Yes, it’s a lesser spotted Grump from yours’ truly. And it’s about 9th Ed Codexes.
Basically? Where the background for units, both new and old? I mean, the majority of them have background already. So writing up some interesting stuff for the new is hardly a massive undertaking.
For my beloved Necrons, I’ve three new flavours of Destroyers I know little about. Ophydian, Skorpekh and Hexmark. All I get is a tiny blurb on their unit entry.
Frankly, it’s just not good enough. Yes, it’s better than 3rd Ed, the absolute nadir of Codex design ethos, as we do get background for the army and it’s politics etc. But...the units. You need to sell them both by model, rules and coolness of background.
It really does feel like an oversight or a misprint in the Necron Codex - but no, it’s a design decision, and one I cannot fathom.
Am likely to remain grumpy about this for some time.
I totally agree. We used to get an entire page of background and artwork for each unit. Now we get maybe a paragraph outlining what the unit does.
I was also a bit surprised to open my Blood Angels codex and see an entire two page spread had been dedicated to quite explicitly advertising the Combat Patrol box.
I don't have a 9th edition codex yet, as neither of my armies has one yet (and one never will, as it was sent to Legends), but I do have the Imperial Armour Compendium, and it follows this design philosophy. Just a short blurb for each unit, but in its case there aren't even any pictures of the models. Really gw? No pictures for any of these beautiful tanks, beasts, and walkers? It's a shame. I will say that the fluff writers did a pretty good job with the limited space they were given, though. Most of those blurbs do a good job of describing the units in question. However when I think of my beautiful old Imperial Armour books, there's just no comparison.
Unit background has come and gone over the editions, no? I think 7th Edition Codizes were also pretty light on unit background, because they had to fit all the formations in that needed a page each.
I mean I agree in general, because rules today are only relevant for about 3 years before they get replaced, while the background stays forever and is the main reason to buy a Codex in the first place.
One could say it fits to the overall picture of 9th edition as a "tournament Edition". Everything is nicely balanced, but missions are extremely bland and all the same outside of crusade and background in the Codizes gets reduced because the tournament people ignore that anyway. (little bit of trolling on my part here)
Do people actually buy codexes for the lore though? At least repeat codexes.
The amount of lore in the books is declining. It's not even that you're getting less for your money - you're buying what you already had in the last codex, except you don't even get all of it.
It's like buying a new car in the same model as the last one, except this time you don't get the sun roof or radio. Chances are you didn't buy the car for the features then.
kirotheavenger wrote: Do people actually buy codexes for the lore though? At least repeat codexes.
The amount of lore in the books is declining. It's not even that you're getting less for your money - you're buying what you already had in the last codex, except you don't even get all of it.
It's like buying a new car in the same model as the last one, except this time you don't get the sun roof or radio. Chances are you didn't buy the car for the features then.
Well I do. And because of that the 8th Edition Daemons Codex was bad, it had only one new page of background per god. I didn't buy the CSM Codex of 8th after seeing that (although that one actually had a little more fluff).
To me, the background is a quintessential part of the hobby. This is why last year, I spent time and a fair chunk of dough buying a complete set of Rogue Trader era books.
Modern stuff, I buy for both the rules and the background.
Yes. Most of the background is repeat - but only for those who aren’t new to the game/hobby.
I’m certain there’ll be those who buy purely for the rules. Of course there are. But how many and what percentage they make up? I’ve not a Scooby.
Yeah I've noticed this with the Space Marines and the Necrons books. It's very disappointing.
Kiro - not everyone is buying their 2nd or 3rd edition of the same codex. New players are going to miss out on so much.
The old (6th edition) CSM codex had fantastic stuff about the new Heldrake, talking about how they were originally Space Marine fighters that were mutated and corrupted by daemonic possession, and curled within the centre of it all was a withered husk of a pilot, whose screams of pain and anguish were broadcast from the vox unit as the cries of the monster it had become.
I assume the 9th edition codex, when it comes out, won't say much more than "dragon dinobot LOL"
Is the lore stuff even that imporant, when GW constatnly changes stuff. They change old lore, retcone new lore, do time jumps, then pull them back. Half the stuff in 8th ed books, probably doesn't make sense, when 9th ed lore is considered.
Karol wrote: Is the lore stuff even that imporant, when GW constatnly changes stuff. They change old lore, retcone new lore, do time jumps, then pull them back. Half the stuff in 8th ed books, probably doesn't make sense, when 9th ed lore is considered.
Well.....yes. One only need look at Dakka’s own Background sub-forum.
It will of course vary from hobbyist to hobbyist. Some may not care for it at all. Some use it to create “historically accurate” armies/collections, and everything in between.
I guess my argument would be that it’s inclusion doesn’t change what someone not fussed for it gets out of a Codex. But it’s exclusion does affect those who like it to at least partially inform choices.
Rough example? I’m building a list, and can’t choose between units A and B. There, the background for me is the tie breaker. Which unit do I think is simply cooler.
Karol wrote: Is the lore stuff even that imporant, when GW constatnly changes stuff. They change old lore, retcone new lore, do time jumps, then pull them back. Half the stuff in 8th ed books, probably doesn't make sense, when 9th ed lore is considered.
Well, part of 40K lore is that everything is part of the lore, even things that get retconned some Rogue Trader aspects and Necrons might be the exception, but other than that there's hardly outdated lore, funnily enough you can find hints for the whole ynnead story in very old Eldar Codex when nobody at GW probably thought they'd ever do anything with these blurbs.
Haven't noticed it much with the new ones but yes I agree, the lore/fluff is an important part of the book. I'd much rather it be full of stories and unit descriptions than generic photos of the models that someone spent 5 minutes setting up.
I don't mind. Most of the lore you can find inside each Codex is almost a basic reprint of what has been already said in a previous Codex.
I'd rather want GW to print a separate true lore/painting dedicated book and filled with new art, very detailled lore and extensive showcase of miniatures and battlegrounds and painting techniques for each army.
Karol wrote: Is the lore stuff even that imporant, when GW constatnly changes stuff. They change old lore, retcone new lore, do time jumps, then pull them back. Half the stuff in 8th ed books, probably doesn't make sense, when 9th ed lore is considered.
Well.....yes. One only need look at Dakka’s own Background sub-forum.
It will of course vary from hobbyist to hobbyist. Some may not care for it at all. Some use it to create “historically accurate” armies/collections, and everything in between.
I guess my argument would be that it’s inclusion doesn’t change what someone not fussed for it gets out of a Codex. But it’s exclusion does affect those who like it to at least partially inform choices.
Rough example? I’m building a list, and can’t choose between units A and B. There, the background for me is the tie breaker. Which unit do I think is simply cooler.
Exactly. Including the lore doesn't hurt those that only want the rules, but omitting it does hurt those that want the lore as well. I don't avoid including daemonic and mutated units in my Night Lords because of the rules I do it because of the lore. The lore of a unit is just as important to me as its rules and looks when I decide if I want to add it to my army. That's not important to some, but it is for many of us.
The reason a lot of people play 40k is the background. And those older codexes and supplements were overflowing with it. Having less of that takes away much of the point of 40k.
i'd personally enjoy if codexes didnt have the lore included in them. Make then smaller books that are easier to carry with only the rules part and very short descriptions.
Then release a standalone lore book that goes into details for every unit/subfaction/etc.
kirotheavenger wrote: Do people actually buy codexes for the lore though? At least repeat codexes.
The amount of lore in the books is declining. It's not even that you're getting less for your money - you're buying what you already had in the last codex, except you don't even get all of it.
It's like buying a new car in the same model as the last one, except this time you don't get the sun roof or radio. Chances are you didn't buy the car for the features then.
No, but as a kid it was definitely how I formed my decisions on how much I liked various units. It isn't very valuable to me now, but I do feel a little sad for the kid in me.
kirotheavenger wrote: Do people actually buy codexes for the lore though? At least repeat codexes. The amount of lore in the books is declining. It's not even that you're getting less for your money - you're buying what you already had in the last codex, except you don't even get all of it.
It's like buying a new car in the same model as the last one, except this time you don't get the sun roof or radio. Chances are you didn't buy the car for the features then.
Yes. My 8e CWE codex is filled with art and fluff. Most of its rules and pts are long since irrelevant.. But it is a lovely book. And I do just re-read some unit entries on occasion. Also, why else bother buying a codex? It will be incorrect on day 1 and need an FAQ 100% of the time..
I wouldn't buy codexes explicitly for their lore - but it does seem like something that you should get as part of the package and seems to have fallen almost completely off a cliff.
I imagine this is because GW are in a state of flux on the lore at the moment (We're jumping 100 years into the future! Did we say 100, we meant... ten? Uh... check this.)
But yeah. It shouldn't really be difficult to give a bit more detail.
VladimirHerzog wrote: i'd personally enjoy if codexes didnt have the lore included in them. Make then smaller books that are easier to carry with only the rules part and very short descriptions.
Then release a standalone lore book that goes into details for every unit/subfaction/etc.
I could live with this.
Alternatively have a rules + datasheet only book and a "collectors edition" codex with all the fluff and art.
However you know GW would charge £30 for the basic verison and then like £100 for the collectors so perhaps lets not give them ideas..
Rough example? I’m building a list, and can’t choose between units A and B. There, the background for me is the tie breaker. Which unit do I think is simply cooler.
That explains stuff. To be honest didn't even knew there was a lore subforum here. I do like the old books more. The 8th ed codex, even rules aside, isn't as fun to read as the older books, has an oddly lower number of units and options too. And without them the lore from the newest book is gone. And the PA books, as good as it was and is rules wise, had someone some of the oddest lore I ever read. As if GW just wanted to make all the GK, 1ksons and DA players unhappy at the same time.
The new DA books seems fine though. All the characterful DW and RW options are there, plus the explanation how primaris made their way in to them. Which did become problematic without the 200y time jump. Because I imagine that after 200 years of non stop crusade, there were no non primaris marines left alive, so the RW&DW had to be primaris, kind of a harder to imagine legions of primaris DW/RW 2-3 years after cawl poping them out of the freezer.
What's extra disappointing about the 9th Necron Codex compared to 8th is how little space the other Dynasties are given. In the 8th Codex you got full pages for each of the main ones, as well as lots of visual references for Ankh designs and also information about unit markings so you could differentiate between squads on the battlefield.
Now, only Szarekhan and Sautekh get full page entries and you have 0 visual aid or reference or even details about stuff like the above.
In terms of the actual overall structure of the books and way the rules are laid out it is much better than 8th, but the gutting of the lore is really disappointing. There's no timeline and no quotes either. Some of the most enjoyable and interesting stuff in the CWE and Necron dexes in 8th were all the quotes sprinkled about; those are now gone.
oni wrote: Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.
That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.
Which is a system that allows casual and competitive gamers to spice up their games with narrative "flavor" without actually being narrative. (i.e. still catering towards non-narrative players).
Progression is not the same thing as narrative. Crusade has rules for progression, not for narrative. It doesn't have anything Narrative players weren't already doing, and it doesn't provide Narrative players with additional tools to do more.
oni wrote: Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.
That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.
"Can the lore so we can write more rules!" seems to be a strange way of approaching the book for people who supposedly care about the lore/narrative, no matter what those rules are.
oni wrote: Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.
That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.
"Can the lore so we can write more rules!" seems to be a strange way of approaching the book for people who supposedly care about the lore/narrative, no matter what those rules are.
Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?
Voss wrote: ...Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?
Oh, sure, but the Crusade rules read to me like "narrative" rules dragged kicking and screaming out of people who would really rather be writing tournament rules. They're half-baked, don't fix any of the problems with casual play that the tournament focus of the main game creates, and don't support non-tournament-legal stuff in any way. Saying "but Crusade..." isn't an all-solving answer to people complaining about GW gutting casual/narrative play to focus on competitive play.
(It's not the fault of the "dirty tournament players", it's the fault of the design team who thinks the rest of us have stopped existing.)
Voss wrote: ...Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?
Oh, sure, but the Crusade rules read to me like "narrative" rules dragged kicking and screaming out of people who would really rather be writing tournament rules. They're half-baked, don't fix any of the problems with casual play that the tournament focus of the main game creates, and don't support non-tournament-legal stuff in any way. Saying "but Crusade..." isn't an all-solving answer to people complaining about GW gutting casual/narrative play to focus on competitive play.
(It's not the fault of the "dirty tournament players", it's the fault of the design team who thinks the rest of us have stopped existing.)
Ah. I'd previously only seen enthusiasm for the Crusade rules. I hadn't caught the current of resentment from narrative players.
Personally, I've found the focus on 'narrative play' since 7th bad for the casual pick-up game players. I figured it was more of that.
Though I'm not sure what you mean by the designer's preferring to write 'tournament rules' and 'tournament focus.' I can't think of any point that was _ever_ a real goal of the GW teams.
Voss wrote: ...Ah. I'd previously only seen enthusiasm for the Crusade rules. I hadn't caught the current of resentment from narrative players.
Personally, I've found the focus on 'narrative play' since 7th bad for the casual pick-up game players. I figured it was more of that.
Though I'm not sure what you mean by the designer's preferring to write 'tournament rules' and 'tournament focus.' I can't think of any point that was _ever_ a real goal of the GW teams.
It's not universal, by any means; there are plenty of people who do like Crusade and sound like they're reading a marketing brochure when trying to convince me it's great.
I talk about the designers preferring to write "tournament rules" and "tournament focus" because of what I see as the emphasis on taking anything cinematic, exciting, or unpredictable out of the game to cater to competitive play. I don't see 8e/9e as any better-balanced or easier for new players than 3e-7e, balance is still often nonsensical and the rules are still very complicated; the removal of scatter, random reserves, vehicle facings/damage tables, and falling back are far more about making the game more predictable for competitive players than making it easier for new players.
oni wrote: Welcome to 9th edition tournament-hammer. Lore and narrative have no place here.
That's really funny, since those sections were set on fire to make room for the Crusade rules.
"Can the lore so we can write more rules!" seems to be a strange way of approaching the book for people who supposedly care about the lore/narrative, no matter what those rules are.
Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to. If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?
Crusade isn't for narrative folks.
Crusade is for casual folks and competitive folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".
A progression system is a "pinch" of narrative, just a bit of flavor to an otherwise exactly-the-same game. It's like adding a slice of cheese on top of a flatbread and going "voila, pizza!" while actual pizza connoisseurs are rolling their eyes and going back to making real pizza with all the same usual ingredients they did. Though if they like the flavor of cheese you picked they might steal some of it to add.
I do like/miss the unit entries - they paint a picture for the "why" of the unit in the 40K universe. I feel that fluff is critical to the heath of the 40K gaming ecosystem. Otherwise I could play Bolt Action if I just want to paint and push 28mm figures around. I've lost track of the Dark Angels Codexes I've bought over the years. When they come out all I care about at first is the rules - I know the fluff! But then I sit back in my chair and see how the fluff has deepened and developed. And not everybody is buying their seventh Dark Angels Codex. Some are buying their first!
Having said that, what is the correct ratio of rules to fluff in a Codex? My 9th Ed Space Marines Codex has about 90 pages of fluff and 100 pages of rules. Would I want to trade 10 pages of rules for 10 more pages of fluff? Probably not.
I do have to say that I found the fluff section of the Necrons Codex a little underwhelming. Maybe its just that Necrons fluff is underwhelming, but I would have liked to have learned more about the units and less about the dynasties. Your mileage may vary!
Bosskelot wrote: Crusade completely fails as a casual game mode though.
It's easier and more straightforward to play a Strike Force game using the GT Mission Pack than it is to play a Crusade game right now.
Which just means Crusade failed at its intended purpose. After all, it was billed as a way to buff your army that you can bring to a casual pickup game against any old player, from the most cutthroat competitive player to good friends without much difficulty.
Warhammer Community wrote:What’s more, you’re not even limited to your local gaming group – you can use your Crusade force in any games you choose to play, be they friendlies against your regular opponents or competitive matches against hardened tournament veterans. In essence, provided you’re using the Crusade rules and your opponent is happy to have a game, every battle counts!**
I hang on to all my old codices specifically for the art and the lore. I was just thumbing through my copy of Freebooterz just the other day for this very reason.
A part of me wasn't sad. Not because I don't care about the lore, but because I wanted to hear in depth stuff like why the unit was originally created, its intended role on the battlefield, its history etc. but what you usually got was a page of hype about how awesome the unit was.
Having said that I do find myself having to continuously refer back to previous codexes to find out more about the lore (be it units or subfactions), or even to find out what a sub-factions paint scheme is supposed to be. It seems a common theme in both AoS and 40K that they are only showing off the studio army and not even bothering to show a single painted example for each sub faction. I think they cut a lot of stuff to compensate for the increasing size of codexes thanks to crusade rules and other stuff.
It does seem a bit pointless to continuous rehash the same background every codex though - there are only so many ways to write the same thing with different words and the 8th edition eldar codex literally had most of the fluff copy and pasted out of the 2nd edition codex (which also explains why it was of above average quality for GW fluff).
It would kind of make sense to have an overview of the faction in the codex for a general flavour of them and then release a full background book of in-depth high quality background that purely focuses on lore and history - maybe 1 book for xenos, 1 for chaos and 1 for imperium.
Unknown_Lifeform wrote: A part of me wasn't sad. Not because I don't care about the lore, but because I wanted to hear in depth stuff like why the unit was originally created, its intended role on the battlefield, its history etc. but what you usually got was a page of hype about how awesome the unit was.
Having said that I do find myself having to continuously refer back to previous codexes to find out more about the lore (be it units or subfactions), or even to find out what a sub-factions paint scheme is supposed to be. It seems a common theme in both AoS and 40K that they are only showing off the studio army and not even bothering to show a single painted example for each sub faction. I think they cut a lot of stuff to compensate for the increasing size of codexes thanks to crusade rules and other stuff.
It does seem a bit pointless to continuous rehash the same background every codex though - there are only so many ways to write the same thing with different words and the 8th edition eldar codex literally had most of the fluff copy and pasted out of the 2nd edition codex (which also explains why it was of above average quality for GW fluff).
It would kind of make sense to have an overview of the faction in the codex for a general flavour of them and then release a full background book of in-depth high quality background that purely focuses on lore and history - maybe 1 book for xenos, 1 for chaos and 1 for imperium.
Why is it pointless? Remeber just because you might have 6 codexes sitting on your shelf full of art and fluff. It could be somebody's first codex ever. So they are going to be paying some £30 for a bunch of data sheets that will be made redundant within 1 FAQ and pts adjustment ? Sounds.. not so great... At least now players can still enjoy reading old codexes like the example you gave. There will be zero icnentive to buy a codex if it has no value other then rules IMO. Because those rules have a life span of maybe 6months...
First, let my say that I do miss those unit entries. I also miss the graphic representations of the faction's organizational structure and the Sector map that shows you the locations of all the faction's assets.
Having said that, I LOVE the Crusade content and the fact that the rules section is bigger. It isn't just Crusade that makes it bigger either; we're getting more strats, which are better categorized and organized than they've ever been; we're getting more subfaction specific content, more relics, etc.
But I'm with y'all in missing the other stuff. I wouldn't sacrifice rules content to bring it back, because I'm really, really digging the extra rules content. Luckily, I keep my old dexes- that gets me my organizational charts and sector maps plus the unit entries for older units.
Since Crusade came up though, I've got to respond.
Crusade is for casual folks and competitive folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".
Going to cut you some slack and assume that you are a narrative player who hangs and plays with other narrative players who also share your opinion. And maybe it doesn't do as much as your group wants it to do. And you're all entitled to your opinions.
But you don't speak for me. See, I've identified as a narrative player since 1989; I've written enough fan fic to fill a book, all of it based on what happened on the tabletop. I've got squads that have been hitting the table for two decades and I can still tell you which battle gave which purity seals to which squad members; I can tell you who the skulls on their bases belonged to and why they have bionics. Because my models didn't start with any of that- they earned it.
Few of the people in my group take it to the extremes I do, but all of us consider ourselves narrative players. And we are stoked about Crusade.
A progression system is a "pinch" of narrative, just a bit of flavor to an otherwise exactly-the-same game.
If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you haven't been reading Crusade rules.
Our Agendas, the equivalent of secondaries, are faction specific, tailored to the background of our factions. Our Requisitions- the ways in which our armies can grow- are faction specific. Units can go through extreme changes in game, moving from one battlefield role to another. Our experience advances are faction specific; Deathwatch can earn roles that no other faction can earn; our Crusade relics are uniques, and some of them get more powerful over time as well. We have specific wounds, both physical and mental that other factions do not receive because they fight in different theatres of war against different types of opponents.
Ever field a Chapter Master?
Guess what? We've got the capacity to tell how, when and why our captains BECAME Chapter Masters.
Now it's true that there are rules for selecting advances randomly, and of course, some people will choose to go that route because they are hung up on balance or whatever. When you, or your group insist on playing that way, sometimes you're going to roll a result that doesn't fit what just happened on the battlefield or your sense of the character's identity. But that's certainly not GW's fault- they very clearly tell you that picking the result that best suits the story is also an option.
If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you are not very creative when it comes to figuring out how to use the toolbox you've been given. I've studied the tool box pretty damn extensively, and the crew I play with STILL manages to surprise me.
It's like adding a slice of cheese on top of a flatbread and going "voila, pizza!"
Yeah, if one of the grains ground to make the dough got ground in the Red Scar fighting Tyranids, while another grain is a fresh faced Primaris unit sent to reinforce the chapter after the Hive fleet decimated it and the cheese went through four distinct aging processes to become the exact palate of flavours that was chosen to become a Watch Master. And don't get me started on the Proteus Vet who BECAME a Blackshield or the Dreadnaught who fought through all of his wounds until he could fight no more with such weak flesh, and donned flesh of ceramite and steel rather than abandoning his battle brothers.
while actual pizza connoisseurs are rolling their eyes and going back to making real pizza with all the same usual ingredients they did. Though if they like the flavor of cheese you picked they might steal some of it to add.
And they might make a mean pizza. But they couldn't tell you where each ingredient comes from, and how it was ground, sliced or aged into its current form or by whom and when. They'd essentially pick all of their pre-processed ingredients from a list ready made to combine. They couldn't tell you who sliced it, because they don't care- as long as their peperoni tastes better than their opponent's peperoni, and come to think of it, the next time they do a taste test, if they're up against a vegetarian pizza, they might choose not to use that peperoni at all, because you know, they have access to every ingredient for every taste test, where the guy with the flatbread started with only a single type of grain and EARNED the rest of the stuff to make his flatbread taste the way it does from competing in other taste tests.
Maybe that's just my group. But one of us is obviously having more fun the other with Crusade rules, and I'm always looking for new chefs.
What's a Narrative player? I enjoy the narrative of the game, and I will do things to fit the narrative of my units even if it works against me. Even if its in a tournament - go for the epic moment. I make up a story about what is going on. I am into the lore of my armies (well, not yet for Necrons but I am trying...really trying).
I find that Crusade isn't different enough from tournament 9th to call it a meaningful attempt at narrative play. You like it, great, you can have your campaigns and watch your Captains grow into Chapter Masters, yay, but the core rules of the game (things like datasheets, stratagems, how reserves works, etc., all the stuff that's common to open/narrative/matched play) are written to be bland and predictable to make sure the tournament game plays smoothly. Bolting a narrative progression system on top of the bland and predictable foundation doesn't make the foundation less bland and predictable if you already thought the foundation was bland and predictable. In my playgroup people who like 9th don't play Crusade because it isn't different enough from tournament play to be an interesting alternative, and people who want to play narrative/non-tournament games don't like the core fundamentals of 9th, completely independent of whether Crusade exists.
It's an attempt, but what narrative players do is ignore & add rules/whatever. so calling something narrative while only adding rules to crappy mission designs and doubling down on secondaries does not narrative play make.
I was hopeful about crusade actually being a positive way forward with the game, right up until the first crusade supplement that had zero narrative hooks(story, maps, engagements, etc) and just piled on rules to a crappy foundation.
So I feel our group will just do what we did in 8th & play open war deck only. It's pretty easy to come up with a narrative when your everything is random and you apply a little "narrative common sense"(sayhipaul philosophy).
Nope, I was excited for my salamanders but when I saw what they were, I decided to shelve them for the foreseeable future. They will remain a modeling project until GW decides to remove their head from the proverbial astartes donkey-cave.
I was planning on the Sororitas & CSM but at this point I'm not too terribly excited and my Metallica forges will be cold.
I don't even play Marines, do they want me to buy the Marine book?
GW wants everyone to buy marine books and marines models so the answer is actually yes .
However I was actually talking to Racer. He's a staunch Marine player so im surprised he hasn't jumped on board the choo-chooing marine train in 9th
I actually enjoy playing my Admech & Bloody Rose more, but do enjoy some hammer and anvil now and again but they're gonna sit out 9th. I'm not an donkey-cave. Since one of the most OP/disliked units in the game fits perfectly into my Army it pains me to not use them, but I don't like running roughshod over my fellow 40kers.
Well, in my opinion there is no difference between leaving out the unit fluff completely and having one more reprint of the exact same plague marine fluff since CSM 3.5.
....folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".
Which is the typical mentality of tourney-hammer dudes .
H.B.M.C. wrote: And again, just because you have the same blurb for the 6th time, new players don't.
In other words, just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't mean it does not matter.
As someone who is regularly bringing people into the hobby, the vast majority of new people don't read those blurbs to inform themselves about fluff. They use wikis, read novels, watch youtube videos. They use modern media, just like they do for other hobbies which have a rich background. Some don't even own codices in the first place.
The only people who care about half-asses fluff stuck to rules that should not be printed in the first places are veterans. Supplying your audience with your background in printed books is just as outdated as printing constantly changing rules.
At least they removed all mention of Tesserarions and Decurions, especially Tesserarions were a bad invention.
Reprinting the same lore for units every three years was a huge waste, it makes sense that it is gone with the product GW wants codices to be.
I think removing all matched play rules from codices would help codices focus on evergreen aspects of the game. That's another 60+ pages for unit lore and art, terrain guides, missions, custom vehicles etc. A lot of the fluff that you find on wiki sites has been pirated from codexes, no codex fluff, no wiki fluff.
This type of codex would last 5-10 years before the lore would have to be updated and the narrative rules need to be changed to fit with however the game looks in the future, similar to old-school codex release schedules.
Indexes, chapter approved (without narrative rules like custom vehicles) and munitorum field manuals could be made more economical by not having colour or hardcovers to fit with them being replaced every 1-4 years. Updating this production line content would be easier since GW would not have to dig around for new fluff, miniature photos and art to update the rules of an army, just black ink.
Bosskelot wrote: Crusade completely fails as a casual game mode though.
It's easier and more straightforward to play a Strike Force game using the GT Mission Pack than it is to play a Crusade game right now.
GT Mission Pack + Munitorum Field Manual 2020 completely failed as a fair and balanced competitive game mode. Points were dumbed down making many wargear options useless and the GT mission pack was not accounted for when they balanced points so many units were overpriced since they easily gave away VP in the missions. It'd be more fair and balanced to play PL using the Only War mission.
This type of codex would last 5-10 years before the lore would have to be updated and the narrative rules need to be changed to fit with however the game looks in the future, similar to old-school codex release schedules.
You say that like it's a good thing.
To GW that means you're not buying another book for 5-10 years, and that won't stand!
....folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".
Which is the typical mentality of tourney-hammer dudes .
Nah, not trusting other people is just as a thing for people who never in their lived played in a tournament.
I think removing all matched play rules from codices would help codices focus on evergreen aspects of the game. That's another 60+ pages for unit lore and art, terrain guides, missions, custom vehicles etc. A lot of the fluff that you find on wiki sites has been pirated from codexes, no codex fluff, no wiki fluff.
So ... we'll just make them completely useless then? Honestly, if we were going to remove something to make more room for fluff, remove the Crusade rules. Drop those into a cheap expansion pack and call it a day. You could do a GT style "Crusade" book for $20 that has the Crusade rules for every army, plus some fun Crusade style missions and be set. Much easier than removing match play rules that nearly everyone needs ...
Like Doc, I too miss the sections that had fluff on individual units, but I have to also confess that it occurs to me I have all three 9th ed books released so far, and I haven't actually looked for that fluff, so I guess I don't miss it as much as I thought I did. How do you all feel about the fluff that IS there? I still read novels and enjoy the lore, but more and more I'm noticing that where I used to get excited to read the fluff sections in the codexes, I now tend to skip them and come back later. They aren't holding up as well for me for some reason.
First, let my say that I do miss those unit entries. I also miss the graphic representations of the faction's organizational structure and the Sector map that shows you the locations of all the faction's assets.
Having said that, I LOVE the Crusade content and the fact that the rules section is bigger. It isn't just Crusade that makes it bigger either; we're getting more strats, which are better categorized and organized than they've ever been; we're getting more subfaction specific content, more relics, etc.
But I'm with y'all in missing the other stuff. I wouldn't sacrifice rules content to bring it back, because I'm really, really digging the extra rules content. Luckily, I keep my old dexes- that gets me my organizational charts and sector maps plus the unit entries for older units.
Since Crusade came up though, I've got to respond.
Crusade is for casual folks and competitive folks who want a bit more narrative, but don't trust "traditional" narrative gamer mechanisms (houserules, game masters, etc) because they're not "official".
Going to cut you some slack and assume that you are a narrative player who hangs and plays with other narrative players who also share your opinion. And maybe it doesn't do as much as your group wants it to do. And you're all entitled to your opinions.
But you don't speak for me. See, I've identified as a narrative player since 1989; I've written enough fan fic to fill a book, all of it based on what happened on the tabletop. I've got squads that have been hitting the table for two decades and I can still tell you which battle gave which purity seals to which squad members; I can tell you who the skulls on their bases belonged to and why they have bionics. Because my models didn't start with any of that- they earned it.
Few of the people in my group take it to the extremes I do, but all of us consider ourselves narrative players. And we are stoked about Crusade.
Ok, cook, I can do the same, and clearly Crusade wasn't required for you to do that, so let's see how crusade actually helps you...
A progression system is a "pinch" of narrative, just a bit of flavor to an otherwise exactly-the-same game.
If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you haven't been reading Crusade rules.What else is it and why?
Our Agendas, the equivalent of secondaries, are faction specific, tailored to the background of our factions.They're just secondaries though. The reward comes in the form of progression rather than "victory points" but progression isn't narrative easier. Having faction specific objectives is only a tiny part of narrative play. Heck, the REAL competitive player secondaries are also faction specific and tailored to the backgrounds of your factions, so Crusade once again is just progression on top of a normal mechanic. Our Requisitions- the ways in which our armies can grow- are faction specific.Maybe it's because my factions don't have new codexes, but I'm playing with players who play SM (DA, BT, Deathwatch) and I've seen exactly 0 unique units or unique growth they couldn't've gotten from the BRB system. Units can go through extreme changes in game, moving from one battlefield role to another.That can't happen during game and could be done with or without Crusade. A Character can become a Dreadnought between games without crusade telling you how to do it or formalizing it. Our experience advances are faction specific;yay, progression is faction specific! It's still just progression. No story writing required, +30 XP, buy sharper sword. Deathwatch can earn roles that no other faction can earnwhat do you mean "roles?" this strikes me as nonsense ; our Crusade relics are uniquesso are your non-crusade relics, same as matched play. Crusade not required. , and some of them get more powerful over time as wellprogression != narrative. We have specific wounds, both physical and mental that other factions do not receive because they fight in different theatres of war against different types of opponents.Except in a given theatre of war, you fight the same opponents as everyone else in that theater.
Ever field a Chapter Master?No, but if I did I don't need formalized Crusade rules to tell me how, when, and why he became a chapter master from a captain.
Guess what? We've got the capacity to tell how, when and why our captains BECAME Chapter Masters.I had that for most of my characters long long long long long long before Crusade existed as a system.
Now it's true that there are rules for selecting advances randomly, and of course, some people will choose to go that route because they are hung up on balance or whatever. When you, or your group insist on playing that way, sometimes you're going to roll a result that doesn't fit what just happened on the battlefield or your sense of the character's identity. But that's certainly not GW's fault- they very clearly tell you that picking the result that best suits the story is also an option.
If you think that Crusade is just a progression system, you are not very creative when it comes to figuring out how to use the toolbox you've been given.The problem with Crusade isn't that I'm not using it, the problem is that it provides tools I already have. I don't need another flathead screwdriver; I've had one the whole time I've been playing narrative. Give me something new and different pls. I've studied the tool box pretty damn extensively, and the crew I play with STILL manages to surprise me.
It's like adding a slice of cheese on top of a flatbread and going "voila, pizza!"
Yeah, if one of the grains ground to make the dough got ground in the Red Scar fighting Tyranids, while another grain is a fresh faced Primaris unit sent to reinforce the chapter after the Hive fleet decimated it and the cheese went through four distinct aging processes to become the exact palate of flavours that was chosen to become a Watch Master. And don't get me started on the Proteus Vet who BECAME a Blackshield or the Dreadnaught who fought through all of his wounds until he could fight no more with such weak flesh, and donned flesh of ceramite and steel rather than abandoning his battle brothers.
while actual pizza connoisseurs are rolling their eyes and going back to making real pizza with all the same usual ingredients they did. Though if they like the flavor of cheese you picked they might steal some of it to add.
And they might make a mean pizza. But they couldn't tell you where each ingredient comes from, and how it was ground, sliced or aged into its current form or by whom and when. They'd essentially pick all of their pre-processed ingredients from a list ready made to combine. They couldn't tell you who sliced it, because they don't care- as long as their peperoni tastes better than their opponent's peperoni, and come to think of it, the next time they do a taste test, if they're up against a vegetarian pizza, they might choose not to use that peperoni at all, because you know, they have access to every ingredient for every taste test, where the guy with the flatbread started with only a single type of grain and EARNED the rest of the stuff to make his flatbread taste the way it does from competing in other taste tests.
Maybe that's just my group. But one of us is obviously having more fun the other with Crusade rules, and I'm always looking for new chefs.
What I read here, PenitentJake, is that you houserule a whole lot of stuff and fold the crusade rules in with it.
So in other words, exactly what I said: You, as a narrative player, are just adding Crusade to your toolbox, while Crusade itself is inadequate for narrative play without houseruling.
Good talk, thanks for the agreement!
EDIT:
In the spoiler I go point by point in red text.
Voss wrote: ...Maybe. But the crusade rules certainly aren't the fault of 'those dirty tournament players,' which is what I was responding to.
If I understood the intent of the Crusade section, its _for_ the narrative folks, right?
Oh, sure, but the Crusade rules read to me like "narrative" rules dragged kicking and screaming out of people who would really rather be writing tournament rules. They're half-baked, don't fix any of the problems with casual play that the tournament focus of the main game creates, and don't support non-tournament-legal stuff in any way. Saying "but Crusade..." isn't an all-solving answer to people complaining about GW gutting casual/narrative play to focus on competitive play.
(It's not the fault of the "dirty tournament players", it's the fault of the design team who thinks the rest of us have stopped existing.)
Sorry, but I hated the hell out of "we're fighting on this planet today - roll to see how much of your army dies! Narrative!".
I think removing all matched play rules from codices would help codices focus on evergreen aspects of the game. That's another 60+ pages for unit lore and art, terrain guides, missions, custom vehicles etc. A lot of the fluff that you find on wiki sites has been pirated from codexes, no codex fluff, no wiki fluff.
So ... we'll just make them completely useless then? Honestly, if we were going to remove something to make more room for fluff, remove the Crusade rules. Drop those into a cheap expansion pack and call it a day. You could do a GT style "Crusade" book for $20 that has the Crusade rules for every army, plus some fun Crusade style missions and be set. Much easier than removing match play rules that nearly everyone needs ...
They wouldn't be useless for people that find value in unit lore, art, terrain guides, dioramas, missions, crusade and narrative rules. Just because it is not something that we rush to read when a new codex comes out does not mean it does not have value and not something worth having on a shelf in a digital library to read when the rules/pts update hype dies down. Tonnes of people find the crusade rules valuable, bundling crusade rules with other narrative elements of the game like fluff, modelling and fun unbalanced narrative rules makes more sense than bundling fluff with datasheets at the cost of datasheets not being updated as often as they should (CSM are still 1W lower than they are intended to be). Crusade rules not being updated more than once every 10 years doesn't matter as much as the disconnect between 2W Marines and 1W CSM. Besides 10 pages does not give us back the unit lore back, you are still 10 pages short after cutting Crusade rules from codexes.
All the rules for factions, aside from datasheets and explanations for the rules on the datasheets need to be separated out so they can be worked on as part of a yearly rules update to avoid the trickle release of new rules like chapter tactics (8th edition codex), stratagems (8th edition codexes and campaigns) and faction objectives (8th and 9th edition codex), it makes sense to bundle all of these updates along with mission rules in Chapter Approved as the book that holds all the rules changes to the game. Chapter Approved narrative and fun rules can go into codexes and campaign books, although I think for the most part campaign books are more of a miss than a hit, mostly they were spent updating different (C)SM factions, something that could have been handled with an index or two in one fell swoop. Datasheets could either be released bundled or unbundled with those of other factions but I think it would be neat if you didn't have to lug around a bunch of lore that has no impact on the game, even digitally it just makes it more difficult to navigate to the datasheets.
But that would mean that people who are interested in rules only would soon wake up in a world where they either have to buy the bad GW app, or have to buy 4-5 books per year each time GW decides to put out another rules update.
Seems like a big hit to a large number of people, just to make a few people playing narrative happy.
Racerguy180 wrote: They really need to divorce tourney rules from the fun stuff, but they're gonna slowly kill everything that isn't tourney rules instead.
I suspect that trying to keep tournament and casual rules in a single set would kill tourney play as much as it kills casual play.
Why is it pointless?
Remeber just because you might have 6 codexes sitting on your shelf full of art and fluff. It could be somebody's first codex ever.
I didn't mean it was pointless to provide background but that it seems pointless (as in redundant) to re-write and re-publish the same background every codex just for the sake of it not being a copy and paste of the previous codex when it contains very little new content. This is especially the case where GW is cutting down on background content to save space, thus reducing the quality and value of the background provided (I've had to refer to previous codexes to fill holes left in the current ones because there was very little detail on sub factions or characters). I thought the background in the 8th edition Eldar codex was so good because it was mostly copy and pasted from 2nd edition, when they frankly were better at writing background. It would seem more logical to have a single, high quality and comprehensive (living?) source. I acknowledge the problem with this is that when you partition off the background and supply it separately, even if the new source is free, you cut down a lot of players engagement with it. That's something I don't want to see, but I also don't want to see pointlessly rehashed background of degrading length and quality.
I just feel there should be a better way of handling background than the current approach provides. Maybe in future technology will provide an answer - maybe we'll have electronic codexes without the page restrictions of current printed codexes that would allow the rules to be updated each release and the background left untouched or expanded to add in new events and depth.
I am surprised that in the gallery section of the Death Guard book they couldn't use a single page to show off the variant colour schemes for the different Plague Companies - heck, we managed to get that sort of content back in Dark Imperium, from memory, so it wouldn't be too much to ask here.
I was surprised that the SM codex didn't have descriptions and images for all the units this time. In the datasheets some of the photos are only a small part of the model too, so new players aren't going to know what some of the units look like!
I reject the notion that 40k Codices have "casual" and "tournament" rules.
There are simple the rules for the units, and that's it. There's a campaign system they've decided to include in each book (Crusade) rather than trying to put them into inconsistent and weirdly-paced supplements, but aside from that, there are simple the rules for the army in question.
Why is it pointless?
Remeber just because you might have 6 codexes sitting on your shelf full of art and fluff. It could be somebody's first codex ever.
I didn't mean it was pointless to provide background but that it seems pointless (as in redundant) to re-write and re-publish the same background every codex just for the sake of it not being a copy and paste of the previous codex when it contains very little new content. This is especially the case where GW is cutting down on background content to save space, thus reducing the quality and value of the background provided (I've had to refer to previous codexes to fill holes left in the current ones because there was very little detail on sub factions or characters). I thought the background in the 8th edition Eldar codex was so good because it was mostly copy and pasted from 2nd edition, when they frankly were better at writing background. It would seem more logical to have a single, high quality and comprehensive (living?) source. I acknowledge the problem with this is that when you partition off the background and supply it separately, even if the new source is free, you cut down a lot of players engagement with it. That's something I don't want to see, but I also don't want to see pointlessly rehashed background of degrading length and quality.
I just feel there should be a better way of handling background than the current approach provides. Maybe in future technology will provide an answer - maybe we'll have electronic codexes without the page restrictions of current printed codexes that would allow the rules to be updated each release and the background left untouched or expanded to add in new events and depth.
Mu sugestion is: Have a bare bones rules + datasheets codex and a collectors one with all the fluff and art.
It sounds like soemthing GW would be well up for doing as it means potentialy selling players 2 books instead of just 1...
What I read here, PenitentJake, is that you houserule a whole lot of stuff and fold the crusade rules in with it.
So in other words, exactly what I said: You, as a narrative player, are just adding Crusade to your toolbox, while Crusade itself is inadequate for narrative play without houseruling.
Good talk, thanks for the agreement!
EDIT:
In the spoiler I go point by point in red text.
Thanks for your response- I learned a lot of formatting stuff rereading after I quoted it.
But I think your analysis of Crusade is very oversimplified. I'm sorry that you wanted a system that changed the story DURING a battle or altered the rules of fighting a battle. I'm not sure either of those things are either necessary or realistic for a good narrative system.
So let's use the Chapter Master as a specific example to illustrate the point. Yes, you can take one from the codex; yes you can write your own history for it; yes you can convert so that it looks unique. But all of its special abilities will be the same as every other straight from the dex chapter master, with the exception of chapter tactics, but those will be the same as every other chapter master from the same chapter. Or you can house rule.
Now let's say that I, as a Crusade player, decide to start at 50 PL so I can bring two captains. Eventually, one of them is going to become a chapter master, but before they can take that upgrade, they have to reach at least heroic level, which means that minimally, they need to fight enough battles to earn two battle battle honours, and the chapter master counts as their third. Now the rules, as written, give you the choice between generating Battle Honours randomly or picking them. If you choose to pick them, you can either do so for advantage, or based on the story.
You probably guessed it, I am a guy who chooses based on story. So let's say the first captain earns his first battle honour by wiping out an important unit in hand to hand. I'm going to pick a battle honour that boosts his hand to hand skill. Let's say the second guy earns his battle honour by blowing away the enemy warlord from the other side of the table. He's going to get a shooty battle honour. Now as a player, I couldn't predict how long it would take to earn those honours, nor could I predict the circumstances under which they would be earned. I use the Crusade rules as written to allow the story of the games I have played to determine those things.
Now clearly, by the time they are ready to become chapter masters, they are different from each other- they have different rules despite the fact that they are both captains. In addition to different battle honours, they may also have battle scars by then, likely different ones- again, based on how those wounds were inflicted in battle. So now, based on how they grew and diverged, I get to decide which one would make a better chapter master based on their story. And when they become a chapter master, they will be different than any chapter master chosen directly from the dex.
That situation couldn't happen without the Crusade system. And because of the Crusade system, it doesn't require a single house rule. You may have wanted rules to make a narrative out of each battle, rather than the narrative of a campaign or a series of battles, but here's the thing: special rules aren't required to make a story out of a battle. If your warlord is removed from play in turn two, obviously he isn't there to contribute in turns three, four or five, nor are they there to provide aura support. YOU DON"T NEED RULES TO TELL THE STORY OF A BATTLE; ITS ALREADY A STORY. That's why Crusade rules don't modify the way battles are fought. (Actually, they do, because of the functional differences between the way secondaries operate and the way agendas operate; in matched, achieving a secondary affects the whole army, where agendas affect only the units which actually achieve them- of course, you'll say since all of that only has an effect AFTER the battle that it doesn't actually matter).
As for the changing roles and specific options for deathwatch, what I'm talking about are specialisms. Sure, you can choose them right out of the dex, but again if you do that, your Proteus Kill team with the Aquila specialism will be the same as every other Proteus Kill Team with an Aquila specialism chosen directly from the dex. But you can also take that specialism as an upgrade, and if you do that, you can choose the specialism based on what unit type the Kill Team has killed more of, which is the thing that makes the rule into a story. Masters of the Specialisms for DW characters work the same way- except here, I'm not sure you can even by that from the codex- I could be wrong, but I think it's only available via Crusade, so you have to earn it.
Another great DW one is the ability for a regular veteran in a proteus kill team to become a Blackshield. Here's why this is so important: the rules for proteus kill teams require you to take five veterans (one of which is the sergeant); none of these are legally allowed to be Blackshield- they must be vets. Your other five soldiers in the team can be a mix of anything so this is is where a blackshield from the dex would go, but if you want bikers to act like bikers, vanguard vets to act like vanguard vets or your termies to act like termies, you must take 5 and combat squad them; if you take a blackshield, he screws that up. BUT in Crusade, you can take five vets and 5 bikes and combat squad them and after a few battles, you can pick one of your four vets and upgrade it to a blackshield, and it stays with the veteran half of the team so it does screw your bikers out of turbo boost. This another example of a way in which Crusade can modify how battles are fought.
Do I use Houserules? I'll be honest, yes I do. My chaos and genestealer cults started as kill teams and had to recruit members by defeating them in battle- either injecting them with Slaaneshi corrupted drugs, or giving them the genestealer kiss. I also count Platoon commanders as HQ choices rather than elites because each platoon is an independent detachment based in a different territory, so if they get attacked and have to fight, they need an HQ to be an army. But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking. Once the new Chaos, GSC and Imperial Guard dexes drop, their crusade content may make my houserules unnecessary. I doubt it, but it's possible.
I think the issue is that you think the crusade system should make the rules of playing games different. From my point of view, that would be incredibly stupid. First, it would decrees the odds of getting a matched player to try try it because they'd have to learn an entirely new ruleset, and second, because as mentioned above, a battle already is a story without needing rules to make it into one. If you want to change a battle with special rules to make it somehow feel like more of a story when it already is one, that's on you. GW isn't going to give you rules for that- I suspect because like me, they feel like a battle is already enough of a story as is; they make different missions to tell different stories, and they even have separate missions for matched and narrative; they even have a whole book of Crusade only missions set in the Pariah nexus and another one is on the way for the next campaign setting.
So about missing the content of old dexes, I'm with you. About Crusade, the only agreement you'll get is an agreement to disagree- I think it's awesome; I think the difference between playing it and matched is as clear as the difference between night and day, and having played Crusade, I now longer have any interest in playing 40k any other way. I'll leave it at that, because while I've found our conversation to be very interesting and you seem to be a pretty reasonable dude, Crusade vs Matched isn't actually the topic of this thread, nor is whether or not the Crusade system requires house rules to make it good.
I really hope they don't stay with physical Codexes. So many problems with the game exist because GW can't edit the rules after release, so their tiny narrow playtest pool misses things, and then they can't fix them once the wider community notices because they don't want to devalue their paper book. Even today when they're FAQing things more regularly and points get overhauled twice a year there are still things they won't change because they wrote them down in a book.
AnomanderRake wrote: I really hope they don't stay with physical Codexes. So many problems with the game exist because GW can't edit the rules after release, so their tiny narrow playtest pool misses things, and then they can't fix them once the wider community notices because they don't want to devalue their paper book. Even today when they're FAQing things more regularly and points get overhauled twice a year there are still things they won't change because they wrote them down in a book.
True - printing stuff does "pin them down." Still, I'd much rather flip through a book at the table than a phone or tablet. Printing books might also encourage some rigour. There big changes have been to points - easy enough to do with the new Munitorium format. Here's to hoping they keep those free updates.
Yes, it’s a lesser spotted Grump from yours’ truly. And it’s about 9th Ed Codexes.
Basically? Where the background for units, both new and old? I mean, the majority of them have background already. So writing up some interesting stuff for the new is hardly a massive undertaking.
For my beloved Necrons, I’ve three new flavours of Destroyers I know little about. Ophydian, Skorpekh and Hexmark. All I get is a tiny blurb on their unit entry.
Frankly, it’s just not good enough. Yes, it’s better than 3rd Ed, the absolute nadir of Codex design ethos, as we do get background for the army and it’s politics etc. But...the units. You need to sell them both by model, rules and coolness of background.
It really does feel like an oversight or a misprint in the Necron Codex - but no, it’s a design decision, and one I cannot fathom.
Am likely to remain grumpy about this for some time.
I am also engrumped by this development. I had seen it in Space Marines but figured that was a side effect of 100-odd dataslates. Later discovered that it's everyone. Disappointing and engrumping in equal measure should this continue.
GT Mission Pack + Munitorum Field Manual 2020 completely failed as a fair and balanced competitive game mode. Points were dumbed down making many wargear options useless and the GT mission pack was not accounted for when they balanced points so many units were overpriced since they easily gave away VP in the missions. It'd be more fair and balanced to play PL using the Only War mission.
Crusade uses the same points values and similar mission design so I'm not really sure what you're getting at. Besides, my point had nothing to do with the balance of matched play, but rather that it is easier and more straightforward to play a competitive GT Matched Play Mission than it is to play the Crusade stuff.
Dysartes wrote: I am surprised that in the gallery section of the Death Guard book they couldn't use a single page to show off the variant colour schemes for the different Plague Companies - heck, we managed to get that sort of content back in Dark Imperium, from memory, so it wouldn't be too much to ask here.
I'm rather happy that they don't lock a paint scheme you liked years ago into a specific set of rules.
PenitentJake wrote: ...But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking...
If the Crusade system was enough on its own why did you need to create a campaign?
Campaign rules usually have a different focus than crusade does. Crusade essentially handles army progression, while a campaign tells the story and tells you which battles are fought where.
In P&P terms, crusade would be the classes, traits and feat books which handle how you level up, while the campaign rules are the adventure book. The actual game you play would be the combat rules.
For me it is fluff that makes army books. If the High Elf army book I borrowed way back when had been rules alone I doubt I'd ever have got into the game.
Perhaps the ideal compromise would be to sell the physical codexes as the definitive guide to the faction. These would contain all the fluff and artwork we used to love. Along with all the rules.
I agree that the art and lore is great to have. But I already have it and I don't want to buy it again.
Then, a digital mini-codex is also sold which is just the rules.
This way veterans like myself don't need to buy the full codex.
Ideally it would be programmed with layers so it can look nice with fancy backgrounds, but also be easily printed without draining three bottles of ink.
It would be great if the rulebook worked the same way.
But I know it's a forlorn hope. They make a lot of money on forcibly up-selling codexes to the 'comprehensive edition'.
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Whatever happens, I hope they stay with physical Codexes. When someone rocks up with their "codex" on their phone I know I am in for a rough game.
That is true, but if digital stuff is all printed brought along to the game and then you are good to go.
A physical codex isn't always enough, especially when someone says "oh but that has been FAQed, I can actually do this now, and I win you lose. I just don't have the FAQ on me. Now which FAQ is it..." And you both just either lose too much time searching, or just say na... Me, if the guy can't find it, I say na man, next time bring the rules with you. And if I win although the dude was right, then tough luck, next time perhaps he will think about bringin his F..ing rules along with his minis
No having your own rules with you is just as bad as showing up with unpainted minis or proxies.
How about they just sell Codices that aren't a complete rip-off and contain equal parts fluff, artwork, photos of the units in the book and rules/unit entries.
It's not like they haven't done that in the past. For decades.
H.B.M.C. wrote: How about they just sell Codices that aren't a complete rip-off and contain equal parts fluff, artwork, photos of the units in the book and rules/unit entries.
It's not like they haven't done that in the past. For decades.
Old rulebooks contained very few rules. 3rd edition Codex Necrons was 68 pages total, 17 pages of rules. 5th 100 total, 25 rules, 9th 125 total, 65 rules. More units, crusade, objectives, relics, WL traits, chapter tactics. If I am in a fluffy mood what do I need datasheets for? Constantly opening and closing the book for games is going to make it less valuable as a collection item and an art gallery.
They wouldn't be useless for people that find value in unit lore, art, terrain guides, dioramas, missions, crusade and narrative rules.
Here's the issue. What you seem to want is a hobby/narrative play guide. The vast majority of 40k players need the match play rules. Going to a local game night for pickup games? You're gonna play matched play rules. Tournament? Match play rules? Fun weekend game at a friend's house? Probably match play rules ...
It's a lot easier to make a hobby/narrative play guide in a similar format to the GT booklet, that has a full hobby section (not just pictures of models as in the current books, but an actual hobby section), along with each army's narrative rules. This makes much more sense than cutting the match play rules, which are, frankly, the point of the codex to begin with.
I do wish they had more fluff - a big reason I didn't really play 3rd is because the army books had basically become black and white pamphlets with no lore to get you excited about the army, but you need to balance form and function. Expanding lore at the expense of the main point of the book makes no sense at all imo.
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Whatever happens, I hope they stay with physical Codexes. When someone rocks up with their "codex" on their phone I know I am in for a rough game.
if you're playing against people that regularly need to look stuff up in their codex, you're already in for a rough game.
They wouldn't be useless for people that find value in unit lore, art, terrain guides, dioramas, missions, crusade and narrative rules.
Here's the issue. What you seem to want is a hobby/narrative play guide. The vast majority of 40k players need the match play rules. Going to a local game night for pickup games? You're gonna play matched play rules. Tournament? Match play rules? Fun weekend game at a friend's house? Probably match play rules ...
It's a lot easier to make a hobby/narrative play guide in a similar format to the GT booklet, that has a full hobby section (not just pictures of models as in the current books, but an actual hobby section), along with each army's narrative rules. This makes much more sense than cutting the match play rules, which are, frankly, the point of the codex to begin with.
I do wish they had more fluff - a big reason I didn't really play 3rd is because the army books had basically become black and white pamphlets with no lore to get you excited about the army, but you need to balance form and function. Expanding lore at the expense of the main point of the book makes no sense at all imo.
agreed 100%. Put nothing else than the rules in the codexes so that its easily carryable to games. Add another book with a focus on fluff and the hobby aspect (give it things like the painting tutorials that AoS battletomes have).
Sell both in a bundle for the similar price as a current codex or separately for a discount.
vict0988 wrote: Old rulebooks contained very few rules. 3rd edition Codex Necrons was 68 pages total, 17 pages of rules. 5th 100 total, 25 rules, 9th 125 total, 65 rules. More units, crusade, objectives, relics, WL traits, chapter tactics. If I am in a fluffy mood what do I need datasheets for? Constantly opening and closing the book for games is going to make it less valuable as a collection item and an art gallery.
Great comparison. Necrons now vs Necrons at their inception, where they had almost as many units as I have fingers.
PenitentJake wrote: ...But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking...
If the Crusade system was enough on its own why did you need to create a campaign?
The campaign is the star system where the series of games takes place. Battles need to happen somewhere, right? And no rules system is going dictate where games take place or which armies take part.
I chose to invent a star system, and planets because I wanted to use existing elements of the 40k background in my story. The Tyranid attack on the Red Scar, the opening of the Cicatrix Maledictum and the discovery of the Blackstone Fortress on the galactic western fringe of Pacificus are all events that shape the story.
I could play Crusade right out of the Pariah Nexus mission pack if I wanted to- it's actually an awesome little book, and I plan to play through it someday. It also combines really nicely with the Argovon stuff from WD, which I will likely add- the two products were designed to work together.
But calling this out is like saying Dungeons and Dragons isn't a good system because someone chooses to play in Forgotten Realms or Eberron. People who actually play the game will tell you that the fact that both Eberron and Forgotten realms exist, plus the fact that the system allows you to create your own campaign if you choose to do so is strength of the D&D rules set, not a weakness.
Same is true here. It's AWESOME that I can play in the Pariah system, or at Argovon, or in the new location that's coming soon (forgot the name- Charadon or something?), or that I can choose to make my own.
I try not to get personal in posts because I think there's enough rage and self righteousness out there on the internet, but I have to say, if you have such vast experience that you feel qualified to judge the Crusade system, I'm surprised you had to ask this question. Most people who are into narrative gaming do know that a campaign is different from the rules system that facilitates it's creation.
H.B.M.C. wrote: How about they just sell Codices that aren't a complete rip-off and contain equal parts fluff, artwork, photos of the units in the book and rules/unit entries.
It's not like they haven't done that in the past. For decades.
Old rulebooks contained very few rules. 3rd edition Codex Necrons was 68 pages total, 17 pages of rules. 5th 100 total, 25 rules, 9th 125 total, 65 rules. More units, crusade, objectives, relics, WL traits, chapter tactics. If I am in a fluffy mood what do I need datasheets for? Constantly opening and closing the book for games is going to make it less valuable as a collection item and an art gallery.
Well, for one, they aren't 'collection items,' I know some people like to treat them that way, but like most things produced by the modern book industry, they're disposable, with little lasting or inherent value. Most books have a 3-4 month life span, then they're returned for bargain status if they're hardback, or for paperbacks just get their cover ripped off and scanned for credit- the rest of the book goes in the garbage (or hopefully recycling). Game books aren't any different beyond the personal value people put on them. GW army books have a longer lifespan than novels, but at this point, its still only a couple years, by design- replaced by the next version.
For two, if you want to see the art gallery, you're going to need to open the book as well.
Citing the 3rd edition codexes is interesting. IIRC, GW stopped doing that stripped-down format because they didn't sell well, and folks complained. People were turned off by the lack of anything but rules, and customers drove the push for more fluff, art and photos.
The majority of players really do want background, art and photographs as well as rules in army books. They also want army books as a general product.
Privateer Press decided to prove this in the worst possible way by taking rules out, and just having fluff books for WM/H. Their book line crashed as a result.
I do agree with the earlier sentiments. I do agree that in an ideal world there would be a slim rules only, paper-back codex at c. $30 and a fluff + hobby stuff + rules in the $50-60 range. But, I have to wonder about the cost of manufacturing the codices as they exist. Every page is covered in artwork, watermarks, dense crowding of images, etc. I don't see how they could split the sales into a slim and full codex without losing money, knowing full well that the majority of people would probably just buy the slim version.
Grumblewartz wrote: I do agree with the earlier sentiments. I do agree that in an ideal world there would be a slim rules only, paper-back codex at c. $30 and a fluff + hobby stuff + rules in the $50-60 range. But, I have to wonder about the cost of manufacturing the codices as they exist. Every page is covered in artwork, watermarks, dense crowding of images, etc. I don't see how they could split the sales into a slim and full codex without losing money, knowing full well that the majority of people would probably just buy the slim version.
That would probably happen and the community would be livid. Can't see it happening.
As an aside, citing the lack of material in the 3rd ed. Necron codex is also an odd choice, since that contained some of the best - certainly most original - background material for that faction of any of their books.
Lord Damocles wrote: As an aside, citing the lack of material in the 3rd ed. Necron codex is also an odd choice, since that contained some of the best - certainly most original - background material for that faction of any of their books.
Was that the one that was almost a load of horror short stories told from the imperiums perspective? If so, yes great book. I remember looking at the Dark Eldar book in 3rd though, excited to learn about this new faction and decided not to purchase.
Dysartes wrote: I am surprised that in the gallery section of the Death Guard book they couldn't use a single page to show off the variant colour schemes for the different Plague Companies - heck, we managed to get that sort of content back in Dark Imperium, from memory, so it wouldn't be too much to ask here.
I'm rather happy that they don't lock a paint scheme you liked years ago into a specific set of rules.
We'll add this to the other things you're wrong about regarding the Death Guard book, such as the equipment options for Plague Marines and Blightlords.
Just skimming the gallery section quickly, replacing the "content" on pg. 29 (the so-called "Colours of Decay") with the previously-mentioned variant schemes, even without the fluff blurbs, would've been more useful than what's on there.
Arbitrator wrote: What's funny is the RRP of the 'dexes went up £5 despite trimming the lore.
Some of that cost increase may just be a change in printer. They're passing on the extra expense of a UK rather than a Chinese printing house. Unfortunately Western print operations tend to cost more, even accounting for the cost of shipping from China. At least, before 2020, anyway.
It may also be an upcharge for the crusade rules, which in theory take more design hours and QA time than re-writing the fluff sections slightly for the Nth time.
Dysartes wrote: I am surprised that in the gallery section of the Death Guard book they couldn't use a single page to show off the variant colour schemes for the different Plague Companies - heck, we managed to get that sort of content back in Dark Imperium, from memory, so it wouldn't be too much to ask here.
I'm rather happy that they don't lock a paint scheme you liked years ago into a specific set of rules.
We'll add this to the other things you're wrong about regarding the Death Guard book, such as the equipment options for Plague Marines and Blightlords.
Just skimming the gallery section quickly, replacing the "content" on pg. 29 (the so-called "Colours of Decay") with the previously-mentioned variant schemes, even without the fluff blurbs, would've been more useful than what's on there.
What? I think we misunderstood each other.
I'm totally happy for having sections where they show of models with different plaint schemes or stuff like the "Colors of Contagion" section in the old codex. I just don't want them to be connected to Plague Companies, because at that point it affects WYSIWYG.
Lord Damocles wrote: As an aside, citing the lack of material in the 3rd ed. Necron codex is also an odd choice, since that contained some of the best - certainly most original - background material for that faction of any of their books.
I think it is a perfect choice, it was short on rules and the main reason people loved it was the lore, now the lore has been pushed out because of more rules. The 3rd edition Necrons Codex is exactly what I want a Codex to be, just without the datasheets and with another 50 pages to go through the lore of every unit. Lore needs its own space, either that is the Warhammer Community site, proper novels or a new type of product. I choose to call the new product I want GW to make codexes because we use that term already or you can call them inverse indexes, all the stuff that was cut out in 8th edition indexes without the index stuff because combining an index with an inverse index makes no sense.
You don't need your index when you are reading lore and browsing art and you don't need your inverse index when you are playing a game. The index part of a codex needs to get done quickly so it can get sent to playtesters to iron out rules writing and points costs and it needs to be as light as possible so it is portable. The inverse index part of a codex needs to look amazing and needs a lot of space to feature all the units, subfactions and history of a faction, there is absolutely no need to rush the inverse index except because it is bundled with the index part of a codex and "oh damn, this faction is terrible, we need to update the rules ASAP to help the faction out". Splitting the inverse index and the index apart just makes sense.
Grumblewartz wrote: I do agree with the earlier sentiments. I do agree that in an ideal world there would be a slim rules only, paper-back codex at c. $30 and a fluff + hobby stuff + rules in the $50-60 range. But, I have to wonder about the cost of manufacturing the codices as they exist. Every page is covered in artwork, watermarks, dense crowding of images, etc. I don't see how they could split the sales into a slim and full codex without losing money, knowing full well that the majority of people would probably just buy the slim version.
By not having rules in the expensive codex you remove the idea that it is a premium version of the other product and urge people to buy both products rather than one, so people buy (codex + index) instead of (codex + campaign). Indexes don't need dense crowding of images or artwork, form over function on that one, costs can be cut until the only expense left is the developers changing rules and adding rules for new units. Depending on how expansive the faction is the index can be combined with other lesser indexes to make life easier on soup players and to further cut costs.
Arbitrator wrote: What's funny is the RRP of the 'dexes went up £5 despite trimming the lore.
Some of that cost increase may just be a change in printer. They're passing on the extra expense of a UK rather than a Chinese printing house. Unfortunately Western print operations tend to cost more, even accounting for the cost of shipping from China. At least, before 2020, anyway.
It may also be an upcharge for the crusade rules, which in theory take more design hours and QA time than re-writing the fluff sections slightly for the Nth time.
PenitentJake wrote: ...But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking...
If the Crusade system was enough on its own why did you need to create a campaign?
It's classic GW defense tactics. Make the players do the work so you don't have to and then praise said players and make them feel special!
You do realize that we wargamers have been making up our own campaigns regardless of game system, company, actual historical facts (in regards to historical games), and the existence/non-existence of official campaign systems, right?
It's got nothing to do with GW.
I don't think 9th edition is a good investment in terms of Codexes. Better to have some other minis.
The life shelf of Codex dropped considerably compared with older edition (albeit, with a more proactive approach from GW), but before the Covid situation is entirely resolved there are no real game soon.... So the Codexes will have an even shorter life.
I felt really bad for my Dark Angel 8th book because I played very little with it (and I haven't even buy it since it was a present). And for the last three year I played almost weekly.
The continuos releases make almost impossible to know what to expect from opponent, and it has been a game of catching rules rather than a Wargame. And now it's the same with an impaired and mutilated scene.
As long as Covid hits, they should have kept the Indexes, use this strange time as playtest buffer and release a properly tested and long lasting edition thereafter.
kirotheavenger wrote: I totally agree. We used to get an entire page of background and artwork for each unit. Now we get maybe a paragraph outlining what the unit does.
I was also a bit surprised to open my Blood Angels codex and see an entire two page spread had been dedicated to quite explicitly advertising the Combat Patrol box.
The codexes are becoming more and more like White Dwarves
PenitentJake wrote: ...But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking...
If the Crusade system was enough on its own why did you need to create a campaign?
It's classic GW defense tactics. Make the players do the work so you don't have to and then praise said players and make them feel special!
You do realize that we wargamers have been making up our own campaigns regardless of game system, company, actual historical facts (in regards to historical games), and the existence/non-existence of official campaign systems, right? It's got nothing to do with GW.
That's rather my point, though it's getting lost in the thread.
Real narrative players have been kicking ass and taking names in the narrative scene long before Crusade existed, and long after it dies as a system. That's half my point.
The second half is that Crusade isn't actually Narrative. At all.
If you took Skyrim, left in the leveling system (different trees to select from, perk points, skills, etc), but took out the World (tamriel), the Storyline (Alduin Worldeater) and the Secondary Plots (The Skyrim Civil War), you'd basically have crusade.
Yes, there's some elements of the missions that are somewhat narrative, but to use the Skyrim comparison again, the Crusade missions are like if Skyrim consisted exclusively of procedurally generated dungeons in which you could pick three secondary missions to complete (kill the necromancer, release the prisoners, secure the food supplies) in addition to the primary mission (find the macguffin). There's no information provided on how to string these dungeons together or what they mean or even what world they're in. They just exist in an empty void.
Yes, yes, when you complete the Dungeon your character (whose nature is completely irrelevant) gets to level up to Level 25 and choose some perk or another... but that's not narrative. That's just progression. Playing procedurally generated Crusade missions so you can earn Crusade XP and RP so you can progress in leveling up your units and your roster isn't even really the same thing as narrative.
The life shelf of Codex dropped considerably compared with older edition
I mean, it sort of depends which edition you're comparing it to. Lifespan has gone UP since 6th/7th. Especially 7th. Who's to say 9th isn't around for a little longer? I think it's safe to say 8th was just a very large public beta, so it's possible 9th runs longer than the what? 3 year span of 8th?
Recent history makes 3 years what they expect before getting another start of fiscal year edition bump.
AoS 1-2: 3 years
7th-8th: 3 years
8th-9th: 3 years
Only 6th and it's sad 2 years has deviated from the 3 year cycle.
I'm expecting AoS 3.0 this year (probably with an accelerated BR release to keep it on track if the Plague keeps plaguing)
PenitentJake wrote: ...But these rules are only necessary because of the campaign we've created, not because the crusade system is lacking...
If the Crusade system was enough on its own why did you need to create a campaign?
It's classic GW defense tactics. Make the players do the work so you don't have to and then praise said players and make them feel special!
You do realize that we wargamers have been making up our own campaigns regardless of game system, company, actual historical facts (in regards to historical games), and the existence/non-existence of official campaign systems, right?
It's got nothing to do with GW.
That's rather my point, though it's getting lost in the thread.
Real narrative players have been kicking ass and taking names in the narrative scene long before Crusade existed, and long after it dies as a system. That's half my point.
The second half is that Crusade isn't actually Narrative. At all.
If you took Skyrim, left in the leveling system (different trees to select from, perk points, skills, etc), but took out the World (tamriel), the Storyline (Alduin Worldeater) and the Secondary Plots (The Skyrim Civil War), you'd basically have crusade.
Yes, there's some elements of the missions that are somewhat narrative, but to use the Skyrim comparison again, the Crusade missions are like if Skyrim consisted exclusively of procedurally generated dungeons in which you could pick three secondary missions to complete (kill the necromancer, release the prisoners, secure the food supplies) in addition to the primary mission (find the macguffin). There's no information provided on how to string these dungeons together or what they mean or even what world they're in. They just exist in an empty void.
Yes, yes, when you complete the Dungeon your character (whose nature is completely irrelevant) gets to level up to Level 25 and choose some perk or another... but that's not narrative. That's just progression. Playing procedurally generated Crusade missions so you can earn Crusade XP and RP so you can progress in leveling up your units and your roster isn't even really the same thing as narrative.
The first point, that we've been doing it forever on our own, is certainly somewhat true, and I'm beginning to see what you're getting at with the second point. I'll try to keep it brief:
Yes, as narrative players, we always created worlds, our own named characters, our own missions, etc. But since there was no progression system, none of it made any difference in subsequent games, unless you found people who were willing to accept any of the house rules that you had to create in order to make that happen. Now the progression system exists, you can still create the worlds, named characters and missions, but because they can actually get skills, equipment and traits as a result of those battles that are official and have an impact on subsequent games, we can do what we've always done AND we can take it as far as we always wanted to but couldn't.
To the second point: you strike me as the kind of guy who, if you were playing D&D, you would insist on playing in Forgotten Realms, or Greyhawk, or Darksun or Eberron because for you, the setting is the game. And without the setting, it's not a game to you, just a progression system.
What you fail to understand is that while I'll play those campaigns if the group wants to and enjoy myself doing it, when I RUN the game, I prefer to make up my own campaign world. My players tend to enjoy that too, because the game that we play ends up being something that they aren't going to play around everyone else's table; it is a unique experience. Now my players might not like it as much if I had to invent all of the rules- the progression system as you call it- because that's where power dynamic rears its ugly. The game is no less a game because I choose to do that. It's no less than D&D. It doesn't become merely a progression system when you remove the campaign world. In fact, I would argue that having multiple campaign worlds to choose from, in addition to the option of inventing your own, is better than having an game that is locked one way or the other.
And that's exactly what Crusade is. Wanna play? Make up the worlds and star systems where the game takes place, like narrative players always have and use these cool new rules to flesh out out. Not sure how to do that, or just want someone else to do the heavy lifting?
Play in Pariah Nexus. Or the Charadon Crusades, or Argovon.
But don't say it's not a narrative game because it gives you the choice. The choice makes it a better narrative game, not worse.
To use your own example of Skyrim- if you ripped out all the world specific content, you claim that makes it empty and reduces it to nothing but a progression system, but I say it would empower you to sub in content from any other sources, or invent your own. Then Skyrim would be as versatile a system as D&D. Or Crusade. But because it's locked behind a specific world and a specific time, if you don't want to play in that world or that time, it's useless.
The Skyrim-without-the-world comparison seems particularly wrong because the world is... 40k? Right? Or is the Crusade system sold without setting context? I may be confused on what it is but I'm pretty sure Crusade has a world, much like Skyrim has a world.
PenitentJake wrote: What you fail to understand is that while I'll play those campaigns if the group wants to and enjoy myself doing it, when I RUN the game, I prefer to make up my own campaign world. My players tend to enjoy that too, because the game that we play ends up being something that they aren't going to play around everyone else's table; it is a unique experience. Now my players might not like it as much if I had to invent all of the rules- the progression system as you call it- because that's where power dynamic rears its ugly. The game is no less a game because I choose to do that. It's no less than D&D. It doesn't become merely a progression system when you remove the campaign world. In fact, I would argue that having multiple campaign worlds to choose from, in addition to the option of inventing your own, is better than having an game that is locked one way or the other.
Rihgu wrote: The Skyrim-without-the-world comparison seems particularly wrong because the world is... 40k? Right? Or is the Crusade system sold without setting context? I may be confused on what it is but I'm pretty sure Crusade has a world, much like Skyrim has a world.
You are correct, of course- the difference being that 40k as a setting is too big to actually be the time and place where a game takes place.
You can play a 40k set on Terra during the Age of Apostasy, or on Armageddon during Thrakka's Waaaghh, etc.
Skyrim is one world, one time.
The context of the comment though is the ongoing debate about whether the Crusade system is enough, on its own, to run a game. This conversation has taken place within this thread over several pages, even though it is somewhat of a tanget to the actual thread. I think the Crusade system is great as is, and the best thing to happen to 40k since I started playing in 89. Unit1126PLL thinks that the Crusade system is missing something, and it seems like he feels that what's missing is campaign content for lack of a better term- the specific elements of story, linked to time and place.
Interestingly enough, we agree on the topic of the thread- new dexes are missing some of the flavour stuff that has previously been included, and both of us seem to prefer to have that stuff. Crusade came up because some people feel that the bespoke Crusade stuff is what pushed out the fluff.
When I think of narrative gaming, pen and paper RPG's immediately come to mind, because I think they are the most narrative of all types of games that exist. Unit1126PLL brought up Skyrim, and I just used the analogy. But I think actual RPG's are better analogies, so I stuffed those into the argument too. If a narrative game is too closely connected to a particular setting (which can be in time or space or both) in order to help people build stories, it loses versatility.
I think Unit would feel like Crusade would be more if it was connected to a specific time or place, I think that would be a mistake, because the system would not be versatile enough to allow us to play in times and spaces of our own choosing.
I think Unit would feel like Crusade would be more if it was connected to a specific time or place, I think that would be a mistake, because the system would not be versatile enough to allow us to play in times and spaces of our own choosing.
Seems like they'd be very interested in, if you've got them right:
Unit1126PLL wrote: ... have been kicking ass and taking names in the narrative scene long before Crusade existed, and long after it dies as a system. That's half my point.
The second half is that Crusade isn't actually Narrative. At all.
It's a rule structure for narrative games. D&D is a narrative game, it still has rules. Necromunda is a narrative driven game, and it has extensive campaign rules.
Campaign rules are fantastic for narrative as they give a structure that allows games to progress from one to another. Having a system that allows for unit progression, force escalation, and even downsides to losing units/games is a good thing. It doesn't limit narrative avenues.
Unit1126PLL wrote: If you took Skyrim, left in the leveling system (different trees to select from, perk points, skills, etc), but took out the World (tamriel), the Storyline (Alduin Worldeater) and the Secondary Plots (The Skyrim Civil War), you'd basically have crusade.
Yes, there's some elements of the missions that are somewhat narrative, but to use the Skyrim comparison again, the Crusade missions are like if Skyrim consisted exclusively of procedurally generated dungeons in which you could pick three secondary missions to complete (kill the necromancer, release the prisoners, secure the food supplies) in addition to the primary mission (find the macguffin). There's no information provided on how to string these dungeons together or what they mean or even what world they're in. They just exist in an empty void.
Yes, yes, when you complete the Dungeon your character (whose nature is completely irrelevant) gets to level up to Level 25 and choose some perk or another... but that's not narrative. That's just progression. Playing procedurally generated Crusade missions so you can earn Crusade XP and RP so you can progress in leveling up your units and your roster isn't even really the same thing as narrative.
I think that using Skyrim isn't the best example. That game may be as wide as the ocean, but it's as deep as a kid's paddling pool.
I get what you're saying, and I have heard the "Crusade is not narrative" argument before, but I fundamentally disagree that the two aren't meant for one another. It's just a structure behind the games themselves, allowing one to flow onto the next with trackable results for all involved players.
For me, Crusade is 40k Necromunda, and I think that's wonderful.
I can see an argument for Crusade technically not being narrative, but in practice it is. Even without any story written players still get attached to their warbands, have grudges against opposing ones, and enjoy following the progression of both. Even friendly banter during the game over how X must be fighting Y because of Z, or how X is back for a rematch after its defeat to Y, can constitute a narrative.
In a way Crusade is more narrative than a structured campaign with specific story elements, because it creates narrative organically by inspiring players to do so on their own. And that is really what narrative play is about; not the existence or depth of a story but just getting people to see their armies as 'characters' in their own right.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I can see an argument for Crusade technically not being narrative, but in practice it is. Even without any story written players still get attached to their warbands, have grudges against opposing ones, and enjoy following the progression of both. Even friendly banter during the game over how X must be fighting Y because of Z, or how X is back for a rematch after its defeat to Y, can constitute a narrative.
That's not at all any different than a non-Crusade game in any edition prior to 9th.
Except it is, because Crusade provides a structure for army progression that applies equally to all factions (or will, when GW finally gets around to getting all the 'Dexes out).
H.B.M.C. wrote: Except it is, because Crusade provides a structure for army progression that applies equally to all factions (or will, when GW finally gets around to getting all the 'Dexes out).
That 'structure' (read: moar rulez!) has nothing to do with any of what I quoted.
Plus, 40K literally had a system of 'progression' based on gaining experience and extra skills during [narrative] campaigns five editions ago! This is nothing remotely new or original.
Much as I bemoan the lack of unit by unit background, I’m not blaming the Crusade Rules, and I most definitely don’t advocate it’s ditching.
Just....gimme my unit by unit background back as well!
I agree.
If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
H.B.M.C. wrote: The campaign rules that GW tacked onto the game in 3rd and 4th were pathetic.
This time they're taking it seriously.
Though, as with any version of Necromunda and its ilk? Those taking part need to do so in the spirit of a narrative campaign - where your journey is just as important as your destination.
I know I'm a few days late to the thread, but I am glad some people are getting to the argument.
First of all, WRT the Veil mission pack: I own it, so I like it. I haven't found anyone to play it with though yet, unfortunately.
But the point has largely been missed still. I also make my own settings for DND. I don't need a good setting prewritten to have a good game. Because I am a narrative player and have already been doing that for ages.
To use the DND analogy, let's say that DND 6th edition releases a single core book that everyone can buy (so no more DMG and no more PHB) that comes with two parts: 1) Dungeon generator (perhaps complete with one of those random online dungeon generator links) - this is basically the crusade mission system. Room 1 is of a random size at the end of random corridors with a random number of doors, and with random enemies and a single objective. The players can pick 3 optional objectives when they enter this randomly generated dungeon. That's the Crusade mission system.
2) XP and levelling guide (encounter worth X CR gives X XP, at Y XP you gain a level. When you gain a level, choose a feat or roll randomly if you want).
What they've given you isn't DND. There's no backgrounds (no requirement for them), there's no languages. There's not even a requirement to name your character. There's no social system, no information about how to connect your player's backstories (I loved the system in the Rogue Trader FF40kRPG for this)... there's basically nothing except progression and random unconnected dungeon generation.
Now, of course, a good DM could take all that information and make a linked setting anyways, picking and choosing what random elements of dungeon to incorporate, building the social encounter mechanisms from scratch, forcing people to name their characters and talk about backstories, etc.
but that's the GM doing the work, not the game, and could always have been done in the history of 40k without the Crusade system.
All crusade brings is a progression system that's "official". It doesn't even mean your guys get the bonuses next game unless you're playing someone from your campaign; I've definitely seen people turn down PUGs against crusade armies specifically because they CBA to use Power Level or because they don't think the CPs offset the bonuses that Crusade offers.
I agree.
If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Unit1126PLL wrote: But the point has largely been missed still. I also make my own settings for DND. I don't need a good setting prewritten to have a good game. Because I am a narrative player and have already been doing that for ages.
D&D has splatbook adventures. How is the Veil book any different to that?
I'm with Unit on this. There are a couple of points that I think are getting missed or conflated.
The Crusade rules provide structure for progression. I like that. That's a good thing and I'm glad it exists. But mechanical progression on its own doesn't make a campaign; Crusade is a series of disconnected battles using the same force. There's no larger context. Unit's analogy of a dungeon generator is spot on- it gives you the mechanical rules that you need to implement battles within a campaign, but no meat to string together those battles into a coherent narrative.
You could certainly take the 'dungeon generator' example, play a series of dungeon crawls, have your character level up each time... but that's more like a roguelike videogame than a D&D campaign. If you wanted it to be a campaign, you'd have to start homebrewing. Maybe you have a world map and allow the players to move around it, with different areas producing different dungeons. Maybe you could give the players decisions and progression unrelated to each individual dungeon crawl, like allies to recruit or equipment to buy. Then when they get into a dungeon, you generate and run it according to the given rules. That persistent larger world is what turns a series of disconnected encounters with the same character into a narratively structured campaign.
Crusade doesn't give you the tools to repeat the old WD campaigns, where they had a map and territory control, with ultimate objectives for each side. It just gives you ways to have prior battles affect the next, using the same force- a Crusade 'campaign' is more like a slow-grow tournament than it is like a D&D campaign. GW actually did that in WD, back in the day, but it was a whole different thing from their big narrative campaigns.
GW doesn't need to start publishing narrative campaign sourcebooks giving you dry accounts of each battle. That's the easiest thing to homebrew. They just need to provide a metagame, even if it's simple, for the Crusade system to slot into.
If I want to do a 'Battle for Vraks' campaign, I need:
1. Background on what Vraks is, who's fighting, why they're fighting, etc.
2. An overarching system to track how the campaign is going, what progress each side has made, and where/why an individual battle is occurring.
3. A system to fight the individual battles.
4. A system to handle progression for the forces involved in each battle.
Imperial Armour gives me #1. 40K gives me #3. Crusade gives me #4. Nothing gives me #2. So my choices are to either homebrew #2, or have the same forces fight each other over and over again according to default 40K rules, without any sense of 'place' within the Vraks conflict. That's not really a narrative campaign.
Unit1126PLL wrote: I know I'm a few days late to the thread, but I am glad some people are getting to the argument.
First of all, WRT the Veil mission pack: I own it, so I like it. I haven't found anyone to play it with though yet, unfortunately.
But the point has largely been missed still. I also make my own settings for DND. I don't need a good setting prewritten to have a good game. Because I am a narrative player and have already been doing that for ages.
To use the DND analogy, let's say that DND 6th edition releases a single core book that everyone can buy (so no more DMG and no more PHB) that comes with two parts:
1) Dungeon generator (perhaps complete with one of those random online dungeon generator links) - this is basically the crusade mission system. Room 1 is of a random size at the end of random corridors with a random number of doors, and with random enemies and a single objective. The players can pick 3 optional objectives when they enter this randomly generated dungeon. That's the Crusade mission system.
2) XP and levelling guide (encounter worth X CR gives X XP, at Y XP you gain a level. When you gain a level, choose a feat or roll randomly if you want).
What they've given you isn't DND. There's no backgrounds (no requirement for them), there's no languages. There's not even a requirement to name your character. There's no social system, no information about how to connect your player's backstories (I loved the system in the Rogue Trader FF40kRPG for this)... there's basically nothing except progression and random unconnected dungeon generation.
Of course it's D&D.
There's no backgrounds (rules wise) in pre-5e editions of D&D. At least not in the PHB, DMG. Pre-5e the best you get straight out of the core books is vague nods (see 1e DMG). And it's completely optional in 5e. There's definitely no social system in any of them. You do get some vague stuff in additional books though. There's never been anything actually requiring a character name (well, besides a line on the character sheet).
Unit1126PLL wrote: All crusade brings is a progression system that's "official". It doesn't even mean your guys get the bonuses next game unless you're playing someone from your campaign; I've definitely seen people turn down PUGs against crusade armies specifically because they CBA to use Power Level or because they don't think the CPs offset the bonuses that Crusade offers.
Oh absolutely. Pts or PL, either is fine with me.
But I'm not going to play a game where I haven't got the same option to choose additional free rules for my models/units. 1st, if you're not in our Crusade (where things are documented)? I highly doubt you randomly rolled that upgrade that's so uniquely suited for unit x. And I KNOW you didn't have to pay anything for it. I'll also bet $ I'll never see a Battle Scar on any of your units (it's too rare in Crusade as is...) & if I do it won't be one of any consequence.
Ex: In our Crusade game my Immortals just got a weapons upgrade (Auto-loaders) that generates an additional hit on hit rolls of 6. That is worth sooo much more than giving my opponent +1 starting CP. And, IMO, that's not the best thing I could have Battle Honor wise.
I agree. If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Why bother buying a book only for the rules, if said rules will be reduntant following FAQ/CA/ Pts adjustment in +/- 6 months? That's just throwing money away.. The app is the answer IMO they need to make that a living rules system and keep codexes for fluff and art.
catbarf wrote: The Crusade rules provide structure for progression. I like that. That's a good thing and I'm glad it exists. But mechanical progression on its own doesn't make a campaign; Crusade is a series of disconnected battles using the same force. There's no larger context. Unit's analogy of a dungeon generator is spot on- it gives you the mechanical rules that you need to implement battles within a campaign, but no meat to string together those battles into a coherent narrative.
Necromunda has mechanical progression, and it makes a campaign just fine. It has territories, yes, but they're abstract and not finite. You're not fighting over a map, and the game, as written as of this posting, does not contain support for that. And Necromunda has supported campaigns for decades now.
catbarf wrote: You could certainly take the 'dungeon generator' example, play a series of dungeon crawls, have your character level up each time... but that's more like a roguelike videogame than a D&D campaign. If you wanted it to be a campaign, you'd have to start homebrewing. Maybe you have a world map and allow the players to move around it, with different areas producing different dungeons. Maybe you could give the players decisions and progression unrelated to each individual dungeon crawl, like allies to recruit or equipment to buy. Then when they get into a dungeon, you generate and run it according to the given rules. That persistent larger world is what turns a series of disconnected encounters with the same character into a narratively structured campaign.
Ok... and? Sorry, I'm not sure what the greater point is here.
Crusade provides a structure for campaign progression. What you do with that campaign progression is up to the players. If there were more rules around maps and territories and other such stuff, the same people would still be complaining about it not being "narrative" and just being "more rules".
catbarf wrote: Imperial Armour gives me #1. 40K gives me #3. Crusade gives me #4. Nothing gives me #2. So my choices are to either homebrew #2, or have the same forces fight each other over and over again according to default 40K rules, without any sense of 'place' within the Vraks conflict. That's not really a narrative campaign.
I can't agree with you here. As it is narrative play you can do whatever you want. Do you want specific defined conditions/rules on what a Vraks game should be so that you can have a sense of 'place'. I mean, isn't that just a "trench warfare mission" rules table?
Campaigns don't have to be structured. They don't have to have maps, or anything like that. They need some level of progression so that there's a reason to keep going, so that there's a point to battles beyond just straight win/loss ratios, so people can see their forces grow, or shrink, see heroic deeds rewarded, and bitter defeats sting. And for people who want a setting, that's what their Crusade books are for (like any D&D or other RPG adventure).
I've played many hours of Deathwatch in my life. I've only ever played an official adventure once, and that was during play-testing of a specific adventure book. All the other times we just make up our own stuff. Deathwatch has the rules for character progression, but what we do with that is up to the GM who is writing the campaign, and they can do whatever they want. They don't need a map or anything.
I agree.
If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Why bother buying a book only for the rules, if said rules will be reduntant following FAQ/CA/ Pts adjustment in +/- 6 months? That's just throwing money away..
The app is the answer IMO they need to make that a living rules system and keep codexes for fluff and art.
I'm entirely unclear as to why an app is 'the answer.' Other folks have done 'living rules systems' without an app. Heck, _GW_ did 'living rules' for Epic and BB without an app (before they killed them off).
Then you get to the issue that living rules aren't something that GW has demonstrated any interest in. Its pretty antithetical to their sales model. So the answer to something they don't even want doesn't seem at all useful.
And, of course, I'm entirely unclear on how a sub fee isn't throwing money away? On top of the book you need to buy to get the code to get access all the app features for your army? That seems like throwing more money away. Or rather throwing money away to set more money on fire.
I agree.
If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Why bother buying a book only for the rules, if said rules will be reduntant following FAQ/CA/ Pts adjustment in +/- 6 months? That's just throwing money away..
The app is the answer IMO they need to make that a living rules system and keep codexes for fluff and art.
I'm entirely unclear as to why an app is 'the answer.' Other folks have done 'living rules systems' without an app. Heck, _GW_ did 'living rules' for Epic and BB without an app (before they killed them off).
Then you get to the issue that living rules aren't something that GW has demonstrated any interest in. Its pretty antithetical to their sales model. So the answer to something they don't even want doesn't seem at all useful.
And, of course, I'm entirely unclear on how a sub fee isn't throwing money away? On top of the book you need to buy to get the code to get access all the app features for your army? That seems like throwing more money away. Or rather throwing money away to set more money on fire.
Because paper rules by GW dont work because they feth up and change everything mid edition every time..
If you only wnat the rules makes sense to have the app where it updates pts and faq everything as and when. the codex just sits there being incorrect.. I dont get why people want to pay for GW's paper rules... IMO might as well get pictures, art and fluff if thats the only option..
Are people complaining about having to carry around a codex with a dozen or two more pages? Or about a codex costing more if it had the same amount of fluff as before + crusade rules? Because that was something no one suggested.
I agree.
If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Why bother buying a book only for the rules, if said rules will be reduntant following FAQ/CA/ Pts adjustment in +/- 6 months? That's just throwing money away..
The app is the answer IMO they need to make that a living rules system and keep codexes for fluff and art.
I'm entirely unclear as to why an app is 'the answer.' Other folks have done 'living rules systems' without an app. Heck, _GW_ did 'living rules' for Epic and BB without an app (before they killed them off).
Then you get to the issue that living rules aren't something that GW has demonstrated any interest in. Its pretty antithetical to their sales model. So the answer to something they don't even want doesn't seem at all useful.
And, of course, I'm entirely unclear on how a sub fee isn't throwing money away? On top of the book you need to buy to get the code to get access all the app features for your army? That seems like throwing more money away. Or rather throwing money away to set more money on fire.
Because paper rules by GW dont work because they feth up and change everything mid edition every time..
If you only wnat the rules makes sense to have the app where it updates pts and faq everything as and when. the codex just sits there being incorrect.. I dont get why people want to pay for GW's paper rules... IMO might as well get pictures, art and fluff if thats the only option..
That addresses nothing I asked.
Also, errata doesn't make anything unusable, otherwise the entire publishing industry has been non-functional since its inception.
catbarf wrote: The Crusade rules provide structure for progression. I like that. That's a good thing and I'm glad it exists. But mechanical progression on its own doesn't make a campaign; Crusade is a series of disconnected battles using the same force. There's no larger context. Unit's analogy of a dungeon generator is spot on- it gives you the mechanical rules that you need to implement battles within a campaign, but no meat to string together those battles into a coherent narrative.
Necromunda has mechanical progression, and it makes a campaign just fine. It has territories, yes, but they're abstract and not finite. You're not fighting over a map, and the game, as written as of this posting, does not contain support for that. And Necromunda has supported campaigns for decades now.
catbarf wrote: You could certainly take the 'dungeon generator' example, play a series of dungeon crawls, have your character level up each time... but that's more like a roguelike videogame than a D&D campaign. If you wanted it to be a campaign, you'd have to start homebrewing. Maybe you have a world map and allow the players to move around it, with different areas producing different dungeons. Maybe you could give the players decisions and progression unrelated to each individual dungeon crawl, like allies to recruit or equipment to buy. Then when they get into a dungeon, you generate and run it according to the given rules. That persistent larger world is what turns a series of disconnected encounters with the same character into a narratively structured campaign.
Ok... and? Sorry, I'm not sure what the greater point is here.
Crusade provides a structure for campaign progression. What you do with that campaign progression is up to the players. If there were more rules around maps and territories and other such stuff, the same people would still be complaining about it not being "narrative" and just being "more rules".
catbarf wrote: Imperial Armour gives me #1. 40K gives me #3. Crusade gives me #4. Nothing gives me #2. So my choices are to either homebrew #2, or have the same forces fight each other over and over again according to default 40K rules, without any sense of 'place' within the Vraks conflict. That's not really a narrative campaign.
I can't agree with you here. As it is narrative play you can do whatever you want. Do you want specific defined conditions/rules on what a Vraks came should be so that you can have a sense of 'place'. I mean, isn't that just a "trench warfare mission" rules table?
Campaigns don't have to be structured. They don't have to have maps, or anything like that. They need some level of progression so that there's a reason to keep going, so that there's a point to battles beyond just straight win/loss ratios, so people can see their forces grow, or shrink, see heroic deeds rewarded, and bitter defeats sting. And for people who want a setting, that's what their Crusade books are for (like any D&D or other RPG adventure).
I've played many hours of Deathwatch in my life. I've only ever played an official adventure once, and that was during play-testing of a specific adventure book. All the other times we just make up our own stuff. Deathwatch has the rules for character progression, but what we do with that is up to the GM who is writing the campaign, and they can do whatever they want. They don't need a map or anything.
I agree with H.B.M.C. here, you get the basic crusade rules for progression, armies get unique rules to properly display their fluff like the blood angels slowly falling to the black thirst or a DG warband spreading their unique plague, and the crusade mission packs like Beyond the Veil to tie together your battles in a story.
All of that combined is crusade, and that's plenty for narrative gaming. I'm not sure what more you would to go ahead with a narrative campaign.
Because paper rules by GW dont work because they feth up and change everything mid edition every time..
If you only wnat the rules makes sense to have the app where it updates pts and faq everything as and when. the codex just sits there being incorrect.. I dont get why people want to pay for GW's paper rules... IMO might as well get pictures, art and fluff if thats the only option..
1) I for one don't WANT my rules to auto-update.
Sure, I want access to whatever the errata is. Throw it on the site & I'll print it out. But I want the people I play with & I to be in control of when it's applied. If GW comes out with some change we don't agree with? We can decide xyz will not apply, do it according to codex/rule book. That becomes alot harder if things just auto-change.
2) I spend enough time looking at a screen. I don't do that come game time.
3) The older I get, the harder it's becoming to read stuff on tablets & phone screens. You'll get there too one day.
4) I'm not paying GW a monthly fee to play their games.
H.B.M.C. wrote:Necromunda has mechanical progression, and it makes a campaign just fine. It has territories, yes, but they're abstract and not finite. You're not fighting over a map, and the game, as written as of this posting, does not contain support for that. And Necromunda has supported campaigns for decades now.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Necromunda's Dominion system is a metagame about territory control, which provides context for the individual battles. You care about the outcome of a battle beyond the direct impact on the participants; there's something at stake. If you win a battle, that has consequences.
Sure, it's abstract; it doesn't need to be a hard-copy map with little zones that you move Monopoly pieces around. It just serves as the connective tissue for battles. You are fighting over control of territory. The objective of the campaign to control the most territory. The game gives you rules for controlling territory and what territory does for you. Simple.
I'm not asking for a whole new layer of extremely complex gameplay; just something to make a campaign out of a series of battles. And yes, I could DIY something like the Dominion system for Crusade pretty easily. But it ain't in the box.
H.B.M.C. wrote:I've played many hours of Deathwatch in my life. I've only ever played an official adventure once, and that was during play-testing of a specific adventure book. All the other times we just make up our own stuff. Deathwatch has the rules for character progression, but what we do with that is up to the GM who is writing the campaign, and they can do whatever they want. They don't need a map or anything.
Let me put it this way: Have all of your Deathwatch sessions been randomly-generated one-shot encounters, with no relevance to prior ones besides using the same character?
Imagine the GM rolls a die and go 'okay, got a 6, today's session is Fighting A Genestealer Cult', and then you take your existing character and fight this isolated scenario. Regardless of what happens, the only impact to the next scenario will be that your character will experience some progression. That's the Crusade experience.
Deathwatch is designed around those encounters fitting into an overall narrative. It has a GM acting as referee, who constructs the scenarios. You aren't randomly generating encounters ex nihilo; the GM is given the tools they need to build an encounter based on player actions and decisions.
Now, you absolutely could do the same with Crusade- have a GM who tracks the status of the combatants in the context of the larger campaign, where their forces are deployed on a world, what they're fighting over, what they've captured and how it affects future encounters, and how the battlefield should be set up to represent the engagement that is about to occur. That'd probably be a lot of fun. But since none of that is provided or supported by the rules, you'll have to homebrew all the mechanics. That's my point.
Crusade is hampered because it was written for pick up games, and further hamstrung by the fact that fact specific rules would be dribbling in slowly with codex releases.
Your army is a character generated using the normal 40k rules (so Crusade doesn't offer that).
Your army plays missions that are entirely randomly generated save for the Agendas that you get to pick. There is no connection between the missions (save that your force exists in both) and no requirement that your Agendas conform to any sort of pre-existing structure. So far, we haven't left what regular 40k provides, except that we changed the name of Secondary Objectives to Agendas, and they reward XP rather than VP...
And XP is just feeding a progression system. My keeper of secrets gets exploding 6s, yours does not, because mine got 6xp last battle and therefore an upgrade. Never mind that we're both timeless destroyers from beyond the bounds of time and space...
yep, when I think narrative, I wonder why my Fire Prism can't have the "Accelerator" upgrade for its laser until it kills one more psyker. I definitely don't think "why am I here and why am I fighting this battle"? Which Crusade doesn't provide. Its splatbooks might (e.g. Veil) but people don't actually play with those in my experience, just like how they didn't play with Campaign Books back in the day (unless they gave them some kind of matched play advantage like the Vigilus formations specialist detachments).
I mean heck, even as a progression system it's flawed. If I kill 30 termagaunts in 3 units of 10, I get 1 XP, if I kill 30 termagaunts in one unit of 30, I get nothing. Why does the administrative division of the enemy force affect my progression? If I kill 30 bandits in Skyrim, do I get less XP because they were all in the same ruin instead of 10 bandits per ruin in 3 ruins? Or in D&D if I kill 3 Beholders in the same dungeon run, am I out XP vs killing 3 beholders one at a time?
Great discussion all around- Unit, that last post was super articulate; Catbarf- knocked it out of the park, and great rebuttal by H.B.M.C. And everyone else too.
And I agree about Crusade itself being short on the "Background" bits (CB's #2). I think that the reason it can afford to be light on that part is that 40k itself gives us so much of that... But this brings us back to OP, because the whole thread is about how new dexes are doing less of that.
And it's also true about the tree campaigns, ladder campaigns and map based campaigns- those types of systems have previously been detailed in other core books, so we know them if we've been playing for a long time, but they were not brought out again and repolished for Crusade.
I'm still using Urban Conquest's Streets of Death territory system, though I've modified it fairly heavily.
For my part, I think I'm glad that Crusade lets us hand this part ourselves. I'd be afraid that if they tried to go too far on the "Background" piece, they'd limit the utility of Crusade by locking it to certain times/ places/ factions.
As for campaign systems, it could have been helpful to reprint these for newer players for sure. But I'm glad Crusade focussed on giving us things we hadn't seen before, rather than reprinting information about the difference between map based campaigns and ladder campaigns.
I do understand a lot more about where Unit is coming from though. It's been a good conversation.
Books like Beyond the Veil are the story telling part part of crusade and people like them, so why does the main criticism seem to be that crusade is not telling a story?
If we're still using the Dungeons and Dragons analogy, Crusade offers the exact same progression and structure as DnD does.
There is not a single line in the PHB, DMG, or MM explaining where your campaign takes you or why your players are in a dungeon or fighting a monster.
The 40k campaign books that did offer this kind of stuff were not extremely popular with the player base. I for one have never had interest in Dnd campaign books which do give you the where, why, and when and have always favored homebrew. I've also never met another person who had any interest in the campaign books for any system, but I am aware that they exist within the tabletop rpg world.
I'm not sure how many people bought the End Times books for WHFB because they were excited about playing the scenarios within.
My main gripe with the narrative campaigns up to and including the PA was that their missions were either horribly narrow or just bad. For example for one missions you needed Magnus, TS, some Grey Knights and Dark Angels, or the mission won't work. Missions which weren't as narrow were just regular missions with a hand full of special rules slapped on, usually horribly balanced and untested and therefore all but a few gems were horribly unfun to play.
Rihgu wrote: If we're still using the Dungeons and Dragons analogy, Crusade offers the exact same progression and structure as DnD does.
RPGs are collaborative storytelling. The reason a DM exists is to manage the world around the players to help the storyline progress according to a narrative arc.
What I was hoping for with Crusade was essentially a DMG. A narrative system (complete with rules!) that could help define the setting. 40k is too broad to be a setting without further narrowing, so questions like:
1) How do we build the planet are we on, and determine its attributes?
2) How will its attributes affect gameplay (e.g. a high-gravity desert world will have the table and terrain setup and rules work differently from a large but mostly hollow space station)
3) What are the orbital conditions that make this into a ground fight instead of a space fight; conversely, what rules are there for orbital control and what rules "on the ground" can offset this advantage?
4) What sorts of reasons may certain armies collide? Why would CWE fight Harlequins? If armies fighting for the same faction collide, such as Space Marines slaughtering Imperial Guard, what would be the reaction of the superior authorities (i.e. inquisition, Segmentum Command, etc) and how do we make sure that these narrative actions have narrative consequences?
5) What are the rules for different sizes of conflict? Does the deployment of an entire company of Space Marines or Imperial Guard superheavy tanks have any escalatory consequences (and therefore narrative consequences) for the players?
That's the type of thing I mean. I want the choices the players make to have narrative consequences. The critical difference with DND is that the DM exists, and the world is "theirs". But in 40k, there is no DM, and Crusade does not require or even suggest one. 40k as a setting, the image of what would happen, exists within GW's head.
A better example might be the FFGRPGs. There were penalties (the Corruption and Malignancies) system for players who willingly consorted with Chaos. There were recommended narrative threads for acolytes who were outcast because they killed loyal Imperial citizens or unnecessarily risked Imperial assets. There were specific rules surrounding the Writs of Trade that Rogue Traders had, distinctly allowing them (or not!) to include Xenos crewmembers.
Currently, I might play Crusade on Planet Bowling Ball with a green mat and chest-high hedges all over it one week, and then play the same army (with whatever progression it made) in an ultradense urban environment with no more than 4" between terrain pieces next week. There's no guidelines whatsoever to string those encounters together or to make sense of them.
Of course, I could make all of it up myself, but I never needed Crusade to do that in the first place, which means that Crusade isn't helping me be narrative at all.
Jidmah wrote: My main gripe with the narrative campaigns up to and including the PA was that their missions were either horribly narrow or just bad. For example for one missions you needed Magnus, TS, some Grey Knights and Dark Angels, or the mission won't work. Missions which weren't as narrow were just regular missions with a hand full of special rules slapped on, usually horribly balanced and untested and therefore all but a few gems were horribly unfun to play.
How you you find the middle ground between these two extremes, if you were tasked with developing this sort of scenario?
My favourite army book/Codex by GW from a fluff perspective was the 6th Edition Dwarf army book (the first one, not the revised one that was released later in that edition).
The fluff for each unit was written as from the perspective of an old Hammerer in a tavern telling everyone about each one whilst grumbling about his tobacco and ale. It was great.
The Dark Elf 6th edition book was also pretty great. The history section was written as though by a Dark Elf, rather than from an all-seeing detached narrator perspective, so you really got an insight into how the Dark Elves regarded their society and history, as well as the other races.
Nowadays what fluff and lore you get (which isn't explicitly a short one/two page story piece, if they still do them?) is typically less and written very blandly. None of it really has any individual flavour that makes it feel like you are being given a view of how this army/species/etc. views the world around them and themselves.
I agree. If im going to be charged £30+ ish for a codex which will have its rules redundant within 6 moths I dont mind paying abit more and have a hefty bigger book full of art and fluff. I dotn even care if its a C&P of my 8th ed codex..
Good for you, but what about all the people that only buy the book for the rules. You are making them pay more for a book, with stuff they don't want and will neve need.
And while you can enjoy downloaded books with lore at home, it is a lot harder to waltz in to a store with printed out rules and absolutly no one is going to believe that the print out comes from a print out of the GW app, but you just forgot to bring your phone with you. But it is of course totaly legit, and you of course bought the rules set in another store, that is why the store owner doesn't remember you ever buying it.
Why bother buying a book only for the rules, if said rules will be reduntant following FAQ/CA/ Pts adjustment in +/- 6 months? That's just throwing money away.. The app is the answer IMO they need to make that a living rules system and keep codexes for fluff and art.
I'm entirely unclear as to why an app is 'the answer.' Other folks have done 'living rules systems' without an app. Heck, _GW_ did 'living rules' for Epic and BB without an app (before they killed them off).
Then you get to the issue that living rules aren't something that GW has demonstrated any interest in. Its pretty antithetical to their sales model. So the answer to something they don't even want doesn't seem at all useful.
And, of course, I'm entirely unclear on how a sub fee isn't throwing money away? On top of the book you need to buy to get the code to get access all the app features for your army? That seems like throwing more money away. Or rather throwing money away to set more money on fire.
Because paper rules by GW dont work because they feth up and change everything mid edition every time.. If you only wnat the rules makes sense to have the app where it updates pts and faq everything as and when. the codex just sits there being incorrect.. I dont get why people want to pay for GW's paper rules... IMO might as well get pictures, art and fluff if thats the only option..
That addresses nothing I asked.
Also, errata doesn't make anything unusable, otherwise the entire publishing industry has been non-functional since its inception.
The point I was trying to make is that paying money for paper rules and rules only I.e. no fluff and art, seems a much bigger waste of money then an app sub. Currently, the app sub is £24 a year.. If that gives you access to all the datasheet rules, I think that's much better then putting down £30 for a book that will have a lot of its rules invalidated/changed within 6 months. Pts, costs, rules interaction etc. Yes the FAQ are free, but I for one would rather have it all in one place so I done do a goof or cheat by accident because I didn't realize/remember somethings been FAQ'd... Trying to remember all the faqs and erratas not just for your army but for your opponent's army is not appealing..
Just to be clear. Im all in the physical book camp. I love books. But GW is simply incapable of making coherent written rules it prints in it books..
Because paper rules by GW dont work because they feth up and change everything mid edition every time.. If you only wnat the rules makes sense to have the app where it updates pts and faq everything as and when. the codex just sits there being incorrect.. I dont get why people want to pay for GW's paper rules... IMO might as well get pictures, art and fluff if thats the only option..
1) I for one don't WANT my rules to auto-update. Sure, I want access to whatever the errata is. Throw it on the site & I'll print it out. But I want the people I play with & I to be in control of when it's applied. If GW comes out with some change we don't agree with? We can decide xyz will not apply, do it according to codex/rule book. That becomes alot harder if things just auto-change.
2) I spend enough time looking at a screen. I don't do that come game time.
3) The older I get, the harder it's becoming to read stuff on tablets & phone screens. You'll get there too one day.
4) I'm not paying GW a monthly fee to play their games.
Nothing is stopping you deciding the most current errata/FAQ does not apply. How is that different than deciding current errata / FAQ doesnt apply now? Just because you dont print it? It still exists...
So you'd rather pay GW a bigger annual fee for a codex+supplaments which does not contain correct rules/pts?
Rihgu wrote: There is not a single line in the PHB, DMG, or MM explaining where your campaign takes you or why your players are in a dungeon or fighting a monster.
There's plenty in the PHB, DMG, and MM covering topics besides 'combat' and 'leveling up'.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Seriously, did nobody here read the old campaigns they used to have in White Dwarf? I remember a really expansive one where the participants were fighting over control of a city, using the then-new Cityfight rules. They had a map of the city, divided into territories. Territories had special rules, either for the battles fought within them or for the player who controlled them. Each faction had their own goals, and the game used a simple system for players to attack and conquer other territories. When a player attacked another territory, they played a game against the player who owned it.
I'm not asking for the map they used or the background they made up. Anyone who's run a D&D campaign can come up with their own background and make a map for it.
I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
I'll probably be homebrewing this because it really doesn't have to be all that complicated. But I have to homebrew it, because that very basic campaign framework isn't in the Crusade rules. That's the point.
I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
I guess what you're looking for is the Flashpoint stuff from the White Dwarfs.
Argovon and now/upcoming Charadon.
They give you rules for Mass Campaigns rather than Map Campaigns, but it's still a Campaign structure with a form of finality and even has special rules for different areas to fight in.
I don't know how much this satisfies yours or Unit's desires (must they provide structure for map campaigns for it to be a real campaign system?) but it does seem to at a surface level fulfill the needs.
I finally found the Tombworld one and it's awesome!
There's tons of stuff provided that can help give more background and show the effects of the location of the battle
I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
Urban Conquest from 8th has some of this- that box had a big price tag, but if you could find just the book, it would go for cheap. Even there though, they didn't do territories as well as Necromunda; I haven't played Newcromunda yet, so I'm not sure if its territory system is as good as the classic.
Urban Conquest gives you 4 special territories; it gives maps, missions and strats that relate to these four territories. The other 21 territories in the city grid are kind of underdeveloped.
The Flashpoint suggestions weren't bad either- you'll find some good stuff in there... But again, not full-on functioning territory rules. Beyond the Veil Crusade Pack has some great stuff in, but pretty specific to that setting and those factions (very Cron-centric). If I remember correctly, there is supposed to to be a Charadon Hardback Campaign book (like Vigilus) as well as a Charadon Crusade mission pack on the way.
I was underwhelmed by the first installment of Flashpoint Charadon in last month's Dwarf, so I'm hoping the next article in that series raises the bar.
Anyone remember the old hex-tile campaign system GW built? I never bought in because the cost of the hex tiles seemed odd to me at the time, but I bet the book had some good stuff in it.
I think the conversation is specifically regarding 9th and whether Crusade offers sufficient narrative rules. In that sense, 8th edition's Urban Conquest book (as well as the Vigilus series which offered some pretty nice campaign rules) are irrelevant.
That said, Urban Conquest did look like an interesting system and my friend and I bought it at a very bad time. Never got a chance to play it (yet).
Sad to hear about the Charadon flashpoint, too. Maybe the second and third installments will bring it back!
Blndmage wrote: Why not make use of the Theaters of War from PA?
I finally found the Tombworld one and it's awesome!
There's tons of stuff provided that can help give more background and show the effects of the location of the battle
I hated the Tombworld one, it was a big part of why I only loaned the campaign book and browsed it instead of buying it. I think having something like it is neat but it needed another round of brainstorming and playtesting.
Fade Into the Dark, makes sense if it is underground, I guess you would use a different Theatre above ground? Already the narratives that this theatre fits has been cut in half.
Null-field Matrix completely destroys psykers, forget anyone using multiple ever agreeing to play these silly rules. Should have been a Stratagem instead. On top of it being overpowered it makes no sense, Necrons shut down psykers, they don't make them more likely to explode.
Why would Canoptek Wardens from the battlefield twist attack the Necrons defending the Tomb World? And look, another effect that messes with psykers, we get it you've never playtested this against someone with psykers to see if it is fun to play Eldar vs Necrons with these rules which they should have been ideal for if the writer had cared.
Apparently, it's extra important that we know that mysterious objective markers cannot be re-rolled because it's been pasted twice from the battlefield twists section. The mysterious objectives are actually all pretty cool though.
The terrain rule brings in the last effect in the theatre that messes with psykers, or does it? Actually, it can save the psyker from killing themselves, that's kind of amazing and no doubt unintentional. Again we see Canoptek servants attacking what could be their masters, stuuupid. Using rad-bursts to intercept ballistics doesn't sound like Necron technology.
Then there is a Stratagem that lets you teleport units more than 1" away from enemy models, it seems evident that despite this whole campaign book focusing on the events on a tomb world the associated theatre of war was never tested.
catbarf wrote: I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
Jidmah wrote: My main gripe with the narrative campaigns up to and including the PA was that their missions were either horribly narrow or just bad. For example for one missions you needed Magnus, TS, some Grey Knights and Dark Angels, or the mission won't work. Missions which weren't as narrow were just regular missions with a hand full of special rules slapped on, usually horribly balanced and untested and therefore all but a few gems were horribly unfun to play.
How you you find the middle ground between these two extremes, if you were tasked with developing this sort of scenario?
When I prepare narrative games without knowing who will play them, my requirements to the armies are much broader, for example by not requiring Magnus for the big ritual, but instead just a psyker interested in performing a big ritual, or have fortifications up to a certain PL to defend a choke point or just a LoW or other large model. I also have some back-up plan for factions or players who can't fulfill those requirements, for example if a necron player is supposed to do the ritual, a cryptec will set up and calibrate a portal to their tombworld instead.
You can also utilize models everyone has, for example you can always borrow some cultists, guardsmen or someone's AoS warband to be civilians, some admech or industrial looking terrain to be a shield generators or sources of power, a bunch of rhinos/chimeras/trukks/etc for a convoy, or just a cool character model as a VIP (if everything fails,Cypher always has a reason to be anywhere in the galaxy )
As for making missions more interesting, less is usually more. GW often tries messing with deployment zones, dice tables for weather, complex environmental effects or odd limitations for what you can or cannot bring. None of that has huge impact on a game that's essentially just capturing objectives/amassing kill points.
One option is to introduce a game-changing gimmick to a regular game - a siege represented by having one player build his fortress in any way they likes and giving the attacker a way to blow up terrain (for example by letting the attacker place objective markers which explode when scored), having an assassinate mission is much more interesting if the opponent has no clue what your objective is at all or if both players deploy just deploy poker chips with numbers with neither knowing what unit will go where. The open war card deck also is a great source for these kind of things.
The other option is to change the game completely, which is much more difficult to do and takes a lot of testing - my favorite is the ork armageddon race, where both players deploy along a start line and then all models and terrain moves 12" to the left at the beginning of every battle round. Everything that touches the table edge is destroyed, terrain that drops off the table is added back the right side. At the end of the game, the model furthest du the right wins the race and the game.
Last, but not least, these missions still need play testing. I remember more than one official narrative mission where the mission stratagems could be comboed with units or other stratagems to a devastating effect, leaving one player completely unable to win the scenario, where in others the developers clearly overlooked some plays which allowed one side or the other to easily win the whole scenario with little to no effort.
It's really not that different from creating a scenario for a D&D or similar games. If your scenario doesn't work unless the group brings a cleric, a paladin and a drow rogue, it's not a great scenario.
catbarf wrote: I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
Wouldn't that be unique to the campaign itself?
Sure, but including some with a basic campaign would give people something to start with.
A Town Called Malus wrote: My favourite army book/Codex by GW from a fluff perspective was the 6th Edition Dwarf army book (the first one, not the revised one that was released later in that edition).
The fluff for each unit was written as from the perspective of an old Hammerer in a tavern telling everyone about each one whilst grumbling about his tobacco and ale. It was great.
The Dark Elf 6th edition book was also pretty great. The history section was written as though by a Dark Elf, rather than from an all-seeing detached narrator perspective, so you really got an insight into how the Dark Elves regarded their society and history, as well as the other races.
Nowadays what fluff and lore you get (which isn't explicitly a short one/two page story piece, if they still do them?) is typically less and written very blandly. None of it really has any individual flavour that makes it feel like you are being given a view of how this army/species/etc. views the world around them and themselves.
This same reason is why I love the 3rd edition Necron codex. It was told from the point of view of the Imperium, in most cases the Mechanicus
catbarf wrote: I'm asking for the rules for what the territories do, how players attack and defend them, and what the ultimate victory conditions are for the campaign.
Wouldn't that be unique to the campaign itself?
Again, look to D&D. If the Dungeon Master's Guide were just a pamphlet that said 'sorry, everything besides combat and progression will be unique to your campaign, do it yourself', it wouldn't be very useful.
Brainstorming some generic territory points of interest:
-Ammo dump
-Communications hub
-Defensible position
-Logistical nexus
-Spaceport
-Food storage
-Population center
-Shrine
-Archaeotech
-Anti-air emplacement
Right off the bat that's ten 'territory types' that could have defined rules and benefits for how they impact a campaign, providing incentive and consequences for holding territory. Add rules for how players attack and defend them and we're nearly there.
Now, to contextualize them to a particular theater, how about some environmental types:
-Tundra
-Desert
-Airless
-Low gravity
-Arboreal
-Plains
-Urban
Give those some universal rules for how they affect battles, and guidance for how terrain should be set up within a battle to match the corresponding environment.
We now have:
-A system for fighting battles and capturing territory.
-A set of territory types with which to populate our battlespace.
-A set of environments to define that battlespace as a particular theater.
Throw in some victory conditions and you have all the tools you need to build out a campaign. Again, I'm not looking for a sourcebook to tell me exactly what the battle is and who's involved and give me a pretty map, just the tools to provide the when, where, and why to the battles.
Taking and holding territory only applies to Map Campaigns, of which none have been released for 40k 9e... yet. Considering Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus, and AoS (of games that I've read the rules for, at least) all have them, I'm sure they're to come eventually.
What GW has provided is structure for a Mass Campaign, one where taking and holding territory isn't relevant and is more about having a Mass number of players (territory control would be unruly if you have 12+ people in the campaign, unless you're truly dedicated).
They have also provided battlefield rules exactly as you've suggested, in the Charadon and Argovon flashpoints.
So we have 2 out of 3 of your points (4 out of 4, if you include victory conditions), and we're only missing the 1 because that specific sort of campaign hasn't been given support yet.
You don't have to be playing a map campaign to make the narrative relevant.
If I and my players are playing on a high-gravity desert world, I want them to have a set of rules they can use for every game (e.g. reduce weapon ranges by 6", jump and jet pack infantry have to take Dangerous Terrain or whatever the 8e equivalent is, use deserty terrain) that is different than the rules we might use if we're fighting on an asteroid or space station (models should be helmeted unless the battle is inside, in which case no vehicles; all weapons have Rending, when inside all BLAST weapons have reroll wounds, etc).
Perhaps the planet has different climes but is still high-gravity or has a thick atmosphere (or no atmosphere) or something. I mean the attributes of our shared battlespace should be shared...
Also, orbital conditions. Why doesn't anyone get orbital support (except for non-crusade related stratagems)? Should someone? If they do, how do you determine who? And how do you offset it in a balanced way in ground battles? If not, then why not? What narrative reason is there for an absence of orbital assets by all people provi-
you know what I gave lots of examples of what might be useful in my earlier post and I'm just repeating them. There's lots of stuff Crusade doesn't provide that would be great for narrative play.Progression is not the same thing as narrative and nor are randomly generated missions.
You don't have to be playing a map campaign to make the narrative relevant.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or trying to make a point against me (ahh, the internet), but this is what I've been hinting at if not outright stating it. The reason Crusade doesn't have rules for a Map Campaign is that GW has not yet published a Map Campaign for the Crusade system. That does not mean Crusade is not a narrative system, it just means it doesn't have a Map Campaign.
Okay, and Crusade provides, in various sources, rules for a variety of terrains/worlds/climates. Omission of orbital conditions is a strange one, but not a new omission for GW to make? Or are we reverting back to the "melee in the far future doesn't even make sense! Why aren't they just exterminatusing every battle?" thing from 2006?
(as a side note, Flashpoint Argovon lets you collect Xenotech points and then spend those to buy a stratagem called Orbital Targetting, which lets you target an enemy unit from Orbit!)
You don't have to be playing a map campaign to make the narrative relevant.
I can't tell if you're agreeing with me or trying to make a point against me (ahh, the internet), but this is what I've been hinting at if not outright stating it. The reason Crusade doesn't have rules for a Map Campaign is that GW has not yet published a Map Campaign for the Crusade system. That does not mean Crusade is not a narrative system, it just means it doesn't have a Map Campaign.
Okay, and Crusade provides, in various sources, rules for a variety of terrains/worlds/climates. Omission of orbital conditions is a strange one, but not a new omission for GW to make? Or are we reverting back to the "melee in the far future doesn't even make sense! Why aren't they just exterminatusing every battle?" thing from 2006?
(as a side note, Flashpoint Argovon lets you collect Xenotech points and then spend those to buy a stratagem called Orbital Targetting, which lets you target an enemy unit from Orbit!)
I mean like, I gave a whole list of things I always consider when designing my own narrative campaign. I get exactly ZERO help from Crusade for any of those. As a DMG, Crusade throws in the towel. It's like if DND published only the PHB and nothing else (and took a couple chapters out of the PHB as well, like what to do outside of combat and how social interactions work).
I haven't actually seen any Crusade rules for different terrain or worlds or climates. The Veil book has some, kinda, but they're not really generic enough to be helpful. I still have to design my own. It's like skipping over the DMG and publishing splatbooks straightaway.
Can you tell me why two people playing pickup games of Crusade are being more narrative than two people playing pickup games of regular Eternal War without referencing anything outside the rules?
Can you tell me why two people playing pickup games of Crusade are being more narrative than two people playing pickup games of regular Eternal War without referencing anything outside the rules?
Not without knowing the players, their intents, etc.
One can play Eternal War with narrative just like one can play Crusade without narrative.
I could propose that the 2 players who willfully chose to play the Narrative Play of the Three Ways to Play are generally more likely going to be more narrative than 2 players who willfully chose to not play the Narrative Play of the Three Ways to Play, but that's just speculation.
As a DMG, Crusade throws in the towel.
What has been published so far is the PHB + "campaign setting guides", in that it entirely gives rules and options for players. So it makes sense that it has not succeeded at being a DMG.
As of yet, there is no content for Crusade that requires, suggests, or implies a Game Master and is set up in such a way that one can play their Crusade games without even a consistent group of players. Will we see such content in the future? Maybe! Especially if there is a demand for it (or a demand made known to GW, more importantly).
Rihgu wrote: Then there exists zero (0) narrative systems.
I have never heard of DND being played in a way other than narratively - even in competitive DND, the players within a party have to craft a story to progress in the tournament.
Rihgu wrote: Then there exists zero (0) narrative systems.
I have never heard of DND being played in a way other than narratively - even in competitive DND, the players within a party have to craft a story to progress in the tournament.
I honestly would never have foreseen this conversation swinging this way. I am unsure how to proceed when the argument is that "rolling dice to kill orcs" is inherently more narrative than "rolling dice to kill orks".
Rihgu wrote: One can play Eternal War with narrative just like one can play Crusade without narrative.
And right there is my argument.
Narrative players don't need Crusade because Eternal War was just fine.
Non-narrative players don't need Crusade because it doesn't make them any more narrative than they were already.
Crusade is not a narrative system simply because narrative is not part of the requirement to play it.
I was with you up until this. I almost quoted your other post- where you were talking about low gravity and such. My response would have been that all of those considerations are part of the Theatres of War stuff; we don't have many 9th ed ones yet, but all the old 8th ed ones are still mostly valid.
But here's the thing: I get what you guys are saying- you want Crusade to give more in-battle effects. You want Crusade to provide tools for modifying missions based on the narrative. You want it to include various systems that can be used to create campaign structures. I too think all of these things would be great additions to crusade, and frankly, they are probably on the way.
Where we differ is that because Crusade doesn't have those things, you think it isn't a narrative system. And you're wrong.
A narrative is a series of events related by cause and effect- that's the basic definition of the word. You can also unpack Freytag's Pyramid ( https://writers.com/freytags-pyramid ), and evoke the beginning/ middle/ end, the inciting incident, the denouement, etc.
Getting wounded in one battle, crossing the Rubicon to heal the grievous wounds, and returning to lead your forces once more is a narrative, by all definitions of the word. Crusade lets me do this. Crusade is a narrative system. Period.
You want narrative IN EACH GAME. Great; I think a system attempting to do that has the potential to be too restrictive, and may ultimately do more harm than good. I'd certainly take a look at these rules, and I would use the ones that fit what our group was trying to achieve.
I'll be the first to admit Crusade is imperfect at providing narrative IN EACH GAME.
Where Crusade excels CREATING A NARRATIVE FROM A SERIES OF GAMES. And that is what makes it a narrative system. The fact that it doesn't do as much as you want it to FOR EACH game doesn't make it any less a narrative game. The difference is merely one of scale.
To Rihgu: I would argue that it is only possible to play Crusade without Narrative if you stop playing after the first game. As soon as any effect earned as a result of one game has an effect on another game, there's a series of events related by cause and effect, and therefore there is a narrative. Your personal definition of narrative may require more. But the literal definition of narrative does not.
Rihgu wrote: Then there exists zero (0) narrative systems.
I have never heard of DND being played in a way other than narratively - even in competitive DND, the players within a party have to craft a story to progress in the tournament.
I honestly would never have foreseen this conversation swinging this way. I am unsure how to proceed when the argument is that "rolling dice to kill orcs" is inherently more narrative than "rolling dice to kill orks".
Well, in DND and in some forms of RPG, you don't have to roll dice to kill orcs. You can talk your way out of it (which has rules), or you can sneak your way past (which has rules), or you can change the story arc through your actions that the orcs don't show up entirely (which is helped by the rules and the DM - Crusade gives you no tools to do this, DND has a whole section for the DM on narrative arcs and narrative consequences).
In Crusade, you can ... well, do none of those things really, except refuse the game.
And PenitentJake, what I want is for decisions in the narrative to affect the narrative itself. A Marine getting his leg blown off because he failed his saves and rolled on a random chart has 0 impact on the narrative. Crossing the Rubicon has 0 impact on the narrative - you could pay 2 RP to remove a captain from your roster and add a Primaris Captain to your roster. It doesn't mean anything more than you lost some upgrades (which you might've gained by some other random factor like playing a relic recovery mission or the like).
You can't choose to preemptively strike the enemy, taking a big risk early to have a better fight later. You can't choose to wait for orbital support, building up your army and defenses without fighting in some sort of "turtle" strategy and hoping you can win the ground battles if they enemy chooses to attack you. You can't have teammates in your games (without significant houesruling) so forces can't work together. There's no penalty for turning on your own faction. There's basically nothing out of "play random 40k battles, level up your dudes." Which, aside from the level up part, is basically just "play 40k". And the level up part is just progression with no further requirements or concerns.
Imagine the following rule: "If an Imperium player fights another Imperium player, he replaces his Imperium Keyword in all cases with the Chaos keyword." Voila, a good rule. And that's important, because if your foe wants to bring an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor to deal with the new traitors? Well, his rules work now, whereas they wouldn't've before (since they only care about the Chaos keyword). That means the decision to attack a friendly target has a narrative impact. There is nothing like this whatsoever in Crusade, and there never will be, because fundamentally it's more concerned with progression than with actual narrative.
But imperials forces war on each other all the time, without there to be need of chaos intervention. There are marine chapters that hate each other. DA eliminate imperial forces that saw their secret on a regular basis. Ad Mecha war against each other and other faction, all the time. The conflicts are so common that the imperial law has rules regarding official duels and trails by combat, between members of the different adeptus.
A Town Called Malus wrote: My favourite army book/Codex by GW from a fluff perspective was the 6th Edition Dwarf army book (the first one, not the revised one that was released later in that edition).
The fluff for each unit was written as from the perspective of an old Hammerer in a tavern telling everyone about each one whilst grumbling about his tobacco and ale. It was great.
The Dark Elf 6th edition book was also pretty great. The history section was written as though by a Dark Elf, rather than from an all-seeing detached narrator perspective, so you really got an insight into how the Dark Elves regarded their society and history, as well as the other races.
Nowadays what fluff and lore you get (which isn't explicitly a short one/two page story piece, if they still do them?) is typically less and written very blandly. None of it really has any individual flavour that makes it feel like you are being given a view of how this army/species/etc. views the world around them and themselves.
The old ogre kingdoms dex i have, was written out of the perspective off an ogre bull. Which was kinda funny, the regard for the hierarchy especially with all the quibs. Morale of the story, you'd either get eaten, or you had the wierdos of ogre society in front of you
Well, in DND and in some forms of RPG, you don't have to roll dice to kill orcs. You can talk your way out of it (which has rules), or you can sneak your way past (which has rules), or you can change the story arc through your actions that the orcs don't show up entirely (which is helped by the rules and the DM - Crusade gives you no tools to do this, DND has a whole section for the DM on narrative arcs and narrative consequences).
In Crusade, you can ... well, do none of those things really, except refuse the game.
Somebody is extremely confused here and I'm not 100% sure it's me. You are aware of what 40k is, right? and what DND is? They're two very different types of games with very different mechanics. Has any edition of Warhammer ever had rules for arbitrating non-combat scenarios? Did I miss a moment in 5th edition where you could roll diplomacy against those Eldar guardians instead of roll shooting attacks? Maybe 2nd edition had the rules for using stealth to completely avoid playing the game you showed up to play?
I'm imagining showing up to the game store for your weekly campaign game, making a stealth roll and saying "well, guess I don't have to play this week. I was able to sneak past you!". It truly is too bad that Crusade fails to capture such narrative rules as this.
edit: I propose that you spend a moment thinking about whyDND has rules for diplomacy and stealth, and 40k doesn't.
And again, you're describing the DMG when all we've gotten for Crusade so far is PHB, player option expansions, and Mass Campaign setting guides.
"If an Imperium player fights another Imperium player, he replaces his Imperium Keyword in all cases with the Chaos keyword." Voila, a good rule. And that's important, because if your foe wants to bring an Ordo Hereticus inquisitor to deal with the new traitors? Well, his rules work now, whereas they wouldn't've before (since they only care about the Chaos keyword). That means the decision to attack a friendly target has a narrative impact. There is nothing like this whatsoever in Crusade, and there never will be, because fundamentally it's more concerned with progression than with actual narrative.
What narrative is this telling? Why does attacking a friendly target turn one from Imperial to Chaos? The fundamental motivation here seems to be giving the Inquisitor bonuses, which is mechanical in nature. The fluff has Imperial vs Imperial forces all the time. Iron Hands and Imperial Fists had a big clash over some artifact until the Raven Guard - er, I mean, mysterious forces - swooped in and blew up the artifact.
The Space Wolves waged open war on the Inquisition and the Grey Knights.
None of those forces are Chaos.
Well, his rules work now, whereas they wouldn't've before (since they only care about the Chaos keyword). That means the decision to attack a friendly target has a narrative impact.
Ah, I see now. You've confused the term "narrative" with "mechanical". That decision has a mechanical impact under this proposed rule.
With or without this rule, the decision has a narrative impact. An Imperial force attacked another Imperial force - but why? That's up for the players to decide, using Agendas (!!! oh! Wait! That's Crusade rules!? Ah, dear). Not some rule that says if an Imperial player attacks another Imperial player they suddenly fall to Chaos.
Here's an example of Crusade forging a narrative better than some rule about falling to Chaos.
Deathwatch player and Dark Angels player decide to play a game against one another.
Deathwatch player chooses Secure Xenotech as an Agenda, and Dark Angels choose Angels of Death.
We immediately can build a narrative off of this - Deathwatch have found a Xenotech artefact that they need to recover at all costs. Dark Angels can't leave any survivors in their hunt for the Fallen.
Since you can pick multiple agendas, the Dark Angels player may pick one of their Fallen hunty ones (I don't have the book so I don't know what these look like), and then the narrative is more fully built. The Fallen have told the Deathwatch about the Xenotech artefact! That is why these specific Deathwatch need to be eradicated!
Wow! And neither party needed to fall to Chaos for this!
edit: and before anybody mentions, I'm aware that not every combination of agendas puts together so neat of a narrative. There's sometimes a little bit of flubbing of exactly why two forces are exactly fighting but for that, thankfully, GW has done all the work for you and you need only to look at the tagline:
“IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE THERE IS ONLY WAR.”
I think Crusade is an alright attempt for what it is - adding narrative to pick up games.
What I would like is for them to release more structured missions or even entire campaign rules to expand upon this.
Similar to the old Imperial Armour books likes Taros or Ansphelion, the book could cover the story of the campaign, perhaps introduce a few units unique to the campaign, and have a sequence of missions players can work through to recreate the campaign.
I know a lot of people prefer to homebrew their own campaigns, but there's not a lot more that GW can give you if you're just going to write it all yourself.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand - this stuff would have been really cool to include in the codexes themselves.
It'd only take a few pages to give players a few scenarios to recreate significant engagements from the army's past.
I play Blood Angels, their codex could have included a mission to recreate a significant event in the Devastation of Baal campaign, another mission from the 3rd war of Armaggedon, etc. This would even double up as soft advertising their novels!
Rihgu wrote: Here's an example of Crusade forging a narrative better than some rule about falling to Chaos.
Deathwatch player and Dark Angels player decide to play a game against one another.
Deathwatch player chooses Secure Xenotech as an Agenda, and Dark Angels choose Angels of Death.
We immediately can build a narrative off of this - Deathwatch have found a Xenotech artefact that they need to recover at all costs. Dark Angels can't leave any survivors in their hunt for the Fallen.
Since you can pick multiple agendas, the Dark Angels player may pick one of their Fallen hunty ones (I don't have the book so I don't know what these look like), and then the narrative is more fully built. The Fallen have told the Deathwatch about the Xenotech artefact! That is why these specific Deathwatch need to be eradicated!
Wow! And neither party needed to fall to Chaos for this!
Maybe D&D should just ditch the Dungeon Master's Guide entirely. Ditch all those rules for what characters can do outside of combat, how to interact with NPCs, how they travel around the world, how to string together disconnected battles into a campaign. Who needs anything besides combat and progression? Why let players make choices about how to progress through the campaign, or where they go, or what their goals are?
Just randomly generate a dungeon, dump the players in it, let players pick their objectives, and then tell them to come up with a justification for why they're in that dungeon and why they have those objectives. As long as the players can invent their backstory after the fact to explain what they're doing in the dungeon, it's the perfect campaign system, and there's no need for anything further.
The Fighter picks 'Rescue' as their secondary objective for the dungeon. The Barbarian picks 'Revenge' as their secondary objective. You might think a narrative would leverage prior events, and who the Fighter is rescuing and who the Barbarian wants revenge on would have been established earlier in the campaign, which would explain why they're in the dungeon. But we're doing this the other way around; you've picked these objectives, now justify them. They don't have to be connected to anything that's happened before, and they'll never affect any subsequent encounter.
This isn't a campaign. It's just creating a narrative justification for a one-off game.
Here's a thought: instead of being able to just pick 'Secure Xenotech' and conjure newly found xenos technology out of thin air for the sake of an objective, wouldn't it be interesting if xenotech being discovered was something that could happen as part of the campaign, and then the Deathwatch player could decide whether it's worth the risk (engaging a friendly) to retrieve it? You could even go a step further and have some repercussions for Imperial forces turning on one another, so that there's some kind of consequence.
Rather than the entire narrative content of your campaign being 'make up reasons for why the battle is happening, which will never affect anything in the future'. Because as far as narrative campaigns go, that kinda sucks.
kirotheavenger wrote: I think Crusade is an alright attempt for what it is - adding narrative to pick up games.
What I would like is for them to release more structured missions or even entire campaign rules to expand upon this.
I agree entirely. I like Crusade. It's a good system for adding a little bit of narrative flavor to a slow-grow tournament for a club, without being overly complicated or precluding new players from entering. But it's not much of a campaign system.
I disagree that there's not a lot GW can give you if you're going to write a campaign. They've done multiple campaign implementations with more substance than either a string of predetermined missions (as you describe) or randomly generated battles with progression (as Crusade provides). They did narrative campaigns with their own rules and player agency in White Dwarf. Seriously, I'll go scan some of the articles if people are convinced there's no other way to do a campaign.
Maybe D&D should just ditch the Dungeon Master's Guide entirely.
No, it absolutely shouldn't.
Now let's talk about 40k? Or must we continue to torture to comparison to DND for no reason?
I am talking about 40K. D&D is a good reference point because it's entirely based on narrative campaigns. I thought I gave a coherent argument for how D&D informs us that the 'forge the narrative' justification does not make a campaign. Hardly comparison 'for no reason'.
But I mean, if you don't want to have a good faith discussion, I can just say 'your argument sucks' and leave it at that?
Okay, I will engage in your good faith discussion with my own.
You either haven't read the DND books, haven't read Crusade, or have read both and don't remember half of them.
Following by the book, you just described how DND works. All those backgrounds you roll for? That's your "Revenge", that you then backfill. Sure you CAN pick if you have a character in mind but the character generation core rules are roll your backgrounds to find out your character's motivations.
DND is an RPG. THAT is why it has rules for stealth and exploration and diplomacy. 40k is a wargame. THAT is why it does not have rules for that.
You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?
Can we please just stop with the DND "shorthand" because it's a completely different game and it's absolutely tortuous to try to fill in the comparisons where they make sense but have to throw out the 99% of the rest where it doesn't make sense. It's deeply flawed and I think muddies things up way more than it needs to. Crusade is not DND. 40k is not DND. Dungeon World is not DND. World of Darkness is not DND. Comparing Apples to Volkswagens this early in the morning is causing a headache.
It's not that your argument sucks, it's that your argument is using a nonsensical frame of reference. You've declared DND to be a narrative system, and because 40k doesn't have stealth rolls or diplomacy or a 300 page DMG giving tips and optional rules about how to randomly generate dungeons or how fast a boat moves, it fails as a narrative.
I keep pointing out that nothing Crusade has printed even TRIES to be a DMG but you and Unit keep bringing up "oh, but how about we throw away all the Persuasion rules from DND? Wouldn't that ruin DND?"
Yes. It would.
It wouldn't ruin 40k.
And to tie a little bow on this ranting tirade:
Here's a thought: instead of being able to just pick 'Secure Xenotech' and conjure newly found xenos technology out of thin air for the sake of an objective, wouldn't it be interesting if xenotech being discovered was something that could happen as part of the campaign, and then the Deathwatch player could decide whether it's worth the risk (engaging a friendly) to retrieve it?
Okay, cool, you've described how the Flashpoints and Beyond the Veil work. I guess that would be a cool idea! Glad it has already been implemented. I guess that makes Crusade a narrative system?
Karol wrote: But imperials forces war on each other all the time, without there to be need of chaos intervention. There are marine chapters that hate each other. DA eliminate imperial forces that saw their secret on a regular basis. Ad Mecha war against each other and other faction, all the time. The conflicts are so common that the imperial law has rules regarding official duels and trails by combat, between members of the different adeptus.
And where are the rules for this? Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions? Would two Guard regiments be allowed to fight? Would Guard be allowed to wipe out a Marine company? The rules that permit combat between different adeptus exist in the lore, but on the tabletop it's a normal fight, complete with tanks exploding and battle-scars like blown off legs and whatnot. Are those within these rules?
This is exactly what I mean. Rules governing blue-on-blue (or forbidding them) seems like they'd be pretty important for a narrative campaign where two players should be on the same side. Who can get away with what? Is it fine for an Adepta Sororitas convent to annihilate a Primaris Space Marine chapter? Does the Imperium go "eh, at least they showed the same zeal they'd show fighting Xenos or Chaos". What if someone brings a Hereticus inquisitor? Can they declare someone a heretic? What about if they bring Coteaz? Can he declare Guilliman a heretic? Why would Coteaz fight Guilliman anyways?
Crusade does nothing to help any of this. It doesn't even stop guilliman on guilliman fights. Some narrative.
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Rihgu wrote: Okay, I will engage in your good faith discussion with my own.
You either haven't read the DND books, haven't read Crusade, or have read both and don't remember half of them.
Following by the book, you just described how DND works. All those backgrounds you roll for? That's your "Revenge", that you then backfill. Sure you CAN pick if you have a character in mind but the character generation core rules are roll your backgrounds to find out your character's motivations.
DND is an RPG. THAT is why it has rules for stealth and exploration and diplomacy. 40k is a wargame. THAT is why it does not have rules for that.
You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?
Can we please just stop with the DND "shorthand" because it's a completely different game and it's absolutely tortuous to try to fill in the comparisons where they make sense but have to throw out the 99% of the rest where it doesn't make sense. It's deeply flawed and I think muddies things up way more than it needs to. Crusade is not DND. 40k is not DND. Dungeon World is not DND. World of Darkness is not DND. Comparing Apples to Volkswagens this early in the morning is causing a headache.
It's not that your argument sucks, it's that your argument is using a nonsensical frame of reference. You've declared DND to be a narrative system, and because 40k doesn't have stealth rolls or diplomacy or a 300 page DMG giving tips and optional rules about how to randomly generate dungeons or how fast a boat moves, it fails as a narrative. I keep pointing out that nothing Crusade has printed even TRIES to be a DMG but you and Unit keep bringing up "oh, but how about we throw away all the Persuasion rules from DND? Wouldn't that ruin DND?" Yes. It would. It wouldn't ruin 40k.
I wasn't the one who brought up DND. I brought up skyrim and got yelled at for it not being DND. I can go back to skyrim comparisons if you want?
And yeah, 40k's narrative system will have to grow beyond being a Pickup WG. Obviously.
Check your core rulebook, the rules for engaging in battles should be in there.
Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions?
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
Crusade does nothing to help any of this. It doesn't even stop guilliman on guilliman fights. Some narrative.
Wow, DND doesn't even stop Orcus on Orcus battles! There's no rules against it! It doesn't even give special rules for inter-party conflict. What's the narrative consequence for a PC fighter throwing an axe at their fellow PC wizard? Can you believe it, the PC wizard actually has to decide how their wizard reacts? There's no rules to dictate it!
(side note, have I finally crossed the line? Will people finally see the comparison is ridiculous?)
I wasn't the one who brought up DND. I brought up skyrim and got yelled at for it not being DND. I can go back to skyrim comparisons if you want?
I'm not sure if I replied to the thread yet at that point but I remember reading those and feeling they were exactly as tortured as the dnd comparisons, if not more so. Although, it would be very funny if I flipped back through the thread and found out I was the one who brought DND to this by comparing Skyrim to DND after you compared 40k to Skyrim. I almost dread to look back...
Everyone needs to know that pretty much everything in the books that can be generated randomly can also be chosen if players prefer.
So wounds can be chosen to suit the weapon that inflicted them; honours can be chosen to reflect the completion of the agenda that provided the experience necessary to earn them, and players can battle for the right to choose the next mission rather than determine randomly. Players can also use their choices about theatres of war to affect the narrative as well- when multiple theatres on a planet, players can choose which ones to engage and which to ignore. There's no house ruling required for any of it- just choose instead of roll- the books even tell you that you're allowed.
The choices that the core rules provide are also part of the narrative- detachment selection, unit selection, use of allies and strategic reserves are all decisions that players make- usually in an attempt to win. But they could (and do) just as easily make those decisions based on the story, both in game and between games.
If in my first game, I take a patriarch and three broods of purestrains; during the game, I kill 10 guardsmen. Next game I add a ten man unit of brood brothers. Have I told a story?
You can't wait for orbital bombardment you say? Really? Because I could either choose to include an Inquisitor as an agent to use his orbital bombardment strat or not. In fact, even better if I have to play a mission where the Inquisitor is an objective first, and I can only choose to use him in subsequent battles if I manage to claim him as an objective.
The reason Crusade doesn't include the rules to do these things is because the rules for straight up 40k already includes them.
Look, I'm not arguing that Crusade couldn't benefit from more stuff. What I'm doing is objecting to the bold, oversimplified and frankly ridiculous statement "Crusade isn't narrative."
Do I want them to publish a how to create campaign systems for crusade book? Sure. Do I want them to keep making Flashpoints and story arc specific mission packs like Beyond the veil and the one that's coming for Charadon? Sure.
But I'm not gonna be a jackass and say it isn't narrative because it doesn't have all of those things yet when it clearly gives me the tools to create sequences of cause and effect over multiple games at the level of individual units, detachments or whole armies, and it interacts with other player choices provided by the core game.
It's like we were all having this discussion and making progress, and seeing each other's points of view and being reasonable, and then suddenly at the end of page six, unit quotes somebody, and then reverts to the original stance of "It's not a narrative game" like the past two pages of reasonable discussion didn't happen. That's what I object to.
I'm not saying it couldn't be better. I'm saying that insisting it isn't narrative because it could be better is not a valid argument. It would be like saying "A hybrid vehicle isn't a car" because it doesn't fit with my narrow, personal definition of what a car is. And if you want to say, "Well it is less a narrative game than a progression system," I may disagree, but the argument is reasonable enough that I could let it go, or say, "Yeah, I really like Crusade, but I can see your point." (In fact, I feel like I have said that. More than once.)
But if you insist on stomping your feet and saying "NO. Not a narrative system at all because it needs to do this better," well yeah, I'm gonna have to try and reset the dialogue back to the place where we can have reasonable discussions about the difference between the narrative of a single game and the narrative of an army's history, or about how elements in core 40k can be used to further support the narrative elements provided by Crusade, or about some of the older publications like the Streets of Death from Urban Conquest can still be used even in 9th.
I don't know, maybe I'm too invested in this discussion- it isn't reasonable to care so much about whether other people like Crusade or not.
Rihgu wrote: You *CAN* pick agendas based on what happened before and after, just like you *CAN* pick backgrounds/ideals/flaws/bonds/whatever that make sense for your idea for your character. OR you can roll them and back-fill justification. Either way you get the same result in the end. Or are people who roll backgrounds playing DND wrong and not being narrative?
You're glossing over the biggest conceptual difference between the two systems, which is that D&D is framed around decisions having later consequences as part of an overarching narrative. Even backfilled fluff for randomly-generated backgrounds can be leveraged by a DM to affect the story. Success or failure within a specific encounter impacts the whole thing, not just your character progression. It is not intended to be a series of unrelated one-shots where you can, if you really want, make up reasons for how they relate to one another.
This is missing from Crusade. It does not matter if you choose Secure Xenotech or any other secondary objective. It has no narrative consequence within the framework of the Crusade system, and doesn't impact future decisions. It doesn't even matter whether you win or lose. These factors only affect post-battle progression. Even if you want to roleplay, you have virtually no decisions to make that might be impacted by prior scenarios. Oh, your Crimson Fists have been losing to Orks for five battles in a row? Maybe by the power of imagination you decide that this means you're surrounded by Orks and down to your glorious last stand, hold the line at all costs! Except... You're just going to play another normal scenario. With your choice of secondary objective. You'll never get overrun and wiped out, or lose vital territory, or have important characters die, or have to make a tough choice about where to focus your dwindling resources, or hit a Bad Ending, or reach the end of a preordained historical sequence. Nothing matters. Nothing changes, except that after five losses in a row your opponent probably has slightly more elite units than you.
Frankly, I think it is rather disingenuous for you to act like pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles is tantamount to nitpicking that it doesn't have stealth rolls. A 'narrative campaign' where you are fighting over nothing with no results, and have no decisions to make besides tactical objectives and post-battle rewards... well, that just doesn't feel much like a narrative to me. It feels like a tournament, or just a series of pickup games. With a guy in the corner furiously writing his fanfic to explain it all retroactively.
I mean, heck, if you don't want to talk D&D anymore, I'm cool with that. I can bring up any of the myriad of campaign implementations from other wargames that implement the very basic concept of 'stuff you do matters in the long run', or give you a series of narrative scenarios to reflect a fixed and unchanging 'historical' progression, or otherwise in any way provide context for how battles relate to one another and the overall campaign.
Rihgu wrote: Okay, cool, you've described how the Flashpoints and Beyond the Veil work. I guess that would be a cool idea! Glad it has already been implemented. I guess that makes Crusade a narrative system?
Yes, those are systems for making a narrative campaign structure out of the Crusade progression rules- now can people stop swearing up and down that playing Crusade as written without Flashpoints or campaign books constitutes a fully-fledged narrative campaign system on its own?
And again- because apparently I have to reiterate this every time- I like Crusade and I like its progression. Implementing meaningful progression is a tall order for any wargame, and it adds a lot of flavor to pick-up games between friends. It's a great baseline for building out a proper campaign system. But on its own it's just a baseline.
catbarf's point is mine. Well spoken, sir, especially about the other wargame campaign systems (including from GW!) that can incorporate long-term narrative impacts.
There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.
I was tabled in our local crusade by Grey Knights. I played Eldar. His leader crushed mine in close combat. I asked him what the narrative should be for my force to get away - why would his Grey Knights release me unharmed? (I didn't roll any 1s for post-battle battle scars).
He said he'd think about it, and we never really decided on an appropriate conclusion.
I basically fell out of the campaign at that point. I had been writing a narrative for every battle, and I couldn't rationalize why the Grey Knights would just magically let everyone go unharmed after a brutal battle that saw lots of the Emperor's Finest and lots of Eldar die. I mean an entire main battle tank (Fire Prism) exploded, and yet somehow after the battle it was all fine.
How do I write a narrative that ends with "and then everyone was fine so we left to go fight... oh my opponent this week is More Eldar? Oh, why would my craftworld fight them? Ah, what a pain."
But I would've had to fight him, if I'd wanted to continue. Because progression is what's important in Crusade, and I've seen what happens to armies who fall behind (R.I.P. our Militarum Tempestus player, you will be missed).
This total lack of narrative essentially killed my interest in the local crusade (and the campaign itself has largely stalled). I have a few opponents who I'd be interested in playing, but that's just the same as it was before Crusade, because if you thought narrative then, you think narrative now, and if you didn't think narrative then, Crusade doesn't ask that you think narrative now.
It does not matter if you choose Secure Xenotech or any other secondary objective. It has no narrative consequence within the framework of the Crusade system, and doesn't impact future decisions
If you succeed at the agenda to Secure Xenotech, the unit who secured it gets the Xenotech (which is a Relic that unit permanently has for the future until they lose it by any mechanism within Crusade to lose a Relic).
Oh, your Crimson Fists have been losing to Orks for five battles in a row? Maybe by the power of imagination you decide that this means you're surrounded by Orks and down to your glorious last stand, hold the line at all costs! Except... You're just going to play another normal scenario. With your choice of secondary objective. You'll never get overrun and wiped out, or lose vital territory, or have important characters die, or have to make a tough choice about where to focus your dwindling resources, or hit a Bad Ending, or reach the end of a preordained historical sequence.
If the Ork player keeps winning then they're getting more and more RP and XP which means they've got bigger and badder units and can take bigger and badder, and your forces are accumulating battle scars. Nothing in the rules say you need to have the same power rating in the battle.
Also, as new codexes (codices? whichever you prefer) come out, more of these meta-narrative processes are coming out. Death Guard manufacture and evolve new plagues using plague points or whatever, Blood Angels have to manage their Black Rage, and Dark Angels get ever closer to their Fallen culminating in actually finding a Fallen and being able to select an agenda to make the battle about retrieving said Fallen for interrogation. There may be some book or codex for Rynn's World one day that models this exact scenario, or maybe Orks Crusade rules allow them to get more WAAAGH points to allow them to, by explicitly defined rules, take a larger and larger force.
We're still very early on, but we see the hints of what you're describing formulating already.
pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles
Battle scars, XP, requisition, black rage points, plague points, fallen points, xenotech points, etc... all of those aren't consequences for battles? you've fought a battle, now your forces are injured, some are more experienced, you've requisitioned more forces, and you're closer than ever to tracking down that Fallen Angel! You've also gathered Xenotech points to solve the mystery of the Pariah Nexus, too! Not consequential?
I can bring up any of the myriad of campaign implementations from other wargames that implement the very basic concept of 'stuff you do matters in the long run'
Oh! I've got one! The Crusade system! But actually yes, I'd be interested in hearing some of these for the sake of comparison.
now can people stop swearing up and down that playing Crusade as written without Flashpoints or campaign books constitutes a fully-fledged narrative campaign system on its own?
Who has said that? I'll make them stop myself, if I have to.
Well, maybe I won't, because Crusade on it's own with just the Core book and a codex works fine for what it's trying to be, a narrative campaign system for a "personal campaign", which is for me a new concept that I think GW invented for this.
There are long term consequences, there are progressions... only thing it really lacks is Flashpoint Argovon's system for declaring a victor (based on accumulating Xenotech points and then converting those to Victory points), which is for a Mass Campaign, not the Personal Campaign core Crusade embodies anyways and the different battlefield rules to add a bit of flavor to where you're fighting.
I'm personally of the opinion that a narrative can be forged, that say you're fighting on a volcano, without special rules telling you how the lava is causing mortal wounds as it seeps down the volcano.
I can just as well assume that either we're not fighting directly in a lava flow or our space armor is adequate protection against the lava flow making it viable to fight directly on top of it.
I guess this is where we diverge - battlefield rules don't make something inherently more narrative (or perhaps more honestly reaching your point, lack of battlefield rules don't make something inherently non-narrative).
Hey! DND doesn't explicitly tell you when a campaign ends either, so I guess we're actually fine on that front!
I basically fell out of the campaign at that point. I had been writing a narrative for every battle, and I couldn't rationalize why the Grey Knights would just magically let everyone go unharmed after a brutal battle that saw lots of the Emperor's Finest and lots of Eldar die. I mean an entire main battle tank (Fire Prism) exploded, and yet somehow after the battle it was all fine.
Oh, this one is easy, and used in basically every single battle report/story/novel in every GW book every (End Times was full of them!)
Before the final blow was struck, the Eldar warrior, seeing their opponent had the upper hand and that to continue this duel would certainly mean death, used their uncanny Aeldari agility and speed to escape the duel, and indeed the battlefield. They were never taken prisoner, that was your own narrative that you decided on for some reason. I'm sorry you ruined your own narrative by ascribing a specific narrative when nobody told you to do that. Seems easily resolvable without a special rule like, PERFIDIOUS ELDAR: When this model would be reduced to 0W remaining, reduce it to 1W remaining instead, and remove it from play. This model counts as slain for all rules purposes, but does not count as slain for narrative purposes.
As for the explosion, huh. You got me. Argument shattered. Crusade is non-narrative.
There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.
It's somehow irritating that the same people shouting me down for claiming that 40k has never been a proper narrative game are now shouting in the same manner about how crusade is not a narrative game.
you take a dice, check your BS roll to hit, to wound then opponent rolls to save. This represent the rules of one side shoting the other.
Would two Guard regiments be allowed to fight?
You mean ordered to? of course.
Would Guard be allowed to wipe out a Marine company?
That would have to be a lot of IG for it to actually happen. But of course, you are ordered stuff, you follow it. you don't you get shot on the spot
Where's the narrative structure surrounding a fight between Imperial factions? The rules that permit combat between different adeptus exist in the lore, but on the tabletop it's a normal fight, complete with tanks exploding and battle-scars like blown off legs and whatnot. Are those within these rules?
If you are talking about crusade rules, then I think, as I don't play crusade, there is a an option for battle scared in the crusade rule set.
In the first covid quarentine I made a narrative map-based campaing with 6-7 friends using TTS. I used the custom character creator for chapter approved to make a progresion ruleset for our warlords (each one chose a character with equipement from legends, they gained exp after battles, could buy traits and upgrades to weapons, be wounded, etc....)
I made a map, wrote the fluff of the planet we were fighting (Artel V), and put points of interests in the map (xeno ruins with loot tables, savage orks/Technobarbarians camps with encounter tables, etc...) and then made rules for when the Tyranid Invasion subplot started, how hostile 3rd party tyranid forces could appear mid battle between two players (First it was only lictors, the next week was small bioforms, and then we had a couple full blown invasion narrative games mastered by me)
I played the grot revolution in that campaing (Basically because I was the most experience player, all my friends were noobs to 40k so I went easy on them... and still won every game to hilarous effect).
I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.
In my campaing there were a ton of stuff that had no rules but players wanted to make (we are all roleplayers), like when the Ravenguard player dropped in the north pole of the planet (I put X points for players to start, each one with a little fluff about the zone) and used a bit of fluff I wrote about human rebels (descended from a catachan regiment stranted on the planet after the cicatriz maledictum broke the galaxy in two) to basically start a couple of narrative missions we made on the fly for him to contact them and gain their help (And the alpha legion player that started the campaing as black templar tried to sabotage).
At the end of the day a narrative system will put examples, rules, and scenarios, but those are just tools one has to use to make a proper narrative scenario. Crusade offers some rules. They are pretty good and cool. If you use them as written with 0 input from the players they are gonna suck. Just as if you play D&D with 0 input from the players.
Galas wrote: I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.
I agree, especially if you want to leave some agency to players in regard to what's happening. A campaign written in a book can't improvise when the SW and Orks decide to gang up on some Grey Knights halfway through the campaign.
Rihgu wrote: If you succeed at the agenda to Secure Xenotech, the unit who secured it gets the Xenotech (which is a Relic that unit permanently has for the future until they lose it by any mechanism within Crusade to lose a Relic).
Right. Progression for your army. No consequence to the campaign in terms of overall objectives, or force disposition, or territory control, or strategic assets, or any of the things that really matter in a war and drive the narrative of the conflict.
Rihgu wrote: If the Ork player keeps winning then they're getting more and more RP and XP which means they've got bigger and badder units and can take bigger and badder, and your forces are accumulating battle scars. Nothing in the rules say you need to have the same power rating in the battle.
I mean, this is exactly my point. Crusade gives you great rules for progression for your army. I really enjoy them and I think they're well-done. But that's all that you get.
'What were the consequences of the Allies successfully storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day?'
'MacArthur got more experience and received a couple extra Shermans.'
'What would have happened if the Allies failed to secure a beachhead and the Germans won instead?'
'Well, MacArthur would get fewer Shermans.'
Kind of missing all the important bits, isn't it?
Rihgu wrote: Oh! I've got one! The Crusade system! But actually yes, I'd be interested in hearing some of these for the sake of comparison.
Sure.
White Dwarf featured a simple campaign system for 40K, in which a map was drawn up and divided into territories. Players were allowed to make one attack per turn, picking a territory adjacent to one their own and fighting a battle against the player who owns that territory. If they won the battle, they captured the territory. Some territories were particularly relevant to specific factions' overall objectives, some conferred bonuses to the player who owned them. The objective was generally to control the most territory by the end of a preset time limit.
White Dwarf featured a more narrative-focused campaign system for WHFB and 40K constructed as a branching tree of scenarios. The intent was to play the starting scenario, then who won or lost would determine the next scenario. Eventually, the flowchart terminated at a victory (Major or Minor) for one player or a stalemate.
White Dwarf also featured an escalation league system for WHFB where players started at 500pts and did a slow-grow tournament. Characters who died or won would roll on injury or advancement tables to receive permanent boosts. Winning battles awarded victory points based on the degree of victory, and the ultimate goal was to accumulate the most VPs.
Necromunda, as mentioned before, has a campaign system in which players draw territory cards to determine the locale for a battle. Whoever wins controls that territory, and receives buffs or debuffs from it. The overall objective is to hold the most territory at the end of a time limit.
Bolt Action has a core campaign system that is extremely similar to Crusade (primarily progression-focused), which is coupled with campaign sourcebooks that provide campaign-specific scenarios, progression, and victory conditions.
Getting real grognard, Advanced Squad Leader was designed around small one-off scenarios, but a campaign system was introduced in Historical Advanced Squad Leader. This was designed around combining multiple maps to create very large battlespaces, breaking the game into days of varying numbers of turns, and allowing redeployment, unit progression, and reinforcement between days. The objective was to control the entire battlespace or reach scenario-specific objectives.
Getting into videogames, Dawn of War (a 40K strategy game) has featured both scripted campaigns (so defined scenarios with defined participants) and freeform campaigns where you pick a territory on a global map to attack. Holding territory confers various advantages.
Rising Storm 2, a multiplayer Vietnam War first-person shooter, has a simple campaign system where Vietnam is divided into a series of territories. Each territory is associated with a particular game map. The winner of the last match picks a territory to attack, and a match is fought on that territory's map, with the winner holding that territory. The campaign ends when either the real-world date of the end of the war is reached (with the team holding more territory winning), or one team controls the entirety of Vietnam.
All of these systems track some kind of permanent progress to determine relative position in a campaign, as complex as a campaign map or as simple as a victory point tracker.
Galas wrote: I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion
That is literally all I have been saying.
And no, you don't strictly need a DM; you only need one if you aren't happy with just an overarching metagame and really want bespoke scenarios. Lots of games make it work without a DM. Please, folks, just look at what already exists out there.
pointing out that Crusade lacks consequences to battles
Battle scars, XP, requisition, black rage points, plague points, fallen points, xenotech points, etc... all of those aren't consequences for battles? you've fought a battle, now your forces are injured, some are more experienced, you've requisitioned more forces,
So fall, all of this is progression. Saying these are consequences is like saying that the consequence for slaying General Tullius in Skyrim is 896XP. Like sure, technically true, but not at all what we mean.
Rihgu wrote: and you're closer than ever to tracking down that Fallen Angel! You've also gathered Xenotech points to solve the mystery of the Pariah Nexus, too! Not consequential?
Not in the Crusade core rules, no.
Rihgu wrote: I'm personally of the opinion that a narrative can be forged, that say you're fighting on a volcano, without special rules telling you how the lava is causing mortal wounds as it seeps down the volcano. I can just as well assume that either we're not fighting directly in a lava flow or our space armor is adequate protection against the lava flow making it viable to fight directly on top of it.
And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.
Rihgu wrote: Oh, this one is easy, and used in basically every single battle report/story/novel in every GW book every (End Times was full of them!) Before the final blow was struck, the Eldar warrior, seeing their opponent had the upper hand and that to continue this duel would certainly mean death, used their uncanny Aeldari agility and speed to escape the duel, and indeed the battlefield. They were never taken prisoner, that was your own narrative that you decided on for some reason. I'm sorry you ruined your own narrative by ascribing a specific narrative when nobody told you to do that. Seems easily resolvable without a special rule like, PERFIDIOUS ELDAR: When this model would be reduced to 0W remaining, reduce it to 1W remaining instead, and remove it from play. This model counts as slain for all rules purposes, but does not count as slain for narrative purposes.
And that happened the time she was killed by a Black Templar, and that time she was killed by an Archon, and that time she was killed by a Dreadnought, and that time she was killed by a Thousand Sons psyker? And that time she died to Perils of the Warp? Or that time she died from a tank exploding with her inside? And it happened in this battle to every single eldar on the field?
A book that had the main character escaping from death by plot fiat every chapter would be rightly criticized for having no real narrative consequences or risks. Why is Crusade more narrative because this sort of plot fiat becomes necessary? To me, that isn't narrative at all - and books that do this get rightly criticized for doing so. It's not okay just because it's GW's crusade.
Rihgu wrote: As for the explosion, huh. You got me. Argument shattered. Crusade is non-narrative.
There's no narrative impact for a given action except what the players assign to it - which is to say, there's no narrative impact at all, unless they were already narrative players.
This remains true for literally everything.
No, it isn't. Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact. For example, the FFGRPGs had a Corruption and Malignancies system which gave in-game bonuses and maluses to characters in exchange for flirting with Chaos. The DM had to decide any story ramifications (e.g. if you let the fact that you have a snake tail instead of legs be known you will be hunted down and killed) but the rules helped them by providing an architecture for Acolytes who were outcast/banned from the Inquisition/declared heretics, etc. It also provided ingame rules for what happens when your legs are replaced with a snake tail, for better or worse.
In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!
Some of the best moments of my last narrative campaign (I gmed, late 8th, over TTS due to pandemic) was when the Ork player tried to be "diplomatic".
Instance 1: Ork player tried looting an abandoned fortress-monastery at the same time as some Renegade Knights and admech, and kept convincing the other two parties why they should attack each other instead of him. Ultimately the Knight player ONLY listened the exact one time the Ork player miscalculated and the Admech made off with the loot.
Instance 2: The sun revealed itself to be a Necron tomb world, and the Ultramarines player was like "Wellp, guess I gotta protect the Imperium" and started flying their fleet to the sun to try to take on the Necron capitol ship + majority of their defensive fleet. What then happens? The orks cease ALL their operations in the system and every ship they've got crashes into the necron fleet, leaving a wide opening for the Ultramarines to act basically unopposed. This was again foiled by the Renegade Knights, who intercepted the Ultramarines in the middle of the Necron fleet because they wanted to steal some Repulsors. Which also frustrated the Ork player because their own goal was to fight the Ultramarines after!
edit: oh no, two other replies spawned while typing that up.
Rihgu wrote: Some of the best moments of my last narrative campaign (I gmed, late 8th, over TTS due to pandemic) was when the Ork player tried to be "diplomatic".
Instance 1: Ork player tried looting an abandoned fortress-monastery at the same time as some Renegade Knights and admech, and kept convincing the other two parties why they should attack each other instead of him. Ultimately the Knight player ONLY listened the exact one time the Ork player miscalculated and the Admech made off with the loot.
Instance 2: The sun revealed itself to be a Necron tomb world, and the Ultramarines player was like "Wellp, guess I gotta protect the Imperium" and started flying their fleet to the sun to try to take on the Necron capitol ship + majority of their defensive fleet. What then happens? The orks cease ALL their operations in the system and every ship they've got crashes into the necron fleet, leaving a wide opening for the Ultramarines to act basically unopposed. This was again foiled by the Renegade Knights, who intercepted the Ultramarines in the middle of the Necron fleet because they wanted to steal some Repulsors. Which also frustrated the Ork player because their own goal was to fight the Ultramarines after!
edit: oh no, two other replies spawned while typing that up.
Crusade didn't help you with any of this. And that's my point. Narrative players have always been doing what they do with their own toolbox of rules. Crusade is not required.
Since another post has occured since my last post I won't just edit it with all my replies, which are as follows.
Crusade didn't help you with any of this. And that's my point. Narrative players have always been doing what they do with their own toolbox of rules. Crusade is not required.
And thank goodness for that, because I did this a few months before Crusade came out! Don't believe I ever said Crusade was required.
No, it isn't. Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact. For example, the FFGRPGs had a Corruption and Malignancies system which gave in-game bonuses and maluses to characters in exchange for flirting with Chaos. The DM had to decide any story ramifications (e.g. if you let the fact that you have a snake tail instead of legs be known you will be hunted down and killed) but the rules helped them by providing an architecture for Acolytes who were outcast/banned from the Inquisition/declared heretics, etc. It also provided ingame rules for what happens when your legs are replaced with a snake tail, for better or worse.
Sounds like a battlescar.
But more importantly:
Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact.
Is exactly what I'm saying. There is nothing dictating that there *MUST* be a narrative impact for your character growing a snake tail. NOTHING. It's a narrative the DM decides! It can never come up again, narratively, except for whatever mechanical bonuses or maluses. Wait that's not narrative, that's mechanics.
Not in the Crusade core rules, no.
Really wish somebody had told me from the start that we were talking Core Crusade rules only! Weird that it suddenly just came up that that's what we were talking about. Would've saved me a lot of time sorting through other sources.
And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.
Well, since we're playing Crusade Core Rules Only, it doesn't matter? It's a personal campaign, the story of *my* forces. The opponent can come up with whatever narrative for their own personal campaign. It won't affect mine. Crusade Core Rules only! And when Crusade eventually comes out with an Arbitrator's Toolbox book, that also won't matter, because it's not in the Crusade Core Rules either. Too bad.
In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!
actually you'll find that if you play any Chaos force it will have the Chaos keyword. This is true of Chaos Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, Thousand Sons, and Death Guard, which are the Chaos forces in 40k. Oh wait, there's also the Gellerpox Infected and Servants of the Abyss.
Oh, you're talking about a player deciding that their non-Chaos forces fall to Chaos? Well, it's right that there's nothing like that in the Core Crusade Rules. Something might come up in an expansion, but that won't matter.
I am equally upset that me arbitrarily deciding that my Space Marine chapter works for the Tau does not give them the Tau keyword. I even converted the models and everything! Clearly a flaw with the Crusade Core rules.
Right. Progression for your army. No consequence to the campaign in terms of overall objectives, or force disposition, or territory control, or strategic assets, or any of the things that really matter in a war and drive the narrative of the conflict.
Is a xenotech relic not a strategic asset? Anyways, Crusade, especially by core rules, doesn't really address a conflict or war. It's more like the trials and tribulations of a specific force, which may or may not engage in a protracted campaign. A protracted campaign is represented by say, Argovon, where you gain Argovon specific Xenotech points which eventually convert into Victory points, abstractly representing the overall objectives, force disposition, territory control, and strategic assets of your side in the Argovon campaign. And if you win, you get a battle honour showing that you won the Argovon campaign.
White Dwarf also featured an escalation league system for WHFB where players started at 500pts and did a slow-grow tournament. Characters who died or won would roll on injury or advancement tables to receive permanent boosts. Winning battles awarded victory points based on the degree of victory, and the ultimate goal was to accumulate the most VPs.
This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.
White Dwarf featured a more narrative-focused campaign system for WHFB and 40K constructed as a branching tree of scenarios. The intent was to play the starting scenario, then who won or lost would determine the next scenario. Eventually, the flowchart terminated at a victory (Major or Minor) for one player or a stalemate.
This is also what they put into Vigilis.. Defiant? or Ablaze? This is neither here nor there but I did run a campaign in 8e following that paradigm. It worked well besides some unbalanced scenarios but my players like the system I used in a later campaign (the one with the Orks!) better. That one was basically me asking each player what they wanted to do and writing a scenario for it, though, so I can see why the freedom was preferred.
The rest all seem like map campaigns or variations on map campaigns. Which I agree are cool, but not particularly more or less narrative than non-map campaigns.
Sure, if you equate "a character falling to chaos" with "a character getting hit by an artillery shell". If you think those have the same narrative consequences, then yea, I guess I get why you'd think Crusade is a narrative system.
Rules can govern narrative impact - or, perhaps more appropriately, rules can empower someone to generate narrative impact.
Is exactly what I'm saying. There is nothing dictating that there *MUST* be a narrative impact for your character growing a snake tail. NOTHING. It's a narrative the DM decides! It can never come up again, narratively, except for whatever mechanical bonuses or maluses. Wait that's not narrative, that's mechanics.
Yes, the DM decided. That's the crucial difference. The default setting is that something should matter and it is a choice when it doesn't. In Crusade, nothing matters unless you choose to make it matter - which means nothing matters, unless you were already a narrative player in the first place.
Really wish somebody had told me from the start that we were talking Core Crusade rules only! Weird that it suddenly just came up that that's what we were talking about. Would've saved me a lot of time sorting through other sources.
I mean, campaign supplements have always been narrative aids for 40k, before Crusade. "A campaign supplement helped me be narrative!" isn't the Crusade system helping, it's just the campaign supplement helping. Crusade, again, not required.
And in your narrative that might be the case, and in your opponent's narrative it might not be. What do you do then? Roll a dice? It'd be nice if the rules either appointed someone who was In Charge (we'll call them a CM, Crusade Master, perhaps) to make this call or just gave you enough rules architecture in the first place to handle it.
Well, since we're playing Crusade Core Rules Only, it doesn't matter? It's a personal campaign, the story of *my* forces. The opponent can come up with whatever narrative for their own personal campaign. It won't affect mine.
You don't see the problem here, in a narrative context? This is basically saying that narrative 40k is a single-player game (or that Crusade turns it into one) which is patently ridiculous.
Rihgu wrote: Crusade Core Rules only! And when Crusade eventually comes out with an Arbitrator's Toolbox book, that also won't matter, because it's not in the Crusade Core Rules either. Too bad.
I'm glad you agree with me that the DMG should've been part of the Crusade core rather than the latter only including a bunch of irrelevant progression mechanics.
In Crusade, if you fall to chaos, you don't even get a chaos keyword (which means anti-chaos stuff doesn't work on you). Not that there's any consequences for falling to Chaos at all, or that it even has any meaning. It doesn't change your opponents, doesn't change your roster... hell, it has no meaning whatsoever. Narrative!
Oh, you're talking about a player deciding that their non-Chaos forces fall to Chaos? Well, it's right that there's nothing like that in the Core Crusade Rules. Something might come up in an expansion, but that won't matter. I am equally upset that me arbitrarily deciding that my Space Marine chapter works for the Tau does not give them the Tau keyword. I even converted the models and everything! Clearly a flaw with the Crusade Core rules.
Yes, actually. The inability to have the narrative you've built for your force (and even built your force around!) matter is exactly the problem. Thank you for illustrating it for me! I'm glad you understand.
Rihgu wrote: Is a xenotech relic not a strategic asset?
Depends, what does it do?
Rihgu wrote: Anyways, Crusade, especially by core rules, doesn't really address a conflict or war.
Then for those of us who want to play a wargame as the narrative for a war, it's and inadequate system don't you think?
Rihgu wrote: This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.
So a campaign supplement, nice. Glad GW is still publishing those. They're at least useful.
Rihgu wrote: Which I agree are cool, but not particularly more or less narrative than non-map campaigns.
The main issue is they have long-term narrative consequences for short-term decisions.
The World War II example is fitting; consider the following: "My aircraft at Malta successfully interdicted your convoy!" "Drat, that means your aircraft at Malta gained an XP and enough RP for another squadron! And my convoy escorts got a battle scar and move slower now! Grrr."
Actually, it means that the Germans are losing the entire war for North Africa. But sure, yeah, progression = narrative.
Yes, actually. The inability to have the narrative you've built for your force (and even built your force around!) matter is exactly the problem. Thank you for illustrating it for me! I'm glad you understand.
It's actually a problem with 40k's rules rather than Crusade specifically. If Crusade was completely out of the picture I'd still be unable to have my Tau Marines.
You don't see the problem here, in a narrative context? This is basically saying that narrative 40k is a single-player game (or that Crusade turns it into one) which is patently ridiculous.
No, the game is still two-or-more players. The narrative is by default single-player.
Yes, the DM decided. That's the crucial difference. The default setting is that something should matter and it is a choice when it doesn't. In Crusade, nothing matters unless you choose to make it matter - which means nothing matters, unless you were already a narrative player in the first place
I'm sorry, I really cannot understand this. It seems like an arbitrary delineation where you've decided Black Crusade is narrative and 40k is not. Thus, when you play Black Crusade un-narratively you're making a choice, and when playing 40k un-narratively, well, that's just the default.
If Crusade doesn't help/isn't required for narrative at all, why is it important? What does it do that we couldn't do without it? That's my point.
It doesn't do anything we couldn't do without it. It gives a baseline for somebody to do some stuff they could do without it, but without homebrewing or homebrewing as much.
Then for those of us who want to play a wargame as the narrative for a war, it's and inadequate system don't you think?
Yup, I'll completely agree with that. If you're looking for a specific type of narrative not covered/currently covered by the Crusade system, then the Crusade system is inadequate for that. I will completely agree with that. I will not agree that the Crusade system is inherently or objectively non-narrative, pointless, or useless, just because it doesn't model map campaigns or specific types of narratives.
The World War II example is fitting; consider the following:
"My aircraft at Malta successfully interdicted your convoy!"
"Drat, that means your aircraft at Malta gained an XP and enough RP for another squadron! And my convoy escorts got a battle scar and move slower now! Grrr."
Actually, it means that the Germans are losing the entire war for North Africa. But sure, yeah, progression = narrative.
Without being a war historian or looking up this specific battle... The convoys are the Allies?
Okay, so the convoy side won their agenda to give them North Africa points, but the aircraft passed their primary objective. So for the battle, the Germans won, but hey, the Allies now have more North Africa points! They're actually winning the war.
Galas wrote: I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.
I agree, especially if you want to leave some agency to players in regard to what's happening. A campaign written in a book can't improvise when the SW and Orks decide to gang up on some Grey Knights halfway through the campaign.
I agree with them when they say it like this too.
But every now and then they insist on saying it like this: "Crusade =/= Narrative".
And when they say it like that, I have to disagree.
Rihgu wrote: This is literally Crusade + Argovon, based on your description of it.
Yeah pretty much. Not 'This is literally Crusade out of the box, with no additions or alterations'.
Crusade provides a good progression system as a framework, but an actual campaign system- be it narrative, strategic, or just competitive- has to come from elsewhere. And for that you have a ton of options:
-As simple as 'track your VPs and whoever has the most at the end of the month wins',
-As complex as modeling out a map and terrain and bunch of contextual rules,
-As focused as taking a conflict from an IA book and building out a bespoke set of scenarios based on it,
-As creative as having a DM narrate and generate battles, or
-As easy as buying GW's pre-made products like Flashpoints.
But those aren't in the base Crusade rules. The base Crusade rules are just progression.
For, like, the fifth time, that's my sole argument here.
Rihgu wrote: Okay, so the convoy side won their agenda to give them North Africa points, but the aircraft passed their primary objective. So for the battle, the Germans won, but hey, the Allies now have more North Africa points! They're actually winning the war.
See I'd be completely fine with that as a really simple WW2 campaign. Integrate the campaign objectives into the individual battles as a victory point tracker, that may not actually align with the individual scenario objectives.
But that's not in the base Crusade system. If you want 'North Africa points', to make any effort to represent how the battle matters to the conflict, you have to homebrew it or bring it in from a supplement. That's all I'm saying.
Jidmah wrote: Books like Beyond the Veil are the story telling part part of crusade and people like them, so why does the main criticism seem to be that crusade is not telling a story?
I'm confused.
I'd wager most people don't own it - myself included, but I'm keen to snag it to use with the kids and find out what it is all about. Has anyone here read through it?
They create a mechanic called Investigation Points; certain agendas give you Investigation points, as do some of the missions.
There are various things you can do with investigation points.
The relics are all Necron technology, because you're fighting on tomb worlds. But these relics have special powers that you have to study to unlock; Necrons, naturally figure this stuff out more easily than non-Crons, so the native target they have to hit to unload the secret is lower. But you can burn investigation points to lower the target number.
There are also a lot of new actions to take on objectives- things lock "Lock it Down" or "Deactivate" really change how an objective feels/ functions.
There are 6 missions for each game size, which is nice since the BRB only gives you 3 for combat patrol and 3 for onslaught.
The mission pack is designed to work with the Pariah PA and the Argovon Flashpoint series. I wouldn't go as far as saying you need them, but they do put more tools in the toolbox if you have them.
The book doesn't include a campaign system, so it still isn't going to satisfy everyone. But I liked it, though I haven't played any of the missions yet.
So basically what I have understand here is that something only is narrative if theres a system to conect the games between them be it a map or some style of ladder campaing. And that theres a end or winner condition.
The fact that theres any narrative is secondary. Only the structure is needed. I understand the reasoning but I think people is falling in a No True Narrative system here to discredit Crusade.
Galas wrote: I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.
Which, to me at least, sounds like them attempting to blame an orange for not being an apple.
In other words, criticising something for not being something it never intended to be.
Galas wrote:So basically what I have understand here is that something only is narrative if theres a system to conect the games between them be it a map or some style of ladder campaing. And that theres a end or winner condition.
The fact that theres any narrative is secondary. Only the structure is needed. I understand the reasoning but I think people is falling in a No True Narrative system here to discredit Crusade.
H.B.M.C. wrote:
Galas wrote: I suppose what Catbarf and Unit are saying is that what Crusade lacks are those rules I invented for stuff like how to represent in your game the progresion of a planetary xenos invasion, how to make more DM-like narrative scenaros, etc... but I seriously believe a narrative campaing CANNOT work without someone acting as a DM. Theres no ruleset that can make a narrative campaing work with only rules. At best, it will end up as a risk-like tournament with army progression.
Which, to me at least, sounds like them attempting to blame an orange for not being an apple.
In other words, criticising something for not being something it never intended to be.
If your idea of a narrative campaign is loose enough that just being able to 'forge the narrative' while having no structure to connect the battles is sufficient, then surely you could have a narrative campaign with just the base rules and not use Crusade at all?
I'm just saying, it doesn't feel to me like adding an experience/reinforcement system onto the base game is the make-or-break distinction that turns an escalation league into a narrative campaign.
If just the idea of a narrative campaign is just 'play games, make up your own narrative' then Crusade is fine, but so are the base rules so here's my mantra: Crusade is not required.
Progression alone is not enough for narrative; indeed, it doesn't have to be narrative at all. You can track RPs, XP, IPs, ZPs, BPs, really whatever progression metric you want, without there being any impact at all except a random unnamed Captain takes the next perk in the One-Handed skill line (except there aren't even skill lines either so he just picks or rolls an upgrade on a chart) or grabs a relic (like you can do in the base game, but DIFFERENTER!) or whatever.
That's how this whole tangent started: there isn't space in the codex for real narrative because they crammed in all this Crusade stuff. And since the Crusade stuff isn't any more narrative than the base rules, it's an overall reduction in the quality of the codex from a narrative perspective.
But why is Crusade not enough but a map with objetives is? Does each different system (A map one, a progression one, a scenarios one) add X amount of "narrative points" to a game and once you reach enough you become a proper narrative game or what?
Crusade is a tool for progresion. Is that enough by itself to be a narrative experience? No.
Is any other narrative tool, by itself, enough to make a narrative experience? Also, no.
Do you need ALL of them to have a narrative experience? No, not really.
If I don't use the economy system in my D&D campaings, it is less of a narrative experience? Not really.
Crusade tries to do something. And it does it pretty good. What Crusade does, is something many people want and use in their narrative experiences. It is the whole package? Nah, not really. But theres such a thing as "enough narrative"? As an ork would say, no. Theres never enough narrative, only the ammount of tools players want to use and feel they need.
Right, I never said Crusade wasn't a useful tool in a player's toolbox to build narrative. Just that it, itself, isn't narrative content. So reducing actual narrative content (stories that outline the character of an army, lore explaining the provenance of some new unit, whatever) in favor of Crusade content is a net loss, because Crusade doesn't offer anything that homebrew campaigns couldn't already do, but DOES take up pages that could inspire Forge the Narrative moments or give people great ideas for army narratives.
If just the idea of a narrative campaign is just 'play games, make up your own narrative' then Crusade is fine, but so are the base rules so here's my mantra:
Crusade is not required.
Progression alone is not enough for narrative; indeed, it doesn't have to be narrative at all. You can track RPs, XP, IPs, ZPs, BPs, really whatever progression metric you want, without there being any impact at all except a random unnamed Captain takes the next perk in the One-Handed skill line (except there aren't even skill lines either so he just picks or rolls an upgrade on a chart) or grabs a relic (like you can do in the base game, but DIFFERENTER!) or whatever.
That's how this whole tangent started: there isn't space in the codex for real narrative because they crammed in all this Crusade stuff. And since the Crusade stuff isn't any more narrative than the base rules, it's an overall reduction in the quality of the codex from a narrative perspective.
It isn't "Just Play Games"; it's do stuff in one game to learn a skill, get an item or be promoted, which then changes the rules that govern your behaviour and capabilities in future games; it is the changes to your capabilities that impact the story. In the base game, you can tell the same story, but since your capabilities don't change as a result of the story (ie. the thinks you did to learn the skill, find the equipment or earn the promotion), they have zero impact on the subsequent battles. Could you play a D&D adventure without D&D's progression system?
Look, Crusade content includes non-combat actions through Agendas (codex content) and non-combat interactions with different kinds of objectives (campaign mission pack content). The books tell you that you can choose your honours, relics, scars rather than roll for them. The way experience is earned and used in Crusade is far more narrative than D&D.
Seriously. Think about this. In D&D, you earn experience through both combat and non combat. Same with equipment in the form of treasure/ quest items or money. But you keep doing stuff, doing stuff, doing stuff and nothing changes. Then you hit a level threshold, and all the sudden, you get all kinds of upgrades all at the same time, and NONE of them are connected to the stuff you did to earn the experience that paid for the upgrade. For example, you could spend all of level 1 doing nothing but various strength challenges, roleplaying training sessions with the greatest strongmen in the land and eating nothing but protein, but when you hit level 2, you won't be able to raise your strength stat, because that's only allowed at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20. And what's funny is that you can raise your strength at level four even if you've never performed a single strength challenge, never spoken to a strength trainer and haven't eaten anything but fatty food.
But I don't hear any whining that D&D isn't narrative.
In Crusade, I can have a unit perform 3 Investigation actions during battle, and fulfil an agenda, and if it takes me above a threshold, I don't get something as abstract as an arbitrary level that confers a number of rules changes that are absolutely unrelated to the experience. Instead, I choose a single upgrade and I am free to relate it specifically to the experience by which it was earned; in this example, I might say that after performing three distinct investigations during a battle, my unit got so good at maintaining combat readiness while performing non-combat actions that I can now fight and shoot while performing actions.
You say it's not narrative because it doesn't have maps and settings? Find me a map in the PH or DMG. I dare you to try.
You say it's not narrative because it doesn't have a campaign system (map based, ladder, tree, etc); again, find me one in the PH or DMG. There isn't one- you might play a single session game with pregenerated characters, a 5 game story arc, a classic 1-20 campaign, or play at organized events as part of a persistent world structure, or even an annual halloween game with persistent characters. None of these are defined in the PH or DMG, and you're not told which one to use.
You know, if Crusade had provided a campaign system in the BRB they would have alienated more players than they pleased. Think about it: campaigns in Crusade are map based... Now all the players who prefer ladder or tree campaigns are angry. Same is true of settings (in both time and space).
This is why all of that work is done by supplements, which you can choose to buy and use, or not. You can also choose to use only the pieces of each that fit the story you want to tell. This is by design.
Seriously. Want a campaign system for Crusade? Buy the Dwarf issues with the Argovon Flashpoint. Want specific theatres of war? There's one in Beyond the Veil (as well as a sector map naming all the key planets), at least one in each PA book and a whole chapter of them in Pariah. Want to know about the forces involved in the campaign in the Pariah Nexus and summaries of actions taken by specific faction at specific locations? You'll find that in the Argovon Flashpoint, and PA Pariah. Want specific missions for the Theatre of war? There are 24 of them in Beyond the Veil.
I like text based lore as much as the next guy, but when it's lacking, that's stuff I can make up because it doesn't unbalance the game. It's nice, but not necessary, because we all know how to make up a Chapter history. The progression system- that is the mile long list of things you can do to earn experience, and the list of things you can do with it once it's earned... That's the stuff we're less free to make up; sure we've all done house rules, but it's harder to get buy in from all the players when you're making up rules than it is when you're making up background. This is why Crusade gives us rules- it outlines many ways, both combat and non-combat, that you can earn experience points, requisition points and investigation points (Beyond the Veil), and it gives us faction specific ways we can spend it. Sagas for Spacewolves, Specialisms for Deathwatch, etc. And these things may be rules rather than text based fluff, but they define their factions just as much as text based fluff would.
Think of the Barbarian Rage ability in D&D. No one will deny that the ability to rage is a core feature of a barbarian's identity. But D&D doesn't tell you whether that rage represents past trauma that makes you fight harder, the anger of your totem or deity made manifest in you, or the voices of your ancestors driving you past normal limits- they give you the rule and you personalize the rule in accordance with your own notions of your character's identity.
Same with Crusade. It tells you the rules of how experience can be earned; maybe you choose a techpriest with a cybereye to perform the investigation battlefield action because you think it's fluffy- the rules don't tell you to do that, just like the D&D rules don't tell you what Barbarian rage looks, sounds or smells like. Crusade provides things you can do with that experience; you might get artificer armour, but choose to represent that on the table by giving the model a cyber arm and a cyber leg- the rationale being that when so much of your body is metal, an improved armour save would be a likely result. D&D is the same: you might choose to select the Mage Slayer feat, which is a collection of rules- but YOU are the one who figures out the fluff; maybe you had a dream that revealed to you that magic will be the downfall of the realms fo example.
I'm not saying Crusade can't be improved; it certainly can. Every codex, campaign book, flashpoint and mission pack improves it a little bit more. But it is ridiculous to claim that it's not a narrative system, when it clearly links games to each other via cause and effect through the agency of actions taken by units in battle which result in improvements to the capabilities of those units in subsequent games, creating a far more detailed story of the army's development than we've ever been able to do in the past.
And I'm also not saying I don't miss the force distribution maps and background pages that are no longer appearing in dexes. Doesn't hurt me, because I've been playing for three decades and I still have the other books from previous editions. But it will affect new players over time. Given the choice between that stuff and the Crusade content, I'm going to take the crusade content any day of the week, because it's the stuff that I'd have trouble getting through a group of players. Seriously- try it. Take your Spacewolf army to a store or a tournament, and then tell some crazy story like "Actually this army- though they are Spacewolves, leant their support to the Blood Angels during the Tyranid siege of Ashallon, so they've formally been recoginzied the Sanguinary priests of the Blood Angels as Battle Brothers." Your opponent is likely to say, "Cool. Game on!"
No try try to do the same thing when there are rules at stake: "Oh, specialisms can normally only be purchased by units, but this character has supported so many specialist squads in battle that he's become a master of the specialisms." And your opponent is likely to say "Show me the rule." And thanks to Crusade, you can.
So why the #%&* would anyone want to waste pages telling you how to do the first thing, which won't make a lick of difference to your opponent when they can spend those same pages telling you how to do the second, which will clearly have an impact upon all of your opponents in all of your games once the ability has been earned?
I agree with a lot of what people on the other side of the debate are saying. Yes, I think Crusade can do more, and it will. But as soon as you take that detailed analysis and deep discussion and reduce it to the soundbite of Crusade =/= Narrative, you have oversimplified your arguments so much that they are no longer true.
A progression system can be defined as all the things you can do to earn experience and all the things you can do with experience once it's earned. That is 60-90% of the rules content in any pen and paper RPG. In the case of Crusade, the percentage is higher, because all the army rules (RPG equivalent of Race/ Class and Background) is in the Codex, and is the same as matched play content.
I really like the crusade system. One of the things I like about it, is you can play a crusade completely separate from anyone else. as long as you're playing crusade, you can play it as a pick-up game with others.
You'll always be playing the same PL size of game, and if one force has more upgrades, the other side just starts with more CP.
Never have to worry about one player running away with it, as there is a balancing factor to is.
I think the main thing people are missing is that instead of interesting plot hooks, narrative justification for a faction being (x), beastiaries, etc were ditched for quite possibly the lamest excuse for "narrative" content.
Progression for the sake of progression does not narrative make.
Yeah, because narrative gaming without any progression is totally awesome.
Remember that time when the Chapter of the Fluorescent Monks went on a crusade for 100 years and no one learned anything or suffered any scars, and they fought with the exact same wargear every single battle? Boy, what a story!
Jidmah wrote: Yeah, because narrative gaming without any progression is totally awesome.
Remember that time when the Chapter of the Fluorescent Monks went on a crusade for 100 years and no one learned anything or suffered any scars, and they fought with the exact same wargear every single battle? Boy, what a story!
Remember that time when the Chapter of the Flourescent Monks fought the entire Imperium for 100 years and learned everything there is to know and suffered every scar they could, yet they fought with the exact same people every single battle and no one ever died on either side? Oh, and they stayed Loyalists too throughout?
Boy, that totally fits in with the wider 40k Narrative!
Jidmah wrote: Yeah, because narrative gaming without any progression is totally awesome.
Remember that time when the Chapter of the Fluorescent Monks went on a crusade for 100 years and no one learned anything or suffered any scars, and they fought with the exact same wargear every single battle? Boy, what a story!
I wouldn't count equipment swapping as "progression", and besides, you don't need any progression rules to do it.
Tbh, I'm narratively contented by just changing my list a bit.
and suffered every scar they could, yet they fought with the exact same people every single battle and no one ever died on either side?
unlikely as written, and if pursued will likely result in the affected unit changing forms (ie. crossing the rubicon or becoming a dreadnaught). Furthermore, removal from battle =/= death, not only in Crusade, but in also in every other campaign based system from GW (necomunda, warcry, etc).
Boy, that totally fits in with the wider 40k Narrative!
Doesn't always, but certainly can. I mean, there are some damn old loyalist characters in matched play games who have never died or been tainted. Why does it fit with lore when it's them and not some unit in a Crusade?
Really? Well then why does every pen and RPG that I've ever played include a progression system, yet many lack the things you hate on Crusade for lacking?
I mean, pen and paper RPG's are universally acknowledged for being the undisputed masters of narrative games. So just find me one that doesn't include a progression system okay? You might be able to- I've played more than 50 different pen and paper RPG's over a gaming career that started in grade 3, but I haven't played them all. Can't think of any that didn't include a progression system off the top of my head.
Unit1126PLL wrote: Remember that time when the Chapter of the Flourescent Monks fought the entire Imperium for 100 years and learned everything there is to know and suffered every scar they could, yet they fought with the exact same people every single battle and no one ever died on either side? Oh, and they stayed Loyalists too throughout?
Boy, that totally fits in with the wider 40k Narrative!
I'm fairly sure I've read quite a few 40k noves which are perfectly described by this.
You also need to decide whether you complain about people playing random people in a crusade or the same ones.
Not to mention that crusade actually supports units and models dying.
and suffered every scar they could, yet they fought with the exact same people every single battle and no one ever died on either side?
unlikely as written,
Why? It's literally impossible for someone to die in the Crusade rules. Sure, you could have the players swap out a unit and fluff it as "dying" but if we're making up rules and narrative whole cloth, why do we need Crusade to help?
PenitentJake wrote:and if pursued will likely result in the affected unit changing forms (ie. crossing the rubicon or becoming a dreadnaught).
But only sometimes for some people if you want; no tank crewman or armory officer can become a techmarine, for example.
PenitentJake wrote: Furthermore, removal from battle =/= death, not only in Crusade, but in also in every other campaign based system from GW (necomunda, warcry, etc).
False, the 30k campaign system includes death as a possibility, and even has different modifiers on the chart based on what killed you in the game (e.g. if the attack had Instant Death, you get a -1) which makes it kinda cool where mortals are less likely to survive than Space Marines (since the quantity of weapons that inflict Instant Death on T3 is way higher than T4 or T5).
Boy, that totally fits in with the wider 40k Narrative!
Doesn't always, but certainly can. I mean, there are some damn old loyalist characters in matched play games who have never died or been tainted. Why does it fit with lore when it's them and not some unit in a Crusade?
Most of those loyalists didn't fight Imperium for a century straight.
Really? Well then why does every pen and RPG that I've ever played include a progression system, yet many lack the things you hate on Crusade for lacking?
I mean, pen and paper RPG's are universally acknowledged for being the undisputed masters of narrative games. So just find me one that doesn't include a progression system okay? You might be able to- I've played more than 50 different pen and paper RPG's over a gaming career that started in grade 3, but I haven't played them all. Can't think of any that didn't include a progression system off the top of my head.
"All narratives include progression" does not refute "progression by itself is not narrative." the latter of which is my actual claim. I mean I can't think of any pen-and-paper RPGs that are ONLY a progression system and nothing else.
Jidmah wrote:
Unit1126PLL wrote: Remember that time when the Chapter of the Flourescent Monks fought the entire Imperium for 100 years and learned everything there is to know and suffered every scar they could, yet they fought with the exact same people every single battle and no one ever died on either side? Oh, and they stayed Loyalists too throughout?
Boy, that totally fits in with the wider 40k Narrative!
I'm fairly sure I've read quite a few 40k noves which are perfectly described by this.
Really? I can't think of any, but I also try to stay away from bad writing.
Jidmah wrote:You also need to decide whether you complain about people playing random people in a crusade or the same ones.
Why? Crusade supports both surely?
Jidmah wrote:Not to mention that crusade actually supports units and models dying.
Honestly at this point codices should simply be lore and art books of the various factions. Rules, data-sheets and point values should just go fully digital, that way it's way easier to update and balance them as meta's come and go, much like patches for PvP videogames.
Pandabeer wrote: Honestly at this point codices should simply be lore and art books of the various factions. Rules, data-sheets and point values should just go fully digital, that way it's way easier to update and balance them as meta's come and go, much like patches for PvP videogames.
No thanks. I'm good with digital "helpers" like a good dice app or something like that, but WAY too many people have strolled up to ye ol' table over the years saying "Codex? Oh it's all good brah. It's on my phone!" and it has rarely ended well. Yeah, you could print out what you need, but almost no one does that so .... I'll pass on the things I need to actually play the game being fully digital.
Plus, we have fully digital FAQs now, and the ability to update points digitally via the website. Still only happens twice a year so it's not like it would change anything in that regard. There's also the fact that some groups end up really disliking certain updates and decide they want to ignore them. It becomes harder to do that if everything is digital and GW is auto-updating. Yeah, there would likely be ways around that, but what a PITA ...
No thanks. I'm good with digital "helpers" like a good dice app or something like that, but WAY too many people have strolled up to ye ol' table over the years saying "Codex? Oh it's all good brah. It's on my phone!" and it has rarely ended well. Yeah, you could print out what you need, but almost no one does that so .... I'll pass on the things I need to actually play the game being fully digital.
I'm rather curious. Was there a set of problems that generally occurred when playing against someone using a digital codex?
No thanks. I'm good with digital "helpers" like a good dice app or something like that, but WAY too many people have strolled up to ye ol' table over the years saying "Codex? Oh it's all good brah. It's on my phone!" and it has rarely ended well. Yeah, you could print out what you need, but almost no one does that so .... I'll pass on the things I need to actually play the game being fully digital.
I'm rather curious. Was there a set of problems that generally occurred when playing against someone using a digital codex?
Several. Every once in a while, it goes ok, but I've just played way too many games where it took too long to find rules, the phone froze and needed rebooted, the app wouldn't launch at all, they were using a outdated (and better) version of a dex and more easily hiding it (this was a tournament specific example), they try to look something up but get interrupted by a call (because I guess no one uses airplane mode), the phone flat out dies, and really, if I want to see a rule in someone's codex, I have no interest in being handed their $800+ smartphone, and it's awkward as hell if they try to hold it for you.
Mainly though, it's just the length of time it takes to search for rules when needed. Obviously this can happen with "real" books as well but it's just not nearly as time consuming.
Also, someone is going to, invariably read that first paragraph, and reply w/out reading this one, but for those folks - Yes, I know you can bookmark relevant pages in most apps that read digital codexes. I have played MAYBE two people who got that right over the years, and it still doesn't really help when the bugs pop up ...
Pandabeer wrote: Honestly at this point codices should simply be lore and art books of the various factions. Rules, data-sheets and point values should just go fully digital, that way it's way easier to update and balance them as meta's come and go, much like patches for PvP videogames.
No thanks. I'm good with digital "helpers" like a good dice app or something like that, but WAY too many people have strolled up to ye ol' table over the years saying "Codex? Oh it's all good brah. It's on my phone!" and it has rarely ended well. Yeah, you could print out what you need, but almost no one does that so .... I'll pass on the things I need to actually play the game being fully digital.
Plus, we have fully digital FAQs now, and the ability to update points digitally via the website. Still only happens twice a year so it's not like it would change anything in that regard. There's also the fact that some groups end up really disliking certain updates and decide they want to ignore them. It becomes harder to do that if everything is digital and GW is auto-updating. Yeah, there would likely be ways around that, but what a PITA ...
My thoughts pretty much exactly! I get worried when my opponent only has their phone and their battlescribe list. I tried it a couple of times myself and I vastly prefer flipping through a book in the heat of the moment. The stuff that you look-up in-game changes much less through FAQs (datasheets, Stratagems) than points.
No thanks. I'm good with digital "helpers" like a good dice app or something like that, but WAY too many people have strolled up to ye ol' table over the years saying "Codex? Oh it's all good brah. It's on my phone!" and it has rarely ended well. Yeah, you could print out what you need, but almost no one does that so .... I'll pass on the things I need to actually play the game being fully digital.
I'm rather curious. Was there a set of problems that generally occurred when playing against someone using a digital codex?
Several. Every once in a while, it goes ok, but I've just played way too many games where it took too long to find rules, the phone froze and needed rebooted, the app wouldn't launch at all, they were using a outdated (and better) version of a dex and more easily hiding it (this was a tournament specific example), they try to look something up but get interrupted by a call (because I guess no one uses airplane mode), the phone flat out dies, and really, if I want to see a rule in someone's codex, I have no interest in being handed their $800+ smartphone, and it's awkward as hell if they try to hold it for you.
Mainly though, it's just the length of time it takes to search for rules when needed. Obviously this can happen with "real" books as well but it's just not nearly as time consuming.
Also, someone is going to, invariably read that first paragraph, and reply w/out reading this one, but for those folks - Yes, I know you can bookmark relevant pages in most apps that read digital codexes. I have played MAYBE two people who got that right over the years, and it still doesn't really help when the bugs pop up ...
Agreed on all counts - been there.
There is nothing worse than several people during a rules dispute trying to peer at a tiny screen with someone going - "Its all good - its somewhere here - its going to take time to find - trust me.....lets not waste time"...yeah....
Much easier for several people to look at a book on a table.
vict0988 wrote: You can just have one person read the rule out loud.
I mean, you can... But I've had people read me rules directly from their book and manage to read completely the opposite of what it actually says...
Seems as good a way as any to find people you never want to play again. What if someone cheats with their measuring tape? Do you stop using measuring tapes and use folding rulers instead? Like the guy who used an old codex for Battlescribe, how do you catch someone using an old codex? If you've never played against Death Guard before how would you know whether you are playing against 8th or 9th ed Death Guard? Or whether your opponent's list has been made in accordance with 9th ed pts or 8th ed pts?
@Tycho I spent all of 8th using exclusively digital books on a tablet and really enjoyed and preferred it. I totally understand given your experience why you'd be against it though.
I did read your whole post and maybe I just lucked out by using the Epubs on Kobo but the GW Books all had every section bookmarked automatically and swiftly switching back and forth was easy and faster than when I played with hardcovers.
Not sure if your opponents were using something different but just thought I'd point out it was possible out of the box so to speak.
vict0988 wrote: You can just have one person read the rule out loud.
I mean, you can... But I've had people read me rules directly from their book and manage to read completely the opposite of what it actually says...
This has certainly been my experience far too often. Not sure on the breakdown between poor reading comprehension and wishful thinking but there have been some stunningly bad interpretations where you have to ask to read it and end up looking at them like Jonathan Swan in that Trump interview after.
Eldarain wrote: @Tycho I spent all of 8th using exclusively digital books on a tablet and really enjoyed and preferred it. I totally understand given your experience why you'd be against it though.
I did read your whole post and maybe I just lucked out by using the Epubs on Kobo but the GW Books all had every section bookmarked automatically and swiftly switching back and forth was easy and faster than when I played with hardcovers.
Not sure if your opponents were using something different but just thought I'd point out it was possible out of the box so to speak.
It's definitely an issue with how well-versed a person is with using digital devices and resources. The russian rules archive has a search function, so I usually have rules on my fingertips before my opponent even identified where his book is at. In our group it's also common practice to bring a tablet if you have no other source of rules, which also helps to have additional devices around when someone forgot to charge their phones. Any decent phone or tablet should be able to last long enough to finish your game if you charged it the night before, or at least during your drive to the location. If not - get a power bank, it's not like there is any excuse to not spend some money to have the rules available while pushing around hundreds of dollars of miniatures.
If you have someone who has trouble handling their phone and is looking at a pirated copy or BS solely because they don't want to buy their codex, you are usually in trouble. But that person isn't any different from those who bring an unedited 30 page stack of printed battlescribe roster, lose some pages over the course of the game and spend shuffling through their pile of paper every time they try to figure out what melee weapon they bought their definitely not WYSIWYG sergeant.
Digital isn't inherently worse than paper rules, quite the opposite. It is just that too many people lack the skills to use them properly, and despite what one might think that doesn't seem to be connected to age.
That said, I still always have my books with me, I just don't need them very often.
vict0988 wrote: You can just have one person read the rule out loud.
I mean, you can... But I've had people read me rules directly from their book and manage to read completely the opposite of what it actually says...
My personal favorite was that one guy I met during 5th who had a folder with printed pages from the guard codex and various imperial armor books where he had used photoshop to alter various pages to his advantage. It was eventually found out when he played a guy who owned the actual FW books and ended with him being shouted out of the store.
He is the reason why that store still has ban on self-printed rules to this day.
some Rogue Trader aspects and Necrons might be the exception, but other than that there's hardly outdated lore, funnily enough you can find hints for the whole ynnead story in very old Eldar Codex when nobody at 
.
