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So what do you think of the 40k background as a whole. This includes everything background related as it stands, the writing style, imagery, scene, feel.

For me it was mark gibbons art, 2ed lore when it was dark gritty and somewhat clear cut with plenty of room for imagination

I like what I'm seeing, for the most part. I'm not so beholden to the ossified statutes of crusty old lore that I can't enjoy the extension of that lore into answering some of the age-old questions with the consequence of creating two new questions in its place.

I do wish there was a bit more of the tongue-in-cheek nature of older fluff, where humor came hand-in-hand with grimdarkness... but we still see hints of that (Hi, Orkimedes!) and I hope they continue adding in those little bits.

The lore itself has changed, but what's changed even more is the presentation of it. My favourite lore books are 3/4th ed because of how crazy Emperor worshipping the thing was and how so much fluff was written from in universe characters perspective. Like the Inquisitor trying to make a report on Space marines daily activities, or the Administratum drone compiling known information on orks breeding (being fungus).

Also there was a sense of hope, like the salamaders Chaplains quote from 3d ed: "we know as they know that we will be driven into darkness. We know as they cannot that there will be a new dawn for man when we rise anew and bring light into the darkness".
The Star child, the Senseis and the one or two Inquisitors with access to the black library all gave a certain beacon of hope to the grim setting. Then 5th/6th ed made everything seem far more hopeless with the golden throne breaking and "the end times" get proclaimed by some random nobody.

I feel like back in the day we had less information about everything and, paradoxally, it made the setting seem bigger. The old codexes all had pictures of huge ammounts of in lore armies from the same faction which did not gave models, while now such pictures or texts are often around 10. It makes everything seem smaller. Also 3d had information on all the major world types estimated populations and military as well as so much stuff on warp and heresy within the Imperium.

I'm also not a fan of the character focus 40k took 5th ed and onwards. I don't care about that awesome general or that amazing duelist so much, a random earthshaker barrage might as well put an end to them. In fact, here's a game. Imagine the next time you see a game with a special character in it, when that characters dies, that's it. Dead and never comming back. See how ridicilous the hero concept is. I really don't care much for all the special snowflakes. I care about the 10.000 other officiers in a regiment, the 10 other Captains in a SM chapter, the other thousand farseers in a Craftworld all fighting their hardest but not having songs or great honours written in their names. Less was more and I care the most for him whom the bell tolls.

I did enjoy how the majority of 2nd ed stuff was just a few paragraphs or a couple of pages at most, and from these we were able to piece together the story of what happened during the Horus Heresy, 2nd War of Armageddon, ect...

The only one that had a 'full' history was Codex Tyranids and that was still patchy

It did have a lot of fill in the gaps

But in saying that I did enjoy the Horus Heresy Series because it linked together these small tales together with grander detail, and that feeling you get when you read something and it is just how you imagined it all them years before

I answered that I like the new fluff, but honestly the poll is a tad too complex for any one answer, as there are things I like and dislike about the new fluff, and stuff I'm outright ambivilant about

None of the above. Some parts of the lore are better, some are worse. Overall, it's always been kinda crap unless you ignored the worst offenders.

I was happy with it then and I'm happy with it now. It doesn't look like it's jumped the shark yet.

It's ROGUE trader, not ROUGE trader.

The game was never about the internecine wars between makeup companies in the far future.

I wish they'd slow down some of these major events. I like a lot of what's presented in gathering storm, but each book should have novels of lore expanding on what happened so that it doesn't rush by us so quickly.

For me it got worse and worse as time went on, this current primarch returning malarkey has totally killed all interest I have in it.

As for Rouge trader, I never did like the Avon lady..

 Rayvon wrote:
For me it got worse and worse as time went on, this current primarch returning malarkey has totally killed all interest I have in it.

For me, it's always been a bit different simply because I've taken the stance that simply because the current setting is at the time 999.M41 doesn't mean interesting stories, events, and other things (especially the things that translate well to the Tabletop) don't exist. I find it really easy and nice that we can take a step back and say 'Look at all this other cool lore.'

Of course there is lore I dislike, but with something that's as big and inconsistently-but-ever-evolving as 40K lore, there's bound to be at least a few things that doesn't sit right with everyone.

GodDamUser wrote:
I did enjoy how the majority of 2nd ed stuff was just a few paragraphs or a couple of pages at most, and from these we were able to piece together the story of what happened during the Horus Heresy, 2nd War of Armageddon, ect...

The only one that had a 'full' history was Codex Tyranids and that was still patchy

It did have a lot of fill in the gaps

But in saying that I did enjoy the Horus Heresy Series because it linked together these small tales together with grander detail, and that feeling you get when you read something and it is just how you imagined it all them years before

I wasn't playing back in 2nd edition but I did grab a heap of 2nd ed codexes from the local 2nd hand bookshop and they are brilliant.
Those writers really managed to nail less is more.

Supplement novels irritate me. Too much to have the snippety interest of the codex and not enough to be a real novel.