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 Vaktathi wrote:

nou wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The problem with viewing things like D-cannons "going back to what they were meant to work like" and other such stuff is that 2E ultimately faced the same problems 7E did, humongous power gaps and and insanely broken capabilities coupled with widely dispersed and rules across a multitude of sources that few could keep up with, and the game started to collapse under its own weight, requiring a radical reboot that ultimately gave us 3E. The people excited about these sorts of things forget that 2E turned into an unholy mess by its end, and GW appears intent on making in some cases literally the exact same mistakes.

That is very true from competitive/pickup play point of view. But for more-RPG like aproach 3rd ed reboot was more like castration than "sorting out the bloated mess". And personally, it made me quit WH40k halfway through 3rd ed because 3rd ed Eldar (my army at that time) have lost all their previous character and charm. I have returned only when the gameplay began to at least resemble 2nd ed flexibility. And yours and mine point of views are fine examples of what my post was really about - different mindsets and goals. Preagreed, narrative scenarios can have much more depth in 2nd and 7th editions than in 3rd… And for that role, there is absolutely no problem with "broken capabilities" - quite the opposite really: you can create great scenarios built around those very "broken" things as centerpieces. At the same time, "low power gap" of 3rd ed (internally within codex, between least and most powerfull units. Under 3rd ed mechanics lots of units lost their unique feel and role...) made games more "flat" and quite frankly dull. It was, of course mitigated over time with increasing "bloated mess" of subsequent editions...

I can understand a lot of that, but the problem is that 40k doesnt really offer anything to support that kind of gameplay and fundamentally functions as a pickup game. The game is built around two players showing up with army lists constrained by points costs and playing generic missions. The rules for narrative gaming are either nonexistent or phoned in minor modifications to standard missions. There's no mention of prebuilt campaign supplements offering detailed battle scenarios or a 3rd party GM coming up with custom scenarios with prebuilt armies for both sides the way RT did and most other games that ostensibly offer that kind of experience do.

"Narrative" in 40k almost always ends up meaning "play this bloated mess of an RNG simulator where one side is given an arbitrary advantage over a slightly modified standard rulebook pickup mission with whatever you want to bring". The campaign books pretty much just give us a handful of formations that give silly freebies for taking X configuration of units and maybe some missions minorly deviated from the core rulebook, the substance is extremely lacking. It's all just poorly modified pickup play. Contrast this with other games that offer narrative battles and they'll predfine the forces to a far greater level with very purposefully built missions.

One can look at OGRE for instance, a *far* simpler game with *way* more narrative detail missions. Want your superheavy cybertank equipped with micronuke cannons to stomp all over a lightly defended truck convoy? Ok, but your Supertank type Z enters the map at point X, if the trucks make it to point Y they escape, the map and terrain is set up such that you can only really engage at points A, B or C, and the escort contingent is made up of units D, E and F travelling with the convoy. Supertank Z will have a tough time accomplishing its mission and the game becomes interesting at this point. 40k offers literally nothing to support this kind of play.

If people want their insanely overgunned Wraithguard for "flavor", well, ok, but then lets also acknowledge that nothing else about the gameplay is really built to support "flavor" in that way, and it just ends up coming off as a lame excuse for poor balance and to overpower things for its own sake.

Additionally, with the vast issues of scale the game currently suffers from, such as trying to make what type of blade an individual IG sergeants powerweapon a relevant issue in a game where he may literally be incapable of hurting anything either way because they're facing an army of Knights or dealing with individual close combat challenges in a game involving an entire tank company, makes so much of that "flavor" end up just being irrelevant noise except when its ultra powerful (and then that type of "flavor" is what you suspiciously start seeing lots of).

The game is trying to be far too many things and doing none of them well or even merely adequately. It really needs to be broken into 3 or 4 different systems.

And to be clear - I'm just giving an example of one of possible approaches to 40K, not by any means "the only true way". And I'm writing this only because "public debate" here on dakka is so much competitive/pick-up centric, that it is easy to fell into trap of thinking, that deathstars and gargantuans and all this "broken bull gak" is all there is to 40K and nothing else is possible and no one plays this game differently and that absolutely everyone would be happy with return to early 5th ed...

I get that, and most people acknowledge that 5E was far from perfect. I hated it at the time, for some of the reasons you mentioned as well. But compared to what we've gotten since it was far more playable.

While I can agree, that current 40K does not directly deliver such scenarios, let me rephrase my point of view: given the current state of rules (and WH40K history, starting as a RPG system with MG), it takes a lot less effort to make a great narrative scenario (less rule bending, less fiddling with unit balance etc, less houseruling) than to houserule a viable, broadly ballanced competitive system out of current edition with all possible builds and rule/unit interactions. Good narrative game (using any pair of factions) is doable by anyone with any RPG experience really, given of course, that you do not have to convince a sworn WAAC tournament TFG to participate… At the same time, with all that "rules mess" and "imbalance", competitive 40K is really a mind boggling phenomenon to me, as everybody (myself included) accurately argue, that WH40K is and was very much ill-suited to play competetively in any of it's iterations…

To me I guess it does neither well, or even remotely passably. For narrative games, everything in the game is still built fundamentally around a competitive pickup game style of play, and, at least in my experience over many editions and in many different places, pickup style play is what the majority of the playerbase engages in. For competitive games, while its basics are built around this, the execution is simply nonfunctional.

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me I guess it does neither well, or even remotely passably. For narrative games, everything in the game is still built fundamentally around a competitive pickup game style of play, and, at least in my experience over many editions and in many different places, pickup style play is what the majority of the playerbase engages in. For competitive games, while its basics are built around this, the execution is simply nonfunctional.

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

To be fair though to GW (shock!) they did try moving away from the competitive pickup game style of play with AoS, and it was lambasted and people didn't bother to look at it until they added a hamfisted competitive pickup game style of play to it. Although to be fair I think a lot of that was because they basically gave little/no guidelines for it. I think AoS might (big might) have been better received without General's Handbook if they had had straightforward guidelines for picking forces like they do in White Dwarf for their own games (e.g. something as simple as "To ensure a good battle, decide with your opponent around how many heroes and units you both should field"), but really again I think this is a playerbase problem. The players are the ones who immediately start theorycrafting what is mathematically superior choices and going by the approach if there are no limits, then anything is game regardless of the thematic sense it makes. Again, a little talking about a scenario goes a long way to fixing this so you don't have TFG who takes a bunch of fast moving things and ignores basics just because he can or who abuses summoning just because the rules let him. That is 100% a player problem. Could GW have not allowed those rules? Yes I'm sure, but I imagine it was deliberately for a scenario where you have a BBEG who is summoning things while the heroes try to stop him, not so Bob the WAAC Gamer can summon a ton of extra guys.

Again, I do not mean to completely demonize the players but I think they bear some responsibility on things. A lot of these issues go away if you DON'T want to just set up a game with a minimum of fuss and actually try to be part of the community and not just a random dude who shows up every week at the game shop to play.

To me, AoS didnt so much try to do narrative play so much as it was simply an incomplete ruleset that precluded almost anything but people having to make everything up. It still didnt really have narrative scenarios, but prepackaged pickup style battle guidelines without any sort of army construction framework other than "bring whatever you want". It had many of the same issues and pitfalls 40k had. I havent looked at it in months so I dont know what the points system looks like and cant comment, but even for narrative pla, AoS just didnt bring anything, it was effectively a sandbox pickup game, which was the big problem as that doesn't really work.

Had they provided lots of guidance for building narrative scenarios and constructing forces the way OGRE does or many old Battletech supplements did or somr Flames of War scenarios, I think it would have been better received, but GW did none of that.

Whats worse is that even the events GW ran had these same issues. They ran tournaments at Warhammer World...for a game with army construction guidelines, and just had people bring whatever they wanted, and thus the only play events they offered (at lease AFAIK) were still competitive/pickup style affairs for an ostensibly narrative ruleset, but with no functionality for either playstyle really.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Which part of the rules are we talking about though? IMO the rules work quite well for more "controlled environment" style of games. I just had a 1500 point Loyalist vs. Chaos game where I culled the hypercompetetive stuff from my army and we agreed to no superheavies and no flyers, and honestly the game was very smooth.

Someone said earlier I think that the majority of problems result from the almost anarchic freedom of army selection and the codexes themselves, and I agree. If you play a game with good terrain, and pit a platoon or two of guardsmen against a couple modest marine squads, good times are easy to be had.

It's been suggested before that a good way to reign things in a bit is to have certain requirements based on the scale of the game. I think that would be enough to achieve some normalcy of expectations for pick up games.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me, AoS didnt so much try to do narrative play so much as it was simply an incomplete ruleset that precluded almost anything but people having to make everything up. It still didnt really have narrative scenarios, but prepackaged pickup style battle guidelines without any sort of army construction framework other than "bring whatever you want". It had many of the same issues and pitfalls 40k had. I havent looked at it in months so I dont know what the points system looks like and cant comment, but even for narrative pla, AoS just didnt bring anything, it was effectively a sandbox pickup game, which was the big problem as that doesn't really work.

Had they provided lots of guidance for building narrative scenarios and constructing forces the way OGRE does or many old Battletech supplements did or somr Flames of War scenarios, I think it would have been better received, but GW did none of that.

Whats worse is that even the events GW ran had these same issues. They ran tournaments at Warhammer World...for a game with army construction guidelines, and just had people bring whatever they wanted, and thus the only play events they offered (at lease AFAIK) were still competitive/pickup style affairs for an ostensibly narrative ruleset, but with no functionality for either playstyle really.

What is also funny on that note is that for a narrative game, GW doesn't really do anything to help. I skimmed through that "Crusade of Fire" book they had in 6th, hoping to see like actual guidelines for running a campaign, maybe even an example campaign that was pretty much "plug and play". Instead it was basically go buy three of our Planetary Empires set, oh and it's a Game Mastered campaign but we're not going to really go into anything about that, and here's our guys who played in it by the way other than one player they're all Marines or Chaos Marines because who needs variety, and here's some weird scenarios but we aren't really going in depth but look at the pretty pictures, oh and by the way at least one mission is completely custom and specifically designed for this cool piece of terrain that we have and nobody else has unless you try and build it too, and then some silly extra rules for Gladiatorial combat and dogfights (which weren't bad, I admit). It was pretty much useless, the kind of crap you'd expect to see spread out over a few White Dwarf issues not sold as a book with a hefty price tag but gave barely any sort of tips or framework for running your own campaign.

Sorry this is going off tangent again but what I'd love to see is an actual, thought out campaign for 40k. The sort of thing that can easily be done without a lot of fuss or paperwork, just get some people together and string it out.

Back on size though, I really think the ultimate solution is they need to split the game into different sizes again, it's the only way to not have everything bogged down or turn the game into just vehicle and superheavies battling while troops do nothing.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Which part of the rules are we talking about though? IMO the rules work quite well for more "controlled environment" style of games. I just had a 1500 point Loyalist vs. Chaos game where I culled the hypercompetetive stuff from my army and we agreed to no superheavies and no flyers, and honestly the game was very smooth.

That seems to follow pretty closely with what I was saying, you're rewriting your acceptable army construction rules to exlude large numbers of units and unit types (and their associated mechanics) and playing armies that have similar characteristics, and playing at the lower end of what most would consider a "typical" points level that allows for fewer crazy toys.

That said I should also ask, were you guys also doing the full rulebook rules for things like mission type, mysterious objectives and terrain, unmodified maelstrom, any changes to things like detachmentd or Invisibility, etc? These are things I see people organically ignore or change all the time.

Someone said earlier I think that the majority of problems result from the almost anarchic freedom of army selection and the codexes themselves, and I agree. If you play a game with good terrain, and pit a platoon or two of guardsmen against a couple modest marine squads, good times are easy to be had.

Sure, and I wouldnt totally disagree, but thats also about as basic and stripped down as you can get, cutting out huge amounts of game content.

It's been suggested before that a good way to reign things in a bit is to have certain requirements based on the scale of the game. I think that would be enough to achieve some normalcy of expectations for pick up games.

In some cases that would help very much, but it's also not just an issue of things like Flyers and Superheavies, but stuff like TWC's or Necron Wraiths that can take nearly a thousand lasgun shots to put down and armies just arent capable of mustering that kind of firepower. Formation freebies and spam functionality through multiple detachments along with unintended allies synergy also are huge factors.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

WayneTheGame wrote:

What is also funny on that note is that for a narrative game, GW doesn't really do anything to help. I skimmed through that "Crusade of Fire" book they had in 6th, hoping to see like actual guidelines for running a campaign, maybe even an example campaign that was pretty much "plug and play". Instead it was basically go buy three of our Planetary Empires set, oh and it's a Game Mastered campaign but we're not going to really go into anything about that, and here's our guys who played in it by the way other than one player they're all Marines or Chaos Marines because who needs variety, and here's some weird scenarios but we aren't really going in depth but look at the pretty pictures, oh and by the way at least one mission is completely custom and specifically designed for this cool piece of terrain that we have and nobody else has unless you try and build it too, and then some silly extra rules for Gladiatorial combat and dogfights (which weren't bad, I admit). It was pretty much useless, the kind of crap you'd expect to see spread out over a few White Dwarf issues not sold as a book with a hefty price tag but gave barely any sort of tips or framework for running your own campaign.

Sorry this is going off tangent again but what I'd love to see is an actual, thought out campaign for 40k. The sort of thing that can easily be done without a lot of fuss or paperwork, just get some people together and string it out.

Back on size though, I really think the ultimate solution is they need to split the game into different sizes again, it's the only way to not have everything bogged down or turn the game into just vehicle and superheavies battling while troops do nothing.

Aye, the Crusade of Fire is an excellent point about how truly garbage 40k is for narrative play, the stuff GW puts out is minimal and mostly pointless.


Also yes, splitting the game into multiple systems is desperately needed.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me, AoS didnt so much try to do narrative play so much as it was simply an incomplete ruleset that precluded almost anything but people having to make everything up. It still didnt really have narrative scenarios, but prepackaged pickup style battle guidelines without any sort of army construction framework other than "bring whatever you want". It had many of the same issues and pitfalls 40k had. I havent looked at it in months so I dont know what the points system looks like and cant comment, but even for narrative pla, AoS just didnt bring anything, it was effectively a sandbox pickup game, which was the big problem as that doesn't really work.
Had they provided lots of guidance for building narrative scenarios and constructing forces the way OGRE does or many old Battletech supplements did or some Flames of War scenarios,

I'm sorry but this just smacks of not actually having played AoS or read any of the books that had rules in them.

There absolutely was stuff for narrative play. It just wasn't "The attacker brings X, Y, and Z units while the defender brings A, B, C units".

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me, AoS didnt so much try to do narrative play so much as it was simply an incomplete ruleset that precluded almost anything but people having to make everything up. It still didnt really have narrative scenarios, but prepackaged pickup style battle guidelines without any sort of army construction framework other than "bring whatever you want". It had many of the same issues and pitfalls 40k had. I havent looked at it in months so I dont know what the points system looks like and cant comment, but even for narrative pla, AoS just didnt bring anything, it was effectively a sandbox pickup game, which was the big problem as that doesn't really work.
Had they provided lots of guidance for building narrative scenarios and constructing forces the way OGRE does or many old Battletech supplements did or some Flames of War scenarios,

I'm sorry but this just smacks of not actually having played AoS or read any of the books that had rules in them.

There absolutely was stuff for narrative play. It just wasn't "The attacker brings X, Y, and Z units while the defender brings A, B, C units".

do you have an example? I'm at work and dont have access to anything to reread right now, but from memory (at least the stuff I read) was pretty much "here's a new mission, have anything from factions A and B fight it out, but it also works with anyone else", which essentially was just more pickup gaming material.

I have to agree with Vaktathi (this might warrant a side discussion?). A lot of the "narrative" missions were still just basically scenarios, with a footnote saying that X and Y fought, but even the terms were generic so that it wasn't really faction specific, like there was a Flesh-Eater Court scenario that was based around a narrative of them coming out of the woodwork to attack Stormcasts, and IIRC the attacker was called "Hunter" and the defender was "Prey" or something like that, it was a cool themed scenario, I will admit, but nothing about it was narrative, it was just another mission you could play if you wanted to do something different. Problem is that people generally don't want to do something different, because it might not be "balanced".

It's basically the AoS version of the custom scenarios that you find in Codex supplements; generic stuff that could be good if people actually used them for narrative scenarios.

I'm not saying they are bad, they are cool little extras that you can use, but people don't want to bother with a "special" mission from a specific book, they want to use what's in the main book and that's it.

 Vaktathi wrote:
That seems to follow pretty closely with what I was saying, you're rewriting your acceptable army construction rules to exlude large numbers of units and unit types (and their associated mechanics) and playing armies that have similar characteristics, and playing at the lower end of what most would consider a "typical" points level that allows for fewer crazy toys.

That said I should also ask, were you guys also doing the full rulebook rules for things like mission type, mysterious objectives and terrain, unmodified maelstrom, any changes to things like detachmentd or Invisibility, etc? These are things I see people organically ignore or change all the time.

Well, I was really just wondering where you (personally) draw the line. In the case of my recent game "large numbers of units and unit types" were not culled, just flyers and superheavies, so maybe 5% of total units? That's not a big change. Beyond that I decided to pass on my usual Drop Pods and Grav-Cannons. (though that wasn't part of our negotiation, just me doing something more traditional. For SM, Drop Pods change the game more than Flyers)

Our first mission roll was "the Relic", and we re-rolled it. But otherwise full rulebook.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Someone said earlier I think that the majority of problems result from the almost anarchic freedom of army selection and the codexes themselves, and I agree. If you play a game with good terrain, and pit a platoon or two of guardsmen against a couple modest marine squads, good times are easy to be had.

Sure, and I wouldnt totally disagree, but thats also about as basic and stripped down as you can get, cutting out huge amounts of game content.

It's just an example of compatability of the army baselines. Obviously not the limit, as the previous anecdote (Chaos vs. Loyalists) used ~95% of units. This follows the common statement of "30K doesn't have the same problems with balance." Right? 30K uses the same core rules.

The problem (like 2nd edition) is the creep of special rules/combinations of units available, slowly eroding the usefulness of the basic stuff for which the system was written for. Allies aren't inherently a problem, it's Allies in combination with the special rules/abilities for a number of units all combined together.

 Vaktathi wrote:

It's been suggested before that a good way to reign things in a bit is to have certain requirements based on the scale of the game. I think that would be enough to achieve some normalcy of expectations for pick up games.

In some cases that would help very much, but it's also not just an issue of things like Flyers and Superheavies, but stuff like TWC's or Necron Wraiths that can take nearly a thousand lasgun shots to put down and armies just arent capable of mustering that kind of firepower. Formation freebies and spam functionality through multiple detachments along with unintended allies synergy also are huge factors.

It all depends on how you write up those requirements. Using percentages for Troops/HQ/Heavy Support is handy since it scales with the point size of the game. Limiting Formations to higher point games does something else. Giving units a "Tier Level" or "Tech Level" (like RTS games) has yet another effect on the game. It's not an unsolvable problem.

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me I guess it does neither well, or even remotely passably.

I think it's more a case of a clunky interface than anything else. A more straight forward, intuitive and elegant system would be preferable. If anything, I'd put this higher up my wish list than balance. Because I can deal with the latter

 Vaktathi wrote:
. For narrative games, everything in the game is still built fundamentally around a competitive pickup game style of play, and, at least in my experience over many editions and in many different places,

I disagree.

Is that just because the player base has conditioned itself to only one style of play, regardless of its suitability. Since it's all they know, it's all they expect, and it's the only way they know how to play. narrative gaming takes effort, and gamers are lazy. Gamers are very conservative and terrified of change/new things as a general rule, and will rarely step out of their bubble of accepted thinking and the 'right way to play'. I don't think the game is based around either pick up and play or competitive styles at all American gsming culture is, and the phrase 'square peg. Round hole' comes to mind with regard to playing 40k. Games are like tools. They can be used a variety of ways. Let's not mistake the mechanics of a game, and the approach of various members of the player base to how they insist on thr use of said game. They can be mutually exclusive.

 Vaktathi wrote:
For competitive games, while its basics are built around this, the execution is simply nonfunctional.

Projection. 40k isn't a competitive game, and hasn't been for a longer time. If it ever was. Like I said, fundamentally, gsmes are just a series of resolution mechanisms tied up together.

Back In the day, when gw ran tourneys, they ran, and suggested various other approaches at the same time, so even when competitive 40k was a thing, it was one thing amongst many. Gamers insisting on trying to make it into a competitive game now doesn't necessarily make it true. It's dressing up a donkey as a race horse.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Because Why not?

Rules are just abstract game mechanics. They don't comprise an 'identity'. They're just a series of resolution mechanics. Like actors for a role in a script.

Because it's useful to start somewhere, use some set of rules as a baseline to work with, take what you want and ignore the rest. For what it's worth, we do this with flames of war and infinity in our group. Use the 'main gsme' as a base line, and chop and choose from there. One of the advantages of 40k, still, is that there is a kind of universality to it, in that most of us have some experience of it. It's like Windows. It's not perfect, but you can use it and get what you need out of it with a bit of fuss.

 Insectum7 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
That seems to follow pretty closely with what I was saying, you're rewriting your acceptable army construction rules to exlude large numbers of units and unit types (and their associated mechanics) and playing armies that have similar characteristics, and playing at the lower end of what most would consider a "typical" points level that allows for fewer crazy toys.

That said I should also ask, were you guys also doing the full rulebook rules for things like mission type, mysterious objectives and terrain, unmodified maelstrom, any changes to things like detachmentd or Invisibility, etc? These are things I see people organically ignore or change all the time.

Well, I was really just wondering where you (personally) draw the line. In the case of my recent game "large numbers of units and unit types" were not culled, just flyers and superheavies, so maybe 5% of total units? That's not a big change. Beyond that I decided to pass on my usual Drop Pods and Grav-Cannons. (though that wasn't part of our negotiation, just me doing something more traditional. For SM, Drop Pods change the game more than Flyers)

To me I guess, Grav and Drop Pods are amongst the most powerful tools in the SM arsenal (I agree they have more impact than flyers) and by leaving those out you dramatically level the playing field. So if you're leaving out two of the most powerful tools available, along with associated units that utilize them heavily, along with flyers and SH units, you're cutting a lot out.

Our first mission roll was "the Relic", and we re-rolled it. But otherwise full rulebook.

mmk, was just curious.

It's just an example of compatability of the army baselines. Obviously not the limit, as the previous anecdote (Chaos vs. Loyalists) used ~95% of units. This follows the common statement of "30K doesn't have the same problems with balance." Right? 30K uses the same core rules.

I think 30k is *better* but does have its issues as well. That said having additional limits on LoW units and mostly similar armies helps a lot

The problem (like 2nd edition) is the creep of special rules/combinations of units available, slowly eroding the usefulness of the basic stuff for which the system was written for.

Aye, it is for sure a huge issue.

It all depends on how you write up those requirements. Using percentages for Troops/HQ/Heavy Support is handy since it scales with the point size of the game. Limiting Formations to higher point games does something else. Giving units a "Tier Level" or "Tech Level" (like RTS games) has yet another effect on the game. It's not an unsolvable problem.

in some ways sure, but that also adds additional layers of complexity, and there are just certain things that will probably never balance right in their current incarnation (e.g. Necron Wraiths)

Deadnight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me I guess it does neither well, or even remotely passably.

I think it's more a case of a clunky interface than anything else. A more straight forward, intuitive and elegant system would be preferable. If anything, I'd put this higher up my wish list than balance. Because I can deal with the latter

Balance usually accompanies such systems much better as an inherent part of that, but I'd won't disagree that clunky rules form a gigantic part of the problem.

 Vaktathi wrote:
. For narrative games, everything in the game is still built fundamentally around a competitive pickup game style of play, and, at least in my experience over many editions and in many different places,

I disagree.

Is that just because the player base has conditioned itself to only one style of play, regardless of its suitability. Since it's all they know, it's all they expect, and it's the only way they know how to play. narrative gaming takes effort, and gamers are lazy. Gamers are very conservative and terrified of change/new things as a general rule, and will rarely step out of their bubble of accepted thinking and the 'right way to play'.

I don't think that's quite fair. There are a huge number of mini's games out in the market with all sorts of styles, and most of the people that play those games have played 40k at one point or another, the players are willing to try new experiences. I think the big issue with 40k is that the rules really don't offer anything for that style of play, and the few attempts that have been made have quite simply been lazily phoned-in garbage (e.g. the old 5E Battle Missions book, Crusade of Fire campaign book, all the 7E campaign books really have just offered more pickup options and nothing exclusively tied to a specific setting or story). When the rules don't really support something and the few releases have all been duds, it's no surprise that people don't expect any such thing from 40k.

I don't think the game is based around either pick up and play or competitive styles at all American gsming culture is, and the phrase 'square peg. Round hole' comes to mind with regard to playing 40k. Games are like tools. They can be used a variety of ways. Let's not mistake the mechanics of a game, and the approach of various members of the player base to how they insist on thr use of said game. They can be mutually exclusive.

I may be missing your point, but when I said the game is built fundamentally around a competitive pickup style of play, I'm talking about super basic stuff like misions, army construction, etc. Players have very free form army lists built around some sort of common standard (points), use standardized missions from rulebooks that are sport-like in nature most of the time (e.g. take the enemy home objective, keep control of your own, GOOOOAAAALLLL!) or are almost entirely random and arbitrary (Maelstrom), and have general guidelines but no hard standards for terrain. This is how the rulebook spells out how to play. This is a very pickup game oriented approach. It's not giving you detailed scenarios (e.g. time and place with detailed force breakdowns) or linked campaign battles with dynamic cause and effect results on subsequent games or really anything more than very basic sport-like mission objectives and model deployment zones (again, in a generally very sportfield like manner).

There is no game supplement material that really is built around thought out, narrative play. It's all modifications of basic rulebook stuff, stuff that's built around easy pickup games. Even the ostensibly "narrative" AoS stuff was really just variations on existing pickup missions, same thing with the "Battle Missions" supplement that came out in 5th.

Again, one can see my OGRE reference above for a game that really builds around scenario/narrative play. Or something like old school Battletech that would dictate specific maps that had detailed and pre-arranged terrain along with detailed starting forces and gave players backgroun adherent resources (such as mercenary outfits receiving pay and buying new machines off open markets with their own systems and rules) to recruit new units and replace losses through linked mission campaigns. 40k does none of these things. Every example of narrative play from GW is basically "two players bring whatever they happen to have on hand and a standard pickup mission or some variant thereof" that's then spruced up with comments and some story bits, but is fundamentally still basically pickup play.

The last time 40k could really have been said to be built on a narrative platform is RT, where the game recommended a 3rd player GM to design scenarios and make terrain for games. That was well over 20 years ago now however.

Projection. 40k isn't a competitive game, and hasn't been for a longer time.

I agree, it's not a competitive game, but the basic mechanics of play are built around pickup style competitive play. That doesn't mean it works as a competitive game, it doesn't, but it's certainly not a ruleset that offers much to narrative play either.

If it ever was. Like I said, fundamentally, gsmes are just a series of resolution mechanisms tied up together.

Back In the day, when gw ran tourneys, they ran, and suggested various other approaches at the same time, so even when competitive 40k was a thing, it was one thing amongst many. Gamers insisting on trying to make it into a competitive game now doesn't necessarily make it true. It's dressing up a donkey as a race horse.

What sort of other events did they run that weren't ultimately pickup play or something silly? I remember stuff like a Chaos Spawn gladiator pit thing, but that was basically just everyone paying $10 to split a box of Chaos Spawn and built and painted them and threw them all on a board and had them fight, and that's about as "pickup" as it gets. I don't recall any sort of narrative or campaign play offered at a GW tournament. "Narrative" at events largely just means that you don't have unit restrictions but may have comp restrictions and some weird mission rules and is otherwise played the same way the "competitive" matches are. I just don't recall any real sort of "narrative" play offered by GW ever that wasn't just slightly less competitive pickup play of some sort.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Because Why not?

Rules are just abstract game mechanics. They don't comprise an 'identity'. They're just a series of resolution mechanics. Like actors for a role in a script.

Because it's useful to start somewhere, use some set of rules as a baseline to work with, take what you want and ignore the rest. For what it's worth, we do this with flames of war and infinity in our group. Use the 'main gsme' as a base line, and chop and choose from there. One of the advantages of 40k, still, is that there is a kind of universality to it, in that most of us have some experience of it. It's like Windows. It's not perfect, but you can use it and get what you need out of it with a bit of fuss.

To me 40k is a whole lot more like Linux. You can do almost anything with it, but out of the box it won't do much of anything well, the system will require a very large amount of setup and modification to do what you want it to do, everyone using it has to be an expert or it fails miserably because of the vast array of configuration involved and a bewildering array of modules that few but the most invested can keep track of, and lots of people try to hamfist into doing things it's can kinda make a pass at doing, but isn't an ideal system for, just because, and ultimately is best suited to a narrow range of uses and run by both experienced and closely like minded people

 Vaktathi wrote:


Again, one can see my OGRE reference above for a game that really builds around scenario/narrative play. Or something like old school Battletech that would dictate specific maps that had detailed and pre-arranged terrain along with detailed starting forces and gave players backgroun adherent resources (such as mercenary outfits receiving pay and buying new machines off open markets with their own systems and rules) to recruit new units and replace losses through linked mission campaigns. 40k does none of these things. Every example of narrative play from GW is basically "two players bring whatever they happen to have on hand and a standard pickup mission or some variant thereof" that's then spruced up with comments and some story bits, but is fundamentally still basically pickup play.

The last time 40k could really have been said to be built on a narrative platform is RT, where the game recommended a 3rd player GM to design scenarios and make terrain for games. That was well over 20 years ago now however.

Modern Battletech offers a decent points system that can be used for the most cut-throat of play. It also offers linked campaign scenario books and campaign systems for the narrative player. It also scales up from small battle, to large battle, to planetary conquest, to galactic conquest battles all supported by decent rule-sets. There's also a main rulebook - Tactical Operations - that adds hundreds of pages of optional fluff rules for the narrative gamer. Lets not forget you can plug the Battletech RPG into standard games and campaigns for extra narrative goodness.

Modern Battletech publisher - Catalyst Game Labs - employs about three people directly yet they can manage to scale their games properly, have a decent system for pick-up or tournament games and have reams of stuff for the narrative gamer. Why can GW with a hundred plus people in the 'design studio' not manage the same basic standard? GW play lip service to things like narrative while never actually delivering products that promote narrative play to any meaningful extent. A battle with slightly changed deployment or objective rules seems to be the height of their imagination when it comes to narrative.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
To me I guess it does neither well, or even remotely passably.

I think it's more a case of a clunky interface than anything else. A more straight forward, intuitive and elegant system would be preferable. If anything, I'd put this higher up my wish list than balance. Because I can deal with the latter

Balance usually accompanies such systems much better as an inherent part of that, but I'd won't disagree that clunky rules form a gigantic part of the problem.

I don't disagree either, but even intuitive, the more straight forward systems I play tend to be built with balance in mind, however, many still have balance issues. It's just the nature of the medium, unfortunately. My point was that I'm happy to deal with imbalance (the negotiation phase - I play in one of those 'likeminded groups'), but having more elegant and intuitive game systems for 40k would go a long, long way to make me look at it again as a proper game rather than what it is now (various modelling projects thst when complete, sit in a foam tray). If the system itself is enjoyable, in my mind, then I'll happily jig the rest.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I don't think that's quite fair. There are a huge number of mini's games out in the market with all sorts of styles, and most of the people that play those games have played 40k at one point or another, the players are willing to try new experiences. I think the big issue with 40k is that the rules really don't offer anything for that style of play, and the few attempts that have been made have quite simply been lazily phoned-in garbage (e.g. the old 5E Battle Missions book, Crusade of Fire campaign book, all the 7E campaign books really have just offered more pickup options and nothing exclusively tied to a specific setting or story). When the rules don't really support something and the few releases have all been duds, it's no surprise that people don't expect any such thing from 40k.

New gsmes doesn't necessarily equal new experiences. People can play dozens of wargames, and yet still play every single one of them in the same way, with the same attitude. Different language, same conversation.

Frostgrave and aos are about the only ones that started a conversation about playing games in a non pick up and play manner. Although mechanically, I had no time for aos, I did enjoy how, for seemingly the first time, it opened up a lot of people to the idea/conversation of playing games outside of the '1500pts? Deploy army. Roll for initiative and go!' blind match up kind of games bubble that people seemed to feel were 'how' you played.

To be honest, I don't think the rules can really support the narrative type of gaming and it's a mistake to zero in on them as the source for 'narrative'.. It's more of an attitude thing than a mechanic thing, if you ask me. It's far more nebulous.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I may be missing your point, but when I said the game is built fundamentally around a competitive pickup style of play, I'm talking about super basic stuff like misions, army construction, etc. Players have very free form army lists built around some sort of common standard (points), use standardized missions from rulebooks that are sport-like in nature most of the time (e.g. take the enemy home objective, keep control of your own, GOOOOAAAALLLL!) or are almost entirely random and arbitrary (Maelstrom), and have general guidelines but no hard standards for terrain. This is how the rulebook spells out how to play. This is a very pickup game oriented approach. It's not giving you detailed scenarios (e.g. time and place with detailed force breakdowns) or linked campaign battles with dynamic cause and effect results on subsequent games or really anything more than very basic sport-like mission objectives and model deployment zones (again, in a generally very sportfield like manner).

What you describe above as 'detailed scenarios' are re-enactments. Please, let's not make the mistake of equating narrative games with reenactments. They're not the same thing. Reenactments can be narrative gsmes, but not all narrative gaming is reenactments.

What you describe further above are structural tools - how to build an army. Standardised missions/structure are there to facilitate communication and playability- as you say, it's a common ground/language. I mean, you'll probably use those exact things you equate to 'pick up gsmes' in narrative games, because you Still need structure and game mechanics to make things happen. What those things dont tell you how to play. It's not necessarily pick up and play. Pick up and play means i can take whatever I want out of the box, plug it in and play it immediately against whatever you pulled out of the box, with no problems.

I'd actually argue Where you play (ie in stores etc) often has more of an impact on defining gaming culture than the rules of the gsme - in effect it defined how people approach their games in terms of time constraints etc- you get tables for a short amount of time. You don't necessarily have time to chat or 'negotiate'. You need to sort out your mission quick. You need to set up and just go. This attitude then imposes itself and colours 'how' you perceive 'how' your games are played. Whatever game you play will be coloured in in exactly the same way by the exact same influences, regardless of the character of th game itself. Play the same game under different circumstances and constraints (eg, at home with a mate, over a weekend with a few beers) and the same core game becomes something completely different, even when defined by the same 'rules'.

Gw also make frequent references to take what you want, chop/change/ignore etc, as well as make stuff up yourselves. What I'm trying to say is those structural tools you describe above as for 'pick up and play' are fundamentally the same structural tools you'd use for narrative play. Game mechanics are just for resolution. Nothing more. Everything else is attitude.

 Vaktathi wrote:

There is no game supplement material that really is built around thought out, narrative play. It's all modifications of basic rulebook stuff, stuff that's built around easy pickup games. Even the ostensibly "narrative" AoS stuff was really just variations on existing pickup missions, same thing with the "Battle Missions" supplement that came out in 5th.

Because the stuff that makes narrative gaming narrative is not necessarily well done when codified by 'rules'- it's far more nebulous, and if you ask me, is best left outside of the structure defined by the rules (which I simply see as resolution mechanics, nothing more). Narrative gaming requires a different perspective towards gaming, rather than different rules. Again, like I said earlier, it's 'how' you approach your gaming. Although aos isn't a 'new' type of game, it did, for the first time, expose a lot of people to this attitude, and more than one liked what they saw.

Red adding no game supplement material - I recently bought a load of lotr stuff for historical games, and reading through the rulebook (surprisingly intuitive and elegant system, and seriously under appreciated in my mind!) they gave loads of ideas for narrative play with optional missions, coastal raids, sieges, various mission ideas (looting, assassination, raiding, burning, etc) as well as ideas for linking in successive scenarios. Codifying it would defeat the purpose - these things need to be nebulous to allow choice and options the second you codify it, people stop being inventive and creative and will not budge from the official 'proper' way of playing

 Vaktathi wrote:

Again, one can see my OGRE reference above for a game that really builds around scenario/narrative play. Or something like old school Battletech that would dictate specific maps that had detailed and pre-arranged terrain along with detailed starting forces and gave players backgroun adherent resources (such as mercenary outfits receiving pay and buying new machines off open markets with their own systems and rules) to recruit new units and replace losses through linked mission campaigns. 40k does none of these things. Every example of narrative play from GW is basically "two players bring whatever they happen to have on hand and a standard pickup mission or some variant thereof" that's then spruced up with comments and some story bits, but is fundamentally still basically pickup play.

Like I said, the Lord of the rings books were a treasure trove of ideas. Again, none of the things described here are necessary 'narrative' more so than 'reenactment'. 40k is open ended. It's up to you.

 Vaktathi wrote:

The last time 40k could really have been said to be built on a narrative platform is RT, where the game recommended a 3rd player GM to design scenarios and make terrain for games. That was well over 20 years ago now however.

Gw won't send inquisitors If you choose to have a gm these days either...

 Vaktathi wrote:

I agree, it's not a competitive game, but the basic mechanics of play are built around pickup style competitive play. That doesn't mean it works as a competitive game, it doesn't, but it's certainly not a ruleset that offers much to narrative play either.

Basic mechanics are basic mechanics, nothing more. They can be used any way you want. See above. Store/club culture has far more of an effect in defining 'how' games are played than the resolution mechanics.

And again. I will raise the point that so much of what makes narrative games comes outside the scope of the rules.

 Vaktathi wrote:

[What sort of other events did they run that weren't ultimately pickup play or something silly? I remember stuff like a Chaos Spawn gladiator pit thing, but that was basically just everyone paying $10 to split a box of Chaos Spawn and built and painted them and threw them all on a board and had them fight, and that's about as "pickup" as it gets. I don't recall any sort of narrative or campaign play offered at a GW tournament. "Narrative" at events largely just means that you don't have unit restrictions but may have comp restrictions and some weird mission rules and is otherwise played the same way the "competitive" matches are. I just don't recall any real sort of "narrative" play offered by GW ever that wasn't just slightly less competitive pickup play of some sort.

You were at a tournament and expecting a not-tournament?

Anyway, I wasn't necessarily taking about events - I was talking about approaches to gsming. Narrative gaming isn't necessarily compatible with tournament gaming. It's more time consuming, free form etc. And gw have always encouraged doing your own thing. there are plenty examples throughout white dwarf etc of different ways of approaching your games. It's not all pick up. Pick up gsmes are just gaming 101.

Any ways, let's not make the other mistake of assuming that pick up gsmes and narrative games are somehow resolved differently. You'll put stuff on the board, aim for an objective, try and kill stuff etc - just like in what you call a 'pick up game'. It's the attitude and perception behind it that's different.

 Vaktathi wrote:

To me 40k is a whole lot more like Linux. You can do almost anything with it, but out of the box it won't do much of anything well, the system will require a very large amount of setup and modification to do what you want it to do, everyone using it has to be an expert or it fails miserably because of the vast array of configuration involved and a bewildering array of modules that few but the most invested can keep track of, and lots of people try to hamfist into doing things it's can kinda make a pass at doing, but isn't an ideal system for, just because, and ultimately is best suited to a narrow range of uses and run by both experienced and closely like minded people

Then aim to become an expert. The more you do, the more you learn from your experiences, the better you'll be. Games aren't just fun when they're 'solved'. Gaming can be a hell of a lot of fun when you are tinkering, Experimenting and exploring, and trying out weird and wacky stuff too. It doesn't necessarily even need experience, just a bit of will, and effort, and a desire to be creative. As to like minded people - this is a niche hobby - surely it makes sense to build a community of people you like spending time with anyway? It's not necessarily a barrier.

Deadnight wrote:
Because it's useful to start somewhere, use some set of rules as a baseline to work with, take what you want and ignore the rest. For what it's worth, we do this with flames of war and infinity in our group. Use the 'main gsme' as a base line, and chop and choose from there. One of the advantages of 40k, still, is that there is a kind of universality to it, in that most of us have some experience of it. It's like Windows. It's not perfect, but you can use it and get what you need out of it with a bit of fuss.

Don't even remember when I have played ANY game from ANY company straight off the box. Maybe WM tournament around when mk2 game? At home games every single game(yes even WM) we have changed games.

Quality of game is subjective. Nobody but me can make game that I'm 100% happy. Of course if I make game I'm 100% happy that means opponents won't be 100% happy with it so we compromise.

Since companies need to appeal to larger group than I need they have to make more compromises than I have to do. Therefore odds of any company making game that I would be happy enough straight off the box that we can't customize even more to our taste is...Well nothing is zero%(except finding non-dependant existance in anything) in probabilities won't say impossible but extremely unlikely. Chess is about only thing I can think of where I haven't house ruled ever anything.

 Vaktathi wrote:


Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Deadnight already answered this quite nicely, but I'll like to reiterate, as this is one of the most important aspects in narrative community building: you have to have common ground to start with. Take languages as an example - Esperanto was designed with the goal of being the most intuitive and easy to learn language, yet it is English, with all its irregularities and spelling monstrosities, that is lingua franca of the modern world. Simply because it was popular enough when globalisation kicked in (first with Pax Britannica, then continued by Pax Americana). And this is the same story with GW rules - they are around for three decades and the basics of their system hasn't been changed since 3rd ed. Of course there are far better rulesets out there, but if your goal is to play narrative games in 40K universe using 40K miniatures, it is much easier to build a group based on people familiar with 40K rules and then introduce incremental changes to suit your needs, than to homebrew something ideal from the ground up and then try to convince people to devote their time and effort to learn and play with rules not broadly applicable. This is really why Horus Heresy uses the same mechanics as 40K - Forgeworld could have easily went "full overhaul" on everything....

Deadnight wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

I don't think that's quite fair. There are a huge number of mini's games out in the market with all sorts of styles, and most of the people that play those games have played 40k at one point or another, the players are willing to try new experiences. I think the big issue with 40k is that the rules really don't offer anything for that style of play, and the few attempts that have been made have quite simply been lazily phoned-in garbage (e.g. the old 5E Battle Missions book, Crusade of Fire campaign book, all the 7E campaign books really have just offered more pickup options and nothing exclusively tied to a specific setting or story). When the rules don't really support something and the few releases have all been duds, it's no surprise that people don't expect any such thing from 40k.

New gsmes doesn't necessarily equal new experiences. People can play dozens of wargames, and yet still play every single one of them in the same way, with the same attitude. Different language, same conversation.

I guess, but this is not my experience by and large.

Frostgrave and aos are about the only ones that started a conversation about playing games in a non pick up and play manner. Although mechanically, I had no time for aos, I did enjoy how, for seemingly the first time, it opened up a lot of people to the idea/conversation of playing games outside of the '1500pts? Deploy army. Roll for initiative and go!' blind match up kind of games bubble that people seemed to feel were 'how' you played.

In my experience it just ended up being dead on arrival, for the reasons I listed in previous posts, being more an incomplete ruleset than something really pushing narrative gameplay.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I may be missing your point, but when I said the game is built fundamentally around a competitive pickup style of play, I'm talking about super basic stuff like misions, army construction, etc. Players have very free form army lists built around some sort of common standard (points), use standardized missions from rulebooks that are sport-like in nature most of the time (e.g. take the enemy home objective, keep control of your own, GOOOOAAAALLLL!) or are almost entirely random and arbitrary (Maelstrom), and have general guidelines but no hard standards for terrain. This is how the rulebook spells out how to play. This is a very pickup game oriented approach. It's not giving you detailed scenarios (e.g. time and place with detailed force breakdowns) or linked campaign battles with dynamic cause and effect results on subsequent games or really anything more than very basic sport-like mission objectives and model deployment zones (again, in a generally very sportfield like manner).

What you describe above as 'detailed scenarios' are re-enactments. Please, let's not make the mistake of equating narrative games with reenactments. They're not the same thing. Reenactments can be narrative gsmes, but not all narrative gaming is reenactments.

Then how exactly would you define "narrative" play otherwise? Tossing a bunch of stuff that you just think looks cool on a table just because doesn't really seem to fit that, which is what GW appears to be pushing.

I'd actually argue Where you play (ie in stores etc) often has more of an impact on defining gaming culture than the rules of the gsme - in effect it defined how people approach their games in terms of time constraints etc- you get tables for a short amount of time. You don't necessarily have time to chat or 'negotiate'. You need to sort out your mission quick. You need to set up and just go. This attitude then imposes itself and colours 'how' you perceive 'how' your games are played. Whatever game you play will be coloured in in exactly the same way by the exact same influences, regardless of the character of th game itself. Play the same game under different circumstances and constraints (eg, at home with a mate, over a weekend with a few beers) and the same core game becomes something completely different, even when defined by the same 'rules'.

I've played at my home and other people's homes, I've played in stores and clubs, yes there can be differences, but we're not suddenly playing a radically different game because we're playing at Kevin's house over beers instead of the Club. We might try a different mission than one we'd try at league night because we have a bit more time, but we're not suddenly deciding to radically rewrite the rules either

Because the stuff that makes narrative gaming narrative is not necessarily well done when codified by 'rules'- it's far more nebulous, and if you ask me, is best left outside of the structure defined by the rules (which I simply see as resolution mechanics, nothing more). Narrative gaming requires a different perspective towards gaming, rather than different rules. Again, like I said earlier, it's 'how' you approach your gaming. Although aos isn't a 'new' type of game, it did, for the first time, expose a lot of people to this attitude, and more than one liked what they saw.

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at in this way. I'm getting a lot about "mindset", but nothing actually detailing how that actually looks on a table.

You were at a tournament and expecting a not-tournament?

No, but you brought up GW tournaments talking about different types of play, and my point was I certainly don't remember GW actually offering any such thing. When GW puts on events, what do they do? They hold tournaments. For all the talk about not being a competitive game, their event offerings don't seem to reflect that.

Then aim to become an expert. The more you do, the more you learn from your experiences, the better you'll be. Games aren't just fun when they're 'solved'. Gaming can be a hell of a lot of fun when you are tinkering, Experimenting and exploring, and trying out weird and wacky stuff too. It doesn't necessarily even need experience, just a bit of will, and effort, and a desire to be creative. As to like minded people - this is a niche hobby - surely it makes sense to build a community of people you like spending time with anyway? It's not necessarily a barrier.

I've been playing this game through many editions and many years in many different places. I'm as much of a meganerd expert as the next guy, who's played 40k at all different levels from ultra competitive to super casual, from laid back "bring whatever you want" to strictly regimented list based armies and wacky weird game modes, this is hardly my first rodeo. This is all besides the point.

The game rules fundamentally do nothing well. The game fundamentally plays poorly and has no real vision of what it wants to be. Putting the onus on the player to fix everything is ridiculous. If I have to go out of my way to re-write the ruleset that cost $70 just for the core rulebook and over three or four thousand dollars for the games complete rules through three of four different sales channels (all the codex books, dataslates, Imperial Armour books, White Dwarf stuff, etc), I don't expect to have to build my own niche community within said niche community and rewrite the rules we paid so much for to fit that niche within a niche in order to have pleasant and functional gaming experiences, when I can pick up half a dozen other tabletop mini's games, or an older edition like 5th...and not *have* to do any of that. The option is always there if I want, but I don't want to have to sustain a microcosm within a niche community for playing a custom ruleset just because the actual game rules are awful.

Again, this is the only game or hobby I've seen where the players and consumers are blamed for problems with the rules and for not going out of their way to fix the rules they paid so much for themselves.

That may partially explain why GW's revenues have been dropping year over year for 12 years and why (adjusted for inflation) they're at they're lowest since the late 90's and 40k dethroned as the best selling tabletop miniatures game and why competition has been growing rapidly.

niall78 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Again, one can see my OGRE reference above for a game that really builds around scenario/narrative play. Or something like old school Battletech that would dictate specific maps that had detailed and pre-arranged terrain along with detailed starting forces and gave players backgroun adherent resources (such as mercenary outfits receiving pay and buying new machines off open markets with their own systems and rules) to recruit new units and replace losses through linked mission campaigns. 40k does none of these things. Every example of narrative play from GW is basically "two players bring whatever they happen to have on hand and a standard pickup mission or some variant thereof" that's then spruced up with comments and some story bits, but is fundamentally still basically pickup play.

The last time 40k could really have been said to be built on a narrative platform is RT, where the game recommended a 3rd player GM to design scenarios and make terrain for games. That was well over 20 years ago now however.

Modern Battletech offers a decent points system that can be used for the most cut-throat of play. It also offers linked campaign scenario books and campaign systems for the narrative player. It also scales up from small battle, to large battle, to planetary conquest, to galactic conquest battles all supported by decent rule-sets. There's also a main rulebook - Tactical Operations - that adds hundreds of pages of optional fluff rules for the narrative gamer. Lets not forget you can plug the Battletech RPG into standard games and campaigns for extra narrative goodness.

Modern Battletech publisher - Catalyst Game Labs - employs about three people directly yet they can manage to scale their games properly, have a decent system for pick-up or tournament games and have reams of stuff for the narrative gamer. Why can GW with a hundred plus people in the 'design studio' not manage the same basic standard? GW play lip service to things like narrative while never actually delivering products that promote narrative play to any meaningful extent. A battle with slightly changed deployment or objective rules seems to be the height of their imagination when it comes to narrative.

This is pretty much my view. Other games manage this stuff well, GW just puts out what fundamentally amounts to phoned-in minimal effort garbage, increasingly designed for sales pushes (particularly formations). Their "campaign" supplements largely are just formations.

nou wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:


Either way the game does not really function and requires extensive rewriting, deletion, and addition of rules and mechanics, and at that point, particularly for narrative play, why use GW's rules at all?

Deadnight already answered this quite nicely, but I'll like to reiterate, as this is one of the most important aspects in narrative community building: you have to have common ground to start with. Take languages as an example - Esperanto was designed with the goal of being the most intuitive and easy to learn language, yet it is English, with all its irregularities and spelling monstrosities, that is lingua franca of the modern world. Simply because it was popular enough when globalisation kicked in (first with Pax Britannica, then continued by Pax Americana). And this is the same story with GW rules - they are around for three decades and the basics of their system hasn't been changed since 3rd ed. Of course there are far better rulesets out there, but if your goal is to play narrative games in 40K universe using 40K miniatures, it is much easier to build a group based on people familiar with 40K rules and then introduce incremental changes to suit your needs, than to homebrew something ideal from the ground up and then try to convince people to devote their time and effort to learn and play with rules not broadly applicable.

Mostly the question was rhetorical, I get the practical reasons for still using the 40k ruleset, but my point was more about if the ruleset doesn't do anything well and requires a ton of investment both to acquire and then subsequently make work, there's a problem.

This is really why Horus Heresy uses the same mechanics as 40K - Forgeworld could have easily went "full overhaul" on everything....

Well, given that they're not a completely autonomous group, I'm sure management would have something to say about them offering a competing core ruleset based entirely around their most successful product line.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I guess, but this is not my experience by and large.

In my experience, people who tend to play one Wargame a certain way (say, competitive or whatever) will approach other wargames in the same way. The scale of the game is completely separate - say, you play dropzone, infinity and warmachine. I know a lot of people that will take the same mentality into whatever fame they play.

 Vaktathi wrote:

In my experience it just ended up being dead on arrival, for the reasons I listed in previous posts, being more an incomplete ruleset than something really pushing narrative gameplay.

Oh don't get me wrong - aos is a howler. Dead on arrival here too. And I personally have a lot of issues with it, despite being very sympathetic to the kind of game/game mentality to tries to push. When I talk about the conversations it started, and how it opened people you to different views, I'm mainly talking about what I've seen online etc.

 Vaktathi wrote:

Then how exactly would you define "narrative" play otherwise? Tossing a bunch of stuff that you just think looks cool on a table just because doesn't really seem to fit that, which is what GW appears to be pushing.

It's part of it.i mean, wouldn't you like to play a game where you can put a bunch of stuff you just think looks cool on the table?

But narrative gaming is more than just plonking stuff down - it's about being creative in terms of what you want to play, and how you want to play with it - having a story/hook first, having thematic units that fit/represent that story, and playing that story out, rather than just seeing it as some kind of duel of one-upsmanship to see who has the biggest nerd-wiener, with a winner/loser as the aim. which is what a lot of blind pick up gsmes boil down to. They sacrifice a lot of creativity on the altar of what some would call pragmatism, and I think it goes too far. We do this with flames of war, and after three years of playing that game, I can't tell you the points costs or a single 'proper' mission type for it. We've always just approached it our own way.

In terms of pushing it, I mean, rules can't really tell you 'how' to focus on storey first, and match thematic units against that story. You just have to have it in mind when you're doing it. I find that having an rpg-esque mentality towards evoking story, game-building and playing out story rather than focusing in singly on 'power' goes a lot way towards opening up this way of playing wargames.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I've played at my home and other people's homes, I've played in stores and clubs, yes there can be differences, but we're not suddenly playing a radically different game because we're playing at Kevin's house over beers instead of the Club. We might try a different mission than one we'd try at league night because we have a bit more time, but we're not suddenly deciding to radically rewrite the rules either

You are basically describing yourself perfectly as the type of gamer I talked about earlier.

So like I said, you approach all your games the same way. Different language, same conversation. For my part, and from what I've seen from a lot of people into narrative gsmes, I play differently both with different groups, and different games. Warmachine is my go-to pick up game. Flames of war, lotr and to an extent, infinity are my casual or home brew games.

With respect, reading what you've said suggests, you've never stepped out of the mentality of 'organised play' and seeing one-off pick up gsmes as being the 'proper'/only way to play. You 'take it home with you'.This is not a bad thing, nor is it a criticism- for my part, I only ever got into narrative gaming by accident, through introducing two crusty old historical wargamers into infinity, and they corrupted me with their homebrewing and their narrative games. narrative does fundamentally require a different perspective on 'how' to gsme, and you don't seem to have been exposed to it. Leave organised play at the store. Start being creative! Damn the rules, damn the points. Come up with a good story, match up two interesting opposing forces that would fit the universe, and play it out like it would do in the lore.


.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at in this way. I'm getting a lot about "mindset", but nothing actually detailing how that actually looks on a table.

I'm not sure what you want me to say. I mean, we'll put down the same units that you might put down. There is just a different focus on 'what' gets put down. Story trumps raw power/efficiency, and stuff is played out in a war to evoke the character of the universe (berserkers charging across looking for skulls, not hiding behind cover guarding an objective, space marine captains stepping out to duel their opposite numbers, thst sort of thing) rather than pure in game efficiency and picking either the power lists, or the power play. Beyond that, talk of underpowered units is kind of irrelevant since the competitive meta doesn't apply. we would field units appropriate to the theme, or else what would be considered interesting, and points be damned.

 Vaktathi wrote:

No, but you brought up GW tournaments talking about different types of play, and my point was I certainly don't remember GW actually offering any such thing. When GW puts on events, what do they do? They hold tournaments. For all the talk about not being a competitive game, their event offerings don't seem to reflect that.

Bit of a Reading comprehension fail then on your part. What I said was : Back In the day, when gw ran tourneys, they ran, and suggested various other approaches at the same time, so even when competitive 40k was a thing, it was one thing amongst many.

That's not about different types of tournaments. This includes anything from leagues to homebrews, and suggestions for campaigns and unique scenarios. Early white dwarf was loaded with this kind of stuff. For what it's worth, talk to mongoosematt - he often writes up reports of the game days and get together soon that gw organise for aos - not really tournaments there.

 Vaktathi wrote:

I've been playing this game through many editions and many years in many different places. I'm as much of a meganerd expert as the next guy, who's played 40k at all different levels from ultra competitive to super casual, from laid back "bring whatever you want" to strictly regimented list based armies and wacky weird game modes, this is hardly my first rodeo. This is all besides the point.

As have I. And with respect (because I genuinely enjoy your posts a lot of the time!), for all that, narrative gaming still seems somewhat alien to you. So for all that you say, different language, same conversation.

 Vaktathi wrote:

The game rules fundamentally do nothing well. The game fundamentally plays poorly and has no real vision of what it wants to be. Putting the onus on the player to fix everything is ridiculous. If I have to go out of my way to re-write the ruleset that cost $70 just for the core rulebook and over three or four thousand dollars for the games complete rules through three of four different sales channels (all the codex books, dataslates, Imperial Armour books, White Dwarf stuff, etc), I don't expect to have to build my own niche community within said niche community and rewrite the rules we paid so much for to fit that niche within a niche in order to have pleasant and functional gaming experiences, when I can pick up half a dozen other tabletop mini's games, or an older edition like 5th...and not *have* to do any of that. The option is always there if I want, but I don't want to have to sustain a microcosm within a niche community for playing a custom ruleset just because the actual game rules are awful.
Again, this is the only game or hobby I've seen where the players and consumers are blamed for problems with the rules and for not going out of their way to fix the rules they paid so much for themselves.

Firstly, no argument on 40k being a clunky, unwieldy mess of a game.

However, while I don't necessarily expect players to fix everything, players do have a part to play. You can't just blame the parent company for poor rules when players are quite happy to inflict said rules on their opponents to stroke their own nerd-weiners, whilst handing off any sense of shame or self responsibility, for example. They're both sides of the exact same coin. Fundamentally, I would argue players have an onus to make sure they are playing with like minded folks, because when different people who want different things out of the gsme collide, there can easily be bad feelings on both sides.
Furthermore, I would argue that while putting the onus on the players to fix everything is partially ridiculous, I do think it's fair to suggest to players to think about a community driven approach - everyone wants something different out of their gAmes - there is nothing wrong with individual groups tweaking the game to suit their own wants, needs and desires, whether that is 'no super heavies and fliers', a 'negotiation phase', or 'terminators and tac squads only'.

Thirdly, why are you talking about spending thousands on rules. If you don't want to, don't bother. Gw won't send inquisitors after you. Anyway, talking about custom rules sets can be as simple as 'no random charges- let's use fifth ed charge rules' - it doesn't necessarily mean a full make over. Play what's in front of you. You don't need to worry about everything else. As to building your own niche community as a problem - surely you should be doing thst anyway, as a matter of course? Play with like minded people, etc. It's called making friends. Find some folks that want the same thing as you do (there's more than you realise) and build from there.

Cheers vak - really enjoying this conversation.

This conversation has been enlightening for me, lads. Keep up the back and forth! It's given me a lot to think about, especially the bit where Deadnight said that players go to different games with the same attitude; it's what turned me off to Warmachine.

I'm a narrative player, all of my stuff is named and has a backstory that I'm excited to tell anyone who asks or will hear. That means that when I tried Warmachine, I was sorely disappointed; if you asked for a 'narrative' game where, say, there is a cortex-crippled jack that one side must rescue or something, people give you a very strange look, and even i they play it, they play to caster kill. It's wombo-combo bam-thwack "play like you've got a pair" competitive gaming, and I hated it. Quit after probably a year of playing.

Same thing with X-wing; I love the idea of a Corellian Corvette, but I haven't bought any X-wing because all I would buy is one Corellian vessel and because it's not "tournament standard" I wouldn't get any games.

40k is the only game in my local area 'wobbly' enough that when you say "Let's play a game where all the objectives are wild creatures that move 2d6+Scatter per turn" people don't look at you like you've just had a seizure.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
This conversation has been enlightening for me, lads. Keep up the back and forth! It's given me a lot to think about, especially the bit where Deadnight said that players go to different games with the same attitude; it's what turned me off to Warmachine.

I'm a narrative player, all of my stuff is named and has a backstory that I'm excited to tell anyone who asks or will hear. That means that when I tried Warmachine, I was sorely disappointed; if you asked for a 'narrative' game where, say, there is a cortex-crippled jack that one side must rescue or something, people give you a very strange look, and even i they play it, they play to caster kill. It's wombo-combo bam-thwack "play like you've got a pair" competitive gaming, and I hated it. Quit after probably a year of playing.

Same thing with X-wing; I love the idea of a Corellian Corvette, but I haven't bought any X-wing because all I would buy is one Corellian vessel and because it's not "tournament standard" I wouldn't get any games.

40k is the only game in my local area 'wobbly' enough that when you say "Let's play a game where all the objectives are wild creatures that move 2d6+Scatter per turn" people don't look at you like you've just had a seizure.

Lucky. I'm in an area where basically everything has to be played "standard". Not necessarily competitive only, but like the notion of coming up with custom scenarios or letting someone use something that isn't 100% legally allowed in their army but really fits their fluff/army is unheard of.

Which ironically is one of the reasons that I wanted to pick up Warmachine; the appeal of a tight-knit game with a focus on competitive gaming sounded like a good idea at the time.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
This conversation has been enlightening for me, lads. Keep up the back and forth! It's given me a lot to think about, especially the bit where Deadnight said that players go to different games with the same attitude; it's what turned me off to Warmachine.

I'm a narrative player, all of my stuff is named and has a backstory that I'm excited to tell anyone who asks or will hear. That means that when I tried Warmachine, I was sorely disappointed; if you asked for a 'narrative' game where, say, there is a cortex-crippled jack that one side must rescue or something, people give you a very strange look, and even i they play it, they play to caster kill. It's wombo-combo bam-thwack "play like you've got a pair" competitive gaming, and I hated it. Quit after probably a year of playing.

Same thing with X-wing; I love the idea of a Corellian Corvette, but I haven't bought any X-wing because all I would buy is one Corellian vessel and because it's not "tournament standard" I wouldn't get any games.

40k is the only game in my local area 'wobbly' enough that when you say "Let's play a game where all the objectives are wild creatures that move 2d6+Scatter per turn" people don't look at you like you've just had a seizure.

Lucky. I'm in an area where basically everything has to be played "standard". Not necessarily competitive only, but like the notion of coming up with custom scenarios or letting someone use something that isn't 100% legally allowed in their army but really fits their fluff/army is unheard of.

Which ironically is one of the reasons that I wanted to pick up Warmachine; the appeal of a tight-knit game with a focus on competitive gaming sounded like a good idea at the time.

Everywhere I've ever lived I've been lucky. Heck, here, people are appalled at the idea of tournament lists XD.

This thread has been seriously heartlifting lately, with all that narrative talk. Quite refreshing after all those competetively focused and complaint oriented weekly discussions here on dakka.

May I suggest a side thread, in which we could share some custom scenarios and narrative ideas? Judging from flags in your profiles we will (sadly) never encounter each other IRL, and discussion with Vaktathi has clearly shown, that even veteran players could benefit from some direct examples on how to approach narrative games in 40K. [I would start it myself, but I'm on mobile for a week and making new thread would be, or even writing this reply is, quite painfull for me...]

nou wrote:
This thread has been seriously heartlifting lately, with all that narrative talk. Quite refreshing after all those competetively focused and complaint oriented weekly discussions here on dakka.

May I suggest a side thread, in which we could share some custom scenarios and narrative ideas? Judging from flags in your profiles we will (sadly) never encounter each other IRL, and discussion with Vaktathi has clearly shown, that even veteran players could benefit from some direct examples on how to approach narrative games in 40K. [I would start it myself, but I'm on mobile for a week and making new thread would be, or even writing this reply is, quite painfull for me...]

Shoot me a link to the thread in a PM and I'll gladly participate!!

Done. Made a side thread for narrative talk, ideas and the like so we don't clutter this thread anymore.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/702626.page

Thanks Wayne! I'll try to post something longer over there later this weekend.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
This conversation has been enlightening for me, lads. Keep up the back and forth! It's given me a lot to think about, especially the bit where Deadnight said that players go to different games with the same attitude; it's what turned me off to Warmachine.

I'm a narrative player, all of my stuff is named and has a backstory that I'm excited to tell anyone who asks or will hear. That means that when I tried Warmachine, I was sorely disappointed; if you asked for a 'narrative' game where, say, there is a cortex-crippled jack that one side must rescue or something, people give you a very strange look, and even i they play it, they play to caster kill. It's wombo-combo bam-thwack "play like you've got a pair" competitive gaming, and I hated it. Quit after probably a year of playing.

Same thing with X-wing; I love the idea of a Corellian Corvette, but I haven't bought any X-wing because all I would buy is one Corellian vessel and because it's not "tournament standard" I wouldn't get any games.

40k is the only game in my local area 'wobbly' enough that when you say "Let's play a game where all the objectives are wild creatures that move 2d6+Scatter per turn" people don't look at you like you've just had a seizure.

This was my experience with WMH as well. Our local 40k scene in 6th basically improved drastically because all the competitive jerks with their WAAC tournament netlists finally got frustrated and shipped off, and when I decided to try out WMH and showed up to that game night, theeeere they all were. Of all the people there, only little ol' me who'd been playing for exactly a month had more than 2 minis painted, all the terrain was felt cutouts, and everyone was just talking about practically everything in a string of near incomprehensible short-form metagaming gibberish.

"Oh yeah Phaleys so op with tftz, I run her with 2 shifts of erd so I can tag the boost right off the bat." "Yeah, so what do you do about duraskew lists? Eborka with his stupid GLB always rages so high I cant scratch him even with KZQ."

At this point that game should just change its tagline to "mandolls are serious business", but I suppose their current cringeworthy catchphrase says that eloquently enough.

..."Oh yeah Phaleys so op with tftz, I run her with 2 shifts of erd so I can tag the boost right off the bat." "Yeah, so what do you do about duraskew lists? Eborka with his stupid GLB always rages so high I cant scratch him even with KZQ."...

...For the record I go to WMH tournaments now and again and that's pretty incomprehensible to me, too...(Also complaining that '[x] is OP' demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Warmachine; there are games where a netlist is all you need to win, but Warmachine is not one of them)

At this point that game should just change its tagline to "mandolls are serious business", but I suppose their current cringeworthy catchphrase says that eloquently enough.

Their marketing department finally realized how cringeworthy the catchphrase was and dropped it.

FWIW I think that Warmachine-speak wasn't meant to be actual stuff, just similar speech pattern. Because that made no sense to me either; the point seemed to be a lot of focusing on what works, which honestly though is one of the things I LIKE about Warmachine over 40k; there's a LOT more tactical depth. Basically everything you need to think about before you do it, what units synergize with which caster, what buffs you have and how to apply them this turn, what to do with units, it feels a lot more intense than 40k's "put stuff on table, roll a bucket of dice".

Honestly I liked Page 5. I thought it eloquently stated that this was a WARgame and you shouldn't expect to be coddled or "dumb down" what you bring, bring the best you have and expect your opponent to do the same and not whine something is "OP" or "cheese", which is something you commonly found in 40k (and I feel the original Page 5 in MkI was a direct shot at that mentality). What initially attracted me to Warmachine was the notion it was a game built to be competitive, with rules that fostered and encouraged "serious" gaming. I've since backtracked a bit on that stance, but at the time I was very much against 40k's diplomatic, casual, "narrative" approach to gaming and was hopeful to play a "real" wargame.

WayneTheGame wrote:
FWIW I think that Warmachine-speak wasn't meant to be actual stuff, just similar speech pattern...

Yeah, but the density of abbreviations/nicknames (four bits of jargon per sentence, by my count) was far beyond what I've ever heard anyone actually use.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

WayneTheGame wrote:
Honestly I liked Page 5. I thought it eloquently stated that this was a WARgame and you shouldn't expect to be coddled or "dumb down" what you bring, bring the best you have and expect your opponent to do the same and not whine something is "OP" or "cheese", which is something you commonly found in 40k (and I feel the original Page 5 in MkI was a direct shot at that mentality). What initially attracted me to Warmachine was the notion it was a game built to be competitive, with rules that fostered and encouraged "serious" gaming. I've since backtracked a bit on that stance, but at the time I was very much against 40k's diplomatic, casual, "narrative" approach to gaming and was hopeful to play a "real" wargame.

The problem with Page 5 is that there were people who read half of rule 2 (play aggressively) and the bit at the bottom that said 'play like you've got a pair' and skipped the rest. Page 5 was intended to say 'play well and be mature about it', but it got read as 'be a tough-guy jerk about it' so often the devs dropped it.