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For me - its just that I am from a different bygone era where tabletop gaming was a completely different thing and what was considered skill is not what people want to engage in today.

The world evolved, gaming evolved, and while we may say that evolution is good - its really in my experience just "different'. The games that I fell in love with though and are what drive my interest are mostly dead today with the exception of a few like Battletech which is (THANKFULLY) still around and not giving into the current design paradigms of moar abstraction moar random moar faster moar faster moar faster games. (Alpha strike exists for that but the devs have continued support for the crunchy battle sim that I fell in love with so we have choices over there, unlike most games where you just have the one version and thats these days going to be the gamey game version). And if you like that thats wonderful!

And the people enjoying things today are in for a treat in 10 or 20 years when the things they fell in love with are called crap and flushed out of games in favor of whatever is coming up next wants.

The only thing for sure is ... things will change as they always have as game studios churn their dev talent over to the next wave of developers and those people will bring in what their generation of players wants. I work in the games industry and the average age of game devs that I work around is about 21-24, with management and directors being late 20s and early 30s.

The cycle of old man screams at cloud in anger will always continue lol The older you get, the more things will continue to change.

You are not wrong lol.
I guess at least we have a shared gorup of old men yelling at the sky so we can tell at it together.

so we can tell at it together.

Such a beautiful chorus we all make.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I don't like shouting at the sky. It sucks, the rules are terrible, and it doesn't support narrative play.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I don't like shouting at the sky. It sucks, the rules are terrible, and it doesn't support narrative play.

Fine just go back to your boomercore shouting at clouds, the future is now old man we yell at the sky.

I have toyed with making my own version of 40k that is more narrative driven and less listbuildy meta building driven but... thats a lot of effort to basically play with myself lol.

We shall find time in Valhalla old man…

I actually wrote a post about basically this situation just before Grandfather Nurgle unleashed his Great Plague upon us:

https://skinflintgames.wordpress.com/2019/12/12/musings-on-game-design-or-can-40k-ever-be-good/

TLDR, basically GW makes £ from selling new models, so new models have to be better in the rules than old ones or no one will buy them.. hence the inevitable cycle of power creep through the Codexes and then a new edition reset every 3/4 years. Honestly, I think it's just an economic inevitability more than any sort of conspiracy on the part of the rules writers.

The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

 Skinflint Games wrote:

TLDR, basically GW makes £ from selling new models, so new models have to be better in the rules than old ones or no one will buy them..

But thats wrooooooooooong.

 Skinflint Games wrote:
I actually wrote a post about basically this situation just before Grandfather Nurgle unleashed his Great Plague upon us:

https://skinflintgames.wordpress.com/2019/12/12/musings-on-game-design-or-can-40k-ever-be-good/

TLDR, basically GW makes £ from selling new models, so new models have to be better in the rules than old ones or no one will buy them.. hence the inevitable cycle of power creep through the Codexes and then a new edition reset every 3/4 years. Honestly, I think it's just an economic inevitability more than any sort of conspiracy on the part of the rules writers.

A shocking new argument that no one has ever made before.
For every new kit with better rules there are 2 new kits not worth buying because they suck balls.

Whether or not GW is malicious doesn't matter that much when they are to incompetent to actually pull it off.

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

And the counter to that is that just because GW tries to do something, doesn't mean they're any good at it.

 auticus wrote:
I have toyed with making my own version of 40k that is more narrative driven and less listbuildy meta building driven but... thats a lot of effort to basically play with myself lol.

Curious about this.

We've discussed several times that Crusade is more progression system than narrative- at this point, I'm not going to deny it, because that's an old discussion.

But I find that driving games via narrative lies mostly in the way individual games are linked to each other, and as such, they aren't always well represented by rules anyway.

So if you look at a progression of battles and how they link, that gives you narrative. Despite the fact that Crusade can be seen through the lens of progression system, I'd say it offers a greater potential for linking games in different ways for two reasons. In matched, the only real way of linking games is through the dichotomy of win/loss. This is because secondaries are connected to victory, so you can't say "Advance to Mission A if you win, Mission B if you succeed at this secondary or Mission C if you succeed at this other secondary."

In Crusade, of course, this dichotomy doesn't exist, because Agendas are not tied to victory. Beyond that though, most bespoke Crusade content provides faction specific goals that are often decoupled from both Victory Conditions AND Agendas. So you can put a player in a situation where they have to choose between Winning, to create one outcome, vs. completing an Agenda to create aa different outcome, or a faction specific goal to create a third outcome. Missions can be designed in such a way to facilitate a likelihood of completing more than one of these objectives, or to facilitate a likelihood that a player has to make a choice and use appropriate tactics on the table to follow through.

There are combination approaches too- where the path forward is keyed to victory/loss, but achievement of an agenda provides variation- ie. if you win, you're fighting in the heart of the plague next battle, but if you achieve a particular agenda in addition to winning, there might not be as many toxin emitters active when you get there.

And then of course, the other great story hook we get in 9th which isn't specifically connected to Crusade is game size. It puts a lot of variety in stories by allowing for "side quests" between large games. I'm having a riot with interactions between Kill Team and 40k, which is another really nice little narrative hook. experience levels are set at the same thresholds for both Kill Teams and Crusade forces, so your XP from KT can be used interchangably with Crusade in a few different ways: you can choose to buy either a Crusade upgrade or a KT upgrade either at unit creation- meaning you have to stick to your choice for the unit's lifespan- or you can have them choose every time they level. In either of these methods, the upgrade selected applies only in the game it was designed for. The third way to do this is a gestalt, so that everytime you level, you pick a KT trait that will apply in KT games AND a Crusade trait that will apply in 40k games. The Ideal, of course, is picking traits that are similar- but this isn't always possible.

Strategems, while problematic in other modes of play, can be a tool in an arbitrated narrative campaign- the ability to use given strategems can be restricted or enhanced based on the story.

I think that these tools are powerful in terms of forging a narrative. And while it may be true that GW might have provided more guidance on how to use these things as narrative tools than "Here's an XP system so you can take whatever you want whenever you want it," it's also true to say that had they done so, they may have interfered with our potential to use them as we see fit. What they HAVE done is illustrated different ways we could do this for ourselves by providing 3 campaigns so far, with another just about to kick off.

And while you may FEEL like you have to invent a new system to be MOAR narrative, I would caution you about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'm a Sisters and DE die hard, and I tell you this in all seriousness: if your new system takes the Penitent Oath and Repentance or Sainthood off the table or Territorial Acquisitions, I think a lot of Narrative players would not be interested. I can honestly say that I've wanted these things for decades, and when I read them in print, it felt like someone had read my mind. Tell me you're inventing a narrative system and then take them away and I'll tell you I'd rather stick with what I've got.

By all means add. Unit told me once about a DE concept he had for a Kabal that worked closely with Corsairs and were fleet-based rather than locked in Commorragh; the concept sounded really cool, but obviously the Commorrite Crusade rules are an imperfect fit for this army at best. So by all means, Unit should be able to modify or create something that will suit his list better, using existing rules as inspiration for the sake of consistency. But it would be foolish to throw away the existing rules, as they might be perfect for another DE player.

Recently, I've had to augment the Crusade rules for the GSC. The rules that exist are great- they helped me define the NPC factions from which both the GSC and the Chaos Cult recruit their operatives. But they didn't go as far as I wanted, because I really wanted a set of rules to reflect the way a cult grows in terms of generations and brood cycles. So I'm creating those rules myself- not throwing out anything that already exists, but augmenting it. I'm also working on a GSC Kill Team Variant known as the Primogenitor Cult; it follows the patterns laid out for custom KTs by the existing rules for consistency, but it allows you to field Purestrain and Brood Brother fire teams in addition to those described in the Compendium list, but it locks the inclusion of all fire teams to Spec Op missions that reflect the breeding cycle of the Cult. So you MUST start with only Purestrain Fire teams. Every time they use the Implant Tac Op, you add a brood brother to your roster. Once you have enough brood brothers to form a fire team, you can include them. But if they sit out, they can create and train Acolytes. Once you have enough Acolytes to form a fire team, you can include them... but if they sit out, they create and train neophytes... etc, etc. Because we use KT and Crusade interchangeably, these rules grow the roster for both games. But all other rules (ie. RP costs in Crusade, Fire team sizes and limitations in KT) are followed as usual.

Add as needed.

But never subtract.

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

they schedule the releases, but as for writing the rules themselves in the releases, they pretty much just wing it

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/

And while you may FEEL like you have to invent a new system to be MOAR narrative,

Oh my desire to invent a new system has nothing to do with being "moar narrative", it has everything to do with the game of 40k is to me repellant in almost every avenue it drives through.

Its abstraction, its lack of maneuver mattering, its lack of positioning mattering, its over abundance of truck loads of dice, its heavy focus on combo building and chaining like its a card game, its strict adherence to a small few basic overall mission objectives which allows you to even more easily listbuild against it, its horrifyingly bad balance pushing players to purchasing bad units with a ton of real-life money that they then feel bad over because they were duped into thinking that points == balance.

Those are all reasons why I want to write my own 40k.

Narrative play really comes down to me a few pointers (heavy emphasis on TO ME since narrative means something different to each person)

* the story matters
* armies in the narrative should reflect the narrative and not adepticon tables
* many times commanders aren't going to have the finely tuned best of the best of the best list to go to war with
* unforseen things happen in battle all the time and commanders have to respond and react to that as much as to the enemy
* sometimes you don't have the units you'd rather have, but you have to make due to whats available
* sometimes the mission parameters are not going to be in your favor
* the game feels like you are reading whats happening in a 40k novel

Many of those things can be done with 40k as it stands today, but the over abstraction and lack of wargame in the wargame means having to stretch it a bit (for me) to be worth it.

Fair enough. Given insurmountable problems (for you) with the core game, I can see why a rebuild is your only option.

Too bad, cuz if a can't take Penitent Oath and subsequently redeem myself, or work toward sainthood, it still wouldn't matter to me personally how good it was, I'd still rather play what I've got... But then that's me.

Some of your parameters for your narrative style also don't mesh with my own preferences- I tend to find story based opportunities more interesting than story based obstacles, and you seem to lean pretty heavily into obstacles. Again, not a BAD approach, just not my preferred approach.

To each their own.

 auticus wrote:

And while you may FEEL like you have to invent a new system to be MOAR narrative,

Oh my desire to invent a new system has nothing to do with being "moar narrative", it has everything to do with the game of 40k is to me repellant in almost every avenue it drives through.

Its abstraction, its lack of maneuver mattering, its lack of positioning mattering, its over abundance of truck loads of dice, its heavy focus on combo building and chaining like its a card game, its strict adherence to a small few basic overall mission objectives which allows you to even more easily listbuild against it, its horrifyingly bad balance pushing players to purchasing bad units with a ton of real-life money that they then feel bad over because they were duped into thinking that points == balance.

Those are all reasons why I want to write my own 40k.

This is what drove me and my group to assemble ProHammer (see the link in my signature). It's a blending on 4th + 5th edition at its core, but with compatibility rules to allow people to use any classic era caudexes from 3rd-7th edition. Many of the rules shave off the more egregious codex-level issues (no formations or super-formations, flyers are toned down, psychic powers from 7th edition toned down, no random warlord traits, etc.).

We've been trying to find the sweet spot in the delineation of rules that GW always seemed to overcorrect too far and miss between editions. And for what it's worth 6th and 7th edition codexes seem to work better under more of a 4th/5th paradigm set of rules than they do under 6th/7th.

We also added in a few new elements that feed into tabletop positioning. Classic style overwatch is back, but with restrictions. Units can take reactive fire under certain situations now. There's a suppression mechanism that also incorporates a cross-fire rule. We have a universally viable way to handle vehicle facings. Lots of other tweaks too.

We're working to make this a fully complete and unified system for both light-hearted "competitive" play as well as narrative play. Beyond the core rules for ProHammer, we've generated an entire Mission Pack that provides we feel a very diverse range of missions, each with a host of variables built into them, so that you need to account for a lot of possible situations when building a list.

We're also adapting an old campaign system we used to run back in 3rd edition to ProHammer, but pulling in a bunch of ideas and methods from the current 9th edition crusade system. It's a tight set of rules for running a MAP based campaign, with the strategic warzone map determining (with some built-in variation) what mission players will play when their armies meet (tapping into all of the missions in the new mission pack we made). There are rules for progression, experience gains, reinforcements, etc. We're getting ready to launch it so we'll see how it goes.

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Tacticals were good.

GW just don't know what they want and change direction mid-release because someone thinks this might be the better option

Primaris might have been designed to be True-Scale replacements of Marines, finally making the models people asking for

but than AoS failed, the new Fantasy Space Marines not the beloved models as expected and the "but we like the old stuff more" from the players comes into 40k and GW changed their mind to add Primaris as addition instead of a replacement

now we a strange mix of some units being a 1:1 replacement, others being an addition to the line, while again others are a replacement for new untis that were not received well

Marines are a mess were no ones really knows what to do with them except for keep new releases going because they sell and are the iconic line for 40k

 vict0988 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Tacticals were good.

...no?

Hecaton wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Tacticals were good.

...no?

Primaris are not better than firstborn. Scouts are gak because they got a pts hike and were moved to Elites because GW tired of Scouts, other than that Firstborn VanVets, Attack bikes, Devastators and Tacticals are as good or better than their Primaris counterparts. Why did firstborn get an extra wound?

GW are stumbling their way ineptly towards balance, that is the only theory that explains everything that has happened in 8th and 9th. Not that I think it's impossible that the odd bad intention slips in because it's the designer's favourite faction or management wants sales, but as a theory of everything it fails utterly.

Hecaton wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Tacticals were good.

...no?

really? so why did they give normal marines 2 wounds then? If the objective was purely to sell new Primaris kits they wouldn't have had reason to change old-marines.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
This reminds me of a particular web comic that is so often frowned upon but the core idea behind it is true.

When the game turns into just "an excuse to socialize" and rules and the health of the game gets thrown to the wayside, you can't really blame the people who got into the hobby for the game being upset that people are just taking over the hobby to socialize and screw up the game they originally fell in love with.

Except... the group you think should now be upset, are the group who have done this to other players already.

1st and 2nd editions, and arguably 3rd and at least early 4th, were not games people generally got into for "the game" rather than because of the sculpts, the lore, the visuals, the social aspect. From my experience - and I may be a little off on the timeline - it was only around mid-to-late 4th that you started to see groups focusing on the game itself rather than everything else. This was also the timeframe where the internet was having more of an impact as a discussion platform, and tournament scenes were getting larger and more visible.

If the pendulum is swinging back towards people playing the game to socialise as a primary factor, then that's a good thing, quite frankly. After all, 40k isn't a good enough game to be obsessing over it as a game first and foremost.

Yeah, but it could be. As you point out... It was.

Why should we celebrate the game being crap when it was once a good game?

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, but it could be. As you point out... It was.

Why should we celebrate the game being crap when it was once a good game?

But was it really? The concept of good (or bad) is entirely subjective.

40k seems at least as popular as it was in 4th, if not more popular. For many, including me (I started in 3rd), this edition is the best one so far. Maybe on par with 3rd, but 3rd had a huge downside back then: it was extremely difficult for some armies to play properly due to lack of official models or bitz. Playing 3rd with current models' range is a whole different experience than what it was back then.

Still, I think 9th is superior in any possible way except a couple things: there weren't massive models in those old editions (I despise massive models, lol) and dice rolling was much lower. That's it, for anything else I think 9th is better. So maybe once it was a good game, but now it's better and it's definitely much easier now to play the game mostly to socialise compared to late 5th, all 6th, all 7th and I think all 8th as well. Which is more than a decade of 40k. Yeah, we should definitely celebrate!

Don't confuse popularity with goodness!

 vict0988 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
The counter to that is always to point out that newer models aren't always more powerful (reference: primaris marines).

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Primaris were good.

Yeah but they kept tweaking the rules until Tacticals were good.

...no?

Primaris are not better than firstborn. Scouts are gak because they got a pts hike and were moved to Elites because GW tired of Scouts, other than that Firstborn VanVets, Attack bikes, Devastators and Tacticals are as good or better than their Primaris counterparts. Why did firstborn get an extra wound?

GW are stumbling their way ineptly towards balance, that is the only theory that explains everything that has happened in 8th and 9th. Not that I think it's impossible that the odd bad intention slips in because it's the designer's favourite faction or management wants sales, but as a theory of everything it fails utterly.

Primaris did not sell as they expected, we didn't all rush out and replace our marine armies like they thought we would.

Because GW has never believed in market research, that's why AoS crashed and burned on release.

So they had no choice but to make marines equal in terms of wounds because those kits could no longer be discontinued because they still sold.

Primaris were meant to be superior but they are too inflexible to work as an army, without truesons filling in certain rolls they just can't compete.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Don't confuse popularity with goodness!

I don't. But I know that good is subjective. What's good for you might not be good for others, maybe the majority. And vice versa.