Behind the Scenes of GW rules design & playtesting

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**kodos**

this is actually how the rules look like. the guy who writes them never cross reads the stuff he wrote and therefore rules are missing or wrong because he just wanted to write them down but never did (all of us who write reports or long texts know how easy this happens and how important it is to read your own stuff again after a break to realise that the stuff you wrote does not match what you wanted to write).

**Commissar Benny**

tag8833 wrote:
Simon Grant gave an interview today on Warhammer's Twitch feed. He was talking about the fluff of the new Gathering Storm book. He seemed generally much more comfortable talking about fluff and Age of Sigmar than 40K rules, despite being the rules author behind most of the recent rules that have come out for 40K. He was asked how the Ynnari faction interacted with transports. He scoffed, and turned to the page expecting it to be spelled out. When it wasn't, despite being the author of those rules, he said he couldn't tell us the rules for that, because "This isn't the forum for rules discussion", but that an FAQ would be forthcoming. Then they joked about "Nick" whose job it was to write the FAQ's, and implied that he was hired for that purpose. It's hard to tell based on the jokey manner, but they referred to "Nick" the way I would refer to a new hire or intern. Someone that is lower than me on the totem pole.

I would encourage anyone interested in the process to check out the interview:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/122479057
(Simon Grant starts 1/2 through or so)

So piecing it together based off of the info they've been willing to disclose.
They have a 5-person rules team.
- Simon Grant writes the rules in most or all of the campaign supplements, and new codexes like Genestealer Cults, and Deathwatch.
- Jervis Johnson writes the rules for many of the box games, and main rulebook editions.
- "Nick" writes the FAQs.
- The department manager (whose name they've mentioned, but I forgot). is not one of those 3 people.
- Phil Kelly Writes Fluff, and is likely not a member of the rules team.

It really feels like Simon Grant is the one most responsible for most of the 40K rules. He likes to express a rules philosophy that is very child-like. "It looked cool." "wouldn't it be awesome", but surely there must be more depth to it like considerations of playability, comboing, and balance, but maybe not.

Wow. So this along with what others have shared pretty much confirms all of our worst fears.

I had hoped with all the outreach that GW has been doing that they would have reached the obvious conclusion that many (perhaps the majority) of their players are buying their models not only because they look nice but because they are supposed to belong to a tabletop wargame with an actual functioning ruleset. If it is true that the AoS handbook was written & tested in 2 days that would explain a lot about the state of 40k and the practices of GW. In order to create any sort of balanced/competitive ruleset it would take thousands of hours with dozens of full time employees. GW is by far the most bizarre company I do business with. There is no rhyme or reason on how they conduct themselves. I've never understood their business philosophy and likely never will. Its like they operate outside the realm of capitalism where they are not interested in profit and everything they do is short sighted and in the interest of short term gain.

**Warhams-77**

The GW design team (department) consists of 150 people. They may find 'a minute or two' actually playing their games before release. Some jolly talk in a WarhammerTV video made by the guys notorious for finding plastic Sisters of Battle in trashcans is revealing something surprising after all these years? Have you read the articles about GHB, Nova and other community interaction regarding AoS and 40k? They are getting a lot of feedback. And yes, the way they write rules for their main tabletop systems is far from optimal. But how is that new and surprising? Some people dont like the rules, others are okay with them. There are games who promise to be better, maybe they deliver, buy them instead if who want a change of quality in your gaming. Beyond the Gates of Antares and maybe the upcoming Warpath (& Firefight) would be the better choice for you.

**Lord Kragan**

What? Those two days weren't to write, general's handbook. To begin with, they've been in contact on multiple occassions, as stated by the guys of heelanhammer. This meeting was to iron out what they had gathered and test how it would work against the two worst offenders. because the games they did were ALL focused on tomb kings versus fyreslayers, since that was the prime concern of THAT reunion and with reason.

**tneva82**

Hmm. Nothing in the article seems to indicate that was ONLY testing and design done. Seems like one weekend that had external guys come in. Who says they haven't had internal work done?

Okay GW testing is not best at best of times but claiming it was done by few guys over 2 days only is still bit funny with just this article.

**kodos**

there is a mistake, the original AoS rules were written and tested in 2 days
there is no info how much work was put into the handbook, just that they had 2 days with "external" people.

**Matt.Kingsley**

tag8833 wrote:
Simon Grant gave an interview today on Warhammer's Twitch feed. He was talking about the fluff of the new Gathering Storm book. He seemed generally much more comfortable talking about fluff and Age of Sigmar than 40K rules, despite being the rules author behind most of the recent rules that have come out for 40K. He was asked how the Ynnari faction interacted with transports. He scoffed, and turned to the page expecting it to be spelled out. When it wasn't, despite being the author of those rules, he said he couldn't tell us the rules for that, because "This isn't the forum for rules discussion", but that an FAQ would be forthcoming. Then they joked about "Nick" whose job it was to write the FAQ's, and implied that he was hired for that purpose. It's hard to tell based on the jokey manner, but they referred to "Nick" the way I would refer to a new hire or intern. Someone that is lower than me on the totem pole.

I would encourage anyone interested in the process to check out the interview:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/122479057
(Simon Grant starts 1/2 through or so)

So piecing it together based off of the info they've been willing to disclose.
They have a 5-person rules team.
- Simon Grant writes the rules in most or all of the campaign supplements, and new codexes like Genestealer Cults, and Deathwatch.
- Jervis Johnson writes the rules for many of the box games, and main rulebook editions.
- "Nick" writes the FAQs.
- The department manager (whose name they've mentioned, but I forgot). is not one of those 3 people.
- Phil Kelly Writes Fluff, and is likely not a member of the rules team.

It really feels like Simon Grant is the one most responsible for most of the 40K rules. He likes to express a rules philosophy that is very child-like. "It looked cool." "wouldn't it be awesome", but surely there must be more depth to it like considerations of playability, comboing, and balance, but maybe not.

Cruddace is also still on the rules team, and he was credited as being the lead rules designer of the Deathwatch Codex, plus he's meant to be doing a seminar/talk at Adepticon about game design (as funny or not as that may sound).

And as others has said the actual development team is much larger than that, though most of them probably aren't dedicated to rules in any meaningful or large way.

**tag8833**

Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Cruddace is also still on the rules team, and he was credited as being the lead rules designer of the Deathwatch Codex, plus he's meant to be doing a seminar/talk at Adepticon about game design (as funny or not as that may sound).

And as others has said the actual development team is much larger than that, though most of them probably aren't dedicated to rules in any meaningful or large way.

Ah. Yeah, I remember a facebook video with Cruddace, I couldn't find it just now to add him to the team. I remember he came off as a bit of a dunce. "Big explosions are awesome. When writing the deathwatch we asked what had we never done? Bonuses for battlefield roles". "The Corvus Black star has SOOOO Many guns."

While the Design team might be huge, on their twitch feed, GW has repeatedly stated that their rules team is 5 people. For all I know, "Nick" isn't part of their "Rules Team", but is instead part of their "Community Outreach Team".

In one of his interviews Simon Grant said that they had restructured to separate the rules team from the fluff writing team. I don't know when this restructuring took place, but I suspicion it was at the dawn of the Community outreach strategy. I imagine many of the rules team aren't pleased with the split. Technical writes (rules) is a whole different skillset than creative writing, and from what I can tell they all were hired for their skills doing Creative Writing.

**Matt.Kingsley**

Makes you wonder who the last 2 people are. Adam Troke went on to be part of the Middle Earth Specialist Team (so I'd assume he's no longer part of the main Development team), and we know Mat Ward left and became an independent writer years ago.

Is Vetock still around, or did he move on as well?

**Earth127**

If what you say is true, that's not very inspiring at all. Would it kill Gw to hire one or two guys who sorta know maths and game balance?

**Davor**

Earth127 wrote:
If what you say is true, that's not very inspiring at all. Would it kill Gw to hire one or two guys who sorta know maths and game balance?

But Mr Cruddace has a PhD.

**Gibblets**

That's the worst "play testing" I've ever seen. I make maps for strategy games, MAPS not core rules changes, and it takes about 30+ play throughs (so 150+hrs) by me and anyone else before it's tight. 2 days is laughable, I can't believe they got paid.

**tneva82**

Gibblets wrote:
That's the worst "play testing" I've ever seen. I make maps for strategy games, MAPS not core rules changes, and it takes about 30+ play throughs (so 150+hrs) by me and anyone else before it's tight. 2 days is laughable, I can't believe they got paid.

Again where it's stated that was ONLY playtesting done for the book?

How many days you think is reasonable for non-paid volunteers to spend at GWHQ?

Maybe that explains why that was 2 day session. It was VOLUNTEERING FANS who WERE NOT BEING PAID(I presume) coming in to help around.

Now call me dump if you want but I presume basic assumption is that the paid staff does work outside as well and not depend 100% on unpaid volunteers. Ergo unless otherwise said this is just 2 days outside volunteers came to help but that the game designers would be doing what they are paid for outside as well.

**Wayniac**

I think they're type of attitude sums it up. They're not interested in Balance rules for a war game this is obvious when they talk and it sounds like a little kid as others have said it. Oh wow wouldn't it be cool if I could do X or man Y looks so cool it should be the coolest most awesomest thing ever you know? It's like a kid. Wild an actual game uses math and Game Theory and some sort of algorithm to determine what it should be not just this sounds cool. I really don't even get what the mentality behind that is but it's obvious that they do not care at all about the actual rules interactions it's just a ask your opponent. I'm sorry but when the actual rules writer doesn't know what the feth the rule even is or how it interacts, they are just showing themselves to be a complete fething moron. I'm sure they are nice people but they obviously have zero clue what they're doing as far as designing a game and this attitude also goes down to the stores, because they do not hire people who know the game they hire business people and expect them to either BS about it or learn the game and that is completely the opposite from what they should be doing. My GW store manager knew absolutely nothing about warhammer before he opened the store. Even now he injects this weird pseudo-rules nonsense into games there, his demo game shows nothing other than rolling dice to hit (with made up numbers often), etc. It's really annoying.

**Slipspace**

Couldn't agree more with Wayniac.

The new Soulburst interactions are another good example of GW just not caring at all about their own rules. There are so many obvious questions raised about out of sequence actions and there's little attempt to address them. Further, it seems GW aren't even aware of how their own game functions most of the time and the attitude in the linked video about FAQ writing is pretty abysmal too. Overall, my opinion of GW rules designers is they seem to combine incompetence with a complete lack of awareness of the needs of the community.

I don't expect rules to be perfect all the time. 40k is complicated and things will slip through the net regardless of playtesting but I do expect obvious issues to be addressed before publication and a timely FAQ or errata for anything that comes to light afterwards.

**Wayniac**

I think that's an important thing. If you assume 40K is complex then wouldn't you expect more care to be given to the rules interactions? Instead you have designers that don't even know what the rules they wrote do or how it interacts, this tells me that they barely played with them or changed it at the last minute because normally you expect at least some form of idea. I know that when Privateer Press, for example, has talked about rules they sometimes that it they will confuse the rules because it's gone through many iterations but that is a far cry from being a well I'm not really sure how it works but this isn't the place to talk about rules.

They really are incompetent there is no other way to say it there should be 0 excuse for this level of bad rule writing in a professional product that costs a lot of money

**Slipspace**

I've long thought it should be a condition of employment as a games designer (at any company) that you attend at least 2 moderately large tournaments a year. Then you should compile a report on the tournament including things such as:

1. Armies present (and, importantly, not present)
2. Any tournament rules that break from the core rules, along with possible reasons why
3. Whether the tournament uses any non-official FAQs to deal with rules disputes and what those rulings are

I don't care if you think your game isn't competitive-based. If it has tournaments they are the best place to find balance issues and common rules problems. Everyone benefits from a balanced game, not just the super-serious tournament players.

**zerosignal**

I went for a job in a GW store, around sixteen years ago.

Did the interview at Loughborough; quite a fun experience, but I was told at the end that GW weren't looking for Inquisitors - they wanted to hire Orks.

That put me off the hobby for a decade!

**Wayniac**

Slipspace wrote:
I've long thought it should be a condition of employment as a games designer (at any company) that you attend at least 2 moderately large tournaments a year. Then you should compile a report on the tournament including things such as:

1. Armies present (and, importantly, not present)
2. Any tournament rules that break from the core rules, along with possible reasons why
3. Whether the tournament uses any non-official FAQs to deal with rules disputes and what those rulings are

I don't care if you think your game isn't competitive-based. If it has tournaments they are the best place to find balance issues and common rules problems. Everyone benefits from a balanced game, not just the super-serious tournament players.

Absolutely. But it seems like GW doesn't even hire designers based on any qualifications. Some of them have been around for years, and seem to have... degraded, for lack of a better word. Jervis and Phil Kelly for example, used to write fairly good rules back in their day (although Jervis' were always erring on weaker rather than stronger, but that's the type of player he is). Now though, it seems they have zero quality and are more or less kids in a sandbox playing pretend and making things up as they go along. Their design approach is, quite literally, Calvinball.

**ZebioLizard2**

Wayniac wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
I've long thought it should be a condition of employment as a games designer (at any company) that you attend at least 2 moderately large tournaments a year. Then you should compile a report on the tournament including things such as:

1. Armies present (and, importantly, not present)
2. Any tournament rules that break from the core rules, along with possible reasons why
3. Whether the tournament uses any non-official FAQs to deal with rules disputes and what those rulings are

I don't care if you think your game isn't competitive-based. If it has tournaments they are the best place to find balance issues and common rules problems. Everyone benefits from a balanced game, not just the super-serious tournament players.

Absolutely. But it seems like GW doesn't even hire designers based on any qualifications. Some of them have been around for years, and seem to have... degraded, for lack of a better word. Jervis and Phil Kelly for example, used to write fairly good rules back in their day (although Jervis' were always erring on weaker rather than stronger, but that's the type of player he is). Now though, it seems they have zero quality and are more or less kids in a sandbox playing pretend and making things up as they go along. Their design approach is, quite literally, Calvinball.

Kelly has always had interesting rules at least.. Even if he made Eldar OP every edition he wrote them in.

**tag8833**

ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Kelly has always had interesting rules at least.. Even if he made Eldar OP every edition he wrote them in.

Phil Kelly is no longer a rules writer. He now writes fluff only.

Simon Grant writes basically all of the 40K rules. Including Gathering Storm I and II, Wrath of Magnus, Traitor Legion, Genestealer Cult, Space Wolves: Wulfen edition, and a bunch others.

He is a regular on the twitch feed, and likes to play and talk about Age of Sigmar. When he is interviewed about 40K rules he usually ends up talking about AoS. The Soulburst rule is probably an example of his love for AoS, and lack of interest in 40K. It is an AoS rule ported to 40K without much consideration to how 40K is different from AoS. I think that is why it is only 1/2 a rule, that doesn't account for a bunch of important interactions in 40K such as transports, and charge restrictions. Caul and Celestein are another example. If they were rules in AOS where there are no IC's they'd work much better.

**Wayniac**

tag8833 wrote:
ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Kelly has always had interesting rules at least.. Even if he made Eldar OP every edition he wrote them in.

Phil Kelly is no longer a rules writer. He now writes fluff only.

Simon Grant writes basically all of the 40K rules. Including Gathering Storm I and II, Wrath of Magnus, Traitor Legion, Genestealer Cult, Space Wolves: Wulfen edition, and a bunch others.

He is a regular on the twitch feed, and likes to play and talk about Age of Sigmar. When he is interviewed about 40K rules he usually ends up talking about AoS. The Soulburst rule is probably an example of his love for AoS, and lack of interest in 40K. It is an AoS rule ported to 40K without much consideration to how 40K is different from AoS. I think that is why it is only 1/2 a rule, that doesn't account for a bunch of important interactions in 40K such as transports, and charge restrictions. Caul and Celestein are another example. If they were rules in AOS where there are no IC's they'd work much better.

So basically, Simon Grant is an awful rules writer and has little idea of how the game plays, and likely would rather write for AOS, and acts like a child as far as how he creates rules. I'm sorry but as a professional designer, things like "This sounds cool" or "Wouldn't it be awesome if" should be the least concern to actual balance and figuring out interactions; for GW it seems like it's their primary concern to the exclusion of all else.

**SeanDrake**

Slipspace wrote:
Jervis was heavily involved in Blood Bowl and the more recent versions of Epic. Those are 2 of the better games GW has produced, especially in terms of balance.

Having said that, a lot of JJ's work for WH and 40k hasn't been so great. I don't think it's the case that he's a bad designer, I think it's possibly more the case that his style lends itself better to certain types of projects and he often struggles to get create balanced rules that fit into a greater whole. Both BB and Epic were more or less stand-alone games in many ways, designed almost entirely in one go.

Sorry took awhile to stop pissing myself laughing, since when is BloodBowl balanced?

Random does not equal balanced but JJ seems to disagree.

Also if the game was balanced you could play whatever team you liked with a reasonable chance of winning, however Blood Bowl Players seem to have given JJ/GW a get out by saying picking a team is picking a difficulty level and not a team you actually want to play. As such unless you enjoy getting Kerbstomped repeatedly about half.the teams are unusable.

**Wayniac**

SeanDrake wrote:
Slipspace wrote:
Jervis was heavily involved in Blood Bowl and the more recent versions of Epic. Those are 2 of the better games GW has produced, especially in terms of balance.

Having said that, a lot of JJ's work for WH and 40k hasn't been so great. I don't think it's the case that he's a bad designer, I think it's possibly more the case that his style lends itself better to certain types of projects and he often struggles to get create balanced rules that fit into a greater whole. Both BB and Epic were more or less stand-alone games in many ways, designed almost entirely in one go.

Sorry took awhile to stop pissing myself laughing, since when is BloodBowl balanced?

Random does not equal balanced but JJ seems to disagree.

Also if the game was balanced you could play whatever team you liked with a reasonable chance of winning, however Blood Bowl Players seem to have given JJ/GW a get out by saying picking a team is picking a difficulty level and not a team you actually want to play. As such unless you enjoy getting Kerbstomped repeatedly about half.the teams are unusable.

So typical GW then. Any faction in a game that touts itself as a hobby (even Blood Bowl tends to do this in a way) should not be treated as a difficulty level but a choice of aesthetics. Holy feth.

**BlaxicanX**

Not related to AoS but I recall reading an interview not too long ago where a rules writer basically said that new units are created by the modeling team first making a new model, then the rules writers making rules for the model, and then the fluff being written at the end. During this process the three teams have almost no communication between each other, and sometimes fluff-writers would be brought in to write the rules.

Goes a long way toward explaining how things like Centurions came to exist.

**Lord Kragan**

Gibblets wrote:
That's the worst "play testing" I've ever seen. I make maps for strategy games, MAPS not core rules changes, and it takes about 30+ play throughs (so 150+hrs) by me and anyone else before it's tight. 2 days is laughable, I can't believe they got paid.

Then thank god it wasn't "just" two days:

I can't give details (yet), but - The visit was only one day, but there has been a lot of back and forth with email/calls etc over a period of time, GW have really been open/co-operative about this. Bear in mind various guys that are involved with the books their end are also solid tournament players, so its not guys that don't play writing this stuff to start with. This really is a 'new world' (or 'Age' maybe....).

This is a comment made in this very same forum, by one of the involved individuals. And no, they are not changing core rules. They are tweaking points. Now, please guys, stop harping, this is bordering on toxic.

**Wayniac**

BlaxicanX wrote:
Not related to AoS but I recall reading an interview not too long ago where a rules writer basically said that new units are created by the modeling team first making a new model, then the rules writers making rules for the model, and then the fluff being written at the end. During this process the three teams have almost no communication between each other, and sometimes fluff-writers would be brought in to write the rules.

Goes a long way toward explaining how things like Centurions came to exist.

Yes I have read this too. A model is made, then the rules guys are told "make rules for this new model" and then they have to fit it in. Zero interaction about how this thing actually affects the game. Totally backwards. And people still defend this gak.

**Slipspace**

Lord Kragan wrote:
Gibblets wrote:
That's the worst "play testing" I've ever seen. I make maps for strategy games, MAPS not core rules changes, and it takes about 30+ play throughs (so 150+hrs) by me and anyone else before it's tight. 2 days is laughable, I can't believe they got paid.

Then thank god it wasn't "just" two days:

I can't give details (yet), but - The visit was only one day, but there has been a lot of back and forth with email/calls etc over a period of time, GW have really been open/co-operative about this. Bear in mind various guys that are involved with the books their end are also solid tournament players, so its not guys that don't play writing this stuff to start with. This really is a 'new world' (or 'Age' maybe....).

This is a comment made in this very same forum, by one of the involved individuals. And no, they are not changing core rules. They are tweaking points. Now, please guys, stop harping, this is bordering on toxic.

While that's true, we've also seen other examples of how GW treats its rules that deserve to be called out as stupid and unprofessional. Things like developers not knowing how their own rules work, the attitude towards making stuff "cool" without any thought of balance and the interaction, or lack of it, between the sculptors, rules writers and fiction writers.

It's also probably worth bearing in mind that this attitude is what led to this "amazing" interaction with the community, since it was the community that came up with a points system for AoS after GW decided it didn't need one at launch. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about their approach to the game I'm not sure what does.

When you add it all up it all points to a set-up that may actually be the worst in the industry for how it treats the mechanics of the game. That may or may not be a problem for GW as a whole but it's definitely worth discussing.

**Wayniac**

Slipspace wrote:
Lord Kragan wrote:
Gibblets wrote:
That's the worst "play testing" I've ever seen. I make maps for strategy games, MAPS not core rules changes, and it takes about 30+ play throughs (so 150+hrs) by me and anyone else before it's tight. 2 days is laughable, I can't believe they got paid.

Then thank god it wasn't "just" two days:

I can't give details (yet), but - The visit was only one day, but there has been a lot of back and forth with email/calls etc over a period of time, GW have really been open/co-operative about this. Bear in mind various guys that are involved with the books their end are also solid tournament players, so its not guys that don't play writing this stuff to start with. This really is a 'new world' (or 'Age' maybe....).

This is a comment made in this very same forum, by one of the involved individuals. And no, they are not changing core rules. They are tweaking points. Now, please guys, stop harping, this is bordering on toxic.

While that's true, we've also seen other examples of how GW treats its rules that deserve to be called out as stupid and unprofessional. Things like developers not knowing how their own rules work, the attitude towards making stuff "cool" without any thought of balance and the interaction, or lack of it, between the sculptors, rules writers and fiction writers.

It's also probably worth bearing in mind that this attitude is what led to this "amazing" interaction with the community, since it was the community that came up with a points system for AoS after GW decided it didn't need one at launch. If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know about their approach to the game I'm not sure what does.

When you add it all up it all points to a set-up that may actually be the worst in the industry for how it treats the mechanics of the game. That may or may not be a problem for GW as a whole but it's definitely worth discussing.

Definitely. Also, even if they made several trips, that's not enough time to really test all this stuff. 2 days was apparently for the Fyreslayers/TK changes and I would assume general discussion of it, so let's say they did several trips, that's still what, a total of 10 days? 12? Still barely enough time to playtest a multi-million <currency> game! And GW's designers have shown that they are either lazy or incompetent because they just don't care or are skilled enough to do the testing themselves, and what they do is very minimal.