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many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense, is because they have novelists writing the rules instead of technical writers.

Look at who writes rules, they're all black library novelists. They're story tellers, and honestly pretty damn good at fiction. So they sit down, write something that sounds good and don't bother even checking to see if the rule is nonsensical or doesn't actually work in the context of the game.

Technical writing and fiction writing are two totally different skills. it's like someone saying "i drive a car, so i can drive a cruise ship"

GW needs to hire the type of people who write manuals, boardgame rules, ect. People who know how to check to see if things actually work.

I agree game design and story writing are different arts, but how are you this certain that modern GW hires writers and gives them game designer jobs ?

I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

Jacksmiles wrote:
I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

They write great vignettes, it's when the stories get past 2-4 pages that they start to fall apart. I love the fluff in the codices and rulebooks. But the novels are mostly just pulpy war fiction.

 oldzoggy wrote:
I agree game design and story writing are different arts, but how are you this certain that modern GW hires writers and gives them game designer jobs ?

Because you can just look up the hiring requirements for that position is just an english degree

But they have Jervis.

GW has been doing this for decades. Whether the current team is still made up of such, I don't know, they stopped attributing authorship several years ago.

That said, alone it does not explain GW's poor game design, and they've brought in dedicated game people as well and many of their former employess have gone on to other positions in game design elsewhere. The rules aren't really there to be functional, they're there to push kit sales and serve as an add-on sale. Games Workshop is not, and does not advertise itself to its shareholders to be, a games studio, but basically a "premium" toy company.

You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

But instead they come up with every wrong idea possible.
"lets split armies into multiple books to sell more books"
"lets dumb the rules down, maybe it's too hard"
"lets get rid of the community support and push our online store"
"lets break things, then release a formation that fixes what's broken but requires a dozen of one kit that doesn't sell well."

It's like if they took about 5 minutes to read any forum or listen to any gamer they'd get this incredibly simplistic idea that the biggest issue with their games is their lack of well written rules. It's right there in front of them and it goes totally over their heads.


I actually don't know for certain that they still use novelists for rules writing, but that's what they did for 26 years...so it's probably a good bet they still are by the quality of the rules. And the books where we do hear rumors of who wrote it, it always turns out to be black library novelist. So i think it's a pretty solid guess.


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 TheSilo wrote:

Jacksmiles wrote:
I can get behind the idea, but find it incredibly arguable that their writers are good at fiction. I find them "okay" at best, most of the time.

They write great vignettes, it's when the stories get past 2-4 pages that they start to fall apart. I love the fluff in the codices and rulebooks. But the novels are mostly just pulpy war fiction.

a large chunk of them are just bolter pron, you know "some space marine cleaved 600000 orks in half with a chainsword for 100 pages"
But i do still think in general their stories are entertaining, and among them are some actual gems, like anything written by his holiness Dan Abnett, or Graham Mcneal, ect

I personally love warhammer fluff, i think a lot of us do and it's probably one of the reasons we put up with such a crap company. But they badly need to realize how a well written game will sell more miniatures.

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

On the whole the rules are unbalanced towards shooting and MC/GMC. Are you saying that monstrous creatures are supposed to be much more powerful than the majority of similarly costed vehicles? Grav weapons are good against basically everything. Are you saying that Grav is supposed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperium's armory? Due to how the barrage rule works it's easier to hit a specific target in a unit with a barrage weapon than it is to with a sniper. Is artillery (with the barrage rule) supposed to be better for the purposes of sniping than actual snipers are?

As for who writes the rules, back when we knew who the codex authors were the people who did most of them were dabblers, who did some fluff writing and had some experience writing rules. The advantage of this was that you'd have someone who would actively try to write rules that matched the lore. The problems were that there wasn't a concerted effort to balance things in between books, or sometimes within the same book, that the authors would write the rules based on their ideas about the fluff and often got much leeway, sometimes leading to massive canon changes between codexes, and writers picking favorites which led to a lot of throwing ideas about what's "fair" out the window, like the original GK Plasma Syphon.

As for a lot of the newer stuff it feels like GW is thinking less about balance and more about pushing out the latest supplement and making rules that are fun to play with.

Davor wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

For example a technical writer could write contracts while a creative writes stories.

Considering CSM just won a Grand Tournament and everyone is berating Magnus for being overcosted, and how terrible CSM are, just shows that this meta simply isn't well defined.

We talk about balance, but imbalance should be present in these games. Because the meta typically evolves; as one thing becomes more powerful, it's logical counter should gain popularity. For instance, if everyone at the tournament was playing Dark Angels and just jinking the night away, maybe template flamers/barrage/template that ignores cover start to show up in lists.

The problem is that this meta is relatively inelastic, in that not a lot of games get played, and also, it's not easy to just "have a new list with certain strengths" since constructing a unit & painting it are very time consuming. It fosters the perception of imbalance, when the game may actually have a good level of competitive imbalance.

I mean there's a thread talking about how bad Magnus is and he's overcosted. Magnus was instrumental in winning a GT. Are these people going to admit they didn't know how to use Magnus, or claim the guy who won got lucky, or what? The community took a pretty solid stance on this specific model and all of that just got blown out of the water, if we use tournaments as an indication of what's good and what isn't.

I guess my point is, it's easy to call the game imbalanced, and that's true, but that doesn't mean that the imbalance makes the game ineffective. That's an entirely different argument.

Edit- for screwup

Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

Nope.

I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

Davor wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
You'd think at one of their yearly financial meetings about how they're losing wallet share like they do every year someone would have the brilliant idea to say "hey guys, maybe if we write good rules for said plastic we'd sell more plastic?"

I am sure someone did. They got thrown out the window.

For the original poster, what is a technical writer?

A technical writer is someone who's trained in, well i guess the official term is technical writing. It's actually a pretty big field that no one really knows exists. I took a few classes in it myself as part of my degree which is the only reason I know it's a thing. Basically the people who write every manual, textbook, or instruction book you've ever read. Writing those is a completely different skill set. In my classes we even used rule books for board and tabletop games as examples of good and bad technical writing.

Essentially with technical writing the goal is clarity, saying everything in as few words as possible, but in ways that can lead to no misunderstanding, and making sure everything makes sense and doesn't conflict with other sources. So everything GW needs.

 Vaktathi wrote:
GW has been doing this for decades. Whether the current team is still made up of such, I don't know, they stopped attributing authorship several years ago.

That said, alone it does not explain GW's poor game design, and they've brought in dedicated game people as well and many of their former employess have gone on to other positions in game design elsewhere. The rules aren't really there to be functional, they're there to push kit sales and serve as an add-on sale. Games Workshop is not, and does not advertise itself to its shareholders to be, a games studio, but basically a "premium" toy company.

It, traditionally, was the other way around.

Gav Thorpe and Graham McNeill started as rules-writers first, then got to do BL stuff.

Most of the BL writers now don't have anything to do with rules, and haven't ever.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

Have him write the fluff, but get Rick Priestley, Matt Leacock and Reiner Knizia together to write the rules collectively.

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

I think almost everyone here would disagree. But i'll let them do so instead of speaking for them.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

What i'm talking about is the rules are broken and badly written, not imbalance, not what unit is at what power, but repeatedly rules are released which blatantly don't work
just a couple quick examples,
A techpriest-enginseer can't even use it's ability on the army it exists in.
deathwatch talks about combat squads, but can't combat squad.
Rubric marines can take a weapon that doesn't work with them since they're slow and purposeful.
imperial agents lets you take a transport...that can't transport anyone.

Think about every codex release. Every single one within minutes of it being out players have found rules that simply don't work, and ones that are written in a way where you wonder if the writer has even read the big rulebook or played a game.



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 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

I would probably buy that just because it's written by him, even though i don't think rules should be written by novelists, but he's Dan Abnett, so who am i to question god.

Most interesting part of this thread to me is the different opinions on the novelists.
Myself I think some of the novelists are great and others are...well, I wish they weren't. I also miss the blurb fiction codexes used to have.
I've never thought the core balance was particularly bad, skewed towards shooting maybe but not bad - I've always thought the biggest problem was in the codex stage some writers really get into their codexes, some seem to whack a new round of 'eavy metal in there and call it a day. The guy who writes Necrons is probably the only one that cares about balance though.

Technical Writers are all over, they just take positions in corporate settings working in Knowledge Management, User Accessibility, or other words that basically amount to "person who writes documentation for products."

And technical writers wouldn't create the rules, they would just write them. And the more complex the product, the more mistakes, or issues, can be in the writing. And you would definitely have multiple teams of writers, so it's very very very likely that each book can have a different set of writers.

I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

 Peregrine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

 Blacksails wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

The mark of a well written rule is not that a good-faith reader can determine its meaning; it's that a bad-faith reader can come to no other meaning than the intended one.

 Asmodai wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:


I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

If you have to adopt a particular mindset to understand the rule, its not clearly or well written.

A well written rule is understood by all without need to read with any sort of interpretation.

So in that case, no, GW does not do a good job writing their rules.

The mark of a well written rule is not that a good-faith reader can determine its meaning; it's that a bad-faith reader can come to no other meaning than the intended one.

QFT. And we aren't even talking about trying to prevent WAAC rules abuses half of the time, just honest misinterpretation.

Lord Kragan wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
I would say GW does a fairly good job writing their rules. It's clear if you read it with, "What does it say" in mind versus "what do I want it to say."

It really isn't. In fact, "you can't use RAW" has been one of GW's major problems. For example, remember the "models with helmets can't shoot or charge" thing from 6th edition and earlier? The rules said you draw LOS from the model's eyes, and a model with a helmet (or crisis suits, wraithlords, etc) do not have eyes to draw LOS from. To make the game function at all you had to completely ignore "what does it say" and replace it with "what do I want it to say".

.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

See Wraithguard/Wraithknight

Lord Kragan wrote:
.... Shouldn't visors count as not having issues with eyes?

Visor =/= eye. Now, it's certainly obvious what the rule was intended to be and easy to fix the problem in real games, but RAW was obviously broken and you had to be reasonable about house-ruling it to something that made more sense if you wanted to have an enjoyable game. And it certainly disproves the idea that RAW is fine and all of the issues are from players not paying enough attention to RAW.

Danny slag wrote:

 BBAP wrote:

Danny slag wrote:
many of us like to bemoan GW and how awful they are at writing rules, myself included. Well the title says it all. My theory for why they seem to have an uncanny ability to consistently write rules that don't work at all, that conflict with rules 2 pages later, to write rules that someone who's played for 2 weeks can see obviously doesn't work and makes no sense

This just isn't true at all. Sure there are oversights in many new releases, but on the whole the rules function as they were intended to. The fact you don't like the rules doesn't mean they're non-functional.

I think almost everyone here would disagree. But i'll let them do so instead of speaking for them.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

What i'm talking about is the rules are broken and badly written, not imbalance, not what unit is at what power, but repeatedly rules are released which blatantly don't work
just a couple quick examples,
A techpriest-enginseer can't even use it's ability on the army it exists in.
deathwatch talks about combat squads, but can't combat squad.
Rubric marines can take a weapon that doesn't work with them since they're slow and purposeful.
imperial agents lets you take a transport...that can't transport anyone.

Think about every codex release. Every single one within minutes of it being out players have found rules that simply don't work, and ones that are written in a way where you wonder if the writer has even read the big rulebook or played a game.



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 master of ordinance wrote:
Novelists would be an improvement - could you imagine Dan Abnett writng the next Imperial Guard codex?

I would probably buy that just because it's written by him, even though i don't think rules should be written by novelists, but he's Dan Abnett, so who am i to question god.

And some of those complaints are just complaining to complain. Deathwatch already operate at 5 dudes and don't really combat squad in the first place and not being able to Overwatch is a core issue with Rubric Marines; the Flamers still work.

 gnome_idea_what wrote:
On the whole the rules are unbalanced towards shooting and MC/GMC

Your Codex might be, but the core rules aren't. My Codex does fine against both of those things.

Are you saying that monstrous creatures are supposed to be much more powerful than the majority of similarly costed vehicles?

Are they? A Bloodthirster can kill a lot more models than a Land Raider can, but on the other hand I can kill a Bloodthirster with almost any weapon in my army, and the Bloodthirster has to expose itself to those weapons in order to hurt me. Five Flyrant armies might be more powerful than five-LR armies, but that's a case of the army being greater than the sum of its parts. An individual Flyrant isn't much more powerful than an individual Land Raider pound for pound.

Grav weapons are good against basically everything. Are you saying that Grav is supposed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperium's armory?

Well, yes - because it was designed to be the most versatile weapon in the Imperial arsenal. Works as intended. Explain why such a weapon is bad, please.

Due to how the barrage rule works it's easier to hit a specific target in a unit with a barrage weapon than it is to with a sniper. Is artillery (with the barrage rule) supposed to be better for the purposes of sniping than actual snipers are?

I doubt that, which means this is a rule not working as intended. This deficiency has little overall effect on the game's functioning, but I suppose it's a deficiency nonetheless.

Ruin wrote:
I have serious doubts the 40k rules designers in 1998 (which present day 40k is built on) intended anything like the unwieldy fustercluck we have in front of us...

The game is perfectly functional, barring a few oversights. What the old designers intended for the game, and your personal feelings about the sturcture and flow of the game, are not relevant.

Danny slag wrote:
I think almost everyone here would disagree

Almost everyone agreed the earth was flat at one time. Popularity does not entail validity.

I wasn't even really referring to balance. That's a whole different can of worms, so please don't straw man me into saying "i wish my army was more OP." because that's not what i'm saying at all.

I never said you were talking about balance. You think rules oversights in new releases are indicative of poor development. I think they're an inevitability of the design process regardless of the skill set your writers employ, and have no issue with such problems as long as they're patched out promptly (by the developers - it's not acceptable to expect players to patch your rules for you).

There are many reasons the 40K development team need a kick up the arse, but minor mechnical oversights in new releases isn't one of them.