Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

During a game of Epic last night , my opponant suggested to me that GW came up with the idea for the Heresy in order to explain why Space Marine (the Epic Scale game) had marines fighting each other..
What do you think of that?

What predated what? Was Horus Heresy always there in the background? Or did the game come first. Because if they hadn't gone into any of the background before they made that game, then possibly. But I always thought the whole heresy deal was basically a constant in 40k, from the get go

I dunno what came first....I hoped someone else would..

I had heard a similar thing;
The heresy was mentioned but never really expanded upon until they needed a reason for their expensive new titans to fight each other.

No idea if thats true /shrug.

Son_Of _Deddog wrote: During a game of Epic last night , my opponant suggested to me that GW came up with the idea for the Heresy in order to explain why Space Marine (the Epic Scale game) had marines fighting each other..
What do you think of that?

Yes, that's more or less correct.

The HH had been mentioned in passing earlier, with no real indication of what it was about.

GW were developing the first Epic scale games and pretty much spent all their R & D budget on the plastic Imperial titans and didn't want to waste what they'd done.

So they gleefully grabbed upon the idea of the HH and the rest is....

History, or should I say Heresy?

I didn't know the Epic scale game had been around that long.

Adeptus Titanicus came out in 1988, first edition Space Marine a year after..

iirc, there was no mention of the Heresy in Rogue Trader. The closest that it got was some artwork depicting some renegade non-spikey marines. My recollection is that the first mention of the Heresy within material that could be used in 40K was the first Realms of Chaos book, Slaves to Darkness.

Epic came out at about the same time, iirc.

Correct, neither the the Heresy the Traitor Marines nor indeed the Primarchs were mentioned in Rogue Trader. I can recall being told back in the 1990s that the Heresy background was indeed created to cut costs, allowing as it did for the same masters and moulds to be used for both sides in Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine 1st Ed.

Unless my memory is at fault, the original Space Marine Legions weren't initially all named either in Space Marine or in the Realm of Chaos books. The first full list of the Traitors that I can recall was part of a White Dwarf article for Space Hulk (at which point the Word Bearers and Night Lords both worshipped Khorne). Likewise, I don't believe the Raven Guard or Iron Hands were actually named until much later (end of Rogue Trader/beginning of 2nd Ed.).

So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

...that's basically how company whose entire business model is predicated on creating a fictitious game and selling models operates


Automatically Appended Next Post:
...that's basically how company whose entire business model is predicated on creating a fictitious game and selling models operates

BrainDeleted wrote:So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

Don't get me wrong, I love GW stuff.. but they would stuff, mount and sell their grandmothers if it would make money

They'd just carve an 8 pointed star on it and call it good

chunky_baby wrote:

BrainDeleted wrote:So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

Don't get me wrong, I love GW stuff.. but they would stuff, mount and sell their grandmothers if it would make money

They'd just carve an 8 pointed star on it and call it good

Well the imperator titans have to come from somewhere

This is true.

BrainDeleted wrote:So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

I think that's a little harsh...All that happened was they expanded on something that existed already so they could market a game of marine v marine warfare.....

GW's primary business is and always has been selling plastic models. The game is entirely secondary, and the fluff's a distant third.

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:

BrainDeleted wrote:So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

I think that's a little harsh...All that happened was they expanded on something that existed already so they could market a game of marine v marine warfare.....

I think it's pretty interesting in light of the Mantic thread, and the amount of flak the company is receiving for re-using parts of the KoW sprues for their Warpath range. The problem is when companies start, their resources are limited and they must try and make do with what they can.

Selling some figures, generate some revenue to put back into sculpting and new concepts, and the really original stuff will come later.

Seaward wrote:GW's primary business is and always has been selling plastic models. The game is entirely secondary, and the fluff's a distant third.

While I think this might be true now, in the late 80's/early 90's GW has a huge surge of creativity-Gorkamorka, Mordenheim, Necromunda,Epic...It was all about creating new, interesting games then. They had much less money to develop games but-ironically- developed more games then than now, when they have a much bigger budget.

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:

Seaward wrote:GW's primary business is and always has been selling plastic models. The game is entirely secondary, and the fluff's a distant third.

While I think this might be true now, in the late 80's/early 90's GW has a huge surge of creativity-Gorkamorka, Mordenheim, Necromunda,Epic...It was all about creating new, interesting games then. They had much less money to develop games but-ironically- developed more games then than now, when they have a much bigger budget.

The games exist to sell the models. They always have. They've tried different strategies to get people to buy more - including more games - at various times in their history.

I really think all this GW bashing is way out of line. Workshop basically decided rather than to make lots of games that were ok, but had lots of faults and couldn't be supported with all the miniatures they make rules for (which EVERYONE used to complain about) they would concentrate on their core games and do them properly. I think they have achieved this very well - certainly fantasy and 40k, which I play, are VERY good games, with a virtually full model range. Clearly, the fluff is their to explain it all and, in the early days, they were still working it all out. Remember, this all started out of someone's flat in Nottingham! Their number one goal, as a business, is to make money for their shareholders. Their method of doing that is to make good games, supported by fantastic models. Nobody MAKES you buy their stuff - you buy it cause you love it. Games like Necromunda, Gorkamorka etc were brilliant but always broken. And people complained, and no-one bought the models after the first 10. The rules are still around, you can still play them, but they're not economically viable to support. If you were in charge of MacDonald's, and no-one bought Big Macs, would you keep making them just because a few fans gave you grief about it? Seaward's comments about selling toys first, game second, fluff third is completely true - they don't sit in their ivory towers at head office and think, how can we enrich the lives of people all over the world. They're in it to make money, like everybody else. And as long as they keep making money, they'll keep making new toy soldiers for us to play with.

I'm not bashing anyone. All I said was that GW didn't alsway exist to sell models, and it was harsh to say so. I agree that saying GW manipulate stuff to make money is harsh. s I have already said, all they did was expand on a bit of fluff to help explain Epic..thats all..That said, it has turned into a bit of a slagfest..

Games Workshop originally existed to sell games. Hence the name. Amongst other things they picked up a bunch of licences for 2000AD characters, hence I've got original versions of their Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd board games, along with more esoteric stuff, such as an awesome Dracula hunting game (recently re-released by Fantasy Flight) and Railway Rivals, the best railway building/racing game ever made, bar none (also if you find Chaos Marauders, go buy it).

I would also challenge that fluff has always been a secondary concern. Remember that the founding owners of the company also wrote the Fighting Fantasy books as well as being avid gamers themselves. GW definately started as a gaming company for gamers by gamers.

If you read rogue trader they had very few models in the early days of the Citadel range and all the vehicles were pretty much scratsh-builds using any random rubbish they could find (Argus Flyer anyone?).

Their business model has changed in the past 20 years to concentrate on their main games and produce ever-changing model lines to support them and bring in revenue. I still think their best games are from the Specialist Games range, but they have limited scope and GW are after all trying to make money. (Gorkamorka was early 2000s).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, who cares if they raided an earlier throwaway reference to make a foundation for one of their games. For a start its all stolen from the Bible as a parable of Lucifer's fall and secondly, its a pretty cool backdrop for a future vision

Flinty wrote:
Their business model has changed in the past 20 years to concentrate on their main games and produce ever-changing model lines to support them and bring in revenue. I still think their best games are from the Specialist Games range, but they have limited scope and GW are after all trying to make money. (Gorkamorka was early 2000s).

Just so long as you're aware that this stands in direct opposition to statements from GW corporate officers themselves.

The games exist to support the models.

The original company was set up because they couldn't find any places to buy D&D or associated figures so set up selling them themselves along with "traditional" board games, after some time they decided they could make better models for less than the cost of the ones they were importing, they also found that the rules for D&D and its like didn't support the sizes of game they wanted to play, so they began creating their own rulesets for representing "Battles".

Much of the "Fluff" in Rogue-Trader can be sensilbly ignored as it was purely created as "Warhammer" Sci-Fi, after its release the background grew especially with systems like Adeptus Titanicus, Space Marine, Space Hulk, and the addition of new forces.

Throughout GWs history their "Fluff" has evolved often to suit planned releases but also for its own sake, and in fairness to them it has been treated with far more respect than a fair number of other settings, such as Star Wars and a lot of Comics which get re-written for each film release.

BrainDeleted wrote:So, basically, GW has always just manipulated fluff to suit their economic needs and somehow made it work?

To put it a kinder way, the game background was never worked out in detail. Rather, it has been a work in constant progress, allowing GW to tap into whatever aspects of gaming or popular culture became successful through other channels.

I think some people have blown this WAY out of proportion....

Have you just had that forum moment of "ooops, I created a monster, it was just idle curiosity"?

Seaward wrote:

Flinty wrote:
Their business model has changed in the past 20 years to concentrate on their main games and produce ever-changing model lines to support them and bring in revenue. I still think their best games are from the Specialist Games range, but they have limited scope and GW are after all trying to make money. (Gorkamorka was early 2000s).

Just so long as you're aware that this stands in direct opposition to statements from GW corporate officers themselves.

The games exist to support the models.

They do now. When the company was founded they didn't even have a miniatures range.

Gorkamorka pre-dates Mordheim. Mordheim came out in 1999 to represent the year 1999in the fantasy setting. The twin-tailed comet crashes on New Years Eve.