Nothing New Under the Sun - pt 2

Following on from part 1 yesterday, I’ll start off by answering my final rhetorical questions in reverse.

Where did it all go wrong?

Here’s where:

Ok, wrong is probably too strong a word, but Inquisitor was a huge opportunity for both Games Workshop and Warhammer 40k to expand that was missed. For those of you who don’t know it Inquisitor (or =I=) was released in 2001 as a hybrid skirmish RPG game, a narrative combat game, written by Gav Thorpe. It’s tagline was “Everything you’ve been told is a lie” and nominally focussed on the internal wars plaguing the Inquisition.

And the artwork was amazing.

Players controlled only around four or five models, as there was a much more detailed weapon and damage system along with ammo, bleeding and the like involved. It was Necromunda meets D&D.
It’s biggest draw was that instead of playing front line soldiers for the most part, the players took teams (or warbands) of operatives into urban areas, ancient ruins and the like to vie with the other players for dark secrets of the 40k universe.
Players could be Inquisitors, Tech Priests, Assassins, Arbites, Rogue Traders, Astartes, renegades, gunslingers, xenos and anything in between. The series was launched with a line of models (including one of Eisenhorn himself) in 54mm scale…

54mm?

Wait, what?

This, in my opinion, was a HUGE mistake.

1. Most importantly, who has enough terrain to go with 54mm scale models? Nobody aside from the few who play the large scale Old West games, that’s who. It’s large, harder to make and store, and given the narrative nature of the game you really need a lot of it.

2. Characters were as customisable as you could get. Want a Marine twin wielding assault cannons? You can do it. Want a female Inquisitor in carapace armour with an Eldar long-rifle and a plasma pistol? Sure! But I hope you’re good a sculpting as the range is limited…

3. Which leads on to the next point – all metal models means they were pricey, so people were loath to try and convert them as it was a big dollar investment to mess up. Then they stopped making any more designs.

4. While some of the sculpts were great, some were… less good shall we say (they're still available to see on the main GW site). Not bad models by any means, but the sculptors clearly hadn’t got the hang of the scale yet.

Before I continue I need to digress into a quick discussion of GW’s current nemesis, Privateer Press. Those familiar with Warmachine and Hordes know that when you buy a model for your army – that’s who or what it is. Sorcha is always Sorcha. PP had a sister line to WarmaHordes, the Iron Kingdoms series, designed for the RPG of the same name. These miniatures were more based around archetypes of their world, as well as a few characters. However due to the nature of WarmaHordes it was generally not easy to bring the IK minis into the wargame. I haven’t seen PP release a new miniature for the IK line in quite some time now.

Warhammer 40k suffers no such problem. GW as a company encourages “counts as”, parts swapping and making your own characters. Why they didn’t release =I= as a 28mm line still mystifies me. Tau had just come out, and Codex: Witch Hunters was not far off so would have been well into its design phase. They released an army based around the Inquisition and a game based around the Inquisition, but didn’t make them compatible… though they did re-do the Death Cult Assassins and Daemonhosts in 28mm later.
Think of the modelling and gaming possibilities of it had =I= been a 28mm game. New terrain (compatible with 40k, =I= and Necromunda), new models (character models for collectors, customising your HQs in 40k) and so on. It would have enabled them to explore the unlit corners of 40k with new models and units.

There was much discussion at the time of it being a pre-cursor or testbed for a 40k RPG, which as we know didn’t materialise until much later with Dark Heresy (which, as a relevant aside, I’ve seen people discuss which non-GW manufacturers to get models from to represent their characters).

This was, however, in some ways what many consider the darkest days of GW, with the soon to be purging of Specialist Games, the gutting of Codexes and the turn from ‘veterans’ to the younger market. For a variety of reasons I didn’t see / don’t remember much of this period of GW history, partly because I didn’t buy anything GW for a number of years – make of that what you will – but my main point is not directly about corporate policy, though it no doubt directed much of what we are seening now.
The lack of any real miniatures, by which I mean ones not designed entirely for the tabletop, has left GW hugely vulnerable to their competitors and lost a market share (though it may well be a smaller one, it’s still lost).

Warhammer Fantasy is the best illustration for this. People still play Dungeons and Dragons and the like. People need miniatures for it. GW used to make minis for it, and when they stopped doing it officially you could still buy an Orc Warboss blister or a couple of Mummies to represent just that. A while back when I was building my Heroquest set using contemporary miniatures I noticed a funny thing – my hordes of troops were GW but all the characters, the players and enemy bosses, were all from other company’s lines. This wasn’t out of personal preference, but a combination of $ value and availability.

Take the prototypical two main villains – the Lich Lord and Gargoyle. The first I could maybe kitbash with some skeleton parts and an Empire Wizard kit (and have a lot of stuff left over), the second I’d need to use something totally different and still do a lot of work. Or, I could just go to Reaper and get them both for less.

Now, I’m not saying that GW should start making a massive character line to compete with Reaper here, but when their main sci-fi game extols the virtues of a huge and varied universe there’s not many options out there unless you wear Power Armour.

To leave this topic for a moment I’ll head back to a point I raised before – the canning of Specialist Games. I remember going to the opening of the first Games Workshop in Australia, and standing in line for hours to get that much prized Deathwing Terminator boxset. I also remember the wonderment at seeing all the games there – Warhammer, 40k, Space Hulk, Epic, Talisman, Man ‘o’ War, Blood Bowl…
Yes, the ranges are better and bigger now so there obviously isn’t going to be the same amount of shelf space as there was back then, but let me tell you a story of Space Hulk.

When Space Hulk 3rd edition was released there was much rejoicing, and every time I went in there were people playing it, and the stack of box sets they had gradually got smaller and smaller. Then one day the last box was sold and nobody ever played Space Hulk in the store again.
Why? Because of a corporate mandate that unless the game is currently for sale in that store it cannot be played. Battle Bunkers are exempt from this, but not every store is a bunker. The manager explained that it would be unfair for someone to come in, see people playing a game and not be able to buy it.
For a limited edition like Space Hulk I can see the reasoning, but for a game like Epic or Blood Bowl where they can still order the game in to the store? Idiocy.

House of Paincakes recently had an article up discussing the importance of Specialist Games for getting new players involved in the hobby. I know my brother and I played more games of Ultra Marines than Rogue Trader back in the day, and when I went to NaSGuL I usually played Space Hulk or Blood Bowl.
Now, somewhat older and slightly wiser, Specialist Games provide a great thing – an alternate way to get a 40k fix without playing 40k. I can play a couple of missions of Space Hulk in an afternoon, including set up and teardown. Blood Bowl is timed, and Aeronautica Imperialis has limited turns.

We all have ‘off’ days with 40k. Maybe we’ve hit a funk list design, a losing streak’s rocked our confidence, or a game with That Guy’s sapped our enthusiasm. But we still want to play a game. Big Jim has given us Kill Zone, but I don’t rate my chances of getting a game of that in at a GW store. The options are to play anyway, or not play at all.
At a non-GW store the options are much greater… and a lot of them aren’t Games Workshop. WarmaHordes, Infinity, Malifaux, Dystopian Wars, Flames of War, Incursion and so on all beckon to sate the alternate playstyle bug.

Games Workshop’s discarding of both their Specialist Games and non-army based miniatures has come back to bite them, as if you don’t want to play a big game or paint a unit your options are slim. Slim, that is, unless you look anywhere else.

What would I have done / What should GW do?

Obviously I don’t know their corporate strategy, and I’m basing this off my personal opinions not a sound economic foundation here, so this is geared towards that end of the discussion.

Firstly, get in my time machine….
Secondly, put on my robe and wizard hat…
Thirdly, go back to the end of second edition…

Second Edition was, at the end, a bloated, convoluted, time consuming mass.

This is what a game of 2nd ed looked like, but with piles and piles of books everywhere.

It was a skirmish game playing at a full scale battle simulator. It drastically needed an overhaul to remain a viable system, no argument there. I personally would have split the game off into three separate, but interchangeable and fundamentally the same rulesets:

40k: Kill Team – 100 to 400pts – a game more like 2nd ed and Rogue Trader (or Big Jim’s Kill Team), with individual move rates, more variety of weapons and customisation.

40k: Battlezone – 750 to 2500pts – what we know as 40k today. It has issues, but works well for the most part. The main game.

40k: Apocalypse – 3000pts + - same as now.

Necromunda and Inquisitor would have the same scaling to each other, so you could play all the same characters and cross them over between games. The key thing here is that this wouldn’t have any effect on the main game, but would allow new players to get their feet wet more easily with a ruleset designed to be played at pocket money level, and give veterans and backgroundophiles more to chew on.
For releasing the miniatures it would provide not only more stuff for painters, but a constant stream of new units and upgrades to the main game (and give White Dwarf actual content outside the LotR articles). Those who remember the ‘glory days’ of White Dwarf oft recall that instead of the ‘splash releases’ we get now, there was a much more constant stream of units coming out.
As an example when the Razorback first appeared it wasn’t in a new Codex, it was in White Dwarf with some blurb, it’s stats and the new model on the shelf.

With my idea above it would mean that this month there would, for example, be a new model available (limited on shelves that a month, then direct only) the K’ruthian Marksman. It would list his background, show off the model a bit and give stats for Inquisimunda (a deadly underhive mercenary caste on the fringes of the Ultima Segmentum) and 40k stats (recruitable by Radical Inquisitors, Renegade Guard and Chaos Factions as a unit attachment).
Rather than having the meta game changing every couple of months with each new book, there would be a constant flux as new units pop up (and they’re cheap to add with small sizes), so people can try new things without spending huge amounts of money. With a smaller game actually being supported in store it would open up the opportunities for some crazy things like twenty warbands brought in from =I= facing off against a massive Chaos army commanded by the Inquisitor’s arch nemesis in an Apocalypse game!
Sure you could do something like that now, but what’s the bet the generic henchmen would be played by Imperial Guardsmen and the battle wouldn’t have much effect on anyone’s multi-player campaigns?

Games workshop is moving in the right direction with Finecast and the recent Storm of Chaos releases. Finecast gives them a better medium over metal for modelling and converting, while the single character plastics for the sorcerers are fantastic. All they need now is to do the same thing for 40k, and expand upon the offerings (for both games) beyond what is allowed strictly in the main games.
There's no model for a Techpriest, none for a Hrud, an Eldar Mercenary, or even a Rogue Trader. Wouldn't the 40k world and the GW name be enhanced by their making more of the rich background available to play on the table?

I think so.

Nothing New Under the Sun - pt 1

מַה-שֶּׁהָיָה, הוּא שֶׁיִּהְיֶה, וּמַה-שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה, הוּא שֶׁיֵּעָשֶׂה; וְאֵין כָּל-חָדָשׁ, תַּחַת הַשָּׁמֶשׁ.

That which hath been is that which shall be, and that which hath been done is that which shall be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.

quid est quod fuit ipsum quod futurum est quid est quod factum est ipsum quod fiendum est

What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done.

So it goes that everything repeats itself eventually. While that’s great for philosophers and scholars, for miniature aficionados it’s a bit of a problem. See a company can’t constantly produce the same thing over and over expecting people to buy it ad nauseum. They’ll get sick of it, get ‘enough’, or get distracted by a new shiny thing.
This is why we get periodic re-designs of what are perfectly serviceable models. If people really could put up with just the same old models and designs we’d still have beaky marines, stahlhelm Orks and craxy machinist orang-utans (wait…).

GW periodically redesigns their lines to keep up with new materials and manufacturing procedures (just look at the Dark Eldar here), but in some ways the increasingly iconic nature of their designs is really hampering their long-term prospects.

How is that? Shouldn’t having an icon design (like the Jeep front grill or the Stormtrooper) help them?

In a way it does for brand association (oh hey, it’s a Space Marine, I know them from Dawn of War…) but I’m meaning in terms of retaining and re-energising the interest of more entrenched players. First this requires a slight digression to explain how I see it.

40k’s pull is it’s background and aesthetic. It is not a character driven universe. Sure, it has great characters like Cain, Eisenhorn and the like, but the core is the setting rather than the people in it. This is contrasted by, to use my earlier examples, Jeep which is associated with a lifestyle or image (and aside from a vague stylistic allusion to part of their vehicle for the most part the look is very different overall), and the Stormtrooper who is tied in with the movies, books and comics – character driven devices (though many would argue the depth of character).

I’m also deliberately ignoring the game aspect for the most part as rules development and changes is not an issue (quality is to some, but not that they are changing them). It will come into play later though.

So what we have is 40k is style over substance to a degree. It is a device to sell physical representations of that universe after all, so it’s understandable. However when that stagnates the ‘universe’ stagnates. It’s hard to get excited over a new model when it’s almost identical to the one you currently have. The “she’s got a new hat!” effect only happens rarely.

Quite a makeover they got really.

For me this was most apparent during the Grey Knights release. While most of the focus seemed to be on the rules and their relative levels of broken-ness, the model discussion seemed almost solely to fall on the Dreadknight. Why? Well, he was the only new thing there, and a lot of people hated him.

Sure we got teleporter backpacks, a couple of new guns and the plastic kits were very nice… but they’re the same guys as before with a couple of bits stuck on. Most discussion of the Grey Knight plastics pre-release involved discussion about how their new bolter magazines weren’t right, or how people would have to cut the halberds off their metal dudes to give them swords and the like.
Remember when the Dark Eldar first appeared at Games Day and the forums were flooded with people’s brains exploding at the awesomeness?
The difference was the power of redesign and giving it something new.

How does this relate to 40k being held down by its iconic designs? Well the more entrenched an idea becomes the harder it is to shake. Anyone familiar with Transformers fandom will be well aware of the “Trukk not Munkey!” arguments, now superseded by hating on “Bayformers” or Animated.
For a 40k example imagine the nerdrage if GW introduced female Space Marines, no matter how well done. There’s still that one line some 20 years old that hasn’t been contradicted before and has stood for so long that I’m pretty sure Jervis’ face would melt off Raiders otLA style if he read half the hate mail he’d get.

That said, GW has quite successfully changed a large number of their designs quite successfully – and I don’t mean an update like the Dark Eldar – I mean a redesign like the appearance of the brick style Dreadnought at the beginning of 2nd ed, the new Land Raider, replacing mk6 with mk7, the aforementioned Grey Knights and more recently the Dark Eldar Scourges and Haemonculus coven units.

This look isn't new, it's the plastic 2nd ed Epic design.

But why is this change important?

GW is in trouble at the moment. Price rises and increasing (and increasingly aggressive) competition in an unfriendly economic climate mean they’re competing in a tough market for limited funds. He who has the best product at any one time will get the dollar. This is doubly true for those of us whose primary interest is in painting and modelling over playing - I’m not going to buy a GW miniature out of loyalty when a Dark Sword, Red Box, Studio McVey, Maow, Infinity, Wyrd, Soda Pop, Hasslefree, Privateer Press, Reaper, GOT, Heresy, Scibor, Micro-Art or any other of a dozen manufacturer’s minis will do just as well.

By this I mean the last GW models I bought were the Scourges, before them the Forge World Corsairs, before them the Dark Eldar when they came out and before that…. Um I think it was probably Marines to continue building by Company. It’s honestly been quite a while since I’ve picked up a GW miniature on a whim because it was too cool to pass up. Most of their designs are many, many years old so unless I want something specific there’s no need to go in and check things out. I’ve bought quite a few character minis, yes, but they were for projects such as needing to finish an army or the like.


GW, despite claiming to make the best miniatures in the world, is not the miniature lover’s miniature company anymore. It all seems very much same ol’ same ol’ down at the design pits at Nottingham. Is all hope lost? Is there a future? Where did it all go wrong/miss big?


More on that tomorrow, but for now: No, yes and let’s just say that everything I’ve just said is a lie.


Edit: Part 2 is up here.

Redesigning 40k for the 21st Century, pt3

Part 1
Part 2

So I’m going to start with a summary of my position, handily provided by Justicar on the Millenium Gate:


“I, for one, like the GRIMDARK as it was originally implemented. Gothic is/was a fun change from the usual Star Trek, everything will be better in the future spiel. People just talking their problems out, every violent situation is based on misunderstanding, yada yada, etc. 40K was somewhat unique in that everyone fights everyone else. A very handy thing to have when you are marketing a wargame.

“That said, you are right that GW has gone too far with the pervasiveness of the GRIMDARK aspect of the setting. I think one issue is that GW has gone overboard with this and developed some tunnel vision with the GRIMDARK aspect. Part of the problem is that GW is treating it as the same as the Warhammer setting where the Old World is essentially doomed, it is just a matter of when, rather than if. This of course has been institutionalized most recently in the countdown to doomsday stuff they stuck in the fluff section of 5th edition which I think limits the large scale appeal of the setting.

“That outcome may be "certain" as to the Old World but that is 1 planet in a much larger universe. 40K has always had the GRIMDARK thing going on but in the past there was some balance with things like Rogue Trader fleets expanding the borders of the Imperium and Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleets pushing past the boundries of known space. There were tangible examples of recovered technology being implemented to improve the advance of technology in a number of the Imperial codices. We don't see much if any of that anymore. GRIMDARK is a large part of what makes 40K memorable and unique but like all good things, a complete excess of it is not desirable.”



So, I’m not against grim darkness, never ending war, a galaxy of horrors, and never ending danger. I just want to have a reason to fight against it, and have a slim hope of being heroic and saving the day against all odds (until the next horror comes along).
I think it is necessary for the games longevity to continue to strip away some of the GRIMDARK that has infested it. Why? Well look at it this way – you’re playing a game, be it on PC, Xbox, or whatever. Now it is no ordinary game, but one where your controlled force is your own. You lead them to victory time and time again. But each time you win, a message pops up saying ‘you won, but achieved nothing as the universe is still doomed no matter what you do’.

Bummer.

Why would you keep playing with that shoved in your face all the time? That’s what GRIMDARK overdose means to me.
Waaaaay back in the Rogue Trader days humanity had a future – not just in that it wasn’t monumentally screwed, but the Emperor had a plan. What was that plan? Well he knew that over time, humanity would become more and more psychically aware, much like the Eldar before them. He guided and nurtured humanity over the centuries, working to the goal of preserving his species.
Eventually his body gave out (later, Horus beat him up) and he retired to the throne. But the Imperium was set up to cull out the weak psykers and eventually, should the guard and marines prevail against the odds, humanity would emerge out the other side victorious against the galaxy.

It was still a very slim chance it’d work, but there was a nebulous, far off goal Humanity was working towards more than mere survival. What does this have to do with a-bombs, iPods and Eldrad’s toilet?


Depth of the background

Many decry the newer editions as ‘dumbed down’, ‘made for ten year olds’, ‘aimed at kids’ etc. We’ve all heard it, maybe even said it when our Codex has had its story section reduced to tales of the Ultramarines being awesome.
I started 40k when I was seven or so, back with Rogue Trader. My brother was a bit older than me, but we both started with Marines (RTB01 FTW!) and mostly messed around like kids did. There were no GWs in Australia yet, we mostly went to Tin Soldier in the city or Games World out at Hornsby. They had a club, NaSGuL (Northern Shore Gamers League), and this is where I discovered Space Hulk, Blood Bowl and the wide variety of games out there.
However, I was more interested in the models and stories than playing (as you may have guessed from my blog), and devoured every book and expansion I could get my hands on. I didn’t get most of it at the time, but I pretty much memorised the RT rulebook, the Compendium and Compilation. I can still find things almost instantly in them.

Many years later, I was going back over the Random Mission tables in the back of RT, specifically the pudding one, and I went “ahhh, it’s parodying the second coming of Jesus!”. It’s terribly obvious now, but it took a good decade for me to see it. Similarly, I didn’t immediately get that the Sisters of Battle being based on a planet called Ophelia was a Hamlet reference.

Add to that the sheer volume of background contained in those early books. It’s staggering how much was developed in such a small space really. Does the current background have the same staying power? I don’t think so, unfortunately. When I need to reference something about the Administratum or the Astra Telepathica I don’t turn to 5th ed, I pull out the ancient, dog-eared Rogue Trader book. Maybe 2nd ed if I want another view, but it’s almost always RT first.
I don’t think that the background needs to be dumbed down to be accessible to.
The kids who like 40k for ‘rarrrgh explosions’ would just skip the boring bits not about dismembering, and the weird quiet ones will absorb everything anyway (I used to be able to recite, from memory, the weapon loadout of every 3050 mech [including all the Clan varients]). Those who initially skim the background might grow into it, or they may just enjoy toy spacemen – that’s what the game is to some people after all, just a game. But not having it is a disservice to those who enjoy it in my eyes.


Another salient example, linking with the background disconnect, is the manner in which 40k is sold to people (of all ages). There are no FLGS’s near me, the closest is around an hour away and it is often lacking in F. There is a FLGW about twenty minutes away and next to where my girlfriend works, so I go there when I go gaming. As a result I’ve seen a lot of GW’s pitch technique. It seems to be less aggravating, more laid back here in Australia than in other countries from the stories I’ve heard, so take that on board.

When someone comes in, expressed interest in 40k, the demo game is Marines vs Orks from the AoBR set. The standard setup is to have the staff play Orks, the new guy play Marines. Now the Marines are portrayed as heroic, mighty, fighting for humanity etc etc. I’ve noticed they never add on “but it’s pointless as the galaxy is doomed no matter what.” They talk about the brutality, never ending war, explosions, skulls, chopping people up and next to no chance of survival (unless you are mighty enough!). But they stop short of serving the full GRIMDARK sandwich.

Why?

Because it’s depressing. Nobody’s going to play a game where the tagline is “you will never win – it’s in the rulebook (for reals!)”. They will play “you’ll never win, mwahahahaha- what? You’re totally awesome and still triumphed? Noooooooooo!”
It means your victory on the tabletop with your little men counted for something. It’s like playing call of Cthuhlu – you’ll ultimately never win, but you know that going in. However the big difference is that CoC is a horror RPG, not a sci-fi wargame.

But, back to depth of background and the point... having a deep background means you constantly have more to discover (duh), and more to keep players (customers) interested. The paucity of background available in the rulebooks is tragic in my eyes. Sure, there’s the BL novels, Fantasy Flight’s RPG supplements and erm... that’s it actually. And those are all pretty pricey if you want everything. Even still they lack certain crucial bits of data.
For instance: Navigators only being able to pass on the Navigator gene if both parents are Navigators. Pretty sure it’s not in 5th ed. It’s certainly not in any Codex. It might be in a Dark Heresy or Rogue Trader RPG book, but I don’t own those. It is in Rogue Trader though, some twenty years out of print.

I will never be OOP, because I rock!

Have some fun at a GW – say you want to do female Space Marines. Someone will say it’s impossible due to blah blah blah. Ask what book the article is in. Ding! There is no book available in a Games Workshop that contains the infamous ‘only males can be Space Marines’ line.
This is more than trolling for anti-FSM hate, but illustrating that knowledge is being lost from the books. The depth of the 40k verse is getting shallower. I am obviously a fan of story based games, and not having this depth hurts that, as very, very few of the younger gamers come up with overly complicated back stories for their armies any more (or any story at all). 40k is becoming ‘40k the novels’ and ‘40k the game’, with little cross over between the two.

The previously discussed logic holes hurt the background as it is ‘interactive’, so to speak. While a TV series like Star Trek or a linear game like Half Life could have gaping holes in it, the POV is restricted and controlled so you only see what the director wants you to. By the time the hole appears you’re past it (hopefully). In an open game universe such as 40k (or any RPG setting), the cracks are much more evident as you’re essentially asking people to rummage around and see what they find. When there are so many solid wargaming/RPG settings out there, the holes, missing bits and disconnections make 40k look rather rough around the edges some times.
This isn’t really a good way to keep people interested. If every time they want to make an army or explore an idea they run into a contradiction, something that makes no sense in-universe or can’t find an answer, it’s discouraging. We’ve all likely had it happen with something – you’re interested, but finding what you want to know is too much of a pain so you get frustrated and give up (potentially going to a competitor).
Note: not saying that you have to make a background, but that the situation is limiting the option, and that’s bad for those of us who want to.


What to do about it?

MOAR BACKGROWNDS!
So, if you’re like me and think too much, you’ll wonder odd things. Like thus:
Eldar choose to go on a path.
That Path is a very focused speciality, be it art, music, war.
They only do one sort of thing on the Path, no others (except in times of war).
So who chooses to go on the path of the Janitor?
If such a path does not exist, who cleans the toilets?
Do the Warp Spiders (the tiny ones, not the aspect warriors) do it?
Do they have some sort of autonomous construct?
If they do, why not use said constructs for war?
And so on...

I think it is a valid question. We know the answer for the Imperials: you do. Grab a shovel (Marines go to the excretatorium and have servitors). But we know precious little about everyday life for the Eldar, or even much about Craftworlds themselves. I can think of only half a dozen pictures in the last twenty three years that show the inside of a Craftworld. There are a couple of descriptions in a couple of novels, but nothing really detailed like Imperial cities have gotten.

Me, I’d read a book all about the ins and outs of a Craftworld or inside of a Tyranid ship. A sort of Incredible Cross-sections series for 40k, and not just the tanks.
Developing the alien races will remove them from their fantasy backgrounds – which I think is a good thing. There is a certain stigma attached to 40k that it is just ‘fantasy in space’, and while that certainly used to be true, the races have moved into their own niches, but they need to be explored more.

Make a background book for each race and have it NOT TOLD FROM THE IMPERIAL PERSPECTIVE! Have it neutral and factual, much like the Horus Heresy art books. Facts. Like what the Eldar use as currency (do they have one? Is it barter, socialist collective, no economy at all or what)? Who runs every day stuff (Farseers? Surely they have better things to worry about than whether L’Shin needs to mow his lawn more often or Jathen speeding on his jetbike through a school zone)? Come to think of it, what are Eldar kids like? How fast to they age? What’s the deal yo?!

I am reminded of a conversation on the Giant in the Playground boards, talking about the Princess Bride novel. Someone mentioned the funny edits mad by the ‘editor’ of the ‘original story’. Someone else commented about the court scene, and how the editor cut out the long descriptions of courtly fashion as nobody would be interested in that level of detail. The poster then lamented that they were interested, and would have loved to have read it.
If you weren’t interested, you’d either skip it or forget the details. They need to bring that sort of detail to the other races in 40k.


Solution to lack of depth: DITCH THE IMPERIOCENTRIC VIEWPOINT FOR EVERYTHING

It is very, very constraining, and the ‘woooo mysterious’ stuff gets annoying after a while. If I’m playing a race/character, I’d like to know that they’re not actually the bad guys and are just hiding it if I initially liked them as good guys (even if they have a terrible secret). The whole Dark Angel traitor mystery thing hurt my love of them when it got really silly during 3rd, and as much as I liked Necrons the vagueness and ‘unknownness’ of their story wasn’t enough for me to sink my teeth into.
Not to say a little mystery is a bad thing, far from it, but knowing what side your faction on is a pretty big one.
Losing the Imperial view for a neutral one would give much more freedom to explore things previously unknown to us – just add on ‘but the Imperium is yet to discover this terrible secret’. It gives the developers something to work towards and the audience something to speculate about and look forward to.
A good example of this is the Void Dragon. You know it, I know it, Dalia knows it, The Emperor knows it, the Necrons know it, but the Imperium is in for a very rude surprise some day...


Solution to lack of depth 2: STORIES IN SOME REGULAR FORMAT THAT AREN’T EXPENSIVE

It seems this is coming true, with Black Library announcing at Games Day that they will be doing a monthly magazine filled with stories and such. Huzzah! Now fingers crossed they’re not all from the human POV...




General point: STOP WITH EVERYTHING BEING RELATED TO EVERYTHING ELSE

I liked it when it was just ‘here is the galaxy. It will kill you’. Now it’s all Star Gods this and Old Ones that and grand interweaving conspiracies about everything. Making everything interdependent makes it harder to advance any one part on its own, and makes each part less unique.


In regards to the evolving society and the background (tech, politics etc), many people got the impression I was for some drastic overhaul to make 40k more shiny and happy and such. Not quite the case. I was for ditching the GRIMDARK, scaling it back to grim, relentless war, and accentuating the sci-fi aspects that are already there, but seldom/never used. Also I’m in favour of highlighting the religious tensions that exist between Marines and the Ecclesiarchy and the Mechanicus, highlighting the growing numbers of Psykers (if they still do that), and having the Imperium doing something – anything!
Of the three global campaigns, the Imperium has been defending for three of them. In most Forge World books the Imperium loses or has a pyrrhic victory. It’s rather disheartening to have your faction always on the back foot, defending (losing) and never seeming to win, unless you’re the Ultramarines that is.


Last point: A GLOBAL CAMPAIGN WITH THE IMPERIUM ATTACKING

Use it as a tie-in to release xenos terrain, xenos world / background sourcebooks and such. Hell, do a bunch of civilian figures for all races if you want to go crazy. Adding more detail never hurt, except for the ‘lol Old ones made everyone’ crap, so yeah.

This is the end of my thoughts now, and I hope you have found it as interesting reading as I have pondering it. I Could certainly go on, about the impending end of the galaxy, the stuck timeline (not necessarily a bad thing) and so on, but that’s it for a while.
I do realise much of this may come across as bashing on 40k or the designers, but that is not my intention. I know that no major change is going to happen overnight, and that it does look like GW is moving in the right direction in terms of increasing the love for the background nutters, and expanding their viewpoints. The ranting and complaining is because I love.

Or they could just bring back Rogue Trader, consarn it *shakes fist*

Redesigning 40k for the 21st Century, pt2

Part 1 here

Part 3 here

So I'm putting my money where my mouth is here. But first, a preface.

Most races in 40k have been redesigned and refined over time. Eldar have changed the least of some, Tyranids the most. But the changes are there. Compare a 2nd ed Guardian to a modern plastic one:



The legs are more defined, the armour layered and so on, but still recognisable – just sleeker. Compare the old Falcon to the new:




Much bigger difference here. But they took a design I thought was cool back in the very early 90’s, and made it into a sleek, futuristic looking vehicle. Gone were the blocky shapes like a Lamborghini Countach, and in were the graceful curves of the vehicle’s namesake.
But Space Marines... they haven’t changed a bit since they first started.
Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but aside from a slight difference in scale and sculpting style a 2nd ed metal body Marine is the same as the Tac Squad box marine. With the fantasy tropes imported into the futuristic setting of 40k, Marines were given the role of Knights or Samurai: heavy armour, heroic, monastic, bold colours and so on.

It is easy to imagine a knight in armour or a samurai duelling to the death, leaping around and being generally action packed. Kinda like this:

Image from here

But it’s hard to see a guy this bulk and with these proportions doing something that dynamic:



There’s a reason most marine pictures are limited to ‘standing and shooting’, ‘standing and shouting (maybe while pointing)’ and ‘running while shooting and shouting’. generally physically impossible for a marine to get into a large amount of poses with the way they are.
I’m going to present a radical re-design, going quite a bit farther than I think is really necessary to illustrate my point.




So there it is, not the most wonderful design, but then again I’m not getting paid to do this... Starting from the overall view then working down from the top I’ll go over what I’ve done and why.


The Figure
Firstly, I changed the proportions rather drastically. Marines in the fiction are described as supersoldiers constantly on the attack, charging their foes and killing them either with dakka or their superior close combat skills. If you’ve ever read a Marine book from the Black Library you’ve likely read a description of them moving with blinding speed, parrying, jumping away from attacks/explosions and generally moving with great speed.

The GW Ultramarine design above doesn’t look like the kind of guy to fly through a window ahead of an explosion, land on his feet, draw a chainsword, block a guard, back kick another off a ledge, before ducking another swing and killing the first guy.
Does mine? I think it does more so, and since this is my blog I’m running with it so there.
But back to proportions. The GW UM is boxy overall, big flared boots balance out the massive shoulder pads. He is big, intimidating and I can easily picture him advancing relentlessly and unharmed through a barrage of gunfire and explosions.
However, that’s what Terminators are for, and the silhouette of the GW UM is not much removed from his bigger brother anymore. The shoulders are bigger, as is the backpack. The legs are more flared and blocky.

So what did I do? Firstly I narrowed him down, thinned the legs and waist, while keeping broad shoulders. The backpack was similarly reduced. His stance is more upright, with the feet closer together.

Accentuating the triangularity of the torso and giving the illusion of elevating the head (by having the helmet go above the backpack and shoulders) instantly makes him look more athletic. It’s a basic trick of figure design dating back to the ancient Greeks.
Many of the ‘best’ and ‘perfect’ examples of figure sculpture are anatomically impossible – they’d be all out of proportion to a real person (super shoulders and slightly small heads), have no tailbones to make their butts look better - extra muscles even. It’s because, much like in film, reality doesn’t look real – or people prefer to look at idealised reality depending on who you ask.

But this isn’t an art lesson, so onwards we go.


The Helmet
Possibly one of the most icon bits of Marine hardware, I fused elements of the Mks 4, 6 and 7 helmets together. The longer snout is Mk6, but is more squared off like a Mk4. It has the Mk7 grill, though cut at a slight angle to give the helm a sense of movement. Like it’s a wolf head lunging or some such.

The optics I made into a monovisor, because I like that and think it looks better. Yes, some of this is just personal preference.
Lastly I made it bigger, so Marines aren’t pinheads anymore.



The Shoulder Guards
Possibly one of the biggest changes I made. They’re now squarish with rounded edges, and made of two layered pieces. The idea is that the lower slides under the upper when the Marine raises his arm, so he doesn’t hit himself in the side of the head when he does the chicken dance.
They’re also a lot smaller, or at least end sooner down the upper arm.


The Arms
The forearm guard is based on the Mk4 piece, but with a raised stripe. I’m not sure what it’s for, but it adds a bit of visual interest over the sewerage pipe piece they’ve currently got. They could get a computer panel and keypad built into one arm on the inside of the wrist.


The Torso
The concept is fairly lengthy to describe, so bear with me.
The key here is layers (like a troll). The bottom layer is much like a Mk5 torso – the criss-cross cables going over each shoulder and under the armpits, with a fifth to the belt.
Over this goes the main breastplate (would have an eagle device, but left it off for clarity), much like Mk3 armour. The plate only covers the front and side of the ribs, rather than extending the whole way around.
The stomach has a similar piece, covering the abdominals and with the Mk8 style cable cover int the middle of it.
This accentuates it being tough armour, as it is additional to the ‘undersuit’, so to speak. It also gives more visual interest, with additional points of highlighting/shading and so on.


The Waist
I gave him Terminator style hip guards as a visual cheat. It lets the thigh armour start lower so the legs can bend into more positions without worrying about ‘clipping’.


The Legs
More layering. The Thighs have a raised section that goes most of the way around. The shins have a more moulded ‘inner’ piece, with the shape of the calf visible, with extra plating on the front. Around the ankles there are movable guards to, like the hips, allow for full flexibility without clipping.


The Backpack
Cut down, compact and more flowing curves to fit with the rest of the overall design.



The Bolter
Aside from being a bullpup (Azrael has one!) the main case is cut at a 45 degree angle at the front to make it look, for want of a better term, faster.

Would I, if given the opportunity by GW, make this Marine into the new look of Space Marines? No. I would, however, make one rather large change: pose and proportion (it’s two things, but one change – trust me).

I’ve recently been building the Forge World marines, and something struck me as odd about them. Aside from their obviously different armour something seemed odd about them. I then realised that they are skinnier than their plastic counterparts, and generally stand more upright (especially the Mks 4 and 6). No dramatically lunging or standing in Horse Riding stance for them. They also have narrower shoulders due to thinner shoulder pads.
Basically they do to a degree what I did in my first step – redesign the proportions. I’d go slightly further and tweak the dimensions here and there (taller thinner overall), add some more details and layering to the armour, but generally I’d keep them pretty similar.

I honestly think that’s all they need to be snazzed up – they can’t be changed too much, they are the iconic guys after all.
Which allows me to segue nicely into Part 3 about selling the game, keeping people interested, and why it’s important who cleans Eldrad’s toilet.

Redesigning 40k for the 21st Century, pt1

So our dear Warhammer 40k is twenty three years old, and the world is a much different place from those times. The Cold War is over, Thatcherism is gone in the UK, and technology has advanced quite apace. We have global communication on devices the size of your palm, cloning, mapping the human genome and reality television.
So how does this change the game?

Well, surprisingly, not much has changed. The Tau have been introduced in what many called a cynical cash-in on the explosion of the Anime market. Necrons and Dark Eldar appeared, but there haven’t been any great changes to the universe.
While we here enjoy the internet and tiny, touch screen phones to communicate globally (and tweet from space) that do more than any one device of 87 (unless you count a whole house as a ‘device’), the 40k guys still use radios with limited range to do everything.

vs

Which one do you think the Guard get issued?

Obvioulsy a large part of this is scalability and modelling issues (but this is all about aesthetic [more on that later]) , but where are the tiny cybernetically implanted vox units that can contact orbiting ships? Where is the planetary, or even system wide, communication network? The seeds are there in the background, but it seems as if it all gets lost in the GRIMDARK(tm).


In the very back of the original Rogue Trader book there is a little section on the technology of the 41st millennium (page 267 for you grognards). It mentions that units built using atomic stacks, needing to only be as big as functionality necessitates. It also talks about phased crystal transmission, photon lines (super fibre optics), Sucrosol (a sucrose based cybernetic blood), holographic interfaces and more.
One particularly interesting one is the Electoo – a crystal stack implanted in the body to carry information. A further version of this is the Electrograft – an electoo implanted straight into the brain to impart knowledge (“I know kung-fu!”).

So there were variations of nanotech, bioengineering, advanced touch screens and RFID type devices. So where’d they all go? Why is it all flying buttresses made from skulls in the shape of a bigger skull? 40k (and in particular the Mechanicus) got stupid.


By that I mean when it started, 40k was basically a satirical rip on society and stole most of its base ideas from Dune and Fantasy:

Marines – Sardaukar
Navigators – Navigators
God Emperor – God Emperor
Religion devoted to said God Emp - Religion devoted to said God Emp
Chainsaw swords in a sci-fi world – Chrys knives / sword masters
And so on.

Not a bad thing, but as it grew and evolved on its own the unique aspects of the setting became accentuated:
Skulls
Nihilism
Relentless suffering
Skulls
Gothicness
Skulls

Way back when in 1987 the world was a pretty sucky place if you were a nerd – sci-fi, comics and fantasy were still super un-cool, and very much underground to what they are now. In the UK there had just been the 86 London garbage strike, the heightened tension of the Cold War, and recovery from a serious recession (listen to London’s Calling and replace London with The Imperium). Nihilism was in. But even then it still had a slightly upbeat feel – this was “There is no time for peace. No respite, no forgiveness. There is only WAR”. Sure, war was eternal, but it could be won. Contrast with “In the GRIM DARKNESS of the far future, there is only war.” An end sounds less possible.

What does this have to do with the Mechanicus? Well in Rogue Trader, they were pretty smart (and wore white robes BTW), and liked researching and inventing things: “Their devotion to technical research... dabblers in the old sciences...” (RT pg139).
The mysticism was still there, but it was subtler than it is now. For instance you still have to chant and say prayers to a machine’s spirit to get it going, but it is more in the vein of a gamer’s superstition about their dice staying lucky (nobody touches them but me, blowing on them ‘for luck’, rolling in a certain order etc). The same as Marines would paint kill markings on their bolters – so the weapon’s spirit is honoured, and it continues to be filled with wrath. It was basically ‘gotta work with the spirits or I’ll be hit with bad mojo’.

It meant stuff could get done, like not having society fall apart. The modern view was satirised brilliantly in Mechanicum when Zeth lectures Dalia about the idiocy of thinking a light switch is spiritual.


We live in a society where technology is omni-present, so having a sci-fi universe with technology backwards from our own is... odd to say the least. Well, that’s not entirely true. The technology is there in theory, but we never see any of it.

Make everything look fancier too – boxes are very 80’s. Now it’s all sleek lines and curving shapes. Look at a lasgun:



Look at this gun:



It’s a modern assault rifle. Which looks like it’s from the future?
The same can be said for the designs of the guard themselves. Obviously moulding limitations exist, but they’re very bland to be honest. Nothing about them really screams ’38,000 years in the future!’. Even with the GRIMDARKness taken into account, there’s still something missing. The Krieg guys have some cool steampunkish lasrifles – I think the ‘regular’ guard need a dose of that mixed with the FELIN kit:

+

Armour tech is supposedly super advanced – many forums arguments have been made that 40k body armour could stop a modern machine guns and even light autocannons with no problem (though many dispute this of course). Either way, it doesn’t look futuristic in the slightest. Not even in a ‘we have super tech but can’t use it way’. Something Gears of Warish:



or a grungier version of Mass Effect (more tubes and skulls):



I mean they really look like they’re from the future. So, without further ado:

REDESIGN POINT 1: MORE COOL, SHINY TECHNOLOGY SO I KNOW I’M IN THE FUTURE

Glowing holo interfaces, electoos, glowing information cables connecting mega-cities. The Imperium still feels stuck in the past - I half expect characters in the novels to reach for rotary phones sometimes... as the hippy in the Simpsons said "Looks like someone's living in the past! Contemporise man!"
And un-brainwash/de-stupify the Mechanicum while you're at it. Having them suspicious of untested/new tech, constantly searching for a master STC unit etc is all good – just have them use their brains once in a while.

This religious aspect ties in to my next point. The, er, religion of the Imperium. We’re told that everyone is fanatically devoted to the Emperor and the Ecclesiarchy is ever-present and so forth. Except, much like the tech, you’d hardly know it. In what will be a rare game comparison, look at the Guard Codex. You can take a Priest, representing the many religious units across the galaxy (Valhallans, Tallarnians), and... that’s it. He doesn't even do much. Even the models are lacking in any religious symbols.
In Fantasy the Empire generals can’t go without bucket loads of comets, hammers and Sigmar vanity barding. The troops carry religious icons into battle, and there are special fanatical units all on their own (Flagellants).

40k either needs to bring in more of this or return to the view that the Ecclesiarchy is omni-present and powerful, but for the large part the populace doesn’t give a crap, being more concerned with their own survival. I’d go with option 2 myself, but that’s just me. Any redone Witch Hunters codex may partially resolve this, but if religion is truly a part of all Imperial citizen’s lives, it needs to be in ALL Imperial books.


POINT 2: MAKE UP YOUR MINDS ABOUT THE ECCLESIARCHY ALREADY!


The next one is unrelated to the others in the most part – the scale issue. Example, the Second War for Armageddon:
“The main war lasted for two years, but the actual combat continued for the next twenty years, a colossal effort for just one planet.”
Twenty years to retake a planet is colossal? Well, they do have a thousand Marines taking a planet in a week, so I suppose so...

Just as a frame of reference, it took 28,000 British soldiers 74 days to retake the Falklands. The Germans and Russians had over a million men involved in the battle for Stalingrad alone. The Allies committed in the area of 175,000 to the first day of the Normandy invasions. Eritrea fought for thirty years against Etheopia for independance.
Just look at the numbers on any First World War battle to get an idea of how ludicrously small the numbers in 40k are. Hell, the Athenians had 10,000 guys at Marathon for crying out loud.

Mass Effect 2 has a moment where one character tells the player he received an email from his nephew, and that it is important to him. He says it is important as it gives him a frame of reference, as it is impossible to visualise all the people in the galaxy, but he can visualise (and fight for)his nephew. 40k writers need to realise how many people there are, and multiply everything they do by about a hundred or so.

Fear The Alien has an Ork force big enough to take a Hive (populations in the uncountable millions) funnelled through a single valley and distracted by a single fortress. Yeah... maybe not.

POINT 3: THE GALAXY IS A LOT BIGGER THAN YOU THINK – YOU NEED MORE GUYS TO TAKE IT ON

First up, I’d shrink the Imperium. Maybe have it cover a quarter to a third of the galaxy. A big chunk around Terra, then a strip between the galactic core and the Orks of Charadon, then a smaller blob around the Eastern fringe and Maccragge.
This means that the Imperium, while still under siege, can be expanding into unknown space. I think that is part of why the Horus Heresy series is so popular – the Marines (and humanity) are heroically sticking it to the galaxy. In the 41st millennium they’re patching the cracks more than being heroic. Whilst grim and dark, I like my escapism to be fun and exciting, not a depressing reminder about the transient nature of our achievements.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Secondly, a million Marine chapters of 1000 each. So what if an entire Chapter masses outside your city to assault it. Escape on your private yacht of evil and drop a nuke on them. 1000 dudes don’t take up much space, so they’ll all be in the central blast area and be instantly vapourised.

So much for the Ultramarines!

You wouldn’t send a single regiment to re-take a planet, you’d send five hundred battle groups each made of hordes of regiments.


SUMMARY: REALITY HAS MOVED ON, 40k NEEDS TO KEEP UP...

or it'll become dated like 70s and 80s (and even 90s now) sci-fi. Rollerball, Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Farenheit 451 all have 'lol, it's "the future"' moments - pay phones, reel to reel computers, flares, women introducing themselves as "Mrs John Smith".
The other, potentially worse, possability is that 40k will end up becoming a parody of itself, without realising it. 3rd edition and early 4th were heading that way with the stripped down backgrounds in the Codex, GRIMDARK, and a lot of really stupid changes to the background (Men of Iron, no new plasma weapons/Terminator suits/Dreadnoughts [see my point about numbers earlier]). Things definately seem to be heading away from this, but only time will tell.

I doubt any major changes like I have brought up will happen any time soon, but I sincerely hope 40k marches onward as the real world does.


That’s it for now – next up: Redesigning the Space Marine! Plus, what to do with those aliens, and what about the kids?