though he was instead left more vaguely on the back burner to be " Will he be back ? " We don't know. Will they found a new Cadia somewhere ? Who knows. Kells death was fitting for his character and for the most part they did a good job making it a grim dark battle where you cared as much as you could in the characters involved and the losses moved the story. Character death however isn't the only thing to drive a story and warhammer is much more interesting as a setting with history and heroes and a living feeling to the worlds.
It works best, for me, as settings and their layered stories and times past, current and future to war over.
So they can be amazing characters and live and die like historic ones and not be mary sues, though I feel like the setting is by far more riveting than the random big name in it.
I also get the feeling that there are large doses of both Constantine and Justinian in there. The whole Imperium Secundus this seems very similar to the eastern Roman empire and the founding of Contstantinople by Constantine. Also, Guilliman returning to Terra in recent times feels a bit like Justinian's attempts to reconquer the western empire. Justinian's lead general was even called Belisarius!
Guilliman seems to be an amalgam of many different Roman ideas. Things like the Ultramarines being the 13th legion, which was the legion with which Caesar crossed the Rubicon. I'm sure there are many more.
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
Those guys? Nah. They all had quite major flaws.
Now Admiral Yi on the other hand? Total marty stu!
BrianDavion wrote: and if GW ever took the achomplishments of any of those characters, wrapped it up in a 40k char and sold us the story how many people here would be screaming "mary sue"?
Those guys? Nah. They all had quite major flaws.
Now Admiral Yi on the other hand? Total marty stu!
ohh come on! Alexander was an uber talented guy who conquered the entire world by time he was 30, he was young, and gay, and died a tragic death, and was remembered forever more as the greatest conquerer ever, I mean he reads like a marty stu in a badly written slash fic! (... and after typing that I will never look at him the same way again lol)
I also get the feeling that there are large doses of both Constantine and Justinian in there. The whole Imperium Secundus this seems very similar to the eastern Roman empire and the founding of Contstantinople by Constantine. Also, Guilliman returning to Terra in recent times feels a bit like Justinian's attempts to reconquer the western empire. Justinian's lead general was even called Belisarius!
Guilliman seems to be an amalgam of many different Roman ideas. Things like the Ultramarines being the 13th legion, which was the legion with which Caesar crossed the Rubicon. I'm sure there are many more.
interesting, I wonder why a byzantian general durning the time of the wretched teodora would have a slavic name, meaning the white tzar.
