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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I once saw a unit of 4 Firewarriors kill an Avatar in melee in 3rd Ed.

They ain't no thang.

I did something like that once (think it was like 8 firewarriors). Also a daemon prince.

And then there was the time that a lone Vespid Strain Leader murdered a Space Marine Chapter Master and his bodyguard over the course of 4 turns in melee.

 Hellebore wrote:

The named characters went from examples of how to create your own characters, to the protagonists of the setting that immediately NPC-ified whoever they were fighting.

EDIT: IMO the soul of 40k was the setting itself being the protagonist, with all these characters being dragged along by the weight of history. The setting revolved around its own inertia, not on the whims of specific characters that had models. The setting chewed up and spat out people with names, because they survived only at its convenience. Any story with a protagonist existed at the mercy of the setting, not the popularity of the character.

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it began around the time they retconned Eldrad's death after the 13th black crusade. They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then. Characters that were historical (Macharius) have disappeared. It's '12 seconds to midnight attendees only' now.

Now if you want a character to appear in a historical battle, you just have to pick from a growing range of semi-immortals. Rather than expanding the stories with historical characters.

This is all a really good point.

Jarran Kell has died-died, as has Aun'va off the top of my head.

Aun'va was kind of a cheat-y death though. A Culexus Assassin killed them and the Tau have been faking them still being alive via holograms and overlays.

one of the best characters IMHO is Soloman Lok (IIRC thats the name), the Inquisitor from Imperial Armour "The Aphelion project"

someone the whole purpose of which was basically to show it really is a very big universe and no you really won't be missed

Captain Tycho is also all proper ded.

 Hellebore wrote:

EDIT: IMO the soul of 40k was the setting itself being the protagonist, with all these characters being dragged along by the weight of history. The setting revolved around its own inertia, not on the whims of specific characters that had models. The setting chewed up and spat out people with names, because they survived only at its convenience. Any story with a protagonist existed at the mercy of the setting, not the popularity of the character.

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it began around the time they retconned Eldrad's death after the 13th black crusade. They kept Tycho dead at Armageddon, but no special character has died that had a model (that I can think of), since then. Characters that were historical (Macharius) have disappeared. It's '12 seconds to midnight attendees only' now.

Now if you want a character to appear in a historical battle, you just have to pick from a growing range of semi-immortals. Rather than expanding the stories with historical characters.

Couldn't agree more.

I don't know when this first started, though I'd have to cite 5th (much as I like it in other respects) as being a time when the rot really started to set in.

Apart from the botched introductions for Draigo et al., we also had examples like the Swarmlord being retconned into major battles, even though his presence only diminishes the story.

Aside:


I wonder if there is a similar issue with many named characters in 40k feeling rather detached

So how does Horus Heresy figure into this? Its obviously a character driven narrative, which would make it a bit of the antithesis of what we believe 40k should be, yes? But thats ok, because thats what makes the 30k era distinct from the 41st millennium, because it was a period of greater hope and dynamic growth in the history of humanity, before the outcome of the Heresy resulted in stagnation - thats how I would look at it. Do we think that the 41st millennium is losing some of what makes the setting distinct from the 31st millennium via the heavy character focus?

Also, what about the likes of Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Ciaphas Cain, etc? I'll be upfront and say I've never read any of those books, but they were the "big names" in the setting back in the day, albeit ones that were missing from the tabletop. Has 40k actually always been somewhat character driven, but not necessarily by the characters found in the army lists and codecies? Is the issue maybe less that GW is focusing on characters, and more that those characters are more visible and present in the tabletop game?

leopard wrote:
one of the best characters IMHO is Soloman Lok (IIRC thats the name), the Inquisitor from Imperial Armour "The Aphelion project"

someone the whole purpose of which was basically to show it really is a very big universe and no you really won't be missed

yeah, you're right. I forgot about that one, but the narrative (and Loks story in particular) was top shelf. Also probably the point where I fully came to comprehend what it means to say that Space Marines aren't really the heroes that some people make them out to be.

Anphelion and Mymeara were aces.

The extent to which they feel "detached" varies, I think.

Marines are generally sort of removed from the rest of humanity. So when a marine character shows up, the plot tends to be about them appearing out of the void, beating something up, then disappearing into the sunset. Pretty detached and prone to Mary Sue syndrome.

Phoenix Lords, being wanderers, have a slightly toned down version of the same thing. Show up. Do violence. Leave. In Asurmen's novel, I felt like they did a pretty good job of tying him to the current situation by making him significant to the mother character's arc. In the Jain Zar novel (which I enjoyed), Jain's interactions with basically everyone she meets is colored by a sort of celebrity status. She tends to steal the spotlight without trying by virtue of being in the room.

Yriel and Iyanna, especially in Valedor, both do a better job of feeling attached to the setting. They're both near their home craftworld, interacting with their family legacies, having connections to the people that live there.

Farsight and Shadowsun in their respective novels feel very much attached to the setting (the Tau Empire), even if their status lets them step over a lot of the red tape a less famous tau might deal with.

In Lukas the Trickster, everyone feels extremely at-home and in-character from Lukas to Malys to Sathonyx. The conflict is of a limited scope, and everyone feels like they belong there. If we must have named characters bump into each other, this is how to do it. No one is changing the galaxy, but they're all oozing personality without diminishing one anothers' capabilities.

You probably have to go all the way to Rogue Trader to avoid Named Characters.

Otherwise Named Characters have been influencing the story since very early. I mean even during 4th and purely from a Tyranid player perspective we already saw characters like Kryptman and Yriel having a strong impact on the setting.

My recently acquired Rogue Trader rulebook tells me that there were named characters from the start, such as the illustrious Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau.

chaos0xomega wrote:
So how does Horus Heresy figure into this? Its obviously a character driven narrative, which would make it a bit of the antithesis of what we believe 40k should be, yes? But thats ok, because thats what makes the 30k era distinct from the 41st millennium, because it was a period of greater hope and dynamic growth in the history of humanity, before the outcome of the Heresy resulted in stagnation - thats how I would look at it. Do we think that the 41st millennium is losing some of what makes the setting distinct from the 31st millennium via the heavy character focus?

Also, what about the likes of Eisenhorn, Ravenor, Ciaphas Cain, etc? I'll be upfront and say I've never read any of those books, but they were the "big names" in the setting back in the day, albeit ones that were missing from the tabletop. Has 40k actually always been somewhat character driven, but not necessarily by the characters found in the army lists and codecies? Is the issue maybe less that GW is focusing on characters, and more that those characters are more visible and present in the tabletop game?

As for 30k, it really is different from what came before in that not only are characters changing the course of history, but the narrative is actively moving forward.

That vibe seems to have definitely bled over onto the last couple editions of 40k fluff. More consequential characters, history moving forward, Primaris Marines representing a leap forward in tech and science, etc, etc...
All these were unknown for the first 7 editions of 40k which essentially represented a static, stagnant universe where new information was generally shared with players by revealing new parts of the universe rather than chronological progress.

As for Eisenhorn, it wasn't quite as separate as you might think. He featured quite prominently on the tabletop in the Inquisitor 54mm game that came out about the same time.

Oh, and read at least the first 3 Eisenhorn books. Still among the best 40K writing ever and the Ravenor trilogy is almost as good.

Even then it wasn't truly static. The Tau Empire and Tyranids being both new factions that quickly developed new stuff are most obvious cases, but there also was the awakening of Tomb Worlds and the Black Crusade.

It's kind of ironic to think that for quite some time the only part of the narrative that was actually moving forward was a part of the narrative that has already happened period. I wonder if the success of 30k is what in bolden gw to attempt to replicate that in 40k.

I don't know that I agree with those examples of it not being static.

When Tau were added it was done in a way where basically "they've always been here" - the Damocles Gulf Crusade and other events involving them were referenced as occurring in the past, rather than being "active" events occurring in the games present. Even subsequent codecies always established further developments as being past events. Each subsequent sphere of expansion had already happened or met with failure from the perspective of the narration, up until the most recent one (fifth sphere? Sixth sphere?) which is the first to be presented in a way that indicates that it is what the Tau are actively doing *now*. All their technological developments were also always likewise presented as stuff that has been around but not seen - this only changed relatively recently.

Nids have been around since 2nd edition, so might as well have been there from the actual start of things for how much the setting evolved since then. Likewise each hive fleet event was always presented as being in the past, leviathan was the only one ever really presented as being the "current" invasion - but said invasion made no real progress from 4th edition to 8th/9th edition, it just "was" and not much had changed until recently when they announced that it had split into separate fleets, etc.

Awakening Tomb worlds is similar to the Tau situation - all the meaningful stuff had already happened - were there more continuingbto awaken? Sure but that's like arguing the setting isn't stagnant because people wake up and go to sleep everyday, it had no meaningful impact on the narrative. It's only recently that theyvtook an active voice in the events related to the Necrons abd began presenting things as happening *now*.

I can't comment on the Black Crusade too much, because I only got into the hobby around the time of the Eye of Terror global campaign which represented the 13th Black Crusade. As such, from my perspective there have always been 13 black crusades, as in my 20 years in the hobby there has never been a 14th - in fact I'm pretty sure the 13th is still ongoing in the current edition, and while things are progressing narratively now, that wasnt really the case from late 3rd edition through late 7th edition. As far as I can tell the first 12 black crusades have always basically been "things that already happened" - there was never a point in the games history when the twelfth was already happening. Lore prior to the eye of terror campaign basically presented it as though the previous twelve crusades had already happened and the thirteenth was looming or in the early stages but not really fleshed out until the campaign. Even with the campaign, it was basically always presented in the past tense as something thst had already occurred though also somehow simultaneously being ongoing.

I guess, I get the point you're trying to make, but at the same time it's not a strong point because none of those developments were ever really about moving the story forward, instead they were about painting in background details to flesh out the setting.

All that being said, it dies raise the observation thst some of the tonal shift in the way the lore is being interpreted is down to the shift between passive voice vs active voice, etc. In the past everything had a sort of quality to it where it felt you were reading a history book about things that have already happened and the future of the setting was left open to possibility and you could take that in whichever directionyour imagination wanted to. Now you are reading about things as they happen which makes these events seem more... relatable? contemporary? I don't know what the word is, but it's peeled back a lot of the mystique of the setting and by trying to make it feel more alive have eliminated much of its grandiosity and made it feel smaller and less otherworldly than it once was, and while the future is still open, that's because it hasn't yet been published, rather than because you could forge your own narrative headcanon on where things would go from the "present".

Yes. Yes it has.

The problem about the older fluff was they wrote themselves in a corner. Within 10000 years a lot of stuff suddenly happened within the last couple of months of M40. Necrons awoke, Tyranids invaded, Ghazghkull was about to start Ragnarork, Abaddon started his 13th crusade and since 6th edition all prior crusades were said to have been led to the 13th. So, naturally, every story you wanted to tell had to be inside the 1 minute to midnight, and that's what GW did. They did tell stories and squeezed them into that one minute. Just have a look at 40ks timeline on lexicanum.
And out of that situation the worse aspects of the new fluff emerged. Ghazghkull just... didn't gather all Orks. Abaddon just... split the galaxy in half and then went on raiding on smaller theaters. The Tyranids just... lost again at Baal. The Imperium just... had 10 additional pyrrhic victories.

I feel the really only decisive change in tone is how the Imperium is presented most of the time. Yes, there are still proper grimdark aspects, but they're more or less hidden in lesser known Black library Novels or footnotes in campaign books before the noble Space Marines arrive.

I was ok with the static setting of old editions. It set the tone and background for your own stories and that was quite enough.

The Chat-GPT written fluff pieces about "current events"I saw in a few recent White Dwarfs I borrowed from a friend don't add anything worthwhile in my opinion. Just dilute the well-established atmosphere.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
The problem about the older fluff was they wrote themselves in a corner.

More like they entered a room, walked into the corner facing the wall, and said 'damn this room is all corners'.

They're no more in a corner now that they've blundered into M42 (and then back a bit, and then forward a bit again...) than they were before.

Indeed, there were multiple instances of the timeline having moved beyond 999.M41 before Fall of Cadia.

Local anecdote, but besides the 4 or so top tier players who actually go to world class tournaments there's basically no more 40k tables to be seen at game night.

What irritates me the most about named characters is that it leads to the horrible mistake of Eternal Warrior nonsense. I don't care what your name is, if you get hit by something instant death related you should just die outright, not merely take a wound from a missile launcher to the face. It's one thing they dominate the narrative but they also dominate the game, and in a strange manner as well. Historically in 40K it was the custom character who was often more effective than the named character, and even if named characters were good at all there was usually caveats you needed an opponent's permission to play them. But now in the remake of the edition named characters feel like they beat down Captain Genericus soundly. 'Course the bull gak mortal wound spam and various defenses not offered by any traditional relics does well to pump characters up like the Lion.

That's the opposite of how it is in 10th, at the least. Named SM characters generally struggle to compete with the generic Cap's Rites of Battle. I've seen Sallies lists using Vulkan, but that's because he buffs their favored weapons. As I have restricted myself from using SW named characters (makes no sense for a successor), I can't comment on their utility.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Local anecdote, but besides the 4 or so top tier players who actually go to world class tournaments there's basically no more 40k tables to be seen at game night.

Sad to hear, we had 2 games of 5th ed and 1 game of 10th, along with 2 battle tech, one dust 1947 and one war machine MK III tonight. and it was a light night with several people out sick.

Another anecdote a "visits once in a blue moon" guys came in, he doesn't play much but when he does it is at a store closer to his house, but he said he really appreciates the community at our store promoting gaming in general.

Further local anecdote: Everyone I've met in my local scene still playing 10th, aside from the hardcore tournament crowd, started in 10th. Cross-edition retention is looking a lot like...well, 6th-7th.

Cross-edition retention seems to be low but community growth seems to be high at least as far as anecdotal data is concerned.

Very few of the people that played 3rd-7th are still around, but overall my community is considerably bigger and better organized.

Anecdotal example...
My group all started in 2nd 3rd or 4th. We play tenth now.

Uptonius wrote:
Anecdotal example...
My group all started in 2nd 3rd or 4th. We play tenth now.

Human nature, people want to get games in so they will play what is most current, even if it is a raging dumpster fire...especially if it is just a little better than the inferno dumpster fire that was the end of 9th.

Since i play so many different games i enjoy each because they are different. as i find nothing appealing about 40K after 8th i have zero desire to play it. same as i have felt for games like MTG or malifaux.

Well there is also the issue that we want to play with the stuff we have.

Old school Marine players may be fine with their trusty old Tacticals and Terminators and Land Raiders that had rules since forever, but most other factions had massive expansions in units and models since then.

Let's go back to Black Codex-era Tyranids, where all I can field are Hive Tyrants, Tyranid Warriors, Termagants, Genestealers and Carnifexes!

That's literally all they had, and Hive Tyrants didn't even have a miniature yet.

Uptonius wrote:
Anecdotal example...
My group all started in 2nd 3rd or 4th. We play tenth now.

My inner circle has an assortment of start dates.
Me: tale end if RT.
After that most range from 3/4 -7th. I think only 1 person actually started 8th.
We've all played 8th+
For the most part we're content to play the current edition of the moment. Every now & then we'll play something older.

At the shop? Most players have an 8th+ start date. With the majority having started with 9th.
Once in a while you might still see an 8th or 9th ed game. But pretty much it's all 10e.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Let's go back to Black Codex-era Tyranids, where all I can field are Hive Tyrants, Tyranid Warriors, Termagants, Genestealers and Carnifexes!

That's literally all they had, and Hive Tyrants didn't even have a miniature yet.

I would actually prefer if GW had kept the Tyranid units' names simpler, a gaunt is a guant, no matter what bio-weapons they use. Oh well, I guess that beats calling gaunts with guns "Shooter Gaunts", at least.

Nevertheless, I am not a fan of the explosion of specialist names across all the codices (looking at Primaris here).

I think having one name for multiple different unit types might get a bit silly after a while.

As for Primaris, it didn't help that so many of them were so similar:

Intercessor (then Heavy, Assault and Jump Pack flavours)
Inceptor
Interceptor
Infiltrator
Incursor
Infernus
Impulsor
Invictor

Then you add on Aggressor, Eradicator and Eliminators.

Then, out of absolutely no where: Hellblasters!!!

Someone's kid came up with that one.