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So, I've heard a lot of people voice dissatisfaction with 8th edition. I started out super hyped for 8th, but a lot of the shine has really worn down much faster than I hoped or thought it would.
I'd been completely turned off with the game through 7th, and I wasn't thrilled about 6th, but I didn't mind it too much.

Something I've been thinking about putting together is a community driven 40k model compatible ruleset based (at least initially) around 5th edition. I'd be interested in feedback and probably need a lot of help with the daunting task of creating and updating codexes, especially all the ones that came out post-5th. I'm not sure how we would canonize new codexes and balance changes yet, as there wouldn't necessarily be a central authority on the matter, but hopefully we'd be able and willing to respond to issues faster than GW appears to. This ruleset would be made entirely free online, and would need to sufficiently renamed enough to avoid all the classic copyright pitfalls obviously, but I think a reliable thesaurus would suffice for that.

I post this here in GD because I'm wanting to hear about general community interest, and I suspect that GD gets way more eyeballs than Proposed Rules does.


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Also, if someone's going with a "no", I'd love to hear thoughts on why.

You don't have to justify yourself or anything; just curious on what the reasoning behind it is.

I'd rather just see an expanded and balanced 8th edition. The framework is fine. There are a few things that need updating:

1. Terrain rules. Expand terrain and make it more meaningful.

2. Problematic Faction. Massively nerf the problem child.

3. Adjust Soup. I would say a return to allied detachments makes more sense.

4. Delete Smite, add Primaris Powers. Instead of smite spam, each discipline should have a more balanced spammable power.

my 2c

Provisionally:

Fire arcs either need to go away, or be added to everything.

Vehicles should either use the same damage resolution mechanics as everything else, or need an entire subgame dedicated to their damage resolution to avoid making it just a "really worse" or "really better" than everyone else based on unit type alone.

Army composition must be as wide and varied as possible, so armies like Iyanden craftworld aren't forced to take 2 five-man troops squads (or whatever) before they can start to make a fluffy list.

I disliked, immensely the 3rd edition basic core rules...and they only got worse as they continued on to 7th. So a community ruleset on that would be of zero interest.

8th is a nice platform, and requires only simple fixes --- something easily doable within a small community or locally (hell, between two players). The one advantage of any kind of community build is that you'll have a group of (hopefully) like minded folks. The downside? 40K is fekkin' huge and would be really tough to bring in all the new models and units which didn't have rules in 5th. I run a community blog for adjusting 2nd ed. 40K and it's good fun...but we're dealing with changes to core rule mechanics and mostly ignoring later models/armies at the moment. Undertaking that task would be gigantic.

8th could benefit from a number of excellent and super easy changes...but it all comes down the players.

The only way I'd like it to work and the only way it could work would be for a very, very small team of dedicated people with lots of experience who have a common vision and see it through. This team would have to stay focused even when some vocal people on the forums watching the progress would get upset over something they don't like. The community feedback portion would be for playtesting and data collection to tweak specific ideas and see if people have a better way to execute a certain vision.

But basic idea would have to rest on a very small group of people who don't get derailed by community bickering. JustDave was excellent at this for his fandexes in 5th. Had a vision, sought feedback and ideas within a certain scope, wasn't afraid to ignore people if they didn't match with his vision, but took on lots of feedback and point adjustments from batreps and detailed analysis.

I'd be interested in a fan built ruleset if it was more of a proper tactical wargame and not glorified yahtzee.

 Marmatag wrote:
I'd rather just see an expanded and balanced 8th edition. The framework is fine. There are a few things that need updating:

1. Terrain rules. Expand terrain and make it more meaningful.

2. Problematic Faction. Massively nerf the problem child.

3. Adjust Soup. I would say a return to allied detachments makes more sense.

4. Delete Smite, add Primaris Powers. Instead of smite spam, each discipline should have a more balanced spammable power.

my 2c

That probably enumerates the biggest things that bother me about the core rules (with some extra bits like going to ground and that stuff), and that was my initial thought. The problem I had with that is that I think it's easier to sell an entire different ruleset on people than a handful of plugin changes across the board, as in "Hey lets go play Future Space War" instead of "Hey lets play 40k 8th with these three other houserules and this other codex that replaces guard and this other codex that replaces grey knights". The hope was that it would actually drive adoption if we pitched it as a complete entity. I'm not sure if it works that way or not.

The other idea behind going with 5th was that, since it is out of print, there'd probably be less interest coming from the GW litigation squad if we tread a little too close to their rules in places. That might be wishful thinking on my part though.

Second edition is the place to start.
I am all for the 41st Age or 9th edition or whatever we wanna call it.
But IMO second ed is the place to start.
So yes I am interested in a community ruleset which can be basically open source house rules.
Better design is something scalable. So take eighth and community base the fixes in a modular way, so say eighth with old force org charts or pts limits or other options.
And cc as in second, as in necromunda or as in fifth or whatever.
So basically people see the possibilities and pick in a modular fashion how to play.start with gw points and stats till a large enough body of collective wisdomnlets us all stop sukkin at the teets of gw brainchildren and get a whole universe off the ground.

It's personal preference I suppose. My only issues with 8th edition are enumerated up there.

At the core it's game balance and terrain. Primaris powers never should have gone away, and smite should not exist, but that is a personal preference, many would disagree.

I hope you do well with the project though. You should pay close attention to the brief piece of generating functionology in my signature.

I played 5th, 6th, 7th, and now 8th.

All of the editions had sweeping problems. All of them had major imbalances, confusing rules, and overpowered codexes. In my opinion, trying to go backwards, or even trying to make a whole new ruleset, is just going to be trading one problem for another.

Also, I don't really have faith in a community based ruleset. All across the community there is going to be bias, and if by some miracle it becomes popular enough to be used in any sort of competitive play, tournament organizers are going to come in and add their bias as well. Then, of course, there's the problem that most players are Space Marines players. When you put a rule change up to vote, you're going to have a huge skew towards rules favoring Space Marines.

If, by another miracle, you get past all of that in order to create a fully balanced version of 40k that remains updated with every new model that comes out, how do you convince people to play it?

"It's based off of 5th edition!" you'll say, to which a lot of the community will reply, "But I like 8th edition now," or "but I preferred 3rd edition, or 6th, or 4th, or Rogue Trader."

Instead of trying to pull away from GW, how about voicing your concerns to this new GW? If the community wants better terrain rules, if they feel that a faction is way too OP, if some entry is a must-take in an army, tell them. Tell them a lot. Tell them so that the people managing their Facebook are flooded by junk that they have to read.

All of that will filter into 8th via FAQ's and Chapter Approved in the form of new rules, points adjustments, and clarification.

8th IS the community-driven ruleset, but instead of telling GW directly that there is a problem, people come onto forums like this that GW doesn't see and complain instead.

drbored wrote:
Then, of course, there's the problem that most players are Space Marines players. When you put a rule change up to vote, you're going to have a huge skew towards rules favoring Space Marines.

I doubt this. With 8th in its current state, you will see Space Marines players numbers dwindle over the course of this edition. Space marines, if you don't want to play Guilliman or Azrael, suck, and suck hard. There is no indication they will receive any measurable boost to compete with the other already powerful armies (chaos, and guard). With Xenos codices coming, it stands to reason that they'll get even worse than they already are.

Every space marines player I know has quit them, or phased them out in favor of massive IG with sprinkled SM throughout.

This space marine bias ruining the game really should stop. There's no evidence to make the claim that rules would skew towards Space Marines. If you play space marines outside of the two meta armies, you have every right to feel like your army is weak, because it is.

 Marmatag wrote:
If you play space marines outside of the two meta armies, you have every right to feel like your army is weak, because it is.

L-like Tau?

Oh man, if you chose to NOT play Guilliman is just your own fault

drbored wrote:

8th IS the community-driven ruleset, but instead of telling GW directly that there is a problem, people come onto forums like this that GW doesn't see and complain instead.

What is the mechanism for approaching GW with your concerns in an effective manner? What has been the visible result of the effort spent?

I genuinely don't know the answer to either of those questions.

 daedalus wrote:

drbored wrote:

8th IS the community-driven ruleset, but instead of telling GW directly that there is a problem, people come onto forums like this that GW doesn't see and complain instead.

What is the mechanism for approaching GW with your concerns in an effective manner? What has been the visible result of the effort spent?

I genuinely don't know the answer to either of those questions.

Email, TWitter and Facebook are where they take most of their feedback.

In 40k? Stormraven nerf, the Dark Eldar birds nerf, in AoS they have made much more changes based in community feedback.

Nope I'm not interested in something like that. If you feel you'll get more enjoyment from your armies though, have at it. Trying to get the entire community behind it I find is futile.

 Galas wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
If you play space marines outside of the two meta armies, you have every right to feel like your army is weak, because it is.

L-like Tau?

Oh man, if you chose to NOT play Guilliman is just your own fault

Blood Angels cannot run Guilliman or Azrael. All Tau can run commanders.
Grey Knights cannot run Guilliman or Azrael. All Tau can run commanders.
Space Wolves cannot run Guilliman or Azrael. All Tau can run commanders.
Successor SM cannot run Guilliman or Azrael. All Tau can run commanders.

If you're going to fish at least be better.

Okay, I recognize my defeat. You win this time.

*Retreats to his Sept*

IDK. It'd be a hard sell locally, and if I can't get anyone locally to buy in to it there isn't much point, to me.

 Melissia wrote:
IDK. It'd be a hard sell locally, and if I can't get anyone locally to buy in to it there isn't much point, to me.

Pretty much. Like, obviously in principle I have no objection to better rules, but there are two major obstacles here.

First, I don't particularly trust that the results of this project will be better than what we've got. Yeah, I don't think GW is great at this, but probably most people who think GW is bad at this and who think they themselves could do better are actually even worse. Certainly almost nobody is both in a position to collect the kind of playtesting data necessary and competent to evaluate it. I think the odds of this producing a system which is both very different from the current rules and better balanced and more fun and so on are extremely low. The one big advantage a project like this can have over what GW's doing is that it can issue frequent "patches", but this is really only good for small tweaks. A community-driven project to do minor monthly adjustments to 8th edition point values strikes me as far more likely to actually produce something worth using, for example.

Second, like Melissia says, this is only actually useful if I can find other people who also want to use it. The main reason to use GW rules is that they're a default option. Meanwhile it can be hard to find people who are even aware of the ITC missions. Especially if this project results in substantially revised rules, it's going to be basically impossible to find a pick-up game using them. Minor point adjustments again have an advantage here, but there's still likely to be very little awareness and trust.

It's the same reason why for the longest time in the roleplaying community most people ended up playing DnD 3.5th edition. Even people who hated it ended up playing it, because it was the system, setting, and name that everyone knew and knew how to play; its main competitor was itself derived from 3.5th and thus was familiar to it, but even pathfinder wasn't as popular and I could never find a game that used it, even though people online swore to it. And if it wasn't DnD, it was white wolf.

Dionysodorus wrote:


First, I don't particularly trust that the results of this project will be better than what we've got. Yeah, I don't think GW is great at this, but probably most people who think GW is bad at this and who think they themselves could do better are actually even worse. Certainly almost nobody is both in a position to collect the kind of playtesting data necessary and competent to evaluate it. I think the odds of this producing a system which is both very different from the current rules and better balanced and more fun and so on are extremely low. The one big advantage a project like this can have over what GW's doing is that it can issue frequent "patches", but this is really only good for small tweaks. A community-driven project to do minor monthly adjustments to 8th edition point values strikes me as far more likely to actually produce something worth using, for example.

This is a pretty solid argument, though I'd hope that, as far as trust, it would be self-evident if it was more reasonable or not simply by reading through it. I suppose we wouldn't have several hundred pages worth of Conscript arguments were that the case, however.

I'm starting to see that the minor point adjustments would be a better way to go, though I think there's core rule changes that the system would benefit from too, but perhaps the point adjustments would be a better place to start.

As a philosophical question, and this may warrant a thread entirely on its own: Is it possible to achieve desirable balance to any unit or upgrade in the game through points alone?

Second, like Melissia says, this is only actually useful if I can find other people who also want to use it. The main reason to use GW rules is that they're a default option. Meanwhile it can be hard to find people who are even aware of the ITC missions. Especially if this project results in substantially revised rules, it's going to be basically impossible to find a pick-up game using them. Minor point adjustments again have an advantage here, but there's still likely to be very little awareness and trust.

Yeah, Mel and you have a good point with this. Part of the hope was that awareness would spread through Dakka, and a superior option (if it did actually wind up being superior) would naturally become popular by virtue of being better. I think I'm being naive though.


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 Melissia wrote:
It's the same reason why for the longest time in the roleplaying community most people ended up playing DnD 3.5th edition. Even people who hated it ended up playing it, because it was the system, setting, and name that everyone knew and knew how to play; its main competitor was itself derived from 3.5th and thus was familiar to it, but even pathfinder wasn't as popular and I could never find a game that used it, even though people online swore to it. And if it wasn't DnD, it was white wolf.

That's quite a departure from my area. From the couple groups I intersect with, and the couple of stores I visit, just about everyone leaped onto Pathfinder fairly quickly around here. I mean, ultimately, there was a fairly spirited divide between the 4th ed and the Pathfinder camps, but basically no one (other than me) wanted to stick around with 3.5. I wanted to try to salvage it, because it was basically complete and... oh dear.

I could never ever find anyone, online or IRL, who wanted to play pathfinder. Was easier to find Exalted, which is a fairly obscure white wolf game, than that. But we're getting off topic, here...

 daedalus wrote:

This is a pretty solid argument, though I'd hope that, as far as trust, it would be self-evident if it was more reasonable or not simply by reading through it. I suppose we wouldn't have several hundred pages worth of Conscript arguments were that the case, however.

I'm starting to see that the minor point adjustments would be a better way to go, though I think there's core rule changes that the system would benefit from too, but perhaps the point adjustments would be a better place to start.

As a philosophical question, and this may warrant a thread entirely on its own: Is it possible to achieve desirable balance to any unit or upgrade in the game through points alone?

The basic problems with wanting people just read through it and see that it's better are (1) if you're doing a significantly different system then this is not trivial, and (2) people are going to have very different ideas about what's necessary. Without implying any judgment on either side, it is striking that people who play Guard are much less likely to think that their codex is overpowered than people who play against Guard. My understanding is that the same could have been said for Eldar last edition. Lots of people are going to look at any proposed change through a lens of "how does this affect me", and if they feel like it's unfair to them they're going to be reluctant to adopt it. And there will surely be a large number of people who feel that an objectively (in whatever sense) fair change is unfair to them, just because it nerfs them or buffs someone else.

To your philosophical question, this probably depends a lot on exactly what you mean by "desirable balance". Some rules can just be bad. Maybe there's a unit with the special rule "At the start of the game, flip a coin. If it's heads, you win. If it's tails, you lose." This unit is obviously balanced in some sense at any cost, but what you would really want to do is just ban it because it's stupid as hell.

Dionysodorus wrote:

The basic problems with wanting people just read through it and see that it's better are (1) if you're doing a significantly different system then this is not trivial, and (2) people are going to have very different ideas about what's necessary. Without implying any judgment on either side, it is striking that people who play Guard are much less likely to think that their codex is overpowered than people who play against Guard. My understanding is that the same could have been said for Eldar last edition. Lots of people are going to look at any proposed change through a lens of "how does this affect me", and if they feel like it's unfair to them they're going to be reluctant to adopt it. And there will surely be a large number of people who feel that an objectively (in whatever sense) fair change is unfair to them, just because it nerfs them or buffs someone else.

And now I think you've illustrated the core reason why my endeavor will be fruitless. Inevitably any changes I (or anyone) made won't be accepted by at least one party of people that you'll need buy-in in order to play a game with. To put it into more blunt words: either IG players won't accept it, or everyone else won't accept it, and there's no real way to "solve that".

To your philosophical question, this probably depends a lot on exactly what you mean by "desirable balance". Some rules can just be bad. Maybe there's a unit with the special rule "At the start of the game, flip a coin. If it's heads, you win. If it's tails, you lose." This unit is obviously balanced in some sense at any cost, but what you would really want to do is just ban it because it's stupid as hell.

I suppose when I said "desirable balance" I mean "salvage". Your hypothetical is obviously not salvageable at any point cost, because to such a great extent the rule has an effect. I guess in this case, I was mostly limiting the scope to what one would in good faith believe GW would produce, instead of the literal scope of any and all possible rules.

I've seen countless people show up and ask this question, and when I ask them what they're planning to actually do I get a vague parade of mission-statement catchphrases (usually some variation on "balance").

The major issue with 40k isn't and has never been any specific properties of the rulebook, it's been the designers' refusal to iterate. The idea that you need to change the core rules on a regular basis, give every army one Codex, and then when you're done change the rules again, is not unlike trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle while flipping the table every few minutes just to make sure that everything's all nice and out of whack, just to make sure you're starting over frequently.

Come back in Proposed Rules with some concrete suggestions and I can tell you if you're likely to get anywhere, but at this point I have no confidence that you have any idea what's wrong or how to fix it.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I've seen countless people show up and ask this question, and when I ask them what they're planning to actually do I get a vague parade of mission-statement catchphrases (usually some variation on "balance").

The major issue with 40k isn't and has never been any specific properties of the rulebook, it's been the designers' refusal to iterate. The idea that you need to change the core rules on a regular basis, give every army one Codex, and then when you're done change the rules again, is not unlike trying to solve a jigsaw puzzle while flipping the table every few minutes just to make sure that everything's all nice and out of whack, just to make sure you're starting over frequently.

Well, and I think that was what I was directly trying to address with my comment about "responding to issues faster than GW appears to". I think a regular reevaluation of point costs is probably a core requirement of anything that would be produced. I'm also pretty weary with the idea of the core rules getting tossed out and rewritten every couple years. Maybe some minor tweaks here and there, but your core rules should not get altered that often. To your first point, I'm not sure how to answer to answer such a question without some pie in the sky parade of mission-statement catchphrases. Something something balance something something fun and maybe also leveraging core competencies into synergistic verticals. I dunno. Maybe that makes me as full of gak as the next guy.

Come back in Proposed Rules with some concrete suggestions and I can tell you if you're likely to get anywhere, but at this point I have no confidence that you have any idea what's wrong or how to fix it.

Blunt, but it's a fair thing to say. I guess I'll try to figure out where to start and we'll see how it goes.

Sorry. Not interested. I have enough trouble forgetting previous version rules to play 7/8 to be interested in going backwards.

I'm interested in working off a scratch system rather than going straight to 5th, but would be interested in helping support any Community-driven rewrite.

Yeah with the roaring success of 9th age I can see why nobody wants to get behind this.

Playing, no, but I would be interested in observing how it turns out.

 MarsNZ wrote:
Yeah with the roaring success of 9th age I can see why nobody wants to get behind this.

9th Age as written is akin to the same group of players responsible for Swedish Comphammer deciding to make 8th: Final Destination. I can see why it flopped easily.