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 BaconCatBug wrote:
As much as I hate what MTG has become recently, Ravnica is a fantastic setting. Time Spiral/Ravinica Standard was a golden age that will never be surpassed.

For me, my fondest MtG memories are from Ice Age. I feel all warm and fuzzy remembering it.

Honestly, a box of upopened Ice Age decks (failing that, boosters) would probably be one of the absolute best Christmas gifts anyone could ever get me. Hasn't yet ever happened, though.

I have played quite a bit of various versions of D+D - its...ok but not a rpg i would play if I had the chocie of others.

Prefer D100 systems.

Although its much better than Savage Worlds but what isn't.

 Mr Morden wrote:


Although its much better than Savage Worlds but what isn't.

F.A.T.A.L.

F.A.T.A.L is an international treasure and I won't be having you besmirch its fine name.

nataliereed1984 wrote:
Jidmah, how do you feel about Kill Team and/or Necromunda's campaign rules by comparison?

Haven't played Necromund at all, but Kill Team works a lot better, since single characters matter much more, experience gain is meaningful and the campaign doesn't punish you for not archiving a major victory.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
@Jidmah

Okay! I get a lot of your points and I actually agree. However, my response would be:

1) 40k *should* be able to be played narratively. GW has offered support for this too, however hamfisted and bad it might be.

Should? Yes, of course! But GW hasn't shown any support besides lip service. I'm fairly sure they don't even know how to create a narrative experience besides having a group which does such things naturally. Have you seen those linked game rules in CA2019? It was one of the reasons why I bought that book and it was an utter disappointment. 11 pages of rules which have yielded less interesting ideas than a thread I started here on dakka which only went on for one and a half page. Not to mention that they just forgot some factions in their narrative stratagems, like orks.

2) the failure of 40k as a narrative game is due largely to balance issues.

This last one I would like to expand on a bit, partly because I am involved in a discussion about it in the "playtest competitively" thread.

40k's imbalance does, in fact, make it hard to be narrative. Your stuff just vaporizes off the table like water on hot asphalt. What's worse is that *everyone* is a victim. Even narrative lists that are accidentally hyperoptimized evaporate if they happen to go second.

This is a problem with lethality being dramatically too high right now, and plagues all of 40k.

Yes, I agree. Having a narrative game was much easier in 5th when no single unit could wipe another unit in a single shooting phase.

When you say "40k doesn't function well as a narrative game", what it sounds like your objections are is mostly "40k doesn't function well as a game", period, narratively or otherwise.

Eh, IMO this is a jump in logic. The game can be highly lethal and still properly function, and in my opinion it did so pretty well before marine supplements happened. I had tons of fun games in this edition, but it's more like playing a game of risk or MtG than a game of D&D.

Lastly, I do think GW tries to support narrative play. You yourself mentioned several tools and supplements which exist; the problem is that they are executed with GW's typical disregard for their own game.

"Do or do not, there is no try." I can see they are trying, but I also see them failing in the very same way they already failed in the FW Imperial Armour books a decade ago. And it would be so easy to gather experience in that area. Just host a narrative event at warhammer world for random people showing up, and they would probably be run down by people willing to play.
The result, right now, is that there is zero support for planing an executing a narrative campaign, and you have to do all the work yourself.

But in general I think 40k games should be narratively inspired above all else, and the fact that it hardly functions at all is a detriment to everyone, and is not limited to narrative.

I also disagree on this. People should be able to have fun in their hobby in anyway they want. A proper balance benefits all parts of the game, from competitive to casual, from organized tournaments to narrative play.
Considering how much work companies like WotC, Blizzard, Riot Games and others (even P&P companies!) put into fine-tuning their games for the entire spectrum of their audience, it saddens me to see how slow and heavy-handed GW is acting.
They are getting better, but the Terminus Est changes its course faster than GW does.


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BrianDavion wrote:
just gonna leave that there

What for? Are implying that narrative players should sell their minis play another game in the same setting?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I am not certain why 40k cannot be about collaborative storytelling and imagination. A pair (or group) of people work together to confront fun challenges that they create for themselves and build a story about their characters and armies.

People talk like you can't use 40k battles to tell stories.

You can invent a story about your game versus I, but at the end of the day, one of us won and one of us lost and we went home to make new lists and play someone else next week.

D&D isn't about winning or losing. Victory is what you make of it. Theres an evolving story of the party's characters facilitated and curated by the GM.

40k "Narrative" is like old fashioned wargaming with scenarios and asymmetric objectives.


And of course, when you're playing D&D, you're playing with your friends together. If we play 40k, I have all my pieces, you have all yours, and I play against you for my guys to beat yours.

One of us won and one of us lost, but that doesn't mean we make new lists next week. Oftentimes I'll take the same list, with the same characters, week after week, and when I play someone else I can fluff that game too. After all, unless they have their own fluff (in which case we should play a narrative campaign!) they could easily all be on the same planet.

If I lost, I'm definitely making a new list. That means that my previous list was bad, or at least worse than my opponent or poorly optimized. Why would I play losing game after losing game. If I won, I'll still probably make changes to my list since there's aspects that are certainly less than adequately performing in every game. Of course, sometimes it's locked from game to game, like for a league or tournament, or I want to give some idea another chance, but you get the point, there's not a lot of point in repeatedly playing the same list if you're not winning, so somebody should be coming back with a new list.

The point of a competitive wargame is to win. Even a narrative scenario like this:

the point is to secure a victory in accordance with historically inspired objectives with historically inspired forces while preventing your opponent from achieving theirs and destroying their force.

D&D doesn't have a win condition. You never win D&D, you just play and overcome interesting and exciting tribulations together that the GM thinks up because she thinks they'll be interesting and fun and create a compelling narrative.

Winning SHOULD be based on more than your list. If it's just the list that determines victory or defeat then why do you play instead of exchanging lists, doing the math, and calling good game? The list SHOULD be one of the least impactful elements for victory.

 Lance845 wrote:
Winning SHOULD be based on more than your list. If it's just the list that determines victory or defeat then why do you play instead of exchanging lists, doing the math, and calling good game? The list SHOULD be one of the least impactful elements for victory.

What you brought in your list is fundamentally defined by your strategy for victory and determines what tactical options you will have available.

The majority of potential lists will be unviable all the time, since at the very minimum you need to be able to respond effectively to a significant variety of threats that the enemy may present. In addition, if you want it to actually be good, you need to have a path to victory, threats that the enemy must service, yourself.

You can't just bring whatever crap was on the shelf today and expect to win if you don't have a coherent strategy.


Winning is also based on more than your list, but if you don't have an adequate list then you've failed the first bar. That said, just having an adequate list isn't going to get you very far if you don't know what you're doing with it. You also need to have a command of the system and the tactics and how the units interact.

BrianDavion wrote:

ccs wrote:

 redux wrote:
My issue with DnD is it gives your "friends" a proxy for their poor social skills. eg, my character is an ass hat so I am juuuuuust acting out their ass hattery.

My issue with 40K is it gives your "friends" a rule set for their poor social skills. eg, the rule says I can F you so I'm going to F you.

Your issue is that you aren't playing either of these games with friends.

agreed. D&D and 40k are games designed with the assumption of a social contract. if your "Friends" don't wanna follow said social contract well... don't play 40k and d&d with them

No D&D/40K is better than bad D&D/40K.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I find the FFG RPGs to be a fairly bland core system padded out with a massive dictionary of traits. Most of the play time every time I've tried it consists of people flipping through books to figure out what any of their abilities actually mean; unless you're prepared to have one person memorize the whole thing or write up your own reminder text it's fairly difficult to use.

Smart character sheets are the best thing since sliced bread - for any system with feats/traits/talents/quirks/whatever.

And yes, I agree, but I think that was more an issue for high level games and particularly for Deathwatch - Marines don't really fit in the scale of what is essentially WHFRP in a false nose and glasses, so the book spends ages teaching you rules for fear, corruption, fatigue, starvation, encumbrance, etc, etc (just like dark heresy) but then spends an equal amount of time giving astartes special rules that amount to "ignore this section.....and this section...and this..." and then has to include whole new sections to allow hordes of weaker enemies to hurt you at all. Deathwatch is worth skipping.

Only war (guard) is a lot more sensible and playable as "shoot em up rpgs" go. You're a guardsman. Orks are scary. Tactics become more than just optional extras if you want to live.


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What you brought in your list is fundamentally defined by your strategy for victory and determines what tactical options you will have available. 

Agreed. But at the same time how a list performs in a given game will vary wildly based on how it is employed (and the tyranny of the dice). I never get people whose first response on losing a game with a list is to change their list rather than practice a bit more, try different tactics, and different "choose-on-the-day" options (warlord, warlord trait, relic) and then modify the list once you've got a better feel for what the list lacks compared to your preferred play style.

I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?

It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?

It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.

Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

 Jidmah wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?

It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.

Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.

Admittedly, house rules and making stuff up on the fly ("wouldn't it be cool if the space hulk we arrived with starts breaking up in orbit, and all our units have to make random rolls not to get hit by debris?" or whatever) can add a lot to this kind of play, but they're not necessary.

 Jidmah wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?

It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.

Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played. Future changes to lists, models used, etc would simply be further developments & future chapters of their rivalry.

I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.

I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.

I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.

Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.

My PERSONAL D&D experiences have been awful. I got kicked out of a group in college because I played a chaotic neutral barbarian who...shock...dropped an informant off a building, killing him, after getting the necessary information. Then kicking down the bad guy’s front door; I was told I wasn’t taking it seriously. Second group involved the very definition of bad-stereotype players running roughshod over the game, game master and making it a terrible experience. So I like the concept of D&D, but experience has sucked and I have nothing positive to say about it from personal experience.

I love d&d. I've been playing it and 40k since the 80s. They both scratch a different itch in my opinion.

Notice how people can cite their favorite edition of D&D, but few people can say what their favorite edition of 40k is? I really think D&D reached its pinnacle with 3.5/Pathfinder. 40k has good good ideas scattered throughout its editions that it never consolidated. Terrain rules in some editions that weren't there with USRs, etc. Combine that with the power creep and contradictions in each army book. Although once you get past the core books of D&D it can get pretty bad.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
As much as I hate what MTG has become recently, Ravnica is a fantastic setting. Time Spiral/Ravinica Standard was a golden age that will never be surpassed.

A good second place to the golden age of MTG; Urza block / Mercadian Masques followed by Masques / Invasion. 3 years of unparalleled​ genius both from designers and writers. Original Ravnica is the closest Wizards have since come to that epoch.

 Red Marine wrote:
I love d&d. I've been playing it and 40k since the 80s. They both scratch a different itch in my opinion.

Notice how people can cite their favorite edition of D&D, but few people can say what their favorite edition of 40k is? I really think D&D reached its pinnacle with 3.5/Pathfinder. 40k has good good ideas scattered throughout its editions that it never consolidated. Terrain rules in some editions that weren't there with USRs, etc. Combine that with the power creep and contradictions in each army book. Although once you get past the core books of D&D it can get pretty bad.

3.5 was the edition I played most and I fondly remember the group I played with back then, but I prefer 5E, and I'd even put 4E above 3.X - the only thing 3.X has going for it is how many source books and rule books it had (which was great), but with that came tons of Prestige classes that completely fethed up any resemblance of balance the game could've had (and balance-wise the game was already broken straight out of the core rules. Fighter vs Wizard power curves, anyone?)
4E completely threw all that out of the window and created something entirely new, but was way too bland since all you had were the basic roles, and every class was simply one flavour of those roles, with everyone having like "a D8 at-will attack that also delivers a debuff", for example. But if you just ignored that rules-wise it didn't matter what kind of striker you played, and just focussed on the RP aspects, it was fine - and you'd not run into the issue of having classes that are completely useless in combat at certain level ranges.
5E seems like it's trying to find the balance in between these two editions, and is so far a great experience - I only recently got back into D&D, not much experience (literally - we're level 4) yet with 5E but so far everyone in the group is enjoying it. There were a few minor things that confused us, but so far everyone gets to participate in meaningful ways (both in and out of combat) and that's the best you can hope for in an RPG ruleset, in my opinion.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I don;t play D&D, but I do love playing other roleplaying games like Prowlers and Paragons, Savage Worlds (in about 5 different sub-settings from fantasy to sci-fi), and several others, including a free Indie D20 game called Heroes Against Darkness, which I much prefer to modern D&D.

The last couple of editions of D&D just didn't appeal to me.

But I have also played and painted 40K for 25 years, so I guess I differ from some of the main group. Frankly I have heard 40k players rag on just about anything that's NOT 40K. Lots of claims that other games just "suck", even those with lots of critical acclaim. Even AoS barely gets a pass, if only for being from GW.

Huh, I usually hear the opposite. That whatever it is is vastly better than 40k, and everybody should play it instead, but in the end there's only a small cadre that plays it and everybody keeps playing 40k. There's maybe a dozen people who play Infinity at one of the stores, but otherwise, despite how often some other game is presented, in the end it's basically just 40k.

Yeah, in my area I figure I am part of the vast minority that doesn't just play 40K or Age of Sigmar in their most common forms. I'm not even sure I could get a skirmish game in of either system, or any of the Specialist Games, because they aren't the big "2". MAYBE Warcry because it's new enough. But God forbid I want to get some people to play something non-GW. If I am very, very lucky, it would probably be an entire game using resources entirely of my own and an opponent I can con into what amounts to a Demo game.

Every once in awhile I see Facebook posts in the local group about getting together to play a game of Kings of War or maybe Infinity because someone from the other side of the state that plays will be in town for the weekend or something, but I can only imagine what the work would be to get anyone interested in something non-standard that I own like Song of Blades and Heroes, Dracula's America, or even something Oldschool GW like Battlefleet Gothic, original Necromunda, etc.

 Jidmah wrote:
Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

This is your problem. Pull out the stupid bs to have fun with it and don't worry too hard about playing competitive.

Dakkan laid waste to the shrine world of Whateveritis and is laying siege to the temple containing the ever holy cod piece of the emperor. Kronfeld is responding to preserve his holiness' saintly crotch cover from the fiendish greenskin.

From there you can easily pull it out in a couple ways, if you want to play bog standard from there you absolutely could. Or you can take some inspiration and impose atypical restrictions on both forces. See, Kronfeld is making a precision strike to stop Dakkan from opening the temple which Dakkan is conveniently exactly four turns away from doing unless Kronfeld can take a point deep in Dakkan's deployment zone. As a result the only thing Kronfeld can put on the field the first turn are things disembarking from drop pods, with fliers and fast attack being able to enter from the side of the board at the end of his first turn and everything else the end of turn two. Meanwhile you have Dakkan on the backfoot and forced to actually defend something when most of his boys are off in the more interesting fights. He starts with half his army on the field and can place one unit on his board edge at the end of the battle round for every unit destroyed that turn as his boys hear something interesting.

Is it fair? Possibly, but it's going to drive some different list building and tactics than the standard stand and shoot at things game.

From there, you could do a follow up game depending on who won. If the marines take the temple, throw a meat grinder at them to hold it against the mass of the greenskin forces. If the greenskins take it, go for a convoy based mission where the marines attempt to seize the defiled relic back before it gets to a strong hold.

And round it out without whoever won that one fighting from a prepared position against the other one with the primary goal being breaking the stronghold to get the goods.

It's all a bit of stupid, but you've got a series of games with some fun differences to them tied together based on a loose story dependant on your actions.


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 harlokin wrote:
Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.

The SciFi Companion for it is reasonably good for jumping that gap too.

 Jidmah wrote:

YeOldSaltPotato wrote:
I'm kinda baffled, what beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?

It's not going to be all that much more than scenarios and tossing your own fluff at it. Unless you're asking for a campaign system which is a separate thing than explicitly narrative.

Maybe I'm just missing something.
So, here is an example - I have a bunch of orks, pretty much every unit from the store available at least once. My friend has some primaris Dark Angels and some death wing units.
My warboss is called "Dakkan da Hyena" and his Captain is "Eugen von Kronfeld". How would you try to tell the story of those two facing off with their armies in a single game? Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

I am not going to use your example but an actual game I played this weekend. I have a Primaris only army that roughly fleshed out they were given their chapter name during the Devastation of Baal. Well, a friend of mine has a Tyranid army with a bunch of the bigger Forge World nids in it. He also picked up the Blood Angel/Tyranid Psychic Awakening book. Well I asked him if he minded running a 'historical' 40k game of what exactly happened on Baal when my chapter was there hoping that the PA book would have a good mission in it. Sadly, the one mission in there didn't really work for the game we wanted to play so we went BRB for a kill point game.

So the story so far was the Avenging Eagles had arrived with Roboute Guilliman to lend aid to the Blood Angels and their beleaguered successor chapters. After giving the Sons of Sanguinius some much needed respite, the new Primaris including what would become the Avenging Eagles pushed fight further into territory already controlled by the Tyranids who now had created bigger, more exotic strains with strains never seen before (the Tyranid player was using the new subfaction trait options from PA). Would this push become disastrous or will it allow even more time for Imperial forces to launch a larger, more coordinated counter-attack?



The spoiler above shows the beginning of the battle. The markings indicate movement the Dimachaeron only held back by Intercessors from stunning the marine tanks. While pushed back momentarily, everything unloaded into the beast that could causing grievous wounds but not felling it. It was until Captain Clash aimed his master-crafted instigator bolt carbine and with a perfect shot pierced the staggering creature's eye and brain felling the mighty beast. It was that action and well as the victory of this engagement that lead him to be chosen by the Ultramarine Primarch to become chapter master of the Ultima founded Avenging Eagles.

That same game had the Phobos Lieutenant demonstrate he perhaps takes too great of risks as he charged a last of a genestealer swarm with only a pair of knives. Potentially leaving him exposed to further threats or even if he should fail being torn limb from limb from the rending claws of the still very dangerous xeno. The spoiler below (you can just see his blue force sword inside the front of the building) show Librarian Brother Bastion attempting to hold back the psychic might of the xeno invaders (mostly the Swarm Lord but the 'nit player also had another psyker as well). He was performed admirably, the Swarm Lord obviously grew tired of this small minded thing interrupting and had a giant winged Tyranid come crashing into the ruins to deal with it and bashing the sneaky post-human wizard.



The space marines were victorious here. And while this battle didn't matter all that much in the wider struggle for Baal, it did aid the Imperial forces and also gave the Blood Angels (the ones that knew of it) some measure of respect toward the new Primaris. In honor of this battle and those that fell defending Baal. The Blood Angels honored the Avenging Eagles whose tanks not bear the blood drop and angels wings.

This was still just a regular game of 40k with story elements happening organically as the game continued. That chapter master thing actually happened too. I had simply ran out of things to shoot the Dimachaeron. My Repulsors' big guns weren't being all that successful and my small arms couldn't much past 5+ they needed to wound. I had managed to get the thing down to 2 wounds, but ran out of shooting. Then I checked an saw my Phobos Captain did have line of sight and a weapon in range. It was kinda a long shot with a single attack. However, +2 re-rolling 1s would easily hit, the wounding was still going to be an issue. I managed to roll a 5 and the Tyranid player failed its Save dealing it 3 damage. I can't remember if is also had a FNP, but it was dead.

The point is narrative, I think just giving the game a couple of sentences of what the fight is about and occasionally describing/interpreting what the dice are doing is all that is really needed to string together a decent narrative of what happened. It is no Lawrence of Arabia, but does allow game to feel more impactful and memorable.

 Ishagu wrote:
I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.

I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.

I think that's a very antiquated stereotype, D&D is pretty main-stream now. There are a lot of RPG players of the feminine persuasion.

That said, I only know 2 other women who play miniatures wargames.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

 Ishagu wrote:
I love D&D. I've got a regular group of people I play with (all girls aside from me, yes D&D girls do exist) and it's a lot of fun.

I still much prefer 40k, however. I see the two hobbies as being connected in many ways. I for one used the painting skills gained in 40k to create some great looking D&D miniatures.

I think that's a very antiquated stereotype, D&D is pretty main-stream now. There are a lot of RPG players of the feminine persuasion.

That said, I only know 2 other women who play miniatures wargames.

Seconded.

(Deleting everything further I was gonna say cos I don't want to cause anything to go off-topic again)

 timetowaste85 wrote:
My PERSONAL D&D experiences have been awful. I got kicked out of a group in college because I played a chaotic neutral barbarian who...shock...dropped an informant off a building, killing him, after getting the necessary information. Then kicking down the bad guy’s front door; I was told I wasn’t taking it seriously. Second group involved the very definition of bad-stereotype players running roughshod over the game, game master and making it a terrible experience. So I like the concept of D&D, but experience has sucked and I have nothing positive to say about it from personal experience.

That's unfortunate. D&D is a social experience, and if you are in a bad society, it will come off as bad.

Most of my D&D experience comes from Bioware mostly because I never had a group to run the PnP with. My Brother-in-law has gotten interested in it, but we're an hour of hellish traffic away from each other now, and I rarely can get out of the house.

40K, along with any tabletop wargaming, is in a similar boat. Your local group will have a lot of bearing on your enjoyment of the game experiences.

nataliereed1984 wrote:Decide on an interesting context in which these two characters would face off against one another, that fits with your vision of the generals and their armies and what they're about. Flip through your rulebooks and supplements to find a narrative or matched play mission that fits well with what you came up with. Play that mission, and use your imagination to flesh out the events as they occur and imagine ways and reasons that unusual or climactic moments in the game happened. There you go.

ccs wrote:Same as we've always done. We'd generate a mission, set up the table, & play a game. The first game, even if our heroes had heard of one another, would tell the initial battlefield meeting of these two soon-to-be-epic foes....The exact story would develop as we played.

Sorry you two, but that's... just playing a regular game though? I can literally do the same in a game of risk or any other board game.
Plus Dakkan will probably unepically be boltered down after destroying a vehicle as is the fate of every warboss in every game, while Eugen must stand still in the middle of his army to keep everyone in his re-roll bubble.

nataliereed1984 wrote:Admittedly, house rules and making stuff up on the fly ("wouldn't it be cool if the space hulk we arrived with starts breaking up in orbit, and all our units have to make random rolls not to get hit by debris?" or whatever) can add a lot to this kind of play, but they're not necessary.

css wrote:Future changes to lists, models used, etc would simply be further developments & future chapters of their rivalry.

YeOldSaltPotato's question was "What beyond the faction background and some sample narrative missions do you need for something to be considered narrative support in 40k?", both of your answers basically confirm that you do consider the "support" provided by GW to be insufficient to tell even a simple story.

You can turn your game into a story by creating the narrative yourself. But all the work needs to be done by the players, there is no support from GW for this whatsoever.


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YeOldSaltPotato wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
Restriction: You are not allowed to implement even a single house rule.

This is your problem. Pull out the stupid bs to have fun with it and don't worry too hard about playing competitive.

Thanks for the personal attack, but please explain how "creating house rules" is "native support" you claimed that GW has? That's the very opposite.

Dakkan laid waste to the shrine world of Whateveritis and is laying siege to the temple containing the ever holy cod piece of the emperor. Kronfeld is responding to preserve his holiness' saintly crotch cover from the fiendish greenskin.

From there you can easily pull it out in a couple ways, if you want to play bog standard from there you absolutely could. Or you can take some inspiration and impose atypical restrictions on both forces. See, Kronfeld is making a precision strike to stop Dakkan from opening the temple which Dakkan is conveniently exactly four turns away from doing unless Kronfeld can take a point deep in Dakkan's deployment zone. As a result the only thing Kronfeld can put on the field the first turn are things disembarking from drop pods, with fliers and fast attack being able to enter from the side of the board at the end of his first turn and everything else the end of turn two. Meanwhile you have Dakkan on the backfoot and forced to actually defend something when most of his boys are off in the more interesting fights. He starts with half his army on the field and can place one unit on his board edge at the end of the battle round for every unit destroyed that turn as his boys hear something interesting.

Is it fair? Possibly, but it's going to drive some different list building and tactics than the standard stand and shoot at things game.

From there, you could do a follow up game depending on who won. If the marines take the temple, throw a meat grinder at them to hold it against the mass of the greenskin forces. If the greenskins take it, go for a convoy based mission where the marines attempt to seize the defiled relic back before it gets to a strong hold.

And round it out without whoever won that one fighting from a prepared position against the other one with the primary goal being breaking the stronghold to get the goods.

It's all a bit of stupid, but you've got a series of games with some fun differences to them tied together based on a loose story dependant on your actions.

Yes, awesome!
However, ideas in this paragraph to make WH40k a narrative created by you:
- restrictions on armies
- a temple as primary target for both forces
- four turn countdown to drop the warboss
- marine forces coming late to the party
- cut ork force in half but allow endless reinforcements
- follow up game on the same table
- prepared position game
- relic convoy
- break the fortress
Ideas in this paragraph to make WH40k a narrative create by GW:


Which brings me back to your original question, what do I need more than just fluff and missions? Stuff like what you wrote.
I have turned Magic the Gathering into a story about four planeswalkers trying to unearth a conspiracy on Ravnica, so I obviously have the means to tell a story using WH40k. But WH40k doesn't provide any more support for that than MtG does.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
I am not going to use your example but an actual game I played this weekend.

Spoiler:

I have a Primaris only army that roughly fleshed out they were given their chapter name during the Devastation of Baal. Well, a friend of mine has a Tyranid army with a bunch of the bigger Forge World nids in it. He also picked up the Blood Angel/Tyranid Psychic Awakening book. Well I asked him if he minded running a 'historical' 40k game of what exactly happened on Baal when my chapter was there hoping that the PA book would have a good mission in it. Sadly, the one mission in there didn't really work for the game we wanted to play so we went BRB for a kill point game.

So the story so far was the Avenging Eagles had arrived with Roboute Guilliman to lend aid to the Blood Angels and their beleaguered successor chapters. After giving the Sons of Sanguinius some much needed respite, the new Primaris including what would become the Avenging Eagles pushed fight further into territory already controlled by the Tyranids who now had created bigger, more exotic strains with strains never seen before (the Tyranid player was using the new subfaction trait options from PA). Would this push become disastrous or will it allow even more time for Imperial forces to launch a larger, more coordinated counter-attack?

[spoiler]

The spoiler above shows the beginning of the battle. The markings indicate movement the Dimachaeron only held back by Intercessors from stunning the marine tanks. While pushed back momentarily, everything unloaded into the beast that could causing grievous wounds but not felling it. It was until Captain Clash aimed his master-crafted instigator bolt carbine and with a perfect shot pierced the staggering creature's eye and brain felling the mighty beast. It was that action and well as the victory of this engagement that lead him to be chosen by the Ultramarine Primarch to become chapter master of the Ultima founded Avenging Eagles.

That same game had the Phobos Lieutenant demonstrate he perhaps takes too great of risks as he charged a last of a genestealer swarm with only a pair of knives. Potentially leaving him exposed to further threats or even if he should fail being torn limb from limb from the rending claws of the still very dangerous xeno. The spoiler below (you can just see his blue force sword inside the front of the building) show Librarian Brother Bastion attempting to hold back the psychic might of the xeno invaders (mostly the Swarm Lord but the 'nit player also had another psyker as well). He was performed admirably, the Swarm Lord obviously grew tired of this small minded thing interrupting and had a giant winged Tyranid come crashing into the ruins to deal with it and bashing the sneaky post-human wizard.

Spoiler:

The space marines were victorious here. And while this battle didn't matter all that much in the wider struggle for Baal, it did aid the Imperial forces and also gave the Blood Angels (the ones that knew of it) some measure of respect toward the new Primaris. In honor of this battle and those that fell defending Baal. The Blood Angels honored the Avenging Eagles whose tanks not bear the blood drop and angels wings.

This was still just a regular game of 40k with story elements happening organically as the game continued. That chapter master thing actually happened too. I had simply ran out of things to shoot the Dimachaeron. My Repulsors' big guns weren't being all that successful and my small arms couldn't much past 5+ they needed to wound. I had managed to get the thing down to 2 wounds, but ran out of shooting. Then I checked an saw my Phobos Captain did have line of sight and a weapon in range. It was kinda a long shot with a single attack. However, +2 re-rolling 1s would easily hit, the wounding was still going to be an issue. I managed to roll a 5 and the Tyranid player failed its Save dealing it 3 damage. I can't remember if is also had a FNP, but it was dead.
[/spoiler]
The point is narrative, I think just giving the game a couple of sentences of what the fight is about and occasionally describing/interpreting what the dice are doing is all that is really needed to string together a decent narrative of what happened. It is no Lawrence of Arabia, but does allow game to feel more impactful and memorable.

Thanks for the write-up, that actually was fun to read.

However, I think what you are describing is not actually comparable to what a game like D&D offers. In addition, as I have explained in a previous post, I have found it increasingly difficult for games to actually write their own stories, since 8th often has armies completely wiped out, and single characters like your Brother Bastion just keep getting blown to smithereens over and over again - some armies even specialize in wiping out characters, like ravenguard or eldar. Since 8th the narrative of Meanmek the Big Mek has been "got riddled with sniper bullets a few seconds into the battle, but somehow survived".
I also picked orks and marines on purpose, because both marines and ork characters tend to not really do any epic things on the battle, because they either need to be in very specific positions or need to do very specific things(often resulting in their death) to make their army work.
My Death Guard chaos lord in terminator armor has been wading through legions of enemies he cut down with his trusted axe plaguebringer, has destroyed tanks with his combi-bolter and received dozens of gifts of chaos for cutting down enemy characters. My tallyman has legendary aim with his plasma pistol and the insane foul blightspawn has melted entire destroyer units with his plague sprayer and walked away from the following necron onslaught barely living. But alas, not every character is as durable as a plague marine.

 harlokin wrote:
I played and GMed Deathwatch and the Black Crusade RPGs for a few years, and they were great fun despite being d100 systems, which are usually pretty bad for anything other than simulationist misery porn.

Savage Worlds is a brilliant RPG, and would suit a pulpy 40K perfectly.

The newest game - Wrath & Glory - is a pretty good ruleset, if only GW/Cubicle 7 would actually ****ing publish anything for it.

Love DnD. It has a flexible ruleset that just enables fun without adding to much baggage on top.