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So rather than provide an example you've instead made an assumption about me (that is fairly inaccurate). Anything that is pvp will end in a w/l/d. That's a simple fact, unless you count having to leave early or a plane crashing on top of you. Narrative play still has w/l/d with w as the objective, even if the players don't care who wins. That's just the nature of the game.

Remember, if you don't play how I play, you are apparently stupid.

 malamis wrote:
The intellectual component was the last remaining hurdle for making 40k and its derivatives open to literally anyone who could see and comprehend the position of models and the outcome of dice.

Uh, what? That doesn't make sense, at all. If someone has such a significant intellectual disability that they can't do the basic math of adding up point costs there's zero chance of them being able to understand the rest of the rules well enough to play the game. And if you have an experienced player standing there translating "make my stabby thing stab their monster" into all the rules and dice to roll then the helper can easily take over the token effort of building a list. The idea of making a poorly-balanced point system for "narrative" play has nothing to do with disability accommodations, it's just one more event in a long history of GW endorsing "casual at all costs" attitudes in their design principles.

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Formerly Wu wrote:

I disagree. Any game where two players go head to head where only one player wins, the point of the game is to win. Narrative or matched. The objective of *any* game, however, is to have fun, and there are many ways to have fun in a game. This is not tied to narrative or matched play.

I believe you have those switched around. The objective of the game is often to win, but that is not the point of playing it. Neither is it the only possible objective.

You know, i believe i have. I'd be interested in hearing some other possible objectives to a pvp game? I'm only seeing win, lose and draw here unless we're talking campaign games.

Fun game/non-fun game. Get 1st one and it's good game, get 2nd one, it was bad game. Win or lose irrelevant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tag8833 wrote:
1) I don't see "Competitive" and "Narrative" as mutually exclusive. I always write fluff for my tournament armies. Some tourneys award points for fluff, most don't, but it is always there. I build armies to win a tourney while also keeping them looking like an army that could plausibly exist in universe, and I think most other tourney attendees do likewise.

Narrative!=fluff for army. Fluff for army helps but what matters is story in the game.

Our games involve different companies often in each game. This time it's 5th company of 3rd chapter of sons of horus, next it's 9th company of 6th chapter. Depends more on the narrative of the battle which depends more on generic background of campaign we are playing and how story has progressed so far.

Having fluff on army doesn't mean it's not narrative but having fluff on army doesn't automatically make it narrative either.

2) Narrative games have winners. Narrative campaigns have goals and winners, too. I've never seen a narrative campaign where the outcome of games didn't matter. One thing I see frequently in Narrative play is some amount of "List Tailoring". This can take the form of making sure you are ready for the type of army your opponent brings, or underpowering your own units to give your opponent a chance, or ruthlessly min/maxing to make sure you win. List Tailoring is all about Competition, and making games "Competitive".

Funny. Tell me who won our last narrative game? I sure don't know. At best I would say both since it was bloody fun game.

And as for list tailoring...Well guess you could see we do it as we make forces fit into story we are playing out. Who's got better army though we couldn't care less though.

3) I don't understand how poorly balanced rules are good for narrative play. I've played in lots, and lots of narrative games. Far more narrative games than competitive games, and I've never found crappy balance to be an asset. When people say, "GW didn't support competitive play until 8th", I think they didn't really support narrative play either. Maybe your average narrative player doesn't speak out as vocally when GW dumps a pile of garbage rules onto their tabletop, but bad rules are just as bad in narrative play as they are in competitive player, right?

Then again when you don't limit yourself to matched points you can actually tailor armies closer toward max balance if you so choose. Or you can simply build forces to fit into story. Last game we used points only loosely to give other side roughly 20% points advantage. Game before that we didnt' check points at all.

Narrative does not need point tuning to max. You can do that if you want and even better than in matched if you want but not essential.

4) I don't see how the "Power Levels" are for Narrative Play. One of the challenges for building a Narrative Campaign system is setting up parameters to foster interesting games, as well as mechanics to reward victories, and punish defeats. Points are an excellent way to do that. It's been challenge to make it work in 7th because points were so badly out of balance, but still, points are in my experience the best tool to coordinate a multi-player Narrative Campaign.

They aren't any more than matched points. Points can be used for narrative games but they aren't essential.

 Peregrine wrote:

 malamis wrote:
The intellectual component was the last remaining hurdle for making 40k and its derivatives open to literally anyone who could see and comprehend the position of models and the outcome of dice.

Uh, what? That doesn't make sense, at all. If someone has such a significant intellectual disability that they can't do the basic math of adding up point costs there's zero chance of them being able to understand the rest of the rules well enough to play the game. And if you have an experienced player standing there translating "make my stabby thing stab their monster" into all the rules and dice to roll then the helper can easily take over the token effort of building a list. The idea of making a poorly-balanced point system for "narrative" play has nothing to do with disability accommodations, it's just one more event in a long history of GW endorsing "casual at all costs" attitudes in their design principles.

It's entirely possible for someone who is incapable of conceptualising numbers in the abstract without having them in front of them to play 40k since all they have to do is have the to-hit and to wound chart in front of them, and the capacity to read the outcome of dice. It is not necessarily possible for them to build a pointed army list with that impairment.


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 Galas wrote:

Well, I like to answer in a forum debate where I'm part of it You shouldn't assume I have been offended just because I respond to you.
And about your second point, I'll just say that, if you want to believe that, you are in your total right. I can see, obviously, how Open play is more appropiate to people with some mental dissabilities. But to say that is his "primary" market , or the group of people they had in mind at the time of doing it... to me making a very big jump.

I'm repeating what someone with specific domain knowledge told me, and we appear to be having a fruitful debate on the veracity of the claim.

 Galas wrote:

Are you saying that GW threated all of Warhammer Fantasy players as dissabled people? Because "Open Play" was the only one game mode of AoS for a full year.

I don't have information to that effect and frankly i've never paid attention to Fantasy until the overlords came out. Correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't the lunatic CEO that was booted in charge at that time?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Anpu42 wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
Power Level though is good for pick up games. How many time have you had to wait for the other guy to figure out his last 3 points?

Never even once.

Consider yourself lucky. More than once I just had to find some who could build a list on the fly.

*raises hand*

On more than one occasion, but that's generally because I want to accommodate someone's play skill so neither of us wastes our time, not lead my knights in a conga line over their army list.

I don't see power levels mitigating that problem though, but we'll see how it shakes out in the end.

 Torga_DW wrote:

You know, i believe i have. I'd be interested in hearing some other possible objectives to a pvp game? I'm only seeing win, lose and draw here unless we're talking campaign games.

Off the top of my head: survive against stacked odds; kill an especially annoying enemy model; gain campaign experience/gold for your warband; advance an overarching narrative; see how many of your horde army it takes to overwhelm the enemy elite force; escape from New York; work a secret deal in a multiplayer game where you both betray your teammates and high-five as they yell at you both...

None of these particularly matter if you win or lose the game as designed. They're objectives you can have fun trying to achieve.

 malamis wrote:
It's entirely possible for someone who is incapable of conceptualising numbers in the abstract without having them in front of them to play 40k since all they have to do is have the to-hit and to wound chart in front of them, and the capacity to read the outcome of dice. It is not necessarily possible for them to build a pointed army list with that impairment.

And, again, how many people have such trouble with the kind of math we expect small children to be capable of but are capable of understanding the rest of the rules well enough to play the game in any meaningful sense? I understand that there are people who can't do basic addition, or even understand numbers at all, but I doubt that very many of those people are going to be able to do anything else with 40k. They're probably going to need significant help with the rest of the game, and at that point the helper can do the list building work with the same standard point system as everyone else. Your supposed accessibility factor is such a ridiculously unlikely edge case that I can't believe GW would invest any effort at all into it.

The real answer is, as I said, GW's well-documented obsession with "casual at all costs" attitudes. Their rule authors, going back all the way to the earliest days, are ideologically opposed to the idea of competitive gaming and grudgingly tolerate it at best. Making a "narrative" variant that explicitly states their beliefs about the virtues of not caring about balance is entirely in line with GW history. That's all there is to it, there's no reason to search desperately for an alternative explanation.

 Peregrine wrote:


And, again, how many people have such trouble with the kind of math we expect small children to be capable of but are capable of understanding the rest of the rules well enough to play the game in any meaningful sense? I understand that there are people who can't do basic addition, or even understand numbers at all, but I doubt that very many of those people are going to be able to do anything else with 40k. They're probably going to need significant help with the rest of the game, and at that point the helper can do the list building work with the same standard point system as everyone else. Your supposed accessibility factor is such a ridiculously unlikely edge case that I can't believe GW would invest any effort at all into it.

Incorrect.

In the UK GW offers both a product (40k etc) and a service as defined by the disability discrimination act ( the gaming venue). If at *any point* they refused service based on disability they'd not only be open to litigation but the advocacy groups would be in an uproar - not something a UK business can usually weather without taking a beating. Whilst you can probably discriminate based on trivial edge cases in the colonies without repercussions, you can't do that here.

Also unlike the colonies, the greater portion of GW vendors here are GW stores themselves. If the managers who have a shorter path to interacting with the new head office - which we've seen and been told is more responsive than it's ever been - are saying 'disabled persons are a significant customer tranche, make products more useful to them.' , then it's an entirely reasonable response to incorporate that into their main product without sticking a blatant disabled access badge on it - since less accommodating folks are likely to have responses denigrating them as second class hobbyists.

 Peregrine wrote:


The real answer is, as I said, GW's well-documented obsession with "casual at all costs" attitudes. Their rule authors, going back all the way to the earliest days, are ideologically opposed to the idea of competitive gaming and grudgingly tolerate it at best. Making a "narrative" variant that explicitly states their beliefs about the virtues of not caring about balance is entirely in line with GW history. That's all there is to it, there's no reason to search desperately for an alternative explanation.

I don't have to go searching, i've been handed one
Frankly I wasn't even remotely fussed about it, since i'll be playing matched play 90% of the time anyway, with the exceptions being apoc-lite.

I'd encourage you to contact GW directly regarding their product accessibility policy since I can understand you don't have any reason to believe what some guy on t'internet said about some other guy from GW.

 malamis wrote:
In the UK GW offers both a product (40k etc) and a service as defined by the disability discrimination act ( the gaming venue). If at *any point* they refused service based on disability they'd not only be open to litigation but the advocacy groups would be in an uproar - not something a UK business can usually weather without taking a beating. Whilst you can probably discriminate based on trivial edge cases in the colonies without repercussions, you can't do that here.

What does this have to do with the 40k rules? Not publishing math-free rules is not the same thing as refusing service. Everyone, regardless of intellectual ability, is permitted to buy products from the store and (assuming they behave appropriately, and can find a willing opponent) use the gaming space. The idea that GW could be sued for not providing math-free rules is just not dealing with reality.

'disabled persons are a significant customer tranche, make products more useful to them.'

{citation needed}

Remember, we aren't talking about a minor disability here, we're talking about people who can't do the level of math we expect from small children. I'd like to see some support for this idea that there are a meaningful number of people with that level of disability who also have the ability and interest to play 40k at all, and the financial resources to afford it. And that second part is rather important, given the high cost of GW products and low income that severely disabled people tend to have.

 Peregrine wrote:


What does this have to do with the 40k rules? Not publishing math-free rules is not the same thing as refusing service. Everyone, regardless of intellectual ability, is permitted to buy products from the store and (assuming they behave appropriately, and can find a willing opponent) use the gaming space. The idea that GW could be sued for not providing math-free rules is just not dealing with reality.

They absolutely could be sued for providing math free rules, the suit would be thrown out of court, but there'd still be a (page 16) headline of "Toy company refuses service to dyscalculia sufferers". Making a 2 line adjustment to product to limit this from happening is a sound course of action that Kirby should have mandated years ago.

 Peregrine wrote:
'disabled persons are a significant customer tranche, make products more useful to them.'

{citation needed}

I don't exactly have lawful access to internal GW memos do I?

 Peregrine wrote:

Remember, we aren't talking about a minor disability here, we're talking about people who can't do the level of math we expect from small children.

How small? Seriously? we had 20+ 6 year olds in my local GW on the one and only sunday I went there, and you can bet your bottom feather they don't bother with written lists.

I'd suggest disqualifying participation in the hobby with a baseline expectation of abilities is perfectly fine and valid given the investment involved, so it's perhaps why it's been lowered with tiered complexity available to anyone according to need and desire.

 Peregrine wrote:

I'd like to see some support for this idea that there are a meaningful number of people with that level of disability who also have the ability and interest to play 40k at all, and the financial resources to afford it. And that second part is rather important, given the high cost of GW products and low income that severely disabled people tend to have.

Again, UK. We matter more to GW's policy than America, at least for now.

I'd direct you to the National Autistic Society and British Dyslexic association if you want that information in the abstract. Disabled support services usually operate as individual organisations at the city level, so I don't imagine there are national aggregates but you never know.

As for funding, from my own certain knowledge from working with the benefits agency, in 2011 ASD qualified you for:
Free or subsidised (90%+) housing and free or subsidised residential care
A stipend of about £400/month - from which food would be bought in bulk and distributed in the case of residential care
Additional subsidies if you find a part time job working at least 16 hrs a week - with some employers able to claim funding incentives to provide disability specific employment positions.

The rates are available here and here. The former represents the minimums per qualifying category, there is some flexibility. It's not enough exactly to splurge on a new army every month, but certainly a new pack of space marines on a fairly regular basis if you don't have to pay rent, utilities or transport, and get free supervised use of glue and hobby tools.

Anecdotally, there are 5 regular attendees (of 50~ regular 40k players) over the average month at my local GW who have diagnosed and acknowledged disabilities in that area, one who comes in with a carer. Another regular actually works with ASD people as a residential carer and occasionally brings his charges in on quiet days en-masse.

tneva82 wrote:
Fun game/non-fun game. Get 1st one and it's good game, get 2nd one, it was bad game. Win or lose irrelevant.

Which goes back to the already discussed objective of the game vs point of the game.

tneva82 wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
1) I don't see "Competitive" and "Narrative" as mutually exclusive. I always write fluff for my tournament armies. Some tourneys award points for fluff, most don't, but it is always there. I build armies to win a tourney while also keeping them looking like an army that could plausibly exist in universe, and I think most other tourney attendees do likewise.

Narrative!=fluff for army. Fluff for army helps but what matters is story in the game.

But narrative games involves using the emergent gameplay to tell a story. All he needs to do is invest a bit of imagination and he's playing a narrative game in a competitive scene. Narrative games can make use of alternate force compositions, special rules and alternate victory conditions; but they don't have to.

tneva82 wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
Narrative games have winners. Narrative campaigns have goals and winners, too. I've never seen a narrative campaign where the outcome of games didn't matter. One thing I see frequently in Narrative play is some amount of "List Tailoring". This can take the form of making sure you are ready for the type of army your opponent brings, or underpowering your own units to give your opponent a chance, or ruthlessly min/maxing to make sure you win. List Tailoring is all about Competition, and making games "Competitive".

Funny. Tell me who won our last narrative game? I sure don't know. At best I would say both since it was bloody fun game.

You don't bother to work out who the winner was, therefore there was no winner. Interesting logic. Tell me, what was the *story* behind your last narrative game? Why weren't you interested in seeing how the story concluded in that battle? It's sounding more that you just play for fun (which is fair enough) and might not be as big a narrative player as you think.

tneva82 wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
I don't understand how poorly balanced rules are good for narrative play. I've played in lots, and lots of narrative games. Far more narrative games than competitive games, and I've never found crappy balance to be an asset. When people say, "GW didn't support competitive play until 8th", I think they didn't really support narrative play either. Maybe your average narrative player doesn't speak out as vocally when GW dumps a pile of garbage rules onto their tabletop, but bad rules are just as bad in narrative play as they are in competitive player, right?

Then again when you don't limit yourself to matched points you can actually tailor armies closer toward max balance if you so choose. Or you can simply build forces to fit into story. Last game we used points only loosely to give other side roughly 20% points advantage. Game before that we didnt' check points at all.

Narrative does not need point tuning to max. You can do that if you want and even better than in matched if you want but not essential.

What i'm hearing is, instead of using the printed points values, you're using familiarity with the relative power levels of the units in the game to do essentially the same thing. The ruleset is bad, so you're using ad hoc balancing. If the ruleset was actually good, however, you wouldn't need to throw the points away entirely to 'actually tailor armies closer towards max balance' because the balance would already be there. That's the gw mentality in a nutshell - the rules aren't bad, you're just playing wrong.

tneva82 wrote:

tag8833 wrote:
I don't see how the "Power Levels" are for Narrative Play. One of the challenges for building a Narrative Campaign system is setting up parameters to foster interesting games, as well as mechanics to reward victories, and punish defeats. Points are an excellent way to do that. It's been challenge to make it work in 7th because points were so badly out of balance, but still, points are in my experience the best tool to coordinate a multi-player Narrative Campaign.

They aren't any more than matched points. Points can be used for narrative games but they aren't essential.

Some way of reckoning balance levels is always required, otherwise how do you know if you're playing a deliberately unbalanced game or not? I think the problem here is that you're familiar enough with the rules that you're doing it innately, and then declaring that you're not doing it at all.

Formerly Wu wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:

You know, i believe i have. I'd be interested in hearing some other possible objectives to a pvp game? I'm only seeing win, lose and draw here unless we're talking campaign games.

Off the top of my head: survive against stacked odds; kill an especially annoying enemy model; gain campaign experience/gold for your warband; advance an overarching narrative; see how many of your horde army it takes to overwhelm the enemy elite force; escape from New York; work a secret deal in a multiplayer game where you both betray your teammates and high-five as they yell at you both...

None of these particularly matter if you win or lose the game as designed. They're objectives you can have fun trying to achieve.

I think you're confusing victory conditions here with the objective of winning. Yes, you can have your own personal set of victory conditions outside the mission's victory conditions and play to those instead (for a moral/personal victory). But survive against stacked odds will have a win/lose outcome. Kill an annoying enemy model will have a win/lose outcome. Advance an overarching narrative will be completely dependent on the outcome of the game. All of them have w/l/d outcomes and can be done inside or outside a 'narrative' game or a 'competitive' one.

Unless you're playing for high stakes like money, the game itself doesn't matter if you win or lose. That doesn't mean that there's not an objective to playing the game.

We have been playing if both players had a good time, both won.

 Torga_DW wrote:

I think you're confusing victory conditions here with the objective of winning. Yes, you can have your own personal set of victory conditions outside the mission's victory conditions and play to those instead (for a moral/personal victory). But survive against stacked odds will have a win/lose outcome. Kill an annoying enemy model will have a win/lose outcome. Advance an overarching narrative will be completely dependent on the outcome of the game. All of them have w/l/d outcomes and can be done inside or outside a 'narrative' game or a 'competitive' one.

Unless you're playing for high stakes like money, the game itself doesn't matter if you win or lose. That doesn't mean that there's not an objective to playing the game.

I think that's a very reductive mindset, and frankly one I'm not interested in litigating further. Agree to disagree.

My answers to the op is mainly based on following internet discussions, which have a tendency to be rather simplified and polarised.

Competitive gaming is when the players approach the game like it is a professional sport, the opposite end of the spectrum is casual gaming in which players approach the game to have a laugh. Both groups tend to look down on each other and dismiss the other group as playing it "wrong". Divide and conquer, kudos GW. At it's worst the former group has a slightly ( ) exaggerated view on how much skill is required to play any wargame and throw around stuff like "get good" when someone has an opinion that something should be balanced (see below) differently and the latter screams bloody murder when confronted with someone who takes slightly optimised lists. The extremists of the two groups generally don't have good times when playing each other.

Personally I fall in the casual part of the spectrum since in my opinion wargames are generally to easy to tilt in your favour and the stakes are rather to low for me to get in a competitive mood. So I generally put my effort into parts of the hobby(tm) where I feel the investment pay enough of a return, such as painting, building and hanging out with my nephew who is in that starry-eyed age when everything his uncle do is awesome

Then we come to narrative gaming, it is entirely possible to be both competitive and casual and yet play narrative. I used to be really into narrative gaming, especially in fantasy, prior to AoS.

Narrative gaming and GW Narrative (TM) isn't necessary the same things. The first is a mindset when playing a game that regardless of the outcome both players work together to fit the actions and results of the game into a (often continuous) story. The second is a buzzword to placate the fluffplayers of GW-verse that the removal and simplification of most of the immersive rules such as psychology and morale is fixed by following their prearranged battleplans. This is done in order to allow them to make their best to "balance" the rules to cater to the great masses that only care about balance as evidenced by the massive amounts of threads and posts on forums such as these that inanely clamour: "balance this and balance that!". The last part is a definitive change in attitude from GW. I dare you to find a post or thread asking where the psychology rules went, and it was exactly the same when AoS dropped. Everyone screamed at the "changes" but it really boiled down to the lack of points, which despite the incessant claims that AoS was "a narrative wargame, not a competitive" and "points doesn't matter" was fixed by the community within days of AoS release. GW learnt it's lesson in that regard this time.

 malamis wrote:
They absolutely could be sued for providing math free rules, the suit would be thrown out of court, but there'd still be a (page 16) headline of "Toy company refuses service to dyscalculia sufferers". Making a 2 line adjustment to product to limit this from happening is a sound course of action that Kirby should have mandated years ago.

They could also be sued for a lot of other frivolous things that would promptly get thrown out of court, many of which are far more likely than getting sued for not providing a math-free version of the rules. Living in terror of insane lawsuits is not a reasonable way to run a company.

How small? Seriously? we had 20+ 6 year olds in my local GW on the one and only sunday I went there, and you can bet your bottom feather they don't bother with written lists.

That sounds like a pretty good description of hell to me, and a great way to get any adults that walk in to immediately turn and walk out (taking their piles of disposable income with them). And I sincerely doubt that a 6 year old is going to have the ability to play 40k by the rules anyway, so what the rules say isn't very relevant.

Again, UK. We matter more to GW's policy than America, at least for now.

That's a stupid business decision. The US market is far, far more important to any sane company because of its sheer size. The US market should be driving every choice GW makes, with the UK a distant secondary concern at best.

It's not enough exactly to splurge on a new army every month, but certainly a new pack of space marines on a fairly regular basis

So, in addition to the hypothetical "can't do math that we expect from small children, but is otherwise capable of functioning as an adult and playing the rest of 40k without help" person being very rare you're conceding that they don't even have much money. Occasionally buying a box of space marines here and there isn't what GW wants, they want the new customer who will drop $500 on a new army. So why exactly is this group supposed to be a high-priority market?

Anecdotally, there are 5 regular attendees (of 50~ regular 40k players) over the average month at my local GW who have diagnosed and acknowledged disabilities in that area, one who comes in with a carer. Another regular actually works with ASD people as a residential carer and occasionally brings his charges in on quiet days en-masse.

And, again, if we're talking about people who need someone to take care of them and help them play the game then math isn't an obstacle. The carer can do the simple addition of the point costs just like they help the person play the rest of the game. The rule change is providing absolutely nothing to this edge-case situation.

 Torga_DW wrote:
You don't bother to work out who the winner was, therefore there was no winner. Interesting logic. Tell me, what was the *story* behind your last narrative game? Why weren't you interested in seeing how the story concluded in that battle? It's sounding more that you just play for fun (which is fair enough) and might not be as big a narrative player as you think.

Neither player wins or loses just because of what happens on the table. What happens is story takes turn from path A to path B.

What i'm hearing is, instead of using the printed points values, you're using familiarity with the relative power levels of the units in the game to do essentially the same thing. The ruleset is bad, so you're using ad hoc balancing. If the ruleset was actually good, however, you wouldn't need to throw the points away entirely to 'actually tailor armies closer towards max balance' because the balance would already be there. That's the gw mentality in a nutshell - the rules aren't bad, you're just playing wrong.

Except points are never 100% balanced. They cannot. They are flawed method for that. No matter who does them they CANNOT be truly balanced. Too many variables that keep changing. Value of unit changes depending on too many factors. How can fixed point value that doesn't take into account scenario, opponents army, amount, location and type of terrain etc be balanced? It cannot. It can be only rough estimation.

And 8th ed matched points don't even try to be as close to rough estimation as it could be as evidenced by weapon prices being same for army regardless of who wields it. Flawed from the get-go. Just seeing that tells you it's 100% impossible to have truly balanced 8th edition.

And that's just EASY factor. How you factor value of opponents army composition to point value? GW don't know what I will bring to my next game. How they can make sure that is reflected on point value of your unit. Howabout when I change my army? Value of your units changes.

It's hopeless. If you are looking for fixed point value to bring full balance in a non-fixed game you are doomed from the get-go.

Some way of reckoning balance levels is always required, otherwise how do you know if you're playing a deliberately unbalanced game or not? I think the problem here is that you're familiar enough with the rules that you're doing it innately, and then declaring that you're not doing it at all.

Or howabout we care less about balance and more about what the story calls for?

 malamis wrote:
Another regular actually works with ASD people as a residential carer and occasionally brings his charges in on quiet days en-masse.

I sincerely doubt that this is a situation that GW wants. Much like the horde of small children or the usual socially-awkward game store crowd it's the kind of thing that gets paying customers to turn around and walk out because they want nothing to do with it*. GW is a for-profit business, not a charity, the last thing they want to do is encourage something that makes their stores less appealing for potential customers. GW therefore has zero incentive to make their rules more accessible to people like that. In fact, if they give the matter any consideration at all, that barrier to entry is something they probably consider a good thing that needs to be maintained.

*Yes, you can say that it's being a horrible person. But obviously it happens.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:
Or howabout we care less about balance and more about what the story calls for?

That's a nice thought in theory, but it doesn't produce enjoyable games on the table. Setting up armies with no point values (whether explicitly used or approximate points that you remember even without referencing them) is a great way to create a game where one side is overwhelmingly more powerful than the other and the "game" is nothing more than a tedious exercise in making the obvious conclusion official. If you want to tell a story and ignore the game aspect that thoroughly then don't bother playing a game at all, just paint some models and write a story about how awesome they are.

I foresee a good number of threads in our future where people vainly try to understand ways of playing that don't really appeal to them. I never thought we'd see something like the OP so soon though.

For many people, even though they are standing on the opposite side of the table, the game is actually cooperative rather than competitive. Where their primary interest is not on the win-loss axis, but on the axis of discovery.

I've been in games where part way through the opponent decided to add another few squads and another vehicle as a surprise attack. I know of a good number of players that would be shocked by such behaviour and accuse the person of cheating because they don't understand we were operating under a different one of the "3 ways to play" than they normally do.

I have to deal with this split in ways of play pretty much regularly since I run narrative events, and the competitive players often cannot tolerate it existing in a public format.

 Formerly Wu wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:

I think you're confusing victory conditions here with the objective of winning. Yes, you can have your own personal set of victory conditions outside the mission's victory conditions and play to those instead (for a moral/personal victory). But survive against stacked odds will have a win/lose outcome. Kill an annoying enemy model will have a win/lose outcome. Advance an overarching narrative will be completely dependent on the outcome of the game. All of them have w/l/d outcomes and can be done inside or outside a 'narrative' game or a 'competitive' one.

Unless you're playing for high stakes like money, the game itself doesn't matter if you win or lose. That doesn't mean that there's not an objective to playing the game.

I think that's a very reductive mindset, and frankly one I'm not interested in litigating further. Agree to disagree.

I find breaking things down to their simplest components allows the best understanding of what's involved in something, and reduces confusion when being approached by multiple parties.

tneva82 wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
You don't bother to work out who the winner was, therefore there was no winner. Interesting logic. Tell me, what was the *story* behind your last narrative game? Why weren't you interested in seeing how the story concluded in that battle? It's sounding more that you just play for fun (which is fair enough) and might not be as big a narrative player as you think.

Neither player wins or loses just because of what happens on the table. What happens is story takes turn from path A to path B.

The story is generated by what happens on the table. The outcome of the scenario, winning or losing, it all happens because of what happens on the table. The game is the vehicle that drives everything. Otherwise peregrine is right:

Peregrine wrote:If you want to tell a story and ignore the game aspect that thoroughly then don't bother playing a game at all, just paint some models and write a story about how awesome they are.

tneva82 wrote:

Torga_DW wrote:]What i'm hearing is, instead of using the printed points values, you're using familiarity with the relative power levels of the units in the game to do essentially the same thing. The ruleset is bad, so you're using ad hoc balancing. If the ruleset was actually good, however, you wouldn't need to throw the points away entirely to 'actually tailor armies closer towards max balance' because the balance would already be there. That's the gw mentality in a nutshell - the rules aren't bad, you're just playing wrong.

Except points are never 100% balanced. They cannot. They are flawed method for that. No matter who does them they CANNOT be truly balanced. Too many variables that keep changing. Value of unit changes depending on too many factors. How can fixed point value that doesn't take into account scenario, opponents army, amount, location and type of terrain etc be balanced? It cannot. It can be only rough estimation.

And 8th ed matched points don't even try to be as close to rough estimation as it could be as evidenced by weapon prices being same for army regardless of who wields it. Flawed from the get-go. Just seeing that tells you it's 100% impossible to have truly balanced 8th edition.

And that's just EASY factor. How you factor value of opponents army composition to point value? GW don't know what I will bring to my next game. How they can make sure that is reflected on point value of your unit. Howabout when I change my army? Value of your units changes.

It's hopeless. If you are looking for fixed point value to bring full balance in a non-fixed game you are doomed from the get-go.

There's a rather broad area between: the points are completely useless and the points are completely perfect. GW has always been more on the points are useless side of the scale, and fostered an attitude that that's the hallmark of a good narrative to hide the problems with their expensive work. It is possible to have greater balance with the appropriate points and well written rules, and this in no way hinders narrative play.

tneva82 wrote:

Torga_DW wrote:Some way of reckoning balance levels is always required, otherwise how do you know if you're playing a deliberately unbalanced game or not? I think the problem here is that you're familiar enough with the rules that you're doing it innately, and then declaring that you're not doing it at all.

Or howabout we care less about balance and more about what the story calls for?

Why does it have to be an either/or solution? Why can't we have a good and balanced ruleset that can be set aside when the story calls for it?


edit: quotes

Agreed with Torga. Balance is not the opposite of narrative.

This entire thread is operating under the assumption that power levels aren't balanced. They take into account optimal / most expensive choices. If points are balanced, then power levels will be, provided you take the optimal war gear.

 Peregrine wrote:

Open play is an idiotic idea that might as well not exist. Each player buys an amount of GW models, and then the player who spent the most money wins. Nobody will ever play this, except possibly a few "casual at all costs" players who consider it a point of pride to masochistically endure the worst possible rules.

Its only there because gw cant make everything free.

pretty simple.

il hold judgment until i actually try it before throwing it the window.

edit holy hell 4 pages. i really need to pay attention to page numbers :/

 Peregrine wrote:
Open play is an idiotic idea that might as well not exist. Each player buys an amount of GW models, and then the player who spent the most money wins. Nobody will ever play this, except possibly a few "casual at all costs" players who consider it a point of pride to masochistically endure the worst possible rules.

What condescending horse gak. It really shows you don't have any idea what open play is really about. This "the player who spent the most money wins" idea is a caricature that exists only in the minds of people on the internet.

The most common form of actual open play is beginners, especially young ones, getting their early purchases put together and having a fun time on the table with them. Given how much GW concentrates on recruiting new players, it's likely that open play is actually really, really common.

The next most common form of open play would be found at home games where people are throwing a game together. The new power level points system will be heavily used by these sorts of people. I know people who see the hobby as only being matched play with points for every upgrade can't understand why anyone would want to use power level instead (to the point of needing to be told it's for people with developmental disorders and the like), but they will be very popular among the non game store and tournament crowd.

As well, multiplayer games are in the open play category. So every time a GW store runs one of those multiplayer events, they are doing open play.

None of these are "put every model you own on the table and the person who spent the most wins." No one does it that way. After how long the general's handbook has been out and how it has actual scenarios and guidelines in the open play section, continuing to spread that idea can only be described as intentional ignorance or outright misrepresentation. You should stop.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Open play is an idiotic idea that might as well not exist. Each player buys an amount of GW models, and then the player who spent the most money wins. Nobody will ever play this, except possibly a few "casual at all costs" players who consider it a point of pride to masochistically endure the worst possible rules.

What condescending horse gak. It really shows you don't have any idea what open play is really about. This "the player who spent the most money wins" idea is a caricature that exists only in the minds of people on the internet.

The most common form of actual open play is beginners, especially young ones, getting their early purchases put together and having a fun time on the table with them. Given how much GW concentrates on recruiting new players, it's likely that open play is actually really, really common.

The next most common form of open play would be found at home games where people are throwing a game together. The new power level points system will be heavily used by these sorts of people. I know people who see the hobby as only being matched play with points for every upgrade can't understand why anyone would want to use power level instead (to the point of needing to be told it's for people with developmental disorders and the like), but they will be very popular among the non game store and tournament crowd.

As well, multiplayer games are in the open play category. So every time a GW store runs one of those multiplayer events, they are doing open play.

None of these are "put every model you own on the table and the person who spent the most wins." No one does it that way. After how long the general's handbook has been out and how it has actual scenarios and guidelines in the open play section, continuing to spread that idea can only be described as intentional ignorance or outright misrepresentation. You should stop.

^Everything Here.

 BlaxicanX wrote:
I maintain that narrative players are filthy casuals because A) I'm a malicious person and B) lord knows that the distinction between "competitive" and "WAAC" ceased to exist on this forum many years ago, so it's only fair.

Exalted.





To the OP, now. So basically the difference is in mindset, and since every bit of minutiae is up to the player's interpretation as far as "spirit of the game" goes, you will never get a meaningful consensus of any type. It's the same reason you have people going back to 2nd Ed. or whatever.

 frozenwastes wrote:
What condescending horse gak. It really shows you don't have any idea what open play is really about. This "the player who spent the most money wins" idea is a caricature that exists only in the minds of people on the internet.

Sure, if GW's own writers count as "people on the internet". From their army construction article:

At the most basic level, you can just put whatever models you have in your collection on the table and get rolling – this is the very essence of open play.

When the "very essence of open play" is putting your whole collection on the table it's going to overwhelmingly favor the players with the most money to spend on a bigger collection. If you have $500 to spend on models and I have $5,000 then I will have about ten times the strength of your army every game, an advantage that is impossible to overcome. I win every game simply by having more money to spend.

The most common form of actual open play is beginners, especially young ones, getting their early purchases put together and having a fun time on the table with them. Given how much GW concentrates on recruiting new players, it's likely that open play is actually really, really common.

Yes, sure, most games have simplified starter rules for new players. But most games make it clear that the starter rules are just that: starter rules. Once you've figured out how to play the game you move on to the real rules and never look back. But GW is selling open play as something for all players, not just a newbie's first game or two.

The next most common form of open play would be found at home games where people are throwing a game together. The new power level points system will be heavily used by these sorts of people. I know people who see the hobby as only being matched play with points for every upgrade can't understand why anyone would want to use power level instead (to the point of needing to be told it's for people with developmental disorders and the like), but they will be very popular among the non game store and tournament crowd.

As I keep saying, this makes no sense at all. If you're using power levels then you are using points, and the only difference between power levels and conventional points is that power levels are a less-accurate evaluation of a unit's strength. If you are playing with power levels there is absolutely no reason not to use conventional points instead. Nothing is gained by deliberately making the game less balanced in random ways.

And, no, power levels have nothing to do with helping people with developmental disorders. People who can't do the basic addition required to make a list with the conventional rules are unlikely to be capable of playing 40k at all, and if they have someone helping them with the rest of the game then their helper can easily add up some point costs. And that's just considering open play vs. matched play, if you're talking about power levels vs. points then anyone who is capable of adding up power levels can do the same addition with points. So, I suppose there might be a person or two with such a specific disability that this rule is relevant to them, but I don't find it at all plausible that these people exist in such numbers that GW would find it beneficial to put effort into catering to them. The much more obvious explanation is that power levels and open play are a natural extension of GW's well-established "casual at all costs" attitudes.

As well, multiplayer games are in the open play category. So every time a GW store runs one of those multiplayer events, they are doing open play.

Err, what? Plenty of multiplayer games are done with the conventional point system, in a way that is (rules-wise) indistinguishable from any other "matched play" game. The fact that some GW stores run silly "throw some models on the table" events doesn't really mean much, we know that GW stores run poorly-designed events all the time and that has very little to do with the rules used by everyone else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Marmatag wrote:
This entire thread is operating under the assumption that power levels aren't balanced. They take into account optimal / most expensive choices. If points are balanced, then power levels will be, provided you take the optimal war gear.

The problem is that any other configuration will then be underpowered, which is still poor balance. And those other configurations can be desirable for reasons other than being bad at list construction: they might fill a "less powerful, but cheaper" role or they might have a different target type in mind (heavy bolters vs. lascannons, for example). So if you try to bring anything other than the one specific list that GW decided was "optimal" then you're at a significant disadvantage.

So you take a statement that starts with "at its most basic level" and then end up at the conclusion that it must mean whoever buys more wins. Do you really think that's what they meant by the "essence of open play?" Isn't it more likely that it's the simple process of putting your models on the table and getting to the game? Doesn't that make a bit more sense?

You might just be misinterpreting things in order to justify a caricature. Do you honestly believe people actually do that? That they play "buy more to win" games? If so, let me tell you as someone who has been actually doing open play: they don't. Putting "whatever models you have in your collection" is not some arms race where you pay to win. It's just the most basic option. The starting point for beginners.

And yes, if you read the Open Play section of the GHB, you'd see multiplayer is found there. Multiplayer is also in the Open Play section of the new 40k rulebook as well. Also Open Play and a points system are not mutually exclusive. There are also loads of hybrid forms using elements from multiple ways to play.

As well, some people don't care about adding up detailed points and paying for each upgrade and will love just quickly adding things up and getting on with the game. Even if you think it makes no sense. Or fail to realize that your insistence that there is "absolutely no reason" not to use the full points system is proven wrong by the existence of a single reason. Speed. Or ease of use.

I don't know why it's so hard to understand that some people might not care about making sure they pay 19 points per model and then 7 points for this item and 15 points for this when they can just do "10 power for this unit" and get their models on the table. And still have a fun time playing a game they enjoy.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
And, no, power levels have nothing to do with helping people with developmental disorders

What I said was that people need to think it's about that because they can't understand why the power level system is even there. Their failure of imagination is to such a degree that they come up with people with developmental disorders as the real reason it's there. That's laughable. And we saw it in this very thread.

-

ERJAK wrote:

Wow, this manages to be both hateful AND useless.

Well, I mean... it's not like those two things are usually mutually exclusive...

Personally I like both but I like the Simplicity that power levels will give when I don't want to screw around with nitpicking a list. I'm also the fact that most of the interesting missions seem to be narrative will make me try to push my group to do a narrative games but if somebody really wants to play matched with paying for everything I will do that as well.