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I think the general consensus among 40k fans is that the fluff sorely needs to advance in some way. The Imperium's beset on all sides, struggling against innumberable foes, the Eldar are slowly dying, Tyranids be creeping about the galaxy, Chaos is getting nowhere fast with it's Black Crusades, yadda yadda yadda. Same old story. This topic came up in our gaming club almost a year ago, after reading through the fluff section of the 5th Ed rulebook. We had a lot of planets and chapters and so on being destroyed or obliterated and battles being lost and won and so on, none of which represented anything significant. So we went on to discuss a radical overhaul of the current background. What I'd like is a place that people can suggest and discuss such concepts that would shake the fluff out of the immobile rut that it has found itself.

Here's some of the suggestions that came up in our discussion (bear in mind some of these may be less reasonable and more whacky than others):

The Orks finally overwhelm Terra and the Emperor's place at the Astronomican is taken over by Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.
The Emperor dies, somehow either a. reincarnating in some way or form or b. releasing his psychic powers and making every human a psyker.
The Eldar, the Dying race, die already.
One of the main Space Marine Chapters (like one of the 9 original loyalists) turn to Chaos and the Alpha Legion return to being publicly pro-Imperium like the closet loyalists they are.
Abaddon succeeds for once and takes out Cadia (some of the more experienced club members remembered a world-wide Cadia-based campaign that Chaos clearly won, but GW turned round and declared Cadia 'contested'). Seriously, take Cadia out and say their descendants all fled to a secondary front of planets - this can be the new front line against the Eye of Terror.
Generally killing off a planet or a Chapter or a Imperial Guard world or Craftworld or something that is actually significant.
Give the Tau Titans for Gods' sake.
Ultramar gets utterly destroyed and the Ultramarines become a fleet-based Chapter.
NO Primarchs.
Maybe we get to see what's been chasing the Tyranids in this direction.

These are the ones I can remember. Discuss, formulate, so forth.

Tau don't really need titans...
I also disagree with the idea of Orks taking over Terra...
Also disagree with killing off the Eldar...

Also, there's really no such consensus. By and large those of us who have been playing the game for decades don't care; it's only the kids who are insistent that the "plot" must somehow advance or the setting radically change. I blame television for their short attention spans...

The fluff (most of it , damn you Ward!) hasn't realy moved on in the last 20 years and it works. GW have 10,000 years and 1,000,000 planets to work on. Cut them some slack

Don't speak for me when you say what the consensus is, kthx.

I'm happy where it's at really, I mean why move toward whn we still are missing so many good stories that happened in the last 10k years.

I would like to move on to M42, and actually see the Imperium swing out a big victory. Say they recover a STC?

An't never going to happen. You might as well get used to it and welcome the warm "I know where I stand" stance that GW has, for as time marches on 40K will relatively stays the same.

I like the time period how it is because you can always create your own story and advance it if you really want to. What I find so appealing about the setting is the sheer size of it. Not every battle has to include Macarage or Terra.

This allows any war gamer to do what he feels like since an individual battle will have little or no impact overall in an imperium composed of over a million planets.

GoldenKaos wrote:I think the general consensus among 40k fans is that the fluff sorely needs to advance in some way.

I think your very first sentence is wrong, and therefore the rest of your post is also.

The setting does not need to advance at all. I'm very happy with it. It gives me great freedom to play any kind of battle with any kind of force I want, and create my own characters and forces within the setting.

GoldenKaos wrote:The Imperium's beset on all sides, struggling against innumberable foes, the Eldar are slowly dying, Tyranids be creeping about the galaxy, Chaos is getting nowhere fast with it's Black Crusades, yadda yadda yadda. Same old story.

Which is pretty much how the company needs their setting to remain from a miniatures and tabletop wargaming perspective, you know, the things they're flogging. I've always thought of it as: they provide the materials and the background, you sally fourth, carving your own story in and around that setting. If and when they make any substantial progression, chances are they're gonna annoy just as many, if not more, hobbyists than they'll please. Both these things are why I think they're trying to keep things as static as possible.

40k is a balanced setting allowing for all factions to have a well defined place in there. Advancing the timeline would create balancing problems, eventually leading to one race being extinguished and players not being able to play that race. That is not in the player's interest.

Your suggestions sound awful. I mean I would like the fluff to advance as much as the next person but not a drastic change. You just wrote how Warhammer 42k should not include the Imperium... thats pretty unappealing to anyone who actually likes the Imperium

Example, move into the M42 and have the arrival of the next Tyranid fleet hitting the Tau hard. The Tau, desperate turn to the Imperium and ask for support. The Imperium actually provides support knowing that if the Tau fail, it will only make the Tyranids stronger. During one of the battles, the Imperium calls an exterminatus on a Tau world to prevent the Tyranids getting it. This breaks the fragile alliance.

So you have started the M42 with a nice campaign that GW can hold (including a rough free for all with Imperium, Tau, Tyranids, Necrons considering their new story, and Orks, Eldar, and DE can easily find a place)

Nothing has changed yet you now have new stakes and the story has slightly advanced. (Suggestions? Good or bad?)


I have a few other ideas also

Thats a pretty cool idea Galdos, but I feel that the imperium would just as willing to kill tau as they would tyranids since xenos are always considered to be the enemy of man.

But it could work if only the highest commanders knew about the alliance and kept their soldiers ignorant.After all, in the words of Orwell form 1984, Ignorance is strength.

As has been pretty well pointed out so far, the plot will probably never advance in any significant way, other than the addition of the odd race. Retconning may happen, but not a plot advancement. The Emperor will not die, nor will the gods of Chaos, and no primarchs are coming back. Even if you are only playing within a fifty year window of time, the galaxy is enormous and countless stories can be told in those fifty years. Plot advancement is thus both impractical and unnecessary.

Just advance in a small way. like the crimson fists are rebuilding their chapter in a significant way and the SW are at war with th inquisition

Your first statement actually seems to be wrong if you read these comments.

After that, every suggestion you have with the sole exception of "No Promarchs" is pretty bad.

The problem with changing the plot too much, is that we lose the ability to have "Everyone vs. everyone," if the Eldar finally die out, there goes an entire faction. If Cadia is finally lost, there goes a huge plot point, and a million and a half campaigns around it. GW most definitely will not, now or ever, let something bad happen to the Ultramarines. They're the poster boys, if something went really wrong for them, they wouldn't be so perfect anymore. Though Galdos, that idea sounds really cool. Also, the orks overwhelming Terra? The most heavily defended planet in the entirety of the Imperium? There's more of a chance of GW admitting that it made a mistake with a retcon.

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

This is Warhammer 40,000. Everything else is detail. Whatever happens, the above will not change.

Arturius wrote:It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim darkness of the far future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

This is Warhammer 40,000. Everything else is detail. Whatever happens, the above will not change.

True that! I still get chills when I read it. Especially the carrion lord part...

/Calle

Here is the truth: There is no Plot to warhammer. The setting is merely that: a setting. A backdrop, a tool, which is used by others too create their own stories, to fight their own battles in far away battlefields, some we know, others of our own device.

hotsauceman1 wrote:Just advance in a small way. like the crimson fists are rebuilding their chapter in a significant way and the SW are at war with th inquisition

The Space Wolves at war with the Inquisition would be quite a large thing if you ask me.

That would essentially mean that the Space Wolves were a rogue Chapter, possibly with the backing of other members of the 1st Founding, you would have something like the Reign of Blood on your hands there.

Luke_Prowler wrote:Here is the truth: There is no Plot to warhammer. The setting is merely that: a setting. A backdrop, a tool, which is used by others too create their own stories, to fight their own battles in far away battlefields, some we know, others of our own device.

Exactly. It's not a story that is being told, with a beginning, middle and end, it's just a backdrop for the rest of us to use.

GoldenKaos wrote:

The Orks finally overwhelm Terra and the Emperor's place at the Astronomican is taken over by Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.
The Emperor dies, somehow either a. reincarnating in some way or form or b. releasing his psychic powers and making every human a psyker.
The Eldar, the Dying race, die already.
One of the main Space Marine Chapters (like one of the 9 original loyalists) turn to Chaos and the Alpha Legion return to being publicly pro-Imperium like the closet loyalists they are.
Abaddon succeeds for once and takes out Cadia (some of the more experienced club members remembered a world-wide Cadia-based campaign that Chaos clearly won, but GW turned round and declared Cadia 'contested'). Seriously, take Cadia out and say their descendants all fled to a secondary front of planets - this can be the new front line against the Eye of Terror.
Generally killing off a planet or a Chapter or a Imperial Guard world or Craftworld or something that is actually significant.
Give the Tau Titans for Gods' sake.
Ultramar gets utterly destroyed and the Ultramarines become a fleet-based Chapter.
NO Primarchs.
Maybe we get to see what's been chasing the Tyranids in this direction.

Most of the above are attempts to "resolve" the conflicts present in the current fluff.
You fail to realize that that is not a desirable thing to do.

What is the tag-line of WH40K?

"In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war"


Warhammer 40K is a WARgame. You do not want the wars to end when playing a wargame.

Luke_Prowler wrote:Here is the truth: There is no Plot to warhammer. The setting is merely that: a setting. A backdrop, a tool, which is used by others too create their own stories, to fight their own battles in far away battlefields, some we know, others of our own device.

That's pretty much how I see it. moving into M41 just so you can have more room to work with using characters (and races) that don't appear untill the last couple of hundred years of M40 is totally acceptable but no major changes.

Pilau Rice wrote:

hotsauceman1 wrote:Just advance in a small way. like the crimson fists are rebuilding their chapter in a significant way and the SW are at war with th inquisition

The Space Wolves at war with the Inquisition would be quite a large thing if you ask me.

That would essentially mean that the Space Wolves were a rogue Chapter, possibly with the backing of other members of the 1st Founding, you would have something like the Reign of Blood on your hands there.

That.. actually sounds pretty awesome. Sure it would be terrible for the Imperium, a lot of marine chapters would side with a 1st founding against the =][=. The dark angels would pick a fellow 1st founding over the =][= any day, the black templars probably would as well and I believe the silver skulls have a pretty good relationship with them then once more than 1 first founding as well as a few other chapters are fighting with the wolves it becomes a lot harder for the =][= to simply declare the wolves rouge then whoever wins the resulting war claims the other was in the wrong.

Well Galdos idea sounds quite decent actually ( by any chance who didn't apply for the gw game designer job did you ) may not be a huge advancement but what about a war between the imperium + tua vs tyranids is a really good idea and it means they could introduce a new tau book/ New space marine with 2 hero's (SC) being in either book, they could also expand the tau's alliances with the squats and what not as they hired as many alien mercenarys as they can, providing a huge chance to increase the range of models.

oldone wrote: they could also expand the tau's alliances with the squats a

Alliance with the who now?

Sounds like everyone needs Codex:Xenos.

OK so basically what some of you are saying is dont close out any current wars but make another big one involving more then one race?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sounds good to me

Ha no. In fact Im not even sure if there is a GW in my state (Florida). Not one anywhere near me.