Incline Warhammer 40,000 Lore Thread

[Parsimonious cook]

Goes to show that the notion that GW sells minis and not the lore is retarded. All kinds of companies can put out decent looking minis as well as decent table top ruleset. The reason that basicaly no one can compete with 40K is that the lore remains superior to anything that tries to compete with it.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Goes to show that the notion that GW sells minis and not the lore is retarded. All kinds of companies can put out decent looking minis as well as decent table top ruleset. The reason that basicaly no one can compete with 40K is that the lore remains superior to anything that tries to compete with it.

No, I find the tyranids boring af and imo 40k lore in general is generic, derivative, and overrated af. Their group mind structure severely limits their utility as a storytelling tool: they cannot have characters, cannot have entertaining internal dialogues (see the Dawn of War and Battlefleet Gothic Armada campaigns for tyranids), cannot work toward proximate goals… But the competitors go too far in the other direction to compensate, so end up removing the devouring swarm and existential body horror aspects that make them distinct.

Like, the Alien Hives and Gokrug can be replaced with tons of other alien concepts and not affect the storytelling capabilities. They’re not bad per se, but them being inspired by tyranids is purely cosmetic.

Anyone can do roided up supersoldiers. That’s a scifi cliche. Same for space elves, mech suits, theocracies, empires, etc.

What really interests me personally are those times you get alien races that are so alien that it’s impossible to make peace with them. Dark eldar (pain-eating vampires), orks (no concept of peace), tyranids (you get the picture), c’tan (eat souls like popcorn), chaos daemons (no concept of restraint) and the like. I’ve noticed a really bizarre trend lately where writers and fans have lost their balls and want everyone to sit around campfires and sing kumbaya at the end. The idea that cultural or biological barriers exist that would prevent this is arbitrarily declared bad writing or fascism apologia.

Anyway, I’m looking for the happy medium between “boring faceless voiceless force of nature” and “boring human or dog in rubber mask”. The orks, dark eldar, c’tan and chaos daemons achieve that (more or less, depending on the writer), but thus far tyranids and equivalents in other media have not. Or at least not for long or very well. Basically, I want unrepentant monsters who are understandable in their motives and maybe even vaguely sympathetic, not arbitrarily evil for no reason and intended solely to be hated by the audience.

Part of the reason for the tyranids being so boring is probably down to the fact that any attempt to give them characterization would almost undoubtedly overlap with orks and chaos daemons. That’s the problem with having so many species playing major roles: it makes niche protection absolute hell to deal with. But that’s no excuse for the lack of alternatives from other publishers.

Let me check my list…

Gravemind in Halo is a fucking lunatic with nonsensical motivations. It’s an FPS about a roided up super soldier nicknamed Master Cheeks, what’s there to expect? Rubbish.

Overmind and cerebrates in Starcraft are getting close to what I want… oh wait, they were all killed off in favor of Metzen’s disgusting bug girlfriend fantasy and a nonsensical lawsuit from GW? For fuck’s sake you fucking idiots…

The arachnids in Starship Troopers are a persecuted minority being invaded by the evil Federation… oh for fuck’s sake, what the fuck is wrong with these writers? I want to throttle these shitheads!

Going down my list there’s only some obscure works that nobody here is gonna have any idea about if I mention them…

Sigh

Tyranids being the least inadequate option out of a handful of options that are all bad is not a point in GW’s favor. GW are partly the reason the zerg suck ass! GW and their lore can get fucked by chainswords

And yeah, I fully admit this is just my personal taste. I hope this rant has been informative

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Goes to show that the notion that GW sells minis and not the lore is retarded. All kinds of companies can put out decent looking minis as well as decent table top ruleset. The reason that basicaly no one can compete with 40K is that the lore remains superior to anything that tries to compete with it.

On a more general note, you’re comparing a decades old franchise written over decades by hundreds of writers to games written two years ago by one or two people. That’s not a fair comparison.

 

[Tyranicon]

Goes to show that the notion that GW sells minis and not the lore is retarded. All kinds of companies can put out decent looking minis as well as decent table top ruleset. The reason that basicaly no one can compete with 40K is that the lore remains superior to anything that tries to compete with it.

On a more general note, you’re comparing a decades old franchise written over decades by hundreds of writers to games written two years ago by one or two people. That’s not a fair comparison.

1. The only interesting 40k lore is centered around the Imperium. Nobody really gives a fuck about space elves or zerg, or space dorf or whatever the fuck else. Like I'm sure some do, but it's the Imperium that's cool and bad ass.
2. The Imperium is interesting as fuck though, and is enough to carry the lore all by itself.
3. It's getting watered down super fast and as we see 40k breaching the mainstream, the lore is going to be dead within years.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Goes to show that the notion that GW sells minis and not the lore is retarded. All kinds of companies can put out decent looking minis as well as decent table top ruleset. The reason that basicaly no one can compete with 40K is that the lore remains superior to anything that tries to compete with it.

On a more general note, you’re comparing a decades old franchise written over decades by hundreds of writers to games written two years ago by one or two people. That’s not a fair comparison.

1. The only interesting 40k lore is centered around the Imperium. Nobody really gives a fuck about space elves or zerg, or space dorf or whatever the fuck else. Like I'm sure some do, but it's the Imperium that's cool and bad ass.
2. The Imperium is interesting as fuck though, and is enough to carry the lore all by itself.
3. It's getting watered down super fast and as we see 40k breaching the mainstream, the lore is going to be dead within years.

I’ve always found humans to be the most bland and boring race to ever come out of the scifi genre. I don’t get why writers keep writing them when you can replace them with sexy lamps or candy bracelets and lose nothing of value. Humans being the main focus of 40k is the reason I lost interest after a few years.

 

[lightbane]

The arachnids in Starship Troopers are a persecuted minority being invaded by the evil Federation… oh for fuck’s sake, what the fuck is wrong with these writers? I want to throttle these shitheads!

Check the novel, they're a caste system of sorts here and actually evil. Same with the CGI show and the anime IIRC.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

The arachnids in Starship Troopers are a persecuted minority being invaded by the evil Federation… oh for fuck’s sake, what the fuck is wrong with these writers? I want to throttle these shitheads!

Check the novel, they're a caste system of sorts here and actually evil. Same with the CGI show and the anime IIRC.

Unless Sony does a 180 and redoes the IP with a tone authentic to the book, then I don’t give a flying fuck. In fact, I want to use a time machine to warn Heinlein not to write it.

Anyway, the entire point I’m trying to make is that I don’t want evil villains. Evil villains are boring. They only exist to be vilified and killed by the hero.

I want villains who are written as fleshed out characters with rational motivations and behaviors, even if their goals are something as alien and esoteric as “devour all biomass in the universe”. There’s a ton of horror, philosophy and tragicomedy you could do with the eugenics biotech angle if you gave a fuck to do it justice.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

For an example of what I'm talking about, I'm gonna point to the Therians from the dead AT-43 miniatures game. AT-43 initially seems to be a fairly conventional Cold War in space setting, then (in true French fashion) it gets progressively weirder when these guys show up.

They look like this:

The Therians are a post-biological civilization consisting of uploaded minds living in VR sims aboard dyson spheres powered by white dwarves. They have god-like technology and can effortlessly manufacture the robotic drones seen above in order to wage perfunctory skirmish against other species.

Their goal is to reformat the universe in order to prevent it from being destroyed by heat death (and in AT-43, the heat death is one billion years away, not trillions; yes, that is a big red flag that something is off about the timeline). This would necessarily require killing all biological life and converting it into new "hyperlife" that can survive in the reformatted universe. This new universe would not remotely resemble the previous universe, because it would have completely different physics and no pesky entropy.

The way the Therians go about accomplishing their goals is very strange because... well, they're spoiled rich kids driven insane by luxury. They've lived in VR sims for millions of years so they don't really understand the universe much better than a video game. Their combat units are more for show rather than genuine combat and they've lost battles against inferior civilizations because their commanders were too busy playing around with sims rather than devising competent strategies.

I'm not really sure how much sense that really makes, but at least the writers explicitly point out that they're incompetent VR addicts rather than not addressing it. I also appreciate that they bring this up in the first (and only) edition, rather than undergoing villain decay over subsequent episodes like the Borg. Yes, it makes the Therians something of a joke that they're godlike buffoons, but at least it's not a surprise that makes you wistful for past editions. Of course, this is the same game that has chain-smoking gun-toting uplifted gorillas as one of the main armies, so the tone isn't completely serious to begin with.

Also, spoiler alert: most of the other civilizations in the game setting were created by them as social experiments, but nobody besides the Therians themselves actually knows this. The humans in the setting are technically their descendants, but think the Therians are mysterious alien robots.

They're not evil or even selfish. They don't torture people for fun, or war endlessly without point, or follow nonsensical religions that demand pointless genocide, or lie about their intentions to manipulate innocents. They're literally saving the universe from imminent heat death and even deign to rescue less advanced civilizations (which is more than I can say for certain other asshole aliens). But this would require reformatting everyone else, so they're hostile by default and cannot be reasoned with. From their perspective, those opposed to them are either stupid or actively malevolent.

Neat idea, right? Well, publisher Rackham went bankrupt in 2010 and the game hasn't had a new edition since. That's the problem with 40k dominating the entire tabletop space.

 

[lightbane]

The Therians are a post-biological civilization consisting of uploaded minds living in VR sims aboard dyson spheres powered by white dwarves. They have god-like technology and can effortlessly manufacture the robotic drones seen above in order to wage perfunctory skirmish against other species.

Sounds like the Culture (never read the books though) meets Metabarons.

The way the Therians go about accomplishing their goals is very strange because... well, they're spoiled rich kids driven insane by luxury

Just like The Culture!

Neat idea, right? Well, publisher Rackham went bankrupt in 2010 and the game hasn't had a new edition since. That's the problem with 40k dominating the entire tabletop space.

And now WH40k is breaking down, having finally succumbed to the woke virus. Yay...

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Neat idea, right?

Uhhhm, no? I will take actual Necrons over some frenchie parody anyday tbh fam. Anyway, I would say that 40K´s dominance is well deserved and reiterate that it is also by and large due to lore being so good - if somebody wants to compete for the space under the sun, they will obviously have to try a bit harder.

I remember very well when Warmachine first came out and lots of people at the time were basicaly claiming that it was going to be the 40K killer, because the ruleset was supposedly so much better and Privateer Press was alegedly a bro-tier company in comparison to GW cucks. Also the models were supposedly good. And yet it somehow didnt pan out, lol.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Neat idea, right?

Uhhhm, no? I will take actual Necrons over some frenchie parody anyday tbh fam. Anyway, I would say that 40K´s dominance is well deserved and reiterate that it is also by and large due to lore being so good - if somebody wants to compete for the space under the sun, they will obviously have to try a bit harder.

I remember very well when Warmachine first came out and lots of people at the time were basicaly claiming that it was going to be the 40K killer, because the ruleset was supposedly so much better and Privateer Press was alegedly a bro-tier company in comparison to GW cucks. Also the models were supposedly good. And yet it somehow didnt pan out, lol.

Anyway, my point is that 40k's de facto monopoly is bad for the market and bad for human creativity. We need a diversity of ideas and products. Otherwise, we get the situation we're now in: monopolies inevitably turn to shit because they have no impetus to improve because consumers have no choice (besides not consuming), the creatives become increasingly less creative because they have less exposure to new ideas, and fans are stuck in echo chambers where they cannot conceive of liking more than one thing at a time. Why do you think pop culture has sucked for decades and is stuck in an endless nostalgia death spiral?

It doesn't matter which game you shill for. We need all of them or the hobby is fucked. GW has spent decades treating their customers like garbage because their customers enable them by refusing to cultivate alternatives. This isn't rocket science.

 

[RaggleFraggle]

Sounds like the Culture (never read the books though) meets Metabarons.

I’ve heard them compared to SpaceBattles too. They’re not bargain bin Necrons but their own distinct civilization with goals that are essentially the exact opposite of Necrons. The Necrons want to revert biotransference, become human, and ultimately die of old age. The Therians want to reformat the universe so everyone can live forever and enjoy VR sims.

I like antagonists like that. They’re alien and complex, but not shallowly evil or humans in rubber masks.

And now WH40k is breaking down, having finally succumbed to the woke virus. Yay...

GW have been asshats for years. Remember when they sued an innocent housewife for publishing the children’s book Spots the Space Marine? I know the current fad is wokeness, but GW has always been evil.

40k dominating the market is no indicator of quality or being “deserving”. (GW doesn’t deserve shit.) Twilight is hugely popular but I doubt most people here enjoy that or think highly of it. Art is subjective like that. I think the one-size-fits-all approach to fandom is effing stupid. You can’t use 40k to tell every scifi story and you shouldn’t try to shoehorn your creativity to fit neatly in that box.

There’s numerous scifi stories that aren’t 40k and are better served for it. GW’s market dominance and killing of competition and creativity should not be celebrated.

 

[Storyfag]

The arachnids in Starship Troopers are a persecuted minority being invaded by the evil Federation… oh for fuck’s sake, what the fuck is wrong with these writers? I want to throttle these shitheads!

Check the novel, they're a caste system of sorts here and actually evil. Same with the CGI show and the anime IIRC.

I wouldn't call novel arachnids evil. They are just a competing spacefaring power, too alien to properly engage in diplomacy with. At least unitl the brain bug is captured and... studied.

What is important to note is that while they have specialised castes of worker bugs, breeder bugs and brain bugs (I can't remember if the workers also do the fighting or if there is a separate warrior bug caste), THEY ARE A TECHNOLOGICAL SPECIES, so are not like movie arachnids, tyranids or zerg.

 

[Louis_Cypher]

There is a lot to be said for 20 monopose figures, rather than the hyper-detailed posable stuff.

Yes. Words such as "banal", "shit", "boring".

I didn't get across what I mean there very well. I mean it like this. Say I wanna assemble a horde army. I don't want to have to glue every fucking wrist to every hand, nor is it nessecary to create an aesthetic army. It's okay for characters and elites though. Rouboute can have an articulated shirt and tie for all I care. 20 Genestealers with say 5 variants of pose are more than enough (like old Space Hulk). I would gladly trade some posability for ease with those units. I built a Necron Ghost Ark recently. It took about six hours, which I didn't complain about. However it could have taken a lot less if every little cufflink didn't need attaching separately. Nor would I want 100 Termegants where I had to glue their tongue in 100 times.

So partly it's that I don't wan't "too much" busywork when just assembling a battleline unit. But partly, I think miniatures don't need posability to look aesthetic, and many monopose soldiers look just as good on tabletop as others. Your imagination is what makes them living, and I'm not a big fan of "dynamic actions" poses either, like throwing a grenade out. I like them to look like a column that could equally be moving through a jungle, a desert, or wading into combat.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Relaxed/at ease posing is peak miniature.

 

[Tyranicon]

I feel like tabletop wargaming is a hard niche for new companies to get into. You have a lot of issues, such as miniature design, production, having the right base of players, etc. It's a huge headache. You need connections and startup money.

Meanwhile tabletop RPGs require... a book. With some rules and fluff.

So anybody with writing chops and an interest in worldbuilding, lore, whatever, is just going to kickstart a PDF and call it a day.

Honestly, if my vampire game goes well, I'm seriously considering just popping one of these out.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Indeed, the number of successful kickstarters for all kinds of PnP RPGs is massive - there is obviously a market for them and it indeed does seem to be a p. low cost thing to produce as well. I guess the only really expensive part is the ilustrations (unless that writer dude can do them on his own of course).

 

[Caim]

Honestly, if my vampire game goes well, I'm seriously considering just popping one of these out.

If you REALLY want to do that, look into blatantly ripping off how One Page Rules does it. Put out a core rulebook, miniatures that people can print by themselves or if it works out see if you can get one of those 3D print on demand companies to print and sell your minis for you.

Not that you necessarily HAVE to go this way. There's quite a few smaller companies that do stuff like this, and you might find some success with the whole "take a sprue, add a few bodies and slap on a whole lotta bits so players can make their own D&D characters" angle that a few people do.

There was this miniature line that did just that. I can't remember the name though, something with frost, ice or something else cold in the name, with them having a few boxes of stuff with a bunch of plastic knights, wizards and maybe another one, possibly with female minis being segregated into their own box. Can't find it right now.

 

[Akratus II]

Frostgrave?