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How do!

First of all, apologies for anyone thinking this is going to be some deep treatise sifting through all the written official sources for a single thing that isn’t contradicted elsewhere.

And genuine apologies. Because the Truth of The Only True Statement is far more interesting than a canon of a single barrel. Some of you Dear Reader’s can probably guess what it is from here, as it’s something I often use in background discussion.

But if you’ve not? Here it comes. The only truly accurate Truth in all of 40K Background.

Gird thy loins and brace yourself…..

It Depends

Yup. It Depends.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This isn’t some restrictive thing, indeed it is by its entire existence permissive. Because so very, very little of 40K is truly set in stone and stands immutable.

Some stuff is, in-universe, a statement of fact. The Emperor, Gork, Mork, Khorne, Slaanesh, Tzeentch, Nurgle and other greater and lesser gods provably exist. But their approach to a given situation? It Depends

This is a setting of anarchy and chaos and nonsense and silliness and, quite often, is all the more interesting as a result. Because it allows for these discussions to go off at tangents and morph and mutate as we (hopefully) take onboard new and interesting points and fold them into our own headcanon.

There are some strong rules (for instance, if a secretive race of Furries were behind it all, you’ll need at least the merest tatter of a shred of official printed source to support), but they’re surprisingly few and far between.

And that my friends, is what makes 40K such an interesting sandbox. Some stuff is impossible (The Emperor isn’t an Eldar or an Ork by any published source)…..everything else is possible, however unlikely.

This mantra applies to so many things:




The galaxy is a big place and even the most dogmatic factions are not homogeneous.

It should be noted that "It depends" is not the end of a debate on a lore issue, but rather its starting point. Many interesting discussions can be had within the "It depends" frame... in fact, the lore elements where "it depends" are arguably the only ones worth debating at length.

.

Oh absolutely.

But by being the ultimate answer, it’s also the ultimate question.

So, so many shades of grey. And not moral shades (I’m with Granny Weatherwax on that one).

But truth is a malleable beast. Unless we’re truly honest. The exception never proves the rule, but the exception will always challenge the rule.

My personal favorite interpretation of 'it depends' is whatever will lead to the most conflict. Whether that conflict be internal, external, small-scale, large-scale, short-term, or long-term. I want there to be in-universe rationale ready to go for any faction fighting any other faction, including themselves at (almost) any time and any place.

Nothing makes me grit my teeth quite like seeing a TT match-up and someone goes, "Well that could never happen. The warp did it!"

jareddm wrote:

Nothing makes me grit my teeth quite like seeing a TT match-up and someone goes, "Well that could never happen. The warp did it!"

It's either that or "training exercise!"

 Insectum7 wrote:

jareddm wrote:

Nothing makes me grit my teeth quite like seeing a TT match-up and someone goes, "Well that could never happen. The warp did it!"

It's either that or "training exercise!"

I always hated that. I came to play warhammer not sporthammer. I didn't build my models to be a bunch of guys playing airsoft.

I've been playing quite a bit of Rogue Trader (the PC game) recently, and it drives this point wonderfully home in my opinion. There are many truths and POVs, and Dogmatics, Iconoclasts and Heretics all see things quite differently.

However, I think such nuance and subtlety rarely seems to extend to the tabletop, at least as far as modern GW is concerned.. Even if the lore is multifaceted, GW seems to try their damnest in trying to homogenize and stereotypize its own IP for the actual WH40K game somehow. Boggles the mind..

I mean you say that but customers and fans also 100% do the very same thing. Codex have always been more limited in the scope of lore they cover because trying to squish "well its a galaxy so anything could happen" into every statement in a 20-30 page block of lore - it doesn't work so well.

People want hard cold boring limits to help frame their impressions and imagination around. So there's always been this duality that the lore/codex/big rulebook presents a fairly inflexible view of many things; or at least defines a lot of things.

Then when you dip into Black Library stories and such you find the greater variety of "reality" in the setting.

I like "It Depends" alot when it comes to 40k and to a certain extent I wish GW hadn't gone so far in recent years to nail down some of the larger questions (origins, deep history, etc) around the factions and overall history.

I preferred the "big undefined sandbox" of 40k where there was still a TON of content to build games and narratives off of, but the edges and limits were nicely undefined and there were less ways for folks to say "That couldn't happen".

I suppose it's inevitable that as more is revealed, more grey would be removed, but it feels like there should have been a more concerted effort to retain more grey.

There's still a lot of grey its just different grey. Some is still the same - we still have basically no idea about the Tyranids

IMO the BL Lore glut and pseudo shakespearean HH books that take themselves and their topic way to seriously, have done a massive disservice to 40k.

The phrase 'lore accurate' is now a weapon to beat others around the head with - that's not a lore accurate paint scheme, a lore accurate marine would bench press mountains, lore accurate custodes eat stars, wankwankwank.


GW USED to treat 40k as a sandbox and that was purely for economic reasons. All IP companies do this. But as you create more material, you want to constrain your customers to interacting with your stuff within the framework you're selling them, or you don't make your money.

Lore Accuracy creates easy to track product sales lines, it ensures loyalty to product over concept. When you only have the concept to sell, you're happy for the customer to buy whatever so long as they're buying into the IP. But when you have product, the concept must align to the product to reinforce and increase sales.

The 80s reagan kids commercial era was where this took off. TV shows acted as adverts for the product, but also sold the kids the right way to use the product, which also conveniently involved the need to purchase the official battlemat, mountains, lair, lunchbox, adventure book and storage bin in order to do it right.

Modern 40k is just doing to adults what 'nuhuh, Skeletor can't fight optimus prime, you're doing it WRONG' has done for kids since the 80s.

 Hellebore wrote:
IMO the BL Lore glut and pseudo shakespearean HH books that take themselves and their topic way to seriously, have done a massive disservice to 40k.

The phrase 'lore accurate' is now a weapon to beat others around the head with - that's not a lore accurate paint scheme, a lore accurate marine would bench press mountains, lore accurate custodes eat stars, wankwankwank.


Modern 40k is just doing to adults what 'nuhuh, Skeletor can't fight optimus prime, you're doing it WRONG' has done for kids since the 80s.

"lore accurate" paint schemes have been a thing for decades of Warhammer.

As for lore arguments about what can/can't be done in the lore - that has also been part of the hobby for decades.

Nothing has changed. We did have one blip on the paint scheme front when GW tried to make schemes stick as a formal feature for defining your army; mostly because they had daft alliance rules back then. Most people ignore them and it mostly only affected marines (because outside of marines most people don't know the official schemes anyway). But that was one blip in decades and is long since passed.



Honestly I think what you describe is less how things change and more just how you interact having changed. You're not longer 13 interacting with other 13 year olds; you're *insert whatever adult age* interacting online with - at least on Dakka - most likely more similar adults. So the nature of conversation shifts. Part of this is because those who are matured who are still in a hobby are most often the more die-hard fans back when they were kids. So everything gets ramped up a bit.

Well, having started back in the early 90s, the RT and 2nd ed days had a huge amount of leeway in what you were doing. GW actively encouraged your dudes, and your story.

I've watched that erode to the point now that you can't do the HH right if you don't buy every one of the new Journal books that tell you precisely how each of the lore accurate scenarios from the history of the HH should be played.

They actively encourage that you play within their increasingly narrower frameworks around whatever the current narrative thrust is. Indomitus, the upcoming Armageddon 4!? and so on.


The fact is, that in the 90s if you started 40k, you were encouraged to come up with whatever story you wanted and play however you wanted, because they didn't have such a huge amount of LORE that things rotated around that said whether something was right or wrong.

The modern 40k is sold as an ongoing narrative where the 'correct' point to play is the bleeding edge of the current Narrative where you must buy the scenario and lore books around it to do it right.


I don't disagree with your perspective about interacting with the game changing at different points in your life.


But I'm looking at how they sell their product and the choices they make on what products to focus on. It's become more and more constrained in the name of accessibility - now you have a roadmap to play the right way and spend your money on all the bits you need.


The argument that you can make up your own thing is always true in whatever you do, but my point is that this went from the default way to play, to now the special thing you have find in between all the LORE that you can't touch lest you do it wrong.

It's like the god of the gaps - the creativity of the gaps, ever shrinking as the LORE envelops everything.

Honestly I just don't agree with that at all. It sounds like you see GW releasing a campaign book and that you're feeling the only way to play is to play that book.


You don't have too. You can still convert your models and tell your own story about your dudes. Heck with 3D printing there is a bonkers amount of custom gear out there to choose from to further customise (provided you aren't playing at a GW store of course where its a bit more restricted and always has been unless you can sculpt).

OF course GW is going to push you buying their products; companies always do that. Cause in the end that's what makes them the actual income to make the stuff.


But the fact that GW is selling a campaign book doesn't mean you have to purchase it and can only play your army in that campaign or whatever.

I don't deny things have shifted in how GW markets and such, but I feel like this is more a you (and/or local group scene) than a GW thing.

It's their marketing and the focus. How they push new players. It's a closed ecosystem.

As I said anyone can do anything in any IP they engage with. But you can see what the company WANTS you to do by what they produce and push on players, how they lead them to play. And GW clearly wants you to buy that stuff.

If their business strategy wasn't built around this, they wouldn't spend all their time building out the monolithic lore and books that tell you the correct way 40k works.

My comments are nothing to do with the local meta or anyone I know that plays 40k, because they are all older and ignore GW.

I'm making comments on the changing business model as evidenced by GW's sales methods and product focus. My commentary is business, not personal.

I thought you were going to say "Everything is canon, not everything is true", which is honestly a more comprehensive version of your statement.

The only thing we know for sure is that the Alpha Legion hates Rhino transports.