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.

Skylifter wrote:I like Jervis Johnson. He views these games pretty much the way I do. I like his WD articles, too.

But I never understood why people who want a strategy game with clear and concise rules and balanced armies play WH40k, because that is what chess is for. If you play 40K, crying for perfect balance and perfectly clear rules is a load of gak. It is a strategy game based on roleplaying. You cannot on one hand allow for anything thinkable to be playable and on the other hand expect perfectly simple rules.

This opinion may have been supportable in 2nd edition, when armies and units were incredibly customizable. 40k is just another points based wargame at this point, and asking for it to at least recognize that people play a certain way would be nice.

The bigger failing than having a tigh ruleset is how often the fluff and the rules are at odds with eachother. The two should be congruent.

And it's deeply ironic that the few times where the rules and fluff have matched (Codex: Armageddon Templars, Iron Warriors from 3.5), everyone went crazy with cries of 'cheese'.

theHandofGork wrote:Two thoughts:
1. It's hard to balance the JJ who designed BB and Black Powder with the JJ who did DA and writes standard bearer.

2. JJ is no Andy Chambers. If you started in the GW when Chambers (or Rick Priestly) was the design head then JJ seems relatively bland. JJ also took over when the rules started to be streamlined. Take them together & it's easy to assume JJ is behind the bland-ification of GW.

This.

It began when there was a reshuffling of personnel back in the middle of the 90's, then when He pulled out the story about the DA revamp with using his kid as the yardstick, and then after that fell through, everyone else but him left and he was left holding the bag with a bunch of bean counters making decisions, while fans and everyone else had him as the "Face of GW" to point the finger at. I included.

It's that little thing about some yeg out of left field poping out of nowhere and telling you how you've been playing your game for the last five or so years poping up and telling you you are all wrong and not doing it the right way, nevermind that he had one story for the first half of that decade, and then pops up with his standard bearer BS the next.

When I see him, I see him changing the game completely out of how it was into some sort of anachronism of how it really should have evolved into. Theres one thing about changing a game to improve it, its quite another to change it for the sake of sales and beancounting.
JJ took it upon himself to be that spokeman. He gets what he gets from his own undoing.

No sympathy for him or his upstarts like Alessio, or Gav the newb. WHY? Because what is seriously lacking in GW's design department is a full set of Huevos.

They do things that THEY think works, not what is benificial to improve the game.

Polonius wrote:Until it's explained how better rules hurt anybody's fun, it seems like a net positive for the hobby to have them.

The issue comes from maintaining an ease of reading while still removing all scope for interpretation.

A good example I read the other day in YMDC was for the Shokk Attack gun, where the rule states "Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play. Vehicles hit take an automatic penetrating hit."

This is written in plain English, and is fairly easy to understand with a common sense interpretation. But by RAW it means the vehicles, being models, should be removed from play and also take a penetrating hit. It's a crazy interpretation, and the kind of thing that'd breach most clubs 'don't be a dick' rule, but amongst the RAW WAAC crowd it has some kind of legitimacy.

Now, the rule in this instance could have been kept absolutely clear and immune to crazy RAW interpretations, and still been easy to read just by adjusting it to read "Any model hit by the gun this turn is removed from play, except for vehicles which take an automatic penetrating hit." Given how easily that could have been made unambiguous without adding complexity, I hope it's obvious I'm not claiming the 40K rules couldn't improve both their clarity and the ease of reading.

But I would point out there's a point where you do have to trade one for the other. Removing all possible interpretation would require writing in a dense language much like a legal document, and that really isn't to many people's tastes. Writing in a simpler style would work, but it'd leave greater room for interpretation.

GW doesn't do either, but any effort to improve the text would mean at some point you'd have to start allowing some ambiguity for the sake of simplicity, or vice versa.

Mannahnin wrote:

Several of the casual gamers I used to play 40k with have moved over to Warmachine and Hordes, despite those games being ostensibly written for a more competitive mindset. The thing that really appeals to those casual gamers is that the rules are rarely unclear, and they are almost never stuck trying to figure something out or have an excessively-complex rule used to their disadvantage and explained to them by a more-competitive player. Pretty much every time they have a question, they can just look in the main rulebook or the glossary and find the answer. 40k's been getting better, no doubt. I love 5th edition. But there are still rules that are excessively complex and counterintuitive (like multiple assaults, and wound distribution in complex units) and GW leaves obvious questions unanswered.

Mannahin describes me perfectly (though I have never played him in 40k).

I sometimes forget that this is a side benefit to me never having played in a
competitive warhammer 40k environment yet playing warmachine now. Yes, I
love that the rules are mostly clear. I love that when I run events, the most
lawyering I usually have to do is ask, "What does the rule say?" Saying the rule
out loud usually gets them to notice the word they missed reading it to themselves
in the midst of playing the game.

I suppose the problem is that anyone who posts on these forums is by definition getting more mileage out of the game, and so is more likely to find problems with it. Yes there are some issues with the rules being inbalanced or in some cases incomplete, but I think for the vast majority of gamers (most of whom don't spend a lot of time on the internet) then 40k functions fine as something that you can just pick up and play and not worry too much about beyond that (and beyond the beer and prezels I suppose).

I will introduce an analogy: If you just drive your little hatchback to go shopping once a week, or into town, or for the odd holiday, you might find that it works perfectly. But, start taking it on 4 hour commutes every day, or to a track day to thrash it around, and then you might find that bits of it start to fall off! So maybe if you are in a latter camp it might be an idea to either upgrade to a more appropriate car for that kind of use, or else make your own modifications so that it's more suitable! But, perhaps it is a tad unfair to expect the manufacturer to cater for that kind of use when its only used for such by a minority.

(I realise that's pretty terrible, feel free to pick it to pieces! ^^ )

I think it's just he has tried to make the game more simple but then in doing so has left out everything that makes the game interesting. Thats why i love Phil kelly and Brian nelson.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
do you think he know that he is hated so much??

If you read the above thread, there are a lot more posts supporting him than 'hating' him, and this is at the sharp end of GW fans..

sebster wrote:

Polonius wrote:Until it's explained how better rules hurt anybody's fun, it seems like a net positive for the hobby to have them.

The issue comes from maintaining an ease of reading while still removing all scope for interpretation.
...snip...

But I would point out there's a point where you do have to trade one for the other. Removing all possible interpretation would require writing in a dense language much like a legal document, and that really isn't to many people's tastes. Writing in a simpler style would work, but it'd leave greater room for interpretation.

GW doesn't do either, but any effort to improve the text would mean at some point you'd have to start allowing some ambiguity for the sake of simplicity, or vice versa.

Well, most legal documents spend a lot of their time defining things, which in the exmaple you cited is the problem. How is it possible that the term "model" can be used to mean "non-vehicle model"? Most of the ambiguity is built around ill defined or poorly chosen words, not simplicity.

Polonius wrote:Well, most legal documents spend a lot of their time defining things, which in the exmaple you cited is the problem. How is it possible that the term "model" can be used to mean "non-vehicle model"? Most of the ambiguity is built around ill defined or poorly chosen words, not simplicity.

Note that I said that in the example in question, and in lots of GW's other rules writing, that the rule in question could be more clearly written without becoming any more complex. But your example of a list of formal definitions is exactly where you start seeing the trade off between clarity and simplicity. A whole lot of folk really don't want to spend their time flicking back to the definitions to piece together exactly what a rule means. They want a plain reading where much of the meaning can be interpreted from the context and from common sense.

Do you see where I'm coming from when I say there can be a trade-off between clarity and simplicity (though GW could improve both substantially).

I play Chaos Night lords. They cost lots of money. They had one page of rules. As JJ put it, they were to complicated for a 10 year old. Over half my models simply couldn't be used. (there was a sizable gap between CSM and Daemons). Saying I could kinda make a dark apostle and kinda make a warsmith is like saying you can kinda make a chaplain out of a librarian. It's easy to sit back and call nerd rage when you didn't blow hundreds on legion specific dreads rhino doors and Emperor's children vehicle sonic weapons, or Alpha legion cultists. It's a failure to gw, on his and his lot to have that many models on the rack without rules. The worst part is they failed to Nerf the power of Chaos. (Lash Plague Oblit is just as powerful as daemon bomb or iron warriors). And turns out 10 year olds don't want to play a simple codex, they want one that wins. Nobody asks "What's the most simple codex out?" That's why space wolves and IG leaf blower do, and sell so well. 3.5 Chaos was the second most used army in it's day. So the sales went way down as well, thats even worse when all the Iron warrior stuff went on ebay. 4 heavy support and one was an IG tank. When asked about my one page of nightlords, the reply is "Turny players tend to complain about the new chaos codex. I don't hate the man. he failed in 3rd and forth edition. Just think of Tau with no kroot or vispids. or Necrons with no monoliths.

PS His crew went on to take the Necromancer Lord out of my undead army, just to kick my while I was down. What's so complicated about a Necromancer leading undead?

sebster wrote:

Polonius wrote:Well, most legal documents spend a lot of their time defining things, which in the exmaple you cited is the problem. How is it possible that the term "model" can be used to mean "non-vehicle model"? Most of the ambiguity is built around ill defined or poorly chosen words, not simplicity.

Note that I said that in the example in question, and in lots of GW's other rules writing, that the rule in question could be more clearly written without becoming any more complex. But your example of a list of formal definitions is exactly where you start seeing the trade off between clarity and simplicity. A whole lot of folk really don't want to spend their time flicking back to the definitions to piece together exactly what a rule means. They want a plain reading where much of the meaning can be interpreted from the context and from common sense.

Do you see where I'm coming from when I say there can be a trade-off between clarity and simplicity (though GW could improve both substantially).

I understand the point, but in the case of wargaming rules at the complexity level of 40k or Warmachine, ONE competent editor adding a two-page glossary and enforcing consistent use of important words like "model" and "unit" would make a world of difference, vastly improving the clarity and consistency of GW's rules without adding ANY complexity. We all knew it was true and many of us discussed it. Then Privateer went and proved it.

sexiest_hero wrote:Saying I could kinda make a dark apostle and kinda make a warsmith is like saying you can kinda make a chaplain out of a librarian.

LOL! +1. QFT. This.

... and all those other cliché internet thingies you put after you agree with someone. Had I room in my sig...

sexiest_hero wrote:It's easy to sit back and call nerd rage when you didn't blow hundreds on legion specific dreads rhino doors and Emperor's children vehicle sonic weapons, or Alpha legion cultists.

Right there with ya buddy. I had Word Bearers (fully blended multi-God Daemon army with Marine support), World Eaters, Death Guard (most of it Forge World kits), Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion and Lost & The Damned. Jervis hits the scene, kicks every Dark Angel player in the nuts and then proceeds to unleash Gav and Alessio so that they might castrate the Chaos players. To say that I was unhappy would be an very large understatement. It's even more galling when you see more recent books like Dark Eldar, and Ward Angels and how they have options up the wazoo - so many in fact that people don't even use half of 'em (and that's mostly because they're weapon options, and you can only take so many weapons on a single model)

What's worse is that some of his reasons for simplifying things were logical, yet (as is almost always the case with GW) the execution was fething horrendous. He made the case that new players wouldn't know what a Meltagun is by sight, or a Flamer, or a Power Fist, or whatever, so each Codex would get a 'Wargear' section that has pictures and the rules. Unfortunately they failed at this from the word go, as half the entries in every damned Wargear section have you fliping back through the book to find the rules. The Guard Codex is the worst offender here - look at its vehicle upgrade section, almost every single entry is a "Please see Page XX" entry rather than rules. Why did they even bother printing that if all it does is tell you to look somewhere else? So instead of confusing new players by expecting them to know what a Multi-Melta or a Plasma Gun look like, we're not confusing them by forcing them to go on a treasure hunt through their 'simple' book to find the fething rules.

His influence since the Dark Angel Codex, even if some recent Codices have been better and even good, has been detrimental to 40K as a whole.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mannahnin wrote:I understand the point, but in the case of wargaming rules at the complexity level of 40k or Warmachine, ONE competent editor adding a two-page glossary and enforcing consistent use of important words like "model" and "unit" would make a world of difference

It's what we did with our own homebrew 40K rules. One of our group is a lawyer, and he went and added in a section for Defined Terms, and then strictly enforced them through all the books we wrote.

As one of his fans, I certainly dont see anything bad about Jervis. Dark angels need un update anyway.

Mannahnin wrote:I understand the point, but in the case of wargaming rules at the complexity level of 40k or Warmachine, ONE competent editor adding a two-page glossary and enforcing consistent use of important words like "model" and "unit" would make a world of difference, vastly improving the clarity and consistency of GW's rules without adding ANY complexity. We all knew it was true and many of us discussed it. Then Privateer went and proved it.

That's an entirely fair argument, I'm not trying to make the argument that GW can't improve both. I was just responding to the statement 'Until it's explained how better rules hurt anybody's fun, it seems like a net positive for the hobby to have them' by pointing out that 'better rules' can be subjective, and can involve choosing between two different design goals.

Care to elaborate?

He's pointing out that "better" is inherently subjective. Some people prefer Star Fleet Battles to 40k: Star Fleet Battles is "better" for them, even though it's vastly more complicated.

That said, as PP has manifestly demonstrated (though they're not perfect either), you can have a quickly-playing fun tabletop game like WM or 40k with the level of complexity we're all accustomed to without having to sacrifice clarity for the sake of simplicity. It just requires better writing and more consistent use terminology. GW IS gradually getting better in that department; 5th ed is certainly clearer than 4th, which was clearer than 3rd. But they're still substantially behind where they would be if they had a single competent editor overseeing the line. Heck, I could do it, and I haven't done any technical editing in more than ten years.

I would say that fun is subjective, but quality in rules has various objective points, such as simplicity and clarity in which they are written.

Clarity of written language can be measured using a standardised system developed by the US government. There is a version of the tool built into MS Word.

Sadly you need the text as a digital file, so you have to type in screeds of it from the rulebook, which I am not prepared to do for 40K.

sebster wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:I understand the point, but in the case of wargaming rules at the complexity level of 40k or Warmachine, ONE competent editor adding a two-page glossary and enforcing consistent use of important words like "model" and "unit" would make a world of difference, vastly improving the clarity and consistency of GW's rules without adding ANY complexity. We all knew it was true and many of us discussed it. Then Privateer went and proved it.

That's an entirely fair argument, I'm not trying to make the argument that GW can't improve both. I was just responding to the statement 'Until it's explained how better rules hurt anybody's fun, it seems like a net positive for the hobby to have them' by pointing out that 'better rules' can be subjective, and can involve choosing between two different design goals.

Ok, well, (ironically given my complaint) what I should have said was "Until it's explained how GW putting more time and effort into eliminating poorly worded rules hurts anybody's fun..."

I mean, I get your point on the difference between simplicity and clarity. I also know that the biggest questions arise because of simply sloppy writing, not any effort to be simple.

HI all.
I suppose I get frustrated with Jervis , (I do not hate him.)
Because he should know better!

We have examples of his best work in BB and EA.

Yet there are SO MANY silly mistakes in 40k rules and codexes, and he pretends everyone that complains has not got enough intellegence or creativity to understand what was intended!

I can remember under AC, regular apologies for mistakes and erratas appeared in WD.And I for one apreciated the honesty of that.

But under the new GW corperate directive , 'no admission of error policy' eg 'everything GW do is perfect and saying anything else will devalue our product.'

JJ has taken it upon himself to preach this to the masses, and made himself a bit unpopular in doing so...

TTFN

Okay, TTFN?

As to the beer and pretzel thing:

Time spent arguing over rules subtracts from the beer time.

Balance wrote:As to the beer and pretzel thing:

Time spent arguing over rules subtracts from the beer time.

+1. That's what the anti-competitive-tight-rules-crowd never really seems to "get" on the forums; tight rules benefits the casual player at least as much, if not more than, the competitive.

Exactly. Jervis acts as if making the rules clear would necessarily mean making them into an old Avalon Hill wargame with carefully-numbered subsections like 1.2.5 and 5.2.1(a), and formal, dense text. Many of those old games were quite intimidating and certainly unappealing to a casual gamer. But that's a false dichotomy. You can maintain a casual, open and readable tone while also using your words carefully and consistently.

Where has he actually said that he wants rules to be unclear and not precise? I mean I can imagine he did, I just do not think it likely.

I wouldn't mind rules that are clearer, and just hiring a few guys to check that now and then could certainly make a difference.

But to me that just is not as important as other factors - for example cool ideas for campaigns and things like that. So if GW have money to hire one more guy for the rules, I'd be all for hiring one who develops cool campaigns over one who goes over the rules to make them more precise.

GW clearly value tight rules as much as new campaign ideas; they do neither.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Care to elaborate?

Simply that what makes a ruleset better can depend on what you want out of the game. That at some point a decision might have to be made between clarity and simplicity, or as another example between rules balance and flexibility.

Jervis' argument is that GW tends towards simplicity, and also towards flexibility, because GW build its rules with the focus on with the tournament mindset.

I agree with Jervis in general that you have to pick some things over others, and GW should focus on simple, direct language in their rules, and on flexibility, over unambiguous rules or perfect factional balance, but I would point out (and agree with the general sentiment in this thread) that with the current state of 40K they could significantly improve each of those elements without affecting any other.

I like jervis. But he kinda needs to think of better things to do. And write a better Dark Angel Codex.

The biggest reason I don't care for Jervis is because of his various belittling of people who play different than he thinks the game should be played.

I think again thats something which is really subjective. I have never ever got that impression from his articles, and in any case he is writing what he considers to be the way to do things. Do you read a newspaper article, or editorial, and then question the right to it's existence because it doesn't match with your own opinions? If you don't agree with what he says, then you always have the ability to flick over to the next page (although, I'll admit in WD that doesn't give you a lot of options! )

I like jervis. But he kinda needs to think of better things to do

I would be interested to know if the Specialist Games range would even exist without his efforts. Those games are now GW's embarrassing uncle and I'm sure some of the bean counters would like them to be removed entirely, they are far too entertaining and far too cheap to be allowed to exist alongside the core ranges.

This discussion seems to be going backwards and forwards, so I will just leave my final comment with this: Blood Bowl. That would mitigate JJ accidentally blowing up Warhammer World in my book.