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 Overread wrote:
It's a bit of an unfair comparison considering one is a stand alone novel and the other was a novel released right alongside a new launch edition of the game as a companion product. If anything putting things in Skaventide that are not in the box/game would be more of a mistake since the books sort of paired up super close too it.


Heck I recall when there were naga and sea seaserpents in Sylvaneth and a whole undersea world that they added to one of the novels as a short element. A concept that probably was somewhere in GW's background at the time when they were alla bout micro-armies and such; but which has never come to fruition in the game.

But that's the point, the novels have shifted from a product on their own, to supporting marketing collateral and thus occupy a completely different space. The difference you see as an unfair comparison is exactly the point. The unfairness isn't the comparison, it's that GW changed how the books work so that comparison is now so obvious.


GW won't let a stand alone novel with too much world building get produced anymore, unless it also has accompanying models to sell. Their novels used to be a product unto themselves, now they're just a long poster for a toy. You can see how this evolved with the HH novels. Their first few were speculative, world building. but then they produced models and a game and over the last 20 years the novels now connect more and more to the products.

Fiction driven sales vs product support driven sales have changed how they get novels written. For the worse in my opinion.

I think it depends which novels you read - the AoS ones still have a tonne of stuff that isn't appearing as a model. Cities of Sigmar in the stories is full hard core steam punk - tabletop wise they really only have the CogFort. The rest is honestly almost pre-steampunk era (a lot of their guns are more primitive in design than even Empire guns from Old World).


This is an issue because if fans connect more with the books and come through that gateway into Warhammer but then can't find that steam punk army; or that naga based undersea army; or that Asia inspired army with dragon leaders - suddenly their hook is lost.
Plus fans who ARE in the setting already read those books and instantly go "Ohh so maybe GW will make X". Some of us are STILL waiting for Exodites which so far have not had a single model in 40K (perhaps barring one or two in the Rogue Trader days?); and from what I recall have had a couple of models (and a few concepts) in Epic and that's it.



So on one front GW creating fantasy outside of product creates hooks and temptations that people want and don't get.

At the same time I also love when the books do that because it does help deepen the setting. It does flesh out the world; create interests and so forth



I think its a no win on either front. IF GW make models of everything in books and only put in books what they make models of they lose some free imagination in the setting; but gain hooks that make people happy.

In a sense you kind of want separation; but its also impossible to actually have.

AoS demonstrates the point though, because it's been at that pre-product state for ages relying on old WFB models to sell.

They were using the novels to help world build because they didn't already have one. But now they're shifting to that novel per faction schtick.

The expectation that if it's described it has to have models is also a relatively new phenomenon.

Back in the early days of Dakka and Portent we would discuss these snippets just for their own sake, obviously saying it would be great to see models but also just talking about the scale of snippets and extra stuff that's out there.

Exodites are a little different in that they actually had 40k stats and epic preproduction models. So they were closer to a model release than say the 'quiescent perils of the c'tan', the only mention of the c'tan until the callidus phase sword and then much later the 3rd ed codex necrons.

Ghoul Stars are still a thing, right?

I think its also about catering to less "creative" minds and shorter attention spans, the target audience of today. A Timmy from 1991 is a completely different Timmy than a Timmy from 2026. You gotta have stuff that you can buy straight away, and get cracking with, and you need to have a list for what colour to use etc. Introducing stuff that leaves your imagination to run wild wont be conductive to getting sales from such Timmys (or rather, their single moms who apparently are the biggest buyers of GW products)

 Overread wrote:
It's a bit of an unfair comparison considering one is a stand alone novel and the other was a novel released right alongside a new launch edition of the game as a companion product. If anything putting things in Skaventide that are not in the box/game would be more of a mistake since the books sort of paired up super close too it.


Heck I recall when there were naga and sea seaserpents in Sylvaneth and a whole undersea world that they added to one of the novels as a short element. A concept that probably was somewhere in GW's background at the time when they were alla bout micro-armies and such; but which has never come to fruition in the game.

So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

 tauist wrote:
I think its also about catering to less "creative" minds and shorter attention spans, the target audience of today. A Timmy from 1991 is a completely different Timmy than a Timmy from 2026. You gotta have stuff that you can buy straight away, and get cracking with, and you need to have a list for what colour to use etc. Introducing stuff that leaves your imagination to run wild wont be conductive to getting sales from such Timmys (or rather, their single moms who apparently are the biggest buyers of GW products)

Which is little different to how it was in the olden days.

Yes, the painting guides have gotten better. Yes, the advent of Contrast and a bit of slapchop has lowered the skill barrier to reasonably painted models.

But in the olden days? Painting Guides did exist, they just lacked detail. And if you had a GW Store nearby, they’d do you a free painting lesson on pretty much anything,

That support and easing the path in has always existed. It’s just done much better these days. And there’s still constant encouragement to hone your skills, be that modelling, playing, painting or what have you.

 Haighus wrote:
So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

I think without prompting most people probably forget (or never knew) Inquisitor ever existed.

Tyel wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
So the funny part about this is that Eisenhorn was also a tie-in product. It was written to tie in with the Inquisitor game release- Abnett was shown an early version of the game in development. You can see links like the discussion of the new Inquisitorial philosophies.

The fact it isn't obvious rather underlines the original point.

I think without prompting most people probably forget (or never knew) Inquisitor ever existed.

Yeah you don't even see models if it appear all that often anywhere and that scale of gaming has ever strongly taken off. Heck I'd argue that Confrontation Last Argument of Kings is probably the biggest larger-scale game and that's only at 40mm and even that stands out a lot in the market. Even bigger scale models are typically in the art/painting/collection bracket. I have seen a few games at conventions over the last few years trying to kick off games in those scales; the models always look very cool but to me its somewhat telling that every time I see one of those booths they only have models on display.

There's no terrain, table, game on show; just big models and potential for a game.

You are old. You are no longer GW’s target commercial audience. GW’s target audience has not experienced the kind of storytelling you’re talking about, has different expectations, discovered Warhammer 40K through meme culture, which has amplified the caricature-like aspects at the expense of "grandeur", and is used to getting answers to mysteries.

Nothing new under the sun.

 Overread wrote:
Yeah you don't even see models if it appear all that often anywhere and that scale of gaming has ever strongly taken off. Heck I'd argue that Confrontation Last Argument of Kings is probably the biggest larger-scale game and that's only at 40mm and even that stands out a lot in the market. Even bigger scale models are typically in the art/painting/collection bracket. I have seen a few games at conventions over the last few years trying to kick off games in those scales; the models always look very cool but to me its somewhat telling that every time I see one of those booths they only have models on display.

I'd imagine the need to (at least in theory) build terrain to fit the 54mm scale was something of a burden.
But IIRC the main problem with Inquisitor is that it was exactly the sort of game GW have wanted to make but there's seemingly not much of an audience for.
I.E. There was no points. You are meant to just try and invent a fair scenario - and keep it fair by playing for narrative/RPG results rather than just killing the other player. The moment you approached it as a competitive game where you were aiming to win it fell over.

This all added up to it being more fun to read the Inquisitor battle reports/scenarios in the Inferno! magazine than it was to actually play.
After it was released in 2001 I think GW put a reasonable amount of effort marketing/selling the game for about 18-24 months. Then it went onto life support and after about 2005 it had functionally ceased to exist.

It lives on as a 28mm game, or whatever scale 40k is now, with necro terrain and similar doing a lot of work.

Honestly though why you would want to play that and not confrontation from white dwarf is beyond me

Selfcontrol wrote:
You are old. You are no longer GW’s target commercial audience. GW’s target audience has not experienced the kind of storytelling you’re talking about, has different expectations, discovered Warhammer 40K through meme culture, which has amplified the caricature-like aspects at the expense of "grandeur", and is used to getting answers to mysteries.

Nothing new under the sun.

This is the sad truth. I'm probably going to stop "following" the background soon because it doesn't make me happy to do so any more. But it's fine anyway, there's enough great stuff in the older background that I'll never run out, and in any case I'd rather be making up my own stuff than taking what's given to me by GW (or WOTC, or whoever else).

I do miss the mystery of the older days, but you just can't recreate that in the modern world. All we had were whatever books we could get locally, and there was no way to find anything else out without word of mouth. So we could have these long discussions over the implications of a little bit of boxed text in a 40K rulebook because we couldn't find "the answer" quickly. I found the same thing with comic books back then - we would buy boxes of old american comics second hand, and the collections would have gaps in them and so on. And there'd be these little boxes saying "See Aquaman issue 98" or whatever, and we didn't have that or any way to get it, so we'd have to speculate about what might have happened. Or when there was a few issue gap in our collection, we'd have to discuss what we thought happened. Those are my fondest memories of being into comics as a kid. And you were so excited to get a new rulebook or find a comic you hadn't read.

Nowadays, if you want that information and it exists, it's trivially easy to find it. And you don't even have to find it yourself - there'll be someone on youtube who does that for you, and summarizes it for you and then tells you all about it so you don't even have to read anything yourself. It's turned all of these nerdy niches into something else entirely for me. And I think a lot of my fellow nerds get a sense of satisfaction and comfort from obsessively cataloguing every detail and making sure it's all correct, so it's all up on a wiki somewhere and people are very quick to come in and correct any discussion of possibilities with the "right answer" if it exists. So even discussions have a very different character nowadays with people mostly coming in looking for sources, quotes, screenshots and to either be told or to tell others what is true and correct rather than to speculate. I find speculation a lot more fun and creative, so discussion the background is just a bit depressing for me now.