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I have 2 problems with Crusade as an RPG system; you and I have had this discussion before but I think it bears repeating to the wider audience:
Problem 1: If you don't follow the GW Approved™ way your army is supposed to tell it's narrative, then you don't get to tell your narrative. I'm an Eldar player. The first thing I did when I opened the Eldar codex was flip to the Crusade rules. "Paths, huh?" I said. "I wonder how my grav-tank and Engine of Vaul army will fit into the Path structure."
Spoiler alert: it didn't, and doesn't. I get to continue using the Warhammer 40k rulebook for most of the units in my army - and, what's worse, they're the units whose story I was most excited to tell. So? I'm selling my Eldar locally. Because the Crusade content didn't encourage me to build my character but rather encouraged me to build GW's character and follow their Path progression system. This would be akin to you wanting to play an Elven two-handed fighter in DND and being told "Sorry, Elves can only play archers and battle mages". I've had this problem with Sororitas too but it is even worse for my eldar, to the point where I don't even want the army anymore, if GW's opinion is that the eldar never field tanks or engines of Vaul narratively (or rather that those vehicles will never be narratively significant).
I don't disagree with this point. It's true, GW didn't do everything they could have done for every army- there could be more options for every army's Crusade content then there is, and some armies have it worse than others. It's one of the reasons why when I rave about Crusade lately, I tend to identify the army books that have the most innovative content- Crusade is much more fun for my DE or GSC than my Deathwatch.
Obviously, when they can't give us everything, what they are going to try and give us will be the stuff that is most central to the army's over-all identity; they'll also be trying to avoid having content for one faction overlap too closely with content from a different faction. And it is going to lead to lost opportunities to present some very unique fringe possibilities- or even just possibilities that are less common than the core identifying themes. I think that my point is not that it's perfect, but that it is the best it has ever been. Never has any previous version of the game provided ANY faction based long term story arc, or faction specific upgrades. To complain that you can't tell an engines of Vaul story is legit. But it ignores the fact that you CAN tell the story of a Warlock unit that grows together from green initiates to powerful sorcerers until one member leaves to become a farseer, or that you do now have the capacity for the harlequins to actually bring different performances to the battlefield- these are things that you could not do before without either making up houserules or crafting custom missions that made it feel like these things should happen, but then they don't because rules to represent them only exist if you make them and find players who will allow to use them.
Problem 2: The core rules themselves aren't immersive. It's hard to write a narrative of a battle action by action with the current structure of 40k. I can go into more detail about this, but the general point is things don't behave on the tabletop the way they would in universe. I can pick some examples out of some prior posts if you would like - in fact, here's one from back in the day:
I can see your point here too; missions aren't written in a way that you see the story in them- you kinda have to analyze the system of abstractions that are the rules and find the story inside. Mission writing is definitely an area for improvement. Even in my descriptions of the fun I've had with Crusade above, you'll see it's the choices about campaign level decisions I write about; mission level decisions are less engaging and dramatic. I won't deny that.
Right now, playing 40k feels like playing a GAME. I'm not re-enacting an epic battle or telling the story of characters on a board.
Captain Krassus screamed into the vox: "All Armageddon Steel Legion, raise high the black banners, now is our time! Fix bayonets!" signaling the epic charge.
BUT he couldn't have predicted the cunning of the Rule System, his true foe:
"Sir, we're out of command points, you can't give orders from within a Chimera!" screamed the driver, as he repeatedly shifted from reverse to forwards, jerkily trying to run Orks over like the zamboni scene in Austin Powers. After all, only a fool would drive past enemy infantry that offered practically no threat and bypass hardened positions with maneuver - and the mechanized units of the Armageddon Steel Legion were no fools!
And thusly on the cusp of victory did the planet of Armageddon fall, defeated not by the cleverness of his foe or superior force or tactics, but by the universal laws which this commander foolishly disregarded when he embarked upon his mechanized transport. Who was he to think he could give orders from a Chimera freely? To be a man in such times...
This example is interesting to me, because what I read into it is that there IS a story of the battle, and then there is a story that YOU want to tell, and the two don't match.
The story you want to tell, is that despite the fact that the commander has already used all of his cunning and experience to try and take the battle where he wants it to go, he still has more in him to keep giving more orders- he never starts to doubt himself when it seems he's done all he can and it's still not enough; he never gets tired, he never begins to question whether or not his ideas are enough to win the day.
But the story of the game is that your commander was cocky- he came in headstrong, issuing order after order in the opening moments of the battle. But now he is getting tired. He is having doubts. He feels the loss of the troops who have been sacrificed, and he can't help but think about the troops who are left to be lost as a result of his early bravado on the field. In battles to come, if he survives, he will learn to use command more sparingly, saving orders for the moments when they are most needed.
This is what running out of command points means. In D&D, I often wish my fighter had a third and a fourth wind. He doesn't; he has a second wind. And if he burns it on the minion fight so that it isn't there when he needs it against the boss, I don't say "Geez, that's really non-narrative. You'd think if I had the capacity to summon my internal reserves against the skeletons, I'd be even more inspired by the horrifying presence of the Lich to dig even deeper. Gee, this system is kinda broken because it won't let me play my narrative."
Instead, I as a player realize that my character made a poor decision and used a limited resource that would have been better saved for a more pivotal moment.
Now as for not being able to interact with the battle when you're inside a vehicle? I've always thought that was problematic and could use attention. I also think you'll see it when the new dex drops- GW has begun to include text about characters being able to use certain special abilities if they are "on the field or in transports which are on the field." These aren't specifically Crusade rules either, but I take the point that changes to core rules can improve Crusade.
PenitentJake wrote: As for immersive, again I can't agree- but again, I'm a campaign player, so of course I find it immersive- I've got an entire penitent mission working toward redemption, a fledging cult that is infecting citizens with the genestealer curse and a Dark Eldar Archon who is sponsoring two Wych Cults who compete in the Arena for the right to realspace raid, feeding their dead to the mysterious Haemonculus who has taken up residence beneath the Arena.
I don't really understand why this is impossible in any other iteration of 40k - you could tell these same stories in 4th edition, or 2nd edition (Well, DE didn't exist but you get the idea).
Okay, let's break it down for you then:
Show me any rule from an edition before 9th that tells me how to take a battle sisters unit that failed their objective in a game and make them into Sisters Repentia. Then tell me what the rules say they have to do to restore themselves in the eyes of the Emperor. Then tell me what the rules say happens when I do this.
Sure, in games gone by, I could replace the sisters unit from game one with an identically sized unit of repentia for following games... Oh wait, could I? What if the units didn't cost the same points? Guess I couldn't. Assuming I was using the generic list of battle honours that were printed in previous editions, I could have the repentia keep the battle honours earned by the sisters before their fall, but that would technically be a houserule, wouldn't it? I mean, assuming the rest of the people in the campaign let me fudge the points discrepancy in the first place, which is by no means a guarantee. And then I'm sure they'll let me do it all again when the unit redeems itself, right?
Can you show me in previous rules where it tells me what a genestealer cult has to do to take over a planet? I mean this one's trickier, because if such rules exist at all, they'd have to be in the second, seventh or eighth editions because those are the only editions where GSC was playable. And sure, if we're in a map based campaign, I can declare that that the GSC gain control of a planet once they occupy all the territory on that planet. But what game benefits do they get for partial control? Or from other planets already under their control? Guess I'd have to houserule all of that too, huh?
Okay, surely I can do the DE thing in previous versions of the game. So let's see... My mighty Archon is sponsoring two Wych Cults so I can use my captured arena terrioties to feed them extra XP in battle... Oh wait, I can't because arena territories didn't exist in previous versions of the game. Well, that's okay; I can still make little 500 point Cults fight each other... of course, all the missions in previous editions were designed for 1500-2k battles, but that's okay, I can teak it. And then the winner can appear in the realspace raid alongside their sponsor as an independent ally with it's own command structure... Wait a minute, what do you mean there is only one FOC allowed?
Starting to see what I'm talking about yet?
Yes, you could do literally all of the things mentioned above with enough houserules and open minded players. It's just that now you don't have to- all you have to do is find a group who wants to play crusade.
PenitentJake wrote: What I will say, by way of agreement, is that I don't feel that anyone is likely to experience the game at its best if all they do with it is play unrelated 2k matches in stores. The game is made to do so much more than that- even matched play is meant to be more than that as Matched does include Incursion Missions in addition to Strike Force missions, and it does also have campaign content.
I think there are a lot of people who want 2k matched to be the game at its best. They expect that, because it's the default mode. And it is certainly fair to say that the game should be fun in any format and at any size. But using a 2k roster to field 25PL games in a map-based campaign is just awesome- there's a whole other layer, because you can only use 25PL at a time, so you can have different parts of your roster specialize against specific opponents within the campaign; you can choose to grow veteran units at the opportunity cost of keeping other units green until their turn comes; you can grow your army fast or slow.
And make no mistake about it; the game IS specifically designed to facilitate and encourage this type of play. Your preferences, desires, gaming environments or other circumstances may make it improbable or even impossible for you to play it that way. But it is worth acknowledging that things some people feel are lacking from the game are merely lacking from their preferred format.
There are things I want from narrative play that Crusade does not and cannot deliver without a rewrite of the core rules. It is not a panacea for issues unless you're ONLY willing to follow the GW Approved™ way that your army is supposed to work. THERE SHALL BE NO SORORITAS TANK UNITS, so sayeth GW. THERE SHALL BE NO ELDAR GUARDIAN ARMIES, LEST THEY PROCEEDETH ON FROM BEING GUARDIANS, so sayeth GW.
Fair point. But again, I'm not saying Crusade is perfect. I'm saying that it is better than a series of unrelated 2k matched games because even if it doesn't give you EVERYTHING you want, it will give you more than 2k matched does; that being the case if you only play 2k matched, you might be missing out on some cool stuff that the company worked hard to write for you.
Note: I was going to multiquote and respond to other folks who have responded to me, but this is already a long post and if I don't start painting and photographing my wych cult arena, I'm not going to achieve any of my hobby goals for April- it's already one third of the way beyond me.
Right now, playing 40k feels like playing a GAME. I'm not re-enacting an epic battle or telling the story of characters on a board.
Captain Krassus screamed into the vox: "All Armageddon Steel Legion, raise high the black banners, now is our time! Fix bayonets!" signaling the epic charge.
BUT he couldn't have predicted the cunning of the Rule System, his true foe: "Sir, we're out of command points, you can't give orders from within a Chimera!" screamed the driver, as he repeatedly shifted from reverse to forwards, jerkily trying to run Orks over like the zamboni scene in Austin Powers. After all, only a fool would drive past enemy infantry that offered practically no threat and bypass hardened positions with maneuver - and the mechanized units of the Armageddon Steel Legion were no fools!
And thusly on the cusp of victory did the planet of Armageddon fall, defeated not by the cleverness of his foe or superior force or tactics, but by the universal laws which this commander foolishly disregarded when he embarked upon his mechanized transport. Who was he to think he could give orders from a Chimera freely? To be a man in such times...
This example is interesting to me, because what I read into it is that there IS a story of the battle, and then there is a story that YOU want to tell, and the two don't match.
The story you want to tell, is that despite the fact that the commander has already used all of his cunning and experience to try and take the battle where he wants it to go, he still has more in him to keep giving more orders- he never starts to doubt himself when it seems he's done all he can and it's still not enough; he never gets tired, he never begins to question whether or not his ideas are enough to win the day.
But the story of the game is that your commander was cocky- he came in headstrong, issuing order after order in the opening moments of the battle. But now he is getting tired. He is having doubts. He feels the loss of the troops who have been sacrificed, and he can't help but think about the troops who are left to be lost as a result of his early bravado on the field. In battles to come, if he survives, he will learn to use command more sparingly, saving orders for the moments when they are most needed.
This is what running out of command points means. In D&D, I often wish my fighter had a third and a fourth wind. He doesn't; he has a second wind. And if he burns it on the minion fight so that it isn't there when he needs it against the boss, I don't say "Geez, that's really non-narrative. You'd think if I had the capacity to summon my internal reserves against the skeletons, I'd be even more inspired by the horrifying presence of the Lich to dig even deeper. Gee, this system is kinda broken because it won't let me play my narrative."
Instead, I as a player realize that my character made a poor decision and used a limited resource that would have been better saved for a more pivotal moment.
Now as for not being able to interact with the battle when you're inside a vehicle? I've always thought that was problematic and could use attention. I also think you'll see it when the new dex drops- GW has begun to include text about characters being able to use certain special abilities if they are "on the field or in transports which are on the field." These aren't specifically Crusade rules either, but I take the point that changes to core rules can improve Crusade.
It strikes me that the story of the game in that example isn't anything to do with the commander at all - voxes don't have a cooldown where you can only transmit once per however-long-a-turn-is-supposed-to-last-in-realtime, and a lascannon team halfway across the map deciding that yes, actually, they did make that shot after all wouldn't affect the voxes regardless. Crassus wasn't dealing with vox jamming or equipment malfunctions, no psyker was casting Induce Migraine on him, every other commander on the field would have been able to complete their orders without issue (both before and after Crassus), there's nothing that would prevent this from happening turn one when everyone was still relatively fresh, and there isn't even anything preventing him from opening the top hatch and using flags/lamps/just fething yelling the orders. There's plenty of narrative precedent for Chimeras being mobile command vehicles by default (including special rules in previous codices that explicitly state such). The only reason that Crassus suddenly and inexplicably can't give the order is because of interactions with a metasystem that serves a purely structural purpose.
A better D&D cognate wouldn't be Second Wind, it'd if the rules allowed you to Defend (a full round action) and verbally taunt (as speaking is a free action), but not Defend and verbally Taunt (a standard action, which you can't do alongside a full-round action). (Note: been a hot minute since I played D&D, not sure if the rules are/were actually like that or not. Also, I'm sure most DMs would houserule around that, but we're talking about what we can do RAW here).
Edit: Better example. Also, I suspect there is a difference between "telling a narrative of an event" and "being able to come up with a post-hoc narrative justification for an event". There would be some overlap (eg: "I fire at the Daemon Prince..." "...but the horror of its countenance throws my aim askew!"), but the Crassus example isn't telling a narrative of any of the things either of us have mentioned that could explain it - it's just a flat "computer says no" moment.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/04/10 18:20:13
I have 2 problems with Crusade as an RPG system; you and I have had this discussion before but I think it bears repeating to the wider audience: Problem 1: If you don't follow the GW Approved™ way your army is supposed to tell it's narrative, then you don't get to tell your narrative. I'm an Eldar player. The first thing I did when I opened the Eldar codex was flip to the Crusade rules. "Paths, huh?" I said. "I wonder how my grav-tank and Engine of Vaul army will fit into the Path structure." Spoiler alert: it didn't, and doesn't. I get to continue using the Warhammer 40k rulebook for most of the units in my army - and, what's worse, they're the units whose story I was most excited to tell. So? I'm selling my Eldar locally. Because the Crusade content didn't encourage me to build my character but rather encouraged me to build GW's character and follow their Path progression system. This would be akin to you wanting to play an Elven two-handed fighter in DND and being told "Sorry, Elves can only play archers and battle mages". I've had this problem with Sororitas too but it is even worse for my eldar, to the point where I don't even want the army anymore, if GW's opinion is that the eldar never field tanks or engines of Vaul narratively (or rather that those vehicles will never be narratively significant).
I don't disagree with this point. It's true, GW didn't do everything they could have done for every army- there could be more options for every army's Crusade content then there is, and some armies have it worse than others. It's one of the reasons why when I rave about Crusade lately, I tend to identify the army books that have the most innovative content- Crusade is much more fun for my DE or GSC than my Deathwatch.
Obviously, when they can't give us everything, what they are going to try and give us will be the stuff that is most central to the army's over-all identity; they'll also be trying to avoid having content for one faction overlap too closely with content from a different faction. And it is going to lead to lost opportunities to present some very unique fringe possibilities- or even just possibilities that are less common than the core identifying themes. I think that my point is not that it's perfect, but that it is the best it has ever been. Never has any previous version of the game provided ANY faction based long term story arc, or faction specific upgrades. To complain that you can't tell an engines of Vaul story is legit. But it ignores the fact that you CAN tell the story of a Warlock unit that grows together from green initiates to powerful sorcerers until one member leaves to become a farseer, or that you do now have the capacity for the harlequins to actually bring different performances to the battlefield- these are things that you could not do before without either making up houserules or crafting custom missions that made it feel like these things should happen, but then they don't because rules to represent them only exist if you make them and find players who will allow to use them.
The whole point of narrative play is to be flexible. To tell Your Story. That's why DND has a DM - no rulebook in the world could be as flexible as the human brain. If GW gave narrative rules that officially empowered a GM, gave them tips and tricks and examples to deal with certain situations, wrote campaign arcs with a DM in mind, I think you'd have a lot better narrative content than crusade.
As it stands, Crusade is just another mode of play just like Matched, that doesn't require any narrative at all - if you want to keep up with the bookkeeping, you can be just as competitive in Crusade as in Matched.
Problem 2: The core rules themselves aren't immersive. It's hard to write a narrative of a battle action by action with the current structure of 40k. I can go into more detail about this, but the general point is things don't behave on the tabletop the way they would in universe. I can pick some examples out of some prior posts if you would like - in fact, here's one from back in the day:
I can see your point here too; missions aren't written in a way that you see the story in them- you kinda have to analyze the system of abstractions that are the rules and find the story inside. Mission writing is definitely an area for improvement. Even in my descriptions of the fun I've had with Crusade above, you'll see it's the choices about campaign level decisions I write about; mission level decisions are less engaging and dramatic. I won't deny that.
Right now, playing 40k feels like playing a GAME. I'm not re-enacting an epic battle or telling the story of characters on a board.
Captain Krassus screamed into the vox: "All Armageddon Steel Legion, raise high the black banners, now is our time! Fix bayonets!" signaling the epic charge.
BUT he couldn't have predicted the cunning of the Rule System, his true foe: "Sir, we're out of command points, you can't give orders from within a Chimera!" screamed the driver, as he repeatedly shifted from reverse to forwards, jerkily trying to run Orks over like the zamboni scene in Austin Powers. After all, only a fool would drive past enemy infantry that offered practically no threat and bypass hardened positions with maneuver - and the mechanized units of the Armageddon Steel Legion were no fools!
And thusly on the cusp of victory did the planet of Armageddon fall, defeated not by the cleverness of his foe or superior force or tactics, but by the universal laws which this commander foolishly disregarded when he embarked upon his mechanized transport. Who was he to think he could give orders from a Chimera freely? To be a man in such times...
This example is interesting to me, because what I read into it is that there IS a story of the battle, and then there is a story that YOU want to tell, and the two don't match.
The story you want to tell, is that despite the fact that the commander has already used all of his cunning and experience to try and take the battle where he wants it to go, he still has more in him to keep giving more orders- he never starts to doubt himself when it seems he's done all he can and it's still not enough; he never gets tired, he never begins to question whether or not his ideas are enough to win the day.
But the story of the game is that your commander was cocky- he came in headstrong, issuing order after order in the opening moments of the battle. But now he is getting tired. He is having doubts. He feels the loss of the troops who have been sacrificed, and he can't help but think about the troops who are left to be lost as a result of his early bravado on the field. In battles to come, if he survives, he will learn to use command more sparingly, saving orders for the moments when they are most needed.
This is what running out of command points means. In D&D, I often wish my fighter had a third and a fourth wind. He doesn't; he has a second wind. And if he burns it on the minion fight so that it isn't there when he needs it against the boss, I don't say "Geez, that's really non-narrative. You'd think if I had the capacity to summon my internal reserves against the skeletons, I'd be even more inspired by the horrifying presence of the Lich to dig even deeper. Gee, this system is kinda broken because it won't let me play my narrative."
Instead, I as a player realize that my character made a poor decision and used a limited resource that would have been better saved for a more pivotal moment.
This seems like a post facto rationalization, rather than a real reason.
He can still give orders, just not out of a Chimera because... why again? He used up all his "cunning" that it would require to... talk into a radio? He was tactically overmatched by the channel dial on the vox? He exerted himself SO HEAVILY that the sheer EFFORT it would take to use the radio is JUST TOO MUCH?
Remember, he's not saving orders. Orders don't cost CP. He's just unable to give orders because he's in the back of a tank - but he could when there was CP. Why does having or not having CP change the status of his ability to give orders out of a tank? What's the narrative there?
PenitentJake wrote: As for immersive, again I can't agree- but again, I'm a campaign player, so of course I find it immersive- I've got an entire penitent mission working toward redemption, a fledging cult that is infecting citizens with the genestealer curse and a Dark Eldar Archon who is sponsoring two Wych Cults who compete in the Arena for the right to realspace raid, feeding their dead to the mysterious Haemonculus who has taken up residence beneath the Arena.
I don't really understand why this is impossible in any other iteration of 40k - you could tell these same stories in 4th edition, or 2nd edition (Well, DE didn't exist but you get the idea).
Okay, let's break it down for you then: /snip Starting to see what I'm talking about yet?
Yes, you could do literally all of the things mentioned above with enough houserules and open minded players. It's just that now you don't have to- all you have to do is find a group who wants to play crusade.
Which are the same people who would be okay with a narrative campaign that included such rules in the past.... hence my point.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/04/10 21:00:18
I have 2 problems with Crusade as an RPG system; you and I have had this discussion before but I think it bears repeating to the wider audience:
Problem 1: If you don't follow the GW Approved™ way your army is supposed to tell it's narrative, then you don't get to tell your narrative. I'm an Eldar player. The first thing I did when I opened the Eldar codex was flip to the Crusade rules. "Paths, huh?" I said. "I wonder how my grav-tank and Engine of Vaul army will fit into the Path structure."
Spoiler alert: it didn't, and doesn't. I get to continue using the Warhammer 40k rulebook for most of the units in my army - and, what's worse, they're the units whose story I was most excited to tell. So? I'm selling my Eldar locally. Because the Crusade content didn't encourage me to build my character but rather encouraged me to build GW's character and follow their Path progression system. This would be akin to you wanting to play an Elven two-handed fighter in DND and being told "Sorry, Elves can only play archers and battle mages". I've had this problem with Sororitas too but it is even worse for my eldar, to the point where I don't even want the army anymore, if GW's opinion is that the eldar never field tanks or engines of Vaul narratively (or rather that those vehicles will never be narratively significant).
I don't disagree with this point. It's true, GW didn't do everything they could have done for every army- there could be more options for every army's Crusade content then there is, and some armies have it worse than others. It's one of the reasons why when I rave about Crusade lately, I tend to identify the army books that have the most innovative content- Crusade is much more fun for my DE or GSC than my Deathwatch.
Obviously, when they can't give us everything, what they are going to try and give us will be the stuff that is most central to the army's over-all identity; they'll also be trying to avoid having content for one faction overlap too closely with content from a different faction. And it is going to lead to lost opportunities to present some very unique fringe possibilities- or even just possibilities that are less common than the core identifying themes. I think that my point is not that it's perfect, but that it is the best it has ever been. Never has any previous version of the game provided ANY faction based long term story arc, or faction specific upgrades. To complain that you can't tell an engines of Vaul story is legit. But it ignores the fact that you CAN tell the story of a Warlock unit that grows together from green initiates to powerful sorcerers until one member leaves to become a farseer, or that you do now have the capacity for the harlequins to actually bring different performances to the battlefield- these are things that you could not do before without either making up houserules or crafting custom missions that made it feel like these things should happen, but then they don't because rules to represent them only exist if you make them and find players who will allow to use them.
The whole point of narrative play is to be flexible. To tell Your Story. That's why DND has a DM - no rulebook in the world could be as flexible as the human brain. If GW gave narrative rules that officially empowered a GM, gave them tips and tricks and examples to deal with certain situations, wrote campaign arcs with a DM in mind, I think you'd have a lot better narrative content than crusade.
As it stands, Crusade is just another mode of play just like Matched, that doesn't require any narrative at all - if you want to keep up with the bookkeeping, you can be just as competitive in Crusade as in Matched.
Problem 2: The core rules themselves aren't immersive. It's hard to write a narrative of a battle action by action with the current structure of 40k. I can go into more detail about this, but the general point is things don't behave on the tabletop the way they would in universe. I can pick some examples out of some prior posts if you would like - in fact, here's one from back in the day:
I can see your point here too; missions aren't written in a way that you see the story in them- you kinda have to analyze the system of abstractions that are the rules and find the story inside. Mission writing is definitely an area for improvement. Even in my descriptions of the fun I've had with Crusade above, you'll see it's the choices about campaign level decisions I write about; mission level decisions are less engaging and dramatic. I won't deny that.
Right now, playing 40k feels like playing a GAME. I'm not re-enacting an epic battle or telling the story of characters on a board.
Captain Krassus screamed into the vox: "All Armageddon Steel Legion, raise high the black banners, now is our time! Fix bayonets!" signaling the epic charge.
BUT he couldn't have predicted the cunning of the Rule System, his true foe:
"Sir, we're out of command points, you can't give orders from within a Chimera!" screamed the driver, as he repeatedly shifted from reverse to forwards, jerkily trying to run Orks over like the zamboni scene in Austin Powers. After all, only a fool would drive past enemy infantry that offered practically no threat and bypass hardened positions with maneuver - and the mechanized units of the Armageddon Steel Legion were no fools!
And thusly on the cusp of victory did the planet of Armageddon fall, defeated not by the cleverness of his foe or superior force or tactics, but by the universal laws which this commander foolishly disregarded when he embarked upon his mechanized transport. Who was he to think he could give orders from a Chimera freely? To be a man in such times...
This example is interesting to me, because what I read into it is that there IS a story of the battle, and then there is a story that YOU want to tell, and the two don't match.
The story you want to tell, is that despite the fact that the commander has already used all of his cunning and experience to try and take the battle where he wants it to go, he still has more in him to keep giving more orders- he never starts to doubt himself when it seems he's done all he can and it's still not enough; he never gets tired, he never begins to question whether or not his ideas are enough to win the day.
But the story of the game is that your commander was cocky- he came in headstrong, issuing order after order in the opening moments of the battle. But now he is getting tired. He is having doubts. He feels the loss of the troops who have been sacrificed, and he can't help but think about the troops who are left to be lost as a result of his early bravado on the field. In battles to come, if he survives, he will learn to use command more sparingly, saving orders for the moments when they are most needed.
This is what running out of command points means. In D&D, I often wish my fighter had a third and a fourth wind. He doesn't; he has a second wind. And if he burns it on the minion fight so that it isn't there when he needs it against the boss, I don't say "Geez, that's really non-narrative. You'd think if I had the capacity to summon my internal reserves against the skeletons, I'd be even more inspired by the horrifying presence of the Lich to dig even deeper. Gee, this system is kinda broken because it won't let me play my narrative."
Instead, I as a player realize that my character made a poor decision and used a limited resource that would have been better saved for a more pivotal moment.
This seems like a post facto rationalization, rather than a real reason.
He can still give orders, just not out of a Chimera because... why again? He used up all his "cunning" that it would require to... talk into a radio?
Spoiler:
He was tactically overmatched by the channel dial on the vox? He exerted himself SO HEAVILY that the sheer EFFORT it would take to use the radio is JUST TOO MUCH?
Remember, he's not saving orders. Orders don't cost CP. He's just unable to give orders because he's in the back of a tank - but he could when there was CP. Why does having or not having CP change the status of his ability to give orders out of a tank? What's the narrative there?
PenitentJake wrote: As for immersive, again I can't agree- but again, I'm a campaign player, so of course I find it immersive- I've got an entire penitent mission working toward redemption, a fledging cult that is infecting citizens with the genestealer curse and a Dark Eldar Archon who is sponsoring two Wych Cults who compete in the Arena for the right to realspace raid, feeding their dead to the mysterious Haemonculus who has taken up residence beneath the Arena.
I don't really understand why this is impossible in any other iteration of 40k - you could tell these same stories in 4th edition, or 2nd edition (Well, DE didn't exist but you get the idea).
Okay, let's break it down for you then:
/snip
Starting to see what I'm talking about yet?
Yes, you could do literally all of the things mentioned above with enough houserules and open minded players. It's just that now you don't have to- all you have to do is find a group who wants to play crusade.
Which are the same people who would be okay with a narrative campaign that included such rules in the past.... hence my point.
LoL… yeah, dude dropped his last command token, sort of like running out of coins at the pay phone or minutes on the burner phone or maybe the spring in his toy soldier mechanism needs winding, again, or union labor rules compel a smoke break before more orders may be issued…
His fellow officer leading the next platoon over has already used the megaphone on his Chimera, it is physically impossible for more than one Chimera to use the megaphone at a time.
The commander is all cunning-ed out after that infantry squad over there ducked for cover, and those other guys all threw grenades.
He has nothing to do with any of that, but it's been exhausting for him.
His fellow officer leading the next platoon over has already used the megaphone on his Chimera, it is physically impossible for more than one Chimera to use the megaphone at a time.
The commander is all cunning-ed out after that infantry squad over there ducked for cover, and those other guys all threw grenades.
He has nothing to do with any of that, but it's been exhausting for him.
And that's the weird thing with Strats. The way they singularly affect units feels strange at times. Sure sometimes it can work, like with Marine Captain out of spite fighting before dying. However some others are silly. How come just one squad of Primaris Marines or Custodes remembered they can be tougher?
The whole point of narrative play is to be flexible. To tell Your Story. That's why DND has a DM - no rulebook in the world could be as flexible as the human brain. If GW gave narrative rules that officially empowered a GM, gave them tips and tricks and examples to deal with certain situations, wrote campaign arcs with a DM in mind, I think you'd have a lot better narrative content than crusade.
As it stands, Crusade is just another mode of play just like Matched, that doesn't require any narrative at all - if you want to keep up with the bookkeeping, you can be just as competitive in Crusade as in Matched.
I agree 100%. I started moving into more GM based scenario play in Battletech and holy cow it was like being back in the hobby 25-30 years ago. And ALL of my players have enjoyed it immensely so far.
I think 40k could do amazing in a situation where you could have a GM. The only downside is... models are expensive.
In Battletech I have enough for opfor to give my players a variety of scenarios, but they also only need to have a lance or so of mechs and some tanks and infantry or vtol support if they choose.
In 40k - playing narratively could mean needing a lot more generic tactical marines or whatever and that means having players be open to that (this comes from my immersion in 40k player culture where things like tactical marines are almost never in a collection if they dont need to be).
I have the same problem with Crusade as well - the game itself is not immersive... its a war-themed GAME as opposed to a wargame, and the crusade system itself, which I give GW credit for providing, is the skeleton of what could be something a hell of a lot more fleshed out and in depth.
The whole point of narrative play is to be flexible. To tell Your Story. That's why DND has a DM - no rulebook in the world could be as flexible as the human brain.
D&D, like all roleplaying games, has a GM because there are no antagonist or allied NPCs without a gm to play them. Various RPGs offer different levels of structure. And certainly, a GMcan create their own monsters, magic items and character classes, but they generally don't. And when they do, it's an item here or an item there amidst a whole host of ready made templates.
As an example, I give you modules. Because yeah, it's true that some of us run with nothing but the SRD, but it's equally true that there is a whole sub-set of GMs who wouldn't consider running a campaign without the assistance of a published module.
If GW gave narrative rules that officially empowered a GM, gave them tips and tricks and examples to deal with certain situations, wrote campaign arcs with a DM in mind, I think you'd have a lot better narrative content than crusade.
GW did write narrative rules with GMs in mind that give them tips and tricks. GM's were recommended in the Charadon Campaign, and the ways in which a GM could help to manage a campaign were mentioned... But the concept wasn't leveraged as effectively as it could have been.
But then Octarius happened, and campaign trees were provided as exemplars with blank campaign trees for GMs who wished to make their own, as well as GM edicts, and some additional guidance. If Charadon scratched the surface of moderated campaign play, Octarius was written with moderation specifically in mind.
And again, I'm not saying GW shouldn't go further; I think we really need a "Big Book of Crusade" and I think there might even be one coming, but it probably wouldn't make sense to release such a thing until the codex cycle is complete since we've already started down the rabbit hole. It would have made sense for a big book of crusade BEFORE the parade of bespoke content from dexes began, but now that we're on the train it makes sense to ride it til the end, at which point GW can release a book that augments all of the content.
As it stands, Crusade is just another mode of play just like Matched, that doesn't require any narrative at all - if you want to keep up with the bookkeeping, you can be just as competitive in Crusade as in Matched.
I somewhat agree with this statement. Crusade can be just as competitive as Matched with the wrong attitude and/ or group- probably even moreso. I'd be a fool to deny that.
But saying that crusade doesn't require any narrative at all... I'm not so sure I buy that. If you perform agendas to get xp with which you buy battle honours, there is a story there, whether you choose to acknowledge it or not. There's a beginning (green) a middle (blooded and battle hardened) and an end (heroic and legendary) and these are linked by cause and effect. Tools exist to allow groups to go deeper than this if they choose, and most will- adding a long term goal for their army as whole, for example. But again, when players choose not to do that, it isn't the game's fault.
Oh, and for the record, the same thing can be done with roleplaying games too. I used to play RPGA Living City events, which were highly standardized and followed particular formats to provide standard outcomes for four-hour convention spots. It wasn't as good as free form D&D, but I never claimed that D&D was a bad game because it allowed for the possibility of RPGA style play for those who were into that sort of thing.
Problem 2: The core rules themselves aren't immersive. It's hard to write a narrative of a battle action by action with the current structure of 40k. I can go into more detail about this, but the general point is things don't behave on the tabletop the way they would in universe. I can pick some examples out of some prior posts if you would like - in fact, here's one from back in the day:
I can see your point here too; missions aren't written in a way that you see the story in them- you kinda have to analyze the system of abstractions that are the rules and find the story inside. Mission writing is definitely an area for improvement. Even in my descriptions of the fun I've had with Crusade above, you'll see it's the choices about campaign level decisions I write about; mission level decisions are less engaging and dramatic. I won't deny that.
This seems like a post facto rationalization, rather than a real reason.
He can still give orders, just not out of a Chimera because... why again? He used up all his "cunning" that it would require to... talk into a radio? He was tactically overmatched by the channel dial on the vox? He exerted himself SO HEAVILY that the sheer EFFORT it would take to use the radio is JUST TOO MUCH?
Remember, he's not saving orders. Orders don't cost CP. He's just unable to give orders because he's in the back of a tank - but he could when there was CP. Why does having or not having CP change the status of his ability to give orders out of a tank? What's the narrative there?
And honestly? It was a post facto rationalization. Games that use rules to create stories on the fly often require such things. I train in a character class that gives me an increased critical range- I'm scoring crits on 19's and 20's. I get into a fight where I don't roll over 15 once. Yet everyone else in my party scores a crit and one guy scores three of them over the course of the fight, even though none of them have an increased threat range.
There's no story rationale why that should happen. Statistically, it shouldn't happen. But when it does, I don't talk about the system being non narrative, throw up my hands in angst, sell my books and post on forums that the system is bad because of some of the things that can occasionally happen from time to time.
Instead, when the fight is over, my character might make a comment to the other characters that he didn't sleep well last night, because that would provide a story based rationale for why the rules didn't create the specific scenario I expected. We all know that the GM didn't actually make me roll to see how much rest I got; we know the dice didn't do what they did as a result of mechanics governing the game state at the time the rolls were made. But we'd probably all celebrate the roleplayer for adding a narrative detail to the story to explain what mechanically happened despite the fact that it statistically should not have gone the way it did.
And again, I'll remind you that in the post you quoted, I also said I never liked GW's rules for not being able to do anything when you're in a transport. I also pointed out that guard don't have their 9th dex, so what actually happens with 9th ed guard issuing orders from vehicles is a giant question mark right now. And finally, I pointed out that rules text in some recent releases seems to indicate that there may be some changes on the way.
PenitentJake wrote: As for immersive, again I can't agree- but again, I'm a campaign player, so of course I find it immersive- I've got an entire penitent mission working toward redemption, a fledging cult that is infecting citizens with the genestealer curse and a Dark Eldar Archon who is sponsoring two Wych Cults who compete in the Arena for the right to realspace raid, feeding their dead to the mysterious Haemonculus who has taken up residence beneath the Arena.
I don't really understand why this is impossible in any other iteration of 40k - you could tell these same stories in 4th edition, or 2nd edition (Well, DE didn't exist but you get the idea).
Okay, let's break it down for you then:
/snip
Starting to see what I'm talking about yet?
Yes, you could do literally all of the things mentioned above with enough houserules and open minded players. It's just that now you don't have to- all you have to do is find a group who wants to play crusade.
Which are the same people who would be okay with a narrative campaign that included such rules in the past.... hence my point.
Not necessarily. Certainly, no one open minded enough to play a campaign FULL of house rules would shy away from playing Crusade.
But there might be a fair number of people out there who are willing to play printed Crusade rules because they are official who wouldn't touch houserules with a ten foot pole.
I'll play D&D with someone who tweaks existing material to fit the game, or combines elements from multiple sources, but if we fight 5 OP encounters in a row where all encounters with homebrew monsters, and all we get for it is homebrew magic items in the treasure, I might suggest to that GM that the game would be improved by using more of the printed rules.
I mean, if I had to invent all of the Druhkari territories that we were going to use in our campaign, you think there wouldn't be non-Druhkari players whispering under their breath about how much my house rules suck? Kind of a good thing these rules already exist then, isn't it?
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2022/04/10 23:50:17
Karol wrote: Well there can be countless other games existing, but if the only fandom that exists in large enough numbers to have opponents to play is GW games, and store only sell GW stuff, after they got burned on what Privateer Press did, the play something else, is not really an option. And it is kin to telling someone to get smarter an richer, if they don't like the life they have right now.
Buy an Infinity starter set, teach a friend to play. It's how we did it when we were nerds with niche hobbies instead of passive consumers.
PenitentJake wrote: ...Not necessarily. Certainly, no one open minded enough to play a campaign FULL of house rules would shy away from playing Crusade...
I have 2 problems with Crusade as an RPG system; you and I have had this discussion before but I think it bears repeating to the wider audience:
Problem 1: If you don't follow the GW Approved™ way your army is supposed to tell it's narrative, then you don't get to tell your narrative. I'm an Eldar player. The first thing I did when I opened the Eldar codex was flip to the Crusade rules. "Paths, huh?" I said. "I wonder how my grav-tank and Engine of Vaul army will fit into the Path structure."
Spoiler alert: it didn't, and doesn't. I get to continue using the Warhammer 40k rulebook for most of the units in my army - and, what's worse, they're the units whose story I was most excited to tell. So? I'm selling my Eldar locally. Because the Crusade content didn't encourage me to build my character but rather encouraged me to build GW's character and follow their Path progression system. This would be akin to you wanting to play an Elven two-handed fighter in DND and being told "Sorry, Elves can only play archers and battle mages". I've had this problem with Sororitas too but it is even worse for my eldar, to the point where I don't even want the army anymore, if GW's opinion is that the eldar never field tanks or engines of Vaul narratively (or rather that those vehicles will never be narratively significant).
I don't disagree with this point. It's true, GW didn't do everything they could have done for every army- there could be more options for every army's Crusade content then there is, and some armies have it worse than others. It's one of the reasons why when I rave about Crusade lately, I tend to identify the army books that have the most innovative content- Crusade is much more fun for my DE or GSC than my Deathwatch.
Obviously, when they can't give us everything, what they are going to try and give us will be the stuff that is most central to the army's over-all identity; they'll also be trying to avoid having content for one faction overlap too closely with content from a different faction. And it is going to lead to lost opportunities to present some very unique fringe possibilities- or even just possibilities that are less common than the core identifying themes. I think that my point is not that it's perfect, but that it is the best it has ever been. Never has any previous version of the game provided ANY faction based long term story arc, or faction specific upgrades. To complain that you can't tell an engines of Vaul story is legit. But it ignores the fact that you CAN tell the story of a Warlock unit that grows together from green initiates to powerful sorcerers until one member leaves to become a farseer, or that you do now have the capacity for the harlequins to actually bring different performances to the battlefield- these are things that you could not do before without either making up houserules or crafting custom missions that made it feel like these things should happen, but then they don't because rules to represent them only exist if you make them and find players who will allow to use them.
The whole point of narrative play is to be flexible. To tell Your Story. That's why DND has a DM - no rulebook in the world could be as flexible as the human brain. If GW gave narrative rules that officially empowered a GM, gave them tips and tricks and examples to deal with certain situations, wrote campaign arcs with a DM in mind, I think you'd have a lot better narrative content than crusade.
As it stands, Crusade is just another mode of play just like Matched, that doesn't require any narrative at all - if you want to keep up with the bookkeeping, you can be just as competitive in Crusade as in Matched.
Problem 2: The core rules themselves aren't immersive. It's hard to write a narrative of a battle action by action with the current structure of 40k. I can go into more detail about this, but the general point is things don't behave on the tabletop the way they would in universe. I can pick some examples out of some prior posts if you would like - in fact, here's one from back in the day:
I can see your point here too; missions aren't written in a way that you see the story in them- you kinda have to analyze the system of abstractions that are the rules and find the story inside. Mission writing is definitely an area for improvement. Even in my descriptions of the fun I've had with Crusade above, you'll see it's the choices about campaign level decisions I write about; mission level decisions are less engaging and dramatic. I won't deny that.
Right now, playing 40k feels like playing a GAME. I'm not re-enacting an epic battle or telling the story of characters on a board.
Captain Krassus screamed into the vox: "All Armageddon Steel Legion, raise high the black banners, now is our time! Fix bayonets!" signaling the epic charge.
BUT he couldn't have predicted the cunning of the Rule System, his true foe:
"Sir, we're out of command points, you can't give orders from within a Chimera!" screamed the driver, as he repeatedly shifted from reverse to forwards, jerkily trying to run Orks over like the zamboni scene in Austin Powers. After all, only a fool would drive past enemy infantry that offered practically no threat and bypass hardened positions with maneuver - and the mechanized units of the Armageddon Steel Legion were no fools!
And thusly on the cusp of victory did the planet of Armageddon fall, defeated not by the cleverness of his foe or superior force or tactics, but by the universal laws which this commander foolishly disregarded when he embarked upon his mechanized transport. Who was he to think he could give orders from a Chimera freely? To be a man in such times...
This example is interesting to me, because what I read into it is that there IS a story of the battle, and then there is a story that YOU want to tell, and the two don't match.
The story you want to tell, is that despite the fact that the commander has already used all of his cunning and experience to try and take the battle where he wants it to go, he still has more in him to keep giving more orders- he never starts to doubt himself when it seems he's done all he can and it's still not enough; he never gets tired, he never begins to question whether or not his ideas are enough to win the day.
But the story of the game is that your commander was cocky- he came in headstrong, issuing order after order in the opening moments of the battle. But now he is getting tired. He is having doubts. He feels the loss of the troops who have been sacrificed, and he can't help but think about the troops who are left to be lost as a result of his early bravado on the field. In battles to come, if he survives, he will learn to use command more sparingly, saving orders for the moments when they are most needed.
This is what running out of command points means. In D&D, I often wish my fighter had a third and a fourth wind. He doesn't; he has a second wind. And if he burns it on the minion fight so that it isn't there when he needs it against the boss, I don't say "Geez, that's really non-narrative. You'd think if I had the capacity to summon my internal reserves against the skeletons, I'd be even more inspired by the horrifying presence of the Lich to dig even deeper. Gee, this system is kinda broken because it won't let me play my narrative."
Instead, I as a player realize that my character made a poor decision and used a limited resource that would have been better saved for a more pivotal moment.
This seems like a post facto rationalization, rather than a real reason.
He can still give orders, just not out of a Chimera because... why again? He used up all his "cunning" that it would require to... talk into a radio?
Spoiler:
He was tactically overmatched by the channel dial on the vox? He exerted himself SO HEAVILY that the sheer EFFORT it would take to use the radio is JUST TOO MUCH?
Remember, he's not saving orders. Orders don't cost CP. He's just unable to give orders because he's in the back of a tank - but he could when there was CP. Why does having or not having CP change the status of his ability to give orders out of a tank? What's the narrative there?
PenitentJake wrote: As for immersive, again I can't agree- but again, I'm a campaign player, so of course I find it immersive- I've got an entire penitent mission working toward redemption, a fledging cult that is infecting citizens with the genestealer curse and a Dark Eldar Archon who is sponsoring two Wych Cults who compete in the Arena for the right to realspace raid, feeding their dead to the mysterious Haemonculus who has taken up residence beneath the Arena.
I don't really understand why this is impossible in any other iteration of 40k - you could tell these same stories in 4th edition, or 2nd edition (Well, DE didn't exist but you get the idea).
Okay, let's break it down for you then:
/snip
Starting to see what I'm talking about yet?
Yes, you could do literally all of the things mentioned above with enough houserules and open minded players. It's just that now you don't have to- all you have to do is find a group who wants to play crusade.
Which are the same people who would be okay with a narrative campaign that included such rules in the past.... hence my point.
LoL… yeah, dude dropped his last command token, sort of like running out of coins at the pay phone or minutes on the burner phone or maybe the spring in his toy soldier mechanism needs winding, again, or union labor rules compel a smoke break before more orders may be issued…
PenitentJake is once again defending the "All-out-of-AA-Missiles Missile-Havoc" but this time with a narrative spin..
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/04/11 07:36:43
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GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Not necessarily. Certainly, no one open minded enough to play a campaign FULL of house rules would shy away from playing Crusade.
But there might be a fair number of people out there who are willing to play printed Crusade rules because they are official who wouldn't touch houserules with a ten foot pole.
I'll play D&D with someone who tweaks existing material to fit the game, or combines elements from multiple sources, but if we fight 5 OP encounters in a row where all encounters with homebrew monsters, and all we get for it is homebrew magic items in the treasure, I might suggest to that GM that the game would be improved by using more of the printed rules.
I mean, if I had to invent all of the Druhkari territories that we were going to use in our campaign, you think there wouldn't be non-Druhkari players whispering under their breath about how much my house rules suck? Kind of a good thing these rules already exist then, isn't it?
I find it very difficult to believe that GWs Crusade rules are well balanced either.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/04/11 07:53:12
Not necessarily. Certainly, no one open minded enough to play a campaign FULL of house rules would shy away from playing Crusade.
But there might be a fair number of people out there who are willing to play printed Crusade rules because they are official who wouldn't touch houserules with a ten foot pole.
I'll play D&D with someone who tweaks existing material to fit the game, or combines elements from multiple sources, but if we fight 5 OP encounters in a row where all encounters with homebrew monsters, and all we get for it is homebrew magic items in the treasure, I might suggest to that GM that the game would be improved by using more of the printed rules.
I mean, if I had to invent all of the Druhkari territories that we were going to use in our campaign, you think there wouldn't be non-Druhkari players whispering under their breath about how much my house rules suck? Kind of a good thing these rules already exist then, isn't it?
I find it very difficult to believe that GWs Crusade rules are well balanced either.
As a matter of fact, they are not.
Beyond the "normal" power dicrepancy of factions (Harlequins vs guards) there is also vastly unfair crusade content design. From the completly disfunctional and actually hindering Ork crusade content that basically disallows you from having a Big Mek as a warboss because of how the infighting rules work, to the shoddy agendas. Meanwhile you have GSC which have a very well working ascencion idea seizing planets in a system that grant boni and can force a final battle tm.
the ork player is fethed crusade wise whilest GSC may have a blast, as long as someone doesn't show up with the clowns or tau or custodes.....
So no, crusade content for factions runs the same gauntlet as matched play does, except due to the 50 Pl and aquisition point design has a LOT of potential to become even worse.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
So then Jake's defence of "GWs campaign rules show less favouritism towards certain factions than homebrew campaign rules" isn't really a good argument?
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2022/04/11 08:33:20
Sim-Life wrote: So then Jake's defence of "GWs campaign rules show less favouritism towards certain factions than homebrew campaign rules" isn't really a good argument?
Not if you play orks, because regardless if you play matched or crusade you tend to get the short end of the stick, rules design wise (e.g. basically no synergy for orks units available, compared to the extremely well designed GSC codex, which is just overshadowed by certain other problem factions)
And even if you get nice rules, they often are heavily limited to GW's interpretation of how a faction should work (e.g. being basically forced to have a Magus/ Primus / patriarch in gsc, even IF you want to use the list as "count as chaos cult" list or god forbid a GSC recon list around an Jackal Alpha. Or as above mentioned by Unit cue Eldar mechanised / armored forces)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/04/11 08:39:58
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
In the end one can not force a small group of people to do stuff they don't like. If a designer has a milion and one ideas for GSC or DE, it will show up in the rules. If a faction is a chore to do for the design team, the rules will be a lot less fun. That is why there should be someone above the designers, who say every faction needs, X, Y and Z, and while those factions have alsoa ton of B and C, we have to give everyone some B and C too. Of course this falls apart as soon as the head designer starts having favourits of his own. And by favourits of his own, I don't mean that he designers rules for himself to be more powerful, but favourits in the sense that he likes desiging rules for a faction more then for others.
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Not if you play orks, because regardless if you play matched or crusade you tend to get the short end of the stick, rules design wise (e.g. basically no synergy for orks units available, compared to the extremely well designed GSC codex, which is just overshadowed by certain other problem factions)
And even if you get nice rules, they often are heavily limited to GW's interpretation of how a faction should work (e.g. being basically forced to have a Magus/ Primus / patriarch in gsc, even IF you want to use the list as "count as chaos cult" list or god forbid a GSC recon list around an Jackal Alpha. Or as above mentioned by Unit cue Eldar mechanised / armored forces)
Well that can happen if someone high enough in the design stuff thinks that a faction like orks should be the funny factions with funny rules, just for the sake of funny. Only funny is subjective, so even people looking for fun may not find it so, and people who are looking for well oiled working army or list defintly will be unhappy. And it shows in stuff like the buggy list problem for orks.
It looks as if someone at GW really thought that orks players will jump to buy the new infantry, beast snaggas and maybe a buggy or two. And that only some high end tournament players will run more. I think their suprise, that even outside tournaments a basic ork became a buggy, was genuine.
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If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Not Online!!! wrote: And even if you get nice rules, they often are heavily limited to GW's interpretation of how a faction should work (e.g. being basically forced to have a Magus/ Primus / patriarch in gsc, even IF you want to use the list as "count as chaos cult" list or god forbid a GSC recon list around an Jackal Alpha. Or as above mentioned by Unit cue Eldar mechanised / armored forces)
If you're trying to use a 'dex to represent something else entirely, such as your Chaos cult example, don't be surprised if the Crusade content for it doesn't fit.
I'd also say I don't think it is unreasonable for this first stab at Crusade to focus on a more typical progression cycle for a faction.
Not so sure what's going on with the Ork material, though - haven't read that.
Gamgee on Tau Players wrote:we all kill cats and sell our own families to the devil and eat live puppies.
Kanluwen wrote: This is, emphatically, why I will continue suggesting nuking Guard and starting over again. It's a legacy army that needs to be rebooted with a new focal point.
Confirmation of why no-one should listen to Kanluwen when it comes to the IG - he doesn't want the IG, he want's Kan's New Model Army...
tneva82 wrote: You aren't even trying ty pretend for honest arqument. Open bad faith trolling.
- No reason to keep this here, unless people want to use it for something...
Not Online!!! wrote: And even if you get nice rules, they often are heavily limited to GW's interpretation of how a faction should work (e.g. being basically forced to have a Magus/ Primus / patriarch in gsc, even IF you want to use the list as "count as chaos cult" list or god forbid a GSC recon list around an Jackal Alpha. Or as above mentioned by Unit cue Eldar mechanised / armored forces)
If you're trying to use a 'dex to represent something else entirely, such as your Chaos cult example, don't be surprised if the Crusade content for it doesn't fit.
I'd also say I don't think it is unreasonable for this first stab at Crusade to focus on a more typical progression cycle for a faction.
Not so sure what's going on with the Ork material, though - haven't read that.
It can't even represent a recon talon lead by a jackal effectivly.
So no it isn't even good in that regard either for GSC.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/766717.page A Mostly Renegades and Heretics blog.
GW:"Space marines got too many options to balance, therefore we decided to legends HH units." Players: "why?!? Now we finally got decent plastic kits and you cut them?" Chaos marines players: "Since when are Daemonengines 30k models and why do i have NO droppods now?" GW" MONEY.... erm i meant TOO MANY OPTIONS (to resell your army to you again by disalowing former units)! Do you want specific tyranid fighiting Primaris? Even a new sabotage lieutnant!" Chaos players: Guess i stop playing or go to HH.
Harlequins on 72% win rate.
Tyranids 61%. Custodes 59%. Tau 58%.
GSC (56%) did well, as strangely enough did DG & Sisters (both on 55% respectively) - but that was with a small number of players, so there may be exceptional circumstances.
I think the real hostility is how tournament results are now wall to wall of the 2022 codexes (and Tyranids I guess, although apparently some events were allowing the new codex because its all online so why not really, and Crusher Stampede should have got crushed a long time ago).
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At least the reign of GK and 1ksons got reigned in with the no double cabal/brotherhood change. So GW at least fixed that.
If you have to kill, then kill in the best manner. If you slaughter, then slaughter in the best manner. Let one of you sharpen his knife so his animal feels no pain.
Sim-Life wrote: So then Jake's defence of "GWs campaign rules show less favouritism towards certain factions than homebrew campaign rules" isn't really a good argument?
Yes let's read when Jake said GW's campaign rules showed less favouritism:
I don't disagree with this point. It's true, GW didn't do everything they could have done for every army- there could be more options for every army's Crusade content then there is, and some armies have it worse than others. It's one of the reasons why when I rave about Crusade lately, I tend to identify the army books that have the most innovative content- Crusade is much more fun for my DE or GSC than my Deathwatch.
Do you remember Jake saying not all Crusade content is created equally?
Pepperidge Farm remembers.
What I did say is that when someone makes up their own rules, they tend to encounter more resistance from players than when they use something from a book- even if people HATE the thing from the book. When a rule is official, whether it's good or not, you have ground to stand on when using it. This is the reason the "cult of officialdom" exists- and I don't know too many players who would say there is no Cult of Officialdom.
Not related to anything in the thread so far I think GW could significantly improve the game with a handful of small changes.
1) Add a pre-game psychic phase, disallowing powers that target enemy units.
2) Waive movement restrictions on defensive strats if your army hasn't had a turn yet.
3) Switch from 12 CP up front plus one per turn to 3 CP up front plus 3 per turn. Adjusted for game size, obviously.
4) Do away with the +/- 1 cap, replace it with a method of hitting/wounding when you need more than a 6. Bolt Action's system where if you roll a six then you get to roll another d6-3 and add it to the first die springs to mind.
5) Building on #4, add a standard a -1 to hit and to wound on shots if the target is outside of half range. Heavy weapons also get a -1 to hit inside 1/4 range for being unwieldy.
6) Indirect fire weapons always count as shooting through dense cover if they don't actually have LoS.
All of that is aimed at reducing turn-one lethality and making maneuvering into ideal ranges more important without needing to rewrite all the codexes. I'm 100% certain that there are things I'm not thinking of that would be broken under that set of changes, I'd be curious to hear what they are as long as there are also thoughts on how to address them.
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Sim-Life wrote: So then Jake's defence of "GWs campaign rules show less favouritism towards certain factions than homebrew campaign rules" isn't really a good argument?
Were you expecting a rational argument from someone who thinks PL is a better balancing mechanism than points?
Sim-Life wrote: So then Jake's defence of "GWs campaign rules show less favouritism towards certain factions than homebrew campaign rules" isn't really a good argument?
As a habitual homebrewer I find the homebrew-favoritism thing to be wildly overblown, simply because anyone who writes homebrew rules they actually expect to play has to have enough understanding of game design to realize they need to make the game work for the whole design space, not just for their stuff. Homebrew rules have a reputation for being unbalanced and written by people with a narrow view of a game that'd make them win more, and that certainly exists among people who are trying for the first time without much experience or knowledge, but I don't think it's fair to tar all homebrew rules ever as inherently less well put together than official rules, especially when you're comparing them to GW rules.
(The loyalist-SM v. Chaos-SM relationship is more biased than any homebrew project I've ever read, and it's been going on for as long as I've been playing the game, and yet somehow people still reject homebrew rules as biased towards the armies the writers play and don't reject GW as biased towards the armies the writers play.)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2022/04/11 14:31:52
"...but the horror of its countenance throws my aim askew!"), but the Crassus example isn't telling a narrative of any of the things either of us have mentioned that could explain it - it's just a flat "computer says no" moment.
