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The world's of Warhammer are much smaller now, the imaginative infinity within the players mind is reduced by the focus on product.

When gw had little to sell, Evocative words that powered the imagination is what they sold.

Everything felt bigger, more unknowable when it was from textual inference and ambiguity.

But as their product line expanded it put perceived boundaries on that scope. Now instead of unknown regiments it's all about known ones. And with official models they now have elevated importance beyond the unknown ones.

This is a kind of corporate flanderisation where the more they create things they need to sell, the less thing without tangible products disappear. Which over simplifies the world and reduces it's grandeur

I don't necessarily disagree, but I feel like this is more of a rant (justified or not) than something to readily engine with.

I'm sorry, but how situation now is different from tre 6th or 7th?
It's too often we hear here and there "dey make 40k smaller", though I don't see any real changes.
Yeah we now have more named space marines. And there is 5 notable active warzones on map instead of 2. But what changed? GW written lore for 3 more planets. Of a million in imperium and billiards in galaxy.
You wanna own unique regiment? With rough riders on doggosaurus? Such conversions never this accessible with all those stl and a 3dprinters available on any bakery.
Nothing, and especially GW don't stop us from imagine anything in boundaries of galaxy. Yeah they push cadians, but it's because it's most known regiments.
It's more like we are becoming too lazy to imagine our unknown things.

You have read the AoS lore right - a setting so bonkers open that it actually suffers lore/storywise from the fact that its so insanely vast and open? Where cities can be mounted top huge beasts; where other regions the land reshapes from valleys to mountains overnight and back again; whilst there's a whole realm where ALL the dead go and each religion has its own little corner of unique death including the Skaven (which means is teeming freaking huge).


The 40K and AoS settings are no less vast than they've ever been, Sure codex and official media focuses on the product - and guess what; it did that back in the 2010s and the 2000s and the 1990s. Even back in the "deodorant can tank" era the official media focused on the product.

I'm not even sure what you expect GW to do; produce vast amounts of artwork of factions that they will never produce as models? If they did that you'd be here complaining that GW has never made X legion of Imperial Guard despite constantly talking about them (heck some of us are still waiting to see a single Exodites model )




Also its 2026; we have 3D printers; firms have more ready access to casting methods like plastics than ever before. The market is FLOODED with alternative armies; takes; designs; ideas and potential.
Youtube is bursting at the seams with guides on how to do everything from the 3D design to greenstuff sculpting to terrain and more.

GW doesn't "HAVE" to do everything; they don't need too. There is VAST media out there to do other stuff if you spend 5 seconds looking for it.

I think their main issue is instead of creating a good ruleset, with a set background, then letting the players tell their own stories through games, They try to rewrite the rules constantly based on the books the writers shovel out.

The problem with that is writers change things, add and remove things, whatever it takes to make that story interesting. They are not thinking about tabletop rules because they are not playing a game. They are telling a story.

GW looks at that and says, well the books are doing this, so we need to change the game to reflect that. No! Keep the stories (books) separate from the tabletop game rules. Get your basics down that will never change and adjust other rules as needed for balance and fun.

We don't need anymore "Throw everything out the window because we're changing everything."

*edit*
Forgot to add the disclaimer: "My $0.02"

I would be interested to see how you sell the value of a lack of product to the company.

To quantify the gaps between lore to be just valuable as the lore itself.

The way gw treats it sets the cultural standard for the community, so if they only care about primarchs and describing a set number of chapters and selling models for them, and only writing books to tie into their products, then the way the community interacts with the setting changes from active participation to passive consumption.

And conversation is only on people's favourite primarch or the 'lore accurate ' way to paint X or play y.

The concepts in between are where the greatest scope lie and where much of the game's depth is found, precisely because it doesn't end at the release of a product and it's supporting materials.

How do sell the intangible

 Hellebore wrote:

How do sell the intangible

It's call books.

Black Library has loads of books that detail subfactions, planets, worlds, units, tanks, aliens and so forth that never appear as models. Heck I forget but I'm reasonably sure that the Horus Heresy book series was a thing before the tabletop game got underway? At the very least the HH Book series became a major world seller to markets well outside of those who would ever touch a model on the tabletop.

GW develops loads of bits that never make it to tabletop - Cathay, Nippon, Exodites etc.. are all names of factions that have either never had models for decades or only just recently had some released. Yet they are factions and terms that people familiar with the lore know of.

The thing is GW doesn't want to spend months talking about Nippon in articles; conversions; books and so forth when its not a product they can sell. Because that's what customers will turn around and want/ask for. Indeed if GW pushes X then the potential market for X grows which means the potential for a product for X grows. Thing is from GW's point of view its al ot more efficient to grow interest in X alongside models for X which is why we don't see them push content for new factions until those factions are are going to be a reality.

Everything costs so why should GW spend money on something that won't make money back when they have the choice.




Honestly GW fleshes out their setting really well; most wargames (that are not historical) don't have anywhere near the depth that most GW games do. They have one manual; perhaps a lore book or a short website paragraph or three; They sketch it out ;but ultimately don't have all that much. A few games go way deeper, but even then they still focus on factions that they are releasing or want to release "soon" and which are thus on the horizon.

I think one of the issues has been the increasing focus on named characters.

It makes the universe feel smaller when, for example, every single battle appears to involve Chapter Master Magnificent Caviar.

I think it would be better if most (if not all) of the named characters in 40k were portrayed as being far more distant.

In fact, I'm reminded a little of the Planeswalkers in mtg. There was a particular story (Innistrad, IIRC), that really brought home how awful they are for the setting. There was a scene where various characters (all from the actual plane) were engaged in their respective machinations, and all of them felt well-characterised. And then a Plansewalker turns up with all the personality of a bowl of porridge and (for good measure) Mary Sue powers that easily beat the villain's powers because she's just that amazing.

I think it was the fastest I'd ever lost engagement with a story. And I tend to have similar feelings for many of 40k's named characters.

Anyway, the point I'm (laboriously) trying to make is that trying to include these larger-than-life figures can make the universe feel smaller (because, despite there being billions of worlds, somehow a handful of characters are involved with all of them). Moreover, it also tends to overshadow other, more interesting characters who have far more of a stake in the world. It can also just be tiresome when other characters lose all agency as they can't even blow their noses without it being all part of Vect's plan.

 Overread wrote:
You have read the AoS lore right - a setting so bonkers open that it actually suffers lore/storywise from the fact that its so insanely vast and open? Where cities can be mounted top huge beasts; where other regions the land reshapes from valleys to mountains overnight and back again; whilst there's a whole realm where ALL the dead go and each religion has its own little corner of unique death including the Skaven (which means is teeming freaking huge).

It's funny because AoS has almost the opposite problem.

Every time I hear it described, I remember why I have zero interest in any story that involves the 'Multiverse'.

Heh, as a guards player and painter I can say that we seen Chaptermaster Murmurous Catgar mostly because of space marine chauvinism and community rigidity + newcomers from SM and SM2. All new is bad! Gimme ultramarine! And so on. GW won't create a content and miniatures they couldn't sell, the same with our starters every edition with sm + some hobo faction.

Plainwalkers really kill the lore of mtg they are even stupider then primarchs.
And again we see 5-7 battle zones. Not billions. It's obvious Catgar send his chapter to fight most glorious battles.

I've said this before, but I believe it all comes back to the same thing: The Chapterhouse Lawsuit

Pre-Chapterhouse, GW could describe things without any intention of putting them into production, so we got things like the 3rd edition two-page spread of Imperial Guard regiments and descriptions of things like Mycetic Spores with which to go off and let our imaginations run rampant, and so third parties popped up putting those described-but-not-produced concepts into production, or making their own versions of things to fill gaps in the market. GW had operated on the assumption that anything they put out into the ether was theres, immutably, irrevocably, and so they saw people making their own versions of things that were "theirs" and put their foot down.

Afterwards? The lawsuit violently disabused GW of that notion, they found out the limits of what their control actually was. You can't stop someone making and selling a physical model of something you've only ever described or put into artwork. You can't claim trademark over generic names and icons, you can't claim ownership of artwork where there's no contract giving you that right. Yes, they "won" on several counts, but they also lost on some significant ones, and third parties now had legal precedent saying what was and was not allowed, not just by GW's permission, but by actual law.

So GW pivoted hard, renamed factions, removed codex entries for almost everything that did not have a current model, and that affected the lore too. Regiments that were prominent in the background but had no available models took a back seat and things they could sell took priority. Almost all artwork they put out was of some tangible, sellable thing (although I'm still waiting for that tentacled nurgle beastie from the Dark Imperium art!).

It wasn't total, there were still some gaps - but it was a significant, notable shift.

Chapterhouse shifted GW's entire corporate ethos from just assuming they had automatic rights (even if they didn't choose to exercise them) over every concept they had ever published to operating within the strict - and public - lines set out by the ruling, so their worlds contracted around the main things they could monetize and moved away from things that just existed in the background but were not actual products that could be sold.

It should also be noted that GW are in a semi-unique position in the market too. Most other brands can make art, lore and concepts that might never reach the table because they are basically so small no one cares enough to design models and bring them to the consumer market.

Even with 3D printing that impact is tiny on other brands. For GW they can preview a model and within a day there's copies and 3rd party options out there; and demand for it.


AI is the next biggest hurdle that can impact everyone on that front; since if tokens remain insanely cheap there's potential for this kind of impact to hit any creative group. You can't preview art for the next Warmachine army if someone is going to get AI to spit out a thousand designs of models for them before you've even finished the preview showcase video.

Charax wrote:
I've said this before, but I believe it all comes back to the same thing: The Chapterhouse Lawsuit

Pre-Chapterhouse, GW could describe things without any intention of putting them into production, so we got things like the 3rd edition two-page spread of Imperial Guard regiments and descriptions of things like Mycetic Spores with which to go off and let our imaginations run rampant, and so third parties popped up putting those described-but-not-produced concepts into production, or making their own versions of things to fill gaps in the market. GW had operated on the assumption that anything they put out into the ether was theres, immutably, irrevocably, and so they saw people making their own versions of things that were "theirs" and put their foot down.

Afterwards? The lawsuit violently disabused GW of that notion, they found out the limits of what their control actually was. You can't stop someone making and selling a physical model of something you've only ever described or put into artwork. You can't claim trademark over generic names and icons, you can't claim ownership of artwork where there's no contract giving you that right. Yes, they "won" on several counts, but they also lost on some significant ones, and third parties now had legal precedent saying what was and was not allowed, not just by GW's permission, but by actual law.

So GW pivoted hard, renamed factions, removed codex entries for almost everything that did not have a current model, and that affected the lore too. Regiments that were prominent in the background but had no available models took a back seat and things they could sell took priority. Almost all artwork they put out was of some tangible, sellable thing (although I'm still waiting for that tentacled nurgle beastie from the Dark Imperium art!).

It wasn't total, there were still some gaps - but it was a significant, notable shift.

Chapterhouse shifted GW's entire corporate ethos from just assuming they had automatic rights (even if they didn't choose to exercise them) over every concept they had ever published to operating within the strict - and public - lines set out by the ruling, so their worlds contracted around the main things they could monetize and moved away from things that just existed in the background but were not actual products that could be sold.

Everything that comes from the Chapterhouse lawsuit suggests that no one in GW's entire boardroom has an IG above room temperature.

I think we should also separate GW under Kirby from under Rowntree. Kirby era GW was a fairly disconnected firm from its fans at the very top of the company.

To the point where we got famous lines in the shareholder meetings about them "not needing customer surveys" and the like. It's also when GW went totally nuts against the internet; trying to shut down any rumour sites; hardly running any web presence of their own ;shut down their own tournament event in the UK etc.... Right up until the AoS launch mess which basically broke the back of the old management team.

New GW is a very different beast and whilst it has some big changes; there are some elements from those Kirby days that still hang on (either in reality or in the minds of fans)

 Hellebore wrote:
I would be interested to see how you sell the value of a lack of product to the company.

To quantify the gaps between lore to be just valuable as the lore itself.

The way gw treats it sets the cultural standard for the community, so if they only care about primarchs and describing a set number of chapters and selling models for them, and only writing books to tie into their products, then the way the community interacts with the setting changes from active participation to passive consumption.

And conversation is only on people's favourite primarch or the 'lore accurate ' way to paint X or play y.

The concepts in between are where the greatest scope lie and where much of the game's depth is found, precisely because it doesn't end at the release of a product and it's supporting materials.

How do sell the intangible

There wouldn't be any reason they couldn't add new models to the game, but to change the entire... everything... because "Oh they blew up the world in one of the books." is just beyond ridiculous. The largest complaint I see pretty much everywhere is about balance (right after cost, but that's just the nature of hobbies). I would think that would be their #1 concern and that starts with set rules, adjusted as balance issues are found. And there's your new rulebook to sell, v2.0x.

As others have said? It’s really not that different to how it’s always been.

Even going back to the Rogue Trader rulebook? There are worlds named and cited. Arguably most famous, Birmingham. Not many, the merest figment of a sliver of a fragment of the near as dammit infinite worlds.

What there is now is a sort of reverse Star Wars. Outside of various homeworlds, we’ve seen ever more worlds named and famed. Necromunda, Angelus/Gorkamorka, Cadia, Armageddon, Vraks and so on and so forth. So it’s hardly rested on its laurels by only ever focussing on a handful of back water worlds.

There’s also, thanks to Internet and Black Library? Somewhat more of it than when we were necessarily restricted to monthly White Dwarfs, periodic Citadel Journals and occasional Codexes. Which can make it feel smaller again.

I’m going to recommend a course of Necromunda Background. We know more about that famed world than ever before, but it remains amazingly vague. Uncertain history, dynamic politicising among the Noble and Clan Houses and so on.

There's definitely been a bit of "prestige creep".

To quote a reddit post:

The peak example is that the ultimate protagonist/hero of the Vraks campaign, a man who spoke to the Emperor and who led Grey Knights into battle on the nightmare skein of a burgeoning daemon world, was just some guy. He was a strong psyker, sure, but his name never gets a mention in the franchise's top fifty.

And the architect? The man whose whims drowned millions of screaming mouths in sucking mud, plague, caustic gas, and lasgun fire? Also just some guy. Who became a daemon prince of Nurgle, by the way.

Neither of those characters could be made in modern 40k because the franchise places no true narrative value on anyone who isn't a Space Marine or a Primarch. And while I enjoy both Space Marines and Primarchs, the setting is poorer when you don't have random-ass supermen like Hector Rex running around.

Hell, both Vraks and Badab also showcase that Space Marines don't have to be first- or second-founding chapters to matter, but stuff like that is a vanishing rarity nowadays.

vipoid wrote:I think one of the issues has been the increasing focus on named characters.

It makes the universe feel smaller when, for example, every single battle appears to involve Chapter Master Magnificent Caviar.

I think it would be better if most (if not all) of the named characters in 40k were portrayed as being far more distant.

In fact, I'm reminded a little of the Planeswalkers in mtg. There was a particular story (Innistrad, IIRC), that really brought home how awful they are for the setting. There was a scene where various characters (all from the actual plane) were engaged in their respective machinations, and all of them felt well-characterised. And then a Plansewalker turns up with all the personality of a bowl of porridge and (for good measure) Mary Sue powers that easily beat the villain's powers because she's just that amazing.

I think it was the fastest I'd ever lost engagement with a story. And I tend to have similar feelings for many of 40k's named characters.

Anyway, the point I'm (laboriously) trying to make is that trying to include these larger-than-life figures can make the universe feel smaller (because, despite there being billions of worlds, somehow a handful of characters are involved with all of them). Moreover, it also tends to overshadow other, more interesting characters who have far more of a stake in the world. It can also just be tiresome when other characters lose all agency as they can't even blow their noses without it being all part of Vect's plan.

I agree, I think the focus on special characters is probably the single biggest trend that has led to the world feeling smaller. It also generates a different... feel to the game. If I wanted to play Warmachine, I would have played Warmachine rather than have 40k turned into a character-focused game.

Charax wrote:I've said this before, but I believe it all comes back to the same thing: The Chapterhouse Lawsuit

Pre-Chapterhouse, GW could describe things without any intention of putting them into production, so we got things like the 3rd edition two-page spread of Imperial Guard regiments and descriptions of things like Mycetic Spores with which to go off and let our imaginations run rampant, and so third parties popped up putting those described-but-not-produced concepts into production, or making their own versions of things to fill gaps in the market. GW had operated on the assumption that anything they put out into the ether was theres, immutably, irrevocably, and so they saw people making their own versions of things that were "theirs" and put their foot down.

Afterwards? The lawsuit violently disabused GW of that notion, they found out the limits of what their control actually was. You can't stop someone making and selling a physical model of something you've only ever described or put into artwork. You can't claim trademark over generic names and icons, you can't claim ownership of artwork where there's no contract giving you that right. Yes, they "won" on several counts, but they also lost on some significant ones, and third parties now had legal precedent saying what was and was not allowed, not just by GW's permission, but by actual law.

So GW pivoted hard, renamed factions, removed codex entries for almost everything that did not have a current model, and that affected the lore too. Regiments that were prominent in the background but had no available models took a back seat and things they could sell took priority. Almost all artwork they put out was of some tangible, sellable thing (although I'm still waiting for that tentacled nurgle beastie from the Dark Imperium art!).

It wasn't total, there were still some gaps - but it was a significant, notable shift.

Chapterhouse shifted GW's entire corporate ethos from just assuming they had automatic rights (even if they didn't choose to exercise them) over every concept they had ever published to operating within the strict - and public - lines set out by the ruling, so their worlds contracted around the main things they could monetize and moved away from things that just existed in the background but were not actual products that could be sold.

Eh... that isn't quite true, although it doesn't change the result.

What you say is correct for US law. The Chapterhouse case occurred in the US. GW is a UK company, and UK law is somewhat different on copyright. Probably, although this hasn't been tested in court, GW would have won the same case outright in the UK as the UK does not have the same framework around transforming content to escape copyright. I suspect that GW operated the way it did as a UK company, became successful enough to go international, and then eventually ran into an issue when it encountered the Chapterhouse case in a jurisdiction with subtly-different copyright law.

It still had the same effect of chilling GW depictions they had no models for of course, the US is a big market for GW and they were not going to pull out of it.

Overall, I do agree that Chapterhouse and the focus on named characters together have done the most to make the setting feel smaller than it actually is. The special character effect has also spread to naming conventions in codices, where some generic units are being replaced by named units like infantry squads being replaced with Death Korps, Cadian, and Catachan squads. The setting is presented as narrower.

 Ashiraya wrote:
There's definitely been a bit of "prestige creep".

To quote a reddit post:

The peak example is that the ultimate protagonist/hero of the Vraks campaign, a man who spoke to the Emperor and who led Grey Knights into battle on the nightmare skein of a burgeoning daemon world, was just some guy. He was a strong psyker, sure, but his name never gets a mention in the franchise's top fifty.

And the architect? The man whose whims drowned millions of screaming mouths in sucking mud, plague, caustic gas, and lasgun fire? Also just some guy. Who became a daemon prince of Nurgle, by the way.

Neither of those characters could be made in modern 40k because the franchise places no true narrative value on anyone who isn't a Space Marine or a Primarch. And while I enjoy both Space Marines and Primarchs, the setting is poorer when you don't have random-ass supermen like Hector Rex running around.

Hell, both Vraks and Badab also showcase that Space Marines don't have to be first- or second-founding chapters to matter, but stuff like that is a vanishing rarity nowadays.

Man. I think this hit the nail on the head. I had not even realiced how few random dudes have come up in the last years.

I'm not sure that I'd agree with the 'no random dudes' angle - random dudes like Inquisitor LadyDragon, Commissar ArmouredCar, Inquisitor DonQuixote, Lord WorldSpearer, etc. spawn out of absolutely nowhere all the time, only to be almost immediately forgotten about again.

 Lord Damocles wrote:
I'm not sure that I'd agree with the 'no random dudes' angle - random dudes like Inquisitor LadyDragon, Commissar ArmouredCar, Inquisitor DonQuixote, Lord WorldSpearer, etc. spawn out of absolutely nowhere all the time, only to be almost immediately forgotten about again.

They come alongside model releases though.

Whilst the Vraks characters mentioned above did get characters, an awful lot of older narratives mentioned individuals key to the campaign that never got models, and often no art or rules too.

I don't think we'd get the likes of the Third War for Armageddon campaign placing significant prominence on characters without models like Helbrecht (yes, he got a model in the next edition of the game, but not during the campaign).

Also the huge recent drama about the Steel Legion's strange absence from 11e's conceit.

Like, dramatic as the drama was, it did have that point!

 Overread wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

How do sell the intangible

It's call books.

Black Library has loads of books that detail subfactions, planets, worlds, units, tanks, aliens and so forth that never appear as models. Heck I forget but I'm reasonably sure that the Horus Heresy book series was a thing before the tabletop game got underway? At the very least the HH Book series became a major world seller to markets well outside of those who would ever touch a model on the tabletop.

GW develops loads of bits that never make it to tabletop - Cathay, Nippon, Exodites etc.. are all names of factions that have either never had models for decades or only just recently had some released. Yet they are factions and terms that people familiar with the lore know of.

The thing is GW doesn't want to spend months talking about Nippon in articles; conversions; books and so forth when its not a product they can sell. Because that's what customers will turn around and want/ask for. Indeed if GW pushes X then the potential market for X grows which means the potential for a product for X grows. Thing is from GW's point of view its al ot more efficient to grow interest in X alongside models for X which is why we don't see them push content for new factions until those factions are are going to be a reality.

Everything costs so why should GW spend money on something that won't make money back when they have the choice.




Honestly GW fleshes out their setting really well; most wargames (that are not historical) don't have anywhere near the depth that most GW games do. They have one manual; perhaps a lore book or a short website paragraph or three; They sketch it out ;but ultimately don't have all that much. A few games go way deeper, but even then they still focus on factions that they are releasing or want to release "soon" and which are thus on the horizon.

Their books were part of that evocative direction when they had no products.

Now it's very clear that books are considered supporting collateral for product lines and must be produced to sell them. Especially the space marine ones and especially the Horus heresy.

The samples you give are all from 40.years ago, as I said when they relied on the intangible.

They've been mining that stuff for the last decade rather than building a new evocative background

Without those bits the setting starts to thin because you've stretched everything to fit. 40k operated like a.massive battlscape painting with a huge amount of implied activity and only some in focus and painted in detail. They could generate a feeling of depth by making a selected faction just one face in focus in a crowd.

They've been colouring in some of those others but not repalcing them.

And the focus on special characters changes it from a battlscape to a series of portraits, instead of being a larger than life image of everything it's now a personal image of some of the people there.