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So chaos. Totally chaotic, right? Super random with no rhyme or reason! Well, no. Not really.

We know that the chaos gods feed off of certain emotions/psychic concepts. Tzeentch likes change. Khorne likes violence. That sort of thing. We know (or can pretty safely assume) that they actively want to "eat" because they send daemons and worshippers out on missions to encourage activities that they can feed off of. We know that daemons are essentially fragments of their overall essence, and that those fragments have personalities (though how much of that personality directly belongs to a given chaos god as opposed to simply being a conglomerate of random psychic echoes is unclear). So they eat, they actively want to consume and survive, and they arguably even have personalities. That's not alien and unknowable. They're basically intelligent animals that don't happen to be as attached to conventional paradigms or laws of physics as most species.

Now, that's not to say that the warp isn't chaotic or that there aren't aspects of the chaos gods that aren't "unknowable" or "unstable." If you stare at the wrong piece of non-euclidean geometry, it might drive you insane or make you explode or something. That's weird, but it's understandable. If a creature had fur made of plasma, you would know not to touch it. Similarly, if Tzeentch has appendages made of non-euclidean geometry, you should avoid looking at it. The warp itself *is* pretty "random" in that it has the echoes of all living things with a warp presence floating around in it. These echoes interact oddly with the mechanics of the warp creating a very "chaotic" environment. However, we also know that large chunks of the warp are directly influenced by the chaos gods and take somewhat better defined forms as a result.

Khorne can throw competitions. Slaanesh has very specifically defined temptations. Nurgle has a garden. Tzeentch has a maze. You could argue that these are all metaphors, but the stories we have of Draigo and other warp-travelers sort of conflict with that. In the novels, we see daemons that have very specific abilities or quirks that they manifest. Sure, their bodies might be a little shoggothy, but Nurgle daemons blight environments and fill them with flies. The masque has very specific things that it can do. The changeling is all about its shapeshifting powers.

So why is chaos so "random" on the tabletop? Winning a fight as a chaos marine might cause Khorne to punish you for being too cool even though you're doing something that should be inkeeping with his goals as a big, hungry psychic animal. Daemons have randomized abilities rather than cohesive, thematic ones. Any time the gods hang out together, they start randomly blowing up eachothers troops with the warp storm table for no apparent reason even though it seems clear from the fluff that they're able to act in coordination when they can be bothered to make the effort. It just doesn't seem to match up. Maybe I've been reading too many heretical tomes, but the fluff of the chaos gods doesn't make them come across as mosquito-purple square mouse random. Fickle? Sure. But they have goals and desires, and they know how to go about getting what they want. The warp itself is random, but it seems like anyone playing an army with ties to actual chaos gods should be a lot less randumb than they are.

This is one of those cases where just because something is extremely random in the fluff doesn't mean it's a good idea to translate that to the rules. Unfortunately GW hasn't figured that out because they don't playtest. They have an idea, they put it in the rules and let us work out the bugs.

But see, we almost got the opposite of that. It's not that chaos is super random in the fluff but too stable on the tabletop. My frustration is that (to me) chaos actually isn't all that random when it comes to the gods, yet their rules are unhelpfully random on the tabletop.

Wyldhunt wrote:
But see, we almost got the opposite of that. It's not that chaos is super random in the fluff but too stable on the tabletop. My frustration is that (to me) chaos actually isn't all that random when it comes to the gods, yet their rules are unhelpfully random on the tabletop.

Because they can't figure out what they want to do with Chaos ever since Rogue Trader.

Chaos is chaotic as a whole, but ironically, the most ordered singular factions. Each of the gods goes in ONE direction, and is only chaotic when pushing/pulling against the other gods. The gods are the points on the star.

Except few people play with all the gods, most people (and pretty much everyone in the fluff) devotes themselves to one ordered tract.

thing to consider is the chaos gods are immortal beings with agendas well beyond our ability to understand, thus what might seem random to us may serve the long term intreasts. for instance, if a great champion turns into a spawn and thus makes way in a hundred years for someone to cause even MORE blood shed? Khorne comes out ahead.

Personally I think Chaos Daemons should be random and they should play randomly. Chaos Space Marines not necessarily, there the randomness could be toned down.

Depending on rules design, randomness can also be harnessed in a way that it doesn't make the game broken. The random results could be minor, not game impacting.

You are forgetting to forge the narrative.

Although I agree entirely; across the spectrum of chaos there is massive variation, however at a more local level there is often greater order than even some none chaos forces. Chaos should give you access to the wider variation without making pretty much everything a horrible random mess.

Can you imagine if every turn Space Marines had to roll for their chapter tactics, and half the results were one type of unit they brought blows up?

Was way more random in the RoC days, when Gifts of Chaos (Mutations) were permanent changes to models (or entire units of models) and had to be modeled appropriately to be used in-game.

Some Gifts of Chaos were not at all good, some were amazingly good, some were hilarious (like Uncontrollable Flatulence), some were definite penalties to the recipient, while others were freakin' powerful as hell (like a heavy bolter weapon limb... in WHFB).

Of course, this was rolled on a d1000 chart, and there were lots of things to get on that table. With the simplification of the game over the years, this table has gone away, to be replaced with short-term, once-a-battle sort of thing.

Forge the narrative? I say read my sig mate.

 Psienesis wrote:
Was way more random in the RoC days, when Gifts of Chaos (Mutations) were permanent changes to models (or entire units of models) and had to be modeled appropriately to be used in-game.

Some Gifts of Chaos were not at all good, some were amazingly good, some were hilarious (like Uncontrollable Flatulence), some were definite penalties to the recipient, while others were freakin' powerful as hell (like a heavy bolter weapon limb... in WHFB).

Of course, this was rolled on a d1000 chart, and there were lots of things to get on that table. With the simplification of the game over the years, this table has gone away, to be replaced with short-term, once-a-battle sort of thing.

Man the RoC days, back when they had some incredible Campaign rules, Chaos Champions that while not ascended that die but are powerful enough that they resurrect as a skeleton champion was just funny and awesome.