Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Slipspace wrote:
Would it have been too much to ask for one or two to die during the process? Would it really have hurt the bottom line all that much if Shrike, for example, died and a new Raven Guard character had to be created? Or Corbulo, who no longer has a model anyway?

Gotta save new models for some named characters for 11th.

And while I agree that the success rate for crossing the Rubicon Primaris is suspiciously high, it's not too hard to imagine the outcry from fans if a named character died on the operating table.

Speaking of named characters being everywhere, it gets into the rules as well. I recently considered upgrading my Eldar collection, and Ynnari are a nice way to field both types of Eldar together. But you can only have an Ynnari force if Yvraine is leading it! Isn't this supposed to be a galaxy spanning cult with countless of followers? Apparently not! Unless Yvraine is present, the followers do absolutely nothing.

The idea behind at least some of the special characters is that their impact is their leadership, not their prowess.

Did G man PERSONALLY achieve lasting change? No. But GW would say that without his leadership in the formation of Indomitus Crusade Fleets, the Cicatrix could have ended the Imperium, and even with his leadership, it still might.

Did Leontus personally achieve lasting change? Nope. But GW would say that without the Solblades, the Tyrannic war would be lost.

As for the Ynarri, no, they aren't a galaxy spanning organization; they're a Cult. Until Yvraine convinces you to join, you can't. Now she's been recruiting for three editions, so she's getting closer to making an actual faction- she's got some high profile supporters now- Jain Zar and Lelith among them, cuz Girls Just Wanna Have Fun... But galaxy spanning is a stretch.

Personally, as a Crusader, I would say that Yvraine has to be the warlord during the first fight every unit participates in, but once they're recruited, they remain loyal and can function independently. But the base game, being built for stand-alone battles, doesn't give players the opportunity to express such story driven distinctions on the table.

 Crimson wrote:
Speaking of named characters being everywhere, it gets into the rules as well. I recently considered upgrading my Eldar collection, and Ynnari are a nice way to field both types of Eldar together. But you can only have an Ynnari force if Yvraine is leading it! Isn't this supposed to be a galaxy spanning cult with countless of followers? Apparently not! Unless Yvraine is present, the followers do absolutely nothing.

I'm pretty sure Ynnari is the exception, where GW forces Yvraine as a "tax" to allow it. Realistically, Ynnari should be it's own codex with a specific selection of units

Part of the phenomenon to me seems that a) warhammer has gotten much bigger than it's ever been in terms of media presence and b) GW wants to have an IP with which to sell licenses to other companies and also nostalgia to much of its audience.

In the 90s when I developed an interest in the warhammers and eventually had money to buy minis and books etc. it was at least thinkable that I might be able to read every studio book, or keep up with white dwarf, or read every novel. The sheer volume of stuff coming out since Black Library spun up makes it next to impossible to even think about doing it, let alone actually do it. I think that overwhelmingness has toned down a little since the glut of HH material (and I've read or listened to literally all of it; don't do it) but there's still far too much to keep up with.

Part of what that results in, I think, is an explosion of poorly remembered or misunderstood fluff bits that some hack then writes into Warhammer Wiki without citations, or an influence tells all their followers and then they think the thing is canon. GW also does occasional retcons as well - while I'm on board with custodes and bretonnian knights being taken from all human sexes, they did change out of the blue, just like when Black Templars became weirdos in 3E.

So when it comes, then, to the sheer size of the franchises, and GW trying to hawk it to other parties, it makes sense from a faceless megacorp perspective to try to rein it in and make it more prepackaged so you can sell more lunchboxes. There was this interesting anecdote in a video chat recently where the hosts were pontificating about how many more views lore videos get than other videos, and the thought was that maybe it's easier to feel engaged via someone else telling you a story than it is to sit down and paint, or dredge through books looking for obscure references to concoct your own story, or arrange a game when you have regular life stuff to deal with.

I do think we're in an age of where Recognisable Character Franchises are the order of the day, and this isn't a particularly new phenomenon either - historiography is rife with Important Person History coming and going in popularity.

It's not just that GW wants to sell licenses to video games though, it's also that us older folks are as involved in nostalgia as younger folks are into retro stuff. Corbulo's a great example - I think it's silly that every named space marine is becoming embiggened with no real trouble despite all the inane stuff about how it's so dangerous, and also there are people who are annoyed he didn't get an update.

I do think there's also an extent to which small-group agreements are just less common in the age we're in. If you're a younger person you probably don't have the space to regularly have games at home, and if you're older you're just busier than you were a decade or two ago, and all of us are constantly distracted in the era of attention economics. So our idea of engagement tends to be internet stuff - whether it's old-timey message boards like here or reddit or FB groups or youtube comments, and in THIS context it's much easier for us all to have opinions about a small universe than a big one. Even on a local leve, My Dudes fight My Friends' Dudes a bunch because I have the fortune of playing at home with friends, but even if I were to go to an FLGS nearby they've no interest in what we're up to, and most people I encounter aren't going to have a similar arrangement so we can't even trade tales of Our Respective Plots. But I can go and we can have a (bad, because neither of us have read it all) discussion about the Lion coming back.

All of that long winded waffle aside though, I'm sympathetic to PenitentJake's point - if a given person and their friends are tired of this Saturday Morning situation where Big People fight a bunch but nothing ever changes, it's really up to play groups to do their own thing.

 ultimaratio wrote:
If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

Tl;Dr is They used to; the fans didn't want it.


Met jervis about 15 years back at an Irish con. He talked about how, back in third ed, they presented a 'bare bones' kind of framework, thinking people wanted to make their own chapters and have their own stories. Nah, feedback for the most part was people wanting more lore/stories of named characters/chapters etc. They're a business. They catered to what the fans wanted. In the time since, 'character led setting' is basically the norm now for any IP.

Choose a far-flung space, ideally the Eastern Fringe (no bias here) and set your homebrew in it. I've done this myself. Galaxy's plenty big; don't just limit yourself to what's on the page.

Deadnight wrote:

 ultimaratio wrote:
If the galaxy is a galaxy, why jump around a timeline, when literally anything could happen in the space we know, and don't know, for almost any reason imaginable? Even with warp travel, there could be millions of worlds and wars going on in a small puff of gas, that nobody's ever heard of (or forgot about). So why constrain the setting to the scale of a few characters in a few stories, whose paths even cross, when there's so much room for new civilizations and armies? The timeline doesn't even matter, because we already know the Imperium will always be at war, or there isn't a game.

Tl;Dr is They used to; the fans didn't want it.


Met jervis about 15 years back at an Irish con. He talked about how, back in third ed, they presented a 'bare bones' kind of framework, thinking people wanted to make their own chapters and have their own stories. Nah, feedback for the most part was people wanting more lore/stories of named characters/chapters etc. They're a business. They catered to what the fans wanted. In the time since, 'character led setting' is basically the norm now for any IP.

It doesn't necessarily follow that the two options are 'make your own story' or 'superhero story'.

Also, having read Jervis' Standard Bearer articles for years, what he believes is, let's say, extremely malleable, based on the current GW design philosophy...

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It doesn't necessarily follow that the two options are 'make your own story' or 'superhero story'.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at.

Look at the Imperial Armour books. They cover interesting campaigns involving new characters and locales. The Badab War narrative would not have been improved by shoehorning Guilliman and Mortarion in and having their WWE cage match determine the outcome of the conflict. If GW isn't keen to actually disrupt the status quo, then telling self-contained stories that don't lean on the familiar cast of some two-dozen characters is straightforward enough.

For me it's a big whatever- I'm not especially invested in an ongoing storyline that is transparently going nowhere- but I do resent the hell out of character-centric narratives creeping into the rules.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It doesn't necessarily follow that the two options are 'make your own story' or 'superhero story'.

Also, having read Jervis' Standard Bearer articles for years, what he believes is, let's say, extremely malleable, based on the current GW design philosophy...

There are still plenty of 40k books that are self-contained, pretty much no one reads them aside of whatever fandom niche they are filling.

I mean, how many people even know who is Magus Davien (without googling her)?

Sales wise, most of the fans want and focus on the illusion of the narrative by purchasing and reading books that follow named characters with a model.

 catbarf wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It doesn't necessarily follow that the two options are 'make your own story' or 'superhero story'.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at.

Look at the Imperial Armour books. They cover interesting campaigns involving new characters and locales. The Badab War narrative would not have been improved by shoehorning Guilliman and Mortarion in and having their WWE cage match determine the outcome of the conflict. If GW isn't keen to actually disrupt the status quo, then telling self-contained stories that don't lean on the familiar cast of some two-dozen characters is straightforward enough.

For me it's a big whatever- I'm not especially invested in an ongoing storyline that is transparently going nowhere- but I do resent the hell out of character-centric narratives creeping into the rules.

Since lots of people really do love ongoing main storylines,there's a lot to be said for the Badab war or something on the same scale becoming the the ongoing storyline. That fills the most rudimentary function for a campaign book, which is that players use it as a model for their own campaign in some other sector, or piggyback right into the badab campaign itself.

People love talking alternate heresies, what if X legion had been on the other side. If Imperial Armour is the ongoing storyline, then alt-badab isn't even an alternate universe. Any of the Terran chapters in the Badab War could be on the rebel side of some other conflict. The Carcharodons, Salamanders, and Sons of Medusa could all get on the wrong side of the the local Administratum for their own reasons. The Sons of Medusa flat out come from a civil war themselves. The main Indomitus et al story does not do any of this. Guilliman isnt a template for your gaming group's characters or campaigns

 catbarf wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
It doesn't necessarily follow that the two options are 'make your own story' or 'superhero story'.

Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at.

Look at the Imperial Armour books. They cover interesting campaigns involving new characters and locales. The Badab War narrative would not have been improved by shoehorning Guilliman and Mortarion in and having their WWE cage match determine the outcome of the conflict. If GW isn't keen to actually disrupt the status quo, then telling self-contained stories that don't lean on the familiar cast of some two-dozen characters is straightforward enough.

For me it's a big whatever- I'm not especially invested in an ongoing storyline that is transparently going nowhere- but I do resent the hell out of character-centric narratives creeping into the rules.

I never bought any of the IA campaign books- they did always seem interesting, but again, FW with higher prices, resin, shipping and exchange rates (some of which has improved over the years), FW was always less accessible than GW.

But after breaking out all of the amazing 9th ed stuff, the campaign books and flashpoints... I'd say they did exactly those things. Sure, some named characters were there- just like Huron was at Badab. That may not be quite the same, because I think Badab might have been Huron's origin story (again, don't care enough about marines to dig). But I don't think the involvement of named characters in Chalnath, Octarius or any of the other 9th ed campaign books prevented anyone from playing their dudes, and certainly more than enough resources were provided to allow players to do those things.

In the 9th Hardback campaign books, there were dozens of lesser characters that don't have models to inspire conversions or act as templates for our own creations; there were lots of new planets and star systems, complete with galactic maps (though unfortunately no planet-based maps). The White Dwarf Flashpoints took it to a higher level- creating additional missions, theatre of war rules to facilitate play in particular regions, sometimes minor relics. We got alternate ways to create armies via army of renown rules; we got supplementary material for key subfactions. The only "problem" with 9th's campaign play/ ongoing narrative approach from my perspective is that there was almost too much; I put quotes around "problem" because no one was ever required to use it all, so there's a ready made solution. But I did feel like the material could have been better curated and organized- we didn't need 3 mission packs and two hardback books per season.

I am finding 10th campaign books to be much less satisfying, despite the fact that they are exclusively Crusade materials. The replacement of Flashpoints with mediocre Bunker content in WD really hurts too. I bought Tyrannic War, because I never bothered with the release box, and needed Crusade rules. I was disappointed enough that I didn't bother with Pariah, though by most accounts, it's the better of the two. If Tyrranic War had provided army creation rules for Solblade forces, it would have gone a long way. Theatres of War rules for planets in the Bastior Subsector, even better.

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Slipspace wrote:
Would it have been too much to ask for one or two to die during the process? Would it really have hurt the bottom line all that much if Shrike, for example, died and a new Raven Guard character had to be created? Or Corbulo, who no longer has a model anyway?

Gotta save new models for some named characters for 11th.

And while I agree that the success rate for crossing the Rubicon Primaris is suspiciously high, it's not too hard to imagine the outcry from fans if a named character died on the operating table.

For one, they're named characters because they're exceptional; a chapter's most hearty stock capable of things beyond their brothers. I'd expect their success rate be higher.

That said, for two, all the Rubicon/Primaris stuff is just a cobbled together handwave for what was supposed to be a resculpt line. Marines were just going to be outfitted in new armor and scaled up as part of a reboot, but GW panicked after the Sigmar outrage and cobbled together some generic lore justification instead. It's really not worth taking very seriously. Even in the fluff its pretty unimportant and hand wavy.

Regarding the issue of narratives that increasingly focus on special characters, I would add another issue - it makes the galaxy feel far less dangerous because the sods never actually die.

(At least, no characters who can't just come back to life through regeneration or whatever actually die.)

Yes, characters like Rowboat Guilliman are tough. However, this is supposed to be a galaxy full of untold horrors and weapons that can devastate entire worlds. The entire point of the setting was that casualties were inflicted on planetary scales.

It's one thing for Guilliman et al. to make important decisions from a relatively safe position, but when he's constantly fighting on the front line, it's hard to believe that no bomb or artillery shell has ever landed on him (even more so when you consider that he's the size of a fething tank). Or that his craft/drop-pod/whatever wasn't blown out from under him. Or that even his entire spaceship has never been destroyed, leaving him to fall into the nearest planet in a meteoric fireball.

You can argue these would be unsatisfying, but the point is that 40k battlefields are supposed to be unimaginably dangerous regardless of who you are.

Maybe it would be more appropriate for him to be slain in an epic duel with Abaddon or the Swarmlord or Mortarion etc. Except that never happens either.

When the plot-armour is this thick, it makes it hard to feel that anything is at stake because the named characters are, to all intents and purposes, immortal and invulnerable. It would seem to run entirely counter to the Grimdark setting where lives beyond number are sacrificed to keep the Imperium afloat. A setting where billions may die because an administrator lost a file and omitted to send them crucial supplies, yet such a mistake would merit little more than a footnote. A setting where even the greatest of men are no more than a slightly brighter spark, lost in a galaxy of stars. When they die, and die they will, they will not be missed.

Oh except for the writers' pet characters, who are all indestructible supermen. They are/were present for every single important battle ever, regardless of time or location, and who are so super hyper mega special that they had to be enlarged to size of small buildings just to shoulder the weight of their plot-armour.


EDIT: just to clarify further, my point is not that these characters should die. My point is, when they are constantly on the frontlines (as opposed to acting primarily as distant strategists), then it becomes increasingly hard to justify that they haven't died. That one of the myriad of unavoidable deaths that could so easily befall anyone on a 40k battlefield hasn't befallen them.

Malifaux has always done an exceptional job of getting this right. A big part of that is that the stories are always written from the perspective of a nobody who has no plot armor. From their perspective, the named characters from the table top are all effectively impossible monsters and if they ever appear in the story, the actual protagonist is probably dead or worse. 40k as a setting would probably benefit from something similar.

 LunarSol wrote:

For one, they're named characters because they're exceptional; a chapter's most hearty stock capable of things beyond their brothers. I'd expect their success rate be higher.

Yet Ragnar survived despite being mortally wounded, Calgar was seriously wounded, Lemartes is so coco that he has to be kept in stasis normally...

Tyran wrote:
There are still plenty of 40k books that are self-contained, pretty much no one reads them aside of whatever fandom niche they are filling.

I mean, how many people even know who is Magus Davien (without googling her)?

Sales wise, most of the fans want and focus on the illusion of the narrative by purchasing and reading books that follow named characters with a model.

I think there's a distinction to be drawn here between novels and campaign books. Many (albeit not all, but there are plenty of all sorts these days) of the novels follow characters who are very localised in the setting. Gaunt is perhaps the most famous, but various Ghosts do suffer consequences a bunch. I don't really have any beef with the novels and I don't think that's what this is about, especially since relatively few of the novels promise anything galaxy-shaking (or if they do, it's often revealed to be an incorrect assessment by the viewpoint characters).

PenitentJake wrote:

But after breaking out all of the amazing 9th ed stuff, the campaign books and flashpoints... I'd say they did exactly those things. Sure, some named characters were there- just like Huron was at Badab. That may not be quite the same, because I think Badab might have been Huron's origin story (again, don't care enough about marines to dig). But I don't think the involvement of named characters in Chalnath, Octarius or any of the other 9th ed campaign books prevented anyone from playing their dudes, and certainly more than enough resources were provided to allow players to do those things.

In the 9th Hardback campaign books, there were dozens of lesser characters that don't have models to inspire conversions or act as templates for our own creations; there were lots of new planets and star systems, complete with galactic maps (though unfortunately no planet-based maps). The White Dwarf Flashpoints took it to a higher level- creating additional missions, theatre of war rules to facilitate play in particular regions, sometimes minor relics. We got alternate ways to create armies via army of renown rules; we got supplementary material for key subfactions. The only "problem" with 9th's campaign play/ ongoing narrative approach from my perspective is that there was almost too much; I put quotes around "problem" because no one was ever required to use it all, so there's a ready made solution. But I did feel like the material could have been better curated and organized- we didn't need 3 mission packs and two hardback books per season.

I am finding 10th campaign books to be much less satisfying, despite the fact that they are exclusively Crusade materials. The replacement of Flashpoints with mediocre Bunker content in WD really hurts too. I bought Tyrannic War, because I never bothered with the release box, and needed Crusade rules. I was disappointed enough that I didn't bother with Pariah, though by most accounts, it's the better of the two. If Tyrranic War had provided army creation rules for Solblade forces, it would have gone a long way. Theatres of War rules for planets in the Bastior Subsector, even better.

That's interesting, and I might have a peruse through some 9E stuff if someone local has some I can borrow. I tapped out of 40k's studio plot stuff after Psychic Awakening - and I don't know if 9E's campaigns changed it up - because none of those stories actually went anywhere. The Badab War ended, T'ros is in Tau hands, Vraks was reconquered (but is more or less dead) etc. etc. There were consequences for the protagonists and antagonists of the setting; even though those consequences were localised, the story had a beginning and a middle and an end. Psychic Awakening's plots, Vigilus, and the Pariah Nexus at least all seem like "here's a flare-up, not it continues into endless war". Which is fine, but that's the setting as a whole. I'm quite happy to be wrong on this point though; if any of the campaigns actually tell a tale that comes to a close, that's a good thing in my view and I might check it out.

LunarSol wrote:Malifaux has always done an exceptional job of getting this right. A big part of that is that the stories are always written from the perspective of a nobody who has no plot armor. From their perspective, the named characters from the table top are all effectively impossible monsters and if they ever appear in the story, the actual protagonist is probably dead or worse. 40k as a setting would probably benefit from something similar.

The HH novel Master of Mankind dallied with that a bit - you never got the Emperor's perspective. Periodically something else gets released, but I do think 40k's novels and short stories go in this direction much more, and are far better for it. Ufthak Blackhawk doesn't run into Ghazgkull (albeit he does encounter Badrukk, but Badrukk isn't exactly possessed of an impossible schedule), for example.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

For one, they're named characters because they're exceptional; a chapter's most hearty stock capable of things beyond their brothers. I'd expect their success rate be higher.

Yet Ragnar survived despite being mortally wounded, Calgar was seriously wounded, Lemartes is so coco that he has to be kept in stasis normally...

There's a reason my second point is the much longer one. Primaris fluff is a handwave at best.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Lemartes is so coco that he has to be kept in stasis normally...

That's a somewhat unfair characterisation - he's apparently fallen to the Black Rage, but not been consumed by it, due to his willpower. He's apparently quite sane when outside of stasis, not a frothing loon like others who have fallen.

catbarf wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I think I mostly agree with Vlad here. If you want to tell stories about your guys fighting over small stakes or even pointless stakes in an ultimately unimportant corner of the galaxy, that's still totally possible! This 40k-as-setting approach still works.

It's just that, in addition to that small-stakes stuff that we're all used to from pre-8th, we're now also occasionally moving a few plot threads forward to give the impression that the setting isn't 100% static and to tell some new, potentially cool stories.

Personally I agree with that- but when those major plot threads are being driven by the same limited roster of characters showing up again and again, it makes the setting feel trite, contrived, and small. The setting is so big that they could easily invent Macharius-esque Guard commanders, rising Chaos warlords, unexpected Hive Fleets, minor Craftworlds, Inquisitors, and so on and have them plausibly effect significant change.

Instead it's always Guilliman or Mortarion or Abaddon or Vect or Ghazghkull or whoever behind it. Only the stars get to make any major impact, and everyone else is just window dressing.

You're not wrong, but I tend to think of it like this: the setting loves being hyperlethal and killing off seemingly powerful characters left and right to make a point. One of the main things that defines a named character being a named character is that they're death-resistant enough to stick around long enough for you to bother learning their name. So by virtue of being survivable enough to last more than 5 minutes, they become one of the minority of characters in the galaxy who could conceivably show up in multiple stories. And thus the multi-part narratives tend to be about or at least involving those characters. They *could* have had some random farseer jumpstart the birth of Ynnead instead of Eldrad, but that would have been kind of random and not especially satisfying. By using Eldrad there, you can reinforce the idea that Eldrad is, in fact, out there doing stuff and is, in fact, powerful enough to be adjacent to some pretty major events.

Like, Cawl coming out of nowhere to make marines+ felt random and unearned. Whereas Bile making progress on his own marine+ project feels more "earned" because we've been watching him do it for irl decades.

I also think part of it is just that a lot of players in the canon don't have a ton of actual lore, and some of us kind of want to see the characters/factions we like doing stuff. Like, the Fracture of Biel-Tan could have been the Fracture of Some Craftworld You've Never Heard Of. (See: the Doom of Malan'tai.) But by making it a big name people have heard of and might even play on the tabletop, it adds a major event to the lore of a popular craftworld and gives those events a more more gravitas. Heck, I kind of feel like Yvraine is an example of this. Lady Malys's lore, her beef with Vect, the harlequins' meddling with the Ynnead prophecy, and even Yvraine's fan (which was a gift from Malys), all make it seem like they could easily have made Lady Malys the leader of the Ynnari. It would have been an interesting and reasonable progression of the existing lore, and I would absolutley love some more Malys lore. But instead we got Yvraine from out of nowhere, and it kind of felt like a missed opportunity.

Slipspace wrote: The success rate for named characters is 100%. Would it have been too much to ask for one or two to die during the process? Would it really have hurt the bottom line all that much if Shrike, for example, died and a new Raven Guard character had to be created? Or Corbulo, who no longer has a model anyway?

It just wouldn't have been very satisfying or interesting. In the same way that it wouldn't be very satisfying or interesting for a bunch of unused Marvel/DC superheroes to get unceremoniously shot to death by bank robbers off camera. The fans of those characters would be annoyed, and everyone else wouldn't care. You're right that the rubicon being seemingly easy to cross for any character with a name is weird, but I don't think the problem that creates is well-solved by doing a bunch of named characters dirty. Even if they don't have models.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Like, Cawl coming out of nowhere to make marines+ felt random and unearned. Whereas Bile making progress on his own marine+ project feels more "earned" because we've been watching him do it for irl decades.

It's quite a good comparison really. Bile was created as a heresy era character that appears in the modern era making marine+ soldiers just like cawl.

However, the only difference is that Bile's marine+ audacity has had 29 years for players to feel he 'earned' it, while Cawl has not. So from this, the earned aspect to me is almost entirely realworld time since the character's creation, rather than literary originality.

But Bile was the new character on the block trying to improve on the emperor's designs at one point as well - before the 2nd ed chaos codex no one would dare suggest such a thing, and then bam here's a character that's apparently been around for 10,000 years doing this thing that's lore bending. For me this is a nostalgia bias from the player base rather than any kind of objective analysis.

 Hellebore wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:


Like, Cawl coming out of nowhere to make marines+ felt random and unearned. Whereas Bile making progress on his own marine+ project feels more "earned" because we've been watching him do it for irl decades.

It's quite a good comparison really. Bile was created as a heresy era character that appears in the modern era making marine+ soldiers just like cawl.

However, the only difference is that Bile's marine+ audacity has had 29 years for players to feel he 'earned' it, while Cawl has not. So from this, the earned aspect to me is almost entirely realworld time since the character's creation, rather than literary originality.

But Bile was the new character on the block trying to improve on the emperor's designs at one point as well - before the 2nd ed chaos codex no one would dare suggest such a thing, and then bam here's a character that's apparently been around for 10,000 years doing this thing that's lore bending. For me this is a nostalgia bias from the player base rather than any kind of objective analysis.

Absolutely! Though with the important distinction that Bile's super marines were usually implied to be like, monstrous abominations, probably deeply flawed in some major ways. Which was inkeeping with other lore (like the cursed founding) that all added to this theme of, "Tampering with the all-but-perfect work of the Emperor leads to horrific outcomes." Whereas Cawl, on the other hand, not only seemed to get to ignore that theme but was also implied at one point to have successfully fixed all those gosh darn genseed flaws the Emperor apparently couldn't figure out how to fix. (Newer lore has sort of ammended both of those points.)

The issue with Cawl was that he was yet another weirdly immortal super guy* that does big things singlehandedly. It would have felt far more palatable had there instead been a "Belissarian Conclave" that had worked tirelessly for ten millennia to improve the Astartes. (And usually failing like with the Cursed Founding.)

* Seriously, if you're not that, you cannot have agency in the current GW lore. Normal(ish) people are just props for the immortal superheroes, who are the only ones who can ever accomplish anything.

 Crimson wrote:

* Seriously, if you're not that, you cannot have agency in the current GW lore. Normal(ish) people are just props for the immortal superheroes, who are the only ones who can ever accomplish anything.

Sort of a chicken and egg thing here, I think. Being a named character usually means you have to have a way of living for a long time so that there's a half-plausible explanation for you showing up on a bunch of different tables. A "superhero" without rejuve treatments or phoenix armor or tau stasis tech is kind of hard to justify giving a bespoke datasheet.

In Cawl's case, let's say he wasn't immortal. That would either make it sting even more that some rando just showed up and made marines+ overnight. Let's replace Cawl with the Belisarius Conclave. Now we have one fewer annoying Marty Stu's, sure, but we're still just sort of... throwing out a lot of the "don't tamper with the Emperor's work" theme we'd already established. Like, the primaris lore would still be cringe. We'd just have to direct our cringe at the vague, faceless concept of the Belisarius Conclave instead of having a specific dude to hang it on.

 Crimson wrote:
The issue with Cawl was that he was yet another weirdly immortal super guy* that does big things singlehandedly. It would have felt far more palatable had there instead been a "Belissarian Conclave" that had worked tirelessly for ten millennia to improve the Astartes. (And usually failing like with the Cursed Founding.)

* Seriously, if you're not that, you cannot have agency in the current GW lore. Normal(ish) people are just props for the immortal superheroes, who are the only ones who can ever accomplish anything.

I think that's the only solution GW has found for the consequences of such a vast, lethal and hopeless setting. The only way for them to get around the 'you will not be missed' concept is to make them immortal so they can always be around...

It's not a good solution, but they clearly don't want to have to invent a half dozen ultramarine chapter masters every decade to follow the attrition rate they should have....


If you look at the history of the factions of 40k, the current chapter masters of the most important chapters are complete outliers in terms of their longevity. Every chapter has had dozens of them, all falling in battle like they should at respectable points in time. but as soon as they contract protagonism, they are suddenly the longest serving chapter master in the chapter's history, all coincidentally at the same time.

Shrike as a character has existed for a while, but only just become chapter master. But as you can see the previous master never had protagonism, so was just there to be killed off to further Shrike's character.


Back in 2nd ed, only chaos characters and the phoenix lords were the immortal types, but in all cases they had downsides - sacrifice the soul to dark gods, or eat the precious souls of your species to continue to function.

Even the primarchs weren't listed as immortal back then.

But we're now at a point where it's the only cred worth having.


EDIT: and then there is the weird intersection of worfing and uber warriors where characters that CAN die, seemingly always defeat everything they fight because defeat in 40k is inevitably in hth combat and results in someone dying. While those that actually ARE immortal can be defeated all the time because they can just come back - well so long as they aren't imperial characters. There's also the loose imperial protagonism protection at play. so then you get daemon primarch/avatar/phoenix lord punching bags because they can never actually die.

While the Ragnar's of the setting are winning all the time because it's either win or die.

I'm not sure the Bile/Cawl clash can be described as nostalgia. I think it ties in with the narrative versus setting argument.

We know Bile has been tinkering with New Men/Marines+ for 10,000 (or 29 real) years. So yeah, if he actually manages to do it, this doesn't feel like an alien imposition - its instead just narrative progress. "Guy tries something, guy fails, guy tries again, he gets closer, guy keeps trying, eventually he gets it." That's why it feels like its been earned.

Cawl by contrast... didn't exist, until he did, and viola, he's achieved the seemingly impossible with the Primaris, with massive setting changes as a result. He hasn't really had a narrative because we've gone from start to finish instantly. The setting has changed.

This is always going to be a problem with new characters when you have extensive existing fluff. I.E. look at Vashtorr. I think GW have been relatively restrained with what could be (kind of still is) a very lore bending character. But you are kind of stuck. We know he's new. But if you go with "he just wasn't a thing before now" he's kind of boring. But if he's "secretly" been behind lots of events in 40k, it feels like a cheap and dubious imposition. Its clearly not true as he's only been made up now. Just as we know circa 4th edition no one at GW was thinking "right, there's going to be this Ad Mech character called Cawl, and in about 10-12 years time there will be these things called Primaris Marines."

I kind of like Yvraine and the Ynnari - but as Wyldhunt said, arguably she's an imposition too. She's a weird hybrid of Lady Malys and Iyanna Arienal. But arguably because of that, "narratively" Eldar Lore had been set up for something like the Ynnari coming into existence. So it didn't feel like a breach even if Yvraine stole other people's clothes (literally.)

Tyel wrote:
I'm not sure the Bile/Cawl clash can be described as nostalgia. I think it ties in with the narrative versus setting argument.

We know Bile has been tinkering with New Men/Marines+ for 10,000 (or 29 real) years. So yeah, if he actually manages to do it, this doesn't feel like an alien imposition - its instead just narrative progress. "Guy tries something, guy fails, guy tries again, he gets closer, guy keeps trying, eventually he gets it." That's why it feels like its been earned.

Cawl by contrast... didn't exist, until he did, and viola, he's achieved the seemingly impossible with the Primaris, with massive setting changes as a result. He hasn't really had a narrative because we've gone from start to finish instantly. The setting has changed.

This is always going to be a problem with new characters when you have extensive existing fluff. I.E. look at Vashtorr. I think GW have been relatively restrained with what could be (kind of still is) a very lore bending character. But you are kind of stuck. We know he's new. But if you go with "he just wasn't a thing before now" he's kind of boring. But if he's "secretly" been behind lots of events in 40k, it feels like a cheap and dubious imposition. Its clearly not true as he's only been made up now. Just as we know circa 4th edition no one at GW was thinking "right, there's going to be this Ad Mech character called Cawl, and in about 10-12 years time there will be these things called Primaris Marines."

I kind of like Yvraine and the Ynnari - but as Wyldhunt said, arguably she's an imposition too. She's a weird hybrid of Lady Malys and Iyanna Arienal. But arguably because of that, "narratively" Eldar Lore had been set up for something like the Ynnari coming into existence. So it didn't feel like a breach even if Yvraine stole other people's clothes (literally.)

I'm not seeing the difference with bile. He didn't exist in 1994 and the voila he appears in 1995 having achieved the impossible of creating advanced space marines.

His in universe story is basically a mirror of cawl's. They both even have backups of themselves to extend their longevity. The only difference is that the fanbase has had 29 years to get used to bile. If anything you could argue bile is less realistic because unlike him, cawl has complete access to the base marine blueprints, unlimited imperial manpower and materiel and holy remit to keep going until he gets there. Bile by comparison had to scrape his way, reverse engineer the genome and lacks a galactic Empire's deep pockets to bankroll him.

That Biles ability to reverse engineer the emperor's creation is not questioned by fans at all but a guy that literally got given the base code making improvements gets lambasted is clearly double standards based in the appeal to tradition fallacy.

The way I tend to handle narrative events that seem like they come out of nowhere is to create a narrative structure and play it out. I mention this with Torchbearer Crusades all the time- but a historical Cawl campaign is cool too.

So game one could be an HH game set 10k years a go- Cawl is a green Magos, and he has access to exclusively Mechanicum forces.

If he gets enough objectives (or whatever), he can build marines... These aren't yet Primaris, but they are Marines that he created.

Fast forward 3k, and now Cawl is at Heroic Status. Collect objectives to build better, but still not Primaris Marines.

Fast-forward to Legendary Cawl 4k years later. Now he is testing actual Primaris.

You get the idea. If GW didn't do it, don't whine- do it yourself. They didn't lament the lack of a speeder in the Rogue Traders- they built their own out of a deodorant bottle. We celebrate that, while refusing to do it in the modern era, instead blaming GW that it hasn't been done. In this very thread, we're simultaneous blaming GW for fleshing out the Heresy, while also blaming them for not fleshing out Cawl's? Either you want the backstory or you don't.

Just seems weird to me.

I think of the character dump of that era, Cawl is largely fine. Mechanicus as a whole is full of weirdos working on things that almost always result in disaster and their untimely death, so when one succeeds, that character suddenly becoming "known" doesn't feel particularly out of place.

I think Cawl mostly just becomes a locus for hate of Primaris in general, which I can't help but feel like is a grudge that's gone on far too long. They're just a Space Marine redesign. Whatever "better" they might be touted as ultimately results in them being what Marines have always been. It's just a resculpt line and flimsy lore padding they used to keep firstborn in the game while they rolled out the redesigns really hasn't changed anything. They're just Marines, same as they've always been.

 Hellebore wrote:
I'm not seeing the difference with bile. He didn't exist in 1994 and the voila he appears in 1995 having achieved the impossible of creating advanced space marines.

His in universe story is basically a mirror of cawl's. They both even have backups of themselves to extend their longevity. The only difference is that the fanbase has had 29 years to get used to bile. If anything you could argue bile is less realistic because unlike him, cawl has complete access to the base marine blueprints, unlimited imperial manpower and materiel and holy remit to keep going until he gets there. Bile by comparison had to scrape his way, reverse engineer the genome and lacks a galactic Empire's deep pockets to bankroll him.

That Biles ability to reverse engineer the emperor's creation is not questioned by fans at all but a guy that literally got given the base code making improvements gets lambasted is clearly double standards based in the appeal to tradition fallacy.

But Bile wasn't successful. He's not typically making better stable Space Marines - he's a mad scientist making monsters. I half remember a rule in one codex that said you treated any unit he "upgraded" as casualties at the end of the game if that mattered for victory conditions even if they didn't die during the game. (Although there's been a lot of codexes so could be confused/making this up from something else.)

I mean I'm not even a Primaris Hater. If GW want to make Primaris go nuts. Heresy I know, but I thought the Intercessors were a significant improvement as models on the Tactical Marines they replaced.
But I'd rather the lore was lead there by breadcrumbs. As opposed to "this can't be done - oh wait, its done now."
So for example we've had bread crumbs that Bile would make "Chaos Primaris" - but since the Primaris concept seems to have died (i.e. GW they don't want a separation in the future), that's unlikely. So instead the breadcrumbs seem to be more leading towards Bile tinkering with "Chaos Custodes". That may never happen - but if it did, it wouldn't be from nowhere. Whereas if GW created "Alchemist Lord Dave" to create "Chaos Custodes" you could say "surely its the same" - but it just wouldn't be. Its an invention into the lore rather than working with what's already there.

(I'm not saying anyone especially wants Chaos Custodes before there's massive outcry.)