If you could change anything in the lore what would you change?

[Doghouse]

On 10/19/2025 at 10:20 PM, OnePaulMurray said:

While I do hear you with that, are you really saying that you would be happy with the game staying the same for another decade? It's hard to have huge stakes in a story set in M38, if we already know that the planet exists in M39, so do you not risk the same issue of ennui creeping in when the story stakes have to be kept frozen?

 

Also, if you can't go forward in the story then you can only go backwards... at which point you start colouring in all the blank bits on the canvas and plenty of people don't really want that either.

 

I think it's easy to criticise, and it is perfectly fine to have a favourite 'window' in the lore, but I do feel that there are people that basically want GW to sit on their IP and do nothing with it because they feel it had already peaked.

 

For me personally speaking yeah I would have genuinely been fine for it staying the same for another two decades to be honest. There is so much room for people to create their own lore in the ten thousand years prior that you could easily create massive events that have simply been forgotten or not recorded by the Administratum. You can create your own high stakes and still have it lost to time within the labyrinthian and poorly kept records of Terra. The lore has always been a framework for you as a player to build upon and create your own adventures.

 

I have always been a firm believer in the players using their own imagination and to be fair there is nothing stopping GW retconning new items into the lore like they have done in the past with things like the storm eagle, vindicator, predator, etc. It's never really stopped them expanding in the past. We have even had new armies added such as the Necrons and the Tau prior to the 41st millennium and it never tanked the setting and new people continued to take up the game. In fact I'd say prior to 8th edition there was far more focus on the rules and balance causing issues than the lore.

 

The other thing to remember is that the moving story can also create the same issues that you have raised filing in all the blanks bits of the canvas and uncovering all the mysteries that were never meant to be revealed with a glaring spotlight. Things like the Dark Angels being a favourite example of mine. The ten thousand years of shame that was a closely guarded dishonour to the Chapter to the point they would kill other Space Marines or Imperial Forces and their Primarch slumbering beneath the rock much like an Arthurian legend of old just hand waved away as the Lion wakes up and begins traveling around in a cloud of pine scented Febreze as he turned the Fallen into the Risen. It's this kind of stuff that sucks the darkness and mysticism from the setting and cheapens it for me as they just became a bland regular Chapter in my eyes. And the other thing to remember is that by progressing the story they are at greater risk of painting themselves into a corner.  

 

Truth be told it could have all been kept within the 41st millennium but objectively it doesn't fit in the what has become the mainstream corporate image of what the game universe has become. I personally think it's more about establishing a solid foundation they can copyright and license out to third parties generating cash streams where they have to do very little work themselves.

 

But these are just the ramblings of an old man like me wishing for a return the good old days.

 

 

[ThaneOfTas]

11 hours ago, Captain Idaho said:

There's not a single person in the known universe, under Cthulhu's malevolent gaze or the demon-sultan Azat.hoth's decadent etched contemption, that bought into 40K because the company advanced the storyline.

Hi there, it's me, I'm the guy who bought in because GW were finally advancing the setting. I'd looked into it several times over the years, thought that the models looked cool, but whenever I tried to dive into the lore through the various wikis I kept hitting roadblocks where stories that sounded really interesting were set up, then deliberately left sitting there because the setting was permanently stuck at 1 second to midnight. Hearing about the Gathering Storm from friends who were already actually in the game grabbed my interest in a big way though, because it seemed like things were actually finally happening.

 

We can argue about the execution all the live long day, and you'd likely have some good points about it. But that doesn't change the fact that the reason that it took until the very end of 7th/start of 8th for me to actually dive into the hobby was because I felt that the lore from what I had seen already was unfinished and unsatisfying, cool ideas but no meat to be found. That impression was not entirely accurate looking back, but I stand by it based on my position at the time as an outsider.

Edited yesterday at 05:32 AM by ThaneOfTas

[ThePenitentOne]

For me, it was mostly the promise of plastic Sisters and the return of the GSC... But Gathering Storm WAS a hook- I though Uvraine and the Ynarri were soooo cool. I still think they are BTW, but I wish GW would grow them a bit- create an actual Ynarri battleline unit and a generic HQ. But see, that kinda requires advancing the story, right? It would mean that the Ynarri had grown to the point where they were fighting on too many fronts for one of the triad of characters to ALWAYS be the Warlord.

 

The appearance of the new Blackstone Fortress beyond the Western Fringe of Pacificus was another huge hook for me.

 

And again, the Torchbearer Fleet Crusade rules are some of the best damn rules writing GW has ever done, and absolutely would not be possible without the Primaris event that so many other people have said they hate. Especially since the Torchbearer Lore facilitated greater and more widespread use of the SoS- another supercool plot development.

 

New and emerging Lore was required to bring the Votann back into the fray as well, right? They ARE the Squats... but quite a lot of stuff has happened since those early encounters where the secrets of the Votann were unknown.

 

Respectfully @Captain Idaho, I think talking about what YOU do and don't like is absolutely cool, but you're probably going to run into problems when you try to tell people you don't know and have never met what THEY do and don't like. Ain't trying to pick a fight or anything... But speaking for others is a tricky business.

 

 

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

Hi there, it's me, I'm the guy who bought in because GW were finally advancing the setting. I'd looked into it several times over the years, thought that the models looked cool, but whenever I tried to dive into the lore through the various wikis I kept hitting roadblocks where stories that sounded really interesting were set up, then deliberately left sitting there because the setting was permanently stuck at 1 second to midnight. Hearing about the Gathering Storm from friends who were already actually in the game grabbed my interest in a big way though, because it seemed like things were actually finally happening.

 

We can argue about the execution all the live long day, and you'd likely have some good points about it. But that doesn't change the fact that the reason that it took until the very end of 7th/start of 8th for be to actually dive into the hobby was because I felt that the lore from what I had seen already was unfinished and unsatisfying, cool ideas but no meat to be found. That impression was not entirely accurate looking back, but I stand by it based on my position at the time as an outsider.

 

So, assuming you've now gone back, and you fully understand that nothing really changed, no characters are going to die, they will get upsized and 'get better', and its now just a smaller setting of Big Names Swinging...

 

How do you feel?

[ThaneOfTas]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

So, assuming you've now gone back, and you fully understand that nothing really changed, no characters are going to die, they will get upsized and 'get better', and its now just a smaller setting of Big Names Swinging...

 

How do you feel?

I recognise that nothing at the tabletop level changed that couldn't have been changed in another way. I also recognise that in the most zoomed out meta sense nothing changed or is going to change as the setting cannot end (baring an unlikely and catastrophic loss in profitably) nor can any faction be defeated on destroyed. 

 

But characters dying and factions being destroyed are not the only way to tell stories or to avoid leaving plot hooks perpetually dangling.

 

I've seen a lot of people in this forum decry the so called "marvelfication/mcu-ication" of the lore. And I'm left somewhat baffled by this. At a conceptual level, there does not to me seem to be any meaningful difference between Warhammer Lore and the likes of Transformers or GI Joe lore. Both are examples of wider expanded universes created primarily for the purpose of selling plastic toys and used as vehicles to tell cool stories about those toys. This is not a slight on any of the franchises mentioned to be clear either, simply an observation. But it does mean that complaining that your equivalent of a Saturday morning cartoon is currently becoming too much like a Saturday morning cartoon seems baffling at best. Hell I remember even back when I first started looking into 40k after being introduced to the idea by DoW Dark Crusade that people were calling Abbadon a Saturday Morning cartoon Villain. None of this is truely new. 

 

Of course status quo is king and no foundational changes can be expected, any more than I would expect Optimus Prime to be killed of and replac- oh, well... Anyway, that kind of proves my point, people don't want change but they do want more stories. Sitcom writers have understood this for ever, it's why the Friends lasted for however many seasons and why the Simpsons bloated corpse still gets wheeled out year by year.

 

To bring a long-winded story short. I'm fairly fine with how things are, I've got issues with how the tabletop game plays, and problems with some of the model designs. But by and large I find even the illusion of progressing lore to be vastly preferable to the apparent stagnation that kept me away. 

[Captain Idaho]

4 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

Respectfully @Captain Idaho, I think talking about what YOU do and don't like is absolutely cool, but you're probably going to run into problems when you try to tell people you don't know and have never met what THEY do and don't like. Ain't trying to pick a fight or anything... But speaking for others is a tricky business.

 

I suspect you've missed the nuance of the point I intended, in no small measure due in part at least to humour I utilised to dress it up in.

 

I was talking in hyperbole essentially, to emphasise that, despite small numbers either side (debatable numbers and impact I'm sure) the draw of 40K as a whole, from a consumer base viewpoint, is hobby and Space Marines. 

 

Bottom line is just that I'm afraid. Without Space Marines the sales look very different and likely diminish further with such a shrinking market despite claims from some that they've collected Tau all their lives. All three of them. 

 

The other aspect being "a hobby" is a draw in itself of course, but popularity of the concept is in part due to "Space Marines" and the market would be similarly smaller.

 

So the question of background (fluff) integrity becomes deeper - does the game have depth and quality to offset the losses that come when the pendulum swings into a cultural recession in Space Marines? Big name titles in far more lucrative industries see down turns, so sooner or later this hobby will take its hit too as it has in the past.

 

When that happens, when Space Marines are no longer the cool thing, is the constant shift of the sandbox and lack of a stable core in background material likely to erode resilience or enforce it?

 

Hmmm come to think of it, maybe I did put too much reliance on nuance in very limited prose here. We live , we learn. Probably. Maybe. Ah I'll do it again, who am I kidding. 

Edited yesterday at 09:30 AM by Captain Idaho

[SpecialIssue]

The agony and the ecstasy of 40k.

 

40k is named 40k for a reason - it should have stayed in 40k.

 

 

Commercially this all makes sense so I was not surprised when it started and the path that has been carved since.

 

Every few years I come back and say this it seems, but 40k's strength and its differentiator amongst the scifi pantheon was always that it was a titanic, incomprehensibly vast setting; not a massive, convoluted, calcified story. You and everyone else, from a 15 year old with badly painted custom chapter to Dan Abnett and the Imperial Armours, first and foremost are meant engage with the setting by carving out your own area within, using your own creativity and imagination. Not consume a serialised story that is imposed on everyone regardless of its quality or their taste. If you want to read Cato Sicarius, Marneus Calgar etc books, you can. But you don't have to in order to understand the deliberately and understandably very broad foundational movements or story trends. Continue down the path of focussing on story to drive the setting, and not the other way round, and the homework to keep up with the plot becomes unbearable, or the plot becomes so inconsequential that why even bother.

 

And realistically, how much can one character in this debased age of the Imperium across 10,000 light years of distance and time truly affect the galaxy? (psst its also part of the grim dark).

 

This focus on stories being driven by the setting and not the other way around  means the IP is never beholden to the quality of writing or missteps in storytelling, and is firmly to the taste of each fan - who can flexibly shift without consequence to focus on different things within the setting. Evergreen. Remember the C.S. Goto books, with backflipping Terminators? Everyone does, but if you didn't like it it wasn't necessary to engage with.

 

To those who say that the universe was boring without the story we have been foisted with - can you seriously not think of any gaps or opportunities in the lore to tell interesting new stories, introduce new units, or even focus on galactic-wide issues?

 

I also truly believe that creativity needs restraint with its details, otherwise it becomes convoluted chaos, before ending in bland dross or reactionary incoherence as every single creative well is tapped dry. See every. single. ip for this process.

 

The Custodes, Primarchs, Heresy, Emperor, etc. only gained their aura when they were held outside the reach of the norm, in the lore and the tabletop. I would have gate-kept those concepts to the end of the IP, as by holding them above the tabletop they contribute to the size of the universe. The universe is bigger than the tabletop. 10,000 years should not feel like a few decades in story-time.

 

But I grow old and am shaking my fist at the sky and into the void; look to the original intro blurb for this universe (that has since been itself scrubbed...)

 

"But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed..."

 

The galaxy turns, and all our high-ideals become corpse starch in the end.

Edited 21 hours ago by SpecialIssue

[Scribe]

3 hours ago, SpecialIssue said:

look to the original intro blurb for this universe (that has since been itself scrubbed...)

 

Which is so weird to me, there was nothing wrong with it before, but its been some time since I've bought anything so I'm not sure what it is now.

 

The 3rd edition rule book I think was my favourite version.

[phandaal]

46 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Which is so weird to me, there was nothing wrong with it before, but its been some time since I've bought anything so I'm not sure what it is now.

 

The 3rd edition rule book I think was my favourite version.

 

The whole "They shall be my Space Marines" quote from the Emperor of Mankind (now Emperor of Humankind) got scrubbed as well recently. Now it looks like something passed through several layers of sensitivity readers. Not sure who GW thinks it is supposed to appeal to now.

 

Edit @Scribe here you go, for your enjoyment. The new, sensitivity reader approved version:

 

Quote

"They shall be my finest warriors. Like clay I shall mould them and in the furnace of war forge them. They shall be of iron will and steel sinew. In great armour I shall clad them and with the mightiest weapons they will be armed. They will be untouched by plague or disease; no sickness shall blight them. They shall have such tactics, strategies, and machines that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Terror.

 

They are the Defenders of Humanity. They are my Space Marines and they shall know no fear.

 

- The Emperor of Humanity"
 

 

Have fun seeing which words they took out to make it as bland and paste-like as possible. 

 

Edited 18 hours ago by phandaal
Decolonizing my post in the name of Humxnity

[DukeLeto69]

From the moment the first few HH novels became big sellers it was inevitable GW would both lift the curtain on the myths and legends and provide stories from the POV of major players.

 

THAT was why Abnett invented the Rememberancers and Horus Rising tries to tell the story from an observers POV rather than get inside the heads of Primarchs. That soon fell away.

[DukeLeto69]

9 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

Which is so weird to me, there was nothing wrong with it before, but its been some time since I've bought anything so I'm not sure what it is now.

 

The 3rd edition rule book I think was my favourite version.

No surprise there ;-)

 

But yeah. It didn’t need changing. It was perfectly grim and dark!

[Ahzek451]

8 hours ago, ThaneOfTas said:

 

I've seen a lot of people in this forum decry the so called "marvelfication/mcu-ication" of the lore. And I'm left somewhat baffled by this. At a conceptual level, there does not to me seem to be any meaningful difference between Warhammer Lore and the likes of Transformers or GI Joe lore. Both are examples of wider expanded universes created primarily for the purpose of selling plastic toys and used as vehicles to tell cool stories about those toys. This is not a slight on any of the franchises mentioned to be clear either, simply an observation. But it does mean that complaining that your equivalent of a Saturday morning cartoon is currently becoming too much like a Saturday morning cartoon seems baffling at best. Hell I remember even back when I first started looking into 40k after being introduced to the idea by DoW Dark Crusade that people were calling Abbadon a Saturday Morning cartoon Villain. None of this is truely new. 

 

I'm baffled and your baffle.  Your essentially equating the 40k universe to a sat morning cartoon and that people are upset that the characterization has always been the same. Last I recall, sat morning cartoons didn't have polymastia sex daemons. Your missing that critical element that is Grimdark. People are upset that the Grimdarkness is slipping away. 

There is no doubt that the story is meant to help sell figures, but the maturity level and age demographic this setting had widely appealed for a large chunk of 40k's lifespan is not the same as Transformers and G.I. Joe. Back in 2nd edition and beyond, a lot of the fandom was made up of adults, sprinkled in with late highschoolers(I was one) and a few other exceptions. To many, 40k was a natural progression up in maturity for sci-fi goodness. It's where you went when you outgrew sat morning cartoons. Point being, it didn't start as a sat morning cartoon, it never was. It was Grimdark and had more mature and dark themes than a lot of other expanded universes and I think GW struggles to market to a younger demographic because of that. There certainly is a part of GW that regrets this in it's ongoing attempt to broaden the market pool(looks at warhammer adventure books). 

Optimus Prime "Freedom is the right of all sentient beings"
Duke "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle"
40k "BURN THE HERETIC!"

Edited 18 hours ago by Ahzek451

[Rain]

39 minutes ago, phandaal said:

 

The whole "They shall be my Space Marines" quote from the Emperor of Mankind (now Emperor of Humankind) got scrubbed as well recently. Now it looks like something passed through several layers of sensitivity readers. Not sure who GW thinks it is supposed to appeal to now.

 

Can't wait for 16th edition and the non-hierarchical community organizer of folxkind.

[phandaal]

1 minute ago, Rain said:

 

Can't wait for 16th edition and the non-hierarchical community organizer of folxkind.

 

Our focus group we hired to change the quote says this one is much better!

 

Edited my post to include the actual new quote. It is on par with Amazon nerfing James Bond on all of their posters recently.

 

Since this thread is about lore changes, I would like to see this new version of the quote mocked and then expunged, as it deserves to be. 

[ThePenitentOne]

@Captain Idaho Thanks for the response... And you're right- I tend to miss the larger point looking at specifics, and because I'm an information guy, I also frequently miss humour. I need to lighten up!

 

And while I care very little about Marines, it is certainly true that 40k would collapse without them. Even I have to concede that Deathwatch and Grey Knight DO continue to interest me- I was ecstatic to see that the new Deathwatch Decimus Kill Team is up, for example. So even I, the guy who constantly whines about Marines, wait for the announcements about them that DO affect me.

 

@SpecialIssue You wrote:

 

"You and everyone else, from a 15 year old with badly painted custom chapter to Dan Abnett and the Imperial Armours, first and foremost are meant engage with the setting by carving out your own area within, using your own creativity and imagination. Not consume a serialised story that is imposed on everyone regardless of its quality or their taste."

 

I agree, BTW, but I think my position is that even in the current era, nothing prevents me from doing exactly what I used to do before the plot started advancing with Gathering Storm. If you check out my Chronicle of Saint Katherine's Aegis posts in the Crusade Club, you'll see that the system I created does not exist anywhere in GW's Lore. The Desdaemona system is a backwater that's been ignored by the Imperium for 4 millennia. Guilliman is never going to go there. The ongoing narrative did not prevent me from doing that.

 

Now, as fate would have it, there ARE elements of the Lore I DO plan to use. In my original conception of this campaign, it was always going to be rediscovered by the Imperium at large eventually. But I am choosing to use the discovery of the Blackstone Fortress on the Western Fringe of Pacificus as the thing that motivates that discovery... So Taddeus the Purifier and Pious Vorne will find the System on their way to the BSF- they'll stop in as "Guest members" for a battle or two and then move on. They'll return to the Desdaemona system on their way back from the BSF.

 

But here's the kicker: I'm CHOOSING to do that because it's convenient, but I could have just as easily have had a random Explorator Crew make that discovery. In the day before the plot started moving, we chose what to use and what not to use. We still do. Don't like the Cicatrix Maledictum? Set your games in an area of the galaxy that's unaffected by it. Just as possible to do that as it ever was.

 

I happen to LIKE the Cicatrix, but the only Campaign book I bought this edition was Tyrannic War; when I saw how little rules content it included compared to 9th ed Campaign books, I decided they weren't worth my money, because rules are what I personally want out of a campaign book. The only BL book I've bought in YEARS is Adrian Tchaikovsky's Day of Ascension. I was no more forced to consume serialized books than I ever have been. They exist, but I choose whether or not to use them, just like I've been doing since '89.

 

Conceptually, I like Ynarri, though I think it's ridiculous that either Yvraine or the Visarch must be in every Ynarri army, so I'm choosing to ignore that stupid rule. If an opponent has a hard time with that, I'll just use a different army in battles with them. I've been doing THAT since '89 too.

 

I do know that it is possible to run into conflicts with other players about what is/ is not appropriate based on lore- if I'm fighting a battle outside the Pariah Nexus using Inquisitor Draxus during a time when she's SUPPOSED to be in the Pariah Nexus, some folks MIGHT call me out on that... But it's rare. Speaking of Draxus, some people will even let me attach her to a unit of Aeldari Rangers to represent her Radical tendencies... that's not permitted by the rules either, but it ain't going to stop me from doing it in a battle where my opponent is cool with it, and it never has.

 

Whether setting or story, the galaxy is still big enough to use the parts of the lore you like and ignore the parts you don't. If you and your opponent don't agree, it's usually simple enough to find a compromise.

 

[gideon stargreave]

Reading this thread again, I have a couple of things I’d like to add

 

1. Leading by story is a bad idea. It results in seasons for the game; it makes the setting feel small; it reduces the gravitas of big name characters

 

2. the setting is still massive

 

3. for me, minis and artwork are the lore

 

4. as a converter/ 28 scenester, ‘ruining’ the lore  has been a net positive. I get tonnes of minis to chop to bits in order to explore my own universe. I ignore the top down written word, and instead build my 40k bottom up from miniature inspiration. So what if they bring back the Lion;I get to use the mini (converted) as a cypher in my human  mini based fallen kill team. So what if ynnari sucks; I get to use them as pre fall eldar, or chop them up into Necromunda hive lords. So what if they add primaris; I get to have parts to make marines at a scale that suits them. So what if night lords get ponies; I get to…. 
 

 

5 in conclusion— lore can be cool, lore can suck, but what keeps me in this hobby is the ability to tell my own stories with the models that require lore to market them. 

[SillyDreadnought]

On 10/21/2025 at 7:25 PM, Captain Idaho said:

Ain't nobody reading the 4chan post about the Vigilus campaign and thought "dang, move over Tolken, Herbert and Shakespeare... we've got a new king."

To be fair I don't think anyone who read the Vigilus books thought the same either.

[Captain Idaho]

3 hours ago, ThePenitentOne said:

@Captain Idaho Thanks for the response... And you're right- I tend to miss the larger point looking at specifics, and because I'm an information guy, I also frequently miss humour. I need to lighten up!

 

Oh let's not pretend that I was totally clear! You were polite in your challenge and indeed, I cannot speak for others when I'm observing what I believe to be are trends accurate or not. Well, at least not consistently or accurately.