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Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Lebanon NH


Hey there everyone,

So this is kind of a break-off idea from my “one codex 40k” thread. Essentially, what do you think of the idea of GW taking a previous edition (pick one really,) and compiling ALL the rules into a single book. A sort of “Definitive Tome” of whatever edition we are talking about. All the codex'es, revisions, expansions, everything that makes up an edition of 40k, all in one book!

I think to make it work you would need a lot of streamlining. Things like background and painting guides etc would have to be either cut entirely or severely reduced to avoid the book being simply too large to be viable. I imagine the binding would also have to be carefully thought out, as extremely large books tend to have problems on that front. All that is rather technical limitations though, and I believe they could probably be worked out.

A slight tweak on the idea would be if GW took the rules for whatever the edition is and added in a few fixes and adjustments for balance (essentially, what a lot of folks on here have done already). I'm not sure if I like that tweak myself, but I think the core idea is actually a pretty good one. I imagine that if this sort of thing became a regular and accepted part of GW then we would probably see a LOT of previous edition play going around. I know that I for one would love the idea of not having to track down a million books to play a previous edition, and I bet a lot of new players would love the idea of getting everything they need in a single book.

What do you think?
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







It depends on the edition. If you go back to, say, 3rd/4th this would be very straightforward because there were minimal extraneous expansions and the Codexes themselves were quite small/simple, but if you wanted to do this for 7th you'd have to go chasing up piles upon piles of "we're going to put a special free-buffs formation in this start-collecting box to encourage you to buy it!" note-papers and masses of supplements, and you'd definitely want to do a balance patch over the whole thing before trying to print it to avoid the inevitable "oh god no worst edition ever" panic.

Personally I'd prefer they just do a "xenos" red book for 30k. It wouldn't compile everything together in one place, but 30k's just 7th with the balance patches done already for the factions that are in it, and while you wouldn't be down to one book for the whole thing it'd still be a lot smaller.

Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Lebanon NH

Yeah, my initial thoughts were actually:
3rd (when I started playing)
5th (the one a lot of people seem to champion) or 2nd (for extra old-school flair).

I think the idea would be most difficult for either 7th or 8th as both seem to have the most "extra" material that would have to be accounted for.
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




leerm02 wrote:

Hey there everyone,

So this is kind of a break-off idea from my “one codex 40k” thread. Essentially, what do you think of the idea of GW taking a previous edition (pick one really,) and compiling ALL the rules into a single book. A sort of “Definitive Tome” of whatever edition we are talking about. All the codex'es, revisions, expansions, everything that makes up an edition of 40k, all in one book!

I think to make it work you would need a lot of streamlining. Things like background and painting guides etc would have to be either cut entirely or severely reduced to avoid the book being simply too large to be viable. I imagine the binding would also have to be carefully thought out, as extremely large books tend to have problems on that front. All that is rather technical limitations though, and I believe they could probably be worked out.

Well... no. It really can't. [Well, OK, it can, and that's as an electronic document, but people would absolutely hate something that unwieldy]
The physical limitations on binding (and types of binding that are practical and affordable to actually use on a large scale) aren't just something you can handwave away as 'something that can be worked out.'
If the textblock is too heavy, it rips right out of the covers, because physics. The end.

From another practical point of view, GW picking the right edition and players actually agreeing with that and the 'right versions' of various things (for some armies, their 'right codex' is from the previous edition) is a monumental challenge in itself.

Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







Maybe 5th. It gets a lot of love for doing a lot of fixing, streamlining, and moving from central armories to specific equipment pricing per unit (which made list-building simpler and let GW try and price things based on what they were going on, which they didn't take full advantage of until 7th), but the death spiral of power creep really did start in the 5e Codexes and they started to clamp down on list-building freedom/personality super hard in 5e. It was also the high point of requiring named characters for specific list builds.

If you nailed me to a specific edition I'd pick 4th over 5th because I enjoyed the Codexes much more, but if I had the opportunity to make some edits I'd definitely try to construct some hybrid with largely 5e rules (though with some fixes to vehicle damage and 4e line of sight) and largely 4e army books.

You definitely wouldn't want to do 6th, just because anything 6th did 7th did better, and for 7th you'd probably be better-off adding xenos to 30k just because it's had a lot of quality-of-life fixes for the armies it does include that make it a better version of 7th. As to doing 8th I'm generally opposed, just because I think GW's got tunnel vision on trying to make everything as similar as possible to current 40k and those of us who don't like current 40k have no other options, and a lot of the design decisions I really dislike about current 40k started in 8th.

Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in us
Terrifying Doombull




Well, see, this is why picking the right one is tricky, and getting anyone to agree is difficult

I'd definitely say 6th over 7th. 7th wasn't an edition, just a big fee for a couple pages of errata for 6th (and shoe-horning in the absolute _worst_ magic system WFB ever produced) and army books that were nothing but problems from the get go.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/01/16 18:10:08


Efficiency is the highest virtue. 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran





Lebanon NH

Yeah, I would say that 8th would be right out for the rules bloat, the massive pile of supplements, and the fact that it's very recent (at least right now, obviously).

Probably an edition between 2nd-4th would be the best bet I think. The game was still relatively simple (at least in terms of codex/supplements), there is a lot of goodwill towards those editions, and they are old enough that they wouldn't be "stepping on the toes" of the current edition.
   
Made in us
Gore-Soaked Lunatic Witchhunter







Voss wrote:
...Well... no. It really can't. [Well, OK, it can, and that's as an electronic document, but people would absolutely hate something that unwieldy]
The physical limitations on binding (and types of binding that are practical and affordable to actually use on a large scale) aren't just something you can handwave away as 'something that can be worked out.'
If the textblock is too heavy, it rips right out of the covers, because physics. The end...


Older editions' rules were much, *much* smaller. If you wanted to compile all the rules from 4e (rulebook and every Codex) you could probably do it in under 200 pages, including brief fluff/art sections for each army (for comparison the current SM book, expansions not included, is 208 pages). Stretch that to 300 and you could probably get Apocalypse and all of Imperial Armor stuck in the same single book as well. Maybe 250 if you didn't insist on keeping the one-page-per-Apoc-datasheet formatting and turned the superheavies/flyers into normal unit entries.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Voss wrote:
Well, see, this is why picking the right one is tricky, and getting anyone to agree is difficult

I'd definitely say 6th over 7th. 7th wasn't an edition, just a big fee for a couple pages of errata for 6th (and shoe-horning in the absolute _worst_ magic system WFB ever produced) and army books that were nothing but problems from the get go.


I'd still take the errata'd 6th over original 6th, if only just for the Jink nerf and the clarification as to what actually has precision attacks.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/01/16 18:22:52


Balanced Game: Noun. A game in which all options and choices are worth using.
Homebrew oldhammer project: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/790996.page#10896267
Meridian: Necromunda-based 40k skirmish: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/795374.page 
   
Made in us
Dakka Veteran






So with our ProHammer games, we've had the chance to go back and play codexes from the 3rd - 7th era, often times against each other. I ran half a dozen games with various 3.5 edition chaos marine lists against 7th Ad Mech, 6th Orks, 5th Grey knights, etc. for just one example.

What we've realized is that if you preclude the use of formations from the 7th edition books, and of course using ProHamer since it addresses compatibility between different editions, this frees you up to pick the "best" codexes for each faction and have them all in the mix.

That said....

I think the "pre-flyer" era of 40K was better, and so a combination of 3rd and 4th codexes, with maybe some 5th edition codexes, would probably be my preference. Maybe even a 6th edition one or two.


Want a better 40K?
Check out ProHammer: Classic - An Awesomely Unified Ruleset for 3rd - 7th Edition 40K... for retro 40k feels!
 
   
Made in pt
Inquisitorial Keeper of the Xenobanks






your mind

RT, second, third core rules and select faction books, fourth core and select factions. Done.

   
Made in gb
Fixture of Dakka





Not quite 40K, but for me the last edition of Kill Team filled that role.

Core rules, almost all the factions and a few units from each, and for only £25. It immediately felt like it was a return to the Rogue Trader / 2nd / 3rd edition days but at a skirmish level.

Casual gaming, mostly solo-coop these days.

 
   
 
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