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As the title says. Fluff seems to be based largely on how the author interprets it. Tabletop not so much.

An example

In any given novel, a space marine can waltz straight up to a mob of guardsmen over a long distance while they fire at him with lasguns, and almost always kill them all without a scratch.

In any given tabletop game, If I space marine starts from 24'' away, and moves toward a full squad (9 troops 1 sergeant) while always rolling 6 on the attack move...

If he goes first, on average he will take (.99) one wound and die.
If he goes second, on average he will take (1.53) one wound and die.

So in regards to the tabletop game, rushing into a group of soldiers spraying you with weapon fire doesn't seem like the best move to make while you're by yourself. I find that to be a bit more believable than the fluff would have me believe.

So which do you prefer in regards to "realism"

On another note regarding the recently released space marine game, to me easy mode should be called fluff mode and hard be called tabletop.

Tabletop.

The fluff on Marines uberness has been creeping up year by year.

They are uber. Yes we get that. They are not THAT uber

Easy mode- Marinegasm mode
Hard Mode- Fluff mode (he still owns the whole game if you're any good )
Non-existent mode where he dies rather quickly- Realistic mode...

Neither.

Deathwatch, the RPG, is more realistic, it gets into greater detail than either the Fluff or the tabletop game.

Tabeltop.

Tabletop marines are still very much superhuman powerhouses. In fluff, they vary wildly from being barely better than guardsmen against many foes to being patently ridiculous (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) and usually are far more powerful than they have any right to be even assuming genetically engineered superhuman bodies and power armor (e.g. 6000 CSM's being considered more than powerful enough to take a world defended by tens of billions of experienced, well equipped and entrenched guardsmen with extensive anti-orbital defenses...)


On the Tabeltop the Space Marines are superhuman heroes that remain believable. The fluff all too often exaggerates them to nauseating levels of superiority, and is rarely consistent.

DeathReaper wrote:Neither.

Deathwatch, the RPG, is more realistic, it gets into greater detail than either the Fluff or the tabletop game.

Deathwatch is to Space Marines as 300 is to Sparta, especially pre-Errata Also remember that Deathwatch Marines are proven veterans with significantly more access to powerful weaponry than most Space Marines.

Vaktathi wrote: *snip* (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) *snip*

Huh?

When?

They kill thousands of Orks...

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: *snip* (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) *snip*

Huh?

When?

They kill thousands of Orks...

They fight the Dark Eldar in that city and there's a part where 3 of them kill 50 Dark Eldar in about 10 seconds. Then the Dark Eldar retreat into their single squad and they kill roughly 1000. I just read it about a month ago and wasn't impressed.

The fluff changes too much to really get a "realistic" portrayal down. Depending on the author and the context of the story, power armor might be enough to withstand anything short of a nuclear warhead, or it will just crumple to a strong punch. Guardsmen could be either well trained, efficient troops like SAS or Rangers, or they could be a bunch of bumbling oafs who fall onto their bayonets. It's best to view most fluff as interpreted through various sources - secondhand accounts, stories exaggerated with time, and details fudged with bad memory. The tabletop is too limited in scale (IE - strength only being 1-10, working on a D6 chart, etc) to accurately gauge things realistically. There's no way a guardsman who's charging near Iron Hand Straken is as strong as a Space Marine or charging Ork. If my gun (lasgun) only did as much damage as my bare hands (strength 3) I don't think I'd use my gun all that often.

It all serves as a framework for the narrative, but little is 1:1 here.

Brother SRM wrote:

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: *snip* (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) *snip*

Huh?

When?

They kill thousands of Orks...

They fight the Dark Eldar in that city and there's a part where 3 of them kill 50 Dark Eldar in about 10 seconds. Then the Dark Eldar retreat into their single squad and they kill roughly 1000. I just read it about a month ago and wasn't impressed.

Hmmm, i definitely dont remember there being any numbers mentioned.....i remember the 3 vs 50, but that seemed OK to me, they were inside and confined to a couple of corridors after all (i always think thats a bad way to be against a Bolter, i know i would sure as hell want a lot of jinking room if someone was firing one at me...)

But i dont remmeber the 1000 part at all....which, for me, is very odd.

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: *snip* (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) *snip*

Huh?

When?

They kill thousands of Orks...

I don't have the book in front of me, but it's roughly in the middle of the book, when they deploy to the world where the IG is fighting the DE, and the Iron Snakes arrive to drive the DE out of a city and the protagonists squad is holding the rear exit. I don't have a page number as I'm at work, but if you've got the book, re-read that story they state flat out that they killed "a thousand and more " or something very similar.

Vaktathi wrote:

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: *snip* (lol brothers of the snake, 10 marines killing thousands of Dark Eldar...) *snip*

Huh?

When?

They kill thousands of Orks...

I don't have the book in front of me, but it's roughly in the middle of the book, when they deploy to the world where the IG is fighting the DE, and the Iron Snakes arrive to drive the DE out of a city and the protagonists squad is holding the rear exit. I don't have a page number as I'm at work, but if you've got the book, re-read that story they state flat out that they killed "a thousand and more " or something very similar.

OOOOOOOOHHHHH!!!

TY Vakathi, and my apologies Brother SRM, i was definitely thinking of the end of the book...

In which case, yes, that bit is waaaay OTT.

I have to agree with Brother SRM on this one. It depends on what fluff your reading.

I typically find the fluff to be sometimes more realistic than the tabletop and othertimes the tabletop more realistic than the fluff. It depends on the situation.

Example Tabletop: (This actually happened to me back in 4th) I had a group of 5 Grey Knight Terminators charge an Ork Warboss and a group of boyz. The Warboss had an attack Squig (from the old Ork Codex) my opponent hits and wounds with the "free Squiq attack" and I fail my armor save. Now realistically unless my Grey Knight Terminator was not wearing a helmet and was high on Marijuana, and maybe drunk, and wasn't paying attention to the Warboss MAYBE he could be killed by the attack Squiq, but I think realistically it wouldn't happen.

Example Fluff: In any book or even Codex I have read it all depends on who the author is depicting. If its a Space Marine Codex the Space Marines are going to be UBER AWESOME. If its a book about the Imperial Guard then the Imperial Guard are going to be seen killing Space Marines and Carnifexes by the barrelfull.

So in the two examples above I can't really say which one is more realistic. I do have to say that anything written by Dan Abnett is pretty darn realistic and is the best written fluff/novels in the 40K universe .

Sanguinis wrote:I do have to say that anything written by Dan Abnett is pretty darn realistic and is the best written fluff/novels in the 40K universe .

Aside from Brothers of the Snake

Vaktathi wrote:

Sanguinis wrote:I do have to say that anything written by Dan Abnett is pretty darn realistic and is the best written fluff/novels in the 40K universe .

Aside from Brothers of the Snake

I was just thinking that....

However, it is pretty much the only fluff he has written (that i know of) that isnt spot on correct.

Neither it's only a game, I play it for fun and I enjoy it but no aspect of it is realistic!

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:

Sanguinis wrote:

I do have to say that anything written by Dan Abnett is pretty darn realistic and is the best written fluff/novels in the 40K universe .

Aside from Brothers of the Snake

I was just thinking that....

However, it is pretty much the only fluff he has written (that i know of) that isnt spot on correct.

I've never read Brothers of the Snake, is it really that bad? I love Dan Abnett as a writer and I think all his stuff is awesome but I can believe that some of it isn't. I have read Eisenhorne (OMG AMAZING) and Guants Ghosts (really good) and Titanicus (Eh this could have been better).

Lol, realism never, ever enters my mind with either the fluff or tabletop games.

Both are equally ludicrous...

Revenent Reiko wrote:

Vaktathi wrote:

Sanguinis wrote:I do have to say that anything written by Dan Abnett is pretty darn realistic and is the best written fluff/novels in the 40K universe .

Aside from Brothers of the Snake

I was just thinking that....

However, it is pretty much the only fluff he has written (that i know of) that isnt spot on correct.

I actually found Brothers of the Snake to be one of the better SM novels out there, as it showed the marines as slightly more human than power-armored killing machines... And one scene in the book shouldn't mean that the entire thing is "OTT", besides without knowing how awesome the DE they were facing were, we can't really know how possible it would be for a squad to wipe out over 1000 (they may have been from the Cabal of the Neighborhood Rejects after all).



The thing that bugs me in fluff isn't so much the OTT aspect of the "hero" of the story, it's when an author can't keep things straight (glaring at you Goto).. I mean, a terminator riding around inside a Land Raider AND a Razorback (as if the two are interchangeable), in the same battle, with some pukey kid who was "brave" enough to kill someone, and impress said terminator.

As for tabletop, I think it comes down to situation. In one game, we had a squad of Firewarriors kill an Ork Warboss AND a Chaos Terminator Lord... in CC. In the books and fluff, we *know* that this cannot happen... EVER!! but yet I witnessed this feat (in defense of the Ork, he DID lose all but one wound in shooting attacks... and the CSM Lord was notorious in our group for being extremely impotent, and being killed by his own weapons, etc.)

I thought the apostrophe would have been enough to dissuade people from bringing up that the game is not real, guess I should have put "inb4 game isn't real".

Anyways, the books focused mainly on space marines I've read is the ultramarines omnibus (suprisingly not that bad) and the first ten or so chapters of soul eaters (stupid stupid book). I remember the omnibus has a few parts about how the main character just cleaved through chaos marines (that damned plot armor), but I was happy to read how other marines with him died very quickly.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:

I actually found Brothers of the Snake to be one of the better SM novels out there, as it showed the marines as slightly more human than power-armored killing machines... And one scene in the book shouldn't mean that the entire thing is "OTT", besides without knowing how awesome the DE they were facing were, we can't really know how possible it would be for a squad to wipe out over 1000 (they may have been from the Cabal of the Neighborhood Rejects after all).

There was a lot of other stuff about the book. Sending 1 Space Marine to deal with a crashed DE vessel of potentially hundreds, or at least dozens of well armed DE raiders with weapons beyond the technology of the Imperium not only is disproportionate to the SM's capabilities, but against the concept of the SM's which is to act as organized groups, they aren't solo warriors. Then there was the whole kraken hunting thing which would be like single space marines hunting Carnifex's, except at sea, at least given the krakens descriptions in the book. Then of course there's the whole bit about the SM's just showing up and automatically taking command of IG troops and having their officers arrested. SM's don't have that authority, they lost it with the Codex reformation specifically so they couldn't command large conventional forces anymore.

Abnett did fine character work, but that doesn't mean it still can't be woefully overdone and a poor reflection of 40k lore.

As for tabletop, I think it comes down to situation. In one game, we had a squad of Firewarriors kill an Ork Warboss AND a Chaos Terminator Lord... in CC. In the books and fluff, we *know* that this cannot happen... EVER!! but yet I witnessed this feat (in defense of the Ork, he DID lose all but one wound in shooting attacks... and the CSM Lord was notorious in our group for being extremely impotent, and being killed by his own weapons, etc.)

It's not that they *can't* happen, it's that they aren't likely. Chaos Lord SoAndSo may have simply pissed off the Dark Gods allowing his weak and impotent enemies the opportunity to get in a vital strike or bring their weapons to bear.

Vaktathi wrote: There was a lot of other stuff about the book. Sending 1 Space Marine to deal with a crashed DE vessel of potentially hundreds, or at least dozens of well armed DE raiders with weapons beyond the technology of the Imperium not only is disproportionate to the SM's capabilities, but against the concept of the SM's which is to act as organized groups, they aren't solo warriors. Then there was the whole kraken hunting thing which would be like single space marines hunting Carnifex's, except at sea, at least given the krakens descriptions in the book. Then of course there's the whole bit about the SM's just showing up and automatically taking command of IG troops and having their officers arrested. SM's don't have that authority, they lost it with the Codex reformation specifically so they couldn't command large conventional forces anymore.

Abnett did fine character work, but that doesn't mean it still can't be woefully overdone and a poor reflection of 40k lore.

Part of the solo thing is a part of initiation into the ranks of the Iron Snakes, since they expressly do not use scouts. Then there is the whole "generic" distress signal, and since he was sent to assess the situation, he would easily have seen if the ship were intact that he would have called in more support. Either way, arguing the "reality" of the books, or table top makes about as much sense as the Harry Potter fans doing the same..


I think part of the thing is, when I look at the "reality" behind the fluff, I put on some rose tinted glasses and see it largely as propaganda geared to make the faction in question look good, and as such the OTT will come out in most every instance. I do think that it is possible to see reality as defined by the "realities" of the system... Basically, it's not real, in no way can be but when held within it's own set of rules, can be seen as being realistic. Sort of how a lightsaber just doesn't work in Star Trek or Star Gate, but works just great in Star Wars.

Ensis Ferrae wrote:

Vaktathi wrote: There was a lot of other stuff about the book. Sending 1 Space Marine to deal with a crashed DE vessel of potentially hundreds, or at least dozens of well armed DE raiders with weapons beyond the technology of the Imperium not only is disproportionate to the SM's capabilities, but against the concept of the SM's which is to act as organized groups, they aren't solo warriors. Then there was the whole kraken hunting thing which would be like single space marines hunting Carnifex's, except at sea, at least given the krakens descriptions in the book. Then of course there's the whole bit about the SM's just showing up and automatically taking command of IG troops and having their officers arrested. SM's don't have that authority, they lost it with the Codex reformation specifically so they couldn't command large conventional forces anymore.

Abnett did fine character work, but that doesn't mean it still can't be woefully overdone and a poor reflection of 40k lore.

Part of the solo thing is a part of initiation into the ranks of the Iron Snakes, since they expressly do not use scouts. Then there is the whole "generic" distress signal, and since he was sent to assess the situation, he would easily have seen if the ship were intact that he would have called in more support. Either way, arguing the "reality" of the books, or table top makes about as much sense as the Harry Potter fans doing the same..


I think part of the thing is, when I look at the "reality" behind the fluff, I put on some rose tinted glasses and see it largely as propaganda geared to make the faction in question look good, and as such the OTT will come out in most every instance. I do think that it is possible to see reality as defined by the "realities" of the system... Basically, it's not real, in no way can be but when held within it's own set of rules, can be seen as being realistic. Sort of how a lightsaber just doesn't work in Star Trek or Star Gate, but works just great in Star Wars.

So to put an entire world in jeopardy just as an initiation rite...? *shakes head* that goes against the SM creed as well IMO.

And if there were more than he could handle... well, he explicitly states that it would take years for another response, so the inititate being 'tested' would be lost...as would the entire world....just becuase they sent one guy not 10 (who would have been on the Cruiser/Battle Barge that dropped him off), i dont think so.

But again, its the only one of Abnetts books that i have even a slight dislike for, and thats because of scale. Scale it all down even a little bit and it would be absolutely fine. Saying that, the character of the Iron Snakes is shown very well (very much like Sallies IMO) and really shows the humanity of the SMs, and how they strive against the very greatest odds.

@Sanguinius:

Read Ravenor as well...

BotS isnt that bad, its (as i said above), a question of scale thats not quite right.

Necroshea wrote:So which do you prefer in regards to "realism"

If I'd have to choose, then I would go for the TT. Whilst its system uses very abstracted values, they are still a solid and consistent indicator, and the TT isn't focused on any army in particular. Furthermore, studio fluff is, in the end, constructed from this system, not the other way around. As an example, the 2E Codex Angels of Death even features an entire page describing power armour and the protection it offers, actually backing up the chance even a simple lasgun has to hurt a Marine in the TT.

Novels, P&Ps (see below) and computer games, on the other hand, tend to "favour" individual groups by granting them plot armour and hero bonus, or generally making them more badass in the hopes of generating a bigger feeling of "epicness" in the customer who just wants to see his favorite faction kick some ass.

DeathReaper wrote:Deathwatch, the RPG, is more realistic, it gets into greater detail than either the Fluff or the tabletop game.

Details do not equal realism. Naked Space Marines having a bigger damage soak than the armour they wear, their fist punches doing more damage than other people's bolters, and the capacity to take plasma rounds to the face without flinching doesn't sound realistic to me at all. The "Horde" rules in particular are the anathema of realism. That book is full of nifty "special rules" making player character Marines so uber that they can solo even Daemon Princes in a single turn - which actually was a rather frequent complaint on the FFG forums until the errata came out. Now it'll take at least the whole team to down that Daemon Prince in a single round...
There's a reason its writers likened it to movies like "300". Deathwatch isn't about realism, it's about heroism.

Same goes for the Space Marine computer game. Apart from the previously unseen weapons that somehow popped up over there and yet another Captain of the 2nd Company (explained away by the devs posting it just plays in a "parallel timeline"): no, not even the mighty Space Marines will miraculously regenerate their health by gutting their enemies with a chainsword. If you want to play it "fluffy", try completing the game without even a single Execution move.

Lynata wrote:try completing the game without even a single Execution move.

That should have been an achievement.