It's possible for all of the Primarchs to be brought back

[Antarius]

Also, at the risk of going slightly off-topic, I actually think portraying the Imperium as straight-up good guys not only ruins the setting, but is actually pretty distasteful. Because, well, if you think the Imperium is good...

[Cleon]

40 minutes ago, Antarius said:

Also, at the risk of going slightly off-topic, I actually think portraying the Imperium as straight-up good guys not only ruins the setting, but is actually pretty distasteful. Because, well, if you think the Imperium is good...

I think here you have to consider both the micro and the macro. Sure as a whole the Imperium sucks and of the sci fi settings I'm familiar with it's definitely in the top 3 of 'ones I want to be nowhere near', but in the moment of a game session/battle, one one side you may in the narrative have demon worshipping murder cultists or evil torture addicted space elves bearing down on a human settlement to slaughter everyone (or worse) and a thin line of Space Marines or Guardsman trying desperately to stop them - in that moment in the micro they are being the good guys and both sides of the game would agree to that.

[Rain]

33 minutes ago, Cleon said:

I think here you have to consider both the micro and the macro. Sure as a whole the Imperium sucks and of the sci fi settings I'm familiar with it's definitely in the top 3 of 'ones I want to be nowhere near', but in the moment of a game session/battle, one one side you may in the narrative have demon worshipping murder cultists or evil torture addicted space elves bearing down on a human settlement to slaughter everyone (or worse) and a thin line of Space Marines or Guardsman trying desperately to stop them - in that moment in the micro they are being the good guys and both sides of the game would agree to that.

Sure, but then the Inquisition shows up to turn the surviving civilians and Guardsmen into servitors (or corpses) lest seeing murder cultists or emo elves cause the spread of unconventional thought. But yes, that’s part of the fun of the setting. Individual acts of heroism amid a general macro-setting of grimdark.

[Cenobite Terminator]

Saying it’s all absolutely pointless leads to a paradox… obviously there are many characters fighting what they believe to be the good fight and think they can win, otherwise why not just give up? Because they do choose to fight there is some chance they could win no matter how possibly infinitesimally small. And while there are writers that embrace hopelessness there are others that do not.

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, milddead said:

Saying it’s all absolutely pointless leads to a paradox… obviously there are many characters fighting what they believe to be the good fight and think they can win, otherwise why not just give up? Because they do choose to fight there is some chance they could win no matter how possibly infinitesimally small. And while there are writers that embrace hopelessness there are others that do not.

No, that is wrong. The only “good” possible for humanity was the Emperor completing the webway project and shepherding humanity through psychic ascension. Anything else causes the death of humanity. Sanguinius can come back, all the loyalists can team up for some big Voughtesque spectacle and it won’t matter and nothing will ever change that. Authors can say there’s sparks of hope but none of them would dare say “oh yes things might look up in a few years”. It’s not the setting. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

11 hours ago, Kallas said:

I mean, aren't those two things sort of unrelated? You play the game because it's either fun or not; you read the books because they're interesting or they're not - the setting being hopeless does not make the struggle to survive less interesting, it can make it more interesting: the hopelessness is there, the fight is already over thousands of years before these people even learned to pick up a weapon; but they fight because they shouldn't accept defeat, and the struggle to provide the time and space for humanity, even if their sacrifice is ultimately irrelevant, is ostensibly noble.

 

There's a certain spirituality that can be explored in hopelessness - the "indomitable human spirit" is something that is often explored in stories, even more so when something is considered hopeless. I don't disagree that there being a million-to-one chance that humanity can survive and somehow win makes things fall apart, but the hopelessness is kind of the point, the grim darkness and all that.

 

Also, Pratchett had some choice words about million to one odds 

And the point of those quotes is a parody of stories where hope is lost, and there's a million-to-one chance left...which of course happens, because the heroes win! And then slightly lampooned in Guards! Guards! when they miss the shot and chatter about how it must have been less than a million-to-one... But anyway. The point I have for bringing up Sir Terry is that it's interesting when the million-to-one chance fails; when the "heroes" lose (of course, in G!G! they don't, ultimately, lose, spoilers, sorry) it creates as much of an interesting story as one where they win and this is kind of where 40k sits - we have plenty of stories, outside of and within 40k, where the heroes win, it's far and away more common; the simple existence of such a setting where the good guys main protagonists are so neolithically backwards, but so monolithic that there's such inertia to them even losing that it takes so many thousands of years for the Imperium to even begin to crumble - that is interesting.

 

To stop waffling on so much, I'll just state my opinion a bit more plainly - 40k is interesting to me because it doesn't follow the same narrative throughlines that a lot of stories have (eg, humanity is noble and fighting for survival, and wins!), and the desperation of the Imperium is one where interesting stories can absolutely be told, regardless of whether humanity is ultimately victorious. Gaunt's Ghosts is an excellent example, because they are heroic but they suffer loss after loss after loss (not necessarily battles lost, but individuals and, of course, their home) - it is the darkness they are set within that makes their struggle interesting; that they fight on through the losses is what makes them heroic, not that they expect ultimate victory.

For me the setting/universe is what makes the game.

 

I could go play OPR GDF with GW minis, but I don’t because there’s no story there.

 

I play to build my own little corner of the universe with my armies. 
the books are only interesting or not interesting because of the setting.

 

if you put a 40K cover on a Star Trek book, we’d all know it regardless of how interesting the story may be. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

On 11/10/2023 at 11:10 AM, Lexington said:

 

Not that I doubt GW's capacity to linger on the supposed Deep Implications and Amazing Revelations of a Primarch's every bathroom break, but, I dunno, are any of these things actually important in the context of 40K? Guilliman's return was just one bit in a smorgasbord of giant, galaxy-altering events, and for that, it probably seems a lot more interesting than it really was. Even with the - at best - debatable quality of the 40K setting during and after the Gathering Storm books, there's no doubt that it all felt big and exciting. Primaris! The Rift! Guilliman becoming de-facto Emperor! It felt like the setting was really going through something historic.

 

With the Lion, tho, there's not a lot of implications to be had. Outside of the Dark Angels, specifically, it basically doesn't matter. To the galaxy at large, there's a large, confused man wandering around. Some Space Marines might wear different colors on their armor now. Two brothers have a terse conversation. That's basically a couple of page 20 items on a slow news day. Headlines, they ain't.

 

This is the inevitable problem of bringing Primarchs back in general - on their own, they're just not very interesting. They're epic characters for epic times, meant to encapsulate the legendary past and, eventually, returning to herald the setting's end. 40K's a cash cow, though, so an actual ending isn't in the cards. Instead, we're stuck with this altered-but-mostly-stable state where a big name pops up again every few years, and it's supposed to be a Big Deal, but nothing ever really comes of it. What a sad fate for them, and for us.

An ending for 40K doesn’t mean an end to the money.

 

they ended WHFB, and created an entirely new system. A system that they’ve begun to replicate with 40K from what I hear.

 

they very well could have a 40K end times that then leads into warhammer:age of the emperor

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

No, that is wrong. The only “good” possible for humanity was the Emperor completing the webway project and shepherding humanity through psychic ascension. Anything else causes the death of humanity. Sanguinius can come back, all the loyalists can team up for some big Voughtesque spectacle and it won’t matter and nothing will ever change that. Authors can say there’s sparks of hope but none of them would dare say “oh yes things might look up in a few years”. It’s not the setting. 

And who’s to say the emperor won’t rise and finish the webway?

[Rain]

3 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

An ending for 40K doesn’t mean an end to the money.

 

they ended WHFB, and created an entirely new system. A system that they’ve begun to replicate with 40K from what I hear.

 

they very well could have a 40K end times that then leads into warhammer:age of the emperor

Well, that’s one way to keep me from wasting more money on toy soldiers ever again 

[Marshal Rohr]

4 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

And who’s to say the emperor won’t rise and finish the webway?

The part of the book where Magnus’ spell collapsed the webway close to Kallistar and only like 300 Custodes of ten thousand survived defending the daemonic incursion.  

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

And who’s to say the emperor won’t rise and finish the webway?

 

1. The gaping hole with a flood of Daemons coming through.

2. The fact the "human" sections were already failing.

[Kythnos]

2 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

For me the setting/universe is what makes the game.

 

I could go play OPR GDF with GW minis, but I don’t because there’s no story there.

 

 

But does that mean that for you, GW's rules are essential for your own storybuilding?

 

I understand that, because for 20 years it's been the same for me. But this constant change of rules has finally led me to leave this stance behind.  I cannot properly develop my army's fluff if rules change willy-nilly every few weeks (and GW's fluff had been not to my liking for quite some time). 

 

So I am switching to different rules such as OPR to keep developing my army in a stable rules and fluff environment. I find that preferable to constant changes. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

Just now, Kythnos said:

 

 

But does that mean that for you, GW's rules are essential for your own storybuilding?

 

I understand that, because for 20 years it's been the same for me. But this constant change of rules has finally led me to leave this stance behind.  I cannot properly develop my army's fluff if rules change willy-nilly every few weeks (and GW's fluff had been not to my liking for quite some time). 

 

So I am switching to different rules such as OPR to keep developing my army in a stable rules and fluff environment. I find that preferable to constant changes. 

What do rules chsnges have to do with your army’s fluff?

2 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

The part of the book where Magnus’ spell collapsed the webway close to Kallistar and only like 300 Custodes of ten thousand survived defending the daemonic incursion.  

That has nothing to do with the emperor rising and finishing what he began.

[Kythnos]

4 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

What do rules chsnges have to do with your army’s fluff?

As someone who has been almost excusively playing crusade last edition - a lot. Much fluff has grown upon the crusade results of my warband and having most of this erased in 10th edition rules is more than a minor annoiance. 

 

You did not answer my question, though. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

1 hour ago, Kythnos said:

As someone who has been almost excusively playing crusade last edition - a lot. Much fluff has grown upon the crusade results of my warband and having most of this erased in 10th edition rules is more than a minor annoiance. 

 

You did not answer my question, though. 

Who do I play with? Exactly? OPR isn’t exactly common or widespread 

 

still not sure how rules effect fluff

[Noserenda]

Bringing any character back from the dead is like time travel. If its central to the story, and the whole thing works around it, its great. Otherwise its a terrible idea. 

I mean look at Loken for example, can you imagine how awful it would be, scaled up to Primarch levels? 

Stick to the missing/frozen/daemon ones, yeeeeears of hype to be milked.

[Marshal Rohr]

The people in the universe don’t know humanity died in the Webway. We know that, because the voice of God told us. Every spark of hope, no matter what it is (even the Emperor coming off his throne) is doomed. That’s not why the Primarchs shouldn’t come back, the Primarchs shouldn’t come back because it’s blatantly trying to monetize the popularity of the Horus Heresy setting in the flagship setting of the company. 
 

They now have two parallel stories with the same people doing the same thing with slightly different cast of supporting characters. It’s running into the problem Star Wars ran head first into three years ago, driven by the same story telling sandpits Star Wars hit. People like Primarchs. They like buying models for them. They like playing with them in their games. But Forge World already did better Primarchs in the settings Age of Myth so now we are bombarded with shallow retelling a of stories they’ve already done. 
 

The simple truth is Games Workshop doesn’t care about the story. Games Workshop is only doing Russ, the Lion, Sanguinius, and Guilliman because those are the product lines with unique codexes. Games Workshop doesn’t make products for fans with existing collections, they make products for fans without collections and a cool Primarch model is the best way to move those in the latter camp into the former camp. No story they write is part of a larger narrative with an end. It’s just a stream of consciousness to keep pace with new sales targets. If you think a Primarch returning is anything but a shallow attempt to capitalize on Alan Bligh’s masterpiece but in “accessible” plastic, you are lying to yourself. 

[Scribe]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

The simple truth is Games Workshop doesn’t care about the story. Games Workshop is only doing Russ, the Lion, Sanguinius, and Guilliman because those are the product lines with unique codexes. Games Workshop doesn’t make products for fans with existing collections, they make products for fans without collections and a cool Primarch model is the best way to move those in the latter camp into the former camp. No story they write is part of a larger narrative with an end. It’s just a stream of consciousness to keep pace with new sales targets. If you think a Primarch returning is anything but a shallow attempt to capitalize on Alan Bligh’s masterpiece but in “accessible” plastic, you are lying to yourself. 

 

Love this, and hate this, at the same time.

[spessmarine]

3 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Bringing any character back from the dead is like time travel. If its central to the story, and the whole thing works around it, its great. Otherwise its a terrible idea. 

I mean look at Loken for example, can you imagine how awful it would be, scaled up to Primarch levels? 

Stick to the missing/frozen/daemon ones, yeeeeears of hype to be milked.

Perty and Lorgar would be quite exciting because there is a lot of mystery around how they'd be modeled. Suppose they could also come with small release waves for IW/WB respectively.

[Antarius]

13 hours ago, Cleon said:

I think here you have to consider both the micro and the macro. Sure as a whole the Imperium sucks and of the sci fi settings I'm familiar with it's definitely in the top 3 of 'ones I want to be nowhere near', but in the moment of a game session/battle, one one side you may in the narrative have demon worshipping murder cultists or evil torture addicted space elves bearing down on a human settlement to slaughter everyone (or worse) and a thin line of Space Marines or Guardsman trying desperately to stop them - in that moment in the micro they are being the good guys and both sides of the game would agree to that.

I don't actually disagree with that (although I would add that in this setting, those "good guys" would likely just as soon have slaughtered the civilians - or they might do so afterwards if so ordered).
Again, what I'm against isn't individual characters feeling hope or being "good". I much prefer 40K fiction of the "relatable characters going through stuff" variety over the "bolter porn" version. I just think it's more about having characters that you can identify with and root for, more than them being good in a "voice of god" sort of way. Generally speaking, if you try to portray the Imperium as a whole as good it just either 1) destroys the setting and/or 2) comes off as creepy.
But individuals who are good (from their own perspectives), who I can relate to and understand - and who might behave heroically? Yes, please!

I just don't think it's a setting that's at all about good vs evil. The genius of the old WFB army books was that (almost) every book was written from the perspective of that faction - so everybody were "the good guys" and that worked wonderfully. I like it when Warhammer 40.000 and the Horus Heresy lore does the same :)

[Antarius]

4 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Bringing any character back from the dead is like time travel. If its central to the story, and the whole thing works around it, its great. Otherwise its a terrible idea. 

I mean look at Loken for example, can you imagine how awful it would be, scaled up to Primarch levels? 

Stick to the missing/frozen/daemon ones, yeeeeears of hype to be milked.

I felt so, well it sounds almost silly to say it, but, betrayed when Loken came back (especially, but definitely not just, because the short story in which they brought him back was so bad). His death was a gut punch, but also felt meaningful and rounded off his character arc wonderfully. Bringing him back erased that and gave us yet another Space Marine character which I guess we "needed" for some reason (because, I mean, we just couldn't have found any other Space Marines to tell stories about in that particular setting...).

[Pacific81]

3 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

According to any and every reinforced statement for decades, yes, the Imperium, Humanity, falls.

 

That doesnt mean you quit. It means you die with your boots on, not in the fetal position because 'theres no hope, so may as well quit'.

 

Completely agree - this goes right back to the original Rogue Trader cover, of the Crimson Fist marines in their last stand.

 

But in answer to the OP - I think yes, every Primarch to return just because it will sell a mini. Emperor miniature too, and a Ferrus Manus with detachable head option.

[Lexington]

23 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

An ending for 40K doesn’t mean an end to the money.

 

they ended WHFB, and created an entirely new system. A system that they’ve begun to replicate with 40K from what I hear.

 

they very well could have a 40K end times that then leads into warhammer:age of the emperor

 

Well, they could, sure. Hell, they probably almost did it once - lots of things from later 7th Ed and early 8th hint that GW was set to pull an AoS on 40K until the disastrous launch of AoS caused them to take the (relatively) safe path they ended up going with.

 

Now, though, with cash rolling in and every relevant graph pointing upwards, they're not going to rock the boat. 40K will remain more or less as-is, for better or for worse, until GW sees some significant financial issues.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Lexington

[Karhedron]

I agree, Fantasy was in the doldrums prior to the launch of AoS so they had an incentive to try something drastic. 40K is their cash cow so they are less likely to tear it down and start again while it remains profitable.

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

I want Rogal Dorn to come back. He's the best. The rest are all just filler.