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Racerguy180 wrote:

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.

“Blimey you turn your back for a day or two! I worked for GW (Citadel in Newark and then GW at Eastwood and Nottingham) for 28 years, and the company changed a great deal over that time, but we always aimed at making money. I can just about remember the days when making money was about having enough in the bank at the end of the month to cover our wages – I don’t know if that was ever literally true – but it certainly came across that way! We also enjoyed what we were doing! We enjoyed games and gaming and – of course – the models that went with that. The big recent change is that GW has actually stated – both during the Chapter House court hearing and subsequently to its shareholders – that it considers its market to be collectors of models and not gamers. The games are very much played down internally, and you can see with the latest (very nicely done!) models that they are conceived as collectors pieces that have very little practicality in terms of a wargame. It’s perfec tly fine for GW to turn its backs upon wargaming in favour of modelling and collecting if that is the vision of the current management. But the result is that many customers who are or have been passionate about GW’s games do feel marginalized. I should add that we always used to maintain a games design department that was fairly heavy weight – smart guys, some of them rebarbative, bloody-minded and mildly dangerous types (dangerous to themselves on occasion). I won’t say who it was… but one of our staff once ran back into the burning building he’d just been rescued from by the fire brigade to recover his ‘stash’ from the flames! The design team has been run down over the years – the guys who work there now are just not doing the same sort of work and they’re not the same sort of people. Probably for the best "

Source: https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2015/03/rick-priestley-talks-games-workshop.html


Now tell me how this was always the case, when the guy who created 40k is saying it?

Wow. That is an old article

 Jidmah wrote:

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.

Fair point!

I disagree somewhat when you say the mechanics of a game don't provide a narrative or there is no story telling. But maybe it's just perception more than anything. (We probably agree on more things than we realise.)

They don't really need to. That's the secret.The mechanics are merely resolutions. At its most basic, yhe narrative and the storytelling is imposing one's imagination on the outcome of the dice and the set up.of the game. In terms of storytelling I'd argue the tools are there. storytelling is 'who', 'why' and 'how'. the open ended and modular nature of the game building blocks and the frankly huge amount of scenarios and ridiculous amount of background info and source msterisl is all that's needed for game building. Beyond that it's very easy to envision a scenario as to why this is happening. It's a sandbox and very much envisioned to be entirely in the hands of its players. Hence why I stayed that attitude is more important. 40k is as narrative as you want it to be.

The other argument I tend to see online is you shouldn't do it this way, or narrative is silly because it's a poor narrative game with no mechanical support. I disagree. 40k isn't a poor narrative game, it's simply a poor, clunky game, full stop. Player involvement is necessary, I just don't disagree this is a bad thing in general as I'd do it with all games anyway.

This approach also relies on the players 'game building'. Just like a good RPG group, they should be aligned with each other, including the GM, in terms of what kind of game they are playing, and their characters should fit the setting being presented. Too often people assume that as wargames are adversarial, you shouldn't collaborate (or even that this approach is wrong and offensive) or try to 'match' lists/power/approach for a better game.

Now there is nothing intrinsically unique to 40k that this is an exclusive property or somehow that 40k is better at it (I'd argue rather than 40k being a better narrative game, a narrative game is the best/least bad way to approach 40k). I should know - me and my group have played this way with pretty much every game we plau for a long long time.

I think we are actually saying the same thing, you are just being more positive about it than I am

 Jidmah wrote:

 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.

I don't remember, and I still disagree.
I cannot roleplay in Chess or Risk, because there's no background, no setting, no hooks. I cannot make the Trynzendian 7th Xeno Hunters in Chess, because those words have no meaning. Similarly in Risk, there's no real background other than "is earth, go do" which isn't helpful. Indeed, the starting positions are determined randomly by cards rather than by the players, which I think inhibits narrative creation somewhat.

Warhammer 40k has a rich background, 40k The Game used to encourage you to make Your Dudes with tips and tricks for how they fit into the background, and even gave you rules for customizing Your Dudes to a specific desired background. Neither Chess nor Risk have any of those things, and therefore I contest that they are different. I can't see how you think they're the same, honestly. It's like saying DND is Chess with more steps...

 Jidmah wrote:
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.

So far I am with you, and I don't quite see what you're getting at.

 Jidmah wrote:
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.

There absolutely is a storytelling element, this premise I disagree with. 40k in the past was always about Your Dudes and how you could make them Your Dudes, from conversion guides to army construction rules to plot progression based on gameplay to art... I mean really. There was no requirement to have an ongoing narrative, I'll concede that, but even DND doesn't require an ongoing narrative; you could definitely do a series of one-offs in DND with no narrative thread. So simply "requiring an ongoing narrative" doesn't define an RPG.

 Jidmah wrote:
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.

First of all, if we do that first thing, it's role playing.
Secondly, there's a bit more support for the 2000 points of miniatures because I will insist that there is. I will make a satisfactory narrative and we will come to some agreement, or the game doesn't happen, because that's part of my preferred social contract to play. That's what people mean when they say it is Player Attitude rather than Game Mechanics.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I cannot roleplay in Chess or Risk, because there's no background, no setting, no hooks. I cannot make the Trynzendian 7th Xeno Hunters in Chess, because those words have no meaning. Similarly in Risk, there's no real background other than "is earth, go do" which isn't helpful. Indeed, the starting positions are determined randomly by cards rather than by the players, which I think inhibits narrative creation somewhat.

More of an hilarious anecdote than an argument, but I've actually done both in the past. The game of risk was among some guys who I also play some of the P&P games with and one dropped a pile of armies onto India and started assuming the role of the Gandhi who was coming to pacify all of eurasia (or nuke it), the next guy who was in charge of most of north america became Rainier Wolfcastle, a third one was Sanchez, a south-american drug baron and I assumed the role of a passionate french politician roughly based on the french guard from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Any resemblance of strategy died right there and it became a game about feuds, pointlessly attacking countries for historic/pop culture reasons and about how Gandhi back-stabbed Rainier Wolfcastle to help a drug baron capture canada.
In a similar fashion the chess thing happened. I impersonated the Red Queen from Alice, while my opponent acted and voiced his guys according to their counter-parts in Warcraft, trying to defeat the evil queen.

Warhammer 40k has a rich background, 40k The Game used to encourage you to make Your Dudes with tips and tricks for how they fit into the background, and even gave you rules for customizing Your Dudes to a specific desired background. Neither Chess nor Risk have any of those things, and therefore I contest that they are different. I can't see how you think they're the same, honestly. It's like saying DND is Chess with more steps...

In my opinion Warhammer40k:The Game is not the same as Warhammer40k: The Hobby. I fail to see how exactly 4th-7th edition helped you to create "Your Dudes" and therefore am wondering how those editions affected your way of playing at all.
Saying that D&D is Chess with extra chess is absolutely not what I am trying to say, quite the opposite. I'm saying that Chess is NOT D&D precisely because it doesn't support any sort of story telling. So actually Warhammer 40k is chess with extra steps, while D&D actually has resources, rule support and much more to create your dude(s) and experience a story with them.

There absolutely is a storytelling element, this premise I disagree with. 40k in the past was always about Your Dudes and how you could make them Your Dudes, from conversion guides to army construction rules to plot progression based on gameplay to art... I mean really.

Maybe point me to some resource of the game that does this? I have access to pretty much everything released since 5th, maybe I just don't get what you are talking about.

There was no requirement to have an ongoing narrative, I'll concede that, but even DND doesn't require an ongoing narrative; you could definitely do a series of one-offs in DND with no narrative thread. So simply "requiring an ongoing narrative" doesn't define an RPG.

A one-shot is still an ongoing narrative, even it's a short one. In any case it's way more than what a game of 40k does in my opinion. 40k feels like rolling a characters, dropping them into combat immediately after creation, trade blows for 5 turns and then stop. Sure, I can spin a story around that, and probably so can you, but did the game really contribute anything to this? Would it have mattered to the narrative whether you were playing 5th, 7th or 8th edition? Or Apoc?

 Jidmah wrote:
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.

First of all, if we do that first thing, it's role playing.
Secondly, there's a bit more support for the 2000 points of miniatures because I will insist that there is. I will make a satisfactory narrative and we will come to some agreement, or the game doesn't happen, because that's part of my preferred social contract to play. That's what people mean when they say it is Player Attitude rather than Game Mechanics.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I cannot roleplay in Chess or Risk, because there's no background, no setting, no hooks. I cannot make the Trynzendian 7th Xeno Hunters in Chess, because those words have no meaning. Similarly in Risk, there's no real background other than "is earth, go do" which isn't helpful. Indeed, the starting positions are determined randomly by cards rather than by the players, which I think inhibits narrative creation somewhat.

More of an hilarious anecdote than an argument, but I've actually done both in the past. The game of risk was among some guys who I also play some of the P&P games with and one dropped a pile of armies onto India and started assuming the role of the Gandhi who was coming to pacify all of eurasia (or nuke it), the next guy who was in charge of most of north america became Rainier Wolfcastle, a third one was Sanchez, a south-american drug baron and I assumed the role of a passionate french politician roughly based on the french guard from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Any resemblance of strategy died right there and it became a game about feuds, pointlessly attacking countries for historic/pop culture reasons and about how Gandhi back-stabbed Rainier Wolfcastle to help a drug baron capture canada.
In a similar fashion the chess thing happened. I impersonated the Red Queen from Alice, while my opponent acted and voiced his guys according to their counter-parts in Warcraft, trying to defeat the evil queen.

That's really cool that you did that. Maybe Risk is more RPGish than I've experienced it before.

 Jidmah wrote:

Warhammer 40k has a rich background, 40k The Game used to encourage you to make Your Dudes with tips and tricks for how they fit into the background, and even gave you rules for customizing Your Dudes to a specific desired background. Neither Chess nor Risk have any of those things, and therefore I contest that they are different. I can't see how you think they're the same, honestly. It's like saying DND is Chess with more steps...

In my opinion Warhammer40k:The Game is not the same as Warhammer40k: The Hobby. I fail to see how exactly 4th-7th edition helped you to create "Your Dudes" and therefore am wondering how those editions affected your way of playing at all.
Saying that D&D is Chess with extra chess is absolutely not what I am trying to say, quite the opposite. I'm saying that Chess is NOT D&D precisely because it doesn't support any sort of story telling. So actually Warhammer 40k is chess with extra steps, while D&D actually has resources, rule support and much more to create your dude(s) and experience a story with them.

I see the problem, I think. Because you differentiate the game from the setting in Warhammer, but not in D&D.
In D&D, I can conceive of (and indeed have participated in) "tournaments", PVP or otherwise, where the goal is to make the optimal party (or character) and beat the other parties (or characters) in various disconnected combat scenarios. There's no story, no narrative, and the story is not required for the game to mechanically function.
Conversely, for Warhammer, I can conceive of (and indeed have participated in) narrative sessions, PVP or otherwise, where the goal is to tell a story and collaboratively build a shared world and narrative.

Neither game has any more or less mechanical support for Narrative, because I'm not sure what mechanical support for narrative even consists of; the "Languages" your characters speak? How much better your guy is at Skill checks?

When I say support for narrative, I'm talking about the whole hobby - both in DND and in Warhammer 40k. Just looking at pure and unfiltered game mechanics, I think it's impossible to say that DND is narrative. You aren't even required to name your character in the rules.

 Jidmah wrote:

There absolutely is a storytelling element, this premise I disagree with. 40k in the past was always about Your Dudes and how you could make them Your Dudes, from conversion guides to army construction rules to plot progression based on gameplay to art... I mean really.

Maybe point me to some resource of the game that does this? I have access to pretty much everything released since 5th, maybe I just don't get what you are talking about.

Convenient. The example I was going to point to was the 4th edition Imperial Guard codex, where there were recommendations for regiment names, explanations of paint schemes, Doctrine choices that had small benefits for your army (similar to Backgrounds in 5e DnD), guides for converting your guys to more clearly meet those Doctrines (Background choices) like putting Tyranid bits on tanks for the Xeno Hunters: Tyranids doctrine, etc.

 Jidmah wrote:

There was no requirement to have an ongoing narrative, I'll concede that, but even DND doesn't require an ongoing narrative; you could definitely do a series of one-offs in DND with no narrative thread. So simply "requiring an ongoing narrative" doesn't define an RPG.

A one-shot is still an ongoing narrative, even it's a short one. In any case it's way more than what a game of 40k does in my opinion. 40k feels like rolling a characters, dropping them into combat immediately after creation, trade blows for 5 turns and then stop. Sure, I can spin a story around that, and probably so can you, but did the game really contribute anything to this? Would it have mattered to the narrative whether you were playing 5th, 7th or 8th edition? Or Apoc?

No, and you could do the same thing in any DND edition without houseruling anything. The game mechanics support narrative equally. DND requires no more narrative than 40k does. The players have to collaborate to build the story.

 Jidmah wrote:
First of all, you don't have to worry about my attitude. If you define a narrative, I will strive to match your effort and will try my best to make the game as fun as possible for us both.
But the thing is, it's then you and me supporting that narrative, maybe the way our models are built and painted and possibly the existing background story of your company and my Waaagh!, but not the game itself. It merely provides a system which decides whether certain actions fail or succeed, which is part of every RPG, but not all there is to being one.

It's all there is to D&D. We could equally arrive at a table with 2 constructed DND characters and without houseruling anything, have a GM oversee the two characters rolling dice at each other until one falls over. You are unreasonably divorcing mechanics and rules for 40k but not for DND.

Convenient. The example I was going to point to was the 4th edition Imperial Guard codex, where there were recommendations for regiment names, explanations of paint schemes, Doctrine choices that had small benefits for your army (similar to Backgrounds in 5e DnD), guides for converting your guys to more clearly meet those Doctrines (Background choices) like putting Tyranid bits on tanks for the Xeno Hunters: Tyranids doctrine, etc.

That was true of the 4th ed space marine codex as well through the trait system. Although it did get abused by the competitive players, the intent was to allow you to build your own unique force that was "your's" and behaved in a way on the table that represented their lore.

My salamanders successors have a rather extensive background story that directly ties into their combat style as to what units they are allowed and not allowed to use because of their chapter structure as well as how they fight.

The 4th edition codex had fixed traits for the first founding legions as a "light" version of the restricted lore based army lists/abilities in 3rd.

Maybe point me to some resource of the game that does this? I have access to pretty much everything released since 5th, maybe I just don't get what you are talking about.

Probably because 5th is where the game started moving away from the lore based rules in a big way with a few exception codexes. for those of us who started in 3rd or earlier. much of the reason we play and our so loyal to our faction is based on how the factions lore appeals to us. which at one point was much more reflected in game mechanics than it is now.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
In D&D, I can conceive of (and indeed have participated in) "tournaments", PVP or otherwise, where the goal is to make the optimal party (or character) and beat the other parties (or characters) in various disconnected combat scenarios. There's no story, no narrative, and the story is not required for the game to mechanically function.

This is literally the first time I have heard about something like this, what an abomination
That said, I haven't played D&D outside of video games since I was in school, I just used it as an example because it's a widely known game and I don't expect people on dakka to get references to German P&P systems
So I can't actually argue the specifics of the most current D&D rulesets.

Neither game has any more or less mechanical support for Narrative, because I'm not sure what mechanical support for narrative even consists of; the "Languages" your characters speak? How much better your guy is at Skill checks?

One thing would be being able to buy books with finished stories inside, resource books that help you build campaigns, describe playable setting, maps and so on. I frequently "steal" D&D stuff and adapt it for my games and campaigns, so I know there is a lot.
I'm currently preparing the third narrative campaign I've written for WH40k and it's absolutely frustrating how little official resources support me in doing that. Most stuff is star maps, conflicts which don't match the scale of the game or settings which don't make sense to handle with even a small army. The only things in that regard were the Imperial Armor books and urban conquest box - each heavily flawed, but narrative resources nonetheless.

 Jidmah wrote:
Convenient. The example I was going to point to was the 4th edition Imperial Guard codex, where there were recommendations for regiment names, explanations of paint schemes, Doctrine choices that had small benefits for your army (similar to Backgrounds in 5e DnD), guides for converting your guys to more clearly meet those Doctrines (Background choices) like putting Tyranid bits on tanks for the Xeno Hunters: Tyranids doctrine, etc.

Today I learned that guard had rough riders riding dinosaurs
That book for sure makes the game feel much more like an RPG, but when I compare it to 4th edition's DA or orks, it's definitely an outlier. If earlier books all looked like that, I can understand why people see 40k as an RPG.

It's all there is to D&D. We could equally arrive at a table with 2 constructed DND characters and without houseruling anything, have a GM oversee the two characters rolling dice at each other until one falls over. You are unreasonably divorcing mechanics and rules for 40k but not for DND.

Sure, but we could also break out the "Curse of Strahd" (a D&D adventure which I took parts from and inserted into my current campaign) and have narrative support from the game itself. I am not aware of anything comparable to that in 40k.

alot of the earlier books looked like that jid.

3.5 Chaos is another exemple for it, going so far as to replace the standard FOC for other combinations. gifts of chaos etc... god you could creat such geniously hillarious HQ's f.e. with gifts of chaos....

And of course it got competitivly speaking abused to hell and back.. but recent events show that the lack of RPG elements doesn't impove the game on that front either.

 Jidmah wrote:

This is literally the first time I have heard about something like this, what an abomination

I've heard of them too. I remember people wanting to use Pp's ikrpg for skirmishes like this. (What happens when competitively minded combat focused wargamers 'play' rpg's, haha! )

 Jidmah wrote:

One thing would be being able to buy books with finished stories inside, resource books that help you build campaigns, describe playable setting, maps and so on.

You can take 'books with finished stories' too far. In wargaming terms this leans towards reenacting already fought battles. see that kind of 'on rails' design of more modern RPGs and it makes me shudder.

Anyway, I don't think they're needed. The source msterisl is already there, you don't need to put a gw sticker on it to make it 'real'. Basically, 'how' you build an army is almost entirely modular - let's not talk about the competitive game, but in principle you can build 'an army' any tens of thousands of ways, and put it up against any tens of thousands of opponents. The scenario and objectives etc - again, tens of thousands of ideas and scenarios out there and that just from gw publications - there's more elsewhere. Heck, watch an old movie. Imagine a 40k-ised 'saving private ryan' and building an appropriate 'cast' for the game.

This is how historically speaking, games were built and played for decades before now. Speak to any historical player and they still probably organise like this. It's a self constructed myth that 40k players cannot play outside the impositions of officialdom.

 Jidmah wrote:

Sure, but we could also break out the "Curse of Strahd" (a D&D adventure which I took parts from and inserted into my current campaign) and have narrative support from the game itself. I am not aware of anything comparable to that in 40k.

My imagination and my conversations with my friends as we talk through the campaign, motivations and consequences of actions. I don't need a book to help me 'forge my narrative'.

"I don't need official resources" is something completely different from "the game provides no official resources".

My main game currently is called "The Dark Eye" which is infamous for having rules for pretty much everything, from how you pray to what gods, how well specific crops are grown during a certain seasons in a specific area, to how long an ork warrior lasts when having intercourse with an elf courtesan (yes, I'm serious). It's also notorious for immersion breaking silly names for cities or important characters.
Do I use all those rules and background? Hell no. I don't think anyone does. Especially not the last one.

Basically when preparing for my P&P groups I have tons of support from official material that I can use if I want. When creating a narrative game or campaign for 40k, there is no such option.

But it's much easier to leave stuff out than to cook up everything yourself. When using an pre-created setting or story I keep the things I like and drop the things I don't.
If I wanted to re-create the battle for hive hades as a campaign, there is nothing in any books that would help me setting up narrative games outside of a few character names.

TL;DR: Being able to forge a narrative around a game out of thin air is not the same as the game supporting narrative gaming.

 Jidmah wrote:
"I don't need official resources" is something completely different from "the game provides no official resources".

TL;DR: Being able to forge a narrative around a game out of thin air is not the same as the game supporting narrative gaming.

And yet, the resources, inspirations and source materials are there regardless. It's just more sandpit than instruction manual.

You don't necessarily need rules for every little thing. I've never heard of 'the dark eye' but I'm intrigued. But you don't need it all.to have a narrative. One of my friends back home is an amazing GM. This guy's stories and world building will blow your mind. And he makes all his own worlds and just cobbles together what he needs. He doesn't need books with finished stories' to tell his tales. Regarding leaving stuff out or cooking stuff up, it's a give and take really. Take 40k fans and try and suggest something is 'optional' or doesn't need to be taken. The cult of officialdom is too strong. In terms of cooking stuff up I find building things up or adding my own bit of spice from little pieces is far more stimulating and rewarding than taking something big and lopping bits off. YMMV.


And with respect, if the game wasn't capable of supporting narrative gaming, whether it's from an Instriction manual or from my head, I wouldn't be able to do what I do. (I think you've made a poor choice of words, with respect.)I clearly can, so therefore The game can and does support and accomodate narrative gaming, but what's most important to making the narrative live and breathe is the players approach and attitude to bring this to the table as well.

I think we are running around in circles about the definition of "support" here.

By "support", I mean actively enabling people to play narrative games and providing resources that help doing that.

What you mean by "support" is that the game allows you to integrate it into a narrative.

40k does the later, but not the former.

As for the dark eye, have a look here: https://www.ulisses-us.com/games/the-dark-eye/
I'm not sure how much of the game is available in English - owning all the resource books might rival 40k in terms of costs.

 Jidmah wrote:
"I don't need official resources" is something completely different from "the game provides no official resources".

My main game currently is called "The Dark Eye" which is infamous for having rules for pretty much everything, from how you pray to what gods, how well specific crops are grown during a certain seasons in a specific area, to how long an ork warrior lasts when having intercourse with an elf courtesan (yes, I'm serious). It's also notorious for immersion breaking silly names for cities or important characters.
Do I use all those rules and background? Hell no. I don't think anyone does. Especially not the last one.

Basically when preparing for my P&P groups I have tons of support from official material that I can use if I want. When creating a narrative game or campaign for 40k, there is no such option.

But it's much easier to leave stuff out than to cook up everything yourself. When using an pre-created setting or story I keep the things I like and drop the things I don't.
If I wanted to re-create the battle for hive hades as a campaign, there is nothing in any books that would help me setting up narrative games outside of a few character names.

TL;DR: Being able to forge a narrative around a game out of thin air is not the same as the game supporting narrative gaming.

Mmh, not too convinced about that.

Literature about 40k, including the vast corpus of codicies, rulebooks, supplements and so on both for the main game as well as other systems in the same universe (Epic, BFG, Necromunda etc.) offers a treasure trove of stories, seeds of inspiration, mission schematics and so on give the players much more support than most other games could dream of. Ancillary publications like White Dwarf, or older Fanatic Magazines, Citadel Journal etc. were positively oozing with campaigns, narrative scenarios, alternative army lists and similar goodies (like Battle for Ork's Drift, Armageddon and Eye of Terror mega campaigns with their multi-table games, Bugman's Lament...). Older Imperial Armour books like Siege of Vraks listed dozens of historical scenarios with full army lists to go with if rivet counting was your thing, HH black books include like half a dozen campaign systems explicitly meant for narrative driven campaigns that can incorporate anything from two players to dozens with multi-act structures... Most of those scenarios, ideas, campaign structures and what nots of previous editions are pretty trivially transported to the present day, where we also have the Crusade system for more mechanical incentives to play with a narrative flair on the table (various agendas that advance your guys but not you winning the missions).

In comparison to most commercial RPG's, that's a truckload more useful stuff than they have available and most of that is soulless drivel that you have to adapt for your own purposes anyway. I'm an active RPG referee, too, and boy if 90 % of everything isn't just made by uninspired hacks with occasional useable bits hidden in the muck

It is still worth noting that they are also serving somewhat different purposes, because for a miniature game the focus is on that side of things. You want the narrative system to give you interesting reasons to fight your miniature games, which 40k literature does in abundance, but unlike a full-blown RPG where our focus might shift from perspective to another more often without so formal a frame, here we simply need scenarios that support the themes of chosen reasons. If you have a reason to fight (say, invasion of Armageddon), scenarios for that (Planetfall scenarios as Orks crash down and pour out of their roks against first defensive lines scrambling to face them, invaders attacking freshwater supply tankers on the oceans, a Cities of Death scenario when the Orks breach into a hive...) and armies for that, you're good to go BUT can then slap on extra bits on it as fits your tastes (decide the next scenario depending on the previous results like tree campaigns, give promotions and injuries on the participants like Crusade, have players write narrative after action reports to develop a sense of ownership of the campaign...). All of this has been covered in GW publications as possible ideas for gaming, so it really is mostly the players' fault for being too entrenched in their previous mindset if they do not utilize those resources.

Personally, I see narrative 40k as a collection of GW offerings. There are different games for different scales of conflict, but they are all "40k" for the narrative purpose. Have a star map with BFG planetary assaults decide how many points of attacking troops fight over a theatre of war fought over by Epic armies, zoom on a single bunker assault with regular 40k, have a Kill Team fight over a defence laser battery that can be fired on a 40k table, have Aeronautica bombers pummel a 40k table unless stopped by enemy fighters in time, jump in the craters with infantry after a Titanicus battle has flattened a hab block..

A classic White Dwarf game during the Armageddon campaign was like this with only 40k being used: you had a huge main table where Orks assaulted Imperial Guard, Blood Angels and Salamanders. There were three side tables. From one table, a battery of Basilisks on a nearby mountainside bombarded the main table as long as an Ork wave hadn't silenced them. One table was a boarding action inside an Ork space ship in orbit, which fired on the main table every turn until Black Templars strike force could destroy the three guns there. A third table was fought on plains beside the city, where both Orks and White Scars were racing on fast units to bring reinforcements on the main table. Similar setups don't have to run simultaneously to work, just affecting upcoming games with linked ideas (which GW still endorses in their publications, like CA19), is a good starting point for mechanising narrative elements into the game.

There's plenty to go off from in GW books, with the caveat that proper narrative play requires more from the players to begin with, but saying there's no support for it is patently false.

Yeah. To say there's absolutely zero support for narrative gaming in 40k is to simply not look.

In older editions, there were loads of campaign books, such as the Eye of Terror campaign, the Armageddon campaign, and others. They included not only historical scenarios, but also unique army lists with advice for making the models for said lists (since they didn't make them at the time). They also included advice for running your own campaigns in those settings. There were ridiculously awesome White Dwarf articles about rivalry campaigns (e.g. 1v1 campaigns) and all sorts of cool bits and gubbins. GW used to put rule PDFs on their website as well that often included a narrative scenario (though not usually a whole campaign).

In 5th, they came out with the Battle Missions book to help you design missions and pick fun and engaging missions that were off the beaten path and not really great for tournaments. They also had the Planetstrike book, which not only gave you rules for the namesake battle type but also recommendations and a guide for how to run a map campaign set on a planet against which you'd struck.

Forge World's Imperial Armor series is chalk full of that stuff, from narrative scenarios set in the "history" of the conflict they cover to unique army lists and their own named characters, sometimes taken from Black Library novels.

In 7th, GW's campaign books generally flopped, but they existed (e.g. Fall of Cadia). However, within the framework of 7th, Forge World released Horus Heresy Book 4: Conquest, which has the most comprehensive guide to campaign development and play that I have ever seen. It has recommendations for both map and node campaigns, examples of bonuses or maluses that can be applied to armies based on success or failure, ways to adjudicate what happened to slain characters after the battle that are sensible and narratively informed (e.g. penalties if killed by an Instant Death weapon, bonuses if killed by a weapon lower than their Toughness, etc)... there's so much I can't even list it all. You can find a review of it here.

The support is out there. You do have to go find it.

A game where the fundamental foundation is taking an extremely permissive, loose set of requirements for army construction, and deciding which of dozens upon dozens of units with potentially hundreds of minute wargear variations plus additional rules like power selection, warlord traits, relics, etc provides you the same amount of structure to support you making "Your Dudes" as CHESS?


...............Am I fundamentally missing something here? This is the whole entire reason why I play 40k and it holds my attention while I have brief love affairs with games like Monpoc, Malifaux and WMH and then lose interest. Because the game is huge, diverse and sprawling, and in the real world unlike online the vast majority of people are playing their faction in a cool, unique way.

Even in and amongst the most bland dull wet blanket faction I spend the most time complaining about there's so much variety. Amongst our marine players we have:

-A guy who plays all firstborn traditional razorback and predator salamanders

-An all-tanks all the time Iron Hands mechanized list

-A guy who plays a list that's mostly dreadnoughts, uses Blood Angels rules to represent his custom Dragon Warriors chapter because BA had psyker dreads and frag cannons that could be huge flamethrowers

-A guy who plays by-the-book all primaris ultramarines with Calgar and all-terminators blood angels

-A guy who plays commando themed primaris raven guard with all the shadowspear units

-A canadian guy whose white scars are painted up in the colors of the canadian olympic all-star hockey team with maple leaf shoulder decals, conversions for all his HQs to represent famous canadian hockey legends, incredible custom ice rink bases, with each unit representing a position on the team with Aggressor goalies, Biker defenders and Vanvet offense


That's not how other games tend to work. IF you have subfaction designation, typically you have to pick a particular named character, that particular named character has a list setup that's pretty much pre-fixed by the competitive community, and most people don't paint them in terribly distinct colors. That's my experience from other communities anyway. There's more creativity and variety in the army list setup of just the players of 1 faction in the 40k community where I'm at than the entire WMH community combined.

The Vigilus books had an ongoing narrative and included missions to replay key moments of the story.
The CA provided campaign options, character development and veteran options for units.
There were Cities of Death missions with a campaign tree, there was Urban Conquest where you conquered a hive world I think. There were rules to support your narrative missions with sustained assault for example. There were rules to connect Kill team, 40K and Apo in an ongoing, escalating campaign.
There was the Kronus campaign where they put out a narrative mission every two weeks and the outcome worldwide was noted by GW and used for the next step in that campaign.

This is all just 8th edition.In 9th so far you only have Crusade and I haven't looked much into it yet.
But looking at that I don't follow Judmahs argument that there wouldn't be support for narrative 40K, especially when he described how he made a narrative out of risk.

Competitive D&D is an abomination, if there exist a worse system than warhammer is D&D specially for PVP without a balancing Master allowing players to work outside the rules.

But is wildly popular. Just like 40k.

 Galas wrote:
Competitive D&D is an abomination, if there exist a worse system than warhammer is D&D specially for PVP without a balancing Master allowing players to work outside the rules.

But is wildly popular. Just like 40k.

My least favorite part of PVP DND is how irrelevant armor class is. Stealth is so powerful (and hard for the poor pvp dm to manage) that it doesn't matter if you're in plate or not. What matters is if you can pass stealth checks vs a bajillion passive perceptions (at least in my experience).

But yes, it is wildly popular.

40k is a poor game. The mechanics neither foster a strong narrative nor create engaging, tactical games.


40k's mechanics, as already said up the page, are a resolution mechanism. Ever since I started in 5th, 40k's rules have been the resolution mechanisms for moving, punching, and shooting. In the most boring, abstract way possible. 5th D&D also suffers from this. What makes games fun is the journey, not the destination. Without a ruleset where tactics matter, and players can influence each other's behavior, it is little different from Yahtzee.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Competitive D&D is an abomination, if there exist a worse system than warhammer is D&D specially for PVP without a balancing Master allowing players to work outside the rules.

But is wildly popular. Just like 40k.

My least favorite part of PVP DND is how irrelevant armor class is. Stealth is so powerful (and hard for the poor pvp dm to manage) that it doesn't matter if you're in plate or not. What matters is if you can pass stealth checks vs a bajillion passive perceptions (at least in my experience).

But yes, it is wildly popular.

There is COMPETITIVE dungeons and...

....but....

There's not even a system for DAMAGE to MEAN ANYTHING!!! You're just a bag of hit points and you fight the same at 1HP as you do at 100! WHY would you ever play it as a COMPETITIVE -

People feel this way about 40k, don't they.

They have 9W or less I guess.

The entire reason dnd is so simple, is that it's intended to be a system that allows for a mixture of people who are taking the mechanics really seriously, and people who are playing very very casually and barely understand the rules at all, to play together successfully. They put in all the expansion sets and the subclasses and the subsystems in to make people who are into it stay interested, but they keep the playstyle of "I just attack" always viable to retain the ultra-casual crowd that plays with basically no mechanics.

DND 5th is a perfectly modeled freemium game system. To be clear: Perfectly modeled for profit, because profit is what matters in our current society, and if something is profitable because it's the best thing that is a happy accident and extreme rarity.

40k is so much the opposite of that it isn't even funny. You can buy a 40$ box of figures and it can be 2.5% of a standard competitive army.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

 Galas wrote:
Competitive D&D is an abomination, if there exist a worse system than warhammer is D&D specially for PVP without a balancing Master allowing players to work outside the rules.

But is wildly popular. Just like 40k.

My least favorite part of PVP DND is how irrelevant armor class is. Stealth is so powerful (and hard for the poor pvp dm to manage) that it doesn't matter if you're in plate or not. What matters is if you can pass stealth checks vs a bajillion passive perceptions (at least in my experience).

But yes, it is wildly popular.

There is COMPETITIVE dungeons and...

....but....

There's not even a system for DAMAGE to MEAN ANYTHING!!! You're just a bag of hit points and you fight the same at 1HP as you do at 100! WHY would you ever play it as a COMPETITIVE -

People feel this way about 40k, don't they.

https://iniciativamas4.com/inicio

This is a spanish web about competitive D&D , where they show you the games, the "best builds", you have teams of players, heroes, etc...

As I said, I find it to be an abomination, a subversion of everything RPG is about.

But it is popular and people love to watch it and do it so... eh more power for them.

SecondTime wrote:
They have 9W or less I guess.

Sure, but the gulf between "exists" and "Dead" in 40k is so small it's immaterial for most things with 9w or less. competitive DnD would have the depth of a 40k tournament where all the players are only allowed to bring 1 knight.

....Which I did actually run, at one point, for my group and it was actually fun, but the very first thing I did was put in a system whereby players could either choose to take the damage from a failed saving throw on their Wounds, or they could choose to roll on a random damage table of impeding effects with a modifier based on the number of wounds they were taking at once. But if I'd given the players room to play with the mechanics and powergame and optimize instead of everyone just turning up with their favorite 400-500 point superheavy (special exception for Stompas and Khornemowers) it would have sucked ass.

Also at least knights have SOME degrading stats

Lots of RPG systems do have degrading capabilities associated with incoming damage. Even something as simple as Storyteller system. DnD just chooses to be a homage to the past I guess.

SecondTime wrote:
Lots of RPG systems do have degrading capabilities associated with incoming damage. Even something as simple as Storyteller system. DnD just chooses to be a homage to the past I guess.

Sure, and you could argue that if you could give people the same effects as status conditions then what would be the point of not just optimizing to deal the most damage possible, bla bla bla, but like, it's so obviously and blatantly not a system that's FOR that when you have spells that just have general descriptions and like "And YOU AND YOUR DM figure out what the heck that means!" that I wonder why the hell you'd even bother.

It'd be like running a 2nd edition 40k tournament. Do you get +1 to hit on your shooting attack roll? I dunno, is the target model "Larger than an elephant"? I hope you have your tournament regulation 28mm heroic scale plastic elephant handy! You need it, every time you make a shooting attack!

I've never met or seen *anyone* play "D&D PVP", so I am left wondering if its wildly popular in the US and largely unknown elsewhere.

As I see it 40k isn't an RPG because while you can embody the spirit of your faction and make decisions for units based on how you think "they'd act in character" you are not in any sense compelled or even asked to do so. The amount of variation you have to make "your dudes" your dudes doesn't change that. I'm not trying to write a shared story - I just want to win the game. Or at least try to do so.

Tyel wrote:

As I see it 40k isn't an RPG because while you can embody the spirit of your faction and make decisions for units based on how you think "they'd act in character" you are not in any sense compelled or even asked to do so. The amount of variation you have to make "your dudes" your dudes doesn't change that. I'm not trying to write a shared story - I just want to win the game. Or at least try to do so.

I think you really hit the nail on the head here. Every single game that people agree is an RPG rewards you for acting in character, whether with actual rewards such as XP or items or a more engaging story with special conversations and character moments and such. You don't get points in 40k if your Grey Knights shoot all your Guardsmen after they beat some Chaos in a game of apocalypse, even if that's an in-character action for them to take.