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 timetowaste85 wrote:
Batman and Star Wars games (X-Wing, Armada, Imperial Assault, etc) have more source material than 40k could ever dream of. Heroclix as well, if you can handle their God-awful minis. And Star Trek. And Terminator. And Cthulhu Wars and related games. You have a ton of options that have deeper stories than 40k. Not to say 40k has bad background. They did Anakin's fall to the Sith in the Horus Heresy better than Lucas did in SW. They just happen to have a smaller amount of background than all of those other game options.

Most of Star Wars EU has been relegated to "Legends" and has lost it's canon status (thank goodness). D&D isn't normally thought of as a tabletop game, but there is Attack Wing as well as the D&D miniatures game, and there's a hell of a lot of background for D&D out there, including novels, etc.

There's actually a lot less of Tolkien than one might think in comparison to some of the others named, since it was (largely) written by the one man, rather than an endless stream of authors over several decades like Star Wars, D&D, Warhammer, Battletech, etc

Tolkien's Middle Earth oeuvre consists of five books published while he was alive plus another dozen or so published by his son using JRR's notes and unfinished work. Except for The Hobbit and the poetry book, these are not short books either.

Therefore there is a considerable amount of material covering the creation of Middle Earth and legends from early history leading gradually up to the War of the Ring.

What distinguishes Tolkien from say 40K is the amount of depth in the Middle Earth background, including a number of languages and scripts invented owing to his interest in pre-mediaeval literature and languages. Elvish for example is not a collection of random words grubbed up from dog latin and greek, like 40K's High Gothic, it is a complete though compact language with grammar and two different dialects.

I would suggest finding good rules and using Conan's setting, "The Hyborian era" - its pretty fantastic, and just perfect for finding tons of factions and armies waiting to clash- Conan himself need not be involved at all, even.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:

And after having been made privy to a conversation between a game dev and a GW executive, it seems they are intent on distancing themselves from Abnett's work as much as possible. An imperium full of civilians is not a good concept,apparently.

Which shows just how badly GW's understanding of what makes, or rather made, their fluff so interesting. The FFG 40K RPGs work so well partly because they go beyond the shallow warporn and provide glimpses of the wider, and much more interesting, Imperium which is in many ways much more grim dark than what ever angst ridden Space Marine Y is doing to angst ridden Space Marine X in the derivative and shallow fluff that GW spews into the world these days.

I'm not a huge fan of Abnett but he is the only BL writer that I could tolerate.

Tolkien and Howard both had interesting settings that are philosophically very different, but both based greatly inspired by history and mythology. Moorcock also has very good fantasy settings and introduced the Multiverse concept IIRC. History really is a great source for any kind of fantasy wargame/rpg because you can just pick a time period you like, decide how real the mythology and superstitions of the era are and go from there. Greeks with legendary beasts? Renaissance Europe infiltrated by vampires warring with a materialist church that almost wiped them out? Wild west with ghosts and witches? Modern warfare against terrorism disguising a war against inhuman abominations (that have probably thoroughly infiltrated all sides)? It all works!

Although history itself is plenty interesting with tons of plot twists and colorful characters. With the bonus of learning the backstory actually means something!