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I'm more or less just curious as to how many people actually write fluff/background for their armies, and if so, to what extent do you do so?

Personally, I tend to create fluff for the entire army, including personal (and sometimes even in depth) fluff for every unit and character.

I do that too, although it usually take a few months before I've settled on general army fluff and fluff for the characters, then another few months before I actually write it down.

Me too altho it takes a while since i try to include in game performance in it.

I am working on creating a more in depth background for my army, you can check out the idea in the thread Vampire's of Hunger Wood.

This actually gets me in the mood of writing down my fluff and posting it in the Fiction sub-forum for some C&C...

I writhe fluff for my lords and champions. I try to give the units some fluff also just for the sake of doing that

The Cornerfag~ wrote:This actually gets me in the mood of writing down my fluff and posting it in the Fiction sub-forum for some C&C...

I have such an abundance of fluff written for my Slaanesh army, and I never even thought about posting it in the Fiction section, needless to say, I have nowposted the first part of the story of my newest Exalted.

I do fluff for centerpieces, characters and campaigns. The later is my favorite as it takes me back to the days of GMing RP games which I loved to do.

I'll write my own fluff if I'm doing a multiply game campaign with the same army, kinda like chronicling of events that lead up to it and during it.

The most common choice is missing from the poll: "I don't care about background!"
(although personally I do very much)

Ah, I didn't even think about that Kroot! I suppose I shall keep that in mind the next time around.

I have another quick question for everyone who happens to write their own fluff.
When you name your army, how intricate do you try to be?

I've been spending a good deal of time coming up with a name for my Nurgle WoC army and then I realized just how far I go with my armies' names. I suppose I like to have very out of the box and non obvious names that, while fully abiding with the fluff of the army (in fact, its normally themed around the name I go with), it tends to make you think a bit more.

For instance, these are my 3 WoC armies, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, and Nurlge:
Symphony of Blissful Cessation (Song of Beautiful Death)
Epoch of Malefic Intent (Time of Ruinous Fate)
Breath of Horrid Repose (Wind of Hideous Rebirth)

I find that I don't like obvious and basic army names, but I suppose that's just me. Does anyone else do anything crazy for their titles?

I enjoy writing fluff for my army as well. It gives an extra depth to the game and makes even regular old friendly pick-ups more fun. Sometimes I also include game performance in a unit's fluff as well. It's also fun when your opponent has done this too and you can have a real narrative to your battle. I'm currently refining my fluff for my Vampire Counts army.

See the joy of playing empire is while your army name is quite short your generals full name and title can span entire pages

Buttlerthepug wrote:Ah, I didn't even think about that Kroot! I suppose I shall keep that in mind the next time around.

I have another quick question for everyone who happens to write their own fluff.
When you name your army, how intricate do you try to be?

When it comes to the army itself, I'm not that picky. I don't think my general would call his army anything more than "My army" in most cases... Although you're tempting me now, seeing your names.
However
When naming my characters, I'm EXTREMELY picky. I spend hours researching ancient gods, words from almost-forgotten languages and so on, only to find a name that fills my wants. The name HAS to have a meaning, and the meaning MUST be relevant to the character's history / personality / etc.

I completely agree on characters. Rather than look up names however, I personally go through various affixes and create entirely new names for my Characters.

For instance, the Nurgle Lord planned for my army is going to be Mortiferous. It has an outright chaotic sound to it as is, but the affixes (mort- bearing death; iferous- producing, bearing) end up giving his name the meaning of "Bearer of Death" or any translation you want to take from it!

I play with Vampires so I write nice back stories for them and and some of the units.

It's fun to just loose yourself in a good story about your characters.

I enjoy making fluff for my armies. I think it makes the game more enjoyable when you have specifically named units and heroes. Instead of your generic unnamed firebelly you have Zoralg the fire belcher. It makes the game more interesting.

Also, I really dislike special characters, especially when you have a very specific themed army and you have some random character who makes no sense in being there.

I usually run themed armies, so I have to come up with fluff for them at some point. Well, except for my SM army, because they aren't themed I felt they needed fluff or I would get bored with them.

But yeah, fluff writting is fun!

As long as you don't go nuts and Mary Sue (or Gary Stu) your lords and heroes and so forth.

I like coming up with the fluff of the army while I paint them and write the lists down... also it feels more personal when fighting an opposing army and your two generals duke it out... so far Prince Kelthan Startamer has fought against many horrid foes... but he swears vengance against the Chaos lord Obus due to the massive casualties fought over the dark marsh

I have a dragon called Greg and my Archamge is named Harry. I love GWs IP but I dont really immerse myself in it as much as other folk do, Models are just wound markers to me.