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<begin rant>
What's with all the books?

Maybe this doesn't seem to be a problem to people who have been wargaming for the last 20 years, or to people who are so engrossed in the 40k universe of ultimate fluffiness that they forget that they're playing a game. This rant is all about my frustration with having to read all these codices and rulebooks filled with fluff when you could probably summarise all the useful game-related info in all the books into less than 50 pages.

Back in the good old days, I had a dream of playing the game of Warhammer 40k. It was a good dream, in which i seemlessly commanded an army of miniatures to attack someone else's army of miniatures. Many tiny plastic people died, and I was happy.

I got hold of the AoBR box set so I could have 2 armies to play with. So far so good.
I don't know anyone who could teach me how to play the game, so I had to teach myself. Here lies the essence of my problem. The simplified rules that I found in the "Read this first" booklet that came with AoBR were sortof ok for a game with purely infantry and no terrain or anything. Just getting to grips with that took about an hour. Not too bad. Then I wanted to use all my minis with "terrain" (the empty box, beer bottles and some cardboard) and have a proper game.

I could see that I needed to do some studying here. Hang on. Studying? I thought I was playing a game here.

I don't have a lot of spare time, and I read slowly. After about 2 weeks I reckoned I pretty much understood the game system and thought I was ready for my "proppa" game. So I played it. I still had to look in the rulebook a bunch of times but it wasn't too bad. Good game system. Nothing wrong with the game system, but it really shouldn't take that long to learn it. GW seems to be very good at hiding all the rules in fluff. If the rules and the fluff were separated I could've gotten into this game in less than a day.

Then I decided I wanted to choose an army to start building up. More reading... Even more fluff than the rulebook. The race specific rules meant that even after reading the 95 page rulebook I still didn't have all the info I needed to play my "proppa" game. I decided to stick with Orks because the codex is better organised, shorter, and much simpler, and I didn't have to decide between any chapters. I just want to play a game. You shouldn't need to read more than 1 book to play a game.

The fact that it takes like a month of reading just to get to grips with the game system, and a couple army lists, whereas just about any other game I've played takes about an hour, is discouraging to new players. It's not just because it's a complicated game, it's because GW never learned to separate story from game-play. You read a page full of explanation to figure out that you need to roll 2D6 when something happens.

Some people like stories, some like modelling, painting. I like playing games. I like to be able to learn how to play a game in less than 3 months.
Thankyou.
</end rant>

Does anyone else feel the way I do? Comments?
What do you people think about GW (or someone) releasing a dedicated rulebook/armybook for gamers who just want to know how to play a game and don't need the fluff?
I know it's not happening. I just wanted to rant about it, and maybe get feedback.
phew. I feel better now.

TL;DR summary -

READING AM BAD!

It took me a year to really master all the rules and figure out everything! If you stick with it and get a bunch of players together it can be fun!

Nope. No idea what you are talking about. I wish that codexes had more fluff in them.

You don't need to read any fluff to know how the rules work. Get the rulebook and a codex. Read the rules parts. Done!

It took me maybe an hour to read the rulebook, an hour of pushing minis around the table getting kinks sorted out, and then about thirty minutes to figure out the Tyranid Army List section of the codex. It really isn't that bad. Course, I play D&D, so I'm used to reading.

I think you're getting fluff confused with rules.

The fluff is more like suggestions. If I play Ravenguard for Smurfs I don't HAVE to adhere to all the ravenguards chapter specific "rules" it's like a fluff pseudo guildeline. I don't even HAVE to take Shrike. I could run a Ravenguard Landraider rush.

Just like playing Saim-Hann eldar, they are supposed to have shining spears but if you don't take them is that illegal? No. It's just a fluff "suggestion".

Yes the game system takes a bit to learn but it really is much easier if you find a group to play with.

Oh quit your whining. Almost everyone here enjoys the fluff, and if you don't want to read it, you don't have to. Hell, I know the rules aren't the best system in existence, but the fluff and models are what keep me playing.

PS: Right on the money, Horst.

I guess it's ok once you've got the rulebook and the relevant codices, and you get used to sifting through all the cotton wool. There's a bit of an art to working out how to tell which paragraphs are game-related and which are just fluff.
For a couple months I was reading all the various angry space humans codices at the same time while constantly referencing the rulebook to check the so-called "universal special rules", trying to decide which army to use. My brain started smoldering so thats the main reason I chose to go with Orks.
I'm used to playing pc games which I can just start playing and then get bored with in less than a month.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Don't get me wrong. I like the fluff as much as anyone. I'm actually kinda addicted to reading about the 40k universe.

I just don't think that it needs to be mixed in with the rules so much. The books could use slightly better organisation. I'm used to it now. But it took about a thousand times longer than any other game I've ever played.

PS. Yeh Horst. I like the summary. Lol

Horst wrote:TL;DR summary -

READING AM BAD!

QFT. It took me about a day to be able to play a basic game, and a couple more days before I really had the hang of it. Learning the new rules after 5th Edition came out took about half a game.


Also, if you hate rules and fluff, play Warmachine. To really enjoy a game of 40k you must immerse yourself.... let the fluff flow through you. You can feeeel it, yesss? *cackle*

Like one of the last posters said it takes a while to get the rules down and it REALLY helps to have people to sit down and help you understand. A suggestion to you is to make list of the most frequent list of common problems you have with rules then find them then on the list write the page number down for a quick reference. I too had some problems remembering where rules were in the codex. But unlike you i enjoy the fluff.

I can totally relate to you. You're new, you just got this game and it's taking forever to enjoy it. It'd be like buying a computer game and then having to assemble your computer to play it.

I remember starting in 3rd and somebody loaned me a BGB for a week before I could come back and move models. And even then it took months to start making good moves against normal players. In the beginning all I cared about was getting my little guys into games and winning. I was confused and getting beat a lot. Fast forward a few years...

I've developed the skills that many players have after some time. You will too. I may be speaking for most of us; but we love 40k for the depth. The rules are complicated in many cases and there are all kinds of little loop holes and addendum's. Each army may get it's own codex, but that allows us to get a more personalized feel for how each army runs.

Wait it out. In the beginning hate losing, so you really wanna learn the rules. Screw that fluff stuff. Later you'll pick it up more and be able to use the book less. That's when you care about fluff usually, when you are less concerned with the other parts. I really didn't read fluff until a few years in.

Just have fun, and everything else will fall into place.

Personally, i really like fluff.
However, i really do wish that they put special-rules in the same section of the book as Points, it makes for a lot of flipping around. It could be structured better.
I know my dad tends to write out his army lists in Word, with allt eh special rules and configurations of each model (very handy for Fex's). But he does this from the codex, and then uses it as a quick refference.

I wanted to play 40K because I am a part-time aspiring game designer and I wanted to see what it is about 40K that could cause all this fuss. I wondered what it was about this game system that would make it so awesome. Sure I knew that it had a lot so do with having all these fancy little plastic people and I knew that the background and story-line was really cool. It just didn't occur to me that it was almost more about the fluff than anything else.

I makes me realise that without all the fluff you would still have a very cool game system, but it would never have attracted such a massive following because then it would just be a game. What makes 40K different (and I assume WHFB) is that it's more of a second life than it is a game. It's role-playing as much as DnD is. Without this vast universe described in such detail the player wouldn't have such an emotional attachment to his/her little metal and plastic people.

Now I'm hooked. What have I gotten myself into?

Unfortunately for me I'm not sure if I can really use this for my own games because it takes a team of writers to create such a universe and I'm not sure if there would be space in this world for many more universes. I guess I'll just have to try make some super-duper awesome game systems.

The reason for spreading all the rules around (in a modern codex you need to refer to three different sections to get the info for a single unit) may be to deter people from copying everything.

I hate to think it might be due to bad editing.

Kilkrazy wrote:The reason for spreading all the rules around (in a modern codex you need to refer to three different sections to get the info for a single unit) may be to deter people from copying everything.

I hate to think it might be due to bad editing.

Yeh that was in issue for me. As soon as you start trying to deter your customers from doing anything you (obviously) start to annoy your customers, which is bad. It has been proven time and again that stuff like copywrite protection is often more annoying to paying customers than it is worth. I'd much rather have all the rules for a single unit in close proximity to each other thanks.

Take the Spore pc game for example. They tried so hard to stop people from being able to crack the game that they ended up making it highly inconvenient for people who actually purchased it. The cracked version was on torrent sites by the time they released the game anyway and I know people who bought the game who actually preferred the cracked copy because it was less hassle.

I would hate to think it was *not* due bad editing because if it was done on purpose then they are intentionally inconveniencing their customers as much as the people they are trying to deter... intentional bad editing is worse than accidental IMHO

I'd say the rulebooks are just poorly formatted and written. At the very least it'd be great if they bolded the ACTUAL rule part, so it'd be easy to pick it out in the middle of the fluff instead of having to read an entire paragraph explaining WHY a tank would want to ram another one, etc.

D&D is much more complicated and involved. Most hobby games are much more complicated and involved than regular board and card games. It's just a different kind of game.

I will readily concede, however, that one good editor could do a world of good over at GW.

Be grateful you're not playing RT or some of the other games from the beginning, rules were scattered about randomly on pages (or sometimes missing/in different books/believed to be in books that were never published) and the only thing that made up for it was the (much more comic in those days) fluff and some lovely pictures by people like John Blanche and Paul Bonner filling the gaps. I think the editors were eaten by the 'nids along with many other good things from GW

Seriously though wargaming is not just a hobby but a skill. You have to learn the rules gradually to get a feel for the forces you like most and want to play with, the tactics needed and develop this over time. This may be frustrating now but stick with it, its worth it (If I can play RT with 3000 points a side then you CAN master 5th!) a group of experienced players helps too.

PieceMaker wrote:You shouldn't need to read more than 1 book to play a game.

Dungeons and Dragons called. They say they've been too busy proving you wrong for the past 25 years to properly address what you just said, but they want you to know they're thinking about you and to say what's up.

Bunker wrote:

PieceMaker wrote:You shouldn't need to read more than 1 book to play a game.

Dungeons and Dragons called. They say they've been too busy proving you wrong for the past 25 years to properly address what you just said, but they want you to know they're thinking about you and to say what's up.

QFT. I love my D&D books!

I see what the OP is trying to say, and I had the same problem when I first started playing, and was teaching two of my friends the rules at the same time. The problem's not that there are background sections - that's a good thing. It's that the rules sections are padded out with loads of in-universe descriptions and explanations, which aren't even presented in a different font from the paragraphs that are actually rules. This also prevents the rules from being organised and presented in any clear and easily-referenced way. Didn't anyone else have huge problems trying to look up rules during games when they first started playing?

I do feel the rules sections would benefit from some generous editing. They're uneccesarily wordy, and I really think this style has only been adopted to justify releasing 300 page rulebooks, and a plethora of additional codexes and expansions.

HI all.
It is important to remeber GW are NOT interested in gameplay or gamers at all.

If they just printed the rules in isolation gamers would realise just how 'FUBAR' they are.
Without the fluff padding them and distracting the gamers no-one would buy them!

Most GAME companies pride themselves on straight forward rules that deliver maximum gameplay from the minimum amount of rules.(Thane Games , Ground Zero Games, Two Hour Wargames etc.)

GW is a minature retailer , NOT a games company, and so write rules to promote model sales directly.

Thats why thier rules realted material is not proof read or edited proffesionaly!

Sad but true...

TTFN Lanrak.

I wished Codexes har more fluff to read, my bus and subway daily travels are long

My only problem with the fluff in Codices is with the new IG dex, and how they've replaced all the special rules, wargear options, and points values for standard units with overly long fluff entries. Don't get me wrong - I love the fluff, but when I have to flip to the back of the book for the actual INFO on a unit when it's entry is at the start of the Army List section, it's pretty ing annoying.

Other than that organizational failure of a dex', I find the game and the fluff in the books to be quite well laid-out.

metallifan wrote:My only problem with the fluff in Codices is with the new IG dex, and how they've replaced all the special rules, wargear options, and points values for standard units with overly long fluff entries. Don't get me wrong - I love the fluff, but when I have to flip to the back of the book for the actual INFO on a unit when it's entry is at the start of the Army List section, it's pretty ing annoying.

Other than that organizational failure of a dex', I find the game and the fluff in the books to be quite well laid-out.

I completely agree. What would be awesome is if they had the fluffy page, then followed it with the info page.

I had this problem with Chaucer.
Started with a book.
Then there were all these funny looking 'f' things. Took forever to figure their editor wasn't a moron...

If it took a month to get to grips with the system you probably need to look into possibilities that it wasn't the system that is so difficult to grasp.

Gwar! wrote:

Bunker wrote:

PieceMaker wrote:You shouldn't need to read more than 1 book to play a game.

Dungeons and Dragons called. They say they've been too busy proving you wrong for the past 25 years to properly address what you just said, but they want you to know they're thinking about you and to say what's up.

QFT. I love my D&D books!

I think XKCD summed up D&D splatbooks and powergamers quite well.

Eyclonus wrote:

Gwar! wrote:

Bunker wrote:

PieceMaker wrote:You shouldn't need to read more than 1 book to play a game.

Dungeons and Dragons called. They say they've been too busy proving you wrong for the past 25 years to properly address what you just said, but they want you to know they're thinking about you and to say what's up.

QFT. I love my D&D books!

I think XKCD summed up D&D splatbooks and powergamers quite well.

Dude, that's Gary Gygax...
You just insulted Gary Gygax...

-Runs for his Bomb Shelter-

How I like to agree with the fact that there is alot of fluff with 40k, it is part of what made me play the game and enjoy it. While I have to agree that the way that the codex is layed out with one part of the unit laid out with rules and another part later in the book different then the way previously laid out in a different order compelety bunk, as is the way with newer books. But, I would like to point our that with newest edition both a rule with and without fluff was released unfortunatly you had to buy the the core box set to get the strait rule book without the fluff. This id my personal thoughts,

Fluff is fun!!! Gives you a reason to only barely study for a huge psych test you have tomorrow!!!