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Yeah yeah I know, that ship has sailed.

... but when I hit the jackpot very soon, I'll be writing and producing a Warhammer 40k series or a serie of movies with a World War II vibe like Fury, Band of Brothers and Dunkirk. I'm a big fan of the basic, terrible and realistic horrors of war combined with the grimdark of the Warhammer 40k universe and despise the unimaginative of "only bigger and more extreme" can work. (Did you know that one of the suggestions to the Alien 3 movie were 10 Alien Queens against 10 Power loader exosuits?).

Anyway, if we were to follow the Astra Militarum in some way and really get into dirt with the guardsmen and into the imperial tanks, we would soon find that some points are too inconsistent with reality and would be too obvious and silly to ignore, if you'd want to follow the guardsmen in their everyday work. Take the barrel of the Leman Russ battle tank for example, it's way too big for so many reasons - would you find it a devastating no-go, if the barrel and ammunition were downsized?

This would of course not be a single change, but the point would be to better let the audience merge with the 40k universe without being lazy with the all too common comment: well, don't think about it.

Have you considered maybe getting into a franchise that is gritty and realistic as opposed to an intentionally dark over-designed larger than life space opera?

You can still do this with the craziness of 40k, you just have to show its effects on the human mind rather than glossing over it.

One thing you should consider though is that GW miniatures have never been accurately scaled. It's one of my biggest pet peeves around cosplays of 40k, where they take the scale of a bolt pistol on miniatures as accurate and you see people walking around with toy bricks that couldn't hold more than 5 rounds of ammo...

so Russ barrels are not as big as they appear.



But to get back to 'realism', this is entirely down to the reactions of the humans in the story. Watch any war movie about the red army and their human wave, 1 gun per 4 soldiers and see how it affects them.

Similarly, leman russ' don't have much suspension, the cannon recoil is huge, so show crew being pulled out dead from too much pressure and immediately replaced with a new one, rather than someone improving safety.

Show the effects of fighting war without a geneva convention - how ordinary humans deal with dark eldar toxins killing their friends with splinters of crystal worming their way through their bodies as they melt and scream.

Show the horrors of living ammo from nids on them.

Show what it's like and how it feels to know you could be summarily executed by the commissar.

If the characters take the craziness seriously as something they have to physically and mentally deal with, then the audience will accept it. Especially if you can show consequence of the existence of these things.

You are going to hit the jackpot very soon? Congrats! Hope you have a ton of fun working on this.

I think the movies being animated or live-action would make a big difference here. If animated keep as it is, no need for change it's not realistic anyway imo. If live-action... well, I for one would likely be absolutely unable to realize the various obviously wrong thinks about tanks and wargears because I know nothing about those, but the miniatures have generally distorted proportions to emphasize certain part despite scale, and changing that when scale isn't a problem should be fine, many people likely won't notice.
Not very sure about it. You are the expert, not me . Can always make a test run and see how it goes on a real example?

Even if you get the horror and atmosphere right—please, please, just make the numbers more believable for the galactic scale. Keep the numbers 40 million and 75 million in mind. These are the estimated civilian and military casualties for WW1 and WW2 that I could quickly google.

This all happened on Earth with Earth populations appropriate to their times. Just make sure to dial up those numbers.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
Have you considered maybe getting into a franchise that is gritty and realistic as opposed to an intentionally dark over-designed larger than life space opera?

No that's not possible I'm afraid. Warhammer caught me and it's these universes or nothing - I dropped Warhammer fantasy because of the Sigmar edition and I'm not changing to another, so I just stopped playing medieval games.

There are many perspectives on the Warhammer 40k universe (just take the Primaris discussions, do they fit in or not - what about their aesthetics?) and mine is just one of them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hellebore wrote:
You can still do this with the craziness of 40k, you just have to show its effects on the human mind rather than glossing over it.

One thing you should consider though is that GW miniatures have never been accurately scaled. It's one of my biggest pet peeves around cosplays of 40k, where they take the scale of a bolt pistol on miniatures as accurate and you see people walking around with toy bricks that couldn't hold more than 5 rounds of ammo...

so Russ barrels are not as big as they appear.



But to get back to 'realism', this is entirely down to the reactions of the humans in the story. Watch any war movie about the red army and their human wave, 1 gun per 4 soldiers and see how it affects them.

Similarly, leman russ' don't have much suspension, the cannon recoil is huge, so show crew being pulled out dead from too much pressure and immediately replaced with a new one, rather than someone improving safety.

Show the effects of fighting war without a geneva convention - how ordinary humans deal with dark eldar toxins killing their friends with splinters of crystal worming their way through their bodies as they melt and scream.

Show the horrors of living ammo from nids on them.

Show what it's like and how it feels to know you could be summarily executed by the commissar.

If the characters take the craziness seriously as something they have to physically and mentally deal with, then the audience will accept it. Especially if you can show consequence of the existence of these things.

I agree... There's not much to say, we seem to have the same mindset. Though another realistic aspect is the comradery of soldiers, which is a nice contrast to the harshness of war.

I didn't think about the miniatures being scaled wrong. This means that in most cases, I haven't changed anything as the scale was off in the first place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
You are going to hit the jackpot very soon? Congrats! Hope you have a ton of fun working on this.

Thanks, yeah it shouldn't be too far into the future anymore ;o)

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:

I think the movies being animated or live-action would make a big difference here. If animated keep as it is, no need for change it's not realistic anyway imo. If live-action... well, I for one would likely be absolutely unable to realize the various obviously wrong thinks about tanks and wargears because I know nothing about those, but the miniatures have generally distorted proportions to emphasize certain part despite scale, and changing that when scale isn't a problem should be fine, many people likely won't notice.
Not very sure about it. You are the expert, not me . Can always make a test run and see how it goes on a real example?

I would want live-action, but I don't know how tanks with tracks could be shown as real massive steel beasts without using too much CGI. Maybe they could be constructed out of tree and steel and moved on small hidden train tracks, so only the tank tracks were CGI.

Whichever way you go with this, I'm very keen to see the results!

 Apple Peel wrote:
Even if you get the horror and atmosphere right—please, please, just make the numbers more believable for the galactic scale. Keep the numbers 40 million and 75 million in mind. These are the estimated civilian and military casualties for WW1 and WW2 that I could quickly google.

This all happened on Earth with Earth populations appropriate to their times. Just make sure to dial up those numbers.

Agreed, that's another aspect which needs to be realistic and which fortunately isn't a problem. Such numbers only become a problem if written in the books as part of the lore such as the number of Space Marines in a Chapter. Take the Astartes series on YouTube, how many Space Marines die? 10? That's 1 percent of an entire Chapter just like that. This is not consistent with the rate of Space Marines produced or the average age/veterancy of a Space Marine. I think that a mix of more Space Marines per Chapter combined with a very low level of casualties per engagement is the solution, so low that almost every loss results in entombment in a Dreadnought.

Chaospling wrote:

 Apple Peel wrote:
Even if you get the horror and atmosphere right—please, please, just make the numbers more believable for the galactic scale. Keep the numbers 40 million and 75 million in mind. These are the estimated civilian and military casualties for WW1 and WW2 that I could quickly google.

This all happened on Earth with Earth populations appropriate to their times. Just make sure to dial up those numbers.

Agreed, that's another aspect which needs to be realistic and which fortunately isn't a problem. Such numbers only become a problem if written in the books as part of the lore such as the number of Space Marines in a Chapter. Take the Astartes series on YouTube, how many Space Marines die? 10? That's 1 percent of an entire Chapter just like that. This is not consistent with the rate of Space Marines produced or the average age/veterancy of a Space Marine. I think that a mix of more Space Marines per Chapter combined with a very low level of casualties per engagement is the solution, so low that almost every loss results in entombment in a Dreadnought.

If I recall correctly, only 4 marines died or are unaccounted for that we know of. The Impulsor sergeant survived, but got teleported elsewhere. The original squad that got blown away by psychic blasts in the 4th episode can be seen walking back to join the marines that killed the psykers at the end (the walk in from the back at the end). But, that’s not what I’m really talking about.

Let’s take the Siege of Vraks, for example. From what I hear, the 15-17 year war only had between 16-17 million casualties. Look back up at my WW1 and WW2 numbers. Any numbers related thing you do needs to be pumped up! Super high!
Now, don’t over do it, or you’ll end up like the joke that floats around on 4Chan of a planet that is entirely made of guardsmen.

I don't know that a few off-key numbers will make or break any 40k project. Pretty much all off the 40k "canon" is under the suspicion of coming from unreliable sources, and if some outdated stuff bumps against the rule of cool, GW has never been shy to retcon it as needed.
With all of the material, that has been published over time, there is simply a large difference in the quality of authors, and a lot of stuff someone mentioned somewhere would turn out to contradict something someone else mentioned somewhere else if you went over all of it with a fine comb.

I think from a writer's perspective, the difference between over-the-top and gritty is mostly a question of the perspective your narrative follows. GW is mostly interested in blowing up entire worlds with giant armies.
If you want to tell a film noir story about a detective investigating a series of murder in the underhive, or a band of brothers story following a group of Imperial Guardists (or for a change, Traitor guard?), a ghetto drama about gangers, etc.you would barely bump up against too much canon, because there simply isn't so much there beyond a few sketched outlines of a very strange society.

I mean, it's a question of what your story is about. If one of the many apparent contradictions inspires you to tell a story about how this could impact the life of some relatable guy or gal, force them to find out more about themselves, and change who they are to overcome the obstacles in front of them, more power to you.
But if you get sidetracked to correct other author's mistakes, when they are not really essential to your story, you will bore everyone but the nerdiest 40k nerds to death.
If what you really want is a nerd fight, just post some steep thesises into this forum, and I and others will pounce on you, point out, why you are wrong about everything, and really a terrible person over all.
If, on the other hand, you really want to hunker down and get into some storytelling art, in your medium of choice, I wish you a lot of focus, inspiraton and determination on your quest.
But, you should probably devote a decent percentage of the time you are used to spending on researchng 40k lore, to researchng the tricks and trades of your chosen craft, independently of 40k, instead.

Chaospling wrote:Take the Astartes series on YouTube, how many Space Marines die? 10? That's 1 percent of an entire Chapter just like that. This is not consistent with the rate of Space Marines produced or the average age/veterancy of a Space Marine. I think that a mix of more Space Marines per Chapter combined with a very low level of casualties per engagement is the solution, so low that almost every loss results in entombment in a Dreadnought.

Only 5, and they're not even dead, only MIA.

If you want to tell a good 40k story, it's a good start to aim to tell a good story first, and then apply 40k trappings later, IMO.

 Apple Peel wrote:

Chaospling wrote:

 Apple Peel wrote:
Even if you get the horror and atmosphere right—please, please, just make the numbers more believable for the galactic scale. Keep the numbers 40 million and 75 million in mind. These are the estimated civilian and military casualties for WW1 and WW2 that I could quickly google.

This all happened on Earth with Earth populations appropriate to their times. Just make sure to dial up those numbers.

Agreed, that's another aspect which needs to be realistic and which fortunately isn't a problem. Such numbers only become a problem if written in the books as part of the lore such as the number of Space Marines in a Chapter. Take the Astartes series on YouTube, how many Space Marines die? 10? That's 1 percent of an entire Chapter just like that. This is not consistent with the rate of Space Marines produced or the average age/veterancy of a Space Marine. I think that a mix of more Space Marines per Chapter combined with a very low level of casualties per engagement is the solution, so low that almost every loss results in entombment in a Dreadnought.

If I recall correctly, only 4 marines died or are unaccounted for that we know of. The Impulsor sergeant survived, but got teleported elsewhere. The original squad that got blown away by psychic blasts in the 4th episode can be seen walking back to join the marines that killed the psykers at the end (the walk in from the back at the end). But, that’s not what I’m really talking about.

Let’s take the Siege of Vraks, for example. From what I hear, the 15-17 year war only had between 16-17 million casualties. Look back up at my WW1 and WW2 numbers. Any numbers related thing you do needs to be pumped up! Super high!
Now, don’t over do it, or you’ll end up like the joke that floats around on 4Chan of a planet that is entirely made of guardsmen.

A little off topic, but in the Siege of Vraks 14 millions Guardsmen from Krieg were killed. The entire population of Vraks was purged but they were only 8 millions (quite low for an entire planet, no matter the type) and I couldn't find the number of casualties of the enemies, so my guess is that the total amounts to 35-45 millions casualties which, for a war happening in a roughly uninhabited zone seems somewhat realistic.

Regarding the Astartes series, I thought that the Space Marines were killed in those blasts and more joined the battle - cool videos though! I like that the Plasma Pistol was used only when necessary, which gives it a purpose instead of: Well he used it, because he has it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

If you want to tell a good 40k story, it's a good start to aim to tell a good story first, and then apply 40k trappings later, IMO.

Again I whole heartedly agree. Regarding stuff of the Warhammer 40k universe, I think that less is more and so it should be treated like spices and only added to make the story stand out and make the universe believable.

Take Game of Thrones for example, I really liked how giants initially were shown: not in combat but just walking around, setting up camp like the rest. That's also why I would concentrate on Guardsmen and maybe only spice things up with Ogryns and some of the bigger tanks.