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So, Both Savage Scars and hunt for vldorious describe how it is techno heresy for ships to not be operated by serfs mentally attached to the ship. In savage scars it is mentions that readouts on systems are printed on parchement.
BUT. In cain and the Salamander books i have read it makes no mention of this. The ships are operated by pilots just pressing buttons.
Whats up with this?

Fluff inconsistencies that can be explained with the fact that different Chapters have different beliefs.

Fluff is not consistent. It's just not consistent. One writer thought it would be cool this way, the other thought it worked better the other. Just pick the version you like and that will be the right one.

Harriticus wrote:Fluff inconsistencies that can be explained with the fact that different Chapters have different beliefs.

But it wasnt chapters specific. A tau sympathizer said the ships being wired into people as heresy. Never being a bored a White scars Vessal. It was also the same with the alpha legion ship.

nomotog wrote:Fluff is not consistent. It's just not consistent. One writer thought it would be cool this way, the other thought it worked better the other. Just pick the version you like and that will be the right one.

You don't even need to go that far. The Galaxy is a huge place, and the stories take place over hundreds, or sometimes thousands of years. Just put it down to regional differences and time discrepancies.

Kaldor wrote:

nomotog wrote:Fluff is not consistent. It's just not consistent. One writer thought it would be cool this way, the other thought it worked better the other. Just pick the version you like and that will be the right one.

You don't even need to go that far. The Galaxy is a huge place, and the stories take place over hundreds, or sometimes thousands of years. Just put it down to regional differences and time discrepancies.

I could, but I don't want to. Fluff really is just inconsistent. You can jump around and try to make sense of stuff that dosen't make sense, but maybe it's better to accept that it's inconsistent and embrace the freedom offered by it. Then again, the other way might be good too.

It comes down to artistic licence and the precise level of grimdarkness that the particular author is going for. The Cain stuff is ususally pretty lighthearted and the planets he visits are pretty much modern-earth-normal. Other books go more for the towering spires of drudgery and arcane techno-ridiculousness end of the scale. As noted above, the fluff doesn't need to be particlarly consistent considering the timespan and distances invovled. Its an infinite universe, go for whatever appeals more.

Yeah its just damned inconsistent, like everything else in 40k. I Ignore it myself, I am mainly a Roleplayer and find that FFG does a much, much better job of making things like that consistent. Its one of the damning failings of 40k and Gw, lack of "give a damn" for internal setting consistency.

Hunterindarkness wrote:Yeah its just damned inconsistent, like everything else in 40k. I Ignore it myself, I am mainly a Roleplayer and find that FFG does a much, much better job of making things like that consistent. Its one of the damning failings of 40k and Gw, lack of "give a damn" for internal setting consistency.

I agree that they've done a fantastic job, but FFG are also working on much smaller spatial distances than GW as a whole, which makes consistency all the more important for them. The argument that the galaxy is simply a really big place and there's going to be differences depending on where you go is a strong one. Mainly because 40k does such a good job of portraying just how huge the galaxy really is. Moreso than most other sci-fi settings I've seen. If anything, I'd say it's even less reasonable to assume that ships would work the same way everywhere in the imperium.

I would say size has zero to do with Consistency. The difference is FFG is trying to make it that way and GW could care less. 40k does not do a good job at portraying how big the galaxy is. They are simply lazy when it comes to product control of the setting. As long as people buy the minis they could give a rats ass about the setting and how it fits together.

Always so bitter...whether it be WS, B&C, or here, everyone's always so bitter...

Not bitter man, Just being honest. GW are really lazy about the setting, very, very lazy and they really do a crap job of managing it. I am new to 40k as a whole, so really do not have the huge investment it requires to be really bitter.

However the more I did and learn the more amazed I am 40k is still around with such bumbling mismanagement. They simply seem to have no real care about the setting and try very little to really manage it at all.

Prior to about 2007, this was the case. It's only in the last few years that they've been trying to get their act together. Though that doesn't include codices, as they're hit the hardest by executive meddling and are frankly the last place you should be looking if you want consistant backgrounds. Everything besides codices post-2007 is, on average, leagues above what had come before

Also, size has everything to do with it as above the sector level, communication between worlds is relatively nonexistant.

I am gonna disagree with the idea that a settings size has any effect upon producing fluff that is consistent within a given setting. One simply has zero to do with the other.

What do you mean by consistant? In the opening example, it's easily explained by different forgeworlds using different design methods. One world's staple technology is another world's tech heresy.

If you're talking about two characters or armies being in two different locations at the same time, then yes, that is inconsistant. But that also doesn't happen all that often.

hotsauceman1 wrote:So, Both Savage Scars and hunt for vldorious describe how it is techno heresy for ships to not be operated by serfs mentally attached to the ship. In savage scars it is mentions that readouts on systems are printed on parchement.
BUT. In cain and the Salamander books i have read it makes no mention of this. The ships are operated by pilots just pressing buttons.
Whats up with this?

Actually inconsistence is not as big as it seems - as since war with Iron People humans forbade usage of AI, much of human advanced tech is controlled by wired humans OR servitors -which are just equipment with living, though lobotomised, human brain. To make things worse some authors and thus some chapters call servitors "serfs", making no distinction between normal/augmented and vat-grown/lobotomised humans.
And parchment is just a grimdarklier than hololith display

BTW in last Silver Skulls novel it was secret heresy that Chapter's project involved handing control of the ship to just single augmented human.

jareddm wrote:What do you mean by consistant? In the opening example, it's easily explained by different forgeworlds using different design methods. One world's staple technology is another world's tech heresy.

If you're talking about two characters or armies being in two different locations at the same time, then yes, that is inconsistant. But that also doesn't happen all that often.

I mean about basic stuff of the setting. ship size is one they often get wrong. 'Warp ships are huge' then they go and someone writes "This warp ship is the size of a Guncutter". Something works this way, then someone else has it working another way. GW have very, very little control over the setting at all really. somethings should be in a setting bible and made sure everyone uses and follows.

nomotog wrote:I could, but I don't want to. Fluff really is just inconsistent.

I know, but it hurts my brain to accept that. Something can't be Red and Blue at the same time, unless I can think of a way to rationalise it.

Hunterindarkness wrote:I am gonna disagree with the idea that a settings size has any effect upon producing fluff that is consistent within a given setting. One simply has zero to do with the other.

I understand what you're saying, but at the same time you're wrong.

The size of the setting is a tool that authors can utilize to deliberately step around the established canon. If you want a nice, utopian world where everyone has a brilliant standard of living then you can have that. You want a tiny warp-capable ship, thats fine too. With a galaxy wide setting, with such a huge variation between worlds, almost anything is excusable.

It's really not though, imo. The Star Wars and Star Trek universes are both at least as large and diverse as the WH40K, with just as much material, yet those universes are much more consistent. The difference between the three is that LucasArts and whoever moderates Star Trek simply give a damn about canon, whereas Games Workshop factually does not (did not).

There's a reason for why you if you ask any three official Star Wars EU officials what the canon policy, they will all show you the same neatly organized list showing what media takes precedent over what and how, whereas if you ask three official Games Workshop/Black Library officials what's canon and what's not, you'll get three different answers ranging from "Nothing's really canon" (Gav Thorpse) to "Only codex's are canon" (ADB).

GW has no official canon policy, which just the proof in the pudding.

I think that with the Horus Heresy novels, though, they're trying to make the Black Library novels more relevant by creating an actual, solidly organized expanded universe, which they don't have currently.

BlaxicanX wrote:It's really not though, imo. The Star Wars and Star Trek universes are both at least as large and diverse as the WH40K, with just as much material, yet those universes are much more consistent. The difference between the three is that LucasArts and whoever moderates Star Trek simply give a damn about canon, whereas Games Workshop factually does not (did not).

There's a reason for why you if you ask any three official Star Wars EU officials what the canon policy, they will all show you the same neatly organized list showing what media takes precedent over what and how, whereas if you ask three official Games Workshop/Black Library officials what's canon and what's not, you'll get three different answers ranging from "Nothing's really canon" (Gav Thorpse) to "Only codex's are canon" (ADB).

GW has no official canon policy, which just the proof in the pudding.

I think that with the Horus Heresy novels, though, they're trying to make the Black Library novels more relevant by creating an actual, solidly organized expanded universe, which they don't have currently.

It depends. Sometimes an author is just sloppy, and blames the size of the setting. But othertimes an author has a great idea that would be invalidated by the canon, and looks for a way to work around it. I like having open ended canon, to an extent, as it lets me marginalize crappy stuff while keeping the stuff I like. In more tightly restricted universes, you end up with things being established as the ONLY way things can be (all stormtroopers were Jango Fett clones, for example) which I hate. Which in turn lessens my ability to immerse myself in the background at all. If someone says that Astartes ships are controlled by hardwired servitors as opposed to serf crews and I hate that idea, I can easily marginalize it as something they only do in that area, or that time frame.

Kaldor wrote:
I understand what you're saying, but at the same time you're wrong.

The size of the setting is a tool that authors can utilize to deliberately step around the established canon. If you want a nice, utopian world where everyone has a brilliant standard of living then you can have that. You want a tiny warp-capable ship, thats fine too. With a galaxy wide setting, with such a huge variation between worlds, almost anything is excusable.

I call it lazy. There is no "Plan" there is simply a lack of planning and care. You have just as large of settings (SW) with far greater amount of fluff published that have that freedom. However they are also consistent and not the jumbled mess 40k happens to be.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kaldor wrote:
It depends. Sometimes an author is just sloppy, and blames the size of the setting. But othertimes an author has a great idea that would be invalidated by the canon, and looks for a way to work around it. I like having open ended canon, to an extent, as it lets me marginalize crappy stuff while keeping the stuff I like. In more tightly restricted universes, you end up with things being established as the ONLY way things can be (all stormtroopers were Jango Fett clones, for example) which I hate. Which in turn lessens my ability to immerse myself in the background at all. If someone says that Astartes ships are controlled by hardwired servitors as opposed to serf crews and I hate that idea, I can easily marginalize it as something they only do in that area, or that time frame.

No, GW not just writers contradict themselves on things. Ship size is the most common and easy to look up. Its well lazy not to nail down how fundamentals of a setting work. You need to be x size to have a geller Field. But then you contradict yourself again, again and again. A setting without a setting bible and whose writers do not use a setting bible is simply lazy and mismanaged. Name one other game setting that is this large or even half this large and popular that is handled this way?

I should point out you are incorrect on the stormtroopers, the first wave of clone troopers where jango, later on other types of clones start to be brought in as common and by ANH many ST were recruits and about half are clones.

Hunterindarkness wrote:

Kaldor wrote:
I understand what you're saying, but at the same time you're wrong.

The size of the setting is a tool that authors can utilize to deliberately step around the established canon. If you want a nice, utopian world where everyone has a brilliant standard of living then you can have that. You want a tiny warp-capable ship, thats fine too. With a galaxy wide setting, with such a huge variation between worlds, almost anything is excusable.

I call it lazy. There is no "Plan" there is simply a lack of planning and care. You have just as large of settings (SW) with far greater amount of fluff published that have that freedom. However they are also consistent and not the jumbled mess 40k happens to be.

Oh it's certainly not by design. But it's a happy accident none the less. SW might be more consistent, but that doesn't mean it's better for it.

Name one other game setting that is this large or even half this large and popular that is handled this way?

Name one other game setting that is even half this large full stop.

I should point out you are incorrect on the stormtroopers, the first wave of clone troopers where jango, later on other types of clones start to be brought in as common and by ANH many ST were recruits and about half are clones.

Thats why I said 'were'

Personally I rather like the fuzzy edges. It allows the gamer/hobbyist to come up with anything (literally anything) without having to fully understand the background. Star Wars and Star Trek try very hard to be realistic and feel the need to explain things in minute detail. This is nice, but sci-fi can also be about understanding the human condition using an alternate setting, rather than knowing exactly how many fuse-boxes you need to run a Nebulon B frigate.

Also my understanding of the star trek and star wars backgrounds is that there are a few thousand inhabited systems in each, all nicely reachable with reliable FTL drives and some magical way of keeping all advancement centralised and available to all. The GW universe has none of these. There are more human inhabited worlds by several orders of magnitude that drop in and drop out of contact pretty much randomly. "Modern" technology in the background is actually rather less advanced that kit thousands of years old and hence scales of things can change dramatically as more or less levels of technological magic is applied.

When you can not pin down one of the base aspects of your setting that is past sloppy. Warp has been pinned down a dozen different way and ship size is so random in the same sector just because two guys wrote different books and had either no guidelines or didn't use them.

@kaldor
Off the top of my head

Star wars
Star trek
Plane scape ( Ok its larger)
Traveller
Also I would throw in
Battletech ( Not as large bu very detailed and a good sample of inner setting consistency with ships)

Mass Effect might count even if the pop is smaller

I think you are completely missing the fact that much of the inconsistency you refer to is a result of an intentional approach to setting design, rather than laziness. Yes, GW are fairly lazy and don't police their authors as well as they should. But they have quite deliberately created an inclusive setting where the gamer can exercise almost boundless creativity. That's part of the design of the backstory, and it's done to give a big, open playground for authors, gamers, and modelers alike.

Some of the settings you mention, such as Star Wars and Star Trek, are extremely rigorous in maintaining their lore, but as such are very exclusionary when it comes to fan interaction. Your fan fiction is not as valid as what happened in this episode or novel, and what happened in that episode or novel is canon even if you hate it and it makes no sense. If you come up with a competing theory as to why this or that was possible, you are wrong, plain and simple, because it's already spelled out and stamped "official".

I honestly think GW have done themselves a disservice by making events in the Horus Heresy more concrete with the HH novels. They've taken what was written as half-forgotten myth, full of mystery and conjecture as seen through the mists of 10,000 years time, and placed it directly in the oftentimes clumsy hands of a poorly organized group of authors. Now the primarchs of legend have their actual words and deeds recorded, and most of them come off looking like 2-dimensional teenagers, and the timeline of the Heresy is already getting all mixed up.

But, as I said before, it's an inclusive setting. If I don't like what someone wrote, or it doesn't make sense, I can keep my own personal version in my head. Every player is free to internalize and personalize the setting so that they have fun. That's not laziness, that's a calculated move on GW's part that has been established policy since the start of the game. It's a setting that's founded explicitly on creative differences, rather than a dynasty spawned by movies or a show that attempts to regulate away the creativity of fans (creativity which, after all, is merely a side effect of success, rather than a stated goal).

I am gonna disagree, there is no "Master plan behind it" They simply do not care, they really could care less about the setting or how it is handled or if some stuff matches as long as the miniatures sell.

The ship size thing is not a boon, its a sign of pure failure to control a setting. You can't state something as a universal fact, then keep contradicting it. They do this with ships all the time. This is not the same as leaving places where you create things, settings have rules and "Laws" to make it all fit. GW does not make sure those are used and it leads to the mess that is some of 40k "Canon"

Not to mention that bringing up Star Wars in a discussion of laziness in controlling a setting is kind of hilarious. George Lucas clearly couldn't give a crap about his own setting. His poorly conceived and executed prequels, and his revisions to the original movies, show a lack of understanding of his own material, much less interest in what fans think or believe about the setting.

To continue, the Star Wars setting is also small, like extremely small. It goes into a lot of vertical detail about a relatively narrowly defined horizontal range of planets, people, and events. The setting itself is composed of a reasonable number of planets and species who are all in constant communication, with quick and almost unimpeded travel between them, who more or less share a base level of technology, and are all capable of communicating with one another for F's sake. It's modern-day Earth, with countries spread out over star systems. It even has its own UN. Someone could travel from one side of the Star Wars galaxy to the other and find people (or aliens) using similar technology, speaking a common language (or at least conversing through translating devices). It's like flying to the other side of the globe today and meeting someone in Japan who wears the same jeans as you, uses the same cellphone, and speaks English because it's the lingua franca. It's a small world.

In contrast, the Imperium in 40k is the sprawling Roman Empire at the start of its decline. The far-flung provinces are barely in touch with the weak center of power, much less completely under its control, and shadowy and barbaric enemies press in from all sides. The physical size of the Imperium and the inadequate level of technology to maintain unity across such a large empire IS a reason for diversity, just as Egyptians were quite different from Gauls in Roman times, even though both were under Roman rule.

Edit in Response: The only "Master Plan" is the lack of a master plan. This is more or less explicitly stated in GW material. I have codices from the early 90's that flat out say you could get away with anything from stone age to medieval to super-advanced technology and it could exist somewhere in the galaxy. There are countless alien races and cut-off human worlds that you could explore. This is intentional and is stated as such. There are endless factions within factions to be fleshed out, 10,000 years of vague history that can be expanded upon, and this is encouraged. Nothing is official, and there IS NO CANON. It's a sandbox where anyone's contribution could be considered equal to anyone else's. The settings you mention are for the most part not sandboxes, they are stories told in different mediums, be it movies or video games. Anything outside the official material is, well, not official (or in some cases "less official", but I believe the point stands).

It's comparing apples and oranges. Sandbox versus closed environment. If things like inconsistent ship descriptions really tweak you out, you're in for a bumpy ride.

Eh to each his own then. I feel you are incorrect the EU stuff alone dwarfs any and everything published by GW about 40k, yet all works together and is consistent.

While GL does not care over much he makes damned sure EVERYONE uses the setting bible and follows the way the setting works.

The 40k ships issue is not a master plan its outright failure to have one and control a setting. Its embarrassing really. Small ships can't be both "imposable" and possible with the same technology in the same setting. It is one thing to say "Oh thats a dark age tech" which is the out the setting has given you , its another entrily to say Oh well the laws of physics and warp works differently on that side. Which is what they have done.

They have used the same tech base and given it many different rules to how it works based off a random writers story. Its diffident it if it xeno tech or DA tech but not STC stuff should not use the rules differently. You can't both have a ship no smaller then .5 km and one the size of a cutter with the same rules.

That is lazy and a sign of mismanaged and un cared for setting.

Just so you do not think I dodged it or missed it. This is not about sandbox, both SW and 40k are sandbox, one however is consistent and one is not. Making sure everyone uses a setting bible does not take away from that. I mean if you have to have your special snowflake small warp ship. Use freaking DA tech or Xeno tech. The setting has those built in, it allows for plenty of sand box style play without breaking the setting.

To each his own indeed That's kind of the whole point with 40k.

And I stand corrected on the Star Wars material, I don't know nearly as much about it as I do 40k. It's still, to me, a smaller setting, even if there's a greater volume of semi-official material written for it. It's a matter of how the background works, the interconnectedness and interdependence, and the tech level that hand-waves away the interstellar vastness of the setting. It makes the world seem small much as jet travel and the internet make today's world smaller. 40k is late Roman Empire/early medieval, where travel is slow and dangerous, communication is difficult, and the world is very sketchily mapped with a lot of "here be dragons" for good measure. Most efforts at codifying things within the setting just end up removing some of the allure of the game in the first place.

Also: minor correction on the STC tech. It's by no means identical even for the same piece of equipment or class of technology. Given the same original plan (say for a battlecruiser) it can come down to local materials, local manufacturing level, the urgency with which it was made, and the degree of missing information in the STC fragment. Some forge worlds might have a more complete copy than others, and knowing the AdMech, would probably guard it jealously. Sometimes whole technologies are gradually lost, and as with Imperial battlecruisers, will undergo a shift in design as the missing pieces are filled in using different methods.

I'm not giving this as an excuse why some author would give an inflated ship size, or make up unheard of tech for plot purposes, just saying that it's the case.

Anyway GW definitely does not police their fluff, and I will concede that what was originally an intended feature has slowly morphed into sheer laziness as the company has changed over the years. The people calling the shots now have no love for the game, only the money they can make off it. That said, the sandbox method of game setting is still working as intended - you just have to learn to ignore some of the more flagrant abuses of it. Refute Matt Ward's reality and substitute your own


Yet Another Edit: I agree with you about the special snowflake authors. I haven't read the material you're referencing, but if the author is blatantly making stuff like that up without taking any of the easy outs built into the setting, it's just bad writing. Just because you can step on the toes of well established fluff doesn't mean you should, especially since the "I am so special!" attitude is so out of place in a setting where the message is, pretty clearly, "no one is special and the whole universe hates you".

Of course cause there isn't like 900000 Star wars novels that cover the period after the Emperors death all completely different.

I Personally think that GW isn't lazy and I am sure they do care about the fluff as they own it, however if you give authors and fans the tools to make up their own stuff in that universe then you are going to get a much broader selection of ideas.

Where as say Star Trek is a fairly constricted universe and so you wont get diversity.