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Personally, I consider any source as 40k canon be it book, codex, or video game. How about you?

My own personal interpretation of the 'verse is shaped predominantly by sources published by the GW core studio - meaning rulebooks, codices, and White Dwarf articles.

Occasionally, I do add individual concepts from other sources - be them novels, games, or even cool ideas from other players - as long as I they fit in with the above, do not contradict each other, and are suitably interesting. Examples of this would be Miriael Sabathiel from the Dark Millennium CCG, Forge World's Repressor APC and its fluff, the hidden "suicide knives" from James Swallows' Faith & Fire novel, or the "Detached Novices" from Black Industries' Dark Heresy RPG.
In this, I imitate GW itself, who occasionally adopt things from other sources into studio material, if they think it fits the bill.

Whenever you see me talking fluff on dakka, however, I generally limit myself to GW-only sources, which I treat as a sort of "common ground" between players. I can't well expect anyone to accept, or even know the novels and whatever other outsourced products I have read, after all. Granted, I cannot really expect this in regards to the studio material as well, but most people still seem to hold it in higher regard.

In order of best to worst:

1. Codex/CJ/IA/Other GW or FW publication designed for the table-top game, the game what started it all.

2. Black Library novels and publications that I agree with.

3. Third-party publications that fill in blanks not covered by the previous two entries.

4. Whatever I need to make up that isn't covered in the previous 3 items.


... note that Black Library novels I don't like are not mentioned here. This is intentional.

I find myself over-analyzing a lot. So I look at pretty much everything published that has GW Blessing, Games etc, even if they didn't write it and I try to make it make sense.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I find myself over-analyzing a lot. So I look at pretty much everything published that has GW Blessing, Games etc, even if they didn't write it and I try to make it make sense.

ANYTHING with the 40k logo. so, yes, the blood ravens beat off an entire hive fleet with 1 world worth of IG and a company or two.

The stuff that I like from whatever source that happens to create it.

Depending on what is going on at the time depends on what I consider fluff, if its a search for knowledge, I generally go Codices,then FFG stuff (at least they maintain a consistency), then black library. If I am in an argument I am too stubborn to lose I generally have a percentage thats about :25% rulebooks, 25% Black Library, and 67.35% whatever sounds good at the time and I have a decent chance of you not calling me out on

Reason I place Black Library so low is the tons of contradictory stories between all the novels (heck look at how in one book a lasgun takes out a PA marine and in the next the marine can darn near eat a lascannon shot)

Wardragoon wrote:FFG stuff (at least they maintain a consistency)

Not really..
Their rules differ from game to game, making crossovers a mess, and even their fluff changes between the books. Did you notice that, for example, the number of Sororitas in the Calixis sector has more than centuplicated between Inquisitor's Handbook and Blood of Martyrs? At first there was a temporary contingent of 50 Battle Sisters, and this was described as an unusually high concentration of force causing nobles to worry. Fast forward a few supplements and you have thousands of Sisters, including one of the six Major Orders having stationed a full third of its entire (wo)manpower there.
Same thing about the Space Marines - at first the only thing in the sector was an unmanned outpost by the Black Templars, now the sector has its own Chapter.

But I suppose that is due to the change of writers ... the game did switch from Black Industries to FFG, after all, and the foreword of Deathwatch even had Merrett say that the people at FFG had different ideas than the team GW had appointed.


This brings me to a question sort-of related to the topic - how do people deal with contradictions in the material they read? Generally, the more sources one adds to their "library", the more likely you are to discover conflicts between them.
As far as I can see, there are generally three different "paths" that people take? Prioritising by origin (always treat X as higher than Y), or by release date (newer overrides older), or by simply picking what sounds best/coolest? Are there more? What is the most popular?

I accept everything with the approval of GW. That includes codexes/codices, novels, comics, videogames... As long as it is cool enough and it does not contradict something I already accepted as canon, it is OK.

 Lynata wrote:

This brings me to a question sort-of related to the topic - how do people deal with contradictions in the material they read? Generally, the more sources one adds to their "library", the more likely you are to discover conflicts between them.
As far as I can see, there are generally three different "paths" that people take? Prioritising by origin (always treat X as higher than Y), or by release date (newer overrides older), or by simply picking what sounds best/coolest? Are there more? What is the most popular?

Rule of cool.

Also, the material is far more consistent than it looks, as long as you see it as legends and propaganda. For instance, many people berate DOW for its Khorne Librarians, but they have always been there: Tally Keepers, Gore Mages... It is just an example, but I find most contradictions to be caused by not knowing much of an army.

da001 wrote:Also, the material is far more consistent than it looks, as long as you see it as legends and propaganda.

True enough - this is "the manual" we were given by its authors... It is the fans' mistake to take everything literally.

Dakka once had an interesting/enlightening exchange with novelist Aaron Dembski Bowden (probably best known for his Horus Heresy books) on this topic here.

da001 wrote:It is just an example, but I find most contradictions to be caused by not knowing much of an army.

I have to agree here, too. Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge sometimes seems to extend to professional authors.

Sure, there's the propaganda clause, but then again the fans' opinions are just as protected by it. ^^

 Lynata wrote:
Unfortunately, this lack of knowledge sometimes seems to extend to professional authors.

Absolutely. And I think it is getting worse. It somehow concerns me.

I don´t think they are even proof-reading now. Look at the supplements and Digital Editions. The words "Alas", "Fortunately" and "Unfortunately" repeat over and over in the Iyanden supplement. And the sentence "Once battle has been joined, the Adepta Sororitas will stop at nothing until their enemies are utterly crushed." repeats twice in the same page in the Codex: Adepta Sororitas.

May sound trivial, but it is not. It is a basic mistake while editing a text. Any proof-reader, even one without any knowledge of the game, would have spotted the mistake in less than five minutes. Proof-readers are cheap, and they can get one for free by using a fan. And I am not talking about the clearly out of the question idea that the writer himself should read the stuff he just wrote, something that did not happen here. Not a single human being read the "book" (the, what, four pages of it?) before it was released.

Everything I agree with and nothing I don't

That sentence is copypaste from earlier fluff. I guess that only makes it funnier - or sadder.

I also noticed a number of typos in the DigiDex, or repeatedly shifting between Adepta and Adeptus Sororitas ...

Though my comment was more regarding how some novel authors displaying a prominent lack of "inside knowledge" regarding some of the stuff they write about. Either that, or their interpretation of an army is just very far away from how it was described in the original material - but I'm fairly sure that there are at least some cases where the author just didn't bother.

Eh, the stuff in the Codex and in the Rulebooks is usually considered the most 'relevant' for most people because they don't look beyond the game for story and what-not. As some have posted, they prefer the little from the books and then use their own and create their own, it's great.

As for me, I like the Black Library, I haven't read too much of it but I consider it to be 'fluff' all the same and able to be taken as cannon.

I think the best part of the hobby is making your own stories for your armies and GW gives you a lot of background info to help out with this.

Okay, on an off topic note ADB IS ON FREAKING DAKKA!?
All of the GW related books tend to have some bad typos and other things that an editor/proofreader would nail, the worst/most confusing is the continual retcons

I think he is offline at the moment

I do adore his novels and happy to ignore/forgive the occassional lapse from the more established facts.

 Wardragoon wrote:

Reason I place Black Library so low is the tons of contradictory stories between all the novels (heck look at how in one book a lasgun takes out a PA marine and in the next the marine can darn near eat a lascannon shot)

It can happen on the tabletop, it can happen in a book!

 Lynata wrote:
That sentence is copypaste from earlier fluff. I guess that only makes it funnier - or sadder.

Exactly.
Someone copy pasted some sentences from earlier stuff and didn´t even bother to read it before release. And nobody else did. In a 6th edition Codex. Wow.

Which is why I tend to favor old material over new material. The quality is quite different. I am starting to appreciate when the current studio just copy paste things.

 raiden wrote:
ANYTHING with the 40k logo. so, yes, the blood ravens beat off an entire hive fleet with 1 world worth of IG and a company or two.

Eww.... such a.. poor choice of phrasing.

In my book, the Blood Ravens were a woefully corrupt Chapter, who managed to purge their ranks of the servants of no fewer than three of the Ruinous Powers, and were then, by Inquisitorial Edict, sent on a Penance Crusade to last no fewer than one thousand years, so great was the cost to the Imperium caused by the Blood Ravens' lack of oversight. Hive Worlds subject to Exterminatus, lost to the Arch-Enemy, sacrificed to the Xenos... if the Blood Ravens had planned to lose the sub-sector, they could not have done better.

Otherwise, though, video games I tend to ignore. There are too many variable endings and, as evidenced by the way the game actually play, a "preferred" army/character that will openly and blatantly "cheat". For my canon, the Sisters of Battle are the winners of Soulstorm, purging the worlds of heretic, traitors and xenos alike.


Oh, yeah, copy-editors are fairly cheap, but they're also fairly expendable. You can mandate that authors QC their own work, and fire the copy-editors when the economy dips. That doesn't work out well, in the end, as we've seen, but it's a fairly common practice.

Black Library books run into the problem of having two different books report the same thing in two radically different ways, both of which simply cannot be simultaneously true, so you have to either choose one, or make up your own. This is why I only stick with BL novels that I like. If I don't like the book, I can freely ignore anything it says and not feel bad about it. If I like the book, I can freely ignore anything in it I don't agree with, and adapt the things that I do.

 da001 wrote:
And I am not talking about the clearly out of the question idea that the writer himself should read the stuff he just wrote, something that did not happen here. Not a single human being read the "book" (the, what, four pages of it?) before it was released.

Problem is, and I know this from my own scribblings, is that when you've written the text it's very easy to miss your mistakes as your brain fills in the gaps without you realising. What probably happened was the author cobbled it together, probably under a tight deadline, read it over once briefly, sent it off there and then and nobody read it properly, assuming the author had checked it already. I did a writing course a few years ago & the tutor suggested several times to leave 3 or so days between writing something & going over it to check for errors in the text. However that option isn't always available with deadlines.

Occam's Razor.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Everything I agree with and nothing I don't

raiden wrote:ANYTHING with the 40k logo. so, yes, the blood ravens beat off an entire hive fleet with 1 world worth of IG and a company or two.

Dakkamite wrote:The stuff that I like from whatever source that happens to create it.

Mr Morden wrote:Everything I agree with and nothing I don't

raiden wrote:ANYTHING with the 40k logo. so, yes, the blood ravens beat off an entire hive fleet with 1 world worth of IG and a company or two.

All of the above. Ian Watson's Space Marine and Inquisitor still count, because they're the best 40k novels I've read. Bits of Rogue Trader still count because they're funny. Chucnks of the Horus heresy series don't count because I don't like how they depict the setting.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:



All of the above. Ian Watson's Space Marine and Inquisitor still count, because they're the best 40k novels I've read. Bits of Rogue Trader still count because they're funny. Chucnks of the Horus heresy series don't count because I don't like how they depict the setting.

Exactly, I still like the doubt being cast on Lion El'Jonsons loyalty, heck its what made me buy my army, just that one little line from Angels of Darkness

SkavenLord wrote:
Personally, I consider any source as 40k canon be it book, codex, or video game. How about you?

Whatever doesn't suck.

Pretty much ignore everything from the start of 4th ed onwards.

Whether it be roolzbook, novels, naff computer games or other tripe fluff.

It reached its peak in 2nd ed, and started to decline in 3rd. 5th ed stuff was just kicking a very decomposed corpse.

1. Codex (including novels that have been referenced or incorporated into a Codex) and other similar GW publications like BFG rulebook and main 40K rulebook
2. Novels
3. Anything else

Old background still stands unless directly contradicted or retconned by newer background. Higher level evidence taking precedence over lower level. If of equal level, particularly novels, then what is the more numerous and consistent over time, and which causes the least other discrepancy or conflict.

The biggest thing is recognition of when the POV is in-character/in-universe and hence unreliable, rather than an omniscient 3rd person narrator POV. Any in-character quote or reference is potentially fallible and unreliable as it just shows what a character in the 40K universe believes rather than what might actually be the truth.

The reasoning for the "consistency" condition is that increasingly BL authors are not doing the research of what they are writing about, or alternatively they don't care and just try to put in a "twist" or re-write existing stuff to make their mark on the 40K universe. Frankly I am more impressed with people that can write within the boundaries and rules of an existing IP and universe rather than just tossing out chunks of background left and right just because they can. Unfortunately BL and GW largely don't care about consistency beyond the most basic details (and sometimes not even that). While 40K is a fictional universe, things should still hold together and make internal logical sense within the rules of the fictional universe, but until GW and BL view the effort of ensuring some consistency within their IP as worth it, their products will be rife with contradictions. A general tip and guide to writing is to first know the rules before you break them, and I think that is a statement applicable to the 40K universe or any shared IP, but I think far too many writers are caught up in trying to be unique that they just play havoc by walking all over existing background.

I try to take anything that seems plausible with the newest cancelling out older fluff. The only stuff I tend to ignore is those that appear to have been written by a 12 year old fanboi. Which is, unfortunately, a good chunk of newer fluff.

Anything with the 40k logo.
Except CS Gotos books.
And makari the grot being dead.
Or that I don't like.(But I like most of It.MOST of it..)