Story vs setting

[Sky Potato]

Characters should absolutely be killed off - but just like Captain Tycho of the Blood Angels, the rules should be kept in the main codex and be playable. There should be no reason to drop named characters to Legends even though they’re dead in the narrative.

[Bryan Blaire]

Legends material is still playable - it’s the community you play with that chooses otherwise - it’s fully available for narrative games, they just aren’t up to the latest balance for matched play - and that’s okay if you are playing narrative, historical games.  It is clear that what the company is pushing is that matched play games take place in the “modern era” of 40K - I don’t necessarily like that, but I also don’t play matched play games if I have any way to avoid it.

 

GW could make a “Historical heroes” book at some point, available for matched play, that has what should be millions of heroes, anti-heroes, and villainous characters (depending on your preferred 40K frame of reference), but chances are, they won’t.

 

They could also turn “named characters” into hero archetypes for the rules - and then they could tell us which of those archetypes the current named heroes for each Codex occupy - make it like the Swarmlord - even if a named hero of the “Young King” archetype goes down, a new one either rises to take up the mantle or it remains vacant and a new named hero with a different archetype falls into place, but it would leave the archetype rules (and even the name) open for play in historical games (or future to the modern era games too).

[Khornestar]

Super solid posts, Brother Bryan. Couldn’t have said it better.

[gideon stargreave]

Agree Brian, This was the mindset a long while ago. There doesn't need to be a "story" in regards to the game material. The reintroduction of the Lion for example, doesn't require an in game universe explanation, just the inclusion of rules for him. Players can then use the rules as they see fit to play in any head canon they want, and the black library books can do their thing