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Though I'm just adding my load of salt and continuing the argument, let's take a different approach to the concept of open play. That is if someone hasn't already pointed this out over the 10 pages so far.

And that is to ask the question: why did they feel the need to officially outline a method of play that is so intrinsic to human nature that it should never have needed to be outlined in the first place?
Open play is the most simple and imaginative form of playing, it's what children do naturally all the time. To take arbitrary objects and environments and create a temporary space of entertainment and exploration using whatever is to hand.

I think, for once, I feel for GW as a faceless organisation made up of face-filled people. That they felt the need to enshrine such an unnecessary definition of play tells me a great deal about the entrenched community of 40k players.

Nothing was stopping anyone playing that way before. I think the issue is not that people want a competitive game with efficient choices, that's a perfectly legitimate way to engage with a game.

However, I think that people desire the competitive equivalent of high art, in a game with far too many variables for that to ever be realised. This is the fast food parable of the wargaming scene and I think many want it to be fine-dining; important, pompous & serious.

Too few rules is chaos and too many is a stifling and stagnant Imperium. I think there is a vague middle that exists, which can also work, but it requires the community to function like one, with people actually agreeing on things in a social manner. There was no issue with this in the past and there isn't too much issue doing it in other games in the present (at least where the same mentality hasn't spilled over from 40k and infected it). Despite all our abstract legislation, day to day life remains flowing and motion-filled, not static, with exceptions and work-arounds.

You can't remove that element without removing people.

And yet the collective cry of sunken-cost fallacy is taken up every edition: "Oh please big daddy GW, please make my choices and investment justified!".

Unfortunately, until this unsatisfying reality is taken on board, nothing will change.

Put that in your cognitive-dissonance and dwell on it.

Open play is the most simple and imaginative form of playing, it's what children do naturally all the time. To take arbitrary objects and environments and create a temporary space of entertainment and exploration using whatever is to hand.

I don't know when was the last time you were a child, but here, if you break rules, no one is going to play with you. All games and how you play are played the same way they were played by people before. All the rules who can play with who, who decied what is going to be played is set in stone. The closest to an option to changing the play rules is going home and playing alone. And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

To be fair, GW have also encouraged this approach with rules on "official" models and so on trying to restrict what people use in their game, and their "no model, no rules" policy of recent years.

Karol wrote:

Open play is the most simple and imaginative form of playing, it's what children do naturally all the time. To take arbitrary objects and environments and create a temporary space of entertainment and exploration using whatever is to hand.

I don't know when was the last time you were a child, but here, if you break rules, no one is going to play with you. All games and how you play are played the same way they were played by people before. All the rules who can play with who, who decied what is going to be played is set in stone. The closest to an option to changing the play rules is going home and playing alone. And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

You are misunderstanding me. All games have no rules until they are refined through experiment, discussion, agreement, etc..

I probably didn't spell it out in the purely literal terms required to make the point though, because my argument is a bit flakey in an environment of cut and dry like dakka, so my mistake. What I meant is that the slap/dash method of exploration play is closest to what I think the idea behind open play is.

I understand that there is a set series of rules in place regarding usage of units and their stats, but there isn't really a need for open play as a set concept.

There is also no reason why two or more people cannot get together to just discuss their own set of rules or ways of playing. I don't know where breaking rules comes into it.

It has been deeply entrenched for years and years that you shalt not deviate from "real 40k" by the community.

GW is finally nodding to this entrenchment by "legitimizing" open and narrative play as also being "real 40K".

Was it necessary? It depends on you and your community. For me, creating an open and narrative play as being a legit "real way to play" (of course we could play this way anyway) made breakthrough in getting others to either participate, or at the very least stop harassing people who played in that way as not playing "real 40k".

It made it more welcoming, at least psychologically, for a lot of people.

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
I think that GW should have taken a page from WotC with their rulebook and included a passage similar to this one: "the rules that follow are meant to be guidelines to ensure all players have a basic understanding of the game. However, your group may decide to deviate from the rules printed here, and that is perfectly fine. The important part is that everyone has a good time." Then maybe include some sidebars with some example "alternative rules". I believe a good tabletop game gives you the framework you need to play, while also allowing you the leeway to adapt it to fit your group's playstyle. It's why 40k RAW vs RAI always seem so intense; because the ruleset is so rigid in what you can and cannot do. It's why so many people deviate from the ruleset already. It's just not flexible enough (or well written enough) to fit every single group's idea of the ideal 40k experience.

If I wanted to play a wishy-washy overpriced roleplaying game, I'd play a wishy-washy overpriced roleplaying game instead of a poorly written overpriced "wargame".

You wouldn't have that clause in Chess, so why have it in 40k? The entire point of a wargame is to pit two armies against each other and utilise the rule system to achieve a win state.

To be fair, there is a strong tradition of adjudication and games masters going back to the Prussian Kriegspiel, one of the first close to modern non chess Wargames, that GW games owe plenty to in terms of design paradigm.

Lots of old school wargamers play with a games master who makes those sorts of calls, to keep the simulation realistic and prevent unreal outcomes. Dungeons and Dragons evolved from this sort of play.

I tend to agree that GW is not selling that sort of product really, but I think a lot of the designers really WISH they were. I wish they would go all the way one way or another, it would make for a better game. But they are trying for mass appeal, which means slightly disappointing a lot of us out on the fringes.

There is still a strong, if not exactly mainstream, culture of that type of play in the roleplaying world. OSR (Old School Reneissance) enthusiasts are very active in keeping that style alive and creating excellent products that grab industry awards from broader mass appeal games many years running. Same applies somewhat to the miniature world beyond the obvious player overlap, as the Oldhammer movement seems to be doing pretty well too. The "gamesmaster as a referee" culture might be less systematic there than it is among the OSR folks, but same principles are very much in effect when games are actually played.

It is somewhat tragic that the current GW style isn't grungy enough to promote that style properly, but damn if I wouldn't be amused if they released a 3rd edition (WHFB) style guide for more Kriegspiel-y gaming (that isn't the utterly unplayable horror that was Inquisitor. Cool concept and 150% full of awesome inspiration, failed miserably as an actually playable system )

Rogue Trader (the1st version of 40K) had a requirement for a GM to run the game. As you can guess, it got dropped pretty quickly as the community was far more interested in a direct head-to-head game without the need of a 3rd party to officiate.

People want uniform rules so they know what to expect. But they aren’t against customizing the rules for themselves - so long as they can expect others will be open to their modifications. It’s why we have house rules like getting money when landing on Free Parking in Monopoly.

We just all wish that our house rules were incorporated into the ruleset. Problem is, a lot of people have their own idea of what the proper rules SHOULD be.

I’m lucky enough that my primary opponent for the games I play generally agrees with me about the house rules we use. And that is all I care about - we play the way we want, GW be damned.

Unfortunately, not everyone has that luxury, and there’s been enough bad experiences that most club “house rules” never pass on beyond that group. Which is unfortunate, people should be free to play the way THEY want to, and not be shamed otherwise.

I love the simplification of the ruleset, though I think GW did go a little bit overboard in some areas. I wish the optional terrain rules were just in the mandatory ruleset.

I like the return of the old-school psychic phase, as opposed to flipping a bunch of coins in 6th and 7th. The banishment of wound allocation removing closest models is a blessing. Overall despite shooting, assault seems very strong in this edition due to rerolling charge ranges, changes to who can fight, and tying up shooty units. The changes to armor penetration has been an interesting change as well. I don't mind it since my marines generally save like firewarriors anyway!

It just feels like a return to the classic game as much as I could hope for. I am not a huge fan of stratagems, but I much prefer them to the free detachment rules some armies got. The pervasiveness of aura buffs on characters also seems a little lazy.

 Warptide wrote:
It just feels like a return to the classic game as much as I could hope for.

And this is what keeps me from playing the set. It basically seems like everything I disliked about 2nd Ed. filtered through AOS, and that's not the game I want to play.

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

 Blndmage wrote:

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

This is Karol, who apparently lives in a dystopian future Poland where violence is the first, second, and only answer to every conceivable problem. Presumably women are expected to show complete obedience to men and one should not think about their fate should they not comply.

 Wunzlez wrote:


There is also no reason why two or more people cannot get together to just discuss their own set of rules or ways of playing. I don't know where breaking rules comes into it.

I have never seen a game where a new person joining didn't enter a world where all rules were already set to be honest. And while changing is possible it is mostly done on a social status level. Of course if your the one who is the owner of the gaming consol, you can decide that X is not going to get his turn playing and Y gets to play twice etc But that is like saying that rules changing is good when you have good social standing, and probably a ton of friends to influence other people. It does absolutly nothing for someone who does not have that or can't generate enough preasure on others. Someone can say they want to play open, or without this or that type of unit, at best they are just going to end up owning an army no one is going to play against. And not playing at all with something you paid for, is worse then playing and even having a bad time.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

The little expiriance I have with social interaction between sexs, is that with guys the worse normal thing that can happen is that two guys go and clear the problem by beating each other up. Then the problem is non existant after two or three weeks. Girls seem to be a lot less physical, but they hold grudges against each other for years. That is why in my opinion it is way worse to be girl and try to be different then a boy. When your a boy you at least can be big or stronger then most people, if you train. As a girl if your different, strenght does not help at all. Plus it is much harder to punish. When we beat each other up in middle school, a teacher or parents saw it imidietly. When in 7th class we were told that the bullying of a girl has to stop, all the boys in my class had their jaws drop out, they fell out totaly when our school director and the trainer told that it has been going on for a year. Was the first time I noticed that the difference between sexs is substential, because non of us could imagine why could anyone be angry at someone else, save for killing a member of the family or something crazy like that. And the oddest thing was that when we asked a guy from our class who was going steady, if he knew something, he told us that other girls thought that the bullied girl had too good marks and was doing too good at trainings.

This is Karol, who apparently lives in a dystopian future Poland where violence is the first, second, and only answer to every conceivable problem. Presumably women are expected to show complete obedience to men and one should not think about their fate should they not comply.

Am not sure where you get those ideas. From my expiriance, it is impossible for a boy to bully a girl. If he tries, she goes to teachers, trainers or parents, and on the same day you could be kicked out of school, baned from any events which is worse then being kicked out etc. Girls on the other hand can more or less do what they want., most of the time you can't prove anything, and even if you can, the teachers and trainers will just tell you to suck it up.

 Wunzlez wrote:
Though I'm just adding my load of salt and continuing the argument, let's take a different approach to the concept of open play. That is if someone hasn't already pointed this out over the 10 pages so far.

And that is to ask the question: why did they feel the need to officially outline a method of play that is so intrinsic to human nature that it should never have needed to be outlined in the first place?
Open play is the most simple and imaginative form of playing, it's what children do naturally all the time. To take arbitrary objects and environments and create a temporary space of entertainment and exploration using whatever is to hand.

I think, for once, I feel for GW as a faceless organisation made up of face-filled people. That they felt the need to enshrine such an unnecessary definition of play tells me a great deal about the entrenched community of 40k players.

Nothing was stopping anyone playing that way before. I think the issue is not that people want a competitive game with efficient choices, that's a perfectly legitimate way to engage with a game.

However, I think that people desire the competitive equivalent of high art, in a game with far too many variables for that to ever be realised. This is the fast food parable of the wargaming scene and I think many want it to be fine-dining; important, pompous & serious.

Too few rules is chaos and too many is a stifling and stagnant Imperium. I think there is a vague middle that exists, which can also work, but it requires the community to function like one, with people actually agreeing on things in a social manner. There was no issue with this in the past and there isn't too much issue doing it in other games in the present (at least where the same mentality hasn't spilled over from 40k and infected it). Despite all our abstract legislation, day to day life remains flowing and motion-filled, not static, with exceptions and work-arounds.

You can't remove that element without removing people.

And yet the collective cry of sunken-cost fallacy is taken up every edition: "Oh please big daddy GW, please make my choices and investment justified!".

Unfortunately, until this unsatisfying reality is taken on board, nothing will change.

Put that in your cognitive-dissonance and dwell on it.

I more or less agree with you.

People play how they want to play and always have. The fact that they made that a type of play and called it open is not in and of itself a bad thing. As mentioned above by another poster they made it "real 40k".

The issue comes in when what people REALLY want is a single unified good set of rules. If 8th released with only matched as the only set of rules people would still tweak them, make up new terrain rules, missions etc etc...

They would still play open but have no other name to call it.

But because they gave it 3 different names people flocked towards the most codified set of rules because it provided the most structure. Even when they break away from that structure they still want it.

If the game released with only open and then a variety of plug and play advanced rules options there would be no argument. People would just pick "cities of death, these terrain rules, points and detachments, psychic focus. Cool?" And they would play.

On the surface it was a good move. Practically it just built more walls even when those walls mean nothing. Its never actually any different and what you decide to call it is more or less meaningless but people still get so worked up about it.

I kind of hope the next edition is a slightly structured version of open with modular advanced rules that dont suck.

 Blndmage wrote:

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

Karol is 12 or something like that, so his understanding of women is skewed.

Stratagems and Command Points are a huge drag on the game. The worst part about GW is their game design methodology. Instead of reworking what they have already developed, learning from past mistakes, making incremental changes, they instead effectively designed a new game and give models completely different abilities. To top it off GW maintains no consistency in their templating of abilities just to provide that extra bit of fluff in the rules, where clarity should be prioritized above confusion. Great models with lower than average game design. If you must play anything GW you should stick to Kill Team. It is probably the best GW has ever done on the game design level, and for that it gets a 6/10.

Karol wrote:

 Wunzlez wrote:


There is also no reason why two or more people cannot get together to just discuss their own set of rules or ways of playing. I don't know where breaking rules comes into it.

I have never seen a game where a new person joining didn't enter a world where all rules were already set to be honest. And while changing is possible it is mostly done on a social status level. Of course if your the one who is the owner of the gaming consol, you can decide that X is not going to get his turn playing and Y gets to play twice etc But that is like saying that rules changing is good when you have good social standing, and probably a ton of friends to influence other people. It does absolutly nothing for someone who does not have that or can't generate enough preasure on others. Someone can say they want to play open, or without this or that type of unit, at best they are just going to end up owning an army no one is going to play against. And not playing at all with something you paid for, is worse then playing and even having a bad time.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

The little expiriance I have with social interaction between sexs, is that with guys the worse normal thing that can happen is that two guys go and clear the problem by beating each other up. Then the problem is non existant after two or three weeks. Girls seem to be a lot less physical, but they hold grudges against each other for years. That is why in my opinion it is way worse to be girl and try to be different then a boy. When your a boy you at least can be big or stronger then most people, if you train. As a girl if your different, strenght does not help at all. Plus it is much harder to punish. When we beat each other up in middle school, a teacher or parents saw it imidietly. When in 7th class we were told that the bullying of a girl has to stop, all the boys in my class had their jaws drop out, they fell out totaly when our school director and the trainer told that it has been going on for a year. Was the first time I noticed that the difference between sexs is substential, because non of us could imagine why could anyone be angry at someone else, save for killing a member of the family or something crazy like that. And the oddest thing was that when we asked a guy from our class who was going steady, if he knew something, he told us that other girls thought that the bullied girl had too good marks and was doing too good at trainings.

This is Karol, who apparently lives in a dystopian future Poland where violence is the first, second, and only answer to every conceivable problem. Presumably women are expected to show complete obedience to men and one should not think about their fate should they not comply.

Am not sure where you get those ideas. From my expiriance, it is impossible for a boy to bully a girl. If he tries, she goes to teachers, trainers or parents, and on the same day you could be kicked out of school, baned from any events which is worse then being kicked out etc. Girls on the other hand can more or less do what they want., most of the time you can't prove anything, and even if you can, the teachers and trainers will just tell you to suck it up.

Wow.... like... I want to respond to parts of this.. but I don't even know where to start.

I am going to dodge the bullet of all your misogyny and just address this part.

And not playing at all with something you paid for, is worse then playing and even having a bad time.

Thats insane. Not playing is at worst a neutral time. A bad time sucks. I would never do anything to have a bad time.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

This is Karol, who apparently lives in a dystopian future Poland where violence is the first, second, and only answer to every conceivable problem. Presumably women are expected to show complete obedience to men and one should not think about their fate should they not comply.

And this is Peregrine, who lives, at least from the neck up, somewhere very, very dark where he refuses to acknowledge certain things that don't cater to his worldview.

In this case, the fact that females, even very young females, are judged more harshly for non-conformative behavoir in most societies. And that situations where a female 'player' bucks the norm might be reacted to in a more intense manner than the same from a male player.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

Karol is 12 or something like that, so his understanding of women is skewed.

Wow, the absolute most classic passive aggressive whiny internet poster move of accusing someone who disagrees with you of being an adolescent. I'd give you points for the complete lack of originality if it wasn't also pathetically asinine.

All Karol is suggesting is that woman who buck the norm are more likely to be judged more harshly than men who do, which is absolutely true. It's not guaranteed to happen and the degree isn't always particularly meaningful but it is something women deal with when trying to 'go their own way' as it were.

Taking 5 seconds to parse that out was all you needed to do but you chose to go full 'stereotypical guy on a gaming forum' instead.

ERJAK wrote:
stuff

Perhaps before embarrassing yourself here you should read some of the things Karol has posted? Such as the supposed fact that "concede this tournament game to me or I beat you up" is a regular occurrence and just part of life, smashing your opponent's army to force them to drop out of a tournament is ok, etc? We're criticizing him because he's demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of social interactions beyond thuggish Darwinism.

ERJAK wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Karol wrote:
And God help someone, if he, or worse she, thinks that they can play any game by their own rules. That is a good way to end up being ignored at best and bullied at all other times.

Can you explain what you meet here, especially the bolded section?

This is Karol, who apparently lives in a dystopian future Poland where violence is the first, second, and only answer to every conceivable problem. Presumably women are expected to show complete obedience to men and one should not think about their fate should they not comply.

And this is Peregrine, who lives, at least from the neck up, somewhere very, very dark where he refuses to acknowledge certain things that don't cater to his worldview.

In this case, the fact that females, even very young females, are judged more harshly for non-conformative behavoir in most societies. And that situations where a female 'player' bucks the norm might be reacted to in a more intense manner than the same from a male player.

Peregrine's a chick.

Foot, may I introduce you to mouth?

Well this conversation has taken a very strange turn..


@karol- I don't mean to be rude by asking, but how old are you?

 Lance845 wrote:
Its never actually any different and what you decide to call it is more or less meaningless but people still get so worked up about it.

And here is where you fail to even understand the problem we're objecting to, which is probably why you keep posting your RAW arguments. It's not just a name, the three ways to play are meaningfully different and open play is not just "anything that isn't strictly BCB-level RAW". And people are upset that GW is trying to push an unstructured mess of a game as a legitimate "way to play", with the obvious sales motive of getting people to buy stuff that wouldn't fit into a normal army. It devalues the rules structure that produces an enjoyable game for both players so that a GW store employee can tell a kid "spend your birthday money on the new space marine box, you can just do open play and use them with your tyranids". And even worse than open play being a cynical cash grab is the thought that GW's rule authors might be incompetent enough to genuinely think that it's a good thing for the game.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
Its never actually any different and what you decide to call it is more or less meaningless but people still get so worked up about it.

And here is where you fail to even understand the problem we're objecting to, which is probably why you keep posting your RAW arguments. It's not just a name, the three ways to play are meaningfully different

I agree that the 3 ways to play are "meaningfully different" in that they each have different sets of permissions and rules. I would have preferred a MORE meaningfully different "3-ways to play" but this is what we got.

and open play is not just "anything that isn't strictly BCB-level RAW". And people are upset that GW is trying to push an unstructured mess of a game as a legitimate "way to play", with the obvious sales motive of getting people to buy stuff that wouldn't fit into a normal army.

I take umbrage with your entitlement in respect to a "legitimate" way to play. Anyone who puts there stuff down and plays a game is legitimately playing. I know you think elitism is a good thing from past conversations. You and I will never agree on your elitist values. You have no place telling others what is and is not a legitimate way to play.

It devalues the rules structure that produces an enjoyable game for both players so that a GW store employee can tell a kid "spend your birthday money on the new space marine box, you can just do open play and use them with your tyranids". And even worse than open play being a cynical cash grab is the thought that GW's rule authors might be incompetent enough to genuinely think that it's a good thing for the game.

I get the very shallow and narrow view you have of open. But that is not ALL that open is because open can be anything. Including 99% matched. You don't have play open by saying there are no rules. And the way you react to the very concept of open is basically just catastrophising. You can play a very strict and very competitive version of the game in open. More strict and more competitive then matched because matched has lots of problems from GWs crap rules writing. If you decide to do things to fix GWs gak rules and adjust and tweak the game to suit your preferences then it's open and you're just playing the game as you enjoy it most. More power to you. Call it what it is.

I think the main argument isn't that they aren't playing the book definition of Open Play, but rather that they're playing the real-world definition of Matched Play. As was pointed out, when you say "Open Play" or "Matched Play", both players will have certain expectations of what the game will entail, which will probably not align with the exact wording in the book. But their expectations will probably be similar with each other, and that's what matters.

 Lance845 wrote:
I take umbrage with your entitlement in respect to a "legitimate" way to play. Anyone who puts there stuff down and plays a game is legitimately playing. I know you think elitism is a good thing from past conversations. You and I will never agree on your elitist values. You have no place telling others what is and is not a legitimate way to play.

I absolutely have a right to say that someone putting models on the table and making gun noises is playing with 40k toys but is not playing a game of 40k. And I absolutely have a right to point out that the "just do whatever, rules don't matter" attitude is extremely damaging to the game and in the long run leads to less enjoyable games for most people.

But that is not ALL that open is because open can be anything. Including 99% matched.

Again, it really can't. Stop obsessing over RAW labels and look at the attitudes involved. A game that is 99% matched play is just matched play.

And the way you react to the very concept of open is basically just catastrophising.

No, it's going along with the concept of open play as GW presents it: ignore the faction restrictions, ignore point values or balance in army sizes, and just throw whatever models you want on the table. The fact that they later note that you can use some of these restrictions if you want does not change the fact that the sole reason for open play to exist is to ignore them. If it's not about doing those "catastrophising" things then why does open play exist at all? Previous editions has no problem accommodating minor house rules without creating an entirely separate "way to play", so why is it suddenly necessary in 8th?

Call it what it is.

Ok, fine. It's matched play with a variant rule set.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 flandarz wrote:
I think the main argument isn't that they aren't playing the book definition of Open Play, but rather that they're playing the real-world definition of Matched Play. As was pointed out, when you say "Open Play" or "Matched Play", both players will have certain expectations of what the game will entail, which will probably not align with the exact wording in the book. But their expectations will probably be similar with each other, and that's what matters.

Exactly. Player expectations matter, and nobody cares if those expectations don't perfectly align with BCB-level RAW. Matched play with added house rules intended to achieve the goals of matched play (competitive balance, ability to have random pickup games, etc) is still matched play, just like nobody in previous editions thought that "hey, let's clarify this ambiguous rule" meant that they were creating an entirely new way to play the game.

 flandarz wrote:
I think the main argument isn't that they aren't playing the book definition of Open Play, but rather that they're playing the real-world definition of Matched Play. As was pointed out, when you say "Open Play" or "Matched Play", both players will have certain expectations of what the game will entail, which will probably not align with the exact wording in the book. But their expectations will probably be similar with each other, and that's what matters.

And that guy over there will have expectations, and that guy over there will have expectations, and those people over there will have other expectations, and any new person who doesn't read or know about Dakka and picks up a BRB and reads it is going to have the only centralized and definitive definition of the terms that exists around the entire world regardless of community.

I don't care how some people decide to use the terms. Even if some people in actuality amounts to most people (which is just conjecture), I still don't care. Because you cannot expect ALL people to run off something other than the official definition.

"Probably be similar" is still a bunch of local community hot nonsense. Meanwhile in the real world they are playing Open. The problem, here, is the disconnect between peoples expectations of Open and the reality of what it's capable of. Coupled with the elitism of some pushing a narrative that furthers that disconnect.


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 Peregrine wrote:

No, it's going along with the concept of open play as GW presents it: ignore the faction restrictions, ignore point values or balance in army sizes, and just throw whatever models you want on the table. The fact that they later note that you can use some of these restrictions if you want does not change the fact that the sole reason for open play to exist is to ignore them.

Did you miss the part in matched play where it does not require points? You can play matched by agreeing to a certain number of units. It doesn't even need to be balanced by power level.

If it's not about doing those "catastrophising" things then why does open play exist at all? Previous editions has no problem accommodating minor house rules without creating an entirely separate "way to play", so why is it suddenly necessary in 8th?

Cause GW sucks ass at writing rules so they decided to try to suck ass at writing them in all new ways this edition? Do you expect an answer from me about why GW does all the baffling gak they do? GW sucks. This edition, they seem to have sucked in a way that pushes your particular buttons.

 Lance845 wrote:
And that guy over there will have expectations, and that guy over there will have expectations, and those people over there will have other expectations, and any new person who doesn't read or know about Dakka and picks up a BRB and reads it is going to have the only centralized and definitive definition of the terms that exists around the entire world regardless of community.

You're again looking at this in black and white terms. That player over there may have slightly different expectations about what matched play means, but even if they disagree over whether matched play should use the ITC terrain rules to improve its ability to achieve the matched play goals they still agree on how matched play is functioning in broad terms. Those minor disagreements can be quickly sorted out because the vast majority of their expectations are the same. On the other hand, a player who claims that adding the ITC terrain rules to a matched play game makes it "open play" and puts up an invitation for an open play game is going to have some very substantial disagreements with someone who shows up with a random mix of 5000 points of orks and space marines and tyranids against that 2000 point ITC list.

Because you cannot expect ALL people to run off something other than the official definition.

Of course not. But the fact that BCB does not understand anything but strict RAW (or, hopefully, pretends not to for the sake of entertainment) is not relevant. The vast majority of people understand how the terms are being used in the real world and would not consider "matched play, but with the ITC terrain rules" to be an open play game.

Meanwhile in the real world they are playing Open.

If all of these people, playing virtually every game of 40k that ever happens, are playing open play then what exactly is the reason for the other two types to exist? The fact that matched play exists implies that a non-trivial number of matched play games are played, and your definition makes this impossible. Mine, on the other hand, creates useful separation where all three categories have a non-trivial number of games in them and the attitudes involved in each category are both consistent and distinct from the other two.

Maybe they will have different expectations, but I think they'll be similar enough that any discrepancies can be worked out in-game. Of course, I base this off of the responses in this thread, where it seems you are the lone person with differing expectations than everyone else. For example, if I tell you we'll have a Matched Play game, you'll build an army for Matched Play. If we then decide to play an ITC mission, but continue to use the other Matched Play rules, then we may have moved to Open Play, but we don't have to, say, make army adjustments, or really do anything in order to make the shift.

On the other hand, if we decide to play Open Play, and we build a "anything goes" army, we can't just shift back to Matched Play without a drastic overhaul of what we built. This seems to be what everyone is arguing with you about. The real-world definitions and expectations versus the book definitions and expectations. Even a brand new player, going just by the book, is going to be able to build for Matched Play and play ITC missions with little to no cognitive dissonance.

 Lance845 wrote:
Did you miss the part in matched play where it does not require points? You can play matched by agreeing to a certain number of units. It doesn't even need to be balanced by power level.

And in the real world everyone understands that a single 5-man tactical squad and a warlord titan are not equivalent even though both of them are "one unit", so nobody plays with the number of units as the army construction limit. Even a new player equipped with nothing but the rulebook and their codex is going to find this immediately obvious and discard the idea of balancing by unit count. GW making a token statement about "do whatever you want guys" does not change the fact that in the real world that is not how the game is played.

Cause GW sucks ass at writing rules so they decided to try to suck ass at writing them in all new ways this edition? Do you expect an answer from me about why GW does all the baffling gak they do? GW sucks. This edition, they seem to have sucked in a way that pushes your particular buttons.

Sorry, but resorting to "GW sucks and did this just to be stupid" is an extremely weak argument when there is a much better one that involves making comprehensible, if IMO poor, decisions. If you abandon the absurd RAW nitpicking you will see that open play is distinct from matched play with minor house rules and GW has a reason for making that separation: keeping the majority of players happy by continuing to use the structure of matched/narrative play while also being able to use "buy these space marines for your tyranid army" as a sales tactic in their retail stores.

Peregrine wrote:

 Lance845 wrote:
And that guy over there will have expectations, and that guy over there will have expectations, and those people over there will have other expectations, and any new person who doesn't read or know about Dakka and picks up a BRB and reads it is going to have the only centralized and definitive definition of the terms that exists around the entire world regardless of community.

You're again looking at this in black and white terms. That player over there may have slightly different expectations about what matched play means, but even if they disagree over whether matched play should use the ITC terrain rules to improve its ability to achieve the matched play goals they still agree on how matched play is functioning in broad terms. Those minor disagreements can be quickly sorted out because the vast majority of their expectations are the same. On the other hand, a player who claims that adding the ITC terrain rules to a matched play game makes it "open play" and puts up an invitation for an open play game is going to have some very substantial disagreements with someone who shows up with a random mix of 5000 points of orks and space marines and tyranids against that 2000 point ITC list.

Because you cannot expect ALL people to run off something other than the official definition.

Of course not. But the fact that BCB does not understand anything but strict RAW (or, hopefully, pretends not to for the sake of entertainment) is not relevant. The vast majority of people understand how the terms are being used in the real world and would not consider "matched play, but with the ITC terrain rules" to be an open play game.

Meanwhile in the real world they are playing Open.

If all of these people, playing virtually every game of 40k that ever happens, are playing open play then what exactly is the reason for the other two types to exist? The fact that matched play exists implies that a non-trivial number of matched play games are played, and your definition makes this impossible. Mine, on the other hand, creates useful separation where all three categories have a non-trivial number of games in them and the attitudes involved in each category are both consistent and distinct from the other two.

flandarz wrote:Maybe they will have different expectations, but I think they'll be similar enough that any discrepancies can be worked out in-game. Of course, I base this off of the responses in this thread, where it seems you are the lone person with differing expectations than everyone else. For example, if I tell you we'll have a Matched Play game, you'll build an army for Matched Play. If we then decide to play an ITC mission, but continue to use the other Matched Play rules, then we may have moved to Open Play, but we don't have to, say, make army adjustments, or really do anything in order to make the shift.

On the other hand, if we decide to play Open Play, and we build a "anything goes" army, we can't just shift back to Matched Play without a drastic overhaul of what we built. This seems to be what everyone is arguing with you about. The real-world definitions and expectations versus the book definitions and expectations. Even a brand new player, going just by the book, is going to be able to build for Matched Play and play ITC missions with little to no cognitive dissonance.

It's simple enough and it's how I start every game I have ever played.

I say "What do you want to play?"

And they say "1500 points?"

And I go "Cool, do you have any preference for missions? How do you want to handle terrain?"

The words "Open" or "Matched" never get spoken. I know we are playing open when we divert from Matched. What does it matter?

When you sit in a room and go "Anyone wanna play ITC?" You don't have to say "ITC Open" or "ITC Matched". ITC is it's own unique set of rules (that just so happens to fall under Open) that anyone who understands ITC can agree to or not. Like a regular person I talk to my opponent about what kind of game we want to play and then we play it. Open play made all those little house rules an "official" way to play. It didn't need to be official but GW decided to do it anyway. Why? Who knows? Maybe they wanted to knock some people off their pretentious high horse? Maybe it was a money scheme?

That's a fair point, but going in with the assumption that you'll be playing "Matched Play" means you don't have to go over every single rule. You could say "1500 pts, ITC Missions and Terrain rules." and I'll naturally assume the other Matched Play rules will be in effect (Rule of 3, Detachment limits, etc.). Because most folks are gonna hear that and assume its "Matched Play". In fact, I doubt anyone will assume that you're proposing Open Play, unless you specifically say "Hey, let's just mess around with Open Play. 1500 pts and ITC Missions and Terrain." Then you've set my expectations that we'll be playing a more freeform style of game than I would normally play.

 flandarz wrote:
That's a fair point, but going in with the assumption that you'll be playing "Matched Play" means you don't have to go over every single rule.

And continuing that conversation above by saying "Matched play restrictions and rules?" is a quick and simple way to add all those things into the mix without ever actually specifying whether we are playing matched or open. The person I ask that to could easily respond with "Sure. But I hate rule of 3, do you mind?" and I go, "Go nuts." Guess what we are playing? It sure as gak isn't matched.

You could say "1500 pts, ITC Missions and Terrain rules." and I'll naturally assume the other Matched Play rules will be in effect (Rule of 3, Detachment limits, etc.). Because most folks are gonna hear that and assume its "Matched Play". In fact, I doubt anyone will assume that you're proposing Open Play, unless you specifically say "Hey, let's just mess around with Open Play. 1500 pts and ITC Missions and Terrain." Then you've set my expectations that we'll be playing a more freeform style of game than I would normally play.

And the difference is ITC. If you say 1500 points ITC, then again, ITC has a list of rules which starts with Matched play rules except where noted bellow. And the general matched play rules apply to ITC. So any match that starts with ITC starts with all that comes with it.

And likewise, I agree that if anyone starts any match by saying the words "Hey, let's just mess around with..." that it will be more freeform. It was more freeform before you ever reached the word open.