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 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

What if we all just agree to have the Space Marine players lose everytime?

They will find a creative way to get Imperium being rescued somehow. Just like the Eye of terror campaign where Chaos stomped the Imperium yet they only achieved a minor victory.

Voss wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

Yep. if the Imperium loses control of Vigilus, they lose controlled access to Imperium Nihilus, which implies lots of rocks fall, lots of people die (maybe including Dante, since he is/was/will be in charge over there, after Roboute comes/came/will come to clean up that whole tyranid invasion after the Indomitus Crusade). So... they won't lose so the plot can happen and the game doesn't end in 'rocks fall, everyone dies.' Story!

How else are we supposed to get to Age of Guilliman?

 herjan1987 wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

What if we all just agree to have the Space Marine players lose everytime?

They will find a creative way to get Imperium being rescued somehow. Just like the Eye of terror campaign where Chaos stomped the Imperium yet they only achieved a minor victory.

I choose to interpret this as meaning BFG will return and play an active part in the season results.
Suddenly I'm okay with these books.

No One Important wrote:

 herjan1987 wrote:

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

What if we all just agree to have the Space Marine players lose everytime?

They will find a creative way to get Imperium being rescued somehow. Just like the Eye of terror campaign where Chaos stomped the Imperium yet they only achieved a minor victory.

I choose to interpret this as meaning BFG will return and play an active part in the season results.
Suddenly I'm okay with these books.

Honestly the would be cool to make space combat effect the campaigns

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Voss wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

Yep. if the Imperium loses control of Vigilus, they lose controlled access to Imperium Nihilus, which implies lots of rocks fall, lots of people die (maybe including Dante, since he is/was/will be in charge over there, after Roboute comes/came/will come to clean up that whole tyranid invasion after the Indomitus Crusade). So... they won't lose so the plot can happen and the game doesn't end in 'rocks fall, everyone dies.' Story!

How else are we supposed to get to Age of Guilliman?

I mean, that's fine as a concept (they could do some interesting things if the Imperium goes factional).

Its just that I hope people realize that when the WarCom article says this:

Each season will last six months, focusing on a different corner of the galaxy and all the fighting that’s happening there – we’ll be witnessing pivotal flashpoints where the outcome of battles will have major consequences for the grim, dark future.

It means that GW's narrative will have (probably light) story consequences that they will write later (or are already), not that players will send in results and GW will change things depending on how various factions do in those results. That isn't happening.
A random new character will be introduced and die, a hither-to unnamed chapter or craftworld will get blown up and Xenos A will be distracted by a widening conflict with Xenos B, so can't eat the sector or whatever. Not... Chaos players won 1000 battles so Fenris gets blown up, Perturabo is unlocked or something like that.

Voss wrote:

 Abadabadoobaddon wrote:
So what exactly is this campaign about? I haven't been keeping up on the advancing plotline. If Abaddon takes this Vigilus planet he'll control the only stable corridor through the warp storm and the Imperium will be even more doomed than the last time that happened? I'm glad they advanced the plot so we can get these new and compelling narratives.

Yep. Its another 'return to sender' piece of post warp rift history. Remember Dark Imperium (8th), launched at the end of the Indomitus Crusade, 100 years after everything went kersplat. GW for no apparent decided they really needed to actually tell that story and restarted the narrative back at the beginning of Indomitus.

Now maybe the Imps won the first battle of Vigilus and this is round 2 to wrest it away (or possibly, with the retcon, that was round 2 and this is actually round 1), but mostly it doesn't matter. <Planet> is attacked by <various factions>, and <factions> have to be in control or <things> happen. Stay tuned for Warzone Hupperdook, where <factions> on <planet> fight for <other things>, and Vigilus will once again be a vague memory of nothing at all.

Remember the first time they had a worldwide campaign to determine whether Abaddon would conquer The Only Stable Route Through The Warp Storm? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Then they retconned the results and rewound the timeline to before Chaos won because otherwise the Imperium would be toast! But then they advanced the timeline and Chaos won and the Imperium wasn't toast! But then there's this other planet that's The Only Stable Route Through The Warp Storm and if Abaddon wins the Imperium will be toast! And they may or may not have already retconned the results of this one, I guess we'll see. Man I haven't been this excited since The Force Awakens.

Warhammer 40000: Age Of Hokey Cokey.

Warhammer 40k: we take the story writing as serious as our rules writing

Voss wrote:

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:

Voss wrote:

Necronmaniac05 wrote:
Well, there is an inference that the outcome of each season will have implications for the story going forward. So, we will see where that goes.

Yep. if the Imperium loses control of Vigilus, they lose controlled access to Imperium Nihilus, which implies lots of rocks fall, lots of people die (maybe including Dante, since he is/was/will be in charge over there, after Roboute comes/came/will come to clean up that whole tyranid invasion after the Indomitus Crusade). So... they won't lose so the plot can happen and the game doesn't end in 'rocks fall, everyone dies.' Story!

How else are we supposed to get to Age of Guilliman?

I mean, that's fine as a concept (they could do some interesting things if the Imperium goes factional).

Its just that I hope people realize that when the WarCom article says this:

Each season will last six months, focusing on a different corner of the galaxy and all the fighting that’s happening there – we’ll be witnessing pivotal flashpoints where the outcome of battles will have major consequences for the grim, dark future.

It means that GW's narrative will have (probably light) story consequences that they will write later (or are already), not that players will send in results and GW will change things depending on how various factions do in those results. That isn't happening.
A random new character will be introduced and die, a hither-to unnamed chapter or craftworld will get blown up and Xenos A will be distracted by a widening conflict with Xenos B, so can't eat the sector or whatever. Not... Chaos players won 1000 battles so Fenris gets blown up, Perturabo is unlocked or something like that.

I was actually referring to GW taking a 'rocks fall, everybody dies' approach to the story to move to a new setting in which Bobby is now God-Emperor*. I remember keenly how the Storm of Chaos went down in 2004, and how badly it went for Archaon. If they had intended for the results to dictate the story, Archaon would've been turned into a spawn; instead, they hand-waved it away and di a whole do-over with the End Times.

*Of course, one could argue that's already happened...

 Manfred von Drakken wrote:
I was actually referring to GW taking a 'rocks fall, everybody dies' approach to the story...

I think you'll find it was 'Blackstone Fortress falls, everybody dies, and it was my plan all along for my BSF to be destroyed and then crash into Cadia...' approach.

It’s a shame the 40k universe isn’t like the real universe, infinitely large where anything is possible. Instead it’s entire future depends on fighting in a localised area, with cliche results and it never matters what’s happening now, it’s only what these events lead up to that matters. Only what it leads up to turns out to be just disappointing gak.
What exactly is it GW is rushing towards with their advancing timeline? Do they realise the journey to get there is equally important? Or do they think plot advancement is something they can just fart out to appease the plot advancement crowd without actually understanding what that means? Once you advance you can’t stop advancing, you can’t wind back. All the cool gak you could have done is now wasted opportunity.

 privateer4hire wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 Oryza Sativa wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
So will we be doing this again?

7th edition: "The game is too bloated!"
8th edition: "OMG GW are listening, I love Nu-GW and 8th is back to basics!"
9th edition: "The game is too bloated!"
10th edition: "OMG GW are listening, I love Nu-GW and 10th is back to basics!"

You forgot the transition from 3rd to 4th (or was it 4th to 5th?), where we got rid of all the White Dwarfs we were carrying around for the extra rules in them (Minor Psychic Powers, anyone?) and streamlined down to fairly simple codexes before starting to build up again.

Nothing beats the start of 3rd though... all your codex rules for every faction (except Squats of course!) in the back of the rulebook. That was slimmed down! For a month or two.

They came close with indexes for 8th. But then everyone pissed on about how bland things were (hint: insane variability in unit/combos makes balance effectively impossible) like they did with 3rd back of the book forces.

Well complains were irrelevant. Large pile of codexes were done pre-rulebook released.

What are you talking about? The ork codex clearly wasn't done even after it was released

 Geifer wrote:
Not to judge a book by its cover or spoil the story for anyone, but I think Abby settles down as a toll collector overseeing the Nachmund Gauntlet. He gets rich and fat and lives happily ever after, his dream of toppling the Emperor a long distant memory.

 NAVARRO wrote:
More rules and books? Really?

"GW is a book company, not a model company," a spokesperson confirmed after we reached out for a statement from Games Workshop. "We know our customers and we know what they want. Market research is otiose in such a niche."

Joyboozer wrote:
It’s a shame the 40k universe isn’t like the real universe, infinitely large where anything is possible. Instead it’s entire future depends on fighting in a localised area, with cliche results and it never matters what’s happening now, it’s only what these events lead up to that matters. Only what it leads up to turns out to be just disappointing gak.
What exactly is it GW is rushing towards with their advancing timeline? Do they realise the journey to get there is equally important? Or do they think plot advancement is something they can just fart out to appease the plot advancement crowd without actually understanding what that means? Once you advance you can’t stop advancing, you can’t wind back. All the cool gak you could have done is now wasted opportunity.

?? You realize GW did rush (to the end of Indomitus Crusade), then retconned and absolutely did 'wind back,' and are now stepping through the journey very slowly?



I love the idea of the 'plot advancement' crowd being the real villains, though.. Those people who didn't exist because GW didn't do this sort of thing until they sprang it on everyone are definitely a powerful group that need appeasing. Nothing can ever be GW's own fault

Voss wrote:
I love the idea of the 'plot advancement' crowd being the real villains, though.. Those people who didn't exist because GW didn't do this sort of thing until they sprang it on everyone are definitely a powerful group that need appeasing. Nothing can ever be GW's own fault

There was a vocal group pushing for plot advancement for quite a while prior to 8th - despite the fact that 40k was a setting, not an ongoing narrative. I'd like to say it was a "vocal minority", but I don't have data to be clear on that either way.

GW seems to have listened to this group, for some bizarre reason, and now we're getting this sort of thing. GW being terrible at the execution wouldn't matter if they hadn't listened to this group in the first place.

 Dysartes wrote:

There was a vocal group pushing for plot advancement for quite a while prior to 8th - despite the fact that 40k was a setting, not an ongoing narrative.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Except by introducing plot advances you keep changing setting invalidating players usage of setting forcing players to reset their own progress all the time

tneva82 wrote:
Except by introducing plot advances you keep changing setting invalidating players usage of setting forcing players to reset their own progress all the time

No, you really don't. If you're using it as a setting, it's easy to keep your stuff in the time period before the advancement. Adjusting or ignoring has always been how players in other settings with advancing plots have done it, I've found this idea of something being both to be anathema to be an almost uniquely 40K player issue. Hell, GW having multiple divergent timelines isn't a new thing either(Space Marine video game, Tamurkhan, the original Enemy Within Campaign for WHFRP).

Indeed. New story doesn’t “invalidate” anything about your army. Plenty of Codexes have currently-dead characters in.

 Dysartes wrote:

Voss wrote:
I love the idea of the 'plot advancement' crowd being the real villains, though.. Those people who didn't exist because GW didn't do this sort of thing until they sprang it on everyone are definitely a powerful group that need appeasing. Nothing can ever be GW's own fault

There was a vocal group pushing for plot advancement for quite a while prior to 8th - despite the fact that 40k was a setting, not an ongoing narrative. I'd like to say it was a "vocal minority", but I don't have data to be clear on that either way.

GW seems to have listened to this group, for some bizarre reason, and now we're getting this sort of thing. GW being terrible at the execution wouldn't matter if they hadn't listened to this group in the first place.

While you are correct about the existence of that group, there's a decent chance that GW did not listen to a portion of its customers over another but found inspiration in other industries. Marvel had been very successful for almost a decade prior to Gathering Storm with an ongoing narrative connecting its various movies. I'm specifically drawing attention to that because around the time those movies started to appear, GW also made a marked change to the presentation of 40k, slowly developing it away from a pseudo-historical presentation to a super heroic setting focusing on the exploits of special characters with everything else just providing a backdrop. Incidentally I think this change was also the impetus for dropping accurate timelines from newer publications because too often the question was raised how a special character could be in two warzones at the same time.

It's not just Marvel, either. TV shows have become less episodic, revolving more often around (multi)season-spanning narratives than they did 20 years ago. Video games have also dipped into deeper stories more often. Trying an evolving story line may well have been GW's attempt at satisfying a general change in customer perception of what an entertainment product has to offer rather than listening to a specific subset of their customer base. Especially since at the time steadily decreasing profits put economic pressure on them to counter the decline.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Indeed. New story doesn’t “invalidate” anything about your army. Plenty of Codexes have currently-dead characters in.

I play BattleTech. That's a game that has been designed as an ongoing story and, unlike 40k, not a setting. In the most recent plot development the main faction I play was annihilated.

Let's have a story where the Imperium finally decides 'Enough is enough!', launches a massive Crusade, and wipes out the Tau. You going to tell Tau players that it's no big deal? That they can just play games set further back in the story?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Indeed. New story doesn’t “invalidate” anything about your army. Plenty of Codexes have currently-dead characters in.

I play BattleTech. That's a game that has been designed as an ongoing story and, unlike 40k, not a setting. In the most recent plot development the main faction I play was annihilated.

Let's have a story where the Imperium finally decides 'Enough is enough!', launches a massive Crusade, and wipes out the Tau. You going to tell Tau players that it's no big deal? That they can just play games set further back in the story?

A lot of people would absolute love that, since they keep crying about how unrealistic Tau are and how they don't fit the universe.

The plot has been advancing since at least 2nd edition. Many have come from battle reports in the WD and the personal campaigns of those in the studio.

For much of the 1990's the timeline WAS advancing steadily at the rate of 1 game year to 1 real year. 40K was not static. It was the timeline advancing that allowed for the possibility of character development. That was how Tycho got created (from an unnamed BA captain being "killed" by an Ork Weirdboy's power in a battle report), got maimed, became embittered, and finally died. That was how Yarrick chased Ghaz, got captured, and then released, to fight him again when the 3rd War for Armageddon occurred.

A steadily advancing timeline didn't break the 40K universe then and there is no reason advancing it should suddenly break it now. It is a fallacy to think that advancing timeline or story plots automatically means breaking the setting. Individual characters and plotlines can progress and have closure. Not every character or plotline has to deal with the fate of the entire galaxy.

GW had written themselves into a corner with the end of M41, with numerous and important events packed into literally a few weeks of the last year. There wasn't time for characters to actually do anything like travel to a warzone and fight before they would have to travel elsewhere in order to make their appearance at another event.

Whether a world or even a sector falls, whether a character lives or dies, 40K is supposed to be a universe where they won't be missed on the grand scale. It does not need to turn into superheroes clashing in the conflict of the week, and I don't like GW taking in such a direction with the same named characters showing up. That shrinks the galaxy.

 Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Indeed. New story doesn’t “invalidate” anything about your army. Plenty of Codexes have currently-dead characters in.

I play BattleTech. That's a game that has been designed as an ongoing story and, unlike 40k, not a setting. In the most recent plot development the main faction I play was annihilated.

Let's have a story where the Imperium finally decides 'Enough is enough!', launches a massive Crusade, and wipes out the Tau. You going to tell Tau players that it's no big deal? That they can just play games set further back in the story?

A lot of people would absolute love that, since they keep crying about how unrealistic Tau are and how they don't fit the universe.

And if it did happen, there'd still be people calling them Mary Sues because they took a couple of unnamed or previously unheard of Chapter Masters down with them.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Indeed. New story doesn’t “invalidate” anything about your army. Plenty of Codexes have currently-dead characters in.

I play BattleTech. That's a game that has been designed as an ongoing story and, unlike 40k, not a setting. In the most recent plot development the main faction I play was annihilated.

Let's have a story where the Imperium finally decides 'Enough is enough!', launches a massive Crusade, and wipes out the Tau. You going to tell Tau players that it's no big deal? That they can just play games set further back in the story?

Ahhhh whataboutism. Always productive… not. And you know GW won’t do similar anyway. They’ve had plenty of opportunities but seem to prefer making money.

I'm with Johnny here - we already have characters fighting together or against each other that would never meet in-universe because the lived hundred of years or multiple sectors apart. Many other game systems also keep characters around after they have found their glorious or not-so-glorious death.

In narrative gaming, GW actively encourages you to not run named characters anyways, and for any other game mode - who cares?

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Ahhhh whataboutism. Always productive… not. And you know GW won’t do similar anyway. They’ve had plenty of opportunities but seem to prefer making money.

You used a lot of words there to dodge the question. Good job!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Ahhhh whataboutism. Always productive… not. And you know GW won’t do similar anyway. They’ve had plenty of opportunities but seem to prefer making money.

You used a lot of words there to dodge the question. Good job!

I dodged no legitimate questions, only an attempt to sidetrack. There was no question. The thread isn’t about BattleTech. I’m sorry BattleTech hurt your feelings but that’s irrelevant here.