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How do you make an army better then others and laste for more then a 2-3 months window, if it doesn't have a multitude of rules to carry it through out a whole edition? I mean you could leave it with some OP start power set, but that is more or less it and GW doesn't seem to give that to many factions in the first place. So of course it is good to have a ton of rules and a ton of units, because the more you have the higher the chance that some of them are going to be good at some point in time.

Well, I know board games that have a tiny fraction of 40K's rules and have provided me and my friends with more of an engaging intelectual challenge than WH40K for more years.

Width of the system and its depth are two different things, not to be confused. We talked about it in the topic about cosmetic differences in wargear rules adding plenty of tedious memorisation and no interesting decision-making to the game at the same time.

Well that is the problem it requires friends to play those games. You don't need to have any friends to play w40k .

Cyel wrote:
For example my regular gaming group calls wargames (and similar RNG-heavy titles) "social activities" and refuse to call them games, because of the almost total lack of "brain-provoking gamey-gaminess" and the predominance of pew-pewing and vroom-vrooming with toy soldiers.

Methinks your game group doesn't actually know much about wargames. The majority of wargames are nothing like warhammer, or warmachine, or anything similar. The majority are played using hex and counter systems and are more deterministic than they are RNG based.

The "roots in an RPG setting" have been dead for decades now though.

Fundamentally speaking, not really. The senior leadership of the design studio are all guys that started playing in the Rogue Trader era, a few of them actually worked on Rogue Trader. The big "forge the narrative" push is in part because these grognards believe that this is still a narrative game embedded in its original RPG roots. Beyond that, mechanically, the core of the game really hasn't changed that much from way back when, many of hte gameplay fundamentals are similar or identical. The game engine, at its heart, was never intended for what its being used for today.

Well that is the problem it requires friends to play those games. You don't need to have any friends to play w40k .

chaos0xomega wrote:

Methinks your game group doesn't actually know much about wargames. The majority of wargames are nothing like warhammer, or warmachine, or anything similar. The majority are played using hex and counter systems and are more deterministic than they are RNG based.

Sure thing! I meant miniature wargames, without being specific about it, so your comment is understandable. Other types of wargames are definitely something they like, for example we adore the combat system in The Game of Thrones (and the game itself) and enjoy simplistic but painful conflicts in Imperial 2030 or Age of Discovery.

chaos0xomega wrote:

The "roots in an RPG setting" have been dead for decades now though.

Fundamentally speaking, not really. The senior leadership of the design studio are all guys that started playing in the Rogue Trader era, a few of them actually worked on Rogue Trader. The big "forge the narrative" push is in part because these grognards believe that this is still a narrative game embedded in its original RPG roots. Beyond that, mechanically, the core of the game really hasn't changed that much from way back when, many of hte gameplay fundamentals are similar or identical. The game engine, at its heart, was never intended for what its being used for today.

The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.
If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing. That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

 Jidmah wrote:

The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.

Nobody ever claimed that they tried to write an RPG, nor is that what we are discussing.

If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing.

You have a very narrow definition/comprehension of what constitutes an RPG. There are many RPG's out there that do not do any of the things you just referenced. D&D is just one interpretation of the RPG genre (and not necessarily a good one).

That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

These are not mutually exclusive. RPG's are, by definition, tabletop games.

In that case, Magic:The Gathering is just a good RPG as previous editions of 40k were.

Oh, and please do provide a list of those "many RPGs" which provide as little support for roleplaying as 40k does.

Jidmah wrote:I've played and observed games of 4th and started with 5th, and plenty of the codices at that time dated back to 3rd edition. At that time I was already a P&P veteran and had lots of role-playing experience. In all those rules 40k never had any real aspects of an RPG in it, people role-playing the game are really no different that people role-playing their characters in World of Warcraft or GTA. You can immerse yourself into the game and have fun doing so, but the game has never offered any real support for it outside of a setting and customization options.

In fact, 9th edition crusade is probably the closest thing to an RPG I've ever experienced in 40k.

I disagree. You could always customize Your Dudes - buy Xenos Hunters for Guardsmen, give a medal to another guardsmen after great performance in the last game (which made him a Heroic Senior Officer profile while retaining whatever role he had in your army before) etc.

Jidmah wrote:The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.
If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing. That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

I don't think we're using the RPG analogy very well here. Why are mechanical features (character progression, skill checks, dungeons, NPCs, etc) the same as narrative elements? View the plot as your army's success and failure in the hard world - for example, my fluff in 3rd-6th counted the game stores I played in each as separate planets, and any pickup games I had were battles. A city was a system, a state was a subsector, never really got to leave the country, lol. These battles could be viewed as "dungeons" or "monsters" against which my character (army) was tested, and either succeeded or failed. I don't have to "level up" or find "+1 sword of stabbening" in order to have that narrative experience. In that sense, it's like an RPG - I'm telling a story about a character in a world in which there are other characters, and they sometimes come into conflict. The fact that I don't earn 350XP after every encounter or gain additional Eldritch Invocations on my warlock psyker doesn't make it suddenly not-narrative.

That's actually why I think it's funny you brought up Crusade. I would review Crusade as "progression" but I would then say that progression isn't the same thing as narrative. Crusade is more like a Call of Duty game, where you get thrown into random matches, with a random mission on a random map, and if you win you get some XP towards your next class unlock (or character trait or relic or whatever crusade thing you want). Progression is not the same thing as narrative. Check out WintersSEO's review of Crusade on youtube for a similar line of thinking.

TL;DR:I think it is definitely possible to have narrative without progression, and conversely I don't think adding progression to something makes it narrative by default.

I've played 40K since second edition - and I'm not entirely sure in what manner folks feel like 40K was more of an RPG (in the narrative sense?) in older editions versus newer ones.

I mean, whether or not a given player was playing an army list that was "in character" has always been up to individual discretion. Players have always been able to come up with some cheesy, non-fluffy list with little repercussion.

While I like the older editions more (4th + 5th) from a gameplay standpoint, if it were to come down to it I feel like 6th, 7th - and perhaps now 9th - are more RPG-like in some ways. The formations from 7th edition were all incentives to build fluffy lists. The new 9th edition non-standard missions are all throw backs to 2nd and 4th edition missions with attackers and defenders, etc.

I could be wrong of course...

The biggest difference now is that it is possible for a "fluffy list" to accidentally or incidentally be super overpowered.

Back in the day, you kinda had to try to break the game - taking advantage of unforseen wargear combinations or rules interactions or army building oversights. Typically, if you played the game the way the designers predicted you would (i.e. narratively and without looking for advantage), it was okay.

These days, you can build a narrative list and arrive at the table only to find out that your list is horrifyingly overcapable and effortlessly tables the enemy, even building to GW's "Forge the Narrative!" mentality.

I've played 40K since second edition - and I'm not entirely sure in what manner folks feel like 40K was more of an RPG (in the narrative sense?) in older editions versus newer ones.

Play 1st edition and you'll understand why. Very different gameplay experience. The design studio moved things in the direction of "mass battle" from there while trying to keep the narrative flavor in 2nd edition, but by 3rd edition the game was no longer really being played as a narrative game by the community at large. Fundamentally, however, the core ggameplay mechanics haven't really changed much since first edition which is where a lot of issues with the game "engine" come from.

Oh, and please do provide a list of those "many RPGs" which provide as little support for roleplaying as 40k does.

Your problem is that you don't seem to actually know what roleplaying is. None of what you described is "role playing". The list of RPG's that don't use any sort of card, dice, skill checks, dungeons, NPCs, monsters, etc. is longer than the character limit on a post in this thread. Hell, theres probably literal thousands of RPG's out there that don't have GM's either. Rather than giving you a long list of gak you're never going to look up, try looking up Microscope, Kingdom, Follow, and Union by Lame Mage Productions should really push your understanding of what an RPG is/can be - there are no skill checks, no dungeons, NPCs, monsters, no GM, hell - no characters really. RPGs are a hell of a lot more than D&D, Pathfinder, and "roll above a 13 on a d20".

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest difference now is that it is possible for a "fluffy list" to accidentally or incidentally be super overpowered.

Back in the day, you kinda had to try to break the game - taking advantage of unforseen wargear combinations or rules interactions or army building oversights. Typically, if you played the game the way the designers predicted you would (i.e. narratively and without looking for advantage), it was okay.

These days, you can build a narrative list and arrive at the table only to find out that your list is horrifyingly overcapable and effortlessly tables the enemy, even building to GW's "Forge the Narrative!" mentality.

Do you have an example of these "accidentally super overpowered" lists?

I feel that in 8th and 9th you have to break the game significantly more than you ever did before, when you had clear massive imbalances from codex to codex depending on what the designer was thinking at the time.

Tyel wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The biggest difference now is that it is possible for a "fluffy list" to accidentally or incidentally be super overpowered.

Back in the day, you kinda had to try to break the game - taking advantage of unforseen wargear combinations or rules interactions or army building oversights. Typically, if you played the game the way the designers predicted you would (i.e. narratively and without looking for advantage), it was okay.

These days, you can build a narrative list and arrive at the table only to find out that your list is horrifyingly overcapable and effortlessly tables the enemy, even building to GW's "Forge the Narrative!" mentality.

Do you have an example of these "accidentally super overpowered" lists?

I feel that in 8th and 9th you have to break the game significantly more than you ever did before, when you had clear massive imbalances from codex to codex depending on what the designer was thinking at the time.

Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

 Jidmah wrote:

The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.
If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing. That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

You need to forge the narrative harder.

When people make comparisons to RPGs they generally mean it in terms of the game providing and facilitating options, and also in terms of approaching the game in a collaborative manner instead of a selfish one, and the equivalent of have the story drive the game choices/make up ('things should fit') rather than an absolute and unbending insistence on for example, only taking the most powerful stuff and not giving a toss about the other person. Like RPGs, they also mean that the players have a role and responsibility in their own enjoyment and game building.

With respect you have focused in exclusively on the mechanics of a game. Player Attitude counts for a lot more, if you ask me. And the older I get the more I value the latter.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I actually had an earlier thread where I suggested 40k is dropping the war from wargame, and becoming just a game.

So I fully agree with you, and it pains me that this is the case.

It is not longer a wargame. It is MTG.

It was never a wargame.

SecondTime wrote:
It was never a wargame.

It was more of a wargame than it is now, even if it wasn't Avalon-Hill.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

Depends I guess on your lists - but the evidence is CWE and Tyranids have a shot *if they go first* - which is at least comparable, and potentially better, than *good codex* and *bad codex* for every previous edition of 40k.

Really while I'll whinge about Marines until the cows come home - it is premised on people tailoring and spamming (within the rule of 3) the top stuff. Not running an old-style White Dwarf army list of "I own 1 of every unit, and I'll just grab 9 of them" and see.

As I've noted elsewhere, from my perception, 40k is a vehicle to sell plastic space monsters and toy soldiers, the game is not the focus of GW's attentions.

40k, as a game, is a sandbox where anything GW makes from their IP's can be used and have something to roll dice for or influence dice rolls to make it feel special and cool no matter how big or small (or appropriateness to the general scale), it is not the end product but a supplementary one, and is not intended to be a realistic combat simulator or immersive tactical challenge, it's there to give people a reason to buy models by giving them something to do with those models so they can go "my plastic soldier totally chainsawed your toy monster in the face before he got torn in half, hahaha that was awesome!"

Tyel wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

Depends I guess on your lists - but the evidence is CWE and Tyranids have a shot *if they go first* - which is at least comparable, and potentially better, than *good codex* and *bad codex* for every previous edition of 40k.

Really while I'll whinge about Marines until the cows come home - it is premised on people tailoring and spamming (within the rule of 3) the top stuff. Not running an old-style White Dwarf army list of "I own 1 of every unit, and I'll just grab 9 of them" and see.

Well, that depends on the nature of the fluff.

A competitive White Scars list really looks like white scars should look, with some bikes and melee threats that move quick.
A competitive Salamanders list also looks like a fluffy Salamanders list.

You can't differentiate (with some chapters especially) between fluff and competitive, which is a dream imo, and that's why I said it was generally a good book. But the problem is that other books aren't the same, and so a fluffy Salamanders list ends up also being a competitive Salamanders list (or not too different), and crushes its narrative opponents despite the player simply executing fluff on a fluffy list.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

This is a poor comparison. The new Space Marine codex is written to a different standard than the CWE or Tyranid books. Its comparing apples to oranges. You have to compare the old SM codex to the CWE or Tyranids book in order to get meaningful output.

As I've noted elsewhere, from my perception, 40k is a vehicle to sell plastic space monsters and toy soldiers, the game is not the focus of GW's attentions.

100%

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

This is a poor comparison. The new Space Marine codex is written to a different standard than the CWE or Tyranid books. Its comparing apples to oranges. You have to compare the old SM codex to the CWE or Tyranids book in order to get meaningful output.

This is the truth right now, when my group's Crusade campaign is ongoing. Everyone is playing with current rules (though even the 8.5 Marine dex would still trounce CWE or Tyranids). There's not much to be done, really, except wait for GW to balance the game. Until then, it is what it is and my point holds true.

 Vaktathi wrote:
As I've noted elsewhere, from my perception, 40k is a vehicle to sell plastic space monsters and toy soldiers, the game is not the focus of GW's attentions.

40k, as a game, is a sandbox where anything GW makes from their IP's can be used and have something to roll dice for or influence dice rolls to make it feel special and cool no matter how big or small (or appropriateness to the general scale), it is not the end product but a supplementary one, and is not intended to be a realistic combat simulator or immersive tactical challenge, it's there to give people a reason to buy models by giving them something to do with those models so they can go "my plastic soldier totally chainsawed your toy monster in the face before he got torn in half, hahaha that was awesome!"

That's it, in a nutshell. The rules are an excuse to use models, there's not much of a real "game" about them, even if the props are there (dice, rulebooks). Which becomes kind of obvious once you start comparing them to actual games.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Tyel wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

Depends I guess on your lists - but the evidence is CWE and Tyranids have a shot *if they go first* - which is at least comparable, and potentially better, than *good codex* and *bad codex* for every previous edition of 40k.

Really while I'll whinge about Marines until the cows come home - it is premised on people tailoring and spamming (within the rule of 3) the top stuff. Not running an old-style White Dwarf army list of "I own 1 of every unit, and I'll just grab 9 of them" and see.

Well, that depends on the nature of the fluff.

A competitive White Scars list really looks like white scars should look, with some bikes and melee threats that move quick.
A competitive Salamanders list also looks like a fluffy Salamanders list.

You can't differentiate (with some chapters especially) between fluff and competitive, which is a dream imo, and that's why I said it was generally a good book. But the problem is that other books aren't the same, and so a fluffy Salamanders list ends up also being a competitive Salamanders list (or not too different), and crushes its narrative opponents despite the player simply executing fluff on a fluffy list.

That goes back to why people love the 3.5 chaos codex so much. the forces were viable in performance while also at the same time being totally fluff based army lists. being the best mix of wargame and RPG "light" that gave you a game that also felt like it was in the 40K setting.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

Spoiler:

Jidmah wrote:I've played and observed games of 4th and started with 5th, and plenty of the codices at that time dated back to 3rd edition. At that time I was already a P&P veteran and had lots of role-playing experience. In all those rules 40k never had any real aspects of an RPG in it, people role-playing the game are really no different that people role-playing their characters in World of Warcraft or GTA. You can immerse yourself into the game and have fun doing so, but the game has never offered any real support for it outside of a setting and customization options.

In fact, 9th edition crusade is probably the closest thing to an RPG I've ever experienced in 40k.

I disagree. You could always customize Your Dudes - buy Xenos Hunters for Guardsmen, give a medal to another guardsmen after great performance in the last game (which made him a Heroic Senior Officer profile while retaining whatever role he had in your army before) etc.

Jidmah wrote:The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.
If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing. That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

I don't think we're using the RPG analogy very well here. Why are mechanical features (character progression, skill checks, dungeons, NPCs, etc) the same as narrative elements? View the plot as your army's success and failure in the hard world - for example, my fluff in 3rd-6th counted the game stores I played in each as separate planets, and any pickup games I had were battles. A city was a system, a state was a subsector, never really got to leave the country, lol. These battles could be viewed as "dungeons" or "monsters" against which my character (army) was tested, and either succeeded or failed. I don't have to "level up" or find "+1 sword of stabbening" in order to have that narrative experience. In that sense, it's like an RPG - I'm telling a story about a character in a world in which there are other characters, and they sometimes come into conflict. The fact that I don't earn 350XP after every encounter or gain additional Eldritch Invocations on my warlock psyker doesn't make it suddenly not-narrative.

That's actually why I think it's funny you brought up Crusade. I would review Crusade as "progression" but I would then say that progression isn't the same thing as narrative. Crusade is more like a Call of Duty game, where you get thrown into random matches, with a random mission on a random map, and if you win you get some XP towards your next class unlock (or character trait or relic or whatever crusade thing you want). Progression is not the same thing as narrative. Check out WintersSEO's review of Crusade on youtube for a similar line of thinking.

TL;DR:I think it is definitely possible to have narrative without progression, and conversely I don't think adding progression to something makes it narrative by default.

If you remember, we had this discussion before. Zero of the things you describe here are in any way related to Games Workshop, the rules of warhammer 40k or whatever edition you were playing.
You could have done everything you describe there if the game rules hadn't existed.
Therefore, the game of Warhammer 40k is not an RPG nor does it support you in any way when you play it as such any more than the games Risk or Chess do.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Your problem is that you don't seem to actually know what roleplaying is. None of what you described is "role playing". The list of RPG's that don't use any sort of card, dice, skill checks, dungeons, NPCs, monsters, etc. is longer than the character limit on a post in this thread. Hell, theres probably literal thousands of RPG's out there that don't have GM's either. Rather than giving you a long list of gak you're never going to look up, try looking up Microscope, Kingdom, Follow, and Union by Lame Mage Productions should really push your understanding of what an RPG is/can be - there are no skill checks, no dungeons, NPCs, monsters, no GM, hell - no characters really. RPGs are a hell of a lot more than D&D, Pathfinder, and "roll above a 13 on a d20".

I literally went to each of those games sites and found more support in the short blurb describing them for roleplaying than in 4th to 8th editions rules COMBINED.

All of them are games that help you tell a story, Warhammer 40k has never done such a thing.

Oh, and to point out the irony in your extremely condescending post - Warhammer 40k as I know it has never been anything but "roll above 3+ on a d6".




Automatically Appended Next Post:

Deadnight wrote:
You need to forge the narrative harder.

When people make comparisons to RPGs they generally mean it in terms of the game providing and facilitating options, and also in terms of approaching the game in a collaborative manner instead of a selfish one, and the equivalent of have the story drive the game choices/make up ('things should fit') rather than an absolute and unbending insistence on for example, only taking the most powerful stuff and not giving a toss about the other person. Like RPGs, they also mean that the players have a role and responsibility in their own enjoyment and game building.

With respect you have focused in exclusively on the mechanics of a game. Player Attitude counts for a lot more, if you ask me. And the older I get the more I value the latter.

The point you (and others) are missing, is not that I don't understand what role-playing is. I have been role-player for ten years when I picked up 40k in 5th, and by that I don't mean rolling dice against monsters from some monster manual until they die. I'm currently DMing a campaign that has been running for seven or eight years while playing as a player another round for years that rarely if ever needs dice for anything and even tried LARPing. I'm perfectly aware of what I'm talking about.

It's possible to role-play in World of Warcraft, Skyrim, Fallout or GTA, it's possible to role-play in turn-based spaceship browser games, it's possible to role-play the arkham horror, zombicide, the settlers or "a ticket to ride" board games. It's possibile to role-play MtG and the munchkin game. And of course, it's possible to role-play in Warhammer 40k.
Everything you describe is true for pretty much every game ever made that has some sort of background attached to it - so pretty much anything beside games like cards against humanity, poker or tic-tac-toe.

My whole point is the mechanics of the game do nothing to provide a narrative nor does it provide constructs or processes to create such a narrative like the games chaos0xomega listed. There is no story telling element anywhere. Therefore it fails to fulfill the basic requirements of a role-playing game.
If we meet in person at a bar somewhere and you just start assuming the role of a commissar and me the role of marine captain disagreeing with you, we have exactly as much support for that as when we do when we put 2000 points of miniatures on a gaming table between us.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:


Well, sure. The new Space Marine codex on the whole is a great example - a beauty of a book allowing many styles of fluffy play, that also happens to cream books like CWE or Tyranids that are built with fluff in mind.

This is a poor comparison. The new Space Marine codex is written to a different standard than the CWE or Tyranid books. Its comparing apples to oranges. You have to compare the old SM codex to the CWE or Tyranids book in order to get meaningful output.

Not sure you can say that as atleast some of these codex's are going to be the current rules for these factions for over a year.
Your basically saying you can't even have a close game but that's okay as you don't have a Codex, "Wait and see what your codex does before you complain".

So effectively the message is suck it up and don't complain about having zero realistic chance of even close games for 6 months to more than a year, while the new codex's wipe the floor with you.

watcha chatting about OP.

Rolling 60+ dice and re-rolling all of them is super tactical..

40k is the least tactictal game that I have read the rules for and have a general understanding of.

I've switched to other games like LOTR, Conquest, and even buying and painting two armies for Epic armageddon.




40k is desiged this way because it forces you to constiantly think about your army comp, thus making you more likely to buy models. The philosophy of the current game design is directly corresponded to sales, a d boy are sales good.

Deadnight wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:

Spoiler:

The thing is, even if they intended to write an RPG that doesn't mean that they succeeded. Or even came close.
If you would compare 40k to D&D, all they have done is provide you with a character generator and rules for PvP and absolutely nothing else. The only way to play is to drop a pair of characters into an arena, have them fight, and then they disappear until they get dropped into the arena again. No plot, no character progression, no skill checks, no dungeons, no NPCs, no monsters, nothing. That's not an RPG, that's a tabletop game.

You need to forge the narrative harder.

When people make comparisons to RPGs they generally mean it in terms of the game providing and facilitating options, and also in terms of approaching the game in a collaborative manner instead of a selfish one, and the equivalent of have the story drive the game choices/make up ('things should fit') rather than an absolute and unbending insistence on for example, only taking the most powerful stuff and not giving a toss about the other person. Like RPGs, they also mean that the players have a role and responsibility in their own enjoyment and game building.

With respect you have focused in exclusively on the mechanics of a game. Player Attitude counts for a lot more, if you ask me. And the older I get the more I value the latter.

It is an entirely different mindset and I think that some players cannot even comprehend playing any other way. which is an incredibly sad thing.

Vaktathi wrote:As I've noted elsewhere, from my perception, 40k is a vehicle to sell plastic space monsters and toy soldiers, the game is not the focus of GW's attentions.

40k, as a game, is a sandbox where anything GW makes from their IP's can be used and have something to roll dice for or influence dice rolls to make it feel special and cool no matter how big or small (or appropriateness to the general scale), it is not the end product but a supplementary one, and is not intended to be a realistic combat simulator or immersive tactical challenge, it's there to give people a reason to buy models by giving them something to do with those models so they can go "my plastic soldier totally chainsawed your toy monster in the face before he got torn in half, hahaha that was awesome!"

this pretty much sums it up.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sledgehammer wrote:

40k is desiged this way because it forces you to constiantly think about your army comp, thus making you more likely to buy models. The philosophy of the current game design is directly corresponded to sales, a d boy are sales good.

this has been true since RT: models first, rules....3rd or 4th.

cuz let's face it, if the models sucked GW wouldn't be where they are today.