The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[nullBolt]

<snip>

<snip>

<snip>

Honestly, guys, that sounds great. Great fun.

I think they already found out that one, ten or even a hundred graduates cannot really manage forums. However, they could post a bit more than just an occasional tacky YouTube video - with the comments switched off, obviously.

You have to think of forums as a barely controlled fire. You don't want to burn yourself with it but you need the heat in order to survive.

Also, you might be able to, y'know, actually do market research and adjust your corporation to fit the wants and needs of your customers.

Also, more generally, the discussion didn't really take the forms that GW had been wanting. They wanted sycophancy and brainwashed enthusiasm, which would help the "GW hobby" look good to curious newcomers. What they got was sass and discord. They quickly scrapped the forum.

I would argue, though, that it is precisely because GW is so keen on sycophancy and brainwashed enthusiasm, that it keeps getting sass and discord instead. People look at the GW hype machine, and they see purple kool-aid.

I do wonder if the corporate part of GW is CONVINCED that people are enthusiastic and happy about their product and always confused that they're losing money year after year. They don't have any realistic expectations of their customers and so have no idea of what to do.

Also, what I imagine a conversation down in Nottingham is like:

[Hobgoblin]

Man, I've been seeing and getting some of that myself - what you say about fostering insecurities resonates with me at the moment. People have to stick with 40K because others nearby already play it, because they've spent too much money to stop spending money, because they can't use the minis with  other games, because they like the fluff, because people who try to promote other games are sad, because they live too far from a city... Sometimes it feels like people'll pull anything out of their hat to justify sticking with a game that they might not actually like all that much.

I think the attitudes you describe here are odd but interesting. I can never understand why people who like the 40K background and models don't just use them with better rules - Ganesha's Flying Lead or Mutants with Death Ray Guns, for example, or some of the interesting "modern" rule sets like Chain of Command or Crossfire (I'm sure there are many more good examples).

Another thing I don't quite get is the importance of "fluff" to a wargame, as opposed to an RPG. Surely the only point of it (other than a guide to painting) is to help generate scenarios or narrative campaigns. Yet don't most 40K players just play straight fights?

It all seems a far cry from the games of 40K I remember playing as a kid. Most of those pitted bands of "primitives" (usually Slann, lizardmen or orcs), led by a few higher-tech agitators, against smaller groups of high-tech "colonialists". This was largely because we had plenty of primitives from WHFB, but only a few 40K figures. But those games were terrific ...

[Vermis]

I think the attitudes you describe here are odd but interesting. I can never understand why people who like the 40K background and models don't just use them with better rules...

Another thing I don't quite get is the importance of "fluff" to a wargame, as opposed to an RPG. Surely the only point of it (other than a guide to painting) is to help generate scenarios or narrative campaigns. Yet don't most 40K players just play straight fights?

It's a headscratcher alright. But one of the biggest reasons I can think of, is what some of those examples are used to argue against - that GW still does a good job in conditioning gamers and their expectations.

When you see some of those arguments first hand: about people who refuse to use KoW rules - despite all the ex-WFB players who moved to them and like them - because they don't like the Mantica fluff; people who tell you that's perfectly valid logic; people who think you have to stick with 40K when you live more than half an hour away from a city and it's high-falutin', 'cosmopolitan' gaming...
That last one was levelled at me recently, in rebuttal of GW fostering a certain attitude, and because I just didn't understand. It still gets me. The only thing resembling a city round here is a full hour away, and that's the place where I'm most likely to find a game of 40K.

It gets a bit freaky. I'm just waiting for someone to tell me how wrong I am, and argue that they have to keep playing 40K, not because of a constrained, GW-centric view of gaming (or even the more valid reason that they only have a GW store for gaming) but because of the phases of the moon, or because there was a gunman on the grassy knoll, or something.

(Ah, the old GW forums. They were a mess. But I have fond memories of Kroot Knarlocs. )

[baldlea]

I can never understand why people who like the 40K background and models don't just use them with better rules ...
Another thing I don't quite get is the importance of "fluff" to a wargame, as opposed to an RPG. Surely the only point of it (other than a guide to painting) is to help generate scenarios or narrative campaigns. Yet don't most 40K players just play straight fights?

This is exactly what we have started to do using the Clash on the Fringe rules. The writer openly says they are a "love letter" to Rogue Trader. They work well as a modern interpretation RT.

I think the straight fights thing comes comes from the same place as the enduring popularity of crunchy RPGs over light, story based ones. Geeks like numbers, I suppose.

Even if players do want scenario driven games, as discussed already...gamers talk more about playing than playing. So when the opportunity arises, a straight "balanced" fight is quicker to organise than setting up a scenario. This is also true if you want to use a different ruleset to enact your favourite background - it takes time to "stat up" fluff into another system.

[Worded badly...can't be bothered to fix]

[nic-e]

.

I think the straight fights thing comes comes from the same place as the enduring popularity of crunchy RPGs over light, story based ones. Geeks like numbers, I suppose.

I think this is one of the reasons 40k remains the system of choice for many. because of it's popularity, it's easier for people to get away with calling it tactical/competititive/serious bizznuz ect ect...and then exploit the numbers to kill all the fun.
(because god knows 90% of the people i have played against in GW stores didn't give a damn about narratve/fluff ect , they just wanted to spam 200 tanks.)

[3 fingers]

I think the attitudes you describe here are odd but interesting. I can never understand why people who like the 40K background and models don't just use them with better rules - Ganesha's Flying Lead or Mutants with Death Ray Guns, for example, or some of the interesting "modern" rule sets like Chain of Command or Crossfire (I'm sure there are many more good examples).

Another thing I don't quite get is the importance of "fluff" to a wargame, as opposed to an RPG. Surely the only point of it (other than a guide to painting) is to help generate scenarios or narrative campaigns. Yet don't most 40K players just play straight fights?

It all seems a far cry from the games of 40K I remember playing as a kid. Most of those pitted bands of "primitives" (usually Slann, lizardmen or orcs), led by a few higher-tech agitators, against smaller groups of high-tech "colonialists". This was largely because we had plenty of primitives from WHFB, but only a few 40K figures. But those games were terrific ...

A lot of savage orcs were used as 40k stand ins.

[Humorous_Conclusion]

I would argue, though, that it is precisely because GW is so keen on sycophancy and brainwashed enthusiasm, that it keeps getting sass and discord instead. People look at the GW hype machine, and they see purple kool-aid.

I think this is probably spot on. GW maintained its Specialist games forum for years, long after they'd stopped producing new models for it, and it never descended into the kind of acrimony you saw on the main forums.

Though it probably helped that the Specialist games tended to attract more experienced gamers who were already knew what to expect from GW and were still playing.

[beefcake]

Though it probably helped that the Specialist games tended to attract more experienced gamers who were already knew what to expect from GW and were still playing.

Spot on there!

[Dim_Reaper]

Though it probably helped that the Specialist games tended to attract more experienced gamers who were already knew what to expect from GW and were still playing.

It probably also helped a bit that most of the Specialist Games didn't suck, welcomed player involvement, and generally kept their integrity over a period of more than 3 Months. SGers get rather tetchy when it comes to change though. Because, well, Underhive. **Spits**

I think the attitudes you describe here are odd but interesting. I can never understand why people who like the 40K background and models don't just use them with better rules - Ganesha's Flying Lead or Mutants with Death Ray Guns, for example, or some of the interesting "modern" rule sets like Chain of Command or Crossfire (I'm sure there are many more good examples).

Because Gamers are useless douchebags. Seriously. I'm not just singling out GW fans either. Historical Groups can be awful for outright ridiculous bias towards rulesets. The amount of orthodoxy that exists within this hobby is quite scary sometimes. I've often struggled to encourage a group to even consider the adopting of House Rules, let alone changing the ruleset. Part of the problem with 40k is just how much of it there is, and how everybody likes at least a part of the rules that they sink their teeth into. It's surprising how successful a gimmick can be in gripping someone to something mostly, or entirely flawed. Like, say, Inquisitor.

Ultimately, it takes the right kind of group. But the right kind of group can make the wrong kind of ruleset actually bearable, so in essence, this whole situation becomes kind of impossible. Besides, for the past few years, GW have been exceptionally controlling with regards to gaming, creating orthodoxy, and generally just a shitty ubermench atmosphere (at its worst amongst WHFB players imo). These guys tried to make gamers such as these dependent on them for everything, including, it seems, how to read (RAW: promoting illiteracy across the internet since the mid noughties!). Unfortunately this backfired, because GW were then expected to do work, and also not suck at it. This in turn added to the already tetchy and unhappy atmosphere that was created when the Sales Department essentially became the design studio.

I'm sure there are games out there that could do 40k justice (I've done FUBAR 40k a couple of times) but trying to get gamers to change is like trying to get GW management to admit there's a problem with their company.

You did lose me a bit on Crossfire though. I really dislike that game. Maybe the utterly pointless and boring meat-grinder style of waiting around for decent dice rolls fits with the grim and unrelenting war of darkness and misery, but I don't see adopting that set as much of an improvement. Unless you utterly despise tape measures and are plotting to destroy them all with doomsday lasers...

Another thing I don't quite get is the importance of "fluff" to a wargame, as opposed to an RPG. Surely the only point of it (other than a guide to painting) is to help generate scenarios or narrative campaigns. Yet don't most 40K players just play straight fights?

I disagree with your main point, but I want to cover the straight fights thing first. I still play 40k on occasion, and I feel a big part of why straight fights occur is not so much to do with Gamers, but more to do with how shoddily written the rulebook is and how shallow it is as rulebook material. For one thing, the scenarios in the game are, to use a word, shit. They are barely different, and the addition of so called Tactical Objectives (or, more accurately, Arbitrary Win Buttons For Powergaming Douche Bags) barely helps inject "narrative" into the gaming experience, and usually just makes it more likely that the army better suited to killing on the move (i.e. SPESS MUREENZ) will come out of it better.

Couple in all the other factors, rolling on a arbitrary random chart to determine what personality your general has this game (Warlord Traits), rolled on an arbitrary random chart to determine what deployment style you have (basically: horizontal? vertical? or how about diagonal? Oh Ambassador, with this astounding imagination you are really spoiling us), rolled on one of two arbitrary random charts to determine what "scenario" is played. Now do a similar thing for psychic powers, placed terrain, now you can think about deploying. Speaking from experience, by the time I have sorted all the Forged Army Fun Features I cannot be bothered to play a scenario game, or any other game type that will throw in even more faff. Couple in the fact that the MASSIVE variation between factions means that even a straight game is a tall ask for an awful lot of armies. Most players stick to kill points, partly through a lack of imagination, but also through a determination to actually stand a chance of winning, and in some cases, maybe getting a draw.

Couple in that the scenarios aren't much cop anyway, and there's little point in mixing things up.

As to narrative and story, GW offers absolutely no help developing any of this. There aren't suggestions, there aren't options, there aren't any devices, above and beyond a card deck of random objectives that are mostly "kill this" or "stand here" or "do something you'd do anyway". There's not much point in bothering when the writing is so uninspired. Age of Sigmar isn't much of an improvement in that direction either.

However, on fluff, I view it as pretty important. Unless you are playing a game that is designed to cover any variation of a general theme, I expect a specific narrative. I want something to buy into, to get the feel for how the setting is supposed to be. Other games are like that anyway. Otherwise, it's like saying there's no point in differentiating Necromunda from Legends of the Old West, or Napoleonics from the American Civil War. It's not simply a matter of colour schemes. There's likely going to be some level of personal investment in that setting, whether it's historical curiosity, or simply the desire for a bit of knowledge regarding why these guys are red and those guys are blue. And what the hell the grey guys are up to.

[Hobgoblin]

A lot of savage orcs were used as 40k stand ins.

Yes! That's precisely what we did. The three types of primitives I remember were bow-armed savage orcs (hiding behind trees and sniping at their lasgun- and bolter-armed adversaries), slann with blowpipes (taking cover from swamps and other water features) and lizardmen (who had two wounds each in Warhammer and were thus able to soak up a lot of firepower as they advanced).

I think our main sources of inspiration were the Ewoks from Return of the Jedi and the Swampies in The Power of Kroll. We were too young for the TV broadcasts, but I remember the novelisation being a favourite in the local library.

[Hobgoblin]

Because Gamers are useless douchebags. Seriously. I'm not just singling out GW fans either. Historical Groups can be awful for outright ridiculous bias towards rulesets. The amount of orthodoxy that exists within this hobby is quite scary sometimes. I've often struggled to encourage a group to even consider the adopting of House Rules, let alone changing the ruleset. Part of the problem with 40k is just how much of it there is, and how everybody likes at least a part of the rules that they sink their teeth into. It's surprising how successful a gimmick can be in gripping someone to something mostly, or entirely flawed. Like, say, Inquisitor.

Ultimately, it takes the right kind of group. But the right kind of group can make the wrong kind of ruleset actually bearable, so in essence, this whole situation becomes kind of impossible.

Good points. I confess I've only ever played wargames with friends (or with my kids), so the "group" phenomenon isn't really one I've encountered. I wonder if the family/friends vs club split actually forms a considerable divide in gaming. I mean, the blogosphere seems to be full of people playing wonderful narrative scenarios with Song of Blades and Heroes or whatever, but many of those seem to take place in domestic settings.

Besides, for the past few years, GW have been exceptionally controlling with regards to gaming, creating orthodoxy, and generally just a shitty ubermench atmosphere (at its worst amongst WHFB players imo). These guys tried to make gamers such as these dependent on them for everything, including, it seems, how to read (RAW: promoting illiteracy across the internet since the mid noughties!). Unfortunately this backfired, because GW were then expected to do work, and also not suck at it. This in turn added to the already tetchy and unhappy atmosphere that was created when the Sales Department essentially became the design studio.

GW have never been great at having their products proofread. The early Warhammer books (including 40K) are a fetid swamp of run-on sentences ...

I agree with your points on GW's controlling attitude. A couple of my son's friends were recently lured into the local GW shop. The reports of their indoctrination into Age of Sigmar were deeply depressing (I countered with links to the cheap miniatures thread in the fantasy forum and the Ganesha site, pointing out that kids are much more likely to be able to play a ten-a-side skirmish game with a rulebook that costs a fiver ...).

I'm sure there are games out there that could do 40k justice (I've done FUBAR 40k a couple of times) but trying to get gamers to change is like trying to get GW management to admit there's a problem with their company.

You did lose me a bit on Crossfire though. I really dislike that game. Maybe the utterly pointless and boring meat-grinder style of waiting around for decent dice rolls fits with the grim and unrelenting war of darkness and misery, but I don't see adopting that set as much of an improvement. Unless you utterly despise tape measures and are plotting to destroy them all with doomsday lasers...

Ah - I haven't actually played Crossfire, but have become interested in it recently because of its place in the DNA of Battlesworn, which I really like (it has the same measureless movement). So it may not have been a good example (Battlesworn with all troops as Shooters, on the other hand ...).

I disagree with your main point, but I want to cover the straight fights thing first. I still play 40k on occasion, and I feel a big part of why straight fights occur is not so much to do with Gamers, but more to do with how shoddily written the rulebook is and how shallow it is as rulebook material. For one thing, the scenarios in the game are, to use a word, shit. They are barely different, and the addition of so called Tactical Objectives (or, more accurately, Arbitrary Win Buttons For Powergaming Douche Bags) barely helps inject "narrative" into the gaming experience, and usually just makes it more likely that the army better suited to killing on the move (i.e. SPESS MUREENZ) will come out of it better.

Couple in all the other factors, rolling on a arbitrary random chart to determine what personality your general has this game (Warlord Traits), rolled on an arbitrary random chart to determine what deployment style you have (basically: horizontal? vertical? or how about diagonal? Oh Ambassador, with this astounding imagination you are really spoiling us), rolled on one of two arbitrary random charts to determine what "scenario" is played. Now do a similar thing for psychic powers, placed terrain, now you can think about deploying. Speaking from experience, by the time I have sorted all the Forged Army Fun Features I cannot be bothered to play a scenario game, or any other game type that will throw in even more faff. Couple in the fact that the MASSIVE variation between factions means that even a straight game is a tall ask for an awful lot of armies. Most players stick to kill points, partly through a lack of imagination, but also through a determination to actually stand a chance of winning, and in some cases, maybe getting a draw.

Couple in that the scenarios aren't much cop anyway, and there's little point in mixing things up.

That's all deeply depressing. I've just been looking at the early 40K scenario generator ("Abdul Goldberg stole your ship off you ..."), which is great (run-on sentences and all).

As to narrative and story, GW offers absolutely no help developing any of this. There aren't suggestions, there aren't options, there aren't any devices, above and beyond a card deck of random objectives that are mostly "kill this" or "stand here" or "do something you'd do anyway". There's not much point in bothering when the writing is so uninspired. Age of Sigmar isn't much of an improvement in that direction either.

I suppose what I don't get is why players don't just cook up something like this:

Haptar Clune has been making a killing smuggling ferocious xenoforms from the savage jungle planet of Xanth XIII to the feudal rim world of Kroll 12, where the creatures are used in the gladiatorial games that punctuate the Krollian calendar. But now the Imperium is on to him. Its forces have cornered him in a gloomy hangar of Xanth XIII's least salubrious spaceport, where unspeakable noises and smells issue from the electro-cages that await loading. With the Century Kestrel's flight sensors still being repaired by its servitor droids, Clune and his crew must hold off the Imperium's forces and protect as much of their cargo as they can.

All you do then is plonk down a number of "cages", let the smuggler player mark them secretly with what they contain, explain that laser fire nearby may scramble the locks (a roll of 6 for any shots targeted within three inches, or 5-6 if the lock is deliberately targeted), and let the Imperial player enter from as many or as few of the hangar's gates as he wants ...

However, on fluff, I view it as pretty important. Unless you are playing a game that is designed to cover any variation of a general theme, I expect a specific narrative. I want something to buy into, to get the feel for how the setting is supposed to be. Other games are like that anyway. Otherwise, it's like saying there's no point in differentiating Necromunda from Legends of the Old West, or Napoleonics from the American Civil War. It's not simply a matter of colour schemes. There's likely going to be some level of personal investment in that setting, whether it's historical curiosity, or simply the desire for a bit of knowledge regarding why these guys are red and those guys are blue. And what the hell the grey guys are up to.

I agree that a specific narrative is important. But isn't a scenario-specific narrative (like the one above) is all you really need for a good game? The guys in blue are whatever chapter of space marines keep order on Xanth XIII. The human/alien mix are the smugglers. And those things in the cages ...

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the first edition of 40K got this sort of thing right, so it's depressing how the game has become pretty much the opposite of what it originally was. The Imperium was a sandbox in which all manner of plots and scenarios could be quickly drawn up and played out. The subplot generator (one of the personalities is a malfunctioning experimental android ...) provides some great ideas to go with the broader ones.

And isn't the point about fantasy and sci-fi that you can do anything, and do it quickly? I mean, when my son and I play a game of Song of Blades, I usually get him to come up with the plot. And he generally comes up with something pretty good in an instant. "The goblins are trying to steal dinosaur eggs from the the lizardmen, so that they can raise the dinosaurs as mounts." And that gives us some clear objectives for both sides. With the unlimited worlds of a sci-fi game, this kind of stuff is so easy to establish. And then you can link one game with the next to establish a deeper narrative.

[Dim_Reaper]

Good points. I confess I've only ever played wargames with friends (or with my kids), so the "group" phenomenon isn't really one I've encountered. I wonder if the family/friends vs club split actually forms a considerable divide in gaming. I mean, the blogosphere seems to be full of people playing wonderful narrative scenarios with Song of Blades and Heroes or whatever, but many of those seem to take place in domestic settings.

Generally speaking, yes. I can't comment much on this, only child, few cousins my age, and not a parent. But, a lot of my friends when I started up had brothers, who usually got them into it, or at least played with them. This seems to work better than groups in most cases (unless the Brothers really liked to fight, or in some cases, even though they did), and I'd say that this is probably to do with motivation and introduction. I imagine that most family groups share, more or less, the same influence and motivations that encourage them to keep on gaming. Their views will be similar, at least initially, and that introduction will set the tone for their experience.

If you're among friends who are of similar ages, or are contemporaries and you start together, I imagine the situation can be somewhat similar, although this is where cracks emerge, at least amongst younger gamers. The older I get, the less of a toss I tend to give amongst more mature gamers. I game with a few 30-40somethings on Monday nights and those are easily the most relaxing games I play, even if I'm facing filth. My main group where I have issues though, has had a few incarnations, and the problems seem to arise from a very varied mix of gaming generations. Usually the rifts come from my only direct contemporary, but that similarity can be a problem. But the thing that has caused problems within the group is that the various mixes have always contained a massive variety of play-styles, priorities and preferences (3Ps. Totally unintended). This does lead to difficulty picking games.

Also, as individuals we are all different, even my friend who is the same age as me. We've all had vastly different backgrounds, and have very different current situations, making striking a balance very difficult. The group is still trying to find its feet (and I think eventually it'll probably fail) and this can be a problem. Amongst well established groups, this can be totally less of an issue. I would love to have a dedicated skirmish gaming group in my area, preferably from 30+ and above, so some of the powergamer friendly skirmishes might get pushed out (seriously, had my fill of Warmahordes years ago).

One thing with the GW gaming group though, is just how better it is managed. When I say, a good group makes things bearable, my local GW has a very good staffer manager, which is frankly an anomaly. Hell, he lets me write rules for campaigns (plus, it's nice to help out), and encourages the parts of the hobby that GW haven't promoted enough of late. It's hard to faff on with games I barely know when things are made so easy there, even amongst a group of vastly different age ranges, although depressingly, most younger than how long I've been gaming (20something years), let alone lived.

Ah - I haven't actually played Crossfire, but have become interested in it recently because of its place in the DNA of Battlesworn, which I really like (it has the same measureless movement). So it may not have been a good example (Battlesworn with all troops as Shooters, on the other hand ...).

I feel a little self-conscious that I might be being a bit hard on Crossfire. I do have pretty high standards when it comes to rules (yeah, know, a predominantly GW gamer with high rules standards! What's next, a WHFB player that uses a dozen sentences without the two words "more tactical" appearing in them?). It's not so much experience of rulesets, it's more a sort of petty and pathetic arrogance. I write the odd ruleset, and much like since I started writing novels, I have a capacity to ruin Wargames and Novels by seeing the mechanics a little too much and from completely left field. I don't know if it's just me. I'm probably a borderline case of OCD as well, so I don't suppose that helps.

My beef with Crossfire is that it jumps between intuitive, fluid abstracts (which I am very pro) to anal retentive, nigglingly specific conditions. The two parameters don't often sit well, and I find the game immensely frustrating. To be honest, I seem to have the biggest beefs with games that hinge on handfuls of dice rolls, or the requirement to roll really well to do anything (Hordes of the Things and GW's Lord of the Rings/Hobbit tends to boil my piss for the same reasons). I find that Crossfire seems to discourage tactical manoeuvring, and indeed, risk taking. Whilst I do see why, I don't find it makes for a satisfying game, and if one removes the WW1/2 or Modern Warfare aesthetic of "quick and easy warfare simulator", it can be gamed as more or less a meat grinder for conservative gamers. I guess that's why I go more for Skirmish. I'm sure there are people on here willing to defend it. I'm just still a bit pissed that my group wouldn't accept my house rule suggestions.

I don't doubt it's influential. I like the no measuring mechanic. It's a nice abstract, and I rather like abstracts. I just wish the ruleset ran with more abstracts. It also seems to highlight my massive issues with Historical Gaming and Orthodoxy. "Just keep playing it, I'm sure it'll get better". Whilst I'm sure it's possible that occasionally, gamers fail their rulesets, the kind of ruleset that lets gamers fail to play as intended probably aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Which also leads me to my other beef. Has anyone tried reading these rules? I know GW deserves to catch a lot of flack, but one thing they do well is presentation of ideas, especially order. They faff around with it for no reason, but aside of that, at least it's possible to find rules. The most current edition is quite a low for GW in this regard, but 40k isn't as bad for this as Crossfire, Force on Force, Tomorrow's War, Confrontation, Dark Heresy, and other such games that have pretty crap layout, or just are appallingly poorly worded (or both: looking at you Conf and FoF).

I suppose what I don't get is why players don't just cook up something like this:

Haptar Clune has been making a killing smuggling ferocious xenoforms from the savage jungle planet of Xanth XIII to the feudal rim world of Kroll 12, where the creatures are used in the gladiatorial games that punctuate the Krollian calendar. But now the Imperium is on to him. Its forces have cornered him in a gloomy hangar of Xanth XIII's least salubrious spaceport, where unspeakable noises and smells issue from the electro-cages that await loading. With the Century Kestrel's flight sensors still being repaired by its servitor droids, Clune and his crew must hold off the Imperium's forces and protect as much of their cargo as they can.

All you do then is plonk down a number of "cages", let the smuggler player mark them secretly with what they contain, explain that laser fire nearby may scramble the locks (a roll of 6 for any shots targeted within three inches, or 5-6 if the lock is deliberately targeted), and let the Imperial player enter from as many or as few of the hangar's gates as he wants...

I suppose my main point here is, this kind of attitude has to be taught. It's not something gamers will naturally incline to. Gamers tend to be pretty unimaginative, including with stuff like RPGs. Imagine how rich we'd be if we each got our currency's primary coin for each RPG or Wargame plot that revolved around something taken directly and noticeably from a film, and probably a recent film at that. I played a lot of cyberpunk in my teens around the time of the Matrix. Nuff said.

Often I don't think gamers realise they can do this. Often though, gamers look for big ideas, thus requiring the kind of collector's range that allows adaptability, which is another problem with GW. The game changes so rapidly that I know very few gamers from the more recent generations that have a big dedicated army of one faction. I have a lot of Imperial Guard for 40k, but as I like themes, one is Genestealer Cult, the other is Ecclesiarchy. Doesn't mix well.

Besides, the faff I mentioned. It's very rare that one thinks about doing such things. My local staffer does include stuff like this from time to time (and also mini-games at Store Parties), but it isn't widespread. GW doesn't help, and I don't feel that they want to. If the narrative idea meant so much to them, other than a throwaway sales-friendly gimmick (much like 5th Edition's "immersive" True Line of Sight), then the player wouldn't always be basically thrown a thing to do, as a soul judge, mostly because they can't be bothered to be held to a particular mechanic, or think one up, or reintroduce one. I mean a set of options, or at least ways to modify the scenario to give it character? Weather effects? MacGuffins? Plot Twists? Heck, even just a few deployment options that mixed things up a bit?

Sadly, those options don't always get used. To those who remember playing Halo, and particularly Halo 3 online, remember the blanket preference for Slayer Mode, over, like, anything else? Because Gamers, being often unwilling to fully engage, will just concentrate on killing the enemy. I admit it's quite affected my gaming, and I often struggle to avoid the single-mindedness of it. I'm not even particularly good at it, except in Necromunda, it seems...

I agree that a specific narrative is important. But isn't a scenario-specific narrative (like the one above) is all you really need for a good game? The guys in blue are whatever chapter of space marines keep order on Xanth XIII. The human/alien mix are the smugglers. And those things in the cages ...

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the first edition of 40K got this sort of thing right, so it's depressing how the game has become pretty much the opposite of what it originally was. The Imperium was a sandbox in which all manner of plots and scenarios could be quickly drawn up and played out. The subplot generator (one of the personalities is a malfunctioning experimental android ...) provides some great ideas to go with the broader ones.

I'm rather mixed on both points. I do think we're going back to the days where GW starts to include more and more random tables to mix things up. If I felt the motivations were truly about improving narrative, and not simply making it harder to tell how badly unbalanced and royally fucked the core mechanics are, I might feel more charitable towards them. But in general, I worry that there's just too much emphasis on arbitrary random generators. Sure, they will sort things out quicker than deliberating, but they're also removing a lot of soul from the game.

Part of why 40k fails to tell narrative is that I feel prevented often from seeing the battle from the perspective of my army's general. Perhaps it sounds pathetic, but as a moderately sizeable part of what makes that character is represented by the warlord trait, which is (apart from special characters) randomly determined, it's hard to view the general as a character that you can identify with, and tends to remove the point of making your own hero, because, unless the character is a schizophrenic, it just wouldn't make sense.

Whilst much of 40k these days is more about the wider picture, it is still a sandbox, it's just not got any sand in it. You just dip your hand into the box and pull out randomly a bunch of pre-determined sandstone rocks and bash them together. Even armies are getting like that since formations came into it. I'm used to seeing the same sorts of armies emerge. Not fun.

And isn't the point about fantasy and sci-fi that you can do anything, and do it quickly? I mean, when my son and I play a game of Song of Blades, I usually get him to come up with the plot. And he generally comes up with something pretty good in an instant. "The goblins are trying to steal dinosaur eggs from the the lizardmen, so that they can raise the dinosaurs as mounts." And that gives us some clear objectives for both sides. With the unlimited worlds of a sci-fi game, this kind of stuff is so easy to establish. And then you can link one game with the next to establish a deeper narrative.

This is true. I just wish there was a ruleset that seemed to deliver this that was reasonably mainstream and at 28mm scale, because I've found very few above FUBAR that do that. And again, it's still more or less the players having to do all of the work. Often with some games that leads to even more work.

TL:DR: I over-analyse everything. Kill me.

[Rhoderic]

IIt's surprising how successful a gimmick can be in gripping someone to something mostly, or entirely flawed. Like, say, Inquisitor.

Now I'm curious. Is there a community of Inquisitor players? I've always viewed Inquisitor as one of the very least successful SGs (even accounting for the fact that one could just ignore the 54mm gimmick and do it in 28mm instead), but you've hinted at an Inquisitor community more than once and I know you have more experience with the SG fanbase than I do, so it's piqued my interest.


Anyway, moving on, I must apologise in advance for the christmas "uncheer" of the rest of this post.

This is exactly what we have started to do using the Clash on the Fringe rules. The writer openly says they are a "love letter" to Rogue Trader. They work well as a modern interpretation RT.

Oh yeah, Clash on the Fringe does deserve a mention. It isn't one of those high production value rulebooks that I like to wax lyrical about, and some of the intentional genericity of it isn't quite to my preferences, but still, the sense of "modernised Rogue Trader" is very palpable in it. The rules design and the snippets of fiction convey that same sense of wild, crazy adventure that RT does.

One of the things I lament about GW today is that they no longer care for nurturing the adventure-loving side of 40K players (and probably AoS players as well). The GW core settings, as portrayed by its writers, are all about burning rage, charred battlefields and sheer grim bloody-minded overkill now. There's barely a piece of fluff nowadays that doesn't end with something to the effect of "The last thing Private Xavier saw was his own viscera ripped out of his abdominal cavity by a dozen monstrous claws" or "As the blood became a mist enveloping the layer of corpses which the battlefield had become, Grixzhorr threw his gore-spattered head back and howled in savage ecstacy". Who are they trying to sell this stuff to? (Don't answer that - I know who.)

I agree that a specific narrative is important. But isn't a scenario-specific narrative (like the one above) is all you really need for a good game? The guys in blue are whatever chapter of space marines keep order on Xanth XIII. The human/alien mix are the smugglers. And those things in the cages ...

I'm striking off on a tangent here (because I'm veering away from the discussion on tables and random plot hook generation), but that's a good point you make. While it is true that many of my favourite fictional wargame settings are very richly detailed (the Heavy Gear universe comes to mind), and the value of real history as a game setting is self-evident, there is a different kind of positive value in the mere suggestion of a setting surrounding the immediate stage, dramatis personae, "props", plot hooks and conditions of a scenario. Why are the blue guys wearing crested inca-style helmets? What are those cool alien dog-like creatures the red guys are using? What's with the landscape of weird plants that look like dragon blood trees? What is the significance of the blues having higher morale but the reds being numerically superior? I don't know, but my imagination is running wild over what all of it might suggest about the world the scenario is taking place in.

Of course, this is how richly detailed gameworlds often get started. The blue player might, for instance, declare his guys to be "janissaries of the Castorian Empire", and the red player might declare his guys as "Rheviri mercenaries in the employ of Hiakander Goldmane". The scenario, they decide together, is a famous encounter during "Gup the Seventh's campaign of reconquest in the Blackmoon Peninsula". What/who, then, are the Castorian Empire (and janissaries thereof), Rheviri mercenaries, Hiakander Goldmane, Gup the Seventh and the Blackmoon Peninsula? To answer those questions will entail more world-building. At some point along the line it will become a very conscious, systematic artifice, but it will have begun in a much more spontaneous, organic way.

It does help if the ruleset and what you see on the table (miniatures and terrain) convey a certain atmosphere, whatever atmosphere that might be (techno-gothic, cyberpunk, swords and sorcery, mossy fairytale folklore, steampunk fantasy, etc). But I like to think the mentality of many gamers is such, that even if they were to game with the most generic figures on the most generic terrain, they will naturally begin thinking of a story and a world to go with the game. Why are two factions of identical-looking generic sci-fi jarheads fighting over a grassy green field with a few trees and hills? Well, it's a civil war between the Caudillos and the Fifth-Congress Declarationists on Amaterasu Prime, and this particular encounter is taking place in the temperate sheep-grazing lands of New Sumatra Province, of course.

To bring my ramblings back on track, I often get the feeling that GW does not want to encourage or even acknowledge this part of the hobby anymore because it's "bad for business" to foster imagination and creativity in customers when they could just be spoon-fed dogma instead. It's like a church wherein only the GW priesthood is sanctioned to practice world-building and the writing of fiction. Except that priesthood is in fact a joint-stock company, which means it is almost literally programmed to always try to make the largest profit possible in the most ruthlessly, logically effective way possible. Which, in turn, has resulted in a tendency for purple prose so one-track, so devoid of subtlety, so formulaic, so vacant-brainedly muscular, that it makes "'Twas a dark and stormy night..." read like Jane Austen.

[Dim_Reaper]

Now I'm curious. Is there a community of Inquisitor players? I've always viewed Inquisitor as one of the very least successful SGs (even accounting for the fact that one could just ignore the 54mm gimmick and do it in 28mm instead), but you've hinted at an Inquisitor community more than once and I know you have more experience with the SG fanbase than I do, so it's piqued my interest.

I don't know if there still is. There was a forum, the Conclave. I also know a large part of the online SG community tended to get involved in various based-on-SG spin-offs, usually designed at improving one or two games. A common one became more a trope than a ruleset (there were many versions floating around) called Inquisimunda, which took the principle of "narrative skirmish" (yeah right, my arse) and applied it to 28mm models, usually with the help of the refined Rogue Trader skirmish system: i.e. Necromunda.

I was never really a part of it, so I can't tell you more. My interaction with the Conclave comes from being published by SG, and they weren't very nice about me. To be fair, I asked for it. I was 18, and I let ego overshadow content. I should add, I wouldn't feel any different about Inquisitor even if the main fanbase for it called me worse than shit, it just helped a bit. One said he hoped my name would go down in the annuls of wargaming infamy. That is, funnily enough, the only context in which I have ever thought about Mat Ward positively.

[Rhoderic]

Ah, thanks. Inquisimunda I've heard of