Incline Warhammer 40,000 Lore Thread

[Louis_Cypher]

IPs are so stupid. You can’t constrain human storytelling that way. It just creates problems. It’s natural for humans to retell and alter stories (e.g. fanfiction), but copyright law makes that illegal for a century or longer. This is fucking stupid. We can see the problems right now. IPs last too long and end up rotting. IPs get forgotten and cannot be rescued. Creators and fans attack each other. Copyright shouldn’t last more than 14-28 years. The overwhelming majority of profit on any given work is made within that window, so it makes no economic sense to have it last longer. Trademark law already covers protecting creators against fraud and that lasts for as long as you actively use a trademark.

On the far left end of the political spectrum, anarchism, etc, there was always an argument that intellectual property shouldn't exist at all. No copyrights, etc. But we know why they exist in our current system; to protect works that authors feel is their baby, and to give profit to companies re-selling old ideas. It has been extended in recent decades, arguably due to the greed of business in the USA. Corporations like Disney most certainly don't want their 100-year old movies becoming public domain. I think most common people, on the street, agree that copyright should be shorter, perhaps 40-50 years, to pluck a figure out of the air.

It would have probably saved Star Trek, my most beloved franchise, if it had entered the public domain in say 2007, around the 40th anniversary. Fans would have made better productions than we now get, with certainty. But at the same time, I disagree with your view that things "rot" by themselves. Most of these franchises were deliberately attacked by political activism. Conan hasn't rotted as an "IP", after 100 years, because it largely escaped. Star Trek hasn't. The difference? Choices. Talentless assholes ruin franchises, not time, the mere presence of cosmic time. They could have been managed far better in every case.

 

[Big_poppa_pump]

IPs are so stupid. You can’t constrain human storytelling that way. It just creates problems. It’s natural for humans to retell and alter stories (e.g. fanfiction), but copyright law makes that illegal for a century or longer. This is fucking stupid. We can see the problems right now. IPs last too long and end up rotting. IPs get forgotten and cannot be rescued. Creators and fans attack each other. Copyright shouldn’t last more than 14-28 years. The overwhelming majority of profit on any given work is made within that window, so it makes no economic sense to have it last longer. Trademark law already covers protecting creators against fraud and that lasts for as long as you actively use a trademark.

On the far left end of the political spectrum, anarchism, etc, there was always an argument that intellectual property shouldn't exist at all. No copyrights, etc. But we know why they exist in our current system; to protect works that authors feel is their baby, and to give profit to companies re-selling old ideas. It has been extended in recent decades, arguably due to the greed of business in the USA. Corporations like Disney most certainly don't want their 100-year old movies becoming public domain. I think most common people, on the street, agree that copyright should be shorter, perhaps 40-50 years, to pluck a figure out of the air.

It would have probably saved Star Trek, my most beloved franchise, if it had entered the public domain in say 2007, around the 40th anniversary. Fans would have made better productions than we now get, with certainty. But at the same time, I disagree with your view that things "rot" by themselves. Most of these franchises were deliberately attacked by political activism. Conan hasn't rotted as an "IP", after 100 years, because it largely escaped. Star Trek hasn't. The difference? Choices. Talentless assholes ruin franchises, not time, the mere presence of cosmic time. They could have been managed far better in every case.

Public domain is not this end all be all saving grace have you seen SCP? Sooner or later if it’s popular a group of people will basically take over and then what? All you are gonna get is multiple forms of Warhammer that barely have following.

Conan exists in a weird way, you have pretty much the movie Conan and actual Conan and most normies only like movie Conan.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

IPs are so stupid. You can’t constrain human storytelling that way. It just creates problems. It’s natural for humans to retell and alter stories (e.g. fanfiction), but copyright law makes that illegal for a century or longer. This is fucking stupid. We can see the problems right now. IPs last too long and end up rotting. IPs get forgotten and cannot be rescued. Creators and fans attack each other. Copyright shouldn’t last more than 14-28 years. The overwhelming majority of profit on any given work is made within that window, so it makes no economic sense to have it last longer. Trademark law already covers protecting creators against fraud and that lasts for as long as you actively use a trademark.

On the far left end of the political spectrum, anarchism, etc, there was always an argument that intellectual property shouldn't exist at all. No copyrights, etc. But we know why they exist in our current system; to protect works that authors feel is their baby, and to give profit to companies re-selling old ideas. It has been extended in recent decades, arguably due to the greed of business in the USA. Corporations like Disney most certainly don't want their 100-year old movies becoming public domain. I think most common people, on the street, agree that copyright should be shorter, perhaps 40-50 years, to pluck a figure out of the air.

It would have probably saved Star Trek, my most beloved franchise, if it had entered the public domain in say 2007, around the 40th anniversary. Fans would have made better productions than we now get, with certainty. But at the same time, I disagree with your view that things "rot" by themselves. Most of these franchises were deliberately attacked by political activism. Conan hasn't rotted as an "IP", after 100 years, because it largely escaped. Star Trek hasn't. The difference? Choices. Talentless assholes ruin franchises, not time, the mere presence of cosmic time. They could have been managed far better in every case.

Conan is public domain and a single character. He’s not a canonical setting and timeline like Star Trek. Even the Hyborian Age is only vaguely sketched out and since Howard died different authors have written contradictory stories.

Many franchises were wrecked in the past by non-activists. Remember Alien 3, Terminator 3, or The Mummy Returns? Sometimes companies just make bad products. It happened all the time before political activism was invented in the 2010s. Humans make mistakes, it’s part of being human. Even series written by single authors eventually suffer burnout.

Here’s an example. I read The Hunger by Whitley Strieber this week. The book I read included a preview of the sequel written two decades later by the same author. It was just a short preview but it introduced numerous retcons to the story presented previously in the same book. Was this even edited?

Not to mention the numerous abandonware works that died in obscurity and cannot be saved because of copyright.

My point is this. If you want something done right, then do it yourself. The customer is always right in matters of taste.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

All you are gonna get is multiple forms of Warhammer that barely have following.

RaggleFraggle talks about this a lot in this thread, so I was trying to be balanced. I have my doubts about public domain too.

The customer is always right in matters of taste.

Very debatable. But I take your point that they will at least get what they ordered.

 

[lightbane]

Conan survived to this day because he's barely changed from the start. You can't make Conan work in the modern world, maybe in the Middle Ages at best. There is a future Conan I saw somewhere, but that's pretty much the same with a flashy sword.

 

[Storyfag]

most normies only know movie Conan.

FTFY

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Public domain is not this end all be all saving grace have you seen SCP? Sooner or later if it’s popular a group of people will basically take over and then what? All you are gonna get is multiple forms of Warhammer that barely have following.

Yeah, I read the lolcow thread on Kiwifarms. Thousands of authors contributed and the site owners make a bunch of money via ads while the original writers see nothing. Then there’s the whole grooming drama… that’s just what I remember.

Anyway, the problem is that SCP was always centralized from the start on its wiki. That was the point of weakness. It’s not even actually public domain, it’s creative commons.

Actual public domain properties that survive to the present are not centralized. The Cthulhu mythos isn’t centralized. There are numerous competing creators doing their own versions of the mythos. Despite attempts to colonize the fandom, nothing has actually stuck.

Anyway, One Page Rules actually seems to be doing pretty well for themselves.

RaggleFraggle talks about this a lot in this thread, so I was trying to be balanced. I have my doubts about public domain too.

It hasn’t been tried very often, but go-to examples like Cthulhu mythos show that it works. The problem is that, barring an unlikely legal reform, copyright lasts so long that you can’t use that option for the properties wrecked by corpos. You have to make new ones.

Conan survived to this day because he's barely changed from the start. You can't make Conan work in the modern world, maybe in the Middle Ages at best. There is a future Conan I saw somewhere, but that's pretty much the same with a flashy sword.

That too.

 

[Big_poppa_pump]

Public domain is not this end all be all saving grace have you seen SCP? Sooner or later if it’s popular a group of people will basically take over and then what? All you are gonna get is multiple forms of Warhammer that barely have following.

Yeah, I read the lolcow thread on Kiwifarms. Thousands of authors contributed and the site owners make a bunch of money via ads while the original writers see nothing. Then there’s the whole grooming drama… that’s just what I remember.

Anyway, the problem is that SCP was always centralized from the start on its wiki. That was the point of weakness. It’s not even actually public domain, it’s creative commons.

Actual public domain properties that survive to the present are not centralized. The Cthulhu mythos isn’t centralized. There are numerous competing creators doing their own versions of the mythos. Despite attempts to colonize the fandom, nothing has actually stuck.

Anyway, One Page Rules actually seems to be doing pretty well for themselves.

RaggleFraggle talks about this a lot in this thread, so I was trying to be balanced. I have my doubts about public domain too.

It hasn’t been tried very often, but go-to examples like Cthulhu mythos show that it works. The problem is that, barring an unlikely legal reform, copyright lasts so long that you can’t use that option for the properties wrecked by corpos. You have to make new ones.

Conan survived to this day because he's barely changed from the start. You can't make Conan work in the modern world, maybe in the Middle Ages at best. There is a future Conan I saw somewhere, but that's pretty much the same with a flashy sword.

That too.

I personally do not see playing alt rulesets or even 3D printing actually hurt GW in the end, it technically pushes their monopoly that you still would rather play Warhammer instead of actually playing other Wargames like Infinity or ANYTHING thats not GW adjacent with GW style miniatures.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I personally do not see playing alt rulesets or even 3D printing actually hurt GW in the end, it technically pushes their monopoly that you still would rather play Warhammer instead of actually playing other Wargames like Infinity or ANYTHING thats not GW adjacent with GW style miniatures.

Make new IPs then? Ones that aren’t derivative of 40k? The scifi genre has tons of conceptual space you could use instead.

For example, here’s an idea I had: in the late 21st century the Grays reveal themselves to humanity and usher in a utopia of scientific advancement. By combing gray gravity tech with the human’s newly discovered dark matter reactor, Earth invents the first FTL drives and jumpstarts interstellar colonization. The increasingly authoritarian Earth government pisses off the colonies, who secede and fight the first galactic war. Then a century or two later there is a second galactic war between the hundreds of human-dominated stellar nations after someone lights another powder keg. Mutant supremacists, roboticists, space cowboys, space amish, everything is fair game.

 

[Storyfag]

I personally do not see playing alt rulesets or even 3D printing actually hurt GW in the end, it technically pushes their monopoly that you still would rather play Warhammer instead of actually playing other Wargames like Infinity or ANYTHING thats not GW adjacent with GW style miniatures.

Make new IPs then? Ones that aren’t derivative of 40k? The scifi genre has tons of conceptual space you could use instead.

For example, here’s an idea I had: in the late 21st century the Grays reveal themselves to humanity and usher in a utopia of scientific advancement. By combing gray gravity tech with the human’s newly discovered dark matter reactor, Earth invents the first FTL drives and jumpstarts interstellar colonization. The increasingly authoritarian Earth government pisses off the colonies, who secede and fight the first galactic war. Then a century or two later there is a second galactic war between the hundreds of human-dominated stellar nations after someone lights another powder keg. Mutant supremacists, roboticists, space cowboys, space amish, everything is fair game.

It'd have to be a space naval wargame. Nothing works quite as well as a land force wargame as 40k does. The setting is tailored to support it, and in order to go that way, you will inevitably become derivative of 40k.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

 

[Galdred]

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

GW faces the same issues large companies do when branching products:
The secondary line has to measure to the main line in terms of RoI, which is usually not feasible, hence why they just print limited runs, or just kills them off regularly.
GW is just unable to run smaller auxiliary games because they'll never be as lucrative as 40K (just look at their track record for 40 years of specialist games...).
They'd better just license them, but they'll never licence to any other miniature company.

Actually, there was one such game, a 40K licenced board game mixing ground and space combat called Forbidden Stars:

Look at the "chaos marine" miniatures:

Yes, bottom right are the traitor infantry, and just to the left are the CSM, as a banner because GW was afraid anyone could proxy their minis...

 

[Big_poppa_pump]

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

GW faces the same issues large companies do when branching products:
The secondary line has to measure to the main line in terms of RoI, which is usually not feasible, hence why they just print limited runs, or just kills them off regularly.
GW is just unable to run smaller auxiliary games because they'll never be as lucrative as 40K (just look at their track record for 40 years of specialist games...).
They'd better just license them, but they'll never licence to any other miniature company.

Actually, there was one such game, a 40K licenced board game mixing ground and space combat called Forbidden Stars:

Look at the "chaos marine" miniatures:

Yes, bottom right are the traitor infantry, and just to the left are the CSM, as a banner because GW was afraid anyone could proxy their minis...

Thats crazy since every side game not 40k has 10 times better rules than 40k since forever. Middle Earth, Blood Bowl. Horus Heresy(I love heresy 2.0 yet hate 7th edition it shows they can fix editions but dont)

 

[Mangoose]

 

[Mangoose]

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

GW faces the same issues large companies do when branching products:
The secondary line has to measure to the main line in terms of RoI, which is usually not feasible, hence why they just print limited runs, or just kills them off regularly.
GW is just unable to run smaller auxiliary games because they'll never be as lucrative as 40K (just look at their track record for 40 years of specialist games...).
They'd better just license them, but they'll never licence to any other miniature company.

Actually, there was one such game, a 40K licenced board game mixing ground and space combat called Forbidden Stars:

Look at the "chaos marine" miniatures:

Yes, bottom right are the traitor infantry, and just to the left are the CSM, as a banner because GW was afraid anyone could proxy their minis...

Thats crazy since every side game not 40k has 10 times better rules than 40k since forever. Middle Earth, Blood Bowl. Horus Heresy(I love heresy 2.0 yet hate 7th edition it shows they can fix editions but dont)

Yeah I play everything except 40k.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Forbidden Stars always looked cool; ship designs are pornography for me.

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

I want this to happen so much. I would buy the shit out of it. I was shocked and overjoyed when Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 1 & 2 were released on PC, since I missed the starter box and always regretted it heavily. A lot of people play Battlefleet Gothic with resin prints now, from places like Etsy. It's possible that would be a hard environment to relaunch in, but every good space opera needs a space layer as well as a ground layer.

 

[Galdred]

Space naval wargame? Would be great of GW did a new release of the Battlefleet Gothic tbh fam.

GW faces the same issues large companies do when branching products:
The secondary line has to measure to the main line in terms of RoI, which is usually not feasible, hence why they just print limited runs, or just kills them off regularly.
GW is just unable to run smaller auxiliary games because they'll never be as lucrative as 40K (just look at their track record for 40 years of specialist games...).
They'd better just license them, but they'll never licence to any other miniature company.

Actually, there was one such game, a 40K licenced board game mixing ground and space combat called Forbidden Stars:

Look at the "chaos marine" miniatures:

Yes, bottom right are the traitor infantry, and just to the left are the CSM, as a banner because GW was afraid anyone could proxy their minis...

Thats crazy since every side game not 40k has 10 times better rules than 40k since forever. Middle Earth, Blood Bowl. Horus Heresy(I love heresy 2.0 yet hate 7th edition it shows they can fix editions but dont)

I played epic on and off for a long time. There are several issues with "specialist games":
- Apart from Blood Bowl, it is usually much harder to find players for these.
- They are priced at the same price gouging level, and the starter boxes usually offer limited value, as is the usual GW policy (yes, it is usually better than buying things separately, but when I played 25 years ago, the big boxes were 50% cheaper than buying the components. Nowadays, it is usually a much worse deal).
- They don't mind experimenting much more: that can lead to great ruleset, but also, rules that change a lot from one edition to another and break more things than they fix (that was one of the issues of the move from Space Marines to epic: the rules for 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition of epic were all totally different: fragmenting the playerbase even more).

But secondary game having to compete with the main one was not only a GW issue, it happened to Star Wars Armada vs X-Wing. Despite having an interesting ruleset, Armada never enjoyed the popularity of X-Wing, because many of the players who invested in X-Wing didn't want to restart a collection from scratch, and there was a huge overlap in the targeted demographic.

 

[Galdred]

Some bits of trivia I foud browsing Rogue Trader:

Proto Space Marines were just slightly augmented human shock troops, and seemed to have military police to make sure they behaved properly!
Early Sister of Battles had no minis, but were really like female Space Marines. Also, they had nipple spikes...

 

[Louis_Cypher]

Also, they had nipple spikes...

 

[Mangoose]

Anger is something that grips you, so it's got a reality that transcends you

.....ha.h..ha.hah.a.ha.h.ahhhahah

 

[Galdred]

Apparently, the Emprah gene manipulation skills are overrated:
Here are the stats for regular humans:

And here are the stats for Space Marines in Rogue Trader:

So, at Rogue Trader time, they had (they were only slightly enhanced humans, not the latter abominations they became!):
- ability to reproduce and engage in other human activities
- looked like a regualr very fit human
But their pre-"uberhuman" stats were almost the same as when the lore changed to make them uber-freaks:

They traded all of it for 1 point in toughness and increased mental values (all the mental stats got rolled into a single one later on)?
That doesn't sound that impressive (granted, Primaris got a second wound, so that only applies to oldMarines)...

The worst deal is for their Chaos brethrens who traded their souls for exactly the same stats.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

The wargame stats are honestly not that great way to represent how OP spesh muhreens are in comparison to regular people (as you can hardly have a faction that would have lets say 5 accross the stat line without major balance issues). After all, marines are the average stat line in the tabletop 40K, not really an outlier.

Dark Heresy systems have this done much better as they could afford to be more nuanced. There an ordinary person has stats at about 25, with elite people (stormtroopers and such) in low 40s at best, muhreens are in their 50s at the start and can easily end up in 70s or 80s on higher levels, ie. an experienced space muhreen is about three times better at everything than an average normie. And that is of course before counting in their vastly supperior gear. Only thing that can get close to them are various temple/death cult assassins and extremely high level people like Inquisitors in extremely good gear.

 

[Mangoose]

Apparently, the Emprah gene manipulation skills are overrated:
Here are the stats for regular humans:

View attachment 56615

And here are the stats for Space Marines in Rogue Trader:
View attachment 56616

So, at Rogue Trader time, they had (they were only slightly enhanced humans, not the latter abominations they became!):
- ability to reproduce and engage in other human activities
- looked like a regualr very fit human
But their pre-"uberhuman" stats were almost the same as when the lore changed to make them uber-freaks:

They traded all of it for 1 point in toughness and increased mental values (all the mental stats got rolled into a single one later on)?
That doesn't sound that impressive (granted, Primaris got a second wound, so that only applies to oldMarines)...

The worst deal is for their Chaos brethrens who traded their souls for exactly the same stats.

One Toughness means everything.

 

[Galdred]

The wargame stats are honestly not that great way to represent how OP spesh muhreens are in comparison to regular people (as you can hardly have a faction that would have lets say 5 accross the stat line without major balance issues). After all, marines are the average stat line in the tabletop 40K, not really an outlier.

Dark Heresy systems have this done much better as they could afford to be more nuanced. There an ordinary person has stats at about 25, with elite people (stormtroopers and such) in low 40s at best, muhreens are in their 50s at the start and can easily end up in 70s or 80s on higher levels, ie. an experienced space muhreen is about three times better at everything than an average normie. And that is of course before counting in their vastly supperior gear. Only thing that can get close to them are various temple/death cult assassins and extremely high level people like Inquisitors in extremely good gear.

Right, but the fact that their lore cannot be supported by the rules is a major ludo-narrative dissonance issue to me. I'd rather have the lore reflect the way they play in this case (ie, better than human, but not superhuman).

Anyway, a ruleset in which 1 more in a stat is a massive difference would have worked better (for instance, in Blood Bowl, 1 more Strength is really significant, as is one more in armour, except against claws... ).
The RPG are another good example indeed.

 

[Big_poppa_pump]

The wargame stats are honestly not that great way to represent how OP spesh muhreens are in comparison to regular people (as you can hardly have a faction that would have lets say 5 accross the stat line without major balance issues). After all, marines are the average stat line in the tabletop 40K, not really an outlier.

Dark Heresy systems have this done much better as they could afford to be more nuanced. There an ordinary person has stats at about 25, with elite people (stormtroopers and such) in low 40s at best, muhreens are in their 50s at the start and can easily end up in 70s or 80s on higher levels, ie. an experienced space muhreen is about three times better at everything than an average normie. And that is of course before counting in their vastly supperior gear. Only thing that can get close to them are various temple/death cult assassins and extremely high level people like Inquisitors in extremely good gear.

Right, but the fact that their lore cannot be supported by the rules is a major ludo-narrative dissonance issue to me. I'd rather have the lore reflect the way they play in this case (ie, better than human, but not superhuman).

Anyway, a ruleset in which 1 more in a stat is a massive difference would have worked better (for instance, in Blood Bowl, 1 more Strength is really significant, as is one more in armour, except against claws... ).
The RPG are another good example indeed.

Why do Warhammer fans even think game stats = lore, this shit is getting so retarded lately like the video games "UM 3 MARINES CANT TAKR DOWN ALL THESE TYRANIDS" its a fucking video game. Lore purism is reaching retarded levels of discussion I learned to stop caring when the proclaimed LOREGOD MILITARY PROS at forge world. Wrote some of the worst tank stats of all time to the point GW had to cover up everything about those books out of embarrassment.