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Hello,
The subject. Discuss.

I find it sad that with the Newest Edition that just came out for 40k that there wasn't much progression story wise. I would have like to see something regarding the false emperor eating people, how the imperium has been handling all the bad, or even a big bad. While it kinda seems as though the Nids might kinda be that the main story stayed the same.

 Smolo82 wrote:
Hello,
The subject. Discuss.

I find it sad that with the Newest Edition that just came out for 40k that there wasn't much progression story wise. I would have like to see something regarding the false emperor eating people, how the imperium has been handling all the bad, or even a big bad. While it kinda seems as though the Nids might kinda be that the main story stayed the same.

Yes, this makes me very sad. But I can understand the whole "its a setting not a story" thing. But with the rate of codex releases, it wouldnt be hard to have just a small plot advancement every edition, right?

Not really, because I prefer 40k as a setting. If the story moves on, there's very little room for players to create their fluff that has any meaning.

I think the desire to find out how things play out hits everybody at some point. Personally I made my peace with the fact that it is a setting, not a story. Conflicts and story lines are left open-ended so the players can decide. Even major campaigns like Armageddon and the 13th Black Crusade were never finished, but left in a state of open, continued war, so players can keep re-visiting them if they want.

Pretty much what curran said. All of the "ifs" and ambiguity in the setting gives a lot of freedom to players to make their own fluff or predictions. Advance the plot, and you'll probably start restricting that freedom.

In addition to what has been said above, the setting offers countless possibilities to insert interesting new events into the existing timeline. Why would you have to move beyond 999.M41 - usually presented as the pivotal battle between the Imperium and the forces of Chaos (not to mention the ongoing battles in the Armageddon Warzone) and thus fairly important as a basis for the players - when you have almost 10.000 years of history to fill?

Contrary to public perception, GW does add to the story, just not at the end but in the midst! A lot of entries in the 6E rulebook's timeline are completely new; plot hooks to be detailed in further supplements later on or to serve as inspiration for players now.

Any resolution of the conflict at Cadia can only result in three things:
- The Imperium wins and Chaos suddenly appears much less dangerous.
or
- Chaos wins and the Imperium's defense breaks down, followed by the collapse of the Imperium itself.
or
- Either side wins but nothing changes because GW chickens out the aforementioned options are too drastic a change and would make a lot of fans angry.

For many years, the 13th Black Crusade has been hyped up to become the most important battle of the era - there is no way to move on without alienating a lot of gamers either because it will have no consequences OR because the consequences are of a nature they don't agree with. Can you imagine the backlash of IG players when Cadia is overrun? The backlash of Marine or CSM players when their favourite Chapter or Legion gets destroyed? When some hero suddenly becomes unplayable because he died?
Ironically, it's the fans themselves I see as both the greatest petitioners as well as the greatest hurdle to any move beyond M41.

^this^^^^

and if I want a story, a plot and progression.....
.....there is Black Library.

It can become difficult and sometimes tedious to keep updating a setting. When AD&D did this with Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance in the 90s, it was tricky to keep up with events. Certain areas would suddenly become "off-limits", of course, that is if you wanted to keep pace with the events in Faerun or Krynn.

A progression of 40k would include what? Abbaddon's 14th crusade? A big Tyranid hive fleet invasion? The unification of the Orks? Eldar finding a homeworld?

A campaign year would be so much better than progressi g the story.

no

I am so pleased they are instead exploring all the stories that got them to this point - the Horus Heresy stuff has been a breath of fresh air for me and I hope that BL and Forge World continue their good works in this area.

Moving on is a risk - look at the changes in other systems - they get the best of both worlds here - those who like the current setting get to keep, the rest of us get loads of "new" stuff in the proceeding 10,000 years

I loved BattleTech and whilst I quite enjoyd the Clan era - the later stuff left me cold.............

Plus techncially there are already some BL novels that have bits and pieces set post 999.M41 and refer back to the "game period".

I'd enjoy some plot progression alright.

I remember seeing some fan-made fluff about the future of 40K, where Tyranids and Orks combined to become a huge threat, the imperium became completely divided (With Macragge splitting off from it completely) and Chaos winning the battle for Cadia.

It was truly interesting stuff and keeps me coming back to 40K. If I ever truly, truly believed that there was never going to be any plot progression at all (I don't) then I really don't think I'd collect it anymore.

With the recent changes in how GW conducts its business, I think there's a good chance that, at some point, we'll see some real progression (A novelisation of the Black Crusade perhaps?).

Let's see... the Emperor finally dies. Everyone expects Chaos to reign triumphant until the Emperor achieves godhood because he's able to reunite all the bits of his soul in the Warp and is all "Well, this is all quite embarrassing, isn't it?" and Lorgar's all "SEE, DAD? I TOLD YOU I WAS RIGHT! BUT YOU COULD NEVER LISTEN TO ME!" and the Sensei are all "Please to let us and the Squats out of Fluff Hell kthxbye" The Astronomicon does, however, go foomp temporarily, and a few billion psykers have sudden fatal brainsplosion headaches. The Sisters of Battle now have a more concrete explanation of all their miracles, but everyone still hates them because they don't let the Sisters Repentia wear sensible tunics and trousers. Gork and Mork try to figure out who's gonna crump the Emperor first and another Waaaagh! envelops Armageddon. The four Chaos powers also start fighting amongst themselves because the day ends in Y and they also want to be first to corrupt the Emperor. As a result all of their forces start infighting and ruining even more planets. Cegorach is all catty to him: "Oh, look who FINALLY showed up to clean out this place?" Meanwhile, all the Marine chapters are looking at their Librarians and going "Bob? You in there? Look, I know it's last minute but if you could come in on Saturday that'd be greeeeeat. And clean your brain up off the floor before you close, okay?" The Black Templars are running around planets looking for witches to smite and just finding chunky salsa everywhere. The Dark Angels and their attendant Unforgiven are all en route to the Eye of Terror to pick Cypher up now that the Emperor's returned. Since Empy's back, Lion El'Johnson is back, Luther is making sense and Cypher is now waiting patiently in a tea shop on Cadia.

All of that and you can still have an era of perpetual stagnation in warfare. The Tyranids are still eating their way through the Ultramarines' pocket empire. (Seriously, how no one has jumped down Calgar's throat after the Badab War I don't know.) The Eldar are still a doomed race, the Space Wolves are still drunk as all get out from last night, the Necrons still won't die, the Blood Angels still have their Black Rage and Red Thirst. The only real difference is now humanity has a god to protect them in the Warp itself.

And meanwhile Malal is going "Hey! I was supposed to be the Warp Power of Supreme Irony, not him!"

Its a Setting that spans the entire milkyway galaxy...any major events that happen will take a very long time to play out, the lack of any progression in some far reaching story arc is a problem..the problem is, is that somebody always has to lose, and losers don't sell models, everything will always be at 5 minutes till midnight, doom and gloom on the horizon, and all that jazz,

So pick a corner of the galaxy. make up some planets or systems, and play out your own stories, and add those threads to the tapestry of the 40k SETTING.

Fairly sure it's been said but it's worth saying again.
It's not a story.
It's a setting.

The fallout from advancing the plot would be too great. As it stands, almost every faction is on the brink of either dying out or winning. If the plot was to move beyond this point, at least one faction would have to disappear from the story or take a major tweak to their fluff and/or army structure.

No, it doesn't bother me. Furthermore, I find the idea of it bothering anyone to be strange.

40k has a setting. That's the setting you have. It would be as if we were all playing a game based around the Napoleonic wars and people were getting frustrated that the game didn't move on to american civil war or franco-prussian war battles.

I'd really like it to be a story, but the problem with stories from games is that if it is a story, then at some point, someone has got to lose a war. For a while, there could be a lot of plot advancement without anything really big happening, but once GW gets into the habit of advancing that plot, there will be that point where the umpteenth truce between alien races that hate each other or even worse, between chaos and someone else, just doesn't make any more sense, so that the war will have to be pursued to the end - that is until one side is actually wiped out.

It is one of the things that in my perception at the time killed off a good part of the Battletech fanbase in Germany: they progressed the story, a lot, and it was great fun to read that, but at some point, they wiped out Clan Smoke Jaguar. It was one of the more popular clans in my group of friends, and most of them, including me, stopped reading BT fiction and playing the game at that point.

A similar thing happened with the World-of-Darkness-setting from White Wolf: when they had the meta-plot advance to Gehenna, more than half of their customers quit. They tried coming back with a new WoD, which was actually very good and in my opinion, better than the first, but it never gained the popularity of the first one. White Wolf went down. Because they advanced the plot.

Imagine what an outrage it would be if someday, because the story demands a sacrifice, one of the major marine chapters is completely destroyed. Let's say the Space Wolves. The story advances, and they are gone. Millions of players throw their miniatures at the next available GW employee and rage-quit. And the Space Wolves would probably be one of the less problematic sacrifices, since they are "only" a variant of something bigger. Imagine the last Eldar dies, or the Tau are crushed by the Imperium.

So yeah, I'd like plot advancement, because plot-advancement is fun. But it makes things difficult.

The setting/story debate rages on.

40k obviously has a setting, but I think people would genuinely like to know what happens in certain stroy arcs...

In saying that if they revealed how that ended it might invalidate those battlefields/campaigns.

Their is plenty of time left within 40k to fit your own story or for the GW guys to add more in.

And you can't "advance the plot" without ruining the setting.

Plus, if they "advanced the plot", then they would need to make the rules of the game advance with the plot. If the plot said that all psykers were wiped out (or even all of one faction), then you'd have to rebalance the codex because you'd have to take units out of them due to the plot. GW has a hard enough time balancing things with the fluff being the setting, I can't imagine how badly they'd botch hitting a moving target if it were plot.

There is no plot, individually.

The HH plot is already over. We've seen the conclusion to Armageddon and Badab.

There are lots of individual plots that start, progress and then end. Sometimes they are revisited and expanded upon; sometimes they add new plots.

Like all of us, I wonder what would/could/should happen if they ever progressed past 11:59pm, but we all know it's a setting for us to do with as we please and not a story.

The good news is that with how rich the background is and the lengths of time dealt with on a galactic scale, there's plenty of room for individual story arcs that don't affect the the setting as a whole. I take refuge in these tales.

I fail to see how advancing the story would ruin the setting. The only way to go from the eternal war of the current minute to midnight scenario, is midnight, which is just more war, but in different places. Nothing has to change.

To answer the question: Yes, very much. :<

It would be cool to see what is around the corner but honestly, there is already so much that we do not know that they could provide or even expand upon what we already have.

The lack of story progression doesn't bother me, however the current doomsday scenario the storyline is poised at simply isn't epic enough. It needs revamped.

I'd like to see more setting details. Pick a period of 40k history post heresy and flesh it out more. Give us BL storylines, the odd campaign book. That's the best way to enhance the setting and satisfy everyone.

It bothers me a bit, because we're eternally at Christmas Eve with no Christmas.

The Golden Throne is failing, the Tyranids are about to smash into the galaxy, the Tau plot armor might fail, more psykers are popping up everywhere, a half dozen Primarchs could stumble out of their respective purgatories, NECRONS, Cypher, etc. etc.

There are so many things that could happen that would provide incredibly interesting storylines, and it seems like GW just keeps adding to the potential future storylines instead of advancing any of them.

I know it's supposed to be a setting, and I'm fine with that to an extent, but we just keep sitting on the edge of a cliff and adding more things that should push us over, except we never quite go over. I do enjoy building stories in my own little corner of the galaxy in the setting, so that's good, but it just bothers me a little, kind of like seeing an awesome TV show with a cliff hanger, and then the next episode never comes.

Don't get me wrong. Personally, I like evolving settings. For example, I dig how the universe of Battletech continues to expand into new eras of play, how new units and characters come into being, have their finest hour, and then get killed to be replaced by the next generation. It makes for a dynamic narrative and a living universe. Particularly because you don't know what will happen next, and how long your favourite guy/gal/unit will survive.

With 40k, on the other hand, I think most fans wouldn't take well to such developments. Because most of the heroes and the armies are unfortunately written as too infallible and too heroic, which is kind of ironic given the grimdark nature of the background. Yet, the fans have become used to this style of narration and expect it to continue. To make matters worse, with the 13th Black Cruasade, GW have written themselves into a corner. Without the conflict at Cadia, it would be quite possibly to just go on and have smaller campaigns elsewhere, maintaining the status quo whilst simultaneously delivering the illusion of a minimum of development. With Cadia, however, they've pretty much thrown some of the franchise's most iconic forces into a deadly arena whose nature would necessitate terrible casualties if it'd ever be resolved. I just don't think the fans could take it, as much as they're wishing for it now - likely because they still believe in the expectations I just mentioned, just focused on whatever army is their favourite, and conveniently forgetting that every other player does the same for their army.

Mr Morden wrote:I loved BattleTech and whilst I quite enjoyd the Clan era - the later stuff left me cold.............

This is a good example of the risks that come with advancing a setting (also see Skylifter's extensive post). Looking at Battletech, I see a lot of fans have different favourite eras that seemingly depend on when exactly they joined the hobby. Many of the really old veterans prefer the Post-Invasion era from the 3025s and absolutely loathe Clan stuff. Fans who joined up around the Clan invasion like the 3050s up until the Jihad but hate the following era. Me, on the other hand, I've just recently delved into this franchise, and lo and behold, I like all the eras so far. That doesn't mean that I will retain this happy attitude, however, for by now I have found my favourite factions and characters as well, and I dread what may happen to them in the future.

As I said ... expectations. As much as people like to clamour for development, many of them will be pissed if it doesn't conform to the direction they've been hoping for. Anyone remember the public outrage following Eddard Stark's death in GoT?

iproxtaco wrote:I fail to see how advancing the story would ruin the setting. The only way to go from the eternal war of the current minute to midnight scenario, is midnight, which is just more war, but in different places. Nothing has to change.

So you'd be fine with half the armies meeting on or over Cadia just being removed? Because I'd think a lot of their fans might disagree. Especially the "X wouldn't lose, they're too cool for that!" kind of fans.

PaperworkNinja wrote: The Sisters of Battle now have a more concrete explanation of all their miracles, but everyone still hates them because they don't let the Sisters Repentia wear sensible tunics and trousers.

They already have a concrete explanation, and the Repentia are not supposed to wear anything sensible.

Zond wrote:I'd like to see more setting details. Pick a period of 40k history post heresy and flesh it out more. Give us BL storylines, the odd campaign book. That's the best way to enhance the setting and satisfy everyone.

This. GW should really just repeat something like the Medusa V global campaign. Better yet, accompany it with novel and comic releases, too. They could make a whole sub-franchise out of it, if they wanted, just like they did with the Horus Heresy. The potential is there!

 iproxtaco wrote:
I fail to see how advancing the story would ruin the setting. The only way to go from the eternal war of the current minute to midnight scenario, is midnight, which is just more war, but in different places. Nothing has to change.

If nothing changes, why bother advancing the story? The setting allows for more war in different places already, considering the setting encompasses the whole galaxy and a timeline that covers 10,000 years.

 Lynata wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:I fail to see how advancing the story would ruin the setting. The only way to go from the eternal war of the current minute to midnight scenario, is midnight, which is just more war, but in different places. Nothing has to change.

So you'd be fine with half the armies meeting on or over Cadia just being removed? Because I'd think a lot of their fans might disagree. Especially the "X wouldn't lose, they're too cool for that!" kind of fans.

Why would they have to be removed? What specific armies have to die in order for the story to progress? Currently, we're sitting on the precipice of several major conflicts. The only way to go from here is to start telling the story of those conflicts. There doesn't ever have to be anything decisive, but it'd be nice to actually play the game and act like my characters and armies are doing something, instead of feeling like I'm reenacting events from the past.

 iproxtaco wrote:
I fail to see how advancing the story would ruin the setting. The only way to go from the eternal war of the current minute to midnight scenario, is midnight, which is just more war, but in different places. Nothing has to change.

Because that is not advancing the plot, just changing it. People who want to advance the plot want to know what happens with the Eldar, or dose the big E finally bite it. Do Chaos finaly make advances in to the real world. Etc.

At the moment every faction is on the precipice. It is like a pile of rocks. Move one and the rest will fall. At the moment every faction is on the edge and may fall off or may pull back and grow.

Will the Eldar may die out or may re-establish themselves?
Will the the Emperors death reunite the Imperium or cause it to fracture and die?
Will the Tau rise up to take there place as a major player able to counter all the threats of the galaxy or will they be snuffed out before they make the leap that is clearly on its way?
Will the Necrons rise up to defend against the Tyranids or will they sleep until the danger has passed?
Will the Tyranids strip the galaxy clean or will one or more factions finally find a way to stop them? The Necrons may have the power if they awake and the Tau may be able to if they have time. Or will the Tyranids carry on to Terra following the beacon of the Emperor only to turn back when they notice the void dragon, or will the Emperor die before possibly then leaving the Tyranids in chaos. Is there more Tyranids on there way? Have we seen just a fraction of the fleet?
Will Dark Eldar manage to flourish in the safety of the webway, or will there ways eventually eat them up?
Will Chaos manage to make strides in to the matirum finally damaging humanity and gaining a foothold in reality or will they be pushed back and the Necrons once again begin to work to hold the warp closed?
Will the Orks... Na, feth it. The orks are going to carry on being orks what ever happens.

Etc etc.

At the moment the setting is on the edge. Everyone is balanced, and all it will take is one little nudge for the whole house to come tumbling down.

Moving the story on would be a bad idea. Better we are in a place where all factions have a chance at winning or loosing.

I Agree with the "setting" guys, mostly. Although they could advance the story and kill a few people (individual heroes like Cpt. Tycho have died, if you want to play them, your battle happens in the "past") bit by bit, it doesn't bother me much as long as there is history to explore.