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Simple question. Are game rules a form of fluff? This question always pops out in discussions of fluff, but the question it's needs a full thread.

nomotog wrote:Simple question. Are game rules a form of fluff?

I don't even understand the question, can you give an example of what you are talking about?

It's not a simple yes and no. It cannot be converted directly, but in my opinion there are clear similarities, and instances where GW fluff mirrored the TT rules exactly. I think the fluff has been written after the rules to resemble it, at least to a certain degree.

I'd still have to go by a "no" if that's the only option, though, as often it's really just an abstraction or a rough guideline. Although guidelines could be seen as a form of fluff, too... for example, a heavy bolter clearly does more damage than a normal boltgun. At least I hope we can all agree on that.

When fluff and rules align and agree all is right in heaven and earth, but thats seldom happens in 40k

I use fluff in the choosing of my armies forces, and when we work out some special rules for victory conditions, so there Fluff is a form of rule, that is FUN to follow.

But usually The tabletop rules and results in no way reflect the sometimes over the top actions in the related Fluff, writers are to constrained ( most of them anyway) to go by rules that would get in the way of a good (hopefully) story.

Personally I really enjoy the stories/fluff that follows the actual performance and rules within the game...but thats just me.

The fluff has to have some resemblance to the game. Or you get stuff like back flipping termies.

The rules are there to represent the fluff so we have a game about it, IMHO.

Quite the opposite imo. While I love the fluff, it is there to prop up the TT experience, not to dictate it. Otherwise it gives credence for cry babies to go around declaring marines still aren't powerful enough in game, amongst other vastly unbalanced ideas.

Marines not powerful enough?! I think they're right were they need to be.
Then again, GW is a miniatures company.The games give you an excuse to buy their models.

Fluff does not equal rules. They are, at best, a vague approximation for a universe where gods of chaos and psychic magic occur.

I've played some historical games where real-world values, stats, experiences, and figures are used to create a game that most accurately captures the feel of a battalion level engagement between the Americans and the Germans in WWII.

But for 40k, no, fluff is completely separate and the rules are just that; rules.

I think I see... well Marines are not much more powerful than normal human in fatigues, in the game at least. Marines are super enhanced and wearing power armour, surely they should be able to rip through a large crowd of humans in close combat.

Also the number of marine casualties resulting from a game is ridiculous given they only have 1000 marines in a chapter. If they lose a few dozen marines to an ork hoard, that would usually be taken as a heavy defeat IMO, vitally important marines in exchange for ten-a-penny orks. Also the most indestructible and intergalactically important special characters die quite easily in what is really an insignificant little battle...

The rules are made with the background setting in mind.
The look and feel follows the fluff as best as possible.
The handling tries to be balanced and may tread a different path, but rules have to be justified with small fluff bitz later.

So rules and fluff are not identical, but related and can't be split as the fluff defines the theme and the theme defines the rules.

The fluff ought to follow the rules a tad closer, IMO.

The marine fluff in particlar has got more and more gonzoed over time, as the BL writers and Ward get carried away. It's usually the Marine players who want the fluff to be the rules..

The fluff is supposed to flesh out your army's backstory, around the capabilities laid down in the rules (as far as i'm concerned, anyway )

If you run it the other way around you have people bee-hotching about how X over-the-top BL novel said that one marine can gun down 1000 (whoever else) without taking a scratch or running out of ammo, but their TT ones can't.

As the novel marines get to autowin, perhaps the Marine players who want fluff to equal rules should just autowin too? I've conceded to players that have argued this point constantly, just to end the game and play someone more worthwhile.

'In the fluff Marines should auto-curb-stomp orks.. No ork could ever hit a marine, let along penetrate the mighty Astartes armour...(etc etc ad nauseam)'

'ok, they do. I'm going to go play this guy who doesn't take the fluff/BL as a religion to the great god 'Marines Rule'


Flicks chip off shoulder...

It's bad enough when Space Marine players have an ego for two Imperial Guard players, which usually equals four Tau Players and maybe a Cadre of disgruntled Sisters players, but asserting that fluff should be assimilated into the rules would make me run away from this hobby.

GW is a miniatures company. The rules are an excuse to buy the minis. The fluff is an excuse to use the rules.

So, no.

Being a D&D player before I got into 40k, it's always seemed irregular to me that the rules don't closely follow the fluff. For instance, in D&D an iron golem (or pretty much anything without a working metabolism) is immune to poison. But in 40k, necrons aren't. I know they try to explain it away by saying "just assume the other army has re-equipped to adapt" ie switching poison for acid ammo, fair enough. I know it's about game balance. But then I look at Grey Knights vs Chaos Daemons, codex creep, and the tendency for older models to be given sub-par stats compared to newly-released ones. And I think "does GW really care about game balance?"

The tabletop game is supposed to be balanced for both playability and profitability in a competitive setting. It will never line up with the fluff.

The Deathwatch RPG, on the other hand, is cooperative and thus has no need to balance the Space Marines so they function closer to the way they are "supposed to".

Veteran Sergeant wrote:The Deathwatch RPG, on the other hand, is cooperative and thus has no need to balance the Space Marines so they function closer to the way they are "supposed to".

Of course, with its one-shot Horde rules and small arms invulnerability and four Marines taking down Hive Tyrants within a single round - i.e. 5 seconds. Not to forget Marines being the only characters that cannot be corrupted.

You did notice that both enemy and equipment stats as well as even the rules differ heavily between FFG's 40k games? The designers compared Deathwatch games to movies like "300" - and that's how realistic they are.
Not that this is necessarily a bad thing - just like with the approach of certain novels it is all a matter of personal preferences. Cineastic awesomeness and epic exaggeration have always possessed a certain allure. It only becomes problematic when it is falsely considered to be "the real thing".

By the way, GW's own Inquisitor RPG is cooperative as well, and it portrays Marines much less invulnerable. It's all a matter of interpretations.

The rules aren't and can never be exact. The fluff itself is *highly* inconsistent. We have portrayals of Space Marines as everything from merely somewhat tougher human soldiers to demi-gods and Chaos Space Marines as everything from lasgun fodder to gods of war incarnate, and other such units are similarly treated. We have instances of Guardsmen being killed in their millions for no appreciable gains against the smallest of elite enemy forces and guardsmen that can engage and defeat much stronger opponents such as squads of Chaos marines and Dreadnoughts on almost even terms.

However, that said, game rules would appear to be the best basis for *general* comparison. E.g. a Space Marine is tougher and hardier than a human, but a Tyranid Warrior is hardier still and an Ogryn an order of magnitude tougher and hardier, one wouldn't expect a Space Marine to go one-on-one with either in a melee engagement and come out on top in any but the most exceptional circumstance.

People often make the mistake of thinking the game rules are totally out of sync with the fluff because their Space Marines don't single-handedly owninate everything. We've got lots of internet-fanficy stuff coming out of BL and studio authors like Ward and even Abnett at times, suffering from overgrown Superman syndrome. At the same time, given how scary everything is in the 40k universe, most people don't really take a look at how capable a Space Marine is compared to a Guardsmen (hint: way more capable), or keep in mind that Guardsmen generally are amongst the best their world has to offer and are trained and equipped to a relatively decent standard, much more so than most Planetary defense forces, frateris militia, private armies, noble household forces, etc, and there's so much stuff in the 40k universe that's so powerful that even a Space Marine isn't necessarily all that scary when arrayed against them, it's what makes 40k what it is, but it also makes people think that their Space Marines aren't living up to what they should be.

The bigger issue is the game itself, you've got essentially extremely close range tactical engagements where every macro-factor and most force-mutlipliers are either taken out or hamfisted in in strange ways, and many engagements on the tabletop would generally mean one sides plan has already failed (e.g. Dark Eldar facing Mechanized Guard in a Pitched Battle scenario, something probably went wrong with the DE battleplan, that's not the sort of force they'd confront directly like that, they'd harass its supply lines and harry it on roads and the like, not fight it in open pitched battle).

Also, for those wanting to bring up the Deathwatch RPG, it's not much better at reflecting fluff, it's the 40k equivalent of "300". Before they errata'd everything, basic bolters were significantly more powerful than stuff like Astartes Plasma Guns, or Dark Heresy vehicle mounted Heavy Bolters.

Rules do NOT equal fluff.
Fluff does not equal Rules.

Rules are patchy at best and mediocre at worst.
Fluff is just execrable (post 2nd ed).
Doubly so for anything from a Ward codex.

Lynata wrote:

Veteran Sergeant wrote:The Deathwatch RPG, on the other hand, is cooperative and thus has no need to balance the Space Marines so they function closer to the way they are "supposed to".

Of course, with its one-shot Horde rules and small arms invulnerability and four Marines taking down Hive Tyrants within a single round - i.e. 5 seconds. Not to forget Marines being the only characters that cannot be corrupted.

You did notice that both enemy and equipment stats as well as even the rules differ heavily between FFG's 40k games? The designers compared Deathwatch games to movies like "300" - and that's how realistic they are.

Well, 300 is based on a comic based ob true story... I mean it was a terrible movie, but hey. And honestly, Tyranids should get mowed down if they are caught in an open area. What works in their favor is numbers. If a Hive Tyrant is putting himself in the position to be going one on four with Space Marines without the ability to effectively retaliate, then that's two things: bad judgement, and probably a mediocre GM creating some kind of John Woo action fest. But that isn't the game's fault.

Besides, there is at least one statted Space Marine in Dark Heresy too and he's an absolute beast too. So the differing rules don't seem to differ all that much.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:And honestly, Tyranids should get mowed down if they are caught in an open area.

Point taken, but 5 seconds really seems a bit short for a "boss monster" - and I've heard reports that a single Marine did it in the same time. Which is why FFG finally relented and nerfed the heavy bolter in particular - if only slightly - as that beast just broke the game. The crazy rules in DW seem to often result in either of two extremes - the Kill Team shrugs off enemy hits without catching a single wound, or the characters get wtfpwned. The disparity in stats and damage rolls makes the pendulum swing stronger to each end rather than focusing on the medium, which makes it harder to work out proper tactics. You just don't know how well you'll do if you try this or that, not to mention the GM having a harder time creating challenging encounters. It can be done, of course, but I see it as one of the game's weak points. Missing compatibility with Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader and Black Crusade is another.

Veteran Sergeant wrote:Besides, there is at least one statted Space Marine in Dark Heresy too and he's an absolute beast too. So the differing rules don't seem to differ all that much.

He's got inferior armour and a boltgun that is on par with DH standards, that makes a heap of a difference. Though he has the same strength and toughness. But given that this makes him invulnerable against all the Dark Eldar he is facing in that adventure, it only underlines how broken that "lite" version already was.

As for "300", I actually liked it. I've not read the comic, but it felt like the movie being about the legend instead of the actual event, to which the visual style and the narration and all the obviously overdone clichés about the Persians and the Spartans fit perfectly. Y'know, deliberately including those small exaggerations that are simply included over time when a story is passed by word of mouth or if the historian in question is a patriot.

One important note is that one of FFG's writers is Andy Chambers, one of the old school Games Workshop guys. So their depictions of the universe aren't being created in a vacuum. But I agree with you on the game mechanics. The FFG games are pretty mediocre. I think Dark Heresy is the only one I think is really playable if you care much about the canon setting. Ideally, and I remember pitching the idea to my group when DH was first released, was to play the game Call of Cthulu style, where the PCs are Inquisitorial agents who search out the big nastiness (whatever it is) and then when they find it, instead of realistically getting eaten by it, everyone jumps into Space Marine characters of the Deathwatch kill team to fight it. After all, most things in the 40K universe eat normal humans about as fast as the monsters in CoC did. But Space Marines? Space Marines are damned awesome. Immune to a lot of psychology, big, strong, carry big ass weapons, etc. Would also allow people to play just about any character they wanted without feeling left out in all the combat scenarios. However, I wasn't sure at the time how to stat Space Marines and we ended up playing a different game instead.

I really think that a group trying to figure out how to combine the games look at that approach. Honestly, the Deathwatch concept only goes so far. Space Marines are far too big and obvious to really do any detective or stealth work. Even with a fedora and some glasses with a mustache on them. But if all you need the Space Marines to do is show up and smash some stuff, then you're in business.

IF fluff = rules then who ever had their codex on hand would win. So fluff cannot = rules, I mean just think about what would happen if SM players fielded a Named Character -NC=auto win.- What kind of a game would that be?

I field Draigo... hes 2500 points. Bring it

You're damn right rules = fluff.

Why do units get rules? Generally because they have those concepts covered in fluff.

Does the fluff dictate the rules? No