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I was recently thinking up the fluff for my IG, when I thought; When I do a battle report, I could tell it through the eyes of a guardsman character(or more). The number of characters, or the main one and their story would change based on the outcome of the battle.

Not that the character would be actually on the table for my reports.

Anyone else have something like this?

That would be a really cool narrative, I would give the Commissar or Company Commander a cool back story like he was a Stormtrooper captain or something and worked his way through the ranks or something. Only problem would be if he died in combat during the match.

they did something like that in IA9 where everything is seen through the thoughts of the inquisitor...before he was promptly killed and the feed ended of course

 cox.dan2 wrote:
Only problem would be if he died in combat during the match.

Make it like Necromunda. The characters don't die, they just become incapacitated. The commissar falls to the ground and has to be carried off by medics, but he still remains coherent enough to see the battle unfold (and scream at everyone around him).

My main character would probably be Chief Librarian Gyllan of my Scions of Gnosis homebrew chapter. I've named all my characters, actually, so when I write up dramatic batreps I can switch between everyone for the most interesting story. Like Assault Sergeant Vikare or Scout Sergeant Johnson (with shotgun). I even have their names written on the bases.

It depends on the gamers I play with. When I actually do bother to write a report ... sure, some in-character fluff works nicely to spice it up. I'm a roleplayer at heart, anyways, and half the fun in my army is the writing behind it.

Soldiers die all the time in the books, mainly you see from their prospective to learn something important about the battle before they die. So there's always that.

I have one in my fanfiction - Castellan Thelos from Black Templars.

A few years ago, we're talking like 6 years here, me and my friends all had a few different HQ models, during the campaign we set up, if someone's commander was killed, he was switched out for another model. It was pretty cool, and if someone hit the three link command chain limit, it was game over for that person, no matter how well they were doing otherwise.

I have the commanders of all my armies named and they remain in command no mater their fate upon the table, if they go down they are carried to safety by their troops.

I've also worked up a story and am even in the process of rebuilding a new model for my IG commander to represent to various wounds and augmetics she's received over her many campaigns. Not just her though, the Sgt of my Vets also has a story as well, along with a converted model. It does make you feel more in the moment when you play I think. Along with adding a emotional depth to the game, when writing battle reports having that fluff and time invested in feeling out the character eases the process I find.

I've always used a kinda multi-narrator setup. As in, when I wrote up battle reports, or even just used the battles as inspiration for short style Sci-Fi I used whichever seargent was closest to the action, and then switched between them on death. That worked pretty well for me. However writinf full back story for characters is nice, and just makes the games a little more personal.

The narrative voice of my IG army comes from the Master of Ordnance attached to my CCS, a Petty Officer in the Imperial Navy's Special Warfare branch who coordinates orbital barrages and close air support, while being thoroughly annoyed with how idiotic and sloppy the Imperial Guard are.

For my Wolves, it all happens through the eyes of a random Grey Hunter who just likes killing in the Allfather's name.

I still haven't found that voice for my Blood Angels yet, and I don't play the rest of my armies enough to build that level of attachment,

I have no idea how one would write from the point of a Tyranid invasion fleet.

 Unyielding Hunger wrote:
I have no idea how one would write from the point of a Tyranid invasion fleet.

You could simply write it from the view of the hive mind. Just keep referring to each organism as "a part of me". If you want a challenge you could write everything as a haikoo. It would give a nice kind of flowing poetry feeling to it

"The food struggles hard."
"Cannons destroy much of me."
"Some of me returns."

"I strike at their tanks."
"The non-food stops struggling."
"Infantry is next."

"It's guns are blazing."
"I seek shelter from it's parts."
"Few are lost from me."

Note that I refer to them as a single entity. The hive-mind may or may not know any better if it is against another hive-mind or not. This is assuming that it really cares either way.

Arkova. Check the link in my signature below for a taste of his story.

My main character is my Master of the forge of the white scars.
He favors steam roll approaches over the hit and run tactics of his brethren. He rains fire down up the enemy with his my beam. HE has created robots that resemble dreadnaughts the march unto battle.

Majority of the time, If i write something involving my IG army. My Commander Martin Andrews is the voice and the central character of the fluff.

But other times it can be anyone or anything from another guardsmen from another regiment witnessing my army, an "unfortunate" enemy of my army (who gets snuffed out at the very end), or it can be a individual in my army itself. One even comes from the POV of one of my machines. Said machine is not completed and still on the drawing board but i loved the concept of it so much that I wrote some fluff for it, unfortunatly it was lost when my laptop has problems and ill have to rewrite it.