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The reason I stopped playing 40k competitively (and whfb/AOS) is because to do so regularly you have to regularly buy new models and change your army out.

I did pretty well at competitive play, well enough to enjoy myself and collect a trophy room of stuff from playing at that level. But I got super burned out on having to constantly update my collection and assemble/paint new stuff on a deadline.

I also noted it was why a lot of my buddies were leaving the hobby, they were getting burned out, whereas the casual/narrative route had a longer shelf-life.

Other games my model collection can largely remain as it is and I can still get good games years and years later.

It isn't even that you have to buy new models, it's that you have to chase the meta or even switch armies to stay "competitive". Which is great for GW and bad for everything else.

A balanced game would still have that but to a much lesser extent and have way more things viable so you didn't need to run the numbers on each purchase to make sure you aren't buying a stinker, which unduly punishes people who want to pick things they like (you know, the way GW *says* to play) only to find the units the picked are dog gak in-game and suck to be them, should have done research or ignored the fluff. Both of which seem directly opposed to everything GW presents about the game.

stratigo wrote:


If they're playing in a campaign... tell them to feth off.

Yes, but then you open yourself up to accusations of being 'tfg', 'hobby gatekeeping' and being a 'toxic player'.

For the record, playing with like minded individuals should be the number one piece of advice given to anyone. and be positive about your message, rather than othering.

Deadnight wrote:

stratigo wrote:


If they're playing in a campaign... tell them to feth off.

Yes, but then you open yourself up to accusations of being 'tfg', 'hobby gatekeeping' and being a 'toxic player'.

For the record, playing with like minded individuals should be the number one piece of advice given to anyone. and be positive about your message, rather than othering.

Don't forget CAAC

But yeah, playing with people who share your ideas of the game is the best advice, and also the hardest.

Wayniac wrote:
The sort of person who made up boogeymen during Open Play AOS about "10 Nagashes" or whatever horsegak as "proof" that Open Play was busted, because without rules to stop people from being donkey caves, they'll be donkey caves, and scoffs at the very idea of talking to your opponent before a game other than "2000 points, Eternal War?" as the most conversation.

This reminds me of when they polled a bunch of people who said that they'd never vote for an atheist president. When asked why, the majority of the answers were, without the threat of hell, what's to keep atheists from just going around and murdering and raping? In my head, the only thing I can think is, "Is the only reason these people aren't going around murdering and raping because the rules told them not to? Holy crap".

Ironically, when put to the test, it turns out that atheists tend to dictate themselves in a more moral fashion because their morality is not based on explicit rules, and thus there are fewer loopholes to exploit that allow them to feel like a good person for following the rules, while also doing bad things. There was this complaint thread on Reddit a few days ago from waitresses complaining about how the Sunday crowd will tip with bible verses or chick tracts instead of money.

That's neither here nor there, but I do get the impression from many with the tournament mindset that if the rules allow it (or explicitly don't disallow it) then it is fair game. They are still good players even though they are hella-cheating just because there isn't a specific rule that says it is cheating.

Wayniac wrote:
It isn't even that you have to buy new models, it's that you have to chase the meta or even switch armies to stay "competitive". Which is great for GW and bad for everything else.

A balanced game would still have that but to a much lesser extent and have way more things viable so you didn't need to run the numbers on each purchase to make sure you aren't buying a stinker, which unduly punishes people who want to pick things they like (you know, the way GW *says* to play) only to find the units the picked are dog gak in-game and suck to be them, should have done research or ignored the fluff. Both of which seem directly opposed to everything GW presents about the game.

I think a lot of people put more of the meta chase on themselves than they need to. It's often better to stick to a faction and adjust the competitive list you have than faction hop to whatever is currently the tippy top. The best players rarely jump factions to keep things sharp and tend to just evolve as new threats challenge their dominance. Too much attention is paid to the top 4 or whatever and a lot of people fail to appreciate that really anyone going X-1 has had a pretty spectacular showing. The idea that if you play the list that won the last major event you'll win the next one is a huge trap. It's even kind of self defeating, as the next event will probably be won by someone gunning for that list. I see a lot of meta chasers sell armies for the new hotness and that just seems like a recipe for failure. If you stick to one thing and add models to your options as the game shifts around you eventually build up a collection that's a lot more future proof.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think too many people put too much faith in having a list at 100% efficiency, but that's not the same as saying you should just build whatever you like without considering how competitive it is. I like to encourage people to start with a net list as a starting point rather than the final one. For the vast majority of people, you're not going to be playing in an environment that can't tolerate 200-400 points of suboptimal. That's even true of most major touranments. Sure, you might now win the whole event, but if you're just copying the top players, you're probably not going to beat those same players at their own game anyway. A netlist gives you a strong foundation to let you know you're not completely off base, but you don't need that exact list to be competitive. If you've got a favorite unit you want to throw in or just have some stuff you want to use because you don't have the 3rd copy of some random thing.... its fine. You can treat the game competitively in a pretty casual manner, just like you can play pretty casually without shielding from the tournament crowd. There's a lot of space in between.

Wayniac wrote:
Don't forget CAAC

I think Peregrine coined that one.

But yeah, playing with people who share your ideas of the game is the best advice, and also the hardest.

But that's its own kind of rigidity too. I think it is more important to be flexible in how you play. The greatness of games like AoS and 40k is in the breadth and variety of experiences you can have with them. You can have a really cutthroat competitive game with them, a big narrative campaign, a beer and pretzels fun time, a test to see if 40 space marines can take on big monster, or paint them all to look like Hello Kitty. You'll get more out of the games if you can do (and enjoy) all of those.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Wayniac wrote:
Don't forget CAAC

I think Peregrine coined that one.

But yeah, playing with people who share your ideas of the game is the best advice, and also the hardest.

But that's its own kind of rigidity too. I think it is more important to be flexible in how you play. The greatness of games like AoS and 40k is in the breadth and variety of experiences you can have with them. You can have a really cutthroat competitive game with them, a big narrative campaign, a beer and pretzels fun time, a test to see if 40 space marines can take on big monster, or paint them all to look like Hello Kitty. You'll get more out of the games if you can do (and enjoy) all of those.

Yes, but the issue is when someone who wants to have cutthroat competitive games heads down to the game store and plays a game against someone who wants a beer and pretzels fun time or what have you. It's far too common that you have a variety of people who want different things from the game, are unable to come to any sort of compromise (this is on both people, not just the competitive one) and as a result, neither has a fun game and thinks the other side sucks.

Wayniac wrote:
It's far too common that you have a variety of people who want different things from the game, are unable to come to any sort of compromise (this is on both people, not just the competitive one) and as a result, neither has a fun game and thinks the other side sucks.

That kind of sums up this whole thread, doesn't it?

Well, I know I often just don't go to game nights, because I don't feel like playing with watered down lists, so I just stay home and paint models so I can try them in tournament lists....

So I guess the moral of the story is if you can't play nice, just stay home and play with your toys by yourself, lol.

 Sqorgar wrote:

But that's its own kind of rigidity too. I think it is more important to be flexible in how you play. The greatness of games like AoS and 40k is in the breadth and variety of experiences you can have with them. You can have a really cutthroat competitive game with them, a big narrative campaign, a beer and pretzels fun time, a test to see if 40 space marines can take on big monster, or paint them all to look like Hello Kitty. You'll get more out of the games if you can do (and enjoy) all of those.

Though you are not necessarily wrong, being 'flexible in how you play' is all well and good, but ultimately meaningless when you are the only one willing, or interested in playing, or acomodating that 'flexibility' with different players/styles of games. Which goes back to my point - play with like minded people. If you want flexibility in what/how you play, you really need to find people who want the same. But we are arguing semantics really.

That said, whilst being rigid in what you want isn't necessarily wrong (people like what people like. If that happens to be one thing, then that's fair. If it happens to be one thing that I don't particularly care for, then there also fair - I will at the very least be polite about it). I largely agree with the premise that flexibility in what/how you play is a good thing. Competitive gaming is fun, and has a niche, but I've burned out from it twice, both with 40k and warmachine. Narrative is more what I enjoy now. It takes a fair bit more work to 'game-build' to judge/eyeball rosters/objectives etc, and get right, but for me at least, putting in that amount of work is worth it. In my experience, Having that variety of playing, or evenvexperiencing the varieties of competitive, open and narrative games broadens your horizons and gives you a far better appreciation for enjoying different things and increases the shelf life of your hobby massively.

Deadnight wrote:

Though you are not necessarily wrong, being 'flexible in how you play' is all well and good, but ultimately meaningless when you are the only one willing, or interested in playing, or acomodating that 'flexibility' with different players/styles of games. Which goes back to my point - play with like minded people. If you want flexibility in what/how you play, you really need to find people who want the same. But we are arguing semantics really.

Well, if you can play with anyone, you'll never be for want of someone to play with. The problem is, if you like lots of parts of the game and only get to see a very small part of all that, it can be pretty frustrating. Also, though I'm willing to play matched play, I have an intense dislike of min-maxing, so I'd make a particularly bad tournament-style opponent - so, I might play with others, but they won't play with me.

But I might have to be more accommodating, simply because I don't think anyone else actually plays like I do. Jervis does. Whenever I read an article by him, I feel like, finally! Someone gets it! Only to then come online and see 40 page threads about how what he said was stupid and he should feel bad. Every time I see someone complain that Open Play is stupid and isn't really a thing, I get all sad inside, like someone took my candy and kicked me in the nards.

That said, whilst being rigid in what you want isn't necessarily wrong (people like what people like. If that happens to be one thing, then that's fair. If it happens to be one thing that I don't particularly care for, then there also fair - I will at the very least be polite about it). I largely agree with the premise that flexibility in what/how you play is a good thing. Competitive gaming is fun, and has a niche, but I've burned out from it twice, both with 40k and warmachine. Narrative is more what I enjoy now. It takes a fair bit more work to 'game-build' to judge/eyeball rosters/objectives etc, and get right, but for me at least, putting in that amount of work is worth it. In my experience, Having that variety of playing, or evenvexperiencing the varieties of competitive, open and narrative games broadens your horizons and gives you a far better appreciation for enjoying different things and increases the shelf life of your hobby massively.

I feel like Minecraft is a really good example. A competitive player is the type who goes into the game thinking, I'm going to win this game. These are the steps I have to take to get to the dragon, what I need to beat him, and the most efficient way to do this. The narrative player is the type who thinks, I'm going to build a giant castle with my friends, where I will build the basic blueprint, Ted will be in charge of making the throne room, and Phil is going to make the stables. The open play player is the kind that goes, oh hey, this red stone stuff is cool, I'm going to build a working Atari 2600 emulator out of it, because Minecraft isn't a game, it's a toolbox.

The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

 Sqorgar wrote:

The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

The last WHFB and 40k campaigns that I was in, the same competitive players that would look at the rules and say "You'd have to be stupid to not see these optimums" were the same ones sitting down and writing out after-the-fact narratives to explain what happened in the battle and what cool things the characters did.

What also happened was players getting together and agreeing, "These are the campaign rules and extra restrictions we're agreeing to use. Such-and-such-thing-that-I-don't-remember is getting restricted so it doesn't get out of hand."

I swear to heaven that people forget that part of playing when you're a kid is negotiating what the rules of the game are going to be. Then you get stuff like this where it's all "This is how I want to play" and "No, I want to play this other way" and a complete failure of anyone to play nice with each other. :-/

 Sqorgar wrote:


But I might have to be more accommodating, simply because I don't think anyone else actually plays like I do. Jervis does. Whenever I read an article by him, I feel like, finally! Someone gets it! Only to then come online and see 40 page threads about how what he said was stupid and he should feel bad. Every time I see someone complain that Open Play is stupid and isn't really a thing, I get all sad inside, like someone took my candy and kicked me in the nards.

If it's any consolation, I'm walking in your shoes, too. But it's very unlikely that I can convince my wife and children to move to the US anytime soon...

 solkan wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

The last WHFB and 40k campaigns that I was in, the same competitive players that would look at the rules and say "You'd have to be stupid to not see these optimums" were the same ones sitting down and writing out after-the-fact narratives to explain what happened in the battle and what cool things the characters did.

What also happened was players getting together and agreeing, "These are the campaign rules and extra restrictions we're agreeing to use. Such-and-such-thing-that-I-don't-remember is getting restricted so it doesn't get out of hand."

I swear to heaven that people forget that part of playing when you're a kid is negotiating what the rules of the game are going to be. Then you get stuff like this where it's all "This is how I want to play" and "No, I want to play this other way" and a complete failure of anyone to play nice with each other. :-/

Right. Because people don't seem to WANT to "negotiate what the rules of the game are going to be". They want it to be universal, so they can minimize discussion for some strange reason (despite, y'know, it is a social game because you're playing with other people). So for every competitive person who knows when to tone it down and write after-the-fact narratives, there's the jackass who can't turn off "tournament" mode no matter what they're playing or who they're playing with that is always showing up with their LVO-style curb stomp list and demanding to use it because "It's a legal list" and feth anything else and if anyone dares to suggest that maybe they shouldn't bring an LVO face-smashing list to a casual game night at the shop or narrative campaign then they are "CAAC" people who should just git gud and learn to optimize lists better rather than expect the person who knows how to optimize better to also know when is and isn't the right to be to be maxing to the nines.

So it goes back to what was said above: Many competitive players, especially it seems in the USA, only have one mode: Tournament. They have no idea or desire to ever do anything else, and get offended when people dislike that they're always bringing their tournament lists all over the place.

solkan wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

The narrative player is the type who thinks, I'm going to build a giant castle with my friends, where I will build the basic blueprint, Ted will be in charge of making the throne room, and Phil is going to make the stables. The open play player is the kind that goes, oh hey, this red stone stuff is cool, I'm going to build a working Atari 2600 emulator out of it, because Minecraft isn't a game, it's a toolbox.
The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

Indeed. I disagree with sqorgar's minecraft comparison as well.

Sqorgar' - Your narrative player sounds like a three man painting team doing a diorama. Or building a themed board. As a narrative player, I also view a rules system as a 'toolbox' as much as your 'open play player' - it's a tool to build interesting games/face-offs and scenarios. And when I speak about building scenarios, I see this as encompassing every aspect of 'the game', from terrain layout/function, opposing/complimentary forces, missions/goals/objectives etc. 'Structures' and 'experiences' are functional facets of the same type of creativity. The main difference is my experience is open play is more freeform in that things like 'a space marine, a tyranid hive tyrant, and a tau stormsurge walk into a bar and decide to hook up to fire some guns at the range' or 'monstrous creature wrestling' is as acceptable a game as anything else, whereas a narrative player will probably raise an eyebrow at calling it 'narrative'. And bear in mind, this is not to say those things couldn't be fun.

With respect, while you probably don't intent it, and probably mean it in the best possible way, it comes across as a little bit of 'gatekeeping' on your behalf when you ascribe all the positive things to what you personally like And all the negative things to things you don't, as you frequently do with regard to competitive games/players, and just seem to misunderstand the other things. If anything, it's probably how I'm picking up your signal here though - like I said, it's probably not deliberate, or anywhere near deliberately malicious on your part.

Sqorgar wrote:
Well, if you can play with anyone, you'll never be for want of someone to play with.

That's not what I said. Playing with like-minded people, or being willing to change up your game for the sake of others (assuming the reverse is also true) is not the same as playing with anyone.

Sqorgar wrote:
The problem is, if you like lots of parts of the game and only get to see a very small part of all that, it can be pretty frustrating.

Agreed. But in ways, that's also the price you pay for 'rigidity', as you say, unless you have those like minded players.

Sqorgar wrote:
Also, though I'm willing to play matched play, I have an intense dislike of min-maxing, so I'd make a particularly bad tournament-style opponent - so, I might play with others, but they won't play with me.

Sqorgar wrote:
But I might have to be more accommodating, simply because I don't think anyone else actually plays like I do. Jervis does. Whenever I read an article by him, I feel like, finally! Someone gets it! Only to then come online and see 40 page threads about how what he said was stupid and he should feel bad. Every time I see someone complain that Open Play is stupid and isn't really a thing, I get all sad inside, like someone took my candy and kicked me in the nards.

I'm just surprised that you are surprised that the Internet would say this back. Forums are what they are - a skewed/different perspective, that tends to self-select from the more serious and competitive players in the community, rather than those from any other viewpoint. Plenty people play like you do. They just don't tend to go online and get involved in the 'General discussion' or 'tactics' boards- maybe 'painting/modelling is weirdly, more of a home. There's only a handful of narrative players here, and only a very few of us, for example, get involved with anything approaching regularity.

That could be.

I know when I try to get a narrative discussion going about campaign play, it gets hardly any attention, and typically one or two trolls will jump on to say we aren't playing right.

So that kind of dissuades me from giving a damn to post about that material.

But competitive topics are like fleas. THey are everywhere and compound daily.

Wayniac wrote:
Right. Because people don't seem to WANT to "negotiate what the rules of the game are going to be". They want it to be universal, so they can minimize discussion for some strange reason (despite, y'know, it is a social game because you're playing with other people).

I really, really don't want to negotiate the rules of the game; that's not the same thing as wanting to minimize discussion. I'll happily add an extra hour to the game chatting about whatever; I just don't want the game itself to become an exercise in bartering for victory. I just want to sit down and play and let the developers worry about designing a fun experience for me so I can focus on having a good time with my opponent. A round of peace talks and disarmament agreements has never been my idea of a casual experience.

solkan wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

I never said they were, though I can see how you would think the classifications could be mutually exclusive from the way I posted them. In a previous post, I said that it is the rigidity of tournament players that is a problem, and that these kinds of games are really much better if you try to experience all that they offer.

Deadnight wrote:
Sqorgar' - Your narrative player sounds like a three man painting team doing a diorama. Or building a themed board. As a narrative player, I also view a rules system as a 'toolbox' as much as your 'open play player' - it's a tool to build interesting games/face-offs and scenarios. And when I speak about building scenarios, I see this as encompassing every aspect of 'the game', from terrain layout/function, opposing/complimentary forces, missions/goals/objectives etc. 'Structures' and 'experiences' are functional facets of the same type of creativity.

Well, right. I mean, the Minecraft players that build giant castles or adventure maps for their friends to go through are using the toolbox for all that it is worth. They look at red stone and wonder to what ends it could be used in their favor.

it's a tool to build interesting games/face-offs and scenarios.

Requoting this line because it more or less underscores the idea that you are not trying to win games, but instead create interesting experiences with them.

The main difference is my experience is open play is more freeform in that things like 'a space marine, a tyranid hive tyrant, and a tau stormsurge walk into a bar and decide to hook up to fire some guns at the range' or 'monstrous creature wrestling' is as acceptable a game as anything else, whereas a narrative player will probably raise an eyebrow at calling it 'narrative'. And bear in mind, this is not to say those things couldn't be fun.

I think open play is nebulous and hard to define because, by nature, it has very little structure by itself. But I see open play as... well, if Minecraft is a game and a toolkit for making games, then it is also a kind of programming language - a toolkit for making toolkits.

For instance, I've had it in the back of my head for years to do a campaign system where the objectives on the board are paint pots, and the goals of playing the game is to collect paint that you then paint your armies with. Denying a green paint to an orc army, or just seeking out washes (ignoring bases and layers) with a white undercoat are valid strategies. What kind of orc can you paint without green and only drybrush paints? Don't know, but it would demand some creativity and could produce unexpectedly cool results. And, of course, painted armies play better on the battlefield. That's just common sense. It'd be one the most expensive campaign systems ever devised though.

A paint pot campaign is very meta, to the point where you have to step outside the game rules and purpose to create new game rules and purpose - and a paint pot campaign could potentially be narrative or competitive! Now that I'm thinking of it, you could have a competitive narrative campaign. None of this stuff is mutually exclusive. They are more like layers. To the person building the scenarios, campaigns, and rules packets, he'll probably dip into all three, while the players can choose their own level of involvement. In a narrative campaign, even though there is generally one "game master", it is the responsibility of all the players to work together towards the goal of making a good experience, since narrative games can usually be easily broken by minmaxing.

With respect, while you probably don't intent it, and probably mean it in the best possible way, it comes across as a little bit of 'gatekeeping' on your behalf when you ascribe all the positive things to what you personally like And all the negative things to things you don't, as you frequently do with regard to competitive games/players, and just seem to misunderstand the other things. If anything, it's probably how I'm picking up your signal here though - like I said, it's probably not deliberate, or anywhere near deliberately malicious on your part.

I'm not really making judgement calls on any of it. To me, everything about making and playing games is fair game. Heck, I'd be fine playing competitively, and the only reason I don't is that I refuse to spend the money needed to buy models I don't like just to be successful at the game. When I played Warmachine, I looked into it and discovered that, to play the way I wanted to play, I had to buy not just a warcaster I didn't like, but also multiples of various units I didn't like (if I remember correctly, it was a Butcher list with multiple Doom Reavers). If it were a video game with lower cost associated with army building, I'd be more than happy to make an attempt at playing at high levels of competency. But miniatures are freaking expensive and that's nothing compared to having to paint 30 models I don't like - I've done that before, and it's just not how I like to spend my precious hobby time.

I'll say it again. I have no problem with tournament games, but I do have a problem with the tournament mindset. Not only do I think most (or all) games break down at high levels of minmaxing, I also think the attitude is positively destructive to communities. Warmachine was dying way before Mk3 because of how abusive the community could be to casual and newbie players. Not even hostile. Just abusive. The premise that you will have to lose 20 games before you will win is accepted as a selling point, when nobody is going to invest in a massive, tournament-sized army for a few hundred bucks just to lose at a game they aren't enjoying for 30-40 hours. It sounds good to the people who did it - the Spartan infants left on hills to die which made it, but you can't have a healthy game community by killing 19 out of every 20 new players.

I'm just surprised that you are surprised that the Internet would say this back.

To quote the immortal C3P0, "sometimes, I just don't understand human behavior".

Forums are what they are - a skewed/different perspective, that tends to self-select from the more serious and competitive players in the community, rather than those from any other viewpoint. Plenty people play like you do. They just don't tend to go online and get involved in the 'General discussion' or 'tactics' boards- maybe 'painting/modelling is weirdly, more of a home. There's only a handful of narrative players here, and only a very few of us, for example, get involved with anything approaching regularity.

There's self selecting, and then there is actively tar and feathering those who play a different way and running them out of town. When I first came here, with the release of Age of Sigmar, the amount of abuse I had to suffer through just for saying "I like this game" was really beyond the pale. Unfortunately (for everybody, I guess), the only thing I like more than games is arguing on the internet - but I have to assume that this is a rare condition that is not found in most gamers.

 LunarSol wrote:
I just don't want the game itself to become an exercise in bartering for victory.

That's a terrible attitude, freebirth!

We must become more adept at bidding for victory, quiaff?

 Sqorgar wrote:

solkan wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

The competitive player takes structure and produces efficiency.
The narrative player takes structure and produces experiences.
The open player takes components and builds his own structure.

Those categories aren't mutually exclusive.

I never said they were, though I can see how you would think the classifications could be mutually exclusive from the way I posted them. In a previous post, I said that it is the rigidity of tournament players that is a problem, and that these kinds of games are really much better if you try to experience all that they offer.

Deadnight wrote:
Sqorgar' - Your narrative player sounds like a three man painting team doing a diorama. Or building a themed board. As a narrative player, I also view a rules system as a 'toolbox' as much as your 'open play player' - it's a tool to build interesting games/face-offs and scenarios. And when I speak about building scenarios, I see this as encompassing every aspect of 'the game', from terrain layout/function, opposing/complimentary forces, missions/goals/objectives etc. 'Structures' and 'experiences' are functional facets of the same type of creativity.

Well, right. I mean, the Minecraft players that build giant castles or adventure maps for their friends to go through are using the toolbox for all that it is worth. They look at red stone and wonder to what ends it could be used in their favor.

it's a tool to build interesting games/face-offs and scenarios.

Requoting this line because it more or less underscores the idea that you are not trying to win games, but instead create interesting experiences with them.

The main difference is my experience is open play is more freeform in that things like 'a space marine, a tyranid hive tyrant, and a tau stormsurge walk into a bar and decide to hook up to fire some guns at the range' or 'monstrous creature wrestling' is as acceptable a game as anything else, whereas a narrative player will probably raise an eyebrow at calling it 'narrative'. And bear in mind, this is not to say those things couldn't be fun.

I think open play is nebulous and hard to define because, by nature, it has very little structure by itself. But I see open play as... well, if Minecraft is a game and a toolkit for making games, then it is also a kind of programming language - a toolkit for making toolkits.

For instance, I've had it in the back of my head for years to do a campaign system where the objectives on the board are paint pots, and the goals of playing the game is to collect paint that you then paint your armies with. Denying a green paint to an orc army, or just seeking out washes (ignoring bases and layers) with a white undercoat are valid strategies. What kind of orc can you paint without green and only drybrush paints? Don't know, but it would demand some creativity and could produce unexpectedly cool results. And, of course, painted armies play better on the battlefield. That's just common sense. It'd be one the most expensive campaign systems ever devised though.

A paint pot campaign is very meta, to the point where you have to step outside the game rules and purpose to create new game rules and purpose - and a paint pot campaign could potentially be narrative or competitive! Now that I'm thinking of it, you could have a competitive narrative campaign. None of this stuff is mutually exclusive. They are more like layers. To the person building the scenarios, campaigns, and rules packets, he'll probably dip into all three, while the players can choose their own level of involvement. In a narrative campaign, even though there is generally one "game master", it is the responsibility of all the players to work together towards the goal of making a good experience, since narrative games can usually be easily broken by minmaxing.

With respect, while you probably don't intent it, and probably mean it in the best possible way, it comes across as a little bit of 'gatekeeping' on your behalf when you ascribe all the positive things to what you personally like And all the negative things to things you don't, as you frequently do with regard to competitive games/players, and just seem to misunderstand the other things. If anything, it's probably how I'm picking up your signal here though - like I said, it's probably not deliberate, or anywhere near deliberately malicious on your part.

I'm not really making judgement calls on any of it. To me, everything about making and playing games is fair game. Heck, I'd be fine playing competitively, and the only reason I don't is that I refuse to spend the money needed to buy models I don't like just to be successful at the game. When I played Warmachine, I looked into it and discovered that, to play the way I wanted to play, I had to buy not just a warcaster I didn't like, but also multiples of various units I didn't like (if I remember correctly, it was a Butcher list with multiple Doom Reavers). If it were a video game with lower cost associated with army building, I'd be more than happy to make an attempt at playing at high levels of competency. But miniatures are freaking expensive and that's nothing compared to having to paint 30 models I don't like - I've done that before, and it's just not how I like to spend my precious hobby time.

I'll say it again. I have no problem with tournament games, but I do have a problem with the tournament mindset. Not only do I think most (or all) games break down at high levels of minmaxing, I also think the attitude is positively destructive to communities. Warmachine was dying way before Mk3 because of how abusive the community could be to casual and newbie players. Not even hostile. Just abusive. The premise that you will have to lose 20 games before you will win is accepted as a selling point, when nobody is going to invest in a massive, tournament-sized army for a few hundred bucks just to lose at a game they aren't enjoying for 30-40 hours. It sounds good to the people who did it - the Spartan infants left on hills to die which made it, but you can't have a healthy game community by killing 19 out of every 20 new players.

I'm just surprised that you are surprised that the Internet would say this back.

To quote the immortal C3P0, "sometimes, I just don't understand human behavior".

Forums are what they are - a skewed/different perspective, that tends to self-select from the more serious and competitive players in the community, rather than those from any other viewpoint. Plenty people play like you do. They just don't tend to go online and get involved in the 'General discussion' or 'tactics' boards- maybe 'painting/modelling is weirdly, more of a home. There's only a handful of narrative players here, and only a very few of us, for example, get involved with anything approaching regularity.

There's self selecting, and then there is actively tar and feathering those who play a different way and running them out of town. When I first came here, with the release of Age of Sigmar, the amount of abuse I had to suffer through just for saying "I like this game" was really beyond the pale. Unfortunately (for everybody, I guess), the only thing I like more than games is arguing on the internet - but I have to assume that this is a rare condition that is not found in most gamers.

I just briefly chime in to say that you guys have some fine discussion here. What it IMHO misses on slightly however is a simple fact: all you need for a fully fledged and pretty much unrestricted narrative or open mode experience is a single like-minded play companion (I deliberately don’t call this person an opponent) that has the same amount of time to spend on gaming as you do. And because of that most people involved in wargaming on such basis do not frequent forums like dakka or FB groups and if they do it is usually with terrain/modeling blogs rather than narrative discussions. Those people form pretty much self contained isles of 40k happiness and see no added value in being called filthy CAACs by people from the other side of the planet. I personally was much more active here during 7th ed, because „proposed rules” forum was full of ideas that I could directly utilize in my scenarios and there was value in discussing them, but since me and my group forked away from official rules the last thin thread connecting us to wider „community” has been torn. For some time after that I saw some merit in participating in narrative discussions here for the sake of „bearing the torch” of narrative play for all those silent lurkers, so that they may know they are not alone, but this kind of motivation also died out. Despite how fine those discussions could sometimes get, there is no deeper reason to try discussing the same narrative meta-topics again and again with mostly the same people (most notably Wayniac, Deadnight and auticus; cheers guys!) while being shouted at and called names by the usual suspects. It is simply more productive and more rewarding to spend time on enriching my own gaming experience by making new terrain, new scenarios or working on a new ruleset from ground up (and not getting involved in pointless debates on how a ruleset specifically tailored for my narrative group is utter crap in eyes of sworn competetive pick-up players - the standard way all proposed new rulesets threads here on dakka eventually end up).

@ sqorgar and minecraft comparison: one of the last heated discussions I was involved here revolved around whether or not 40k is a sandbox game. You can either try and find it or try to imagine how some dakka regulars reacted to the ideas of shaping 40k freely to your personal needs. Getting back to thread at hand - I agree with Deadnight here - distinction between narrative and open player in that comparison is needlesly picky. I consider myself a narrative player but I did a lot of very „freeform” things with 40k and I have always considered official GW rules more as general guidelines rather than a gospel, even before forking away completely.

And man, I would very much like to see an Atari 2600 emulator build upon 40k rules interactions

there is no deeper reason to try discussing the same narrative meta-topics again and again with mostly the same people

I can agree with that, it does get kind of very up-hilly to try to hold those discussions in public. Shame but it is what it is.

 Horst wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I just don't want the game itself to become an exercise in bartering for victory.

That's a terrible attitude, freebirth!

We must become more adept at bidding for victory, quiaff?

Aff.

I don't mind discussing a game, but I will admit having to do it EVERY game might get obnoxious. Of course, in this day and age most games are arranged before the day anyways via social media; you shouldn't just show up at the game store (I could see doing this if you lived like super close) and hope someone else did and just bring your army. Usually it's saying you'll be at the shop, so any negotiating can be done before you ever show up so you don't have to discuss it then; you already hashed it out a few days prior.

Why that's not more accepted is a mystery to me, since it requires basically nothing other than talking to the group you are probably already a part of.

Having a regularly scheduled game night where people just show up and play is pretty nice on everyone's schedule. You don't have to really put any effort into making the game happen, its just there waiting for you and when someone moves to the area they can just ask what night it is and likely show up to meet everyone and join the group. Basically, the negotiation was done years ago with the group's momentum carrying itself without any real intervention.

 LunarSol wrote:
Having a regularly scheduled game night where people just show up and play is pretty nice on everyone's schedule. You don't have to really put any effort into making the game happen, its just there waiting for you and when someone moves to the area they can just ask what night it is and likely show up to meet everyone and join the group. Basically, the negotiation was done years ago with the group's momentum carrying itself without any real intervention.

Even with a scheduled game night I see people communicate on social media in the store/club's Facebook group or otherwise to arrange games, or at the very least a "Hey I'm going to be at the shop if anyone wants a game" sort of message, which often gets someone to respond and a get set up in advance.

Wayniac wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Having a regularly scheduled game night where people just show up and play is pretty nice on everyone's schedule. You don't have to really put any effort into making the game happen, its just there waiting for you and when someone moves to the area they can just ask what night it is and likely show up to meet everyone and join the group. Basically, the negotiation was done years ago with the group's momentum carrying itself without any real intervention.

Even with a scheduled game night I see people communicate on social media in the store/club's Facebook group or otherwise to arrange games, or at the very least a "Hey I'm going to be at the shop if anyone wants a game" sort of message, which often gets someone to respond and a get set up in advance.

Sure, but there's still not much effort in that. Certainly not the kind of effort we're talking about in negotiating armies.

Deadnight wrote:

stratigo wrote:


If they're playing in a campaign... tell them to feth off.

Yes, but then you open yourself up to accusations of being 'tfg', 'hobby gatekeeping' and being a 'toxic player'.

For the record, playing with like minded individuals should be the number one piece of advice given to anyone. and be positive about your message, rather than othering.

If they're doing this, then all your players probably KNOW they are doing this, and are okay with them being told to leave. If enough of your players play in a similar way, then it is fine, your group just takes competitive lists and gameplay to campaign play too.

So.... to keep the ball rolling, I thought I'd bring up the other end of things.

One thing I've noticed is that for a lot of players, narrative play kind of gets beaten out of them similar to the way some people feel competitive play beats certain players out of a game. Narrative events sound great but in execution feel like they often fall apart on the table. This isn't just a matter of competitive players exploiting a gap or something. I regularly see our less competitive crowds (regardless of system) build up these big ideas for campaigns or special scenarios. They put weeks into planning but when the event comes around, they tend to lose interest as quickly as the competitive crowd does.

Some of that gets back to the difference between ideals and reality. The campaign and resources and stuff sounds really interesting, but the first time you have to spend 3+ hours playing a game crippled by outside forces, people seem to realize they'd rather get the best experience they can out of the game in front of them than suffer through busywork encounters as part of a larger game. It's like filler episodes; sure they might have moments but actually being forced to watch them often leaves you wishing you were spending your time on a favorite movie or better episode and tend to kill people's interest long term. I feel like a lot of people are turned off narrative campaigns for the same reason people don't like Jump Anime; the high points are thrilling, but slogging through all that filler just isn't worth it.

I think the will for narrative play is always there. In many ways I think its stronger than competitive. The issue is just that few narrative experiences are as well designed and thought through as the competitive stuff. People are really excited for things like the Oblivion campaign and similar efforts, just hugely skeptical after so many experiences with campaigns that just don't play out the way people hope.

Eh. I have seen a lot of what I considered well designed narrative events fizzle out as much as non designed narrative events.

Competitive events are rarely masterpieces of design. They are a series of games with standard scenarios and then collecting the points tally.

Some will go beyond that but those are rare and most of the playerbase really doesn't put a lot of stock in anything past the standings tally.

Narrative games suffer from a variety of things today:

1) gamer ADD is real. Events that span beyond a weekend are usually doomed to fail. This is stark contrast to the same style of events run 15-20 years ago. Today, the expectation is fast, quick, and move on.

2) gamer intolerance for any sort of imbalance is delicate. Which is quite ironic considering that despite this, they will latch on to GW games for competitive play where the whole idea is to listbuild an imbalanced experience and win by having the superior list.

So when narrative games get imbalanced, its true people will jump ship, but yet they'll stay true to tournament play where everyone is trying to push 4000 points of output into a 2000 point list to make a skew list.

EDIT: Come to think of it I think the difference is here is players like imbalance if they feel they are in control of creating the imbalance, but hate imbalance if its because of the scenario creating the imbalance.

3) they are more consuming and involve a greater deal of investment. Tournaments and pickups you show up, play, and go home. Campaigns require a bit more investment, which quite frankly is not present in today's playerbase in great quantities.

they will latch on to GW games for competitive play where the whole idea is to listbuild an imbalanced experience and win by having the superior list.

Just wanted to respond to this point, I don't think that's that odd, because both players are looking at the same rules and codex. Yes, you might not own a specific army, but MOST people who play 40k competitively will pick an army they think stands a chance at winning, and then try to build their army to counter everything else. So if both players are trying to build a superpowered imba list, then the idea is it should cancel out. It often does, many of my games are quite close when playing in ITC events.