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well remember back when 8th launched they did the Kronor campaign which I thought was a great way to do it. make battles important without making them so critical that it would completely twist the campaign if the "wrong" faction won it. IMHO the biggest problem with Kronor was it was a single part of a campaign whose result was already detirmined. a good thing to do might be a year long campaign for a sector of space. let folks fight it out and detirmine the winner, once the winner is detirmined, do up some addityional sourcebooks, novels etc that fleshes out the details.

Imagine if you would, if Vigilius had operated that way, we play out battles and GW takes the info and detirmines who won, who lost etc. and THEN writes the vigilius sourcebook and some novels to tie it all in. then everytime we read the vigilius book.. we feel we had a impact.

Narrative campaigns I think are cool when they are limited in scope. There is enough story to be told in the defense of one system, or at best a series of systems, without having the campaign impact the entire setting. The desire to have the campaign upend the status quo is silly, it is obvious that the way 40K is set up is well thought out and extremely successful, changes to that need to be pretty carefully considered and not based on the vagaries of whatever the most powerful faction is in the current set of GW rules.

The 13th Black Crusade was a let down because it promised to let us live through one of THE BIGGEST sword of damocles threats over the Imperium, but in the end it was a damp squib that changed nothing.
The new setting in 8th is a let down because it changed the setting in ways that could never live up to people's headcannon.

The story of something like the 13th Crusade is always going to be better told through the experiences of a group of players rather than dictated by GW to those players. Experience your stories through the game, rather than recieving them from mostly mediocre writers.

You can't let the campaign be run "on the fly" and people just add whatever they want if you're aim is balance an undetermined outcome.

Pre-set campaigns with given forces people may play could solve this. Who is going to use GW-builds? I don't remember lots of praise for GW made armies... ( WDanyone? ).

Small Factions - maybe also small player base? Thus more players register for the major factions and you have to put the smaller ones into an alliance with the larger ones to spare them from being stomped numerically?
How do you level the playing field in experience of players, size of armies, who teams up, etc?

The only way is to organize and if GW organizes it they may focus on sellling the products they release at this campaign... sales beat balance...would be my guess.


You say : give something to the players. GW says: all your money belongs to us.

Thats why 40k as a storyline is determined to fail. Opinion obviously


Campaigns: Don't do "main storylines" , don't do "main narrative", just keep the things running on the scale of the armies people will field (Tabletop supported by fluff) if they shall battle it out on the tabletop.

General 40K: Yes I am not a fan of "overarching narrative" since this seems wrong considering the size and the timescale of the place 40k is set in, a Galaxy.
Psychic Awakening as the new ( setting/ storyline) : announced as bigger than the past: How many times can you "one up" the events of the last edition? 1x ? 2x ?
Its maybe possible if this was a video/PC game planned as part 1-2-3 and done.

Exactly. 40K is a game setting, not a serial medium like a comic book or a TV show. Even then, comics have to do awful retcons to restore things to the status quo when the writing strays to far away from it. Nobody likes that, but it is needed if the medium is going to stay close to what made it popular in the first place.

GW getting cold feet over actually carrying through on changes based on the Eye of Terror campaign was a disappointment. Andy Chambers supposedly was also very disappointed as well.

Yet ironically, where we sit at now is sort of what things would have been like if they had actually gone ahead with it since the Eye of Terror campaign was officially declared a Disorder minor victory in White Dwarf. Things like the fall of Mordax Prime to Orks have also effectively canonized these details that came about as a result of player action during that campaign.

Sometimes it is the unexpected stuff that catches on. Tycho for example was just an unnamed BA captain until during one battle report he got blasted by an Ork Weirdboy, and they decided to run with that and made him into the Phantom of the Opera half paralyzed face guy. Similarly, Ork players took down Mordax Prime because they didn't want to be just unnoticed background noise during the Eye of Terror campaign in what was basically the standard Imperial vs. Chaos narrative.

I agree, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw the new background "Someone making decisions at GW finally got to follow through on the Black Crusade".

But honestly, back when that was ongoing, I remember feeling uneasy about it and asking my friends where things would go next, now that the big bad hanging over the entire universe had been deployed. I was skeptical that they could pull it off and I did not think the 13th Black Crusade as a player driven campaign was a good idea. It produced a lot of cool stuff and a lot of creativity, just as Armageddon had before it, but I felt it was doomed to disappoint one part of the fanbase or the other. Hell, even with Armageddon I thought it was ludicrous that Yarrick was still fighting at all, given at that point he was basically a historical character and even with handwavium "re-juve" therapy, it stretched my suspension of disbelief. But Armageddon was much more appropriate in scale for a worldwide campaign, and it being a whole system with a rich history (having the first war be chaos focused, etc) meant it was not hard to justify involvement from a lot of factions.

Medusa V or whatever it was didn't manage that as well, but I still thought it was a better idea for a campaign than the 13th Black Crusade and the Storm of Chaos in Fantasy. It really felt like they couldn't come back from that stuff.

I think narrative events are a cool idea, but players have to keep things in perspective. These things should not be status quo altering events but just a spur for playing interesting games and getting excited about the games you are playing in a different way, maybe making some themed terrain or forces and using it as inspiration for narratives of their own. Expecting the current "writing staff" at GW to make something satisfying out of it and tell you a story will never be as good as what you can make yourself with your friends.

 Da Boss wrote:
I agree, that was the first thing I thought of when I saw the new background "Someone making decisions at GW finally got to follow through on the Black Crusade".

But honestly, back when that was ongoing, I remember feeling uneasy about it and asking my friends where things would go next, now that the big bad hanging over the entire universe had been deployed. I was skeptical that they could pull it off and I did not think the 13th Black Crusade as a player driven campaign was a good idea. It produced a lot of cool stuff and a lot of creativity, just as Armageddon had before it, but I felt it was doomed to disappoint one part of the fanbase or the other. Hell, even with Armageddon I thought it was ludicrous that Yarrick was still fighting at all, given at that point he was basically a historical character and even with handwavium "re-juve" therapy, it stretched my suspension of disbelief. But Armageddon was much more appropriate in scale for a worldwide campaign, and it being a whole system with a rich history (having the first war be chaos focused, etc) meant it was not hard to justify involvement from a lot of factions.

Medusa V or whatever it was didn't manage that as well, but I still thought it was a better idea for a campaign than the 13th Black Crusade and the Storm of Chaos in Fantasy. It really felt like they couldn't come back from that stuff.

I think narrative events are a cool idea, but players have to keep things in perspective. These things should not be status quo altering events but just a spur for playing interesting games and getting excited about the games you are playing in a different way, maybe making some themed terrain or forces and using it as inspiration for narratives of their own. Expecting the current "writing staff" at GW to make something satisfying out of it and tell you a story will never be as good as what you can make yourself with your friends.

The Eye of Terror campaign wasn't going to break the setting. It just meant the forces of Chaos had broken out of the Eye and established a more permanent large scale foothold outside of the Eye, instead of being bottled up in there. It didn't mean suddenly Abaddon was on Terra. An Imperium on the back foot, with Chaos roaming freely...sounds an awful lot like 8th edition.

Medusa V was smaller scale but its failing was trying to concoct reasons why every faction in the galaxy should suddenly show up at the same time to the same place. Far better instead to have multiple mini-campaigns pitting smaller factions against each other. If the Imperium has to be involved, maybe break up their monolithic player base by having different Imperial factions have differing (mutually exclusive) objectives, in order to give the other side a fighting chance. That was where Armageddon 3 failed: It was Imperium vs. Orks basically, and the sheer number of Imperial players swamped everyone in the results and it was a foregone conclusion. So a campaign system must take into account player numbers and allow the less numerous side a fighting chance if there is to be any semblance of a suspenseful conflict.

With the state of 40K being so stacked in favour of Imperial players for so long, I think it can only really be "everyone vs. Imperium" for campaigns. But I think that is perfectly possible to do! The Galaxy is absolutely massive, take a cluster of star systems, an area of galactic space and go to town. But the stakes are just that system.

I would disagree about the 13th Crusade. In the background it had been built up of one of several potential Imperium ending events, and it was retconned into just being a major tactical victory for Chaos in the Long War. I preferred the first version, and to me the implementation of the second version is pretty lacking.

In the White Dwarf article by Andy Chambers before the Eye of Terror campaign, it was never hyped up as Imperium ending. It was supposed to set the tone of the next edition. Andy Chambers wrote that a Chaos victory would have meant a darker tone with the Imperium anxious and despairing that Abaddon was out roaming freely out of the Eye.

Then GW backed away from following through on the results. Instead they hyped up the 13th Black Crusade, but had written themselves into a corner.

The current situation is not too dissimilar from Andy Chambers' original article. Abaddon can break out of the Eye but never reach Terra, while other Chaos forces set up their own mini-empires.

40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

Ultimately, that is subjective. If I accepted the new background (I don't, I will be using the background I think is cool instead) it would damage my enjoyment of the game. Going forward I will not be engaging with the novels and so on based on this new material. I dunno if that counts as "ruining" it, I don't have a very strong emotional reaction to any of this because I have easy options for ignoring the stuff I do not like. But you think it is fine, I don't and that is the way it is. But I don't think telling me that "Guilliman coming back does not change things" is a fair representation of the situation.

Your sector can be isolated by warp storms, on the other side of the Great Rift. Life can continue as before. News of Guilliman might not even reach there at all.

 Da Boss wrote:
I suppose it would be possible to do both, and have various different settings at different time periods (Heresy, Age of Apostasy, M40, M41, post death of the Emperor). I would like that a lot.

But the way it is currently done with the focus on a small number of super heroic characters makes the universe seem very small to me, small and limited and without space for my own protagonists and so on.

agreed.
plus the storyline is ... not interesting.
too many retcons and counter-intuitive affiliations (eldar allies with dark eldar, wtf?).
as you note, too much hero-hammer tunnel vision.

setting trumps storyline.

but, storyline is how GW aims to make old models obsolete
and new models necessary... else hobbyists are supposed to feel left behind I guess.

Hasbro-hammer will ultimately leave serious hobbyists behind
as marines become Gundam models
and the game itself becomes Warhammer the Gathering.

(shopping)list building is the new GW business model.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
Ultimately, that is subjective. If I accepted the new background (I don't, I will be using the background I think is cool instead) it would damage my enjoyment of the game. Going forward I will not be engaging with the novels and so on based on this new material. I dunno if that counts as "ruining" it, I don't have a very strong emotional reaction to any of this because I have easy options for ignoring the stuff I do not like. But you think it is fine, I don't and that is the way it is. But I don't think telling me that "Guilliman coming back does not change things" is a fair representation of the situation.

No it definitely signals a change.

(shopping)list building is the now the official core hobby routine.

painting? converting? forging the narrative? not so much...

I preferred 40k as a sandbox, not a story in motion. That's all I can really say without going into a negative rant. I'm not even sure I have the mental energy at the moment to get into it.

 Thargrim wrote:
I preferred 40k as a sandbox, not a story in motion. That's all I can really say without going into a negative rant. I'm not even sure I have the mental energy at the moment to get into it.

absolutely this^^

One more aredent voice for the "setting>storyline" side.

Iracundus wrote:
That's a very Marine and Imperium centric view. There are other factions in the universe that weren't active until the last 254 years before the end of M41. Not every faction has millenia to play around with.

Tau only recently came on the scene. Tyranids were not present before Tyran. Necrons were mostly inactive prior to Sanctuary 101.

Retcon my friend, that's what retcons are for. Tyranids arriving 1000 years before the end of M.41 is fine and nobody will care. Same with Sanctuary 101 happening earlier. Only Tau have been a young new force as an important part of their background.

Iracundus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

Having played for 20 years, I am grateful for the advance in storyline.

To me, advancing the storyline just changes the setting to something new. We now play in a setting a hundred (?) years or so in the future from the previous setting. Really, not much of the setting has changed. Imperium still on the ropes, Chaos ascending, Necrons waking up, the Nids are advancing further into the Galaxy, Orks are still Orkin’ around.

In terms of setting, the themes remain the same. Just a little bit of room to change things. Cawl lets the techno-sorcery of innovation happen as an “advance” rather than “it was always like this, we just never talked about it before...” that feels like even more ham-fisted after the 10th unit is introduced that way.

I like not knowing where the story advances to, rather than having the same “setting” with all the limitations that go along with that.

pm713 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

don't run Primaris. it's really that simple. seriously it's not rocket science, you are no more obligated to run Primaris Space Wolves then you are to run Thudnerwolf, Cavalry, Wulfen, or any of the other elements of space wolves you might not like.

pm713 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

Do you own the entire Space Wolves Chapter, and must compulsively have it accurate to the most recent point in the timeline?

I'm assuming not, so there's nothing that forces you into having Primaris if you don't want them. Either your Space Wolves force simply has no Primaris because it's made up of elements of the Chapter who aren't Primaris, or it's a force from before Primaris Marines were a thing.

I have the full Ultramarines 2nd Company, armed accurately to the company organisation page in the 5th edition Codex. Just because the current 2nd Company has Primaris in it now doesn't mean mine is invalid, because if I'm using it, it's for something pre-Gathering Storm.

As always, if you don't like the current setting, go and set your narratives in a part of the setting you prefer.

BrianDavion wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

don't run Primaris. it's really that simple. seriously it's not rocket science, you are no more obligated to run Primaris Space Wolves then you are to run Thudnerwolf, Cavalry, Wulfen, or any of the other elements of space wolves you might not like.

But I am forced into GW deciding that everyone in the Chapter has Primaris somewhere and that new content is going to have an emphasis on Primaris.

pm713 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

pm713 wrote:
What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

don't run Primaris. it's really that simple. seriously it's not rocket science, you are no more obligated to run Primaris Space Wolves then you are to run Thudnerwolf, Cavalry, Wulfen, or any of the other elements of space wolves you might not like.

But I am forced into GW deciding that everyone in the Chapter has Primaris somewhere and that new content is going to have an emphasis on Primaris.

And what about someone who plays that Chapter which GW (for whatever reason) has said "nah, they don't have Primaris Marines"? They can't set their battles in the past, they can't say that their army just happens to have Primaris - this is different from someone who doesn't want Primaris in their army, but GW has said their Chapter uses them.
Your Space Wolves don't need to be from after the Gathering Storm, nor do they *have* to have Primaris in them, any more so than they must have one of every other unit.

If you don't like Primaris, don't use them. It's not like the Space Wolves are exclusively made up of Primaris Marines now.

pm713 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

pm713 wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Vankraken wrote:
40k is best when it focuses on being a setting and leaves the narratives to the players. That said there is some value to "isolated" events that can take place in their own pocket of space where the outcome has no real impact on the universe as a whole. The problem is when you have universe changing events that can ruin on going local narratives or conflict with player head canon that has been developed from playing the game.

Again, things like the 13th Black Crusade didn't ruin things. Whether Abaddon is bottled up in the Eye or has broken out, changes little if one is playing in one's own little sector. Even Guilliman returning doesn't necessarily change things. Sectors can be isolated for many years, particularly after the Great Rift. Don't like Primaris? Guilliman never delivered them to your sector.

About the only thing really changed was relegating Creed to being a historical character. Even Cadia's destruction hasn't changed a whole lot as all the far flug Cadian regiments can establish "Nova Cadia" all over the galaxy.

What about people who play things like Space Wolves? If GW say that the Space Wolves fully embraced Primaris then I'm somewhat stuck on that front. GW aren't great with things like the named Chapters in general either.

don't run Primaris. it's really that simple. seriously it's not rocket science, you are no more obligated to run Primaris Space Wolves then you are to run Thudnerwolf, Cavalry, Wulfen, or any of the other elements of space wolves you might not like.

But I am forced into GW deciding that everyone in the Chapter has Primaris somewhere and that new content is going to have an emphasis on Primaris.

yet again, GW says Space Wolves have TWC and Wulfen, but no one bats an eye if someone decides they dislike TWC and Wulfen and doesn't have any in their space wolves army.
All Vanilla Marines have access to Centurions but no one seems to claim GW demands they have some centurions in their army.
Tactical Marines where until recently the public "face" of Marines, and included in every boxed set with Marines etc. but nothing said you couldn't run an army that consisted of scout squads and predators.
You're no more forced to have Primaris then you are forced to have anything else in the Marine armory.

Honestly I dont mind the progression of the setting beyond eternaly being stuck in M41 999, however I just think the introduction of Cawl and the Primaris maries was poorly done and could have bennefitted allot from a more gradual introduction and more detailed fleshing out of their backstory.

To me 40k has always been a 'setting' and even with the progression of recent events it remains as such. While I agree there has been a little too much focus on big hero characters of late (esp cawl as he appeared out of no where), the galaxy remains a huge place and there is plently of room to delve into whatver conflict you like, even after the events of the great rift. That being said I too would also like some more info on more 'historical' conflicts in 40k, simmilar to things like the macharian crusade.

40k is firmly a static storyline. They said this in the voxcast last week.

Serafimov86 wrote:
40k is firmly a static storyline. They said this in the voxcast last week.

That's just untrue though. They can say it all they like but they're either lying or just ignorant.

Serafimov86 wrote:
40k is firmly a static storyline. They said this in the voxcast last week.

Who is “they”? I don’t listen to any 40k podcasts.

40k is big enough to be both and does it very well.

 vodo40k wrote:
Honestly I dont mind the progression of the setting beyond eternaly being stuck in M41 999, however I just think the introduction of Cawl and the Primaris maries was poorly done and could have bennefitted allot from a more gradual introduction and more detailed fleshing out of their backstory.

To me 40k has always been a 'setting' and even with the progression of recent events it remains as such. While I agree there has been a little too much focus on big hero characters of late (esp cawl as he appeared out of no where), the galaxy remains a huge place and there is plently of room to delve into whatver conflict you like, even after the events of the great rift. That being said I too would also like some more info on more 'historical' conflicts in 40k, simmilar to things like the macharian crusade.

GW has, as a general rule, not played out and hinted at stuff, they've introduced new stuff and then fleshed it out. that's their MO.