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Brother Coa wrote:On one level you kill 72 Stormtroopers and 3 Space Marines, on the next you kill 52 Stormtroopers and 7 Space Marines ( I counted ). And that part is also true, he had a help from KHORNE. And that is why I consider this non canon - Tau can't hear them at all as we have seen in Dark Crusade Chaos Stronghold attack. ( notice the buzzing )

Or, the Tau commander could be referring to the voices as the comm chatter/buzzing, rather than acknowledge them.

[huh, doublepost]

Tau are not blanks.

Please don't act like they are.

Psienesis wrote:That pretty much ignores the definition of "canon", that's why. No one's saying you can't do it, I'm sure all of us do it to some extent in some areas, but it doesn't make our fan-dexes or fan-fics or RPG settings and house rules and all of that sort of stuff "canon" to the hobby worldwide.

It pretty much fits to how the people at Games Workshop and the Black Library see it, though. Judging from the comments and statements I posted earlier, there is no canon. The idea of a 40k canon is wishful thinking by fans who (like me, back when I joined the hobby) want all their books to contribute to a uniform continuity.
The only thing somewhat coming close to a supposed canon seems to be - as Gav and George said - the rulebooks and codices, and that only because they provide us with some sort of foundation that other publications are *supposed* to follow. But even codex material seems to be "fluid" and may change from edition to edition.

Games Workshop provides us with the groundworks, and they do want it to be our own decision what we do with it. Here is an interesting article from Bolter and Chainsword that discusses the advantages of this approach for hobbyists.

Personally, I would prefer working within the confines of a well-defined setting like SW, but I do acknowledge and understand the points of those who prefer the freedom that GW grants them. It's simply a matter of preferences. Obviously it is also a matter of much misconception.

ph34r wrote:Or, the Tau commander could be referring to the voices as the comm chatter/buzzing, rather than acknowledge them.

Plus it's video game versus video game.

The GW canon is not as extensive as the SW canon, to be sure... but there's some basic things that are "canon" to the setting that one simply cannot ignore if one wants to discuss what WH40K is or is not.

Yes, things can change from one Codex edition to the next... but so does SW canon (also changing based on what a guy says in a press interview, off the top of his head, in a moment of pique, whatever).

Again, no one is saying you can't create your own Chapters, backgrounds, events, aspects to established organizations (like my BSG Centurions as AdMech robot-soldiers), or historical events (like the Heresy never happening)... but outside of a personal game or an immediate circle of friends, these fan-fics are probably not going to show up in a Chapter Approved publication or a National Tournament.

There's lots and lots of "canon" that I discard for my own games (like the entire existence of the Blood Ravens SM Chapter in my DH games), but, again, I wouldn't try to argue that this is how the universal GW 40k world is/should be for every other 40k player.

Psienesis wrote:The GW canon is not as extensive as the SW canon, to be sure... but there's some basic things that are "canon" to the setting that one simply cannot ignore if one wants to discuss what WH40K is or is not.

To an extent I agree, of course! The difficult thing is just the definition of what these basic things are. It's easy to sum up the general principle of "getting the look and feel right" (paraphrased from Aaron's blog), but with this philosophy, the extent of "true" canon could probably be summed up on a single A4 page, where Space Marines are described in just one or two sentences. There are few things that seem "immovable". Grey Knight and Sororitas incorruptability being just the latest examples of a codex-powered revision. Or these dreadful changes to the Night Lords' armour that Aaron has chosen to ignore for his Horus Heresy novels.

It's funny how, the more I talk and think about it, the further I move away from a position I held just about half a year ago.

As for things not showing up in Chapter Approved publications or a National Tournament, I suppose the same thing could be said about new "facts" from Black Library novels or the RPG - though GW has indeed occasionally published things from both BL novels as well as fan-fics, if they thought it'd fit to the current incarnation of the setting as described in the studio material.

I guess all that matters is finding some "mutual ground" for your local gaming group, be it for the RPG or the Tabletop. And that seems to be how GW intended it to work out.

Most certainly... but, again, in the interests of establishing "canon", we pretty much have to refer to the Codices and other materials directly related to the table-top wargame as the "facts", and all other sources can be picked from, taken whole, or totally ignored as suits the individual player or play group.

Brother Coa wrote:

Mr Morden wrote:
re Fire Warrior - well Kais is an average Fire Warrior in the same ways as Gaunt and Cain are just average Commissars, Marbo is just a Catachan guardsman, etc. He is their equivalent - an individual who does truely extrordinary things in the service of his Empire.

Never heard about Cain or Gaunt or Marbo kill Lord of Change. That thing can also see the future http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Lord_of_Change And it is a freaking Grater Daemon foe Emperor's sake ( you know, the one you usually need 10 Grey Knights Terminators to kill ).

He kills lots of things in the game (although a lot less than you outline) but the novel makes clear he is also "helped" on his path of destruction by other powers who see him as a pawn in a larger game. But as often happens, the pawn is underestimated........

On one level you kill 72 Stormtroopers and 3 Space Marines, on the next you kill 52 Stormtroopers and 7 Space Marines ( I counted ). And that part is also true, he had a help from KHORNE. And that is why I consider this non canon - Tau can't hear them at all as we have seen in Dark Crusade Chaos Stronghold attack. ( notice the buzzing )........

The guy from Fire Warrior killing daemon princes is as ridiculous as some 11 or 12 Space Marines killing hordes of Eldar who behave like Orks in Dawn of War 2.

Lynata wrote:

Psienesis wrote:That pretty much ignores the definition of "canon", that's why. No one's saying you can't do it, I'm sure all of us do it to some extent in some areas, but it doesn't make our fan-dexes or fan-fics or RPG settings and house rules and all of that sort of stuff "canon" to the hobby worldwide.

It pretty much fits to how the people at Games Workshop and the Black Library see it, though. Judging from the comments and statements I posted earlier, there is no canon. The idea of a 40k canon is wishful thinking by fans who (like me, back when I joined the hobby) want all their books to contribute to a uniform continuity.
The only thing somewhat coming close to a supposed canon seems to be - as Gav and George said - the rulebooks and codices, and that only because they provide us with some sort of foundation that other publications are *supposed* to follow. But even codex material seems to be "fluid" and may change from edition to edition.

Games Workshop provides us with the groundworks, and they do want it to be our own decision what we do with it. Here is an interesting article from Bolter and Chainsword that discusses the advantages of this approach for hobbyists.

Personally, I would prefer working within the confines of a well-defined setting like SW, but I do acknowledge and understand the points of those who prefer the freedom that GW grants them. It's simply a matter of preferences. Obviously it is also a matter of much misconception.

Except GW and BL, etc. as the owners of the fluff materials are the ones that are allowed to determine the canonicity of the material published which pertains to the setting. They've established it as only the rules and design studio material as being canon, and thats what canon is. Saying you're saying whats canon and what isn't (assuming you fully understand the implications of what the word means) is pretty much akin to rewriting the hobbit so that smaug eats Bilbo, publishing the book,and saying that is the real ending to the book, not the one that Tolkien, the man who created the setting and wrote the story and has the actual power to do that, envisioned.

As for the B&C article it also discusses the disadvantages. In any case, it doesn't matter what B&C says, its not their decision to make.

In regards to changes to the canon from codex to codex, again its within GW's power to do as they please. It is their universe and they have the right to do whatever they want. WE do not have that power. It's literally their universe, we're just living/playing in it. Just because GW changes the fluff themselves, does not give us the right to change it as well. Whats immovable fluff for us and immovable fluff for GW are two different things. Nothing is immovable to GW, if they wanted to they could completely rewrite everything, the Horus Heresy never happened, yadda yadda yadda, and as much as I think it would suck for those changes to be made, I would have to accept it as the canon fluff. I on the other hand, do not have that power. No matter how much I may wish it, the Dornian Heresy concept that Heresy Online has produced will never be canon material (unless GW itslef adopts it). You may say that such a big sweeping change, modifying one of the core fundamental concepts that drives their universe, is not possible and it would create a new canon... that is really up for them to decide. The comic book industry has become notorious for this, they have rewritten the histories of their own superheroes many times and modified the canon in ways you can't describe, and sometimes they create a new canon in the process, but just as often they rewrite the original canon and change it as they see fit.

As for Tau, they are not blanks, they have a warp presence, its just very small.

Void__Dragon wrote:Except for a codex, which I will always admit is canon, what I like is canon, what I dislike is not.

Every single member of the staff of GW could tell me otherwise, and I would tell them to shove it.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own"

Adam Savage (Mythbusters)

I like this approach too.

I do it this way I have no wish, or true chance to play the TT game so I won't buy a codex, but I read a lot of the novels. So my world is set in the novel universe were for me yes the xes rain supreme but the novels are still canon to me because I'm not going to buy a rule book for a game I don't play just for a few cool stories in it. Yet, I take everything with a grain of salt because, as stated it is all propaganda, and just like the inquisition it's all lies lol.

chromedog wrote:1. The codices (until 'updated' and retconned).
2. The Imperial Armour books (until contradicted by another source).
3. BL novels (excluding everything by Goto).

I would add a sub-classification to the BL novels. They actually have some books labeled as "Heretic Tombs" which basically were written so long ago they aren't considered a valid part of the current mythology. I think Farseer and Space Marine are the two books in this category. Inquisition War is kind of on the boundary. I would say all the Dawn of War stuff belongs in this category. And the Caiphas Cain books are more satirical than anything, so they probably belong here too.

I tend to view 40k as having a Brooks' Subsumption approach to canon, whereby everything is canon unless it directly contradicts a more fundamental level of canon.

C) Events described in Black Library Publications
B) Events described in White Dwarf articles (excluding Codices) and GW Website Publications
A) Events described in Codices (including White Dwarf Codices) and BRB

C is canon unless overruled by B or A
B is canon unless overruled by A

Similarly, subsequent amendments apply retroactively throughout all levels. So a more recent A retroactively affects all current B, C, and any previous iterations of A.

Contradictions within a given level are resolved as propaganda where appropriate, or simply accepting neither is more valid than the other (and, as such, can be cherry picked) if not.

chaos0xomega wrote:Except GW and BL, etc. as the owners of the fluff materials are the ones that are allowed to determine the canonicity of the material published which pertains to the setting. They've established it as only the rules and design studio material as being canon, and thats what canon is. Saying you're saying whats canon and what isn't (assuming you fully understand the implications of what the word means) is pretty much akin to rewriting the hobbit so that smaug eats Bilbo, publishing the book,and saying that is the real ending to the book, not the one that Tolkien, the man who created the setting and wrote the story and has the actual power to do that, envisioned.

Perhaps I have worded it a little too extreme, but I think you misunderstand my position. As I previously stated, I take the studio material as "hard facts" - and occasionally include things I like and deem fitting from licensed material such as the BL novels or the FFG RPG, whilst keeping its status in mind. So I suppose we're pretty much on the same page on how we personally deal with it.

Still, for some reason I think that GW takes the question of canonicity far less serious than we do, which blurs the very concept of canon a little - for something that isn't considered "binding" cannot be canon, and I doubt you'd get thrown out of a tournament for a "non-canon" army as long as it still uses appropriate rules (or can you? I seriously don't know but I'd be surprised). The only thing that GW will do is ignore this for their portrayal of the setting in their own books, just like they ignore most of the Black Library stuff. And given the existence of retcons in studio material, the concept of canon loses a bit of cohesion - excluding the most basic concepts of the universe, of course. Hence my theory regarding that single A4 page.

You're probably still right, but I wish they'd do a proper once-and-for-all "policy coming-out" instead of forcing people to go hunting for quotes. That should settle some of these debates far better than stuff like my research on the subject or dialogues such as this one.

Omegus wrote:And the Caiphas Cain books are more satirical than anything, so they probably belong here too.

Having just gotten through the two Cain omnibuses, there's not a lot in there that does much one way or another to the canon. I'd say include them, just because it's nice to show the contrast between what official Imperial writings on events show versus what the guy on the ground was doing and seeing. Anything that horribly breaks canon can just be explained as Cain being confused and running for his life.

Mythals system seems to be pretty much the same as my own (just described differently) but an interesting difference that I tend to defer to the older publication when it comes to contradictions in Black Library works (with codecies/design studio materials I always take the more recent source). For Example, the Persepian Nautical Fleet in Henry Zou's book Flesh and Iron is described as having fighters and bombers that launch off of their seagoing aircraft carriers. This is in direct contradiction to Dan Abnett's statement in Double Eagle that the Phantine Air Corps was the only Imperial Guard unit to operate combat aircraft or what have you. In this case I defer to Abnett instead of the more recent work because a) Abnett is a much better writer with a much better knowledge of the lore from what I have seen, b) Abnett's work meshes better with the statements made in the official design studio publications that Guard units are forbidden to have their own air units.

Lynata - that clears it up, and I mostly agree with you. As for tournies and non-canonical forces, I don't think you would be thrown out, but if the tourny features comp scoring, depending on the system they use, you could be docked points (one question I've seen on opponent scoring worksheets is "Did your opponent field a fluffy force representative of what you might expect this army to field in the Warhammer 40k setting?"

The way I see it, the latest codices are absolutely canon. Any codices that came before that are no longer canon if contradicted by the current codex.
Everything else is supplementary; good for filling in the blanks in the codices until an error or contradiction shows up in them.

Ironsight wrote:The way I see it, the latest codices are absolutely canon. Any codices that came before that are no longer canon if contradicted by the current codex.
Everything else is supplementary; good for filling in the blanks in the codices until an error or contradiction shows up in them.

Pretty much how I view it, too.

I might not agree with what is published as canon, and I might ignore it in favor of whatever in my own games... but that does not make it non-canon, it makes *my stuff* non-canon-compliant.

Sorry to bump this back up, but does this mean we can consider the Horus Heresy series of novels to be not canon?

In my mind, as long as it came out of GW, it's official.

Red Comet wrote:Sorry to bump this back up, but does this mean we can consider the Horus Heresy series of novels to be not canon?

They're a little bit more difficult to decide upon. They detail a continual story that hasn't had very much about it before. They all take each other largely into consideration, as they're kind of a GW published factual account of what happened at the time. I rank them along side Codices, considering they're the events of the past and so don't really contradict anything current.

Red Comet wrote:Sorry to bump this back up, but does this mean we can consider the Horus Heresy series of novels to be not canon?

The HH novels are, as a series, more internally consistent than the usual BL books, but that doesn't mean that they would establish anything by themselves.

It all hinges upon what GW will "adopt" for their own material. For example, lots of people think the SoS are canon, but I have yet to see any mention of them in studio material, and they certainly had ample opportunity to toss a single line if they had wanted to do so.

In fact, if you read Aaron Dembski-Bowden's blog, he mentions that he actively disregards current GW codex canon when it comes to the Night Lords power armour, because he personally liked the older fluff about it more. I can relate, for I think so, too - but the fact remains that this makes at least one case where the HH novels deviate from current studio canon.

I believe there is currently an ongoing thread about potential other cases, for example regarding that new "executioner" role for the Space Wolves that was likewise invented in the HH books, or about details of the Emperor's edict banning psykers that was touched upon in them.

Small, Far Away wrote:In my mind, as long as it came out of GW, it's official.

I would go along with that, taking into account that the official GW sources often disagree and contradict themselves. 40K literature as described by the authors is a mixture of history, legend, lies, propaganda, misunderstandings and mistakes.

That said, people can play around with the "canon" and produce unofficial material, as long as it's well done. Part of the fun of 40K is that it is a big galaxy with room for almost anything.

Hence...



The lost primarch of SM Chapter Space Foxxx

Anything is possible.....except that.

Mr Morden wrote:
The whole point as I understood was that somethng had been awakened in Kais that had not in the other Tau - the ones that were slaughtered as they ran screaming.........probably a bit like Commander Farsight is now a bit different to other Tau.

That's because Kais IS Farsight. Or at least someone was alluding to that when they made Farsight have the same name.

Lynata wrote:

Red Comet wrote:Sorry to bump this back up, but does this mean we can consider the Horus Heresy series of novels to be not canon?

The HH novels are, as a series, more internally consistent than the usual BL books, but that doesn't mean that they would establish anything by themselves.

It all hinges upon what GW will "adopt" for their own material. For example, lots of people think the SoS are canon, but I have yet to see any mention of them in studio material, and they certainly had ample opportunity to toss a single line if they had wanted to do so.

In fact, if you read Aaron Dembski-Bowden's blog, he mentions that he actively disregards current GW codex canon when it comes to the Night Lords power armour, because he personally liked the older fluff about it more. I can relate, for I think so, too - but the fact remains that this makes at least one case where the HH novels deviate from current studio canon.

I believe there is currently an ongoing thread about potential other cases, for example regarding that new "executioner" role for the Space Wolves that was likewise invented in the HH books, or about details of the Emperor's edict banning psykers that was touched upon in them.

In other words its pretty much up in the air as to whether or not Games Workshop will adopt the Horus Heresy series of novels into their canon?

This seems kind of ridiculous for GW to have a canon system like that..

cadbren wrote:

Void__Dragon wrote:Except for a codex, which I will always admit is canon, what I like is canon, what I dislike is not.

Every single member of the staff of GW could tell me otherwise, and I would tell them to shove it.

"I reject your reality and substitute my own"

Adam Savage (Mythbusters)

I like this approach too.

I do that too. My personal canon has very little stuff from 5th edition.

Red Comet wrote:In other words its pretty much up in the air as to whether or not Games Workshop will adopt the Horus Heresy series of novels into their canon?

Well, at least that is my interpretation, based on the commentaries from the people responsible and the fact that the HH novels are already deviating from current codex material based on author preference.

That said, it should also be mentioned that the Horus Heresy gets a lot more attention than the usual Black Library novel in that they are more careful about internal consistency, not to mention the release of artbooks etc, so it could well be that these novels have a better chance to have at least parts of them accepted into studio material. This is what happened to the Daemonifuge graphic novels as well, with the two main characters - Inquisitor Hand and Sister Ephrael - even having received their own miniatures and official rules. And all this whilst Daemonifuge, too, did not adhere completely to studio canon.

Red Comet wrote:This seems kind of ridiculous for GW to have a canon system like that..

It is at least confusing, all the more so because they don't really talk about it much and you have to pull any statements out individual employees. I think they just don't take it as serious as many of us do. The fluff has always been created around the tabletop game, not the other way around - so changes to the TT may easily result in changes to the background as well, which is probably why everything is so loose and may change from one edition to another. From how I understand it, they leave lots of details purposefully unexplained in order to allow players to come up with their own ideas without forcing anyone to accept another's interpretation ... and this includes novel authors.

I still like to believe that the studio material is at least consistent enough to make it possible to use earlier GW books as a standard for the current situation of the setting, though, at least in places where it has not been retconned by something newer. For example, in WD292, Andy Hoare talks about how they designed the SoB for the 3E Codex, and he mentioned that they took care not to contradict anything previously published but rather expand on it, remaining faithful to the Sisters' history - including the small blurb the Sisters got in the 1st edition Rogue Trader rulebook!

Lynata wrote:From how I understand it, they leave lots of details purposefully unexplained in order to allow players to come up with their own ideas without forcing anyone to accept another's interpretation ... and this includes novel authors.

From what you said this seems to be why 40k canon is so garbled and why Games Workshop seems to not really care about what is canon and what is not. They've always left decisions up to the player regardless of whether it be rules, painting schemes, etc. Probably Games Workshop does not want to figure out what's canon when so many things contradict each other. Because of that they've left it up to the players to pretty much decide what is or is not canon.

This also helps explain why employees all have similar, but still varying views on the issue. Like you've stated some of the writers purposely deviated from current codex information because they simply did not like it compared to the older information. Of course this causes many internal consistency issues within the 40k universe, but any franchise has those even when people work together to make it all work consistently.