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Hellebore wrote: I'd prefer they kept the fluff and army lists in separate books, so that I don't have to buy a reprint of fluff to get a new army list
That'd be the split of codex and supplements where most of the subfaction lore is in the supplement that wouldn't need updating nearly as often while the main rules could take up more of the book.
Heck, with keywords they could cram even more into the main book and leave the characters, lore and relics in the supplements.
I couldn't play this game at all without fluff, because I literally only play campaign style. One-off games aren't really my thing. I can generally get a story hook or two out of every sub faction description, and timelines allow me to add flashback episodic battles to create origin stories for relics or warlord traits.
As for rules bloat, for me, there's really no such thing. It's Lego to me. You can build a pretty decent house with fairly basic pieces. But if you want to build something truly impressive, you need a couple of different sets to combine the unique pieces in unique ways. You almost never use every piece in your collection, and some pieces are so specialized that you may only use them once every ten or fifteen projects. But when they work just right in combinations with pieces from other sets, it's like making history for your army's ongoing story.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/03 02:47:48
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
How? It doesn't teachs nearly anything about how the race works, his true motivations, how would be for your army and his soldiers to live in that society. It makes you less inmersed in the narrative of your own faction. Unlike Fantasy, where you could pin poin the origin of your army, all of their motivations, their enemys, the geography that makes them what they are, etc...
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
Heck, if it wasn't for the lore I wouldn't have learned that the boots on Inceptors absorbs impact when they land (allowing them to drop faster) and gives them an extra boost when they take off.
Visually they look a bit like stilts or skid plates but the lore fleshes out a bit about the unit that let's me visualize how they better move about in the setting.
I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/10/03 04:59:40
In the Grimdark future of DerpHammer40k, there are only dank memes!
They should be a decent amount of fluffy stuff in any codex, and other books as well.
I mostly just dont want low effort, low quality that some of the books have got. which is a shame, since they do have a rich background to use, and they waste a lot of that.
Fluff all the way. As a new player the last thing I was interested is how good something was represented on the table top.
My first ever army was tyranids because they looked like lizard/aliens things and they were the swarm hive mind aliens that come to devour all..
"Lictor is this chameleon predator alien thing that jumps out and blaps people?" cool im getting one
"Old one eye is this old lonely carnifex thats been left behind by the fleet and just goes around merking anything that comes near?" Neeaaaeato! Im getting one of those"
I would persoanly like more showcase in the codex and a bit on converting and colecting. I like pictures of nicely painted models.
Trip down memory lane the old BRBR from 3rd/4th (with black templars on cover) had all of the rules by which I mean rules for all of the armies plus a ton of pictures and fluff. how many pages was that ? Anyone have one to hand ?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/03 06:10:15
AngryAngel80 wrote: I don't know, when I see awesome rules, I'm like " Baby, your rules looking so fine. Maybe I gotta add you to my first strike battalion eh ? "
CadianGateTroll wrote: I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the end. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
CadianGateTroll wrote: I absolutely dont like people who like all that fluff in the codex as much as people who own iphone and complain about it and the power cord being over priced.
They are the people who pay for nudes when its free on the internet. They are the people who pay real money for bitcoin to speculate the market but lose when the bubble burst. They are the people who spend real money on cosmetic dlc micro transaction.
Fluff should just be a bare minimum and should be presented in army specific novels not in a rule book codex that is mandatory for playing.
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the ends. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
they also happen to be the worst people to play against(in non-tourney style games).
Going to point up at the poll results. Yes they should have fluff, yes even most of dakka thinks so.
It's a huge part of the fun of the game. Particularly when you don't care too much about 'cannon' and have fun with your spin on the general guideline of the game.
That said, as a kid, I read every last bit of fluff in that 2nd ed Tyranid codex. I still remember feeling like 3rd was a bit of a let down in that department, it went from vibrant and weird to grimdork really, really fast.
Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
Yeah, WHFB was great. It felt like an actual world instead of some high fantasy acid trip.
Like, you had your fantastical stuff, but it was alongside normal stuff as well, and that gave a nice contrast. I just don't feel that with the newer material.
What I have
~4100
~1660
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Peace through power!
A longbeard when it comes to Necrons and WHFB. Grumble Grumble
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
The thing is we do already have some choice. There is loads of fluff from Black Library.
And yet many people don't buy into it. Heck I only started properly reading any of it in the last few years and I've been a GW fan for well over a decade.
When you make it optional you make it something for tomorrow and when push comes to shove many, esp those getting started, are far more likely to buy more models than they are more books. As a result the background understanding of the game would diminish steadily. Lose the lore and you lose one of the connecting points to the game for many people. Heck even the short paragraph or two describing each unit in its setting is fantastic for connecting a player to that model as its imagined. It helps reinforce the imagination for the game and takes it a step away from just being, as another said above, a maths exercise (not that there is anything wrong in that approach of course).
GW has a very smart system with their codex/battletome approach. By smothering the player in artwork, rules, lore, model work, painting etc.. all in one document they hit a broad range of interest groups with the same publication. You could just as easily say lets take out the paint elements and painted armies, we don't need those either for the rules. However I'd bet if you started doing that the number and variety of painted armies would start to drop down because painting would be seen as more optional and gamers wouldn't want to spend more buying the painting promo book on its own.
Rules - all in one book, so buy one book and you can run any army. little snippet of fluff only.
Codexes - all fluff, painting guides, modelling tips, showcases - for people who want the details of their army.
Thus when an edition changes, no army is left behind. The codexes can be updated when new models are released. everything is reasonably balanced from the start of the edition, and stays the same as they release new models with their own leaflets, which are then included in the next edition release.
12,300 points of Orks
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Galas wrote: The problem is that fluff in 40k Codex (And now AoS books) sucks.
Is only a sucession of big battles with charts of units and formations (really I don't fething care about 4 pages with the unit composition of those Tau Hunter Cadres). I could understand that for Space Marines, but is very dissapointing with other races like Tau or Eldar. And don't make me start about those 20-30 pages of photos... what a filler. I mean, a couple are cool, but please...
Compare that with old Fantasy books. They where more like a history and sociological study about that specific race. I love my Ogre Kingdoms books, and the 6th edition Chaos Hordes book was something else: It totally make you felt inmersed in their culture. It made Chaos Warriors a proper culture, with their motivations, and not just a bunch of spiky barbarians.
You had timelines with battles, of course, and some small snipets, but it was much more centered around the race, his culture, etc...
You'd probably think differently if you were just starting the game and exploring the army.
How? It doesn't teachs nearly anything about how the race works, his true motivations, how would be for your army and his soldiers to live in that society. It makes you less inmersed in the narrative of your own faction. Unlike Fantasy, where you could pin poin the origin of your army, all of their motivations, their enemys, the geography that makes them what they are, etc...
It doesn't need to be a replete font of info. It just needs to be enjoyable snippets and images that inspire a player to collect units they like.
Warp Talons, for example. Well, they're mostly just Raptors with dual lightning claws. Fluff-wise its not so simple.
I'm not complaining about fluff in books. Quite the contrary, I love it. i just saying that the fluff in 40k books has always been of much inferior quality than the one in Fantasy Books.
Dakka does have White Knights and is also rather infamous for it's Black Knights. A new edition brings out the passionate and not all of them are good at expressing themselves in written form. There have been plenty of hysterical responses from both sides so far. So we descend into pointless bickering with neither side listening to each other. So posting here becomes more masturbation than conversation.
ERJAK wrote: Forcing a 40k player to keep playing 7th is basically a hate crime.
GW has a very smart system with their codex/battletome approach. By smothering the player in artwork, rules, lore, model work, painting etc.. all in one document they hit a broad range of interest groups with the same publication. You could just as easily say lets take out the paint elements and painted armies, we don't need those either for the rules. However I'd bet if you started doing that the number and variety of painted armies would start to drop down because painting would be seen as more optional and gamers wouldn't want to spend more buying the painting promo book on its own.
they are creating added value system, it is like with painting. If you spend X hours painting your army your less likely to quit, the game then if you never painted a single model at all. mobile games do it all the time, even if your now whaling it up, they make you invest a lot of time to get anything out of a game. And if you spend 200-300 hours playing and building up something, your less likely to leave and more likely to start spending money sooner or later. There is also the thing that people care less for stuff they did not have to pay for. If I go and download a 100 BL books, for free, and there is no real way to punish me for it, my stance on the worth of the lore, is going to be different, if I have to save up for a month to buy a book and at the same time remove money from model spending. Then the investment in to lore and books, becomes something of big value, because I spend money on it. That is also why I think GW was so careful with drip feeding the primaris lore, after the their expiriance with AoS start. There was a serious risk that if they went ham, and just killed off all the classic marines, classic eldar at the start of 8th, they risked their buyers not carring for the new stuff and there for spending less money or even not spending money at all. I mean technicaly there is nothing stoping people from giving their normal marines bigger bases and playing them as primaris marines.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sgt. Cortez 780957 10588177 wrote:
That's nonsense. Right now it's just as easy to get the rules via Internet / Battlescribe as the background. So I could say the same about people who claim to rip apart their Codizes and throw away the fluff pages. Or the people who every year say the only important thing in CA were the points changes at the end. Those people seem to be ignorant of different approaches to the game and only see it as some kind of math exercise.
yes, but unless you play at home, you can't go in to a store where the owner knows you did not bought the codex for him, and pretend that you left the army book, CA etc at home, but you have those handy print outs with all the rules on them. It is also the reason why store owners don't like digital rules, even if they are original bought from GW. From their perspective it is wasted money, not much different from coming in with a recast army.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/03 12:39:40
I would pay for either, but the current codexes are badly designed.
There need to be an index in the back, or the pages need to have cut outs so you can easily flip through, or colour coding etc.
I have to stick mini post it notes.
Either that or they need to make a quick reference codex just for rules and then have a special edition with all the fluff and art if you want it.
I don't mind the fluff and enjoy it occasionally, but it's a bit of a one off. I buy the codex for the rules and points. I would buy something better if it was available!
I'm not complaining about fluff in books. Quite the contrary, I love it. i just saying that the fluff in 40k books has always been of much inferior quality than the one in Fantasy Books.
Agreed. Some of my favourite warhammer fluff is from the 6th edition (I think) army books where the history presented was described from the point of view of the race itself.
So the description of, say, the events leading up to the Elven schism is very different between the High Elf and the Dark Elf books. In the Dark Elf account, Bel Shannar commits suicide after being shown that his incompetence will lead to the downfall of the elves and the remaining High Elf princes sabotage Malekith's trial in the sacred flame of Asuryan and are the ones who attack Malekith.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2019/10/03 15:18:49
The Laws of Thermodynamics:
1) You cannot win. 2) You cannot break even. 3) You cannot stop playing the game.
Colonel Flagg wrote:You think you're real smart. But you're not smart; you're dumb. Very dumb. But you've met your match in me.
I do love a bit of fluff but rules should be free and not coming with a fluff padding/tax. If they absolutely have to charge for a codex/rules, there should be a 'codex light' option that's purely rules so that if I want to just get my army rules for £10 without any pictures, fluff or colourful depictions then I can do that. I've been playing the game for 20 years; I don't need to dole out an extra £15-£30 for fluff that's only minutely changed in the last 15 of that.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2019/10/03 14:49:26
Absolutely fluff should be in the books. Most of the reasons have already been stated. It informs new players, gives armies character and sparks ideas for army and list themes.
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
They did do that with Knights when they were first released (6E) - one book that was pure lore, the other had the rules and stripped down lore. That it did not become the standard tells me it must not have sold very well.
Ginjitzu wrote: How about both? Wouldn't giving consumers a choice between a background filled premium edition, or a stripped back rules only edition allow everybody to have what they want?
They did do that with Knights when they were first released (6E) - one book that was pure lore, the other had the rules and stripped down lore. That it did not become the standard tells me it must not have sold very well.
No, it means they weren't making as much money from single sales of the fluff part. That's a massive difference.
This is just me theory-crafting, but:
Think about it. Most people bought a Knight kit because, let's be honest, it's one of the best kits ever that GW released. Of course if you want to use it for a game here and there, you want just the rules. Nobody cares about the fluff for Knights compared to AdMech/Skitarii and Genestealer Cults. Those have been in the background and people wanted to know more. We already know the basic tenets of Imperial Knights, so we just want the rules.
Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Don't even get me started on how bad the Chaos Knight release was. All that was needed was maybe 2 pages dedicated to rules and how to switch keywords, and then maybe an extra ten on the fall of Knights or how they became Renegades. What we have now is basically an insult if you think about it.
CaptainStabby wrote: If Tyberos falls and needs to catch himself it's because the ground needed killing.
jy2 wrote: BTW, I can't wait to run Double-D-thirsters! Man, just thinking about it gets me Khorney.
vipoid wrote: Indeed - what sort of bastard would want to use their codex?
MarsNZ wrote: ITT: SoB players upset that they're receiving the same condescending treatment that they've doled out in every CSM thread ever.
ClockworkZion wrote: Anyone who claims "no one" cares about the fluff of the knights should hit up their number one fan: Duncan Rhodes. They've used his fanboying about the lore as a joke in the renegade and chaode knight releases.
Absolute statements regsrding what the community does not like are almost always wrong.
Unless it's about hating 7th ed.
Don't even get me started on how bad the Chaos Knight release was. All that was needed was maybe 2 pages dedicated to rules and how to switch keywords, and then maybe an extra ten on the fall of Knights or how they became Renegades. What we have now is basically an insult if you think about it.
Renegades was pretty weak overall, the new book is better, even if it's lacking some on the knights who serve individual gods.
I, personally, do not need fluff in my codices any more. I have been playing for multiple editions, and I just need some rules for my toys and can make my own stories.
But for new players, absolutely! that is one of the most exciting parts of getting into the game.
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