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A friend of mine was interested in reading the 40k fluff, but not play the game. I'm wondering where to start him out at? Is there a book that explains how the Emporer rose to power and fully explains the primarchs and such? Is that all covered in the Horus Heresy books? Where should he go after that?

Horus Rising is a good start for anybody as it is mainly all about the great crusade and only sets the scene for the heresy in the loosest sense.

Take him to your FLGS. Show him the armies.
Whichever one he shows the most interest in, tell him about them.
Try not to let him pick Necrons or some other army that isn't very noob-friendly.

Leonus Cohol wrote:Take him to your FLGS. Show him the armies.
Whichever one he shows the most interest in, tell him about them.
Try not to let him pick Necrons or some other army that isn't very noob-friendly.

I'm looking for something that explains the 40k universe rather than link him to a wiki.

@vodo thanks I'll have to suggest that to him!

15 hours, by Mitchel Scanlon. It's a ~100 page novel, very well written, about a conscript sent to the trenches of a backwater planet to fight an Ork Waagh. It doesn't require any background knowledge of 40k to understand. I've got an old dogeared copy I've lent to all of my friends who've expressed interest in the game, and most found it to be a good 'gateway drug' into the 40k universe. Best of all, it's pretty old, so is available from Amazon for only a couple bucks. It's also in an omnibus, I'm not sure which one.

All that being said, it doesn't explain the history of 40k at all: it's more of a snapshot of what 40k is all about, a look into the life of one of the numberless guardsmen serving on any of the millions of battlefields of the 40k galaxy. Life is hard and then you die, so you might as well take an Ork or two down with you.

l0k1 wrote:

Leonus Cohol wrote:Take him to your FLGS. Show him the armies.
Whichever one he shows the most interest in, tell him about them.
Try not to let him pick Necrons or some other army that isn't very noob-friendly.

I'm looking for something that explains the 40k universe rather than link him to a wiki.

@vodo thanks I'll have to suggest that to him!

I have to disagree with that. The Horus Heresy I think needs at least a little bit of fore-knowledge. I read the first three long before I came on this forum, and to be honest I found my knowledge of the backstory extremely limited. After a month on here I knew a lot more, and I really understood the books better then I did before.
My suggestion would be the rulebook. Get him to read the background parts, including the army-specific background entries, it's really the only place that I know of that gives a broad overview of the setting in published form. After that, the codices idea is the next best step in my opinion. He can flick through the beginning parts depending on which army he felt drew his interest in the rulebook. Or, get someone on Dakka to type out a summary, leaving out all the poetic language that might cause confusion.

I always use Ciaphas Cain novels to introduce people to the Warhammer 40k fluff.

The humor makes sure you don't alienate people right from the get go, and it has editor notes that explain things.

Leonus Cohol wrote:Take him to your FLGS. Show him the armies.
Whichever one he shows the most interest in, tell him about them.

This. Also, the core rulebooks of each edition contain a few pages about the general state and "look & feel" of the setting. That should be enough to get your friend started in terms of basics.

Beyond that, 40k really isn't as consistent as some people think (I had to find this out "the hard way"). There are countless individual interpretations of the setting by various game designers and novel writers, all overlapping somewhere but also differing in some detail, so it depends entirely on what source you look at. For example, in my opinion, the Cain books mentioned by Soladrin are the worst thing you could read when you want to get a feeling for the Adepta Sororitas. On the other hand, if you'd prefer Mitchell's version, one would be free to adopt that interpretation as well, of course. GW seems to be fine with or even encourages people to "make the setting their own", so to say. For them, this is part of the hobby.

I was introduced to the setting as a concept by osmosis from hanging around on various message boards, but what really caught my attention was the artwork. After seeing all the vast spaceships and opulent character designs, I found myself hooked and wanted to learn more. I can only speak from my own experience, but maybe just opening a book and looking at the pictures could help.

Lynata's suggestion is a good one. If he is all fired up about reading some background material, I recommend the book Let the Galaxy Burn. It's a compilation of short stories with a huge degree of variety. It showcases a little of all the variety 40k has to offer.

I started myself with one of them space marine anthologies. I had no clue as to what was going on, and I actually thought space wolves were sanctioned werewolf mutants.... but I just got interested enough to keep reading more and more, and now I understand most of the fluff!

My suggestion, start with Space Marines. It's the bread and butter of GW basically. All around interesting for beginners. Giant supersoldiers who can do basically anything and everything! Then if they can try the other races with a relatively good amount of information in tow

My suggestion is find an army they like the look of, use that army's fluff as a gateway. Would work better than some arbitrary background lore that may be important to the setting, but not interesting to them causing them to lose interest.

Then as the other armies come up in the starting one's background, they will branch out to the rest of the lore.

Soladrin wrote:I always use Ciaphas Cain novels to introduce people to the Warhammer 40k fluff.

The humor makes sure you don't alienate people right from the get go, and it has editor notes that explain things.

This, and I might add showing him the artbook they have, It's either on Black library, or the GW website...not sure, I got it, and it's AMAZING

The 40k first book I ever read was Eisenhorn which I must say was an awesome first read. They introduce the concepts slowly from an inquisitors perspective, and you get a good smattering of everything, from heresy to xenos.

I wouldn't start with a book focused on the Inquisition.
The Gaunt's Ghosts series is pretty inviting.
If you don't know anything about 40k, you'll be like Helen Keller in a mosh pit if you start with Horus Rising.
The Ultramarine novels are very good to start with.

I would show him the Rulebook (preferably the big one with lots of pretty pictures) first.
Then show him the Space Marine Codex, then show him the Chaos Codex.
Then show him Eldar then Orks. After that, Tyranids and Tau.
You should probably mention IG, Dark Eldar, and BA/GK/DA/BT/SW codexes.
Don't mention Necrons.

My brother pulled me into this hobby by handing me book one of the Horus Heresy and walking away...

The first line of Horus Rising is about a million times better if you already know the background.
I'd suggest a Cain omnibus, since IG are a pretty basic faction, just regular humans with lasers, and the humor can't hurt. The basic fluff that is on the GW website isn't bad as a basic intro to the various factions.

l0k1 wrote:A friend of mine was interested in reading the 40k fluff, but not play the game. I'm wondering where to start him out at? Is there a book that explains how the Emporer rose to power and fully explains the primarchs and such? Is that all covered in the Horus Heresy books? Where should he go after that?

The horus heresy books are excellent. I would also recommend just reading it all from THE begining through the internet to get a grasp on the whole universe. And by the begining I mean the old ones, C'tan, the necron empire, the rise of the eldar etc etc. Reading all that wont take more than 1-2hours tops and if you read it on say a warhammer 40k wiki you also have the chance to jump to different articles and read about the stuff you really find interesting. I think thats a great starting point if you want to know more about the fluff.

How about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

Definitely 100% you should hook him up with a codex of whatever faction he seems interested in (probably vanilla marines, sadly, but whatever it takes to hook another one...)

The codices are literally designed to sell the army. Just tell him it's a good overview of the backstory and he should read through it before he launches into novels. Before you know it, he'll be all like "these guys kill everything, and the models are nuts, and what's up with these rules, point me where to hand over my wallet!"

Back in high school (2nd Edition) my friends and I used to joke that it was dangerous reading someone else's codex. By the time you were done, you'd be ready to drop even more money on another army. I'm glad they've brought the codices back to their old fluff-filled goodness, even if the writing is substantially more over the top than it used to be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If that doesn't fly, or if he gets past the codex and wants some actual "literature", I would vote the Gaunt's Ghosts series. They're very well written, with relate-able human characters, and basically rely on people's general knowledge of WWI/WWII-esque warfare while slowly introducing elements of the 40k setting.

forruner_mercy wrote:How about this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MeVxKZBOfM

^ This. +1

Starting out the lore with BL books is a bad idea as they cover a very specific topic in the wider setting of the 40k Galaxy.

The best bets are to read the fluff part of the latest rulebook then move onto Lexicanum/codices.

Honestly, read the rule book fluff section. A very good and condense history of the 40k universe.

horus heresy books explain a lot of the history actually. the fluff section of the rulebook also helped fill in some of the blanks the horus heresy books didnt fill in.

Ciaphas Cain is definitely a good place to start. So is Dawn of War (the original). Also, have your friend read Dune (The first one for sure, and maybe the next three. After that it gets REALLY weird.) and the original Foundation trilogy, at the very least, and also maybe some 2000AD comics, because 40k draws quite heavily from all those.

Stormfather wrote:15 hours, by Mitchel Scanlon. It's a ~100 page novel, very well written, about a conscript sent to the trenches of a backwater planet to fight an Ork Waagh. It doesn't require any background knowledge of 40k to understand. I've got an old dogeared copy I've lent to all of my friends who've expressed interest in the game, and most found it to be a good 'gateway drug' into the 40k universe. Best of all, it's pretty old, so is available from Amazon for only a couple bucks. It's also in an omnibus, I'm not sure which one.

All that being said, it doesn't explain the history of 40k at all: it's more of a snapshot of what 40k is all about, a look into the life of one of the numberless guardsmen serving on any of the millions of battlefields of the 40k galaxy. Life is hard and then you die, so you might as well take an Ork or two down with you.

This was my first 40k book its a very good intro into the universe and if your friend is into more character development I'd go with the gaunts ghost novels. I,d stay away from space marines at first they can be so robot like and the necron books suck

bombboy1252 wrote:

Soladrin wrote:I always use Ciaphas Cain novels to introduce people to the Warhammer 40k fluff.

The humor makes sure you don't alienate people right from the get go, and it has editor notes that explain things.

This, and I might add showing him the artbook they have, It's either on Black library, or the GW website...not sure, I got it, and it's AMAZING

Which art book cuz theirs a few. I love 40k art.

The best place to start is the 40K rule book. Not only does it have the events after the Horus Heresy, but slowly introduces how the Imperium came into being and some snap shots of the most major events in the Imperiums life (The Tyrannic Wars, Armageddon, the Black Crusades, The Damocleas Gulf etc) and it also has short histories of all the major armies in the game (though skip the Necrons because that's not what they do... anymore).

If he shows an interest in an army, guide him to a Codex and let him read a couple excerpts. If he seems interested in Space Marines, chuck the Horus Heresy Novels in his direction. If its Guard, Gaunts Ghosts or Cain. If its the shadowy Inquisition; Eisenhorn and Ravernor, etc.

Stormfather wrote:15 hours, by Mitchel Scanlon. It's a ~100 page novel, very well written, about a conscript sent to the trenches of a backwater planet to fight an Ork Waagh. It doesn't require any background knowledge of 40k to understand. I've got an old dogeared copy I've lent to all of my friends who've expressed interest in the game, and most found it to be a good 'gateway drug' into the 40k universe. Best of all, it's pretty old, so is available from Amazon for only a couple bucks. It's also in an omnibus, I'm not sure which one.

All that being said, it doesn't explain the history of 40k at all: it's more of a snapshot of what 40k is all about, a look into the life of one of the numberless guardsmen serving on any of the millions of battlefields of the 40k galaxy. Life is hard and then you die, so you might as well take an Ork or two down with you.

I was going to suggest this too. Great book. Scourge of the Heretic is pretty good. There's also the Eisenhorn Trilogy.