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And I think I can explain why....

How do!

As we await the next instalment of Broken Realms, my mind turned to how much I enjoyed Morathi (not like that you dirty bugger), especially when compared to Psychic Awakening for 40K.

This is highlighted by my continued love for the Rogue Trader era of 40K. Now, brace yourself and maybe grab a cuppa, because inevitable meandering is inevitable here.

See, the Rogue Trader era (which spanned around 5 years) was a hotbed of unbridled creativity. It had to be, as they were busy creating what has become an absolute SciFi juggernaut. The setting and the forces within it were all being thought up, fleshed out and bulked out. Sure, not everything survived, and some stuff (including Marines believe it or not) weren’t fully codified until quite late on.

And that’s kinda where AoS is right now, though with what seems to be more of a coherent plan behind it (RT was gloriously bonkers and chaotic).

I mean, in its first five years, we’ve had new takes on old races introduced. We’ve had the Realmgate Wars, the Necroquake, and what’s currently rolling out with Broken Realms.

The setting itself is one of near unlimited potential in the stories that can be told. With the relatively newly established Cities of Sigmar, there’s room for distinctly Old World tales (nefarious cults, Skaven invasion, sieges etc). With so much lost during the Age of Chaos, tales of tomb robbing, dungeoneering etc are near unlimited. And all whilst there can be colossal shake ups of the status quo.

Each and every race feels important. No participants in a home brew campaign feel convoluted or out of place as say, Lizardmen once did (at least to me). That all helps players to feel invested and dare I say valued. Sure you might wish for a better or more expansive army book - but every race feels like a legitimate part of the setting, with the ability to make its own mark.

To go back to the Necroquake, the published and evolving Official Background feels creative again, because it can have serious ramifications in the way the Old World couldn’t, and 40K is struggling with (seriously, most of the volumes of Psychic Awakening just....ended. Like there was a conclusion missed out from the print run).

For me, all it boils down to the core of the setting (the Realms themselves) still being kinda vague. Yes, we know that other than Shyish how they work (interior pretty stable, very edges utterly inimical to life, and shades between in between as you travel toward one or the other). We also know the Realms interact with each other. And that broadly, rather than being orbiting planets, they’re interpreted planes of existence.

But, when it comes to specifics of geography? Not so much. Yes we’ve some maps, but it’s clear those are regions of a Realm, rather than the whole of the Realm (as a map of Talabheim was to a map of the Empire). Again, this gives us guidance for our own creation, without setting very many rules.

I also like that actions have consequences. Nothing goes unpunished overall.

Even the relationships between the Gods is intriguing, and full of potential.

The Gods of Order are a very, very loose alliance. Yes they will combine forces quite readily, but each still has their own agenda. Some are hidden (Morathi), some are open (Sigmar) and some, for now at least, remain unknown (Malerion).

Nagash? Well....let’s face it, the dude is nothing if not a pragmatist. If it serves him and his overall aims, or interferes the least, he’ll be open to helping out.

Gorkamorka? He and his are just having a fantastic time with all these new and interesting fights popping up. Suffice to say I’m intrigued what the Big Green Git might do during Broken Realms. I’d love for him to go old Skool RT and smack Khorne in the gob again. Don’t care if it’s for a reason, or just because he can.

Sigmar’s pantheon acts as a really nice counter to the Dark Gods narratively speaking. Where the baddies arguably have the numbers, the Goodies are more willing, and indeed able, to work together, temporarily setting their own rivalries and agendas aside.

By setting their stall out this way from the get go, I feel fans of AoS aren’t as.....sniffy, as 40K fans (BA and Necrons temporary alliance to wreck a Hive Fleet sent people nuts, despite both being known for honourable conduct). Anything seems possible. Nothing feels particularly taboo. And it’s still in its infancy.

My only real fear here is that they won’t know when to stop, and it all becomes overly convoluted. A fluid setting with room to evolve is cool and interesting. An impermanent, overly fluid setting where it doesn’t feel like anything really sticks, not so much.

But man. I love my AoS background!

On the subject of GW not knowing when to stop its somewhat scary that AoS has about as many "factions" as 40K has - yet without the dominating Marines and Imperial lines; AoS has VASTLY more creative freedom within each of its armies.
So GW can likely add a few more before they hit a limit - I hope they do stop as new armies are great but big additions to current armies are also important and its clear with Slaanesh and Lumineth getting big updates this year, that GW realises this need too.



Other than that my only real gripes about the setting are that GW still hasn't put into place a dating system. It's annoying because its nice to know when stories relate to each other temporally and spatially. They are slowly getting there with maps; but right now dates are mostly a case of before/after major events like the start of AoS or the Necroquake event. Massive landmark events that define the setting.


I'd also say that for all the creative freedom the design team has; Black Library is playing catch up, especially since Josh Reynolds has moved on. I feel like AoS is being used for a lot of new talent, which is great, but at the same time a lot of GWs experienced and skilled talent is tangled up with big 40K stories and settings. I'd love to see some more experienced and skilled authors take up the fantasy mantel for AoS and dive into the setting in more depth. I hope that things like the Soulbound RPG are going to help deepen the lore and attract writers to write about the setting.

Plus with BL/GW being more open to every army getting stories (no chosen side here) it means that you can write great sagas about orks (orruks) or demons and not just about glorious marines and Imperials (which was the bulk of BL stories about 40K - its actually shocking how few Eldar, Ork, Tau and such stories there are. I can accept Tyranids being a bit tricky, but darn the other Xenos races should have more than the handful of books they do have)

True. Though for AoS novels, I highly recommend Warhammer Horror.

Again, with the setting constantly evolving, anything can happen in them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
True. Though for AoS novels, I highly recommend Warhammer Horror.

Again, with the setting constantly evolving, anything can happen in them.

I've not yet dipped into the horror - I keep getting side tracked by classic Old World stuff - mostly Gotrek and Felix omnibus editions.

A worthy read for sure!

For Warhammer Horror, I strongly recommend starting with the Anthology books, as they’re the best showcase. If the story your on isn’t to your taste, then just like The Fast Show, there’s another along in a minute.

Of course, if none tickle your fancy, you’ll probs be best off not reading further

Truthfully, Psychic Awakening was fine--the problem is that the 'payout' got spoiled far in advance with the leak of 9E and COVID delaying releases and the usual whinging over "too many books!" derailed anything meaningful really being mentioned.

Right now, Broken Realms has done one good thing:
It created the first City of Sigmar that actually feels unique. Har Kuron is, IMO, what they kept promising us when Cities was first announced:

Bits of Old World flavor with a distinctly AoS twist.

They do need to be a bit careful about over saturating with too many armies. I think after getting a full blown vampire line, malerions shadow elfs and maybe one more faction for destruction they should calm things down a bit. But the setting is a great sandbox for creativity. They can get away with stuff that wouldn't work in the more grounded old world setting.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Each and every race feels important. No participants in a home brew campaign feel convoluted or out of place as say,

Well, except for those sea elves who's fish can swim through the air....

I love the Deepkin models. I just can't bring myself to play them on the grassy fields represented by most of our tables/terrain though. It's just too much of a clash.

Don't they essentially carry an envelope of water around themselves?

Lore still kind of gak. Cool things happen but in a world that in it's own off the wall uniqueness feels bland.

 Overread wrote:
Other than that my only real gripes about the setting are that GW still hasn't put into place a dating system. It's annoying because its nice to know when stories relate to each other temporally and spatially. They are slowly getting there with maps; but right now dates are mostly a case of before/after major events like the start of AoS or the Necroquake event. Massive landmark events that define the setting

I see adding a codified dating system into AoS being much the same as making ones own rope that will probably hang themselves later.

I much prefer the major event timeline. As a very long time D&D player of a number of published settings I couldn't tell you what the current year of any character of mine adventured in the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Dark Sun or any save maybe Ravenloft toward the end of 2nd ed with the Lich Azalin re-arranged the demi-realm and turned the biggest city into undead. It didn't really matter to the events of the campaign we were playing. It would have bound the DM more than provide any structure especially if any additional material was published and moved what little meta-plot those setting had.

As a wargame, I feel similarly with AoS. We start throwing concrete dates on things then we start worrying about how that might affect the lore of our armies. Fortunately, most armies are composed of the long-lived to functionally or actually immortal. But not every faction. I don't know about you, but I like the idea of Captain Hans Franz of Hammerhall having to be Hans the First, II, III, and so one depending on how dates shake out but Hans being a basically a direct copy of his father, grandfather or great (times X) grandfather to keep up with the story.

Nor do I want the 40k issue of thousands of years of things being bad, but like the last score of years of 41st millennium being absolutely crammed with terrible events happening. Which also suffered the short (and brutal) life issue when GW moved things up a couple of centuries which should have killed most if all the Imperial Guard heroes. Honestly, probably should have done in most space marine heroes too given that even chapter masters still fight and few marines live past a few centuries as they begin to slow. Yet, the whole First Founding gang is still there because most of them have models. Which I totally get. Just pointing it out.

I also like the no formal dating as it still indicates that Chaos and chaos still largely control the Realms. I think the lack of accurate time keeping goes hand and hand with the lack of space tracking. I like that AoS is a setting where most of the map is, "Here be dragons." I think it gets far too over-looked that much of the Mortal Realms looks like planets inside the 40k's Eye of Terror. Since many people call AoS less Grimdark than 40k since some factions are completely horribly evil. The funny thing is much of the lands itself of AoS are very much evil to the point they were almost irreversible (and may still be).

I do understand the desire for formal dates. They would definitely provide structure and perspective. However, I don't think structure and perspective would really help AoS since the lack of those elements really leaves the setting more in the hands of the players. Sure, there are major events that drive a meta-plot. Without dates, it allows the margins for a player to have a have their armies exist or even be at some major battles and events since there isn't a time frame too large or too small for them not be there.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Don't they essentially carry an envelope of water around themselves?

{shrugs} Couldn't tell you as I'm not inspired to read their lore.
But even if they do? I still think the sight of flying sharks over our green fields, medieval buildings, & pine trees doesn't jive.

On reading thread title: Yup

On reading first line: Do you need to?

Regarding dating system, in..october, or november WD they started publishing timeline of events for AoS, and they outright said "We will not be adding any definite dating, it leads to continuity issues" which...makes sense in a setting that spans literal tens of thousands of years (age of myth).

The benefits of starting a whole new game.
I allso belive this was very big experiment by GW, and they chose the least favorable game system they had. Could have taken LotR but im guessing that is a more protected IP/ game system???, and thus they did not want to mess with it.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
Which also suffered the short (and brutal) life issue when GW moved things up a couple of centuries which should have killed most if all the Imperial Guard heroes. .

And unsurprisingly GW retconned that away.

Cronch wrote:
Regarding dating system, in..october, or november WD they started publishing timeline of events for AoS, and they outright said "We will not be adding any definite dating, it leads to continuity issues" which...makes sense in a setting that spans literal tens of thousands of years (age of myth).

This is a fair point well made.

I hadn’t really noticed the lack of a dating system for the background to be honest. But adding one would tie things up more than feels necessary. Though it would be cool to see that some of Sigmar’s campaigns last decades or more.

I think it makes sense from a certain perspective how they are handling it. They had to make a big decision about their lines - would they keep the Middle Earth stuff, or get rid of it?

They decided to keep it, and that meant they had a very well detailed, fully mapped out, real world adjacent fantasy setting. The Ur Fantasy setting for that sort of thing, you can't get better than Tolkien. Any sort of grounded "real" fantasy was going to be in that setting going forward.

So they had WFB, not selling well and also in a grounded setting. I'm a huge fan of the Old World, but from a strategic POV I can see that they probably felt it was too similar in theme to LOTR in terms of low fantasy stuff. Why have two competing lines?

So they went for something wacky, out there, heavy metal high fantasy, a pulp fantasy painting on amphetamines.

Has it all landed? Not really, I would say. The release was botched and certain choices they've made don't sit will with me. It doesn't help that I don't love the aesthetics of the new Orcs and the new Slayers. Stormcast look cool, though I find the background a bit meh (I would actually prefer them as faceless minions of Order, a counterpart to the Daemons. I think ordinary people should be scared of them, even though they are defending them.)

I like a lot of the broad imagery of the setting. These bastions of Order in the middle of absolutely blasted, magic swept wastelands filled with mutant barbarians. Awesome stuff. Mad realms of fantasy themed around the Winds of Magic is also cool and could lead to awesome themed boards and armies. Stuff like the marauder warbands of Warcry hint at the cooler idea of a universe conquered by Chaos, where Chaos is the dominant faction split into lots of warring subfactions, a vision of the apocalypse. Order is on the backfoot and only exists within their walls.

And within that you can cram in whatever wacky stuff you like. Sky Pirate Goblins, Snake Elves, whatever you want. I'm open to it. In a lot of ways it is a bit like a really amped up version of my own fantasy setting I use for Dungeons and Dragons.

Where it falls down for me is really the focus on legacy characters from WFB. It really makes this awesome, epic setting feel small and boring that we still have Tyrion, Teclis, Nagash, Sigmar and Morthai wandering around. Not interested, don't care. I especially don't like that they are these huge mythic figures, super hero like, that the plots revolve around. I hate that stuff in game settings. I find that stuff so offputting that I don't really want to engage with the written "lore" at all. I wish it had been a proper reset in that sense, not based around old characters. A couple of the plotlines seem okay, but they could easily have been told with new characters. Leave the Old World dead, move on. Also, side note, I know everyone loves Flesh Eater Courts but I can't help but see them as a middle finger to the best human faction in WFB, the Bretonians.

I feel the same about 40K, but 40K has become fossilised in all the hyper gothic and self serious stuff that GW can claim is unique to the setting, leaving behind all the generic sci fi stuff and leaving no space for that in their line up. That is why we will see more generic sci fi games doing well, because just like there is a niche for LOTR there is a niche for ray guns and space ships sci fi without the gothic melodrama.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Truthfully, Psychic Awakening was fine--the problem is that the 'payout' got spoiled far in advance with the leak of 9E and COVID delaying releases and the usual whinging over "too many books!" derailed anything meaningful really being mentioned.

Right now, Broken Realms has done one good thing:
It created the first City of Sigmar that actually feels unique. Har Kuron is, IMO, what they kept promising us when Cities was first announced:

Bits of Old World flavor with a distinctly AoS twist.

Pretty much none of the Psychic Awakening books had any relevance to the 'payout' what so ever. They could've stuck Phariah at the start of the series or in the middle, narratively it would make literally no difference. They were essentially the timeline paragraphs you get in codexes expanded into a full book, which usually amounted to, "Chaos/Xenos is doing something, Imperium intervenes and thwarts them despite heavy casualties, but actually the battle isn't over/Chaos was only pretending to be dumb and planned to lose (but this will never be touched on again)". The only book that really did anything different was Blood of the Phoenix ("lol you were fighting a hologram all along XD") and The Greater Good, because it actually played each faction to it's strengths, gave everyone involved both a good showing and an arse kicking, but the stakes were so low because they're just fighting over some random sub-sector of zero importance.

Not exactly the 'biggest deal since the 13th Black Crusade!!!' like they made out in the marketing.

In one book, Broken Realms has done more than the entire PA series. It actually showed some interesting developments for Order, advanced the narrative for one of it's characters and whilst I don't think stuff getting destroyed/killed necessarily makes for good storytelling unto itself, Anvilgard falling at least added some stakes to the BR series going forward.

Honestly I think GW is in a position where no matter what they do in 40K their lore fan's won't be happy. The Morathi book did change things, but ultimately one city changed hands. That's akin to one world in 40K changing hands; or getting blown up; or a crusade etc...

Basically lots happened in the Morathi book; but honestly not a huge amount changed at the same time if you compare it to 40K lore.


I think that the issue is 40K lore has been going a long time and some people want to see big changes that just aren't going to happen because its tied to the physical game. The same happened with Old World and the same will happen with AoS. People just don't see the "walls" in AoS yet because its all so new to them so its fresh.


But its going to have the same patterns and shifts. If anything the almost noboarders no timeline nature of the setting makes events even more light on impact in some sense. In Old World if Nuln was destroyed it would have been huge. The game would still have had steam engines (engineers escape etc....) and such; but a main city would have changed. The time period and location hold importance.


In AoS whole swathes of land and time can shift and change and - it affects nothing in the grand scheme of things






By all means I enjoy the lore and I get that as group written lore with no real loremaster in charge at GW its a lot easier for them to just let writers go wild with freedom (Even if that can be very hard to write for) and not care. A city lost or gained; a kingdom made or burned doesn't matter etc....

One city changed hands, sure, but it also set up LRL/Idoneth+DOK conflict, and you know, a brand new full-powered goddess in the setting, no big deal. Not to mention that Imperium has a million worlds, Sigmar has only a small number of the free cities, so it's less like "a planet changed hands" and more like "Well, Cadia changed hands".

In AoS whole swathes of land and time can shift and change and - it affects nothing in the grand scheme of things

And you will note that that they're aware of it, keeping the narrative around Cities of Sigmar (be it as participants or just targets) as opposed to "The Empire", cause you are 100% right, no one cares if 500 square miles of mushroom forest changes hand, but that's true in any setting. They've (so far) kept all of the narrative on the individual cities cause they are strategic objectives, just like IRL.

I am pretty opposed to the idea that we NEED a progressing narrative in the game setting. I would rather keep that stuff to novel series and comic books where it is appropriate. A game setting is supposed to be a springboard for imagination, rather than a passively consumed narrative.

If I want to experience the fall of Nuln or Anvilgard, much cooler to build themed terrain, paint up a bunch of themed minis, and then play out the scenario and tell the story on the tabletop. That is where half of the original stories come from, improvised storytelling on the events of a game. That is what games can do for us that other media cannot, and I think the main strength of settings.

That said I am not opposed to time skips and changes. You could have different versions of the setting at different time periods (ideally quite spaced out) allowing for different versions of factions and settings and letting people choose which playground to mess around with in their imagination.
But I vastly prefer it if that sort of stuff is driven by factions and armies as a whole, which is what the gameplay is about, rather than individual immortal super hero characters that are pivotal to every conflict and story in the setting. That makes this vast apocalyptic world seem really small and soap opera-ish to me, and I think it is better suited to a comic book or TV show (both things I really enjoy, not knocking them, but just not what I want from a game setting). I want to make my own heroes and tell my own stories, and having these super hero immortals wandering around always seems to make that pointless.

I know, it doesn't bother everyone, and someone will surely tell me that I can still do that etc etc. It doesn't matter, it's an emotional reaction more than anything, you know?

I mean, AoS is very much a "mythic" setting, like say, pre-classical Greece. It's Achilles that chops down Hector, not random Achean mook, and gods meddle into the affairs of mortals directly. It's part of the charm, at least for me. They still don't need to be present *at your battle*, but they will drive events, just like Zeus trying to bang anything moving did for Greeks.

That being said, I would very much prefer to keep the actual gods to lore, if we could get Nagash, Alarielle, Teclis and yes, even Archaon out of the battletomes it'd be nice.

Cronch wrote:
just like Zeus trying to bang anything moving did for Greeks.

Now don't suly the good name of Zeus, he probably also banged immobile stuff too.

I kinda agree.

I love the option for literal Gods to take the field, but would hope most players would only do so for narrative rather than power reasons (personal preference, nobody is ‘wrong’ in their preference here).

It also helps that being Gods, they’re kinda really difficult to actually kill properly. Sure you might knack one heavily, but they’d recover in time.

I guess I just don't love that everything is driven by a few immortal beings. It really makes the setting feel much smaller to me. And maybe it wouldn't bother me as much if said immortals were not imports from the Old World who are now godlike immortals for...reasons.

This sort of thing has always been part of Warhammer, Nagash is around for donkeys years. I just preferred it when Nagash was not centre stage. I liked it better when GW were not pushing the special named characters as much, and definitely when they did not drive the events in the game world to the same extent.

Not a deal breaker of course. But it sort of puts me off reading more about it.

That, and the first battletome I picked up had turned my beloved Lizardmen into a bunch of holograms dreamed up by Slaan in space ships. I mean, kudos for the brave and out there take on the faction but it absolutely struck the wrong note for me and was really, really offputting. I like for themes to be represented in the miniatures, and nothing about the Seraphon miniatures says "We are actually conjurations from the mind of an immortal frog" to me, they just look like the same old Lizardmen. They didn't even give them a new paint scheme or something.

Edit: And there's the conundrum. On the one hand, I like and applaud the new direction and want less attachment to the old. But on the other, when they went REALLY out there with my first Warhammer army I was pretty annoyed and upset by it. I guess because they took the feeling of personality and reality away from my troops? After all they're just daydreams a frog is having somewhere.

Yeah, I know they've started retconning that now. But...I mean the damage is done.

Lizardmen lore hasn't retconned its evolved. They've gone from purely magical creations based on creatures in statis into living breathing creatures settling and building civilizations.


It's not changed the old lore, it has simply advanced to a new state.

It doesn't feel like a change so much as a soft ret con because GW's big mistake with AoS is having a world full with a rich detailed history - that they skipped over to make the 3rd age Age of Sigmar. A huge history of many factions is buried in the Age of Myth and the Age of Chaos. We'll see bits fleshed out here and there, but its like watching Lord of the Rings without the Hobbit nor Fellowship of the Ring. We get the awesome battles and fights of Two Towers, but play catch up with themes and ideas the whole time as we put things together.



I agree the Lizardmen just being dreams meant that it was only Slaan who had personality; or not personality but a sense of life beyond battle. If you read Pestilens (the story not the battletome) you get a really great feel for how they are creations, but also have personalities
But having them as living breathing breeding creatures takes it up a step. I'd just hope things settle a bit.

Thing is with Characters like Gotrek running around and such GW clearly wants normal lifespan stories to take place; yet at the same time the big sweeps in power the god s tories want require hundreds of years (AoS is already clearly several hundred years on if we have generations of humans who don't remember the Age of Chaos). It's a bit of a mish-mash element and it could end up messing the lore up a lot if they are trying to jointly have characters like Gotrek appear at key events; but at the same time have hundreds of years between those events to have a sensible passage of time ot let them take place and develop. A slowdown is, I think, the right approach as that way we get to have our mortal and semi-mortal heroes appear and take part without them being swept away so fast that they feel worthless. Even Aelves and Dwarves age and die



(I'm honestly surprised GW let Josh go and didn't just make him lord of the AoS lore because he seemed to really get the setting and has a talent for creation small heroes and big godlike heroes at the same time).

Current AoS is set like, 100-or-so years past the initial Realmgate Wars campaigns. Humans are trashy, short lived gremlins after all.

Cronch wrote:
Current AoS is set like, 100-or-so years past the initial Realmgate Wars campaigns. Humans are trashy, short lived gremlins after all.

It's variable and hard to pin down.

Eg many of the Cities of Sigmar are described as huge settlements now, well behind the front lines of the war enough that infighting and political pressures have arisen to question if the war at the front lines is needed as much. Some regions regard Stormcast as myth already; whilst generations of people and Aelves are described as having been raised within the Cities and not during the Age of Chaos. Which means that its got to be well over 200 years since humans seem to at least live to their 50s if not longer in the setting.

I mean, 100 years is plenty enough to have huge buildings, also important to note that aelves in AoS iare not described (to my knowledge) anywhere as dying race with no kids...and all of the elves in CoS would be coming from Azyr anyway, where there was no Age of Chaos. Like, most citizens of cities of sigmar are colonists from Azyr, not the few survivors of the age of chaos, so it makes sense they'd have no recollection of it, or only passing as their cities were fortified.