Horus Heresy New Edition, or Just Horus Hearsay?

[SkimaskMohawk]

I read legislation daily, this definitely reminds me of EULAs. 

[Marshal Rohr]

Just now, SkimaskMohawk said:

I read legislation daily, this definitely reminds me of EULAs. 

Exactly, end user lethal agreements. That’s why Disney can murder people legally. 

[BitsHammer]

1 hour ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

I read legislation daily, this definitely reminds me of EULAs. 

So I'm not the only one then.

 

Well all those folks who kept saying GW should write tighter rules should be happy I guess since now the rulebook reads like a legal contract.

 

I think there is something to be said about how mastery of a thing means being able to reduce complex and technical ideas to simple language.

 

This is not that.

[Brother Sutek]

4 hours ago, 01RTB01 said:

They're not in the libers if you're unaware :(

I know but I am unlikely to switch to 3rd anytime soon. 

[Irate Khornate]

Bureaucrat here, legal jargon is definitely easier to read. Admittedly it might be because I'm slightly fluent in legalese. 

[Dudley Nightshade]

1 hour ago, BitsHammer said:

So I'm not the only one then.

 

Well all those folks who kept saying GW should write tighter rules should be happy I guess since now the rulebook reads like a legal contract.

 

I think there is something to be said about how mastery of a thing means being able to reduce complex and technical ideas to simple language.

 

This is not that.

I so, so strongly agree with the last part.

 

As someone who has long wanted GW to write tighter rules, though, the first part did not need to be true. Sometimes it feels like GW does not know how to react without overreacting. Perhaps they're too plugged in to the Noosphere and see everything as binary. We can have rules written for beer and pretzels nights with buddies or legal documents, and nothing in between. 

[Antarius]

2 hours ago, Dudley Nightshade said:

As someone who has long wanted GW to write tighter rules, though, the first part did not need to be true. 

Yes, well, you were warned about that monkey's paw 

 

Seriously though, whatever the reason, this surely cannot be the intended final product? It almost makes one hope that the leaks are all a hoax or something like that, but I guess a likelier explanation is that they didn't have any time for editing at all, or that some genius manager mandated using AI for proofreading or something equally stupid.

I always try to avoid the doom and gloom-fest of new editions, because there will always be complaints, but this is on a completely different level.

GW used to write nice, legible rules that, while they could be misinterpreted (which of course anything can, if you really want to) rarely left you in actual doubt as to their meaning. Ironically, this ruleset might be more unambiguous assuming you can actually chew through it, but I'd wager it leaves many, many more people in doubt as to what the rules actually say. I mean, I can barely parse this crap and I've read Kant...

Add to this that even the writers haven't been able to parse their own writing well enough to avoid writing rules that let you do a reaction to make you shoot yourself and the jokes pretty much write themselves. Pity they're not exactly funny jokes.

Here's hoping the writers (or, more likely, their managers) will remember another old chestnut: writing is rewriting. Because this should definitely be rewritten at least once.

[Irongert]

3 hours ago, Irate Khornate said:

Bureaucrat here, legal jargon is definitely easier to read. Admittedly it might be because I'm slightly fluent in legalese. 

I'm with you there, I'm a bureaucrat aswell and this is worse than legalese. Mostly because people who write legalese know how to write legalese. Here it feels like people tried to write something watertight without having the needed skills/experience to do so properly. As an aside, I never understood the whole thing about writing like this. I deal with laws on a regular basis (even if it's just tax law) and they try, and fail almost without exception, to cover all cases. The stakes are a lot higher there than for just a game but lawmaker have accepted the reality. That's what the legal system and lawyers are for, to fix loopholes and ommisions. In gaming term one could call a comparable system, say, an FaQ. Just a thought. 

 

I find it all so baffling, even if my armies would not have been invalidated (barring the magical PDF that will fix every now illegal load out...) I'm not sure I wwould want to bother with this edition. I don't have time to sit down for evenings at an end to try and chew through and digest the rules. I have better things to do. My hobby is to build, paint and play with my little dudes. Not try to decipher a miserably failed copy of the geneva convention. I game to turn most of my brain off and have some fun and relaxation, these rules rules do not facilitate that. 

[Xenith]

8 hours ago, Dudley Nightshade said:

In a Kindergarten through Grade 12 system (K-12), the rules are written at a grade 17 level. I guess that's all of one's public schooling plus five years of post-secondary?

 

40k's main dev, Robin Cruddace, has a PhD in physics, and we know how well they sterotypically do in communicating with the general public. I can see that influence here (though different departments).

 

Thanks for sharing that Flesh reading clarity measure, it's definitely interesting to run things through it! Grade 15+ on the Flesch-Kincade is categorised at the level of an academic manuscript, of which those in the industry will generally "top and tail", i.e. read the beginning and the end to get a feel as the central text is too complicated for simple digestion. 

[01RTB01]

Considering how the trend among students is to "read less, comprehend less", whacking up the reading difficulties is not going to encourage new players. 

 

As aforementioned by another frater, I really can't be bothered to figure out what's meant by the new word spaghetti. The clarity has decreased and for what purpose, I really don't get. The Saturday that just went, I played 3 games of spearhead for AoS, games took 1 hour 15 minutes each, easy to understand, quick and fun. Clear rules, not because of word spaghetti but concise. The level of disparity between the different development teams makes no sense. Anyone able to shed any light there?

 

Conversely, I feel sorry for the development team if they've been forced down this root by the higher ups.

Edited Tuesday at 07:52 AM by 01RTB01

[Mandragola]

The writing is fascinating and also hilarious. It’s amazing that it’s come out like this. I can’t understand how a company is simultaneously able to publish rules for games like 40K, kill team or AoS that are a few pages long and these. 
 

The layout is incredible. It’s 85 pages into the rules before they tell you the turn sequence. By that point you know how to do the combat air patrol advanced reaction. 

 

My own job often involves getting text from scientists or researchers and making it digestible. If I got something like this I’d spend a long time with the author before sending it out. 
 

Despite all that I have to report that it’s actually kind of workable in terms of clarity. Yes, the rules are ludicrously verbose. They read like they were written by someone who has *seen* legal writing and is trying to copy it without having understood it. But the rules are there and there’s an index for them. It takes longer to understand them thanks to the writing but, once you do, it does actually feel a bit clearer to me than 2.0, believe it or not. I’ve hear the same thing from others who have played. 
 

 

[Evil Eye]

I accept this might be grognardism on my part, but I VASTLY preferred the older, more "casual" writing approach. It was much quicker and easier to understand the intention of the rules and equally easy to errata/FAQ in the event of misinterpretation or errors. It was also more generally pleasant to read, both from a perspective of being easier to comprehend and feeling more "friendly".

[Nephaston]

8 minutes ago, 01RTB01 said:

The level of disparity between the different development teams makes no sense. Anyone able to shed any light there?

The only thing that is generally known is that every system has its own rules writing team with individual writers being assigned individual rulesets, and members of the team occasionally shuffled between the teams. The specialists games iirc however are bundled for one team, but I'm not sure if 30k is still a specialist game or if it has its own team.

 

If it's anything like 40k you'll have Codecies/Libers assigned to one person out of the whole team, and it'll be left to their complete discretion. So if the selected writer doesn't like the faction, doesn't feel inspired, has no eye for external balance, internal balance or any combination of these then the book will end up bad or unbalanced. Not sure if the core rules are handled by the team as a whole or if that one is also assigned to individuals.

 

Sometimes you have to wonder if some of the writers even like their jobs.

[Mandragola]

28 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I accept this might be grognardism on my part, but I VASTLY preferred the older, more "casual" writing approach. It was much quicker and easier to understand the intention of the rules and equally easy to errata/FAQ in the event of misinterpretation or errors. It was also more generally pleasant to read, both from a perspective of being easier to comprehend and feeling more "friendly".

Nobody likes this writing style. There are people who like the old style and people who like the style used nowadays by the “main” studio, where the rules are actually clear. There’s no group who wanted an EULA. 
 

One of my GH colleagues this as “cargo cult” writing. “If we use words and phrases that look like legislation then clarity will come out of the sky by magic”. It’s not that simple, sadly. 
 

I can only repeat that the writing style of the rules is kind of a separate thing to the rules themselves. But it’s definitely a barrier to accessing those rules. 

[Astartes Consul]

33 minutes ago, Evil Eye said:

I accept this might be grognardism on my part, but I VASTLY preferred the older, more "casual" writing approach. It was much quicker and easier to understand the intention of the rules and equally easy to errata/FAQ in the event of misinterpretation or errors. It was also more generally pleasant to read, both from a perspective of being easier to comprehend and feeling more "friendly".

I don’t think you’ll find many people who disagree on the fundamental point here.
 

And while previous editions had unintended interactions, mistakes and things that needed clarification…so does this one, from what we’ve seen. The Imperial Fists reaction is written at great length so we all understand the microcosms of the rule, but it still ends up with them, RAW, shooting themselves…

 

The theme of this edition seems to be ‘Why didn’t you aim for a happy middle ground?’ 

 

[Xenith]

1 hour ago, Mandragola said:

My own job often involves getting text from scientists or researchers and making it digestible. If I got something like this I’d spend a long time with the author before sending it out. 

 

Hopefully a long time spent with them clubbing them over the head 

[HeinzD]

Failed Overload shots are directed against the squad, not like gets hot against the model, back in the day, right?

Not a big fan of the new disinitgration rifles, but as a death guard player i really like the idea of a single Heavy Disintigrator in a 5 man squad of Veteran Tacs.

Same cost as and wounds as a Tactical squad and if you slowly move up the board to take objectives you can annoy the hell out of your opponent and threaten all his favorite elite units, lol

[Captain Idaho]

Honestly, speaking as a working class boxer who is intelligent but not "educmacated" I can honestly say it's just badly written. Lots of words to explain it in an unconcise manner is just clumsy for any target audience that isn't in a court room.

 

I could do an FAQ over a weekend so if they understand their source material it's not taking a lot of work.

 

I'd be interested to know their sales and be a fly on the wall in their office. I imagine they think they're victims of toxicity and did done nothin' wrong.

 

 

Sure they might sell a bunch of Saturnine boxes at launch as the brand new thing, but player longevity means sales will dip for this game surely. I'm not willing to wait 18 months+ before I get a workable Ultramarines ruleset as the current rules may as well not exist they're so anemic.

 

I tell ye what this smacks of... not understanding the customer base. Which GW has been in form of for years.

[jaxom]

2 hours ago, Mandragola said:

Nobody likes this writing style. There are people who like the old style and people who like the style used nowadays by the “main” studio, where the rules are actually clear. There’s no group who wanted an EULA.

The only people who I think benefit are those who will feel superior than 40k and AoS players because they play a game with “writing aimed at adults.”

[Marshal Rohr]

1 hour ago, jaxom said:

The only people who I think benefit are those who will feel superior than 40k and AoS players because they play a game with “writing aimed at adults.”

No one thinks this was written for adults. This wasn’t written for anyone. 

Edited Tuesday at 12:08 PM by Xenith
shot fired

[Antarius]

As someone who is, I think, of reasonably normal intelligence and who both has an education and is an educator, I would say that it's the type of writing people should be told to rewrite so as to actually put across what they meant.

 

I really don't think it's a question of educated/not educated. I think it's a question of whether or not people are good at (or, perhaps, interested in) communicating their point in an effective manner. Unfortunately, even people who should really know better, sometimes mistake "wordy and complicated" for "good writing".

I am reminded of back when I was writing a thesis along with one of my oldest friends, it was a bit of a strange construction as we were writing in different subjects and thus were responsible for different parts of the thesis, but we wrote everything together and worked quite a lot on what we liked to call "is this actually understandable to someone who hasn't written it themselves?", i.e. writing and rewriting so as to be as clear as possible. Interestingly, since we were writing in two subjects, we also had two supervisors. One would always give us positive feedback whenever we had improved the clarity of the writing, whereas the other would unfailingly want us to make it more verbose.

I've also had many students who were extremely surprised when I asked them to use fewer "difficult" words, unless they were sure they were a) absolutely necessary (and, sometimes, b) that they actually understood them correctly). 

In short, people who mistake wordiness for brilliance seem to exist at all levels.

Edited Tuesday at 11:06 AM by Antarius

[Northern Walker]

21 minutes ago, jaxom said:

The only people who I think benefit are those who will feel superior than 40k and AoS players because they play a game with “writing aimed at adults.”

And anyone with a financial interest in being able to talk about the rules. So, terrible people.

[Evil Eye]

7 minutes ago, Northern Walker said:

And anyone with a financial interest in being able to talk about the rules. So, terrible people.

I mean to be fair you need to actually have comprehensible rules not spat out by a broken down lex-processor servitor being operated by an Administratum adept who came to work after a night binging amasec and had his co-worker constantly making Krieg shovel jokes if you want to talk about the rules beyond "what the blueberry fethmuffins is this gak?", for money or otherwise.

[Brother Sutek]

22 minutes ago, Antarius said:

As someone who is, I think, of reasonably normal intelligence and who both has an education and is an educator, I would say that it's the type of writing people should be told to rewrite so as to actually put across what they meant.

 

I really don't think it's a question of educated/not educated. I think it's a question of whether or not people are good at (or, perhaps, interested in) communicating their point in an effective manner. Unfortunately, even people who should really know better, sometimes mistake "wordy and complicated" for "good writing".

I am reminded of back when I was writing a thesis along with one of my oldest friends, it was a bit of a strange construction as we were writing in different subjects and thus were responsible for different parts of the thesis, but we wrote everything together and worked quite a lot on what we liked to call "is this actually understandable to someone who hasn't written it themselves?", i.e. writing and rewriting so as to be as clear as possible. Interestingly, since we were writing in two subjects, we also had two supervisors. One would always give us positive feedback whenever we had improved the clarity of the writing, whereas the other would unfailingly want us to make it more verbose.

I've also had many students who were extremely surprised when I asked them to use fewer "difficult" words, unless they were sure they were a) absolutely necessary (and, sometimes, b) that they actually understood them correctly). 

In short, people who mistake wordiness for brilliance seem to exist at all levels.

I worked with an educator who had to use an many big words as he could. It was painful as I knew most but he really dug into the verbiage to try and sound intelligent. Sadly most of the students and faculty thought he was a pompous ass and it didn't have the desired  effect. I get it and like to use one word instead of 20 but you need to know your target audience.  Most of my now coworkers don't read and if I use my normal vocabulary I'd come off as a pompous ass. 

[jaxom]

At the end of it all, this whole debacle reminds of the old chestnut: “The only thing required to be a professional is getting paid for whatever you’re doing.”