Switch Theme:

Do You Want More Primarchs?  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Poll
Do you want more Primarchs in 40k?
Yes, gimme more Primarchs
No, I don't want more Primarchs
Maybe, I don't care either way

View results
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Springfield, VA

The greatest irony of this is that 30k, where primarch models originated, manages to keep them in the game whilst preserving a Your Dudes feel.

I think it achieves this through customization that is now lacking in GW's wheelhouse. When I say customization, I must caveat that if you're playing one of the "historically important" forces like Space Marines, you have to follow the formula (generally). E.G. Leman Russ won't join your Death Guard army.

But the other armies? Ordo Reductor, Taghmata Omnissiah, Legio Cybernetica, Imperial Militia, Chaos Cults, Daemons? My GODS are they customizable. The only one that really isn't is the Solar Auxilia, which makes sense as they're explicitly a standardized force.

Not only are the customizable in the rules, but they're customizable with models too. My Chaos Cult uses a mix of AOS and Necromunda models for the actual cult squads, whilst my PDF uses Void 1.1 miniatures for a higher-tech, more organized but still grungy/dieselpunk feel. My Daemons can use any model on the planet so long as they stay within base sizes (clearly outlined in the rules) and my Ordo Reductor have artillery tanks converted out of all sorts of vehicles (they're like cleaner orks ).

EDIT:
Also, plot armor? Really? This is kayfabe/kid's cartoon stuff.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/11 13:43:49


 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut




I wanna see Ferrus Manus come back as a Primarch Dreadnaught.
   
Made in fr
Mekboy Hammerin' Somethin'






I voted no because I don't like them at all in comp play, but Iwould have voted yes if they were narrative only (which they should be)

Ere we go ere we go ere we go
Corona Givin’ Umies Da good ol Krulpin they deserve huh huh 
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Tittliewinks22 wrote:
I wanna see Ferrus Manus come back as a Primarch Dreadnaught.


That would be hilarious, but if Manus ever comes back, it'll be as a clone or warp entity (there was a little scene in Master of Mankind that hinted at the possibilty, I think).
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





 Hellebore wrote:


The concept of a joe-verse is part of the strategy.

Despite what CCS says above, toy makers in the 60s and 70s really didn't try particularly hard to create a verse for their toys to exist in. Kids naturally use whatever toys they have to play games - kermit and batman play tea time with power rangers and barbie. Because that's what the kid has. This is still normal kid behaviour, where the verse itself is part of the creativity and play. However they are quickly brought into discrete verses so they know that darth maul doesn't fight kermit, he fights Obi wan. So the kid needs an obi wan to do the star wars fight 'properly'. Rather than just enjoying smashing their kermit and darth maul together.

The concept of a joe-verse and the assigned VALUE of such a verse is entirely manufactured by the company - it becomes the 'correct' way to play with your toys. It reduces childhood creativity quite a lot by keeping the creativity within discreet verses rather than unfettered.

The Toy story films hark back to this pre 80s toy strategy, where kids just enjoyed using all their toys however they liked, with no arbiter of quality or correctness but themselves.


This is just a description of what toy companies began doing in the 80s and have refined to fine art today. It's an effective sales tactic that keeps consumer dollars coming to you rather than spread across all manufacturers.

There are plenty of articles out there describing exactly this in regards to GW and their full immersion hobby - GW even call the strategy "total global domination".

GW are commodifying creativity just like every other toy manufacturer has for the last 40 years. All their campaign books, characters, novels etc are increasingly doing the creative work for you. That's good business to keep consumers completely consumed in the GW verse of products.



Oversimplification for the sake of supporting a particular point of view.

Please note the semantics: Saying you are oversimplifying in no way means that what you are saying is untrue; it's saying that there's other stuff which is equally true which would muddy the conclusion you draw.

Yeah, Darth Maul could fight Kermit... But the story would suck. If kids have no other choice, they'll do it, but don't fool yourself into believing that this is any better for the development of creativity than giving someone a full toolbox to tell stories that have internal consistency. I can't speak for all kids, only the kid I was once upon a time; but having ranges with enough breadth to tell more diverse stories was always preferable than shoe-horning in something that didn't belong. Having internal consistency actually helped me develop my writing skills far more than making due with the tools at hand.

It's why Tom Clancy books don't contain aliens- the stories would suck and readers wouldn't buy them, and if they did, they'd be disappointed.

You could also argue that a wood worker doesn't need a shop full of dozens of unique tools, because a relatively smaller number of tools could achieve similar effects; you could then further conclude that creating as many woodworking tools as we have was all an evil corporate conspiracy to make us buy tools we don't need. But I don't think you'll find many wood workers who would be willing to sacrifice their drill press because "technically" they could do the same job with a normal old drill, and YOU think that would make them better wood workers and that the corporations that invented drill presses were doing so for no other reason than separating them from their cash or limiting their creativity.

   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut





PenitentJake wrote:
 Hellebore wrote:


The concept of a joe-verse is part of the strategy.

Despite what CCS says above, toy makers in the 60s and 70s really didn't try particularly hard to create a verse for their toys to exist in. Kids naturally use whatever toys they have to play games - kermit and batman play tea time with power rangers and barbie. Because that's what the kid has. This is still normal kid behaviour, where the verse itself is part of the creativity and play. However they are quickly brought into discrete verses so they know that darth maul doesn't fight kermit, he fights Obi wan. So the kid needs an obi wan to do the star wars fight 'properly'. Rather than just enjoying smashing their kermit and darth maul together.

The concept of a joe-verse and the assigned VALUE of such a verse is entirely manufactured by the company - it becomes the 'correct' way to play with your toys. It reduces childhood creativity quite a lot by keeping the creativity within discreet verses rather than unfettered.

The Toy story films hark back to this pre 80s toy strategy, where kids just enjoyed using all their toys however they liked, with no arbiter of quality or correctness but themselves.


This is just a description of what toy companies began doing in the 80s and have refined to fine art today. It's an effective sales tactic that keeps consumer dollars coming to you rather than spread across all manufacturers.

There are plenty of articles out there describing exactly this in regards to GW and their full immersion hobby - GW even call the strategy "total global domination".

GW are commodifying creativity just like every other toy manufacturer has for the last 40 years. All their campaign books, characters, novels etc are increasingly doing the creative work for you. That's good business to keep consumers completely consumed in the GW verse of products.



Oversimplification for the sake of supporting a particular point of view.

Please note the semantics: Saying you are oversimplifying in no way means that what you are saying is untrue; it's saying that there's other stuff which is equally true which would muddy the conclusion you draw.

Yeah, Darth Maul could fight Kermit... But the story would suck. If kids have no other choice, they'll do it, but don't fool yourself into believing that this is any better for the development of creativity than giving someone a full toolbox to tell stories that have internal consistency. I can't speak for all kids, only the kid I was once upon a time; but having ranges with enough breadth to tell more diverse stories was always preferable than shoe-horning in something that didn't belong. Having internal consistency actually helped me develop my writing skills far more than making due with the tools at hand.

It's why Tom Clancy books don't contain aliens- the stories would suck and readers wouldn't buy them, and if they did, they'd be disappointed.

You could also argue that a wood worker doesn't need a shop full of dozens of unique tools, because a relatively smaller number of tools could achieve similar effects; you could then further conclude that creating as many woodworking tools as we have was all an evil corporate conspiracy to make us buy tools we don't need. But I don't think you'll find many wood workers who would be willing to sacrifice their drill press because "technically" they could do the same job with a normal old drill, and YOU think that would make them better wood workers and that the corporations that invented drill presses were doing so for no other reason than separating them from their cash or limiting their creativity.



The argument I was making is that the perceived value of suck also comes from the company - it is not an objective truth that kermit vs maul is 'bad'. Consistency is not high on young kids' list of enjoyable things. They get it reinforced. Culturally we've accepted this for kids so there's not really any counter viewpoint from kids' role models.

The point being that modern sales techniques and corporatised play not only create a set of toys and discreet verses to sell, they also sell the value proposition of becoming immersed in it. It's a bit self fulfilling. If instead kids were raised to believe that smashing any toys together is the least sucky way to play, then we'd all feel that kenobi vs maul is a terrible way to play.

This also touches on the difference between creating stories and retelling stories. With an existing verse and storyline (and the attendant playsets) the toys encourage kids to step through an existing story someone else created as the least sucky way to play. Anything else is non canon and doesn't count. Maul doesn't chop kenobi in half in the story, so it's 'wrong' that your toys do that.

One of the advantages of early 40k was that it had very few canon events with known outcomes and they were almost all in the past, while the game was in the 'present', thus making your games independent from the verse they happen in. As they've top-ended the game with more and more canon stories in the 'present' they've fallen more into this prescriptive style of play. And they've now filled out the HH to such an extent that it's topped and tailed 40k in terms of prescriptive story telling for players.

There is still space to play the games you want, but the average player may find the difficulty of slotting between the existing canon harder than it used to be. This makes play by numbers 40k the default and most played, reinforcing in the community this as the right way of playing until in terms of player generations you end up with generations who rely on GW's content to keep playing.


   
Made in us
Ancient Venerable Dreadnought




San Jose, CA

 Hellebore wrote:

There is still space to play the games you want, but the average player may find the difficulty of slotting between the existing canon harder than it used to be. This makes play by numbers 40k the default and most played, reinforcing in the community this as the right way of playing until in terms of player generations you end up with generations who rely on GW's content to keep playing.


It is harder and harder to work together towards a shared gaming experience where both sides jointly have fun(casual or not, competitive or not).

This is due to two factors.
#1 GW purposefully manipulating those seeking power.
#2 the portion of the community that has the largest net effect on perceived localized meta, focusing and gobbling everything up that #1 does.

Which feeds #1 and so on...into a vicious cycle that leads to terrible lore and seasonal ebbs & tides of FOTM/FOMO.
Sounds terrible to me.

   
Made in gb
Walking Dead Wraithlord






Macharius562 wrote:
No because I play iron hands and wouldn’t get one :(



I wouldn't loose your head over it...

Sorry could not resist

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/772746.page#10378083 - My progress/failblog painting blog thingy

Eldar- 4436 pts


AngryAngel80 wrote:
I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "


 Eonfuzz wrote:


I would much rather everyone have a half ass than no ass.


"A warrior does not seek fame and honour. They come to him as he humbly follows his path"  
   
Made in us
Powerful Ushbati





United States

 Hellebore wrote:
PenitentJake wrote:
 Hellebore wrote:


The concept of a joe-verse is part of the strategy.

Despite what CCS says above, toy makers in the 60s and 70s really didn't try particularly hard to create a verse for their toys to exist in. Kids naturally use whatever toys they have to play games - kermit and batman play tea time with power rangers and barbie. Because that's what the kid has. This is still normal kid behaviour, where the verse itself is part of the creativity and play. However they are quickly brought into discrete verses so they know that darth maul doesn't fight kermit, he fights Obi wan. So the kid needs an obi wan to do the star wars fight 'properly'. Rather than just enjoying smashing their kermit and darth maul together.

The concept of a joe-verse and the assigned VALUE of such a verse is entirely manufactured by the company - it becomes the 'correct' way to play with your toys. It reduces childhood creativity quite a lot by keeping the creativity within discreet verses rather than unfettered.

The Toy story films hark back to this pre 80s toy strategy, where kids just enjoyed using all their toys however they liked, with no arbiter of quality or correctness but themselves.


This is just a description of what toy companies began doing in the 80s and have refined to fine art today. It's an effective sales tactic that keeps consumer dollars coming to you rather than spread across all manufacturers.

There are plenty of articles out there describing exactly this in regards to GW and their full immersion hobby - GW even call the strategy "total global domination".

GW are commodifying creativity just like every other toy manufacturer has for the last 40 years. All their campaign books, characters, novels etc are increasingly doing the creative work for you. That's good business to keep consumers completely consumed in the GW verse of products.



Oversimplification for the sake of supporting a particular point of view.

Please note the semantics: Saying you are oversimplifying in no way means that what you are saying is untrue; it's saying that there's other stuff which is equally true which would muddy the conclusion you draw.

Yeah, Darth Maul could fight Kermit... But the story would suck. If kids have no other choice, they'll do it, but don't fool yourself into believing that this is any better for the development of creativity than giving someone a full toolbox to tell stories that have internal consistency. I can't speak for all kids, only the kid I was once upon a time; but having ranges with enough breadth to tell more diverse stories was always preferable than shoe-horning in something that didn't belong. Having internal consistency actually helped me develop my writing skills far more than making due with the tools at hand.

It's why Tom Clancy books don't contain aliens- the stories would suck and readers wouldn't buy them, and if they did, they'd be disappointed.

You could also argue that a wood worker doesn't need a shop full of dozens of unique tools, because a relatively smaller number of tools could achieve similar effects; you could then further conclude that creating as many woodworking tools as we have was all an evil corporate conspiracy to make us buy tools we don't need. But I don't think you'll find many wood workers who would be willing to sacrifice their drill press because "technically" they could do the same job with a normal old drill, and YOU think that would make them better wood workers and that the corporations that invented drill presses were doing so for no other reason than separating them from their cash or limiting their creativity.



The argument I was making is that the perceived value of suck also comes from the company - it is not an objective truth that kermit vs maul is 'bad'. Consistency is not high on young kids' list of enjoyable things. They get it reinforced. Culturally we've accepted this for kids so there's not really any counter viewpoint from kids' role models.

The point being that modern sales techniques and corporatised play not only create a set of toys and discreet verses to sell, they also sell the value proposition of becoming immersed in it. It's a bit self fulfilling. If instead kids were raised to believe that smashing any toys together is the least sucky way to play, then we'd all feel that kenobi vs maul is a terrible way to play.

This also touches on the difference between creating stories and retelling stories. With an existing verse and storyline (and the attendant playsets) the toys encourage kids to step through an existing story someone else created as the least sucky way to play. Anything else is non canon and doesn't count. Maul doesn't chop kenobi in half in the story, so it's 'wrong' that your toys do that.

One of the advantages of early 40k was that it had very few canon events with known outcomes and they were almost all in the past, while the game was in the 'present', thus making your games independent from the verse they happen in. As they've top-ended the game with more and more canon stories in the 'present' they've fallen more into this prescriptive style of play. And they've now filled out the HH to such an extent that it's topped and tailed 40k in terms of prescriptive story telling for players.

There is still space to play the games you want, but the average player may find the difficulty of slotting between the existing canon harder than it used to be. This makes play by numbers 40k the default and most played, reinforcing in the community this as the right way of playing until in terms of player generations you end up with generations who rely on GW's content to keep playing.



This is the primary reason I think 40K needs an End Times and an Age of Guilliman Reboot. I know I'll get hate to infinity from it, but I think it is the best option. Too much of the 40K legend is known, nothing they've given us since the fall of cadia has been interesting. Vigilus-whocares, Warzone Shark-Yawn, Necron Nexus-Boring. It's all been done. Time to blow it all up!
   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka







The problem you're running into, Togusa, is the pandering GW have done to those who want the game to have an ongoing story rather than being a setting.

As a setting, 40k is great. As somewhere with a moving storyline? Not so much.

And, no - an End Times is the last thing GW should be considering doing.

2021-4 Plog - Here we go again... - my fifth attempt at a Dakka PLOG

My Pile of Potential - updates ongoing...

Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.


 Kanluwen wrote:
This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.

Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...

tneva82 wrote:
You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something... 
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





If there were an end of times, and age of primarchs this would be good, if, it did not replace the 40K game, which could remain a game in a setting not a story line.

Age of primarchs or whatever would be another game with a different play style that pitted small armies of highly elite warriors and a primarch level character against each other. It could be a game for people who like endless re rolls and buffs and auras and then they could take much of that out of 40k

And then it could be formalised into a moving story line that get me updated every year based on community game results.
   
Made in us
Decrepit Dakkanaut






Springfield, VA

It's like people forget that 30k exists.
   
Made in it
Waaagh! Ork Warboss




Italy

Voted NO. My issue is primarchs' sizes as I despise huge models. If they were just heros with the size of Calgar or Ragnar I'd be excited about them, but I have zero interest in things like Magnus or Mortarion. 500pts models to me are boring to play with or against, awful looking, they're hard to carry and to move on the battlefield and typically their rules aren't balanced at all, either ways.

Besides I've never been willing to pay 100-150 for a single model and I'll never be.

 
   
Made in au
Regular Dakkanaut




I'm curious to see what plastic Lion looks like, but beyond that mild curiosity, no, don't want them.
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Denison, Iowa

I'd like a Loyalist Primarch to balance out RG, both in game and in story. Someone that would still be all pro-Imperium, but opposed dynamically to the way RG has set things up. Lionel Johnson would be perfect for that.
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





 cuda1179 wrote:
I'd like a Loyalist Primarch to balance out RG, both in game and in story. Someone that would still be all pro-Imperium, but opposed dynamically to the way RG has set things up. Lionel Johnson would be perfect for that.


Haha Lionel Johnson.

The problem with the 30k argument is that you can’t take a 30k primarch for a 40K argument. I mean angron and fulgrim are hardly the same 10k years later
   
Made in us
Longtime Dakkanaut





Denison, Iowa

mrFickle wrote:
 cuda1179 wrote:
I'd like a Loyalist Primarch to balance out RG, both in game and in story. Someone that would still be all pro-Imperium, but opposed dynamically to the way RG has set things up. Lionel Johnson would be perfect for that.


Haha Lionel Johnson.

The problem with the 30k argument is that you can’t take a 30k primarch for a 40K argument. I mean angron and fulgrim are hardly the same 10k years later


Well, yes and no. RG and Lionel ARE pretty much their 30K selves. After all both were in stasis for almost all that time, pretty much all of it in the case of the Lion. He's going to be pretty much the same guy as in 30k.
   
Made in us
Powerful Ushbati





United States

mrFickle wrote:
If there were an end of times, and age of primarchs this would be good, if, it did not replace the 40K game, which could remain a game in a setting not a story line.

Age of primarchs or whatever would be another game with a different play style that pitted small armies of highly elite warriors and a primarch level character against each other. It could be a game for people who like endless re rolls and buffs and auras and then they could take much of that out of 40k

And then it could be formalised into a moving story line that get me updated every year based on community game results.


Nah, I mean literally do to it what they did to Fantasy. AoS is in a way stronger position today and a lot of it comes from the fact they do not have to pander to all these old stories from 1999. Bring on the End Times!
   
Made in gb
Longtime Dakkanaut





 cuda1179 wrote:
mrFickle wrote:
 cuda1179 wrote:
I'd like a Loyalist Primarch to balance out RG, both in game and in story. Someone that would still be all pro-Imperium, but opposed dynamically to the way RG has set things up. Lionel Johnson would be perfect for that.


Haha Lionel Johnson.

The problem with the 30k argument is that you can’t take a 30k primarch for a 40K argument. I mean angron and fulgrim are hardly the same 10k years later


Well, yes and no. RG and Lionel ARE pretty much their 30K selves. After all both were in stasis for almost all that time, pretty much all of it in the case of the Lion. He's going to be pretty much the same guy as in 30k.


Well you say that, but therefore saying that ignores the point about demon primarchs.

Also the 40K primarchs shouldn’t be the same as the were in 40K, they should be significantly different. The lion should tear the universe apart looking for the fallen and Luther totally ignoring orders from guilliman. After returning from the warp for 10k years Russ should be a mutant. Isn’t corax some sort of mist now? You know no one should be the same after 10k years of god knows what.

Gulliman well he’s just always been the most boring one so he probably will be the same as he ever was. I bet RG always orders vanilla when they go for ice cream
   
Made in ca
Longtime Dakkanaut





Before I get into it, I want to point out that I don't necessarily disagree... I'm an educator by trade, but my specialties are adolescent and adult learning, so I don't have formal training in primary/ junior cognitive development beyond what I got from overview psychology classes. I do have two decades of experience in child and youth recreation. None of this makes me automatically right or you automatically wrong- elitism needs to die a quick death; if adult learning has done anything for me, it's reinforced the concept of multiple intelligences.

 Hellebore wrote:


The argument I was making is that the perceived value of suck also comes from the company - it is not an objective truth that kermit vs maul is 'bad'.


Certainly true in many cases, not necessarily true with the Kermit vs. Maul. I mentioned I didn't mix GI Joes and Star wars, but this isn't entirely true: Destro made a fantastic dark Jedi, and both the of the Cobra Commanders- hooded and masked- were decent officers to lead Stormtrooper/ Snow Trooper/ Speeder bike pilot squads. I also mixed in Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica toys. And I did do all of those things despite the attempt to manufacture specific universes where they were all separate.

But you can see based on my choices, that even as a child, I was looking for patterns and internal consistency to my play-space; I chose toys of the same scale, and looked for those who were closest to space fantasy in appearance. This is because the human brain is pattern recognition engine; it is literally the building block of cognition. Stories with internal consistency appeal to the pattern maker in us; this internal consistency makes it easier to express artistic concepts such as pathos, catharsis, theme, setting and atmosphere. When a play space is not internally consistent, to much mental energy is required to suspend disbelief.

 Hellebore wrote:


Consistency is not high on young kids' list of enjoyable things. They get it reinforced.


Yes, you are correct. This is one definition of teaching/ learning. Since consistency is a skill required for adulthood, anything that helps reinforce it (like learning to play within the boundaries of an internally consistent world) is a net positive for kids, not something to be avoided. The caveat is that the sandbox needs to be big enough to tell a diversity of stories. The Clash of the Titans range from the original film was terrible for this because there were only four characters and two Monsters, and they were all the main heroes and villains of the stories. Star Wars and GI Joe, by contrast, had a wide range of lesser, minor characters to accommodate children who could build a character through speech and play, as well as the main characters for kids who needed to scaffold from an existing character to learn the elements of character creation. Both ranges were predominantly white male, but they did both include some examples of female and multi-cultural icons, and of course Star Wars teaches notions of "other" through species aliens, as well as cultural identification.


 Hellebore wrote:


The point being that modern sales techniques and corporatised play not only create a set of toys and discreet verses to sell, they also sell the value proposition of becoming immersed in it. It's a bit self fulfilling.


Again, true, but also a net positive for cognitive development. Immersion, by its nature, helps children develop an attention span, since one is required in order to maintain immersion.

 Hellebore wrote:

If instead kids were raised to believe that smashing any toys together is the least sucky way to play, then we'd all feel that kenobi vs maul is a terrible way to play.


An interesting theory. Pedagogical research never interested me as much as actually teaching, but I'm sure there are experiments that test this with clinical objectivity. I suspect, however, that this is untrue. If you give a child toys from multiple verses, I believe they will still tend to group like with like, due to the way internal consistency supports storytelling performed by pattern making minds.

 Hellebore wrote:


This also touches on the difference between creating stories and retelling stories. With an existing verse and storyline (and the attendant playsets) the toys encourage kids to step through an existing story someone else created as the least sucky way to play. Anything else is non canon and doesn't count. Maul doesn't chop kenobi in half in the story, so it's 'wrong' that your toys do that.


This is another one of those that is going to be true for some kids and not others. As I mentioned above, we use examples of precreated characters in order to learn the elements of character building, which we then use to assign characteristics to the more general figures in the range. The degree to which a child retells vs. creates is a measure of a child's particular place on the spectrum of cognitive development. Many, many children will be stuck on imitation; these children may need a caring adult to enter into the play space, take up a generic character and role model the application of character traits in order to create a unique identity for an other wise generic character. Other children will develop this skill naturally if they persist in play beyond the point where they become board with retelling.

I was in the latter category; my favourite Star Wars character was Snaggletooth- a purple jumpsuited, grey-faced simian alien from the cantina scene in A New Hope. The character is so minor, that he has no spoken lines, less than 3 seconds of screen time, and his appearance is at the edge of the frame so that you only see him in the letterboxed versions of the film. I played through a story arc were Snaggletooth became a Jedi, another where he became a bounty hunter, another where he apprenticed to vader and another where he was an officer in the rebel alliance.

Some of the most popular Star Wars characters were minor- like Boba Fett or Aura Sing. And yes, toys and expanded universe material contributed to that popularity, but the interest had to be there to convince folks to explore that expanded universe. The 12" Boba Fett was the best character in the limited 12" range, which was released long before the expanded universe material came along. It was probably a kid who played with that 12" toy who wrote the expanded universe content based on his or her own childhood play.

 Hellebore wrote:


One of the advantages of early 40k was that it had very few canon events with known outcomes and they were almost all in the past, while the game was in the 'present', thus making your games independent from the verse they happen in. As they've top-ended the game with more and more canon stories in the 'present' they've fallen more into this prescriptive style of play. And they've now filled out the HH to such an extent that it's topped and tailed 40k in terms of prescriptive story telling for players.


Again, a lot of truth here: those named characters teach players how to create their own characters, which happens in the space between. I disagree somewhat with your notion of past and present in old 40k; I think that from Rogue Trader until late 7th (Gathering Storm), 40k always played with asynchronous storytelling. I think that folks were always encouraged to play in different time frames- from the first Tyranid attack at McCragge to the Battles for Armageddon to the Slaughter at Sanctuary 101 to the near extinction of the Deathwing in Spacehulk. ANd we fought these battles, not in chronological order- hell no! We skipped forward and backward, and some of us continue to do that, even in the more plot driven Indomitus Era.

And anyone who knows me, knows that there's a Crusade plug in every post I drop, so here it comes. The Crusade system is a better tool than we've ever had for creating our own characters. And it's not just limited to characters! We have dozens of named characters to give us examples of what constitutes a character, but other than Yarrick's FW Fortress of Arrogance and the Hounds of Morkai, we have very few examples of named units and vehicles. And yet now, we have a whole suite of tools to create them.

If you play 40k with kids, please, please encourage Crusade. For starters, it's a cheaper buy-in to start with 25 PL Combat Patrols anyway, and the stories you can tell just with that are fabulous. You will be doing far more for cognitive development than playing matched. Once they've learned all of the storytelling and cooperative play/ sportsmanship elements, you might get them into the tournament scene in order to develop their math skills. But teaching them Math Hammer before Crusade will prevent them from internalizing storytelling/ cooperative play skills by getting them too hungry for competition too soon.

Winning is a quick fix for emotional gratification. Cooperative storytelling delays gratification and helps build an attention span.

 Hellebore wrote:


There is still space to play the games you want, but the average player may find the difficulty of slotting between the existing canon harder than it used to be. This makes play by numbers 40k the default and most played, reinforcing in the community this as the right way of playing until in terms of player generations you end up with generations who rely on GW's content to keep playing.



Glad that you recognize that there is still space for creation, but I'm not sure if you recognize how much space there is, and how much of that is created by the number of tools at our disposable. A few weeks ago, I presented a theoretical Obolis Invasion campaign using all of the available resources at the time. It was pretty cool picking and choosing when to use Flashpoints, when to use the Missions from the BoR, when to use the missions from Plague Purge. It was surprisingly intricate, and as I was putting it together, I could see how many hundreds of different ways there were to build such a campaign. If you took 100 different gaming groups and asked them to come up with a campaign using the same pool of resources, I can almost guarantee you that no two campaigns would be the same, and the range of difference between them would be greater than the scope of some lesser gaming systems in their entirety.

If there's any shoe-horn right-way-to-play trap in 40k that inhibits creativity, it's the ultra competitive WAAC mindset that chooses models based solely on raw efficiency. And while GW does use ITC objectives that support this style of play, and they do promote meta-watch articles, and support tournaments and organized play, they've simultaneously pushed Crusade and campaign based play to cover both sides of the coin, so the fact that competitive play seems to dominate 40k is so far from being GW's fault that I'm really surprised it's not self evident to the Dakka general discussion forum.

And again, for the record, competetive play has its place- it is important to the survival of our hobby, it does promote and incentivize numeracy and data analysis skills, and the viewpoints expresed by our more competitive Dakkanaughts are often spot-on accurate and valuable. But if you want to use this game to develop a complete suite of cognitive skills in children and youth, you have to come at it from the campaign/ story-based/ cooperative angle first, because once you introduce the instant gratification of "winning," those other skills are less likely to develop on their own.

When we learn the competitive spirit BEFORE we learn sportsmanship, we often will not actually learn sportsmanship. If, for example, you read Karol's posts about his meta at the sports school, you begin to understand the peril of an early inculcation of the competitive spirit. Most of Karol's peers were likely enrolled in extra-curricular sport from a very, very young age, and the instant gratification of the win is a motivator for everything they do.

Sorry to rant- again, I see your perspective and I agree with much of what you have to say. Just presenting another side of the story.

This message was edited 7 times. Last update was at 2021/05/14 01:27:22


 
   
Made in dk
Fresh-Faced New User




Spoiler:
PenitentJake wrote:
Before I get into it, I want to point out that I don't necessarily disagree... I'm an educator by trade, but my specialties are adolescent and adult learning, so I don't have formal training in primary/ junior cognitive development beyond what I got from overview psychology classes. I do have two decades of experience in child and youth recreation. None of this makes me automatically right or you automatically wrong- elitism needs to die a quick death; if adult learning has done anything for me, it's reinforced the concept of multiple intelligences.

 Hellebore wrote:


The argument I was making is that the perceived value of suck also comes from the company - it is not an objective truth that kermit vs maul is 'bad'.


Certainly true in many cases, not necessarily true with the Kermit vs. Maul. I mentioned I didn't mix GI Joes and Star wars, but this isn't entirely true: Destro made a fantastic dark Jedi, and both the of the Cobra Commanders- hooded and masked- were decent officers to lead Stormtrooper/ Snow Trooper/ Speeder bike pilot squads. I also mixed in Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica toys. And I did do all of those things despite the attempt to manufacture specific universes where they were all separate.

But you can see based on my choices, that even as a child, I was looking for patterns and internal consistency to my play-space; I chose toys of the same scale, and looked for those who were closest to space fantasy in appearance. This is because the human brain is pattern recognition engine; it is literally the building block of cognition. Stories with internal consistency appeal to the pattern maker in us; this internal consistency makes it easier to express artistic concepts such as pathos, catharsis, theme, setting and atmosphere. When a play space is not internally consistent, to much mental energy is required to suspend disbelief.

 Hellebore wrote:


Consistency is not high on young kids' list of enjoyable things. They get it reinforced.


Yes, you are correct. This is one definition of teaching/ learning. Since consistency is a skill required for adulthood, anything that helps reinforce it (like learning to play within the boundaries of an internally consistent world) is a net positive for kids, not something to be avoided. The caveat is that the sandbox needs to be big enough to tell a diversity of stories. The Clash of the Titans range from the original film was terrible for this because there were only four characters and two Monsters, and they were all the main heroes and villains of the stories. Star Wars and GI Joe, by contrast, had a wide range of lesser, minor characters to accommodate children who could build a character through speech and play, as well as the main characters for kids who needed to scaffold from an existing character to learn the elements of character creation. Both ranges were predominantly white male, but they did both include some examples of female and multi-cultural icons, and of course Star Wars teaches notions of "other" through species aliens, as well as cultural identification.


 Hellebore wrote:


The point being that modern sales techniques and corporatised play not only create a set of toys and discreet verses to sell, they also sell the value proposition of becoming immersed in it. It's a bit self fulfilling.


Again, true, but also a net positive for cognitive development. Immersion, by its nature, helps children develop an attention span, since one is required in order to maintain immersion.

 Hellebore wrote:

If instead kids were raised to believe that smashing any toys together is the least sucky way to play, then we'd all feel that kenobi vs maul is a terrible way to play.


An interesting theory. Pedagogical research never interested me as much as actually teaching, but I'm sure there are experiments that test this with clinical objectivity. I suspect, however, that this is untrue. If you give a child toys from multiple verses, I believe they will still tend to group like with like, due to the way internal consistency supports storytelling performed by pattern making minds.

 Hellebore wrote:


This also touches on the difference between creating stories and retelling stories. With an existing verse and storyline (and the attendant playsets) the toys encourage kids to step through an existing story someone else created as the least sucky way to play. Anything else is non canon and doesn't count. Maul doesn't chop kenobi in half in the story, so it's 'wrong' that your toys do that.


This is another one of those that is going to be true for some kids and not others. As I mentioned above, we use examples of precreated characters in order to learn the elements of character building, which we then use to assign characteristics to the more general figures in the range. The degree to which a child retells vs. creates is a measure of a child's particular place on the spectrum of cognitive development. Many, many children will be stuck on imitation; these children may need a caring adult to enter into the play space, take up a generic character and role model the application of character traits in order to create a unique identity for an other wise generic character. Other children will develop this skill naturally if they persist in play beyond the point where they become board with retelling.

I was in the latter category; my favourite Star Wars character was Snaggletooth- a purple jumpsuited, grey-faced simian alien from the cantina scene in A New Hope. The character is so minor, that he has no spoken lines, less than 3 seconds of screen time, and his appearance is at the edge of the frame so that you only see him in the letterboxed versions of the film. I played through a story arc were Snaggletooth became a Jedi, another where he became a bounty hunter, another where he apprenticed to vader and another where he was an officer in the rebel alliance.

Some of the most popular Star Wars characters were minor- like Boba Fett or Aura Sing. And yes, toys and expanded universe material contributed to that popularity, but the interest had to be there to convince folks to explore that expanded universe. The 12" Boba Fett was the best character in the limited 12" range, which was released long before the expanded universe material came along. It was probably a kid who played with that 12" toy who wrote the expanded universe content based on his or her own childhood play.

 Hellebore wrote:


One of the advantages of early 40k was that it had very few canon events with known outcomes and they were almost all in the past, while the game was in the 'present', thus making your games independent from the verse they happen in. As they've top-ended the game with more and more canon stories in the 'present' they've fallen more into this prescriptive style of play. And they've now filled out the HH to such an extent that it's topped and tailed 40k in terms of prescriptive story telling for players.


Again, a lot of truth here: those named characters teach players how to create their own characters, which happens in the space between. I disagree somewhat with your notion of past and present in old 40k; I think that from Rogue Trader until late 7th (Gathering Storm), 40k always played with asynchronous storytelling. I think that folks were always encouraged to play in different time frames- from the first Tyranid attack at McCragge to the Battles for Armageddon to the Slaughter at Sanctuary 101 to the near extinction of the Deathwing in Spacehulk. ANd we fought these battles, not in chronological order- hell no! We skipped forward and backward, and some of us continue to do that, even in the more plot driven Indomitus Era.

And anyone who knows me, knows that there's a Crusade plug in every post I drop, so here it comes. The Crusade system is a better tool than we've ever had for creating our own characters. And it's not just limited to characters! We have dozens of named characters to give us examples of what constitutes a character, but other than Yarrick's FW Fortress of Arrogance and the Hounds of Morkai, we have very few examples of named units and vehicles. And yet now, we have a whole suite of tools to create them.

If you play 40k with kids, please, please encourage Crusade. For starters, it's a cheaper buy-in to start with 25 PL Combat Patrols anyway, and the stories you can tell just with that are fabulous. You will be doing far more for cognitive development than playing matched. Once they've learned all of the storytelling and cooperative play/ sportsmanship elements, you might get them into the tournament scene in order to develop their math skills. But teaching them Math Hammer before Crusade will prevent them from internalizing storytelling/ cooperative play skills by getting them too hungry for competition too soon.

Winning is a quick fix for emotional gratification. Cooperative storytelling delays gratification and helps build an attention span.

 Hellebore wrote:


There is still space to play the games you want, but the average player may find the difficulty of slotting between the existing canon harder than it used to be. This makes play by numbers 40k the default and most played, reinforcing in the community this as the right way of playing until in terms of player generations you end up with generations who rely on GW's content to keep playing.



Glad that you recognize that there is still space for creation, but I'm not sure if you recognize how much space there is, and how much of that is created by the number of tools at our disposable. A few weeks ago, I presented a theoretical Obolis Invasion campaign using all of the available resources at the time. It was pretty cool picking and choosing when to use Flashpoints, when to use the Missions from the BoR, when to use the missions from Plague Purge. It was surprisingly intricate, and as I was putting it together, I could see how many hundreds of different ways there were to build such a campaign. If you took 100 different gaming groups and asked them to come up with a campaign using the same pool of resources, I can almost guarantee you that no two campaigns would be the same, and the range of difference between them would be greater than the scope of some lesser gaming systems in their entirety.

If there's any shoe-horn right-way-to-play trap in 40k that inhibits creativity, it's the ultra competitive WAAC mindset that chooses models based solely on raw efficiency. And while GW does use ITC objectives that support this style of play, and they do promote meta-watch articles, and support tournaments and organized play, they've simultaneously pushed Crusade and campaign based play to cover both sides of the coin, so the fact that competitive play seems to dominate 40k is so far from being GW's fault that I'm really surprised it's not self evident to the Dakka general discussion forum.

And again, for the record, competetive play has its place- it is important to the survival of our hobby, it does promote and incentivize numeracy and data analysis skills, and the viewpoints expresed by our more competitive Dakkanaughts are often spot-on accurate and valuable. But if you want to use this game to develop a complete suite of cognitive skills in children and youth, you have to come at it from the campaign/ story-based/ cooperative angle first, because once you introduce the instant gratification of "winning," those other skills are less likely to develop on their own.

When we learn the competitive spirit BEFORE we learn sportsmanship, we often will not actually learn sportsmanship. If, for example, you read Karol's posts about his meta at the sports school, you begin to understand the peril of an early inculcation of the competitive spirit. Most of Karol's peers were likely enrolled in extra-curricular sport from a very, very young age, and the instant gratification of the win is a motivator for everything they do.

Sorry to rant- again, I see your perspective and I agree with much of what you have to say. Just presenting another side of the story.
I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for you tho. Or sorry that happened.

As other people have said before in this thread, the genie is already out of the bottle and there ain't no way GW is gonna stop this money train now.
Fans and haters alike of the primarch models might as well just kick back and watch with morbid curiosity how far GW is willing to run this concept into the ground.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/14 01:49:31


 
   
Made in pl
Imperial Agent Provocateur




Poland

It somewhat bogs my mind that people actually play 40k.

When I used to be into 40k, I'd just read novels and fluff and read/participate in debates and occasionally would play a 40k video game.

As for primarch, I think return of one that would be most likely to create conflict with Guillimann regarding the direction of the imperium would be the best.

   
Made in au
Longtime Dakkanaut




I would actually prefer solely traitor primarchs to appear throughout 9th edition. Make it really look like the Imperium is on their last legs narratively and on the tabletop.

Then in 10th edition start with bringing back El'Jonson. Maybe the Eldar assist Khan to escape out of the webway, seeing the Imperium in great need and that it's the best thing to do to preserve their own people.

Maybe to flip the setting on its head we could turn Leman Russ and Corvus onto the traitors side. Maybe they went crazy when the great rift appeared and the astronomican went silent. Though I doubt GW have the balls to do that.

The cloned non-Chaos Fulgrim on the Imperial side as a gift from Trazyn, as well as releasing Creed from stasis.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/05/20 04:58:06


 
   
Made in au
Dakka Veteran




Australia

Each faction should have a primarch level thing, then move onto sub factions.

Note "Space Marines" is a faction, and "Salamanders" is a sub faction.
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

I was never a fan of having Primarchs in 40k...they were more interesting as shadowy, historical figures of legend.

But since they've opened that can, they might as well keep going. Seems hardly fair to only let Ultramarines have the shiny SuperduperCharacter. Bring them all back, and while they're at it have Cawl unlock the secret to craft them for every Chapter that wants one!


'Age of the Primarchs' already exists, though. It's called 'The Horus Heresy'...

 
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






I want Ferrus Manus to return.

Leading the Legion of the Dammed.

Road to Renown! It's like classic Path to Glory, but repaired, remastered, expanded! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778170.page

I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
Made in us
Hurr! Ogryn Bone 'Ead!





 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I want Ferrus Manus to return.

Leading the Legion of the Dammed.

Only if he gets a flaming pumpkin for a head.
Spoiler:
I might actually consider buying LotD if they got Headless Horseman Ferrus as a leader
   
Made in us
Humming Great Unclean One of Nurgle






 waefre_1 wrote:
 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I want Ferrus Manus to return.

Leading the Legion of the Dammed.

Only if he gets a flaming pumpkin for a head.
Spoiler:
I might actually consider buying LotD if they got Headless Horseman Ferrus as a leader
They could name their price from me, for sure.

Road to Renown! It's like classic Path to Glory, but repaired, remastered, expanded! https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/778170.page

I chose an avatar I feel best represents the quality of my post history.

I try to view Warhammer as more of a toolbox with examples than fully complete games. 
   
Made in us
Disbeliever of the Greater Good




USA

I voted yes because I love all the big centerpiece models. They're great to put out on a table even if they don't have great rules. And they're fun to paint and convert.

I do agree with anyone that said they should wait for a bit so the rest of the game can catch up with rules/models though. Especially Eldar. But GW is really doing a great job with a lot of the new models they're putting out.
   
Made in au
[MOD]
Making Stuff






Under the couch

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I want Ferrus Manus to return.

Leading the Legion of the Dammed.

I was going to suggest that it could just be Manus' corpse, propped up Weekend at Bernies-style and paraded around as the Primarch returned... and then I remembered that they already used that plotline...

 
   
 
Forum Index » 40K General Discussion
Go to: