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 nurgle5 wrote:

GW did plenty of campaigns that weren't status quo shattering, but still added a lot of flavour and universe building, like Albion and Lustria. Medusa V and Nemesis Crown were the last two global campaigns before the timelines for both 40k and WHFB were brought back before EoT and SoC respectively. Neither were defining moments for their settings and they were both total clusterfeths. So a campaign can be a complete mess even if the outcome doesn't really matter to the setting

Yeah those were some of the things I was thinking of how were they clutterbucks? I don't know much about them, and perhaps there's lessons to be learnt

 nurgle5 wrote:

I do think they could always start running these types of campaigns again, tell the narrative through White Dwarf issues, take the results month to month and then compile the entire event into a supplement book at the end. Have store managers submit bits of fluff as well as the results from their stores. That way there actually would be a chance for Your Dudes to make it into the lore, maybe not as a defining part of the story, but maybe more along the lines of Commander YourCommander did something notable.

That's pretty much exactly what I was thinking, except with the added possibility for a 'Forge the Narrative' fluffy event/tournament style thing to be held which helps form the backbone of the narrative, and using them as the driving force behind the narrative at large

Great idea to run little mini-battles and then release a campaign supplement at the end of it that way you end up with the best of both worlds!

Come on GW. You know this is a cool idea. Just try it!

"I don't see my army(s) as their own characters and I don't want plot advancement"

To be very honest, I play 40k because it is not a role playing game. If I want to play a role playing game, there are many other options.

The appeal of 40k has always been the fluff. The current pace of change and the selected narratives do not sit well with me, although it's hard to put my finger on why.

So much is happening now so fast in a universe where millennia go by without change. The Eldar, who were a dying race, are suddenly rejuvinated. Long dead heroes are being brought back, for good or for worse, making their myths a literal, playable option. The Necrons can now talk and make a habit of collecting people. Meanwhile, the Orks, Tau and Tyrannids are window dressing.

Not sure if I am being a purist or an old fart who is resistant to change. But this is not like rulebooks, where you can choose to use / lose them. This is the canon, the stuff that feeds the imagination, and I worry the new fluff does not measure up. It does not leave much to be pondered / argued / wondered about, it's too literal. I liked having myth, not OP characters with game-breaking mechanics.

 techsoldaten wrote:
"I don't see my army(s) as their own characters and I don't want plot advancement"

To be very honest, I play 40k because it is not a role playing game. If I want to play a role playing game, there are many other options.

The appeal of 40k has always been the fluff. The current pace of change and the selected narratives do not sit well with me, although it's hard to put my finger on why.

So much is happening now so fast in a universe where millennia go by without change. The Eldar, who were a dying race, are suddenly rejuvinated. Long dead heroes are being brought back, for good or for worse, making their myths a literal, playable option. The Necrons can now talk and make a habit of collecting people. Meanwhile, the Orks, Tau and Tyrannids are window dressing.

Not sure if I am being a purist or an old fart who is resistant to change. But this is not like rulebooks, where you can choose to use / lose them. This is the canon, the stuff that feeds the imagination, and I worry the new fluff does not measure up. It does not leave much to be pondered / argued / wondered about, it's too literal. I liked having myth, not OP characters with game-breaking mechanics.

Couldn't agree more.

All of these revelations and myths coming to reality make the universe feel smaller and less intriguing.

I'll roll with it, but only because that's the direction it's going and I'll just be grumpy otherwise. I'm excited for the added narrative options for things like intra-eldar relations between the splintered factions, and things like a Biel Tan diaspora. I was concerned about Ynnead t obegin with, but I feel like they've added in enough suspicion around its true nature and motives that I feel it's fitting.

Not quite so enamoured by the whole Herohammer direction, and the humanisation of things like the Newcrons.

We'll have to see how the whole 'surprise! Girlyman's back!' thing though...

As far as my own personal tastes go, one of the things I like about 40k was that they created a setting that covered not just a large amount of area but a long span of time and then set about filling it in. If they do decide to significantly advance the plot, I kind of hope they jump it forward by a couple thousand years rather than a couple decades, and then have lots of stories, campaigns and battles filling in the time in between. I also like when they go backwards in time, like they did with 30k or other battles that are set thousands of years before the 41st Millennium.

 Fafnir wrote:


Instead of building the major conflicts of the setting into a bigger and bigger climax that should never come to happen, the writers should be doing the exact opposite. Focus on smaller, more nuanced conflicts that have yet to be explored in the incredibly vast setting and history. Similar to how the Blood Ravens in Dawn of War are essentially their own in-depth little story within the greater setting.

This is the best form of Your Dudes, it's the one where GW themselves make it clear that they have their own Dudes and that the way to play this game is to also have your own Dudes. Gabriel Angelos & co. are just relevant to those specific planets and that specific chapter/ chaos lord / farseer. They are in their own little encapsulated setting if you want them to be, and if you want pay no attention to it you can be into the Badab characters or the Heresy armies instead. That makes it obvious these are all what if sort of scenarios and you can say your army participated.

For some people, Dawn of War is a bit cartooney, which is not completely fair, but it is also important that there should be a cartooney option for warhammer, since that allows people who like that kind of game to get what they want. Then for me, the Horus Heresy is a bit stuffy. This is also important to have.

There are also lots of characters from HH, Badab, and the third edition codices who either go through multiple iterations, like Lysander or. Arab Culln, or who are stated to be dead right in their unit entry. This reinforces that what happens in games is mutable, that it really isn't practical or desirable to level up, replace, or kill off models.

This shows that it isn't important that your character sacrifices himself in one specific game; it matters that your character is the kind that would sacrifice himself, if that game had actually happened. When you play this game, every game is a reset. Most match ups aren't even possible, because Tau don't even appear in most parts of the galaxy, and also didn't your character get killed, not injured, by strength ten ordnance in its last three games? You will have games of blood ravens fighting Eldrad fighting Sigismund fighting Tyranids, none of which will officially happen. However, we know what Your Dudes would do if such an event did occur.

If you explicitly recognize that there are these parallel choices for campaigns, that indicates that you are free to do whatever you want, including crossing them over, because they are your dudes and the important action happens according to your preferences and your creativity.

Ynneadwraith wrote:

Yeah those were some of the things I was thinking of how were they clutterbucks? I don't know much about them, and perhaps there's lessons to be learnt

Nemesis Crown involved every faction in the old world running around a forest looking for a literal mcguffin made by the Dwarfs. The narrative was as thin as tracing paper and even though the Empire won the campaign, the Dwarfs just stole the crown back during the wrap up.

Medusa V was an utter mess from the get-go. Firstly, the set up was super convoluted because every faction had to have a reason to all be on this same planet. Secondly, from the outset everyone knew Medusa V was gonna get wrecked in an approaching warpstorm, and since none of the factions were fighting over the same thing, it felt too inconsequential. Also Dark Eldar (a codex that was horrendously out of date at the time) dominated regions were flooded with an implausible amount of Space Marine wins in the final days of the campaign, which many assumed was match fixing. IIRC Dark Eldar were in the top three factions of the campaign until this happened.

Both campaigns had very similar problems -- they were both set in the aftermath of a huge chaos event that didn't turn out as GW expected and as a result had negative consequences for the plot of both settings. They both involved every faction which diluted the narrative to the point where there was nothing compelling about the plot. Nothing consequential really happened, and anything that might have had longer term implications was wiped in the timeline reset.

Dakka Flakka Flame wrote:As far as my own personal tastes go, one of the things I like about 40k was that they created a setting that covered not just a large amount of area but a long span of time and then set about filling it in. If they do decide to significantly advance the plot, I kind of hope they jump it forward by a couple thousand years rather than a couple decades, and then have lots of stories, campaigns and battles filling in the time in between. I also like when they go backwards in time, like they did with 30k or other battles that are set thousands of years before the 41st Millennium.

I'd quite like a campaign book for the first war for Armageddon. Until the 30k stuff started gaining traction, GW seemed to be moving away from "historic" events in their own setting. There were fewer special characters that were dead and some that had died were brought back to life in newer iterations (Captain Lysander *cough* *cough*). With the plot moving forward they'd probably be less likely to do it, but it'd be a cool way of launching a Daemon Primarch model for Angron.

I like plot advancement. Makes for more exciting times. The old timeline was a bit stale.

pelicaniforce wrote:

This is the best form of Your Dudes, it's the one where GW themselves make it clear that they have their own Dudes and that the way to play this game is to also have your own Dudes. Gabriel Angelos & co. are just relevant to those specific planets and that specific chapter/ chaos lord / farseer. They are in their own little encapsulated setting if you want them to be, and if you want pay no attention to it you can be into the Badab characters or the Heresy armies instead. That makes it obvious these are all what if sort of scenarios and you can say your army participated.

Absolutely agreed with everything you've said

 nurgle5 wrote:

Nemesis Crown involved every faction in the old world running around a forest looking for a literal mcguffin made by the Dwarfs. The narrative was as thin as tracing paper and even though the Empire won the campaign, the Dwarfs just stole the crown back during the wrap up.

Medusa V was an utter mess from the get-go. Firstly, the set up was super convoluted because every faction had to have a reason to all be on this same planet. Secondly, from the outset everyone knew Medusa V was gonna get wrecked in an approaching warpstorm, and since none of the factions were fighting over the same thing, it felt too inconsequential. Also Dark Eldar (a codex that was horrendously out of date at the time) dominated regions were flooded with an implausible amount of Space Marine wins in the final days of the campaign, which many assumed was match fixing. IIRC Dark Eldar were in the top three factions of the campaign until this happened.

Both campaigns had very similar problems -- they were both set in the aftermath of a huge chaos event that didn't turn out as GW expected and as a result had negative consequences for the plot of both settings. They both involved every faction which diluted the narrative to the point where there was nothing compelling about the plot. Nothing consequential really happened, and anything that might have had longer term implications was wiped in the timeline reset.

Gotcha. So the pitfalls I can see are already ones I'd be thinking to mitigate.

1. The need to wedge every faction into a tiny area of space, no matter how implausible or convoluted it needs to be.
2. Having to bend/outright retcon the actual result of the campaign because it didn't fit how they wanted the narrative to progress.

The way I'd fix those issues is relatively simple.

1. Run more, smaller campaigns involving fewer factions in each. Every faction will get to play in at least one campaign/event over the course of a year, but no one campaign will involve all of the factions. As each year goes by, the stories and factions will be involved in different conflicts so they don't end up fighting the same people over and over again.

2. Set it on a small enough scale that there's no need to have a pre-set outcome they have to maintain. The outcome of each campaign should be sacrosanct, and the writers would have to exercise flexibility in writing around that. If a D&D games master can do it, then people who are actually paid to write should be able to plus, by exercising restraint with the scope of the campaign you avoid the whole 'well if these guys win they'll get a massive superweapon that would make them unstoppable', which would force them to change the outcome to preserve balance.

The first point is simply changing the expectation that every faction has to have a toe-in in every campaign. Run enough campaigns and it becomes less of a problem. I'd expect it would be far easier to write 4-5 campaigns a year each involving a handful of factions than one big one that tries to shoehorn everyone in.

The second point is one of flexibility. The writers need to know coming into this that the outcome of each is fluid, and plan accordingly. Either by making the campaign not world-breaking in its scope (preferable), or having contingencies in place if the 'wrong' faction wins (not preferable).

It's useful to hear how these campaigns failed, or what made them naff/worse than they could have been learn from experience.

Hmm, none of the poll options really fit me.

I invent my own army, create lore for it I like, create a color scheme I like, and just make it my own.

My position on plot advancement is that it is irrelevant to me. I ceased to care about new lore around the time of the Necrons revamp. My conversations about the lore with 40k gamers in the past year or so have been extremely confusing to me. Their views on the fiction are beyond my comprehension as to how they rationalize their opinions. It has gotten to the point where I have begun to shy away from discussing lore with random 40k fans - it never goes well. As a result, the lore GW writes is immaterial to me. My knowledge of the lore is right where I feel it should be. I ignore new developments. I invent my own lore for my army. So long as my army has models that are being produced, I don't care what they do with the lore.