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.

I am a big fan of Forgeworld's Imperial Armour books and regret no new ones have come out since 2011. The 'non-fictional military history' style of describing 40k campaigns is just my thing. They are like the Osprey books but then many times better.

Since some time now I've been toying with the idea of continuing where Forgeworld left off. In short: creating a brand new Imperial Armour book from scratch. And then perhaps making it even better then the original one were

Now of course this would involve a humongous amount of work, something which can't be done by one person, and not something I propose to do either. The first step would be to gather a team of like-minded guys who's combined skillset can make this a succes. Then there is the investment which is needed to print books which are just as top notch as the original books. I propose a Kickstarter campaign for this as the best possible strategy which also allows for a financial reward of the book's creators of all goes well.

First things first though. Would there be a market for this; are people ready to jump on and pay 50 €/£ for a new Imperial Armour book? Closely followed by another, almost as important, question: would GW allow it?

Looking forward to hear from the community.

GW would never allow it.

/thread

I believe alongside HH's diminishing they were a casualty of the untimely loss of Mr. Bligh.

A community kickstarter of this sort would never get the greenlight from GW for IP legal reasons, GW's fundamental core value is entirely in its IP portfolio, and anything like this would be done in house or at least through contracted authors under the auspices of the Black Library. Unfortunately Kickstarter is just not a suitable venue for that sort of thing, any more than it would be for an IP like Star Wars.

I'd love to see more stuff like the old IA books, but with Bligh gone and FW increasingly turned toward Specialist games stuff I suspect we may not see anything like that again

I’m confused by the question the OP is asking. Because the reply to the questions being asked is, to be blunt, “Who the heck are you that anyone would want an Imperial Armor book from you, or the team of people you assembled?’

It’s a bit like posting that you loved space as a kid, and wanted to check interest in this moon landing you wanted to organize, without saying anything at all about your qualifications, experience, or background. It’s an entirely different question depending on whether you’ve got an emerald mine you inherited or you work at a coffee shop. Or, heaven forfend, are a NASA administrator. :-b

 Eldarain wrote:
I believe alongside HH's diminishing they were a casualty of the untimely loss of Mr. Bligh.

Yes post the loss it appears GW has gutted FW and redirected alot of the effort and given FW all the new hires if any and left them lacking in the type of people required to push out blackbooks and old school Imperial Armour books. Not to mention GW rules team was rummered to be looking to kill of the FW40k team for years because of internal politics.

That would explain the poor state of the current fw Indexes.

Ice_can wrote:

 Eldarain wrote:
I believe alongside HH's diminishing they were a casualty of the untimely loss of Mr. Bligh.

Yes post the loss it appears GW has gutted FW and redirected alot of the effort and given FW all the new hires if any and left them lacking in the type of people required to push out blackbooks and old school Imperial Armour books. Not to mention GW rules team was rummered to be looking to kill of the FW40k team for years because of internal politics.

Mr. Bligh's death derailed HH, and the success of Specialist Games sucked up resources. Specialist Games are expanding, but that takes time.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
That would explain the poor state of the current fw Indexes.

That was more the FW team not actually being told the release date for 8th, and having about 3 days to finalise the books before they had to send them to the printers.


Getting back on-topic - GW have said they'll never do Kickstarters (as they have the reserves to just do those projects), and trying to get the IP rights would be a nightmare. The best bet would be to try to work with one of the existing RPG teams and see if anything can be done there.

beast_gts wrote:

Getting back on-topic - GW have said they'll never do Kickstarters (as they have the reserves to just do those projects), and trying to get the IP rights would be a nightmare. The best bet would be to try to work with one of the existing RPG teams and see if anything can be done there.

Thanks for the opinions guys. I hadn't thought IP would be such a massive dealbreaker since there are quite some fan-made books around (think about 9th age or all the fanmade fantas armybooks). That being said those books aren't sold through a kickstarter (where the word sold is the big point). The investment of an Imperial Armour like book is to big to do it in another way though. The IP being the first hurdle to take is not a bad thing, as it is such a dealbreaker anyway. Time for a little nightmare .

 solkan wrote:
I’m confused by the question the OP is asking. Because the reply to the questions being asked is, to be blunt, “Who the heck are you that anyone would want an Imperial Armor book from you, or the team of people you assembled?’

It’s a bit like posting that you loved space as a kid, and wanted to check interest in this moon landing you wanted to organize, without saying anything at all about your qualifications, experience, or background. It’s an entirely different question depending on whether you’ve got an emerald mine you inherited or you work at a coffee shop. Or, heaven forfend, are a NASA administrator. :-b

Don't get the hostility here but I'll answer it anyways. I am not qualified to create a book like this on my own. But having over a dozen years in project management under the belt, a serious interest in history and creating scenic gaming tables as a hobby I think I am qualified to gather a team of like-minded peeps, start a project like this and guide it to a good ending. It is not like I'm proposing to build a rocket for a moon landing, it's just a (smashing) book.

The format of a kickstarter would be ideal as prospective buyers/investors would get a good idea of what they'll get beforehand as well as a possible part in the project.

Yeah, making profit directly off of GW's IP isn't going to happen.

The reason the fanmade army books and rulesets are fine is because they're not sold, and because, as far as I'm aware, GW can't copyright the rules for their game.

You might not be proposing a moon landing, but I think you've vastly underestimated the value of IP in "just a book".

 Singleton Mosby wrote:

 solkan wrote:
I’m confused by the question the OP is asking. Because the reply to the questions being asked is, to be blunt, “Who the heck are you that anyone would want an Imperial Armor book from you, or the team of people you assembled?’

It’s a bit like posting that you loved space as a kid, and wanted to check interest in this moon landing you wanted to organize, without saying anything at all about your qualifications, experience, or background. It’s an entirely different question depending on whether you’ve got an emerald mine you inherited or you work at a coffee shop. Or, heaven forfend, are a NASA administrator. :-b

Don't get the hostility here but I'll answer it anyways. I am not qualified to create a book like this on my own. But having over a dozen years in project management under the belt, a serious interest in history and creating scenic gaming tables as a hobby I think I am qualified to gather a team of like-minded peeps, start a project like this and guide it to a good ending. It is not like I'm proposing to build a rocket for a moon landing, it's just a (smashing) book.

The format of a kickstarter would be ideal as prospective buyers/investors would get a good idea of what they'll get beforehand as well as a possible part in the project.

You’re mistaking complete indifference to your proposal for hostility. And “complete indifference” means the Kickstarter gets $200 worth of funding and goes nowhere.

If you’re thinking for some reason that hiring people to write a book containing a bunch of data sheets is easy, you’re half right. Spending $X000 to hire people to fill a book with words is easy. Ending up with a book that anyone will want to give you money for is the hard part.

In other words, what you haven’t provided an answer to is “Why would anyone have a reason to buy your book?” And saying “I have a dozen years of project management experience, that means I have enough experience to hire authors and artists to make a book” is really astoundingly dense. That’s like a software development lead saying they’re qualified to manage a construction project.

Come back, demonstrate that you have someone with artistic vision, and demonstrate that you’ve got competent writers and developers on call, then you might get something other than complete disinterest. And then you can try to provide the answers to “Why should I buy a book of rules without models from you?” or explain what you’re going to do about that.

To be frank, the much more plausible trajectory for this sort of thing would be:
* Spend some money up front to hire some talent to write a few things
* Present those things as proof that you know what you’re doing and want to publish an entire book
and you’re at the point where it sounds like you haven’t done the homework yet.

Fan rule systems work because they are free and GW has basically no way to shut them down. However they also have to go out of their way to not step on GW's IP. So they don't call a space marine a space marine - they call them a space soldier or something else.


As soon as you put money in the equation things change, multiple things.

1) Do the writers want to work for you? Sure you're offering them money, but ultimately you're only producing a single rules system that is a bolt-on to another game system (ergo you're really only making unit profiles).

2) You can't make official lore and stories (again that hits the IP barrier)

3) You've no control over the actual product (models) being made for the game system.


In the end its a project that essentially has no future of its own. Any unique directions you take move you further form the core IP which you're relying on because your rules bolt onto it. If you separate fully you're running the risk that model changes by GW won't be things you know of, so you'll always lag.

Furthermore why will customers want to play your rule system as opposed to GW's (both of which they pay for); when there are other free 3rd party rules systems for GW models?



Honestly I don't see a future for this idea. Heck don't forget 9th age only became super popular when GW ended the entire game. Same as the 3rd party Bloodbowl stand-ins; though there was a lag time and it did take KS before they took off. More importantly the "new bloodbowl" games produced their own models so it wasn't just a rules system. It was a game system.



A Game system has more chance of funding because essentially gamers aren't paying for rules; they are buying into a creative world and IP and whole product line. If rules cost or not that's secondary to the models and lore etc....








Honestly I don't see any potential for your project and would worry that you might not have the experience to put such a project together as you've already shown inexperience in terms of IP understanding even at a basic level. You're basically offering a dream with nothing to back it up. I should also note that most KS that do well have to invest a lot of their own money in production of early concepts and pre-production and production models and rules before they can actually sell anything. Very few do well if they say "pay us to make something when we've got nothing on the table"; and of them VERY few actually deliver well.

 solkan wrote:
I’m confused by the question the OP is asking. Because the reply to the questions being asked is, to be blunt, “Who the heck are you that anyone would want an Imperial Armor book from you, or the team of people you assembled?’

It wouldn't be a lot of different from a book did by GW itself.

Karol wrote:

 solkan wrote:
I’m confused by the question the OP is asking. Because the reply to the questions being asked is, to be blunt, “Who the heck are you that anyone would want an Imperial Armor book from you, or the team of people you assembled?’

It wouldn't be a lot of different from a book did by GW itself.

Well aside from 30 years of being in the wargaming industry and printing rulebooks of course and currently being the biggest fantasy and sci-fi wargaming company in the world - by a significant margin.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
That would explain the poor state of the current fw Indexes.

If it weren't for the pandemic, the Forge World indexes would have been replaced already.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/01/24/from-aelves-to-zoats-previews-from-lvogw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-1/

 Ghaz wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
That would explain the poor state of the current fw Indexes.

If it weren't for the pandemic, the Forge World indexes would have been replaced already.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/01/24/from-aelves-to-zoats-previews-from-lvogw-homepage-post-1fw-homepage-post-1/

True, gw's pulling of the current Indexes in both book and ebook form from the fw site points to that as I've pointed out in the past, I was pointing out how internal politics affected the current Indexes.

But that isn't what this thread is about, which is a kickstarter funded series of IA books, which gw would never allow for reasons others have already pointed out. So, my apologies to the OP, but I feel this endeavor is doomed from the start.