Immersion, or not, in 40K from 8th Edition

[Damo1701]

This is the only place I can think to place this, so if a Mod thinks it deserves a topic, please, feel free to split.

 

Does anybody else wonder at the lack of immersion evident in the new edition from what we've been told?

 

From a  personal point of view, 40k has always been about being a part of the battle, rather than just directing/controlling it.  Feeling like you are on the ground making the decisions, dodging incoming fire, and either making an epic kill or being the epic kill.

 

Now, though, the abstraction has taken over, and we are left with a Chess-like game, with better representations of the pieces on a different style board.

 

Vehicles no longer feel like vehicles, rather than using pistols in close combat like previously, you can now fire them in the shooting phase while locked in combat, unless your opponent has fled the combat and left you with a massive target on your head, and the return of primarchs leave characters like chapter masters as little more than custodians (not the gold guys) until another primarch returns to take control.

 

The realism coupled with futuristic weaponry and nigh-unkillable mechanical behemoths was one of the things that drew me to 40k after discovering the setting via Space Crusade.

 

Don't get me wrong, please, I'm not trying to put a negative tone on anything here, I'm trying to find out.

 

Should speed of games come at a sacrifice to what was an immeasurably fun, immersive gaming experience, that I have found nowhere else in rival companies?

[Khornestar]

This is the only place I can think to place this, so if a Mod thinks it deserves a topic, please, feel free to split.

 

Does anybody else wonder at the lack of immersion evident in the new edition from what we've been told?

 

*snip*

 

Nah, I really don't feel that way at all. 

 

The things that broke my immersion were randomness for the sake of being random, and shoddy rules writing that resulted in disagreements that took us out of playing the game and into the discussion of what the rules writers intended vs. what they wrote. That will undoubtedly still be present to a degree in 8th edition, but if it is less than 7th I'll be peachy.

[Valerian]

 

This is the only place I can think to place this, so if a Mod thinks it deserves a topic, please, feel free to split.

 

Does anybody else wonder at the lack of immersion evident in the new edition from what we've been told?

 

*snip*

 

Nah, I really don't feel that way at all. 

 

The things that broke my immersion were randomness for the sake of being random, and shoddy rules writing that resulted in disagreements that took us out of playing the game and into the discussion of what the rules writers intended vs. what they wrote. That will undoubtedly still be present to a degree in 8th edition, but if it is less than 7th I'll be peachy.

 

 

Agreed.  I think GW saw it, too, when they received several thousand questions submitted when they started gathering issues from the community for their FAQ.  I'll get my immersion from a simple but elegant ruleset over 194 + pages any day of the week.

[Rune Priest Jbickb]

I agree with venomlust. To me the current game is far less immersive due to randomness of things like warlord traits and psychic powers (who doesn't prepare for battle), and the extreme power imbalance. Who goes to battle against a superior foe (read tau, elder, certain space marine builds) and not try to match their strength. With the 7E points balance it's impossible to rise to their level without house ruling or comping in some way. I know true battles are rarely balanced but watching half my space wolves vanish to tau shooting turn one just because they can is what ruins immersion for me. My hope is that immersion will return with 8th not be ruined by it.

[Damo1701]

Who says anything about not preparing for battle?

 

The only reason random like powers or warlord traits are decided at the table is to ensure fair play, otherwise you could pick everything you wanted, and claim you rolled for it.

 

The way I've always seen these rolls is you have picked an area of study, either power or trait, and the roll is to see what is next being trialled by that character/unit.

 

Not much different to RPG character generation. Everything is random when you begin, and randomness has effects in game.

 

Granted, Marines have never performed as the fluff describes on the table, unless you use "Movie Marines" rules. That is down to non-marine players moaning about how tough they used to be and so on. Add to that the fact new factions and newly updated faction get better toys than anybody else, and you have a rule system that degrades.

 

It's how GW operate. They want to sell lots of the shiny new thing, do they make them powerful on the table, and screw everybody else.

 

However, as has been stated, a "fair" battle is one where somebody did something wrong.

 

However, with things not behaving according to their type, or in unbelievable ways, that breaks immersion too. If not more so than deciding what powers or tactics are being trialled during a particular battle.

[MysticTemplar]

Who says anything about not preparing for battle?

 

The only reason random like powers or warlord traits are decided at the table is to ensure fair play, otherwise you could pick everything you wanted, and claim you rolled for it.

 

The way I've always seen these rolls is you have picked an area of study, either power or trait, and the roll is to see what is next being trialled by that character/unit.

 

Not much different to RPG character generation. Everything is random when you begin, and randomness has effects in game.

 

Granted, Marines have never performed as the fluff describes on the table, unless you use "Movie Marines" rules. That is down to non-marine players moaning about how tough they used to be and so on. Add to that the fact new factions and newly updated faction get better toys than anybody else, and you have a rule system that degrades.

 

It's how GW operate. They want to sell lots of the shiny new thing, do they make them powerful on the table, and screw everybody else.

 

However, as has been stated, a "fair" battle is one where somebody did something wrong.

 

However, with things not behaving according to their type, or in unbelievable ways, that breaks immersion too. If not more so than deciding what powers or tactics are being trialled during a particular battle.

 

Well written RPGs generally lack randomness in character generation - because it generally causes one of two things - the first is an inability to play what one wants, and the second is imbalance between players at the table, which never ends well, both things you can see in the 7th Psychic Power tables.

 

Say I want to field Super-Melee!Psyker - I roll on Biomancy because I'd like some of those buff powers, but I get Leach Life and Enfeeble.  Still useful, but I'm disappointed because I didn't get to play what I wanted to.

 

Now if both my opponent and I field Telepathy psykers, and they are identical other than power generation, and one rolls Invisibility, well...  That's a massive power imbalance that suddenly appears at game time.

 

And we still loop back around to "Why does the Chapter Master of the UltraDragons have no idea what his trusty Librarian does until the battle starts?"

 

Edit: And for that matter, why does the Chapter Master, known for his mastery of lightning attacks in the dead of night, only sometimes have skill at making attacks in the dead of night, and other times does things like have a mastery of the reserves he didn't bring with him on his lightning strikes?

[Bryan Blaire]

I don't know, not being an emotionally stunted, hypoindoctrinated child-soldier forcibly grown to greater than man-sized really keeps me from ever being able to be immersed in a 40K game where I'm playing Space Marines.

 

Pretty sure the rules don't have anything to do with that. The rules have always been an abstraction, unless you think that warfare really involves sitting around callously rolling dice to determine which of your squad mates is going to die with no one stopping to carry him back for medical or calling for medical assistance. The game rules have rarely awarded true battlefield tactics or strategy, which further shows that they are abstraction.

 

It's a game, not a simulation. That point has been made by GW several times. If the rules have ever allowed you to get immersed, then you have always been able to be immersed by abstraction.

 

Me, I could never get immersed in the :cuss universe that 40K is, where the greatest defenders of humanity are the war-cogs of the IG waiting to be threshed while selling their lives as hard as they can to blunt the threshing blade or the inhuman monsters made by Space Magic to do things that are Space Magical (because that just ain't how actual biological science works) clad in fantastical battle plate made out of made up materials no one can explain who are willing to destroy entire star systems to "make sure they got it all" or forcibly mind wipe the common man (and isn't that just one of the utmost violations of your person imaginable) for seeing the wrong things.

 

Yeah, I'm good just playing the game and not being immersed. It's an interesting thought experiment and setting to play in, but I can't see ever wanting to truly be "a part" of the setting.

[Race Bannon]

=][= This was split from the 8th Edition Announcement thread =][=

[Valerian]

The game will be just as immersive as you make it.

[Damo1701]

I'm really confused... don't you have to roll a fist full of dice when creating characters to find their base attributes?

 

I definitely remember doing this a few times I've been interested in RPG gaming over miniature gaming.

 

What if all our wars are decided by other beings rolling a bucket of dice arc throughout history?

 

The point is, regardless of whether you agreevwith the way humanity treats itself in the 41st millennium according to GW, that is how they wrote it. Individual rights barely exist, there is a lot of plausibility in the "science" and some of the fiction surrounding 40k.

 

Why else do Ork players WAAAAAAGH or Space Wolf players howl when the opportunity arises? Because they are immersed in the gaming experience to a point they feel one with their army/character.

 

Sure. It has been declining over the years as we move ever closer to the chess system. But many is an hour I remember enjoying involving, immersive gaming experiences that have never appeared anywhere else, even the occasional attempt at RPGs couldn't immerse me as much as 40k has.

 

EDIT

Thanks for the split Race.

[Valerian]

I'm really confused... don't you have to roll a fist full of dice when creating characters to find their base attributes?

 

I definitely remember doing this a few times I've been interested in RPG gaming over miniature gaming.

 

 

It's a little off-topic, but DnD went to a points buying mechanic for generating your initial stats decades ago.  At least it has been one of several options for a long, long, time, even if they might have still allowed rolling randomly.  Most DMs would prefer the points buying system to prevent abuse, and all players start on an even playing field.

 

One of the problems with rolling is: you make a bunch of poor rolls, and just abort that character and start over.  Might have to retry a dozen times before getting something you're satisfied with.  Other problem: wasting time by having to make all of those rolls in front of the DM to prevent cheating.  With points-buying, you just take care of it at home and show up for the game.  

[Scribe]

Seems way too early to say OP.

[Damo1701]

 

I'm really confused... don't you have to roll a fist full of dice when creating characters to find their base attributes?

 

I definitely remember doing this a few times I've been interested in RPG gaming over miniature gaming.

 

It's a little off-topic, but DnD went to a points buying mechanic for generating your initial stats decades ago. At least it has been one of several options for a long, long, time, even if they might have still allowed rolling randomly. Most DMs would prefer the points buying system to prevent abuse, and all players start on an even playing field.

 

Interesting...

 

I played an older one last year called etherscope.

 

It reminded me of 40k in the generation of certain things, and we had to roll loads for attribute generation. Was really fun.

 

I think that's what I'm going to miss with the spoonfeed/choosing option. The variability, and facing armies that couldn't rely solely on one aspect to get the job done, but could be balanced and characterful.

[MysticTemplar]

 

 

 

I'm really confused... don't you have to roll a fist full of dice when creating characters to find their base attributes?

 

I definitely remember doing this a few times I've been interested in RPG gaming over miniature gaming.

 

It's a little off-topic, but DnD went to a points buying mechanic for generating your initial stats decades ago. At least it has been one of several options for a long, long, time, even if they might have still allowed rolling randomly. Most DMs would prefer the points buying system to prevent abuse, and all players start on an even playing field.

 

Interesting...

 

I played an older one last year called etherscope.

 

It reminded me of 40k in the generation of certain things, and we had to roll loads for attribute generation. Was really fun.

 

I think that's what I'm going to miss with the spoonfeed/choosing option. The variability, and facing armies that couldn't rely solely on one aspect to get the job done, but could be balanced and characterful.

 

It's generally emblematic of more modern game design - let players play what they want is generally more fun than forcing things on them.  To keep with the D&D example, I find fighters incredibly boring, and wouldn't be particularly pleased with a game that forced me into that mold through randomness.

 

I'm not sure why you keep referring to it as 'spoonfeeding' - after all, getting to choose a trait gives you an extra chance to make a good/bad decision based on the situation at hand.  And I guess, more to the point, why are balanced and characterful armies synonymous with random generation of aspects of their characters?  Wouldn't it make more sense to fix this with internal faction balance instead, so that it actually makes sense to take tactical marines alongside devastators alongside Assault Marines?

 

While there are often outliers, you will generally get the behavior from your players that you incentivize, and with the massive lack of internal faction balance right now, as well as the way that formations work, you will tend to see skewed armies, because that's what is effective.

[Olis]

The game will be just as immersive as you make it.

 

This, this, a thousand times this. Immersion, imo, is a suspension of actively thinking about mechanics and allowing imagination to take over. This is tied into how well you understand and/or like said mechanics. Of course, going from a system that one likes to another that one does not will automatically harm immersion. For some, including myself, the myriad of rules, special rules and game mechanics that made up seventh edition made the game harder to enjoy, thus breaking our own immersion. Personally, I like games that are quicker, with simpler game mechanics, in terms of wargames.

 

What about roleplaying games? Being story driven, I find it easier to immerse myself in them, even when the rulesets are magnitudes more complex or lengthy. But, still, I try to look for shortcuts in the rules, little 'hacks' for me to memorise rules and tables - all to help immerse me. I prefer to put most of my thinking into the fiction side of things, rather than dwell on crunch. 

[Bryan Blaire]

Why else do Ork players WAAAAAAGH or Space Wolf players howl when the opportunity arises? Because they are immersed in the gaming experience to a point they feel one with their army/character.

:lol: I've never played with someone that did any of that out loud, and I'm pretty sure I'd laugh if one did and assume that he or she was being intentionally goofy to throw me off or get some laughs, and I've been playing this game for going on a few years over twenty. If they got upset over it and claimed it was part of their immersion, I probably wouldn't play them again.

 

Many RPGs have an option to use a point buy system for character creation as well as random rolls, and many folks I have played with also use choice matrices or standardized "roll curves" to generate, whether they are part of the game or not, because people like to play what they want to play.

 

Countering your personal view with my own, 40K has never been about being on the battlefield, but always being the general overseeing the prosecution of the battle, with as much or more real-time information and influence than any modern general has. Being a good general is rarely, if ever, about being a member of the gun line.

 

None of that has anything to do with the rules themselves though, which have ALWAYS been an abstraction.

 

It's an abstraction to roll a dice or two per guy to determine the close combat success for a squad over a few seconds of combat, when, if you have ever been in an actual multi-person melee (let's assume this is all done with foam weapons and mock death), the reality is that you have to not only account for the actions of all your own combat members, but also all your opponents, you are rarely swinging just a time or two over a few seconds, and you may be parrying, reversing, moving, pushing other people into or out of attacks, using weapons other than what you started with to wound or kill your enemies (if what you are using is even classified as a weapon), and avoiding slipping, tripping and falling, which can account for "wounds taken" as well. NONE of that is rolled for or performed on the tabletop in a 40K game.

 

"Yeah, but Bryan, that's all taken into account by the opposed WS/WS roll."

 

Yes, it is, because it's an abstraction. And it always has been. The same can be said for advancing squads under fire, or just movement in general. Seriously, does everyone want to roll for every simulated foot and a half of movement to see if one of their unit members got a foot caught in a hole and tore an Achilles tendon? That actually happens in real life, but we don't roll for things like that, because it isn't important to the game and the rules are an abstraction of life.

[Commander Dawnstar]

To be honest I feel like I haven't really been immersed in the game in that manner since 3rd Edition, although I say that as someone who missed 5th, 6th and most of 4th.

 

When I think of loss of immersion in 40k I think of things like the Death Company being a unit literally made up of Marines who fell to the Black Rage rather than just another thing you pay for; I think of Super Heavy vehicles going from lumbering behemoths with three different damage tables to units that move 12" per turn and ignore the damage tables bar the Explodes! result; I think of Necrons going from being struck down and rolling at the start of their turn to see if they claw their way back up to instead just taking a general extra save. I think of the original Last Chancers as a whole unit full of unique characters who took on entire armies by themselves, and whole pages of the Daemonhunters Codex given over to suggesting why your army might fight those other than the obvious servants of Chaos along with the Adversaries rules so that you could play into that kind of narrative.

 

7th definitely feels like a game where I'm just directing/controlling models rather than one where they have any life of their own, for the most part at least.

[Race Bannon]

If Ork players don't WAAAGH during a game, then they are not playing Orks.  And shame on them.

 

I mean, you don't have to bellow at the top of your lungs ... but something worthwhile is fun.

[Trevak Dal]

To me it, 40k has felt like I am a commander who is looking at the Battle space and directing his forces.

 

Like that role in Battlefield 4...but where your players actually do stuff you want them to do.

 

You have your Kharns and Farsights and other "beast heroes" you set up for them to be their best they can be and try to counter the opponent's team.

 

Or kill everything Enders Game style.

[Servant of Dante]

The "immersion" to me comes when something unlikely happens, and I go and think about what the abstraction might represent. Sometimes seriously, sometimes for a joke.

 

However the rules are abstracted, unlikely things will happen, and your little plastic dudes (or metal girls in my case) will do awesome stuff, and I'll continue to enjoy thinking about what's happening when something fun happens (fun being subjective).

[Damo1701]

Certainly sparked some interesting thoughts here

[Black Cohort]

If Ork players don't WAAAGH during a game, then they are not playing Orks. And shame on them.

 

I mean, you don't have to bellow at the top of your lungs ... but something worthwhile is fun.

Almost every ork player I have faced makes it very clear when he is using his WAAAGH. Particularly in Tournaments, normally everyone in the room knows when a WAAAGH is happening then.

[Hexagon Sun]

I would be more immersed by a faster moving game than any edition of 40k I've played to date. Abstraction is actually the key to immersion in my mind, your imagination is the only thing getting in your way. Roll dice for as little as you need to, let your brain do the rest.

 

40k is anything but immersive when you break it down, but some suspension of disbelief is required if you want it to work. From things like artillery being on the table to flyers being on the board for anything other than a fleeting second. Alternating turns, the random generation which means your army can go from great to awful just based on a few d6 rolls.

 

Overall the changes teased for 8th are a step in the right direction to me, I'm excited to play the game and I can only hope HH goes the same way.

[Vel'Cona]

Wargaming immersion, for me, comes from the spectacle of my armies, lovingly arrayed, standing off against an adversary and waging war in the manner that I have chosen.  When events happen to these models, I characterize what's happening in my head and enjoy the scenario as it plays out, picturing what it would be like to be in that situation.  Yes, I can look at the game as an abstraction and see the rules and the stats and metagame concepts, but I also know the name of my army's leaders and can remember their glorious victories as well as their tragic defeats.

 

Essentially, immersion isn't the duty of the game designer, in my book.  It's about the players, the painters, and the fans (or all three at once) putting that little bit of themselves into the game and walking away with stories to tell about their toy soldiers.  :)

[JeffTibbetts]

This is pretty interesting. Before stumbling on this thread I was just now writing a podcast episode about how I think some of the changes will make for a far more immersive and cinematic game. You've all given me a few things to think about. Thanks for that!