Does anyone remember Project: Unforgiven?

[Belial212]

Does anyone remember Project: Unforgiven?  About 5 years ago we were trying to create a fan-dex on this forum to address the deficiencies in the 4^th Ed Dark Angels codex to make it playable in 5^th edition.  Sadly the project had a number of issues with how it was administered and because consensus turned out to be impossible, it ground to a halt and was eventually overtaken by the release of the 6^th ed codex.

 

I was cleaning out an old hard drive and found a whole bunch of the working documents that a number of us were working off of at the time.  I was browsing through when I noticed that a lot of the things we planned for that codex have since made it in to the GW-approved codex we are all playing from now.  Specifically:

 

• Attack Bike squads
• Hit and Run on RW squards
• Veteran RW bike squads, i.e. modern day Black Knights
• Veteran DW squads armed with shields, i.e. modern day Deathwing Knights, though ours had swords instead of maces, but the stat line was identical
• Plasma cannons as a HW option for Terminators
• Stubborn or equivalent as an Army-wide USR (I think we called it Unyielding at the time which slightly better than Stubborn)
• Ten-model Terminator Squads
• Sacred standards that buffed shooting of tactical marines (Similar to the Standard of Devastation that came out in the 6th ed codex), though ours did not offer as much of a benefit and only effected TAC marines, not RW bikes, Landraider hurricane bolters, etc.
• Point costs largely harmonized with C:SM

 

While these probably all seem quite obvious they were all glaringly missing in the 4^th ed codex that we were critiquing.  Actually reading through the Army list entries, the dex we were proposing is less powerful than what we now have.  It is kind of validating to know that we were making something potentially viable before our internal bickering ground production to a halt.

 

We had some outlandish ideas that never came to be and some obvious ones, like that Azrael should have Eternal Warrior and be able to call in Orbital Bombardment, that also never came to be.  But we never dared hope for Plasma Talons or the concept of overwatching at full BS, though admittedly overwatch didn’t exist back then. 

 

But the work was solid, so for everyone who worked on and remembers that project, cheers.

 

[FerociousBeast]

Ahoy there Belial, mine old adversary, I certainly remember the project. It was (for a while) a fun project, but, two official codexes later, I'm glad it's now unnecessary!

[Isiah]

Ah, Project Unforgiven -- the late and sleepless nights that gave me :(

 

But great outcomes (for the time) where they were agreed.

 

Cheers

I

[Belial212]

True indeed!  What I found most surprising is how much of our design ideas were later embraced by GW.  I suspect it was just a case of parallel evolution and we were coming up with a logical extension of the contemporary fluff and rules to take it to the next step, something that the GW design studio obviously also did with similar, though by no means identical results.

 

It was a frustrating process to write a codex by committee, but it was fun sparring with you FB.  I am also glad it's no longer necessary.  I wonder, was ours the first project of its kind or have any 40k forums attempted to redesign a codex of the day as a group?  I'm sure there have been individuals to write fandexes a plenty, but has there been anything organized as formally as what we were trying to do? 

 

Belial

[Chaplain Lucifer]

If one could see some of the backlogs of Project Unforgiven, fun wouldn't be exactly the word to describe it, due to some (expected) controversy. I am glad some stuff could either be borrowed by or inspire GW...

Or like it was said maybe just they came to the same conclusion as the participants in it.

I doubt it was attempted before or it will be attempted in the future, for many reasons, In part due to the way GW writes Codexes now(very recently) , that seems more consensual despite still hit or miss in some areas.

[FerociousBeast]

It was the fact that there were so many fandexes running around that made us pursue the committee path that we did. Basically, no one cares about fandexes, a fact I found endlessly frustrating when a younger and more idealistic me tried my hand at fixing various codexes back in the day. So, we had the idea that if we could write a codex that had the respected name of the B&C behind it, that would perhaps give the endeavor more oomph.

 

Problem was, to involve B&C necessarily brought the committee effect with it :)

 

There was a camp, the minimalists, who wanted to do the bare minimum to achieve parity. There was a camp that wanted to totally re-work the codex and make it completely divergent from the Ultramarines. I don't think there was actually much of a middle ground. A comparative handful of people occupied the middle space. Much hindsight-hilarity and drama ensued!

 

But the project did result in some good stuff. The themes document was pretty good, IIRC, as was a lot of the brainstorming around various aspects of the codex.

[Master Avoghai]

There was a camp, the minimalists, who wanted to do the bare minimum to achieve parity. There was a camp that wanted to totally re-work the codex and make it completely divergent from the Ultramarines. I don't think there was actually much of a middle ground. A comparative handful of people occupied the middle space. Much hindsight-hilarity and drama ensued!

I think that, in order to keep a middle ground spirit, we should always keep the following mojo.

 

Everything is acceptable as long as it doesn't need model resculpt or useless bitz for the use of only half of a boxset.

 

Example

 

Giving autocannons to DA as tactical heavy weapons is really a nice idea but it would imply total resculpt and new sprues => Bad

 

Giving the entry of assault centurions could be a nice modelling add on without breaking balance because of not using grav cannons centurions... But then it would let hobbyistes paying for centurion boxset with the total impossibility to use the shooting bitz => Bad

(Remember that thanks to this rule we got acces to redeemer or grav guns)

 

I'm working on a alternative sisters list including a gladius-like formation and I've tried to resolve the repentia problem by creating a rhino with an assault ramp. I think I'll remove it for now and keep thing simple just by giving them acess to the crusader/redeemer as dedicated transport : it's a nice model that already exists.

 

I think that if there should be any tweaking in codex, we shouldn't let imagination work but on a stuff that already exists...

[Belial212]

Master Avoghai,

 

Well Sisters badly need to be updated.  So I can only applaud your efforts.  I don’t agree though that you necessarily have to confine yourself to models or bitz already in existence.  On the bitz front, for example sourcing the autocannons, there is a robust bitz market and it is always possible to get your hands on stuff that doesn’t ship on the current sprues.  Grav on Ravenwing bikes anyone?  And even custom sculpting or converting has long been part of this hobby.  Before GW released the very disappointing Belial model, everyone and their second cousin had their own unique interpretation of the character and in many instances they were jaw dropping and awesome.  I believe there was even a thread on this forum specifically to show them off.

 

So I wouldn’t shy away from designing new things if your goal is a new codex.  If you are doing an update more along the lines of an FAQ or errata, then I agree that new material shouldn’t be introduced unless it’s exclusion is an obvious error, like if a new Space Marine codex did not list the Rhino as a dedicated transport, even though all the other Marine dexes did.  There you could make a case that the omission was an error, unless of course the move away is deliberate and balanced by the introduction of something new that fills the role, etc.    

 

 

FB,

 

I agree some good stuff was produced and some good ideas as well!  It is kind of too bad we never got to the stage of publication, because it was an interesting experiment.  Especially given GW’s apparent corporate policy that they are a modelling and miniatures company, not a game company, it would be interesting if the game itself evolved to the point where it existed in the public domain and codices were written and maintained by some sort of crowd-sourced option, like B & C.  Obviously there would be major problems with editorial control and balancing one codex against another which would make the issues we experienced during Project Unforgiven seem pale in comparison, but in theory it would allow the community to react to over and under-powered units, rules, etc. very quickly and for the game to create neutral rulesets that would be very useful for tournament play, that were independent of corporate profit concerns.

 

GW could design models to fit new units/equipment/characters designed under a process like that, or if they neglected to do so, third party manufacturers or just players doing their own custom conversions would fill the void.

 

Project Unforgiven is interesting in a debate like that because as you said, it did enjoy a greater legitimacy from the fact that it had a community of contributors, advocates, moderates, revolutionaries and detractors all caught up in it, but all with a stake and great passion for the quality and validity of the end product. 

 

Belial

[Master Avoghai]

Well Sisters badly need to be updated. So I can only applaud your efforts. I don’t agree though that you necessarily have to confine yourself to models or bitz already in existence. On the bitz front, for example sourcing the autocannons, there is a robust bitz market and it is always possible to get your hands on stuff that doesn’t ship on the current sprues. Grav on Ravenwing bikes anyone? And even custom sculpting or converting has long been part of this hobby. Before GW released the very disappointing Belial model, everyone and their second cousin had their own unique interpretation of the character and in many instances they were jaw dropping and awesome. I believe there was even a thread on this forum specifically to show them off.

You misunderstood my point.

 

I was reacting upon Ferocious Beast comment stating that there was no middle ground way of thinking. Either it was "change everything", either it was "change nothing". I'm against all extremism wheter it's for painting playing or even non hobby things.

 

I try to stay humble. And also I try to make thing as simple as it can because in the end, I've always noticed that the most simple things are always the things that leads to a consensus.

 

I'm not GW. I don't have the power to launch a production en masse of new models that my underpaid designer create to sell for a delirious price :P

If I want the maximum people to try it out, I need to take into account that lots of sister player don't want to build up new models from scratch. I'm not trying to take the place of GW conception team. I try to make with what we already have. And that's already a lot.

 

You can do a lot with special rules, point costs, formations and squad reoganization. You don't need to create entries of non existing models to make the thing working out. BUT you can use models available in GW range to give new options. For example, you can give the repentia a dedicated Land raider to thorw them in CC without suffering during the shooting phase.

 

I let the new models part to GW, I prefer keep things simple.