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 Tyzarion_Kronius wrote:
So having watched Baldemort's series on Rogal Dorn, it got me really excited for the idea that all loyalist Primarchs will now soon return along with a cure for the Emperor's affliction bringing him back to the humanity. And then they would start succeeding on building the future the Emperor was building ten thousand years before and slowly turning around the ship that is the IoM achieving the Emperor's goals and victory for mankind and a glorious future for mankind as well.

How would you feel if this happened?

Not a huge fan - but then its not like the old versions of 40k disapears any more than 3025 Battletech vanished when the Clans arrived or the Jihad happened which to me is the nearest comparision to the changes in 40k over the last few years. Horus Heresy rumbles on as well. Same with the Old World - its live and well with Total war and other computer games and the 4th ed RPG as much as the older tabletop and rpg games - even the odd bit from GW itself - maybe.

The current setting is just as dark, there are a few faint rays of hope by the return of RG but he, like the Impreium itself is being drowned in the "bad things happening".

Any more large scale change will be about selling models - which is GW's buisiness - alot of them I likely won;t like some I will and will buy. Same with the novels - been enjoying quite a few - with the notable exception of Mephiston which was awful.

I have compared Guilliman to a torch before, shining apparent enlightenment and rationality in his immediate area temporarily, but the shadows close back in as soon as he leaves. I see the bureaucracy, the Inquisition, and the Ecclesiarchy opposing him, perhaps not directly but indirectly by slowing down his changes, omitting information, shadow proxy struggles etc... They might not even be doing so maliciously (so far nobody has accused him of being a heretic or abomination, AFAIK), but could perhaps rationalize it to themselves as "The Lord Commander is too important to want to know this" or "He has been in stasis for a long time and doesn't know how things are properly done now, which is how we'll keep doing things." After all, he occupies a place in the Imperial theology similar to an archangel, so resistance is likely to be more covert or from simple bureaucratic inertia. He is able to ram things through temporarily through force of will, reputation, administrative skill, and threat of military force, but after he goes off to troubleshoot and put out another fire, people go back to the old ways of doing things.

Guilliman is forced to make compromises such as tolerating the Ecclesiarchy and not making any overt attempts to undermine their religion. He also maybe starts to waver in his own disbelief of the Emperor as a god. The problem ultimately with Guilliman is he is still trying to save the Imperium as a whole, which means he is never able to stay put long enough to enact lasting reform to any area. If he settled for saving only a part of the Imperium he might be able to return things in that local area to a more rational situation, but then he probably would be accused of private empire building. However he is trying to save everything and in that he may be committing the fundamental error of trying to defend everything.

 lcmiracle wrote:

Let's see... back in the day there's a series of DnD campaign called Dragonlance, with every character, every plot twist, every possible move dictated by the eponymous novel series. I guess they thought people would want to have the set-in-stone characters? Guess what, it's now called rail-roading, considered generally a very poor seires of RP modules.

No, the story people did not win; claiming that they had won does not make it so. GW pushed those characters because they are big, expensive models with loads of wounds and immense destructive power on the tabletop -- which is the main part of their business. They know the competitive types would eat them up just to not get shafted in a new Meta.

Yeah, I said very early D&D. Dragonlance is seen by most as a huge (and wildly successful) departure from the old way of doing things, but to be fair it was already gone by that stage. I am talking about the very early days, the first few years.

And the story people did win. 40K is now a story, not a setting. That is victory. Do the story people outnumber the setting people? I have no idea. This thread suggests that on Dakka maybe they do not, but I have no idea about the broader population. I suspect a nailed down story is more popular generally. I prefer a setting.

It wouldn't be a development I would embrace, just like I didn't accept the End Times for Warhammer Fantasy. Headcanon rules supreme at the end of the day, and I much prefer a rich static setting. Still, I would keep half an eye on it as an alternative storyline in case something good is made out of it. Eat the cake and keep it.

I suspect that the Text-To-Speech-Device parody will handle this better as a memorable story than Games Workshop itself would, at the end of the day. I really like TTS, but it's not actual 40k. Both can be savoured in parallell.

Cheers

 Da Boss wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:

Let's see... back in the day there's a series of DnD campaign called Dragonlance, with every character, every plot twist, every possible move dictated by the eponymous novel series. I guess they thought people would want to have the set-in-stone characters? Guess what, it's now called rail-roading, considered generally a very poor seires of RP modules.

No, the story people did not win; claiming that they had won does not make it so. GW pushed those characters because they are big, expensive models with loads of wounds and immense destructive power on the tabletop -- which is the main part of their business. They know the competitive types would eat them up just to not get shafted in a new Meta.

Yeah, I said very early D&D. Dragonlance is seen by most as a huge (and wildly successful) departure from the old way of doing things, but to be fair it was already gone by that stage. I am talking about the very early days, the first few years.

And the story people did win. 40K is now a story, not a setting. That is victory. Do the story people outnumber the setting people? I have no idea. This thread suggests that on Dakka maybe they do not, but I have no idea about the broader population. I suspect a nailed down story is more popular generally. I prefer a setting.

Black library may want it to be a story, but GW has to sell plastic toys. Those toys need a setting to be played in. No, 40K is a setting, not a story.

 Cybtroll wrote:
I would honestly prefer a miniature of Golden Throne rather than one of the (revived or 30k) Emperor in the flesh

You mean this one?

Anyways, I dont really care abot the storyline progressions. One aspect of 40K which I deliberately ignore is most of the lore, especially all Black Library stuff. That's just paperback Rambo comics to me, I keep that ish far away from my 40K thank you very much.

I've always misinterpreted the lore and will continue doing so. There is enough scope in the timeline and geographical dimensions that we can all just make it up as we go along. I can just use the good old "alternate dimensions" excuse for justifying my own take of the lore. And why not - seems like GW is flocking up their own stories, I can't possibly do any worse rolling my own.

One possibly nice aspect regarding the official storyline would be to reintroduce an Imerial Civil War on the galactic scale. That would make coming up with semi-plausible excuses for all these Imperials vs. Imperials battles that are so prevalent on the tabletop much easier.

The best thing would be to get rid of RG by using his life force to keep the emperor going another 1000 years. That very on tracker that the imperium

I have been really hoping that Robbie was an "Eddard Stark" type of character. A hero in a den of evil, destined to either be broken, killed, or used as an example for how stupid the good side is. But he's still alive, so that's out.

 LunarSol wrote:
It just means that humanities enemies will get similarly huge heroes to counter. The traitor primarchs, the Ghazgulls, Silent Kings, etc. War goes on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:

This is quite literally the exact opposite of what 40k used to be. I sound like a broken record, but the whole core concept of the game universe was meant to be the death of (human) heroes and the fall of empire.

Part of the problem with this is that nihilism has a shelf life. People adapt pretty quickly and at this point a lot of people react to that concept with "are we dead yet? No? Alright, carry on I suppose." I think the setting kind of hit the floor as to how bad things could go and still keep going. Like, the death of a trillion worlds would be shrugged off pretty hard. Sometimes, you have to give people something to care about again to remind them there's still something to lose.

Yes, but it's meant to be that setting. If I want one where the heroes win out and a handful of influential individuals save the world I'll watch the Avengers or read any others of the myriad of comic book settings.

I would feel the same way if Judge Dredd suddenly started being respectful of people's feelings or Mega City became anything other than a horrendous, dystopian nightmare of a place to live. Those components are integral to the setting and the actions of characters within it. The '10 minutes to midnight', of loss of hope, of individual heroes dying alone and unremembered, was always the core culture of 40k as a setting. It was *so* grim in fact that there was an element of dark humour in there (which actually stops it from being too depressing, as it taps into our ability to make jokes and satire from the darkest of situations).

But, I suppose a new generation (several in fact) have come in and added their own touches. Rick Priestly, Andy Chambers and others have moved on and been replaced by other creators, who haven't grown up in Thatcher's Britain and for whom the world (and their influences) are a different place. The company and miniature lines have grown exponentially, not least to an international audience, for whom more the subtlety of interactions has been replaced by a far more marketable (and less contentious) 'good vs evil' arrangement.

So I don't think the current direction is surprising at all, and like the OP says it ending with a massive, beautifully designed (but utterly unrecognisable to the originators of the game universe) miniature of the Emperor lies at the end of that road.

I'd love it.....as a nice what if, maybe even a well written fanfic (they do exist).

For the real in game timeline, not really. Although I kind of dig the thought of other primarchs coming back and causing disunity in the imperium although not to the extent of a full on civil war.