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I tend to be the guy who questions why the Imperial Fists are fighting the Ultramarines in a 40k game, or why a House Davion Lance is attacking another House Davion Lance in BattleTech.

These reasons make me want to play forces that will attack anyone and everyone... Pirates, Mercenaries, the Holy Inquisition, Orks....

Am I alone in this? Or do others sometimes question the "reason" behind a battle?

Orks are their own reason

Civil wars are quite common in BattleTech. And from what I've heard of 40K, resources are scarce enough I can see anyone fighting anyone over them.

But if you can't come up with anything else, call it a 'simulated battle', 'wargaming in universe', or a 'training scenario' between allies.

I tend to like a good scenario, less fussed as to why we are fighting in that scenario, but a good scenario would also incorporate that.

its why i hate owning multiple "good" armies. haha
like vulcan said when it happens good vs good theyre just practicing

Actually depends on the game. When playing Bolt action or Project Z I typically couldn't care less as the rules by themselves are interesting enough. For 40k with the game being flimsy (at least as far as my 6th rules are concerned) i find my fun in nice scenarios behind the battle that pits ours plastic toys together. Also, that allows for a whole range of otherwise impossible scenarios, because we can't jsut playtest every variation or custom scenario we make on the fly, and while it might end up somewhat crooked or flawed, just pretending to live a nice story is enough to make the encounter often enjoyable anyways! But I think I'd love to have got a scenario in any other game that is strongly lore-driven or has got a lot of lore behind it.

Besides, even if scenarios are possible to make up, I find that good vs good notably (as bad vs bad often relies on the fragmented or unstable nature of the villains) are not to credible or a bit forced scenario wise. So If for example my guard has got to face Space Marines, I'll make up a scenario in which the SM turned renegade/ my guard rebelled/ one of those represents pirates mercenaries... whatever.

For a one off battle? Kinda, but not really.

For a campaign (my preference)? I’d say it’s essential.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For a one off battle? Kinda, but not really.

For a campaign (my preference)? I’d say it’s essential.

How do you reign in various factions in a 40k campaign?

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
its why i hate owning multiple "good" armies. haha
like vulcan said when it happens good vs good theyre just practicing

In quite a few wargames, there is no 'good', just 'bad' and 'really bad'. In WFB, even Bretonnia, the Empire, and the Wood Elves would have border battles over who controls what. In Battletech, the ever-shifting nature of warfare and alliances over 500 years means anyone could fight anyone.

This is why I always play the Diamond Sharks in BattleTech. You can simply say, "This encounter is a weapons demonstration for future weapons transactions pertaining to trade negotiations involving high quality Clan made products, Spheroid*."

*You can freely swap the phrase "Spheroid" with "Honorable "'Mechwarrior" when dealing with Trueborns.

Even if it's just a sentence or two of context, I like to have some sort of narrative for a battle. It's part of why I like campaigns so much, but even for one-offs, it's nice to set the stage just a bit.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For a one off battle? Kinda, but not really.

For a campaign (my preference)? I’d say it’s essential.

How do you reign in various factions in a 40k campaign?

With a leather strap or a set of jumper cables.

It is essential to me, because context and narrative matters to my enjoyment a lot.

It depends. Some rulesets do not lend themselves well to narrative immersion. As such it feels more like a simulation and I treat it as such. It is like those hypothetical defense plans maintained by various defense ministries and the Pentagon in case an ally turns on you, no matter how unlikely.

When playing KT 2018 and my Deathwatch fought another Deathwatch team, I assumed it was a live fire exercise. Both KTs performed poorly, and I imagined the Watch Commander tearing strips off of both teams in the AAR. Two elite marine teams performing like slapstick clowns ... yeah, not going over well with the CO.

With solo campaigns I do make a narrative. For my first Five Leagues campaign the justification was a minor lord was trying to claim land, but could not send out all his forces, only a few trusted retainers (my party). For the second, I'm using the King Kull setting by Robert E. Howard (creator of Conan) and adding Deep Ones. So although the days when non-human species like the Serpent Men (canon in King Kull) and Deep Ones (non-canon) dominated humanity are over, they are having a resurgence. The current party will first defend their home village and then ideally get involved in the bigger picture.

Yeah, kind of, IG. It makes sense for Space Marines to be purging Guardsmen and/or Dark Eldar. 40k makes it pretty easy to justify that sort of thing.

I find it essential as all the games I play are narrative. A prime example would involve a series of linked games perhaps starting with BFG leading to a game of epic or LI which in turn could lead to a "closer in view" using either 40k or HH.
No matter how it evolved there needs to be plenty of background or our own story explaining why things have reached this series of games.

At the beginning back in 2014 when I started playing, before we made actual campaigns, we set all our games in the same "sandbox", thus ending up with a fun narrative that emcompassed most of our early games even though they were actually often separate standard games. Then in that same sandbox we started to make little stories within the sotires, and ended up playing campagins. The lore part really always was part of our enjoyment!

For my campaigns, variety of factions in each team and good balance of player experience between teams were more important than fluff compliance, especially as 40k is large enough even very improbable stories have at least a tiny morsel of believability

Making up these oddball background stories was actually fun. Of course we had Tyranids controlled and unleashed by a more sentient race like the Zerg in Starcraft. We also had a Khorne Lord, who, having lost a duel with an Inquisitor and bound by his weird idea of martial honour, swore an oath to serve him...and the Inquisitor, being pretty radical, decided to use that for his own agenda.

So, answering the original question... yes and no?

right that khorne lord idea is massively fun

Works for me. 40k isn't supposed to make sense.

Who blew up this planet a long time ago?

You did.

I don't remember that.

Because you haven't done it yet.

My Cliff Notes of an actual 40k novel.

I've always bought non-mech Xenos because I am a luddite and the empire is the absolute opposite of that so I guess I've always been biased against them.
Then again I did build a few cyborks -_- but like to think of them as a retro-scifi kind of deal or perhaps they just think they are cyborks and aren't really much more than orks with car parts welded to their heads.

Only recently bought some Votann which are ofcourse very into AI, same with buying necromunda van saar.. and then lastly been getting Chaos because of the arks of Omen stories, to make them into Iron warriors.. So we're way past the representing my real life convictions.

Although an added reason for buying those (IW) chaos marines lately is also that they are probably the most masculine and uncompromising, even to the chaos gods, I like that. They are like the best of the worst.

I was thinking about that multi faction aspect of campaings when you've got pals showing up to play and want to accomodate their various armies into the story. I've always felt that our approache to that was false in that we tend to assimilate a world in sci fi settings as a region in a fantasy setting. Thus, we tend to make them monolithic (this is an ork world, therefore, only orks and their eldar constestants here) forgetting that our own planet is massive with absurd lots of defferences at even regions of small sizes. In all logic, nothing would actually stop several races from actually co habiting (and thus warring) in different regions at some point or another.

However, even though that's not the approach we usually went with, if we see worlds as regions then sectors are like the world and so large that you can really fit almost anything you want in it. Then you just need contested, crucial, or neutral objectives to more easily have got two factions that are situated at the edges of your sector fight, and there you go. All in all, nothing too spectacular that always seemed to work while staying credible.

Usually when I start writing some lore for my forces it ends up as an entire novel lol (which is exactly how the leopold helveine novels came to be originally)

Not every army I have has a reason to fight' but moreof a reason why they look the way they do, like an overall theme to bind their kitbashes and colors together, I think thats organic.

The idea for "why" my upcoming chaos army is fighting is a bit inspired by Arks of Omen, although not as broadly.. instead confined to simply being propelled to do as much damage to those Emperor-lovers possible with all the new means obtained (generally, amplification of their demon engines).
But maybe it's a nice thought that my Iron warriors will be the most anti-religious force imaginable, as is their official lore.

For BattleTech I always go Mercenaries of my variety (Inner Sphere). Basically, my regiment is called Carnival of Mayhem. My Clan Galaxy is a mix of paint job per star. Reasoning for that is the Galaxy a ad hoc of smash units combining into a new galaxy.

When I was playing 40K I bring all my armies and counter with an enemy force.

Because it's an order!!!

Makes more sence to fingt an "enemy" Army. We try to match out´r forces so we dont have the issue of "friendly fire"
Or else its a game of paintball

For one off games, I dont care too much, but for a campaign, its fun coming up with some fluffy way to give motive to why everyone is in it. Imperials vs Imperials fighting one another might seem an odd proposition at first, but usually you can make it work given enough researching in to the lore specifics of each faction. Old rivalries, misunderstandings, conflict of interest, deliberate propaganda devised by X in order to get Y and Z fight each other.. you can usually find an angle when you work for it a bit.

When I play, it's always part of a campaign so that there are consequences for decisions during the battle. It also encourages us to try to preserve our forces rather than fight to the last man trying to score points.

There are a reason why I tend to lean towards groups that could reasonably fight any faction or even their own faction.

Groups like the Seagulls of Mars , who see a shiny object and start pecking at it, no matter the cost, all the while chanting, "Mine!"Mine!"Mine!'

Or just having an Inquisitor along, who has duped/ordered/used your main force to attack another group because of ulterior motives unknown to you or your army.

I had a ham sandwich in the fridge for lunch that was clearly labeled and someone took it. Now they must pay. They all must pay.