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I don't know if this is true, but I heard a rumor that GW does a big narrative tournament every year or two, and while the overall framework and story is laid out, the finer details are decided by the outcome of the tournament. For instance if Chaos does well and the theme is a Black Crusade, then the narrative for the next story is that Abaddon kicked everyone's ass. Is this even remotely true, and if so, is there a list of how such tournaments went down? Who won, that sort of thing? If not, please excuse my gullibility and noobishness. Cheers.

Gwarok wrote:
I don't know if this is true, but I heard a rumor that GW does a big narrative tournament every year or two, and while the overall framework and story is laid out, the finer details are decided by the outcome of the tournament. For instance if Chaos does well and the theme is a Black Crusade, then the narrative for the next story is that Abaddon kicked everyone's ass. Is this even remotely true, and if so, is there a list of how such tournaments went down? Who won, that sort of thing? If not, please excuse my gullibility and noobishness. Cheers.

This happened exactly once, Back in 2003 for the Eye of Terror Campaign

They released a codex and everything http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Codex:_Eye_of_Terror_(3rd_Edition)

Chaos won but GW was planning on an imperial win, so they fudged it as Chaos winning orbital superiority and Imperium wining the ground war.

No. Not even within the slightest realm of plausability.
Eye Of Terror’s result got ignored and the Imperium won anyway, so it doesn’t count.

And if they did this every couple of years and stayed true to the results, the 6/7th ed results would mean Eldar and Tau wipe out all of the Imperium. Not exactly conducive to GWs sales plans

The Eye of Terror campaign mainly served to produce huge amounts of salt and conspiracy theories. GW lost control of events and made some very dubious decisions. The whole "what does a minor Chaos victory mean? Basically nothing. Well this sucks - you wanted Space Marines 2 win all along" was bad - but killing Eldrad off after the Eldar did well was especially egregious to the point of being retconned immediately.

When they followed it up with the Storm of Chaos campaign in Fantasy, where they showed even more contempt for the active fanbase, it put the knife through GW/Fan relations which have been various flavours of love to hate until... about 12/18 months or so ago.

They did however do an AoS campaign this year, although since the number of people who care about the AoS setting can perhaps be numbered on one hand it wasn't as meaningful and perhaps unsurprisingly didn't generate the same level of undying hatred.

In this light its highly likely they will do a 40k campaign. After all the idea has always been a good one (gives all factions something new to chew on fluff wise, get players inspired to play, army variants mean people can start new forces or new units they wouldn't normally consider etc.)

I suspect however they will have learned to identify clear outcomes based on results which, while having the illusion of importance, don't have massive ramifications for the wider story (unless this is desired). I.E. expect them to build up a new Armageddon over the next 12 months and then put its fate on the line rather than say Macragge or Terra.

 Verviedi wrote:
No. Not even within the slightest realm of plausability.
Eye Of Terror’s result got ignored and the Imperium won anyway, so it doesn’t count.

Eye of terror wasn't ignored it just took 15 years for GW to figure out what to do with it.

but yeah IMHO campaigns like eye of terror are always big mistakes because the game devs are literally putting the future of their game up on a roll of the dice. I expect in the future we'll see more campaigns, as they ARE popular, but expect them to be like fate of Kronor where the long term impact on the setting is pretty localized and minor

Kind of related: what was the actual point of that global campaign over that Mechanicus world held a few months back? Did something change in the law? All I can remember is that it was, once again, rigged for Imperial victory.

It was a distraction while GW invented new ways to extract money from the faithful...

I was going to say EoT and SoC, but that's covered.

GW's game design isn't good enough to let sweeping things be decided by actual play - and as BrianDavion said, it's putting their IP up against a random die roll. Bad strat.

I do like the idea of campaigns doing something, though it's hard to say what you could really do. Tooling up for a new model line pre or post isn't wise, neither is killing another off.

Well, yes. The developers and writers all get together a couple times a year at a local pub in Nottingham. After drinking a few pints, they start talking about the story, then they post ideas on a dart board and play a round of darts. Drink a few more pints, couple more rounds of darts and Bob's your uncle.

Armageddon became part of the fluff after iirc

Tyel wrote:
The Eye of Terror campaign mainly served to produce huge amounts of salt and conspiracy theories. GW lost control of events and made some very dubious decisions. The whole "what does a minor Chaos victory mean? Basically nothing. Well this sucks - you wanted Space Marines 2 win all along" was bad - but killing Eldrad off after the Eldar did well was especially egregious to the point of being retconned immediately.

When they followed it up with the Storm of Chaos campaign in Fantasy, where they showed even more contempt for the active fanbase, it put the knife through GW/Fan relations which have been various flavours of love to hate until... about 12/18 months or so ago.

They did however do an AoS campaign this year, although since the number of people who care about the AoS setting can perhaps be numbered on one hand it wasn't as meaningful and perhaps unsurprisingly didn't generate the same level of undying hatred.

In this light its highly likely they will do a 40k campaign. After all the idea has always been a good one (gives all factions something new to chew on fluff wise, get players inspired to play, army variants mean people can start new forces or new units they wouldn't normally consider etc.)

I suspect however they will have learned to identify clear outcomes based on results which, while having the illusion of importance, don't have massive ramifications for the wider story (unless this is desired). I.E. expect them to build up a new Armageddon over the next 12 months and then put its fate on the line rather than say Macragge or Terra.

A goodly chunk of us playing AoS have no idea whats going on in the mortal realms anyhow so whatever happens we are good with it. infinite world and all.

Does anyone else have fond memories of the Dark Shadows (Albion) WHFB campaign?

I think it was the best one they ever did. The setting was great, but self-contained so more or less anything could happen without bulldozing a faction into the dust, but the implications ended up feeling substantial. Just the right balance between a few new models, a few twists of existing rules and a great series of missions.

Happy memories.

 BaconCatBug wrote:
Chaos won but GW was planning on an imperial win, so they fudged it as Chaos winning orbital superiority and Imperium wining the ground war.

That's literally the exact opposite of what happened.

http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?151201-Cadia-and-the-Black-Crusade&p=2761492&viewfull=1#post2761492
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?413877-Struggling-to-find-it-EoT-Chambers-space-lanes-quote

 Verviedi wrote:
No. Not even within the slightest realm of plausability.
Eye Of Terror’s result got ignored and the Imperium won anyway, so it doesn’t count.

'And the result is... Victory for Chaos!'
'Death By A Thousand Cuts' in White Dwarf 287 (UK), pg.34


Conspiracy theories indeed!