What is Even the Story in 10th Edition (aka Why Can't BL Do Better?)

[caladancid]

On 11/28/2024 at 8:01 AM, Karhedron said:

There was one change made after Dark Imperium where the Indomitus Crusade was supposed to have lasted 112 years. In this book, we see Calgar still as a Firstborn and feeling sidelined by the new intake of Primaris recruits. Then Warzone Nachmund came out and Calgar crossed the Rubicon. Now this was supposed to be fairly soon after the opening of the Great Rift. It was a one-off failure of communication  between BL and design Studio which was fixed with the retcon make the Indomitus Crusade 12 years long. This change only affected Dark Imperium. Both Plague War and Godblight were consistent with the new timeframe.

 

The problem was not that BL made a timeframe that did not work, it was that BL and the DS independently came up with their own timeframes are realized they were incompatible. So there was a small retcon and life moved on. Since the retcon, everything has been consistent.

 

To anyone claiming BL don't know what they are doing, please provide evidence in the form of continuity conflicts or anything else that happens after that single retcon. Otherwise you are claiming that BL have a problem without any actual evidence. It doesn't matter if one author makes a social media post that maybe gets a detail wrong, I don't keep all the details of my job in my head because I know my memory is fallible. If the dozen or so books that have been set post-Great Rift are all consistent then I would say that is proof BL does NOT have a problem. They have have reviews and processes in place to make sure that books that hit the shelves are consistent.

 

You are wrong up front about the changes not impacting Plague War.

 

Dark Imperium: Godblight Sees Guilliman and Mortarion Clash at Last, and We Got the Author to Spill the Beans - Warhammer Community

 

Again, he says it in the article that changes were made to both the first two books.

 

You are taking quite a firm approach to this (sub)topic. Its a decent point of conversation. There is a post a few above this from someone saying time doesn't matter at all. Different people have different thoughts.

[Karhedron]

3 hours ago, caladancid said:

You are taking quite a firm approach to this (sub)topic. Its a decent point of conversation. There is a post a few above this from someone saying time doesn't matter at all. Different people have different thoughts.

 

They do indeed but I personally find it tiresome when people seek to find fault that isn't really there. The basic charge being levelled by some was that BL had lost the plot (so to speak) on their post-Rift stories. My stance it that some social media posts do not indicate a systemic problem. I work in software and we make mistakes all the time because we are only human. But our company has procedures and processes in place to review and correct stuff before it gets out into the wild.

 

The timeline of the DI trilogy was retconned to bring it into line with the studio campaign books. Since then, everything is pretty consistent as far as I have been able to tell. This to me implies there is no problem with BL since any mistakes or discrepancies by individual authors are caught before they get to print. Making mistakes is not a problem, it is inevitable. It is only a problem if those mistakes are not corrected before they get into print.

 

This is the crux of my feelings. If there are no contradictions in the published works then there is no problem at BL. For people to claim otherwise without evidence feels unfounded.

[darkhorse0607]

39 minutes ago, Karhedron said:

This is the crux of my feelings. If there are no contradictions in the published works then th

ere is no problem at BL. For people to claim otherwise without evidence feels unfounded.

 

So while I do admit my first comment was unwarranted, and was kind of a knee-jerk reaction, I do think it warrants at least a little discussion.

 

By and large, you are correct that they've course-corrected after the retcon back to the beginning of the crusade, but at the same time, I do think BL could at least put out a chart/guide (as was mentioned on here that other websites do) to help because there are enough comments/discussions/videos here and other places that could warrant at least that. It's also worth noting that folks on here who read almost every new release and therefore put things together are the minority, not the majority.

 

Even in the last year, we have had books coming out in various time periods. Dawn of Fire is at the beginning of the Crusade, but then you had Lazarus which is set after Arks of Omen, and Broken Crusade which takes place 200 years post-rift. Again, for folks that are hardcore (or semicore) lore fans, that read most things it's probably not an issue. But to what I would assume is the majority, who dip in for some books and dip out for others, it can appear all over the place. A chart or something on Black Library/WHC/wherever could fix that

 

But they couldn't manage a "coming soon" tab so maybe that's out of reach

 

 

[theSpirea]

While a chart would be a good idea, it's not going to happen. They even got rid of the HH chart they had on BL.com. Once you put books officially in some sort of order, people might not read, let's say, Lazarus, because they haven't read XYZ books shown on the chart that are set before Lazarus. And those books might be sold out or people might not be really interested in them, which could negatively impact sales of Lazarus. This is just an example.

 

Heck, even the whole DoF is one big mess, and you don't need to read it in order, half the books you can easily skip. Now, because Sea of Souls is set in that series, not many people might read it because they haven't read XX books set before or have given up on that series. However, that book works perfectly as a standalone and has next to nothing to do with the whole DoF.

[TheVoidDragon]

On 11/29/2024 at 11:18 PM, theSpirea said:

While a chart would be a good idea, it's not going to happen. They even got rid of the HH chart they had on BL.com. Once you put books officially in some sort of order, people might not read, let's say, Lazarus, because they haven't read XYZ books shown on the chart that are set before Lazarus. And those books might be sold out or people might not be really interested in them, which could negatively impact sales of Lazarus. This is just an example.

 

 

I think this is a problem with 40k in general that's resulted from the whole Dark Imperium / Primarch stuff. I have seen people new to the hobby asking what books to read/start with, saying they only want the "main story", dismissing 30+ years of 40k as "unimportant side quests", and asking what the chronological book order to "catch up with the narrative" is.

[EmprahsStrongestGuardsman]

I think it started to go off the rails with the Eye of Terror worldwide campaign. It stopped being 40k basically from that point since most of the setting changes stemmed from that.

 

The thing is, 40k was never supposed to have an overarcing 'story'. It was supposed to be a setting -within which- players devised their own stories. If the setting becomes a storyline then the setting is changed by advancing that storyline... consequently it stops being the setting that attracted people. Even worse if that story becomes incoherent.

This is what the current crop of designers never really understood and as a result it's just gone now. :(

[cheywood]

1 hour ago, TheVoidDragon said:

 

I think this is a problem with 40k in general that's resulted from the whole Dark Imperium / Primarch stuff. I have seen people new to the hobby asking what books to read/start with, saying they only want the "main story", dismissing 30+ years of 40k as "unimportant side quests", and asking what the chronological book order to "catch up with the narrative" is.

I miss the old days, where the setting felt vast and indifferent to our interest in it. Now it’s just a sequence of ‘big moments’ and everything feels small and empty. Still so many great stories being told, I don’t think GW can stop that as long as it keeps giving talented authors license to create, but I don’t care for the overall direction. 

[DukeLeto69]

Personally, I think BL novels should be set in the “past” to fill in gaps and better explain what happened beyond lore snippets in rulebooks and codexes.

 

I think the game should be the “present”  and if events in the game advance the timeline then BL should cover that later once things have settled in “game time”.

 

That’s not stopping people playing “historical” battles but as each edition is released, I think it is fine if things inch forward in the timeline otherwise (as happened in the past) all these huge campaigns and events were happening concurrently, which was ridiculous. 

[Felix Antipodes]

This was certainly the case in the past and it worked well.  The trouble is that W40K ‘historical’ novels would feature (mainly) MK VII armoured Astartes all over the cover and, imho, GW want only Primaris marks featured.  Hence why the increase in ‘near time’ stories where Astartes are featured.

 

This may be why we have had a lot of Guard and xenos stories of late (which is not a bad thing).