[PLEASE READ] Gauging interest…

[Kaede45]

As some may know, I started a club with the intention of starting a sort of group project, wherein I & anyone else would write an alternate timeline, complete with new Primarchs, new lore & new plot holes.

 

However, it has been some time now since I started the club & I have recruited… 1 person. My hope was to get at least 20+ people (1 for each of the Primarchs plus other faction & sub-faction leaders) to really make this a collaborative project.

 

Perhaps I was too naive in my hopes? Maybe I was far too ambitious? Mayhaps I am in way over my head?

 

Either way, it’s quite disheartening to start something & see it gain little to no traction. To be fair, I was quite pessimistic about it, though I hoped it wouldn’t fail, I kept bringing up the possibility. With seemingly no interest I’m considering abandoning the project & shutting down the club. That might be a bit extreme, but I don’t see any point in trying when nobody else is interested.

 

I'm not trying to make this a “pity party” or elicit sympathy (though I know my narcissism wants that), but I would like to gauge the interest in such a project by the wider community. So, I would like to ask everyone:

 

Are you interested in joining this project? If not, could you explain your reasoning? I’m open to criticism, both positive & negative (as long as it’s not nasty) to help me gauge interest & improve.

 

Anyways, thank you for your feedback & God bless!

[Sonder76]

Hey.

 

The proposal you suggest is huge and if im honest, not something i would have time for and its not an area of the hobby i have much interest in.

I like the lore but there is so much of it already and i dont have the time for the current stuff ... oh and i dont write fan fiction. 

 

The GW hobby has so many layers that although we are all here for a shared love of the setting we probably all have different area of actual interest.

Writing fan fiction is quite niche to begin with but creating a whole alternative time line to the 40k backstory is a huge undertaking. 

 

I personally have nothing to offer. I paint miniatures mostly but barely play the games due to time constraints. 

Space Hulk, Cursed City & Advanced Enhanced Heroquest are kinda my limits as i play these with my kid. 

 

Anyway thats my take on this. Good luck with your project. 

 

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

Simply put, I am not really interested in alternate timelines nor I have time and creativity to contribute. On a more constructive note, I thinkt that 20 semi-active members would be a lot for a club, especially on a forum (it's an oldfashioned and unpopular socials' type). What's more, alternate timelines are a niche within fanlore niche within a still somewhat niche hobby, where most people don't even read much lore beyond their codex and the rulebook. I don't think that You should expect such a high traction quickly. Maybe keep for a time being contributing yourself as the updates should make Your project more visible, but I would definetly lower my expectations for the member count.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

2 hours ago, Kaede45 said:

As some may know, I started a club with the intention of starting a sort of group project, wherein I & anyone else would write an alternate timeline, complete with new Primarchs, new lore & new plot holes.

 

However, it has been some time now since I started the club & I have recruited… 1 person. My hope was to get at least 20+ people (1 for each of the Primarchs plus other faction & sub-faction leaders) to really make this a collaborative project.

 

Perhaps I was too naive in my hopes? Maybe I was far too ambitious? Mayhaps I am in way over my head?

 

Either way, it’s quite disheartening to start something & see it gain little to no traction. To be fair, I was quite pessimistic about it, though I hoped it wouldn’t fail, I kept bringing up the possibility. With seemingly no interest I’m considering abandoning the project & shutting down the club. That might be a bit extreme, but I don’t see any point in trying when nobody else is interested.

 

I'm not trying to make this a “pity party” or elicit sympathy (though I know my narcissism wants that), but I would like to gauge the interest in such a project by the wider community. So, I would like to ask everyone:

 

Are you interested in joining this project? If not, could you explain your reasoning? I’m open to criticism, both positive & negative (as long as it’s not nasty) to help me gauge interest & improve.

 

Anyways, thank you for your feedback & God bless!

Interests vary a lot. I am sort of in the same boat as you. A month ago I offered to do a RPG session which was a crossover of Vietnam War/Shadowrun [1st; 35th Anniversary] littered with easter eggs and anecdotes of the 60s and 80s respectively. Only four people were interested and one turned out to be a drama queen in chat and disqualified himself for the session one week in advance. So we did the session with three players. Everybody had a great time and those were by the way complete strangers at the table. Though despite the good experience none of them asked for a follow-up session.

 

So what will I do? I will have to put the story notes, characters and their AI-generated images in a folder and save ´em up for next year´s RPG convention where I will have a far wider audience to continue my story with different people. And what should you do? You should do the same. Become a member on different forum websites and ask there for interested parties. Otherwise you will have to shelf the project entirely.

[Jings]

These types of projects usually flop unless the proposer has already worked out the broad strokes in a way that sparks interest. Your proposal is ambitious, sure, but it's large in scope with very little to lure people in beyond the not particularly novel Alternative Heresy conceit. Without an interesting gimmick or sufficient meat for contributors to sink their teeth into it's unlikely to gain any traction. It's effectively one of those /tg/ Alternate Heresy posts where they blast through it in a thread and forget about but without the ease of access and corresponding traffic. 

Edited Tuesday at 06:51 PM by Jings

[Shard of Magnus]

I already struggle to find time to paint, play, and convert models. Those are more appealing activities to me personally and seem less of a time commitment than a project like this - it only impacts me when I don’t hobby for weeks.
 

That said, the storytelling side of an alternate timeline could be interesting to read. The Dorian Heresy is a related concept and was fun to read. The mirror universe of Star Trek, Man in the High Castle (book or series) and so many other examples highlight how alternate universes can provide great narratives. 
 

Not sure how much you are marketing the club (and progress) outside of the club forum. You might get more participants if people see there is momentum.

[Scribe]

Probably a few factors.

 

1. Anyone interested is going to want to run the show themselves.

 

2. It's a ton of effort.

 

3. And this is mine. I'm interested in the real timeline, not fan fiction or post 8th abomination. ;)

[ThaneOfTas]

I like the Primarchs and legions that exist in canon. If I'm going to go to the effort of writing fanfiction, it'll be for the version of the universe that I and any potential readers are already invested in. 

 

Also to be frank, writing fanfiction as part of a group project sounds like an awful time. Group projects are difficult enough when there's a strong unifying motivating factor like grades or your job, something that is purely voluntary though? I'll pass I'm afraid.

 

As ambitious as it is, this is really something that I would suggest that you try and work more on yourself if it is an idea that you're excited about.

[sitnam]

I love alternative heresies, I just don't have the willpower to participate in group projects. I can barely get my own army lore written down these days!  I do wish you best of luck and will definitely keep tabs on it if you go foward

[ThePenitentOne]

I wanted to wait a while and give the post time to breathe- I'm the guy who joined the club, and the comments I posted there explained my limitations to my participation.

 

I run a club of my own, and some of the ideas being posted there are things I've been working on since the beginning of 8th, and the seeds of that work were actually planted in the Halcyon days of 2008! So my advice @Kaede45, is that this stuff takes time.  Now, there have been community projects on B&C that were VERY focused, and achieved their stated goals on a much shorter timeline... But those projects had tighter parameters and a narrower scope.

 

I see your club as being more of a passion project that evolves over time, and has a loose structure that allows it to include conflicting ideas from which folks can pick and choose the pieces they incorporate and the pieces they leave behind. It's possible that someone will create and post the backstory for a single Primarch and their Chapter that makes me interested in Marines other than those who have, to varying degrees beased on edition, been defined as Chambers Militant Inquisition. And if that happens, I could easily become more than a spectator who offers moral support.

 

Heck, maybe my contribution could just be something that ports Greyknights and Deathwatch into the Heresy era. Or, like, maybe I'm the guy who just adds Orks and Eldar to the Heresy era to fix the horrible mistake that GW made when they chose to exclude those factions from it. But to me, your project seemed like its timeline would be measured in years, not months. So don't rush it, and don't sweat it.

 

I've been playing 40k since '89, and I suspect I'll still be here in another decade. I've refused to let the exclusion of Court and Beast units from the 10th ed Drukhari dex force me to rage quit, but there's a lot riding on the 11th ed treatment of Drukhari. But what my break from the game for 6th and 7th editions taught me is that while my participation may wax and wain, the game itself isn't going anywhere. I quit because GW did Sisters dirty not to terribly wrong after doing GSC even dirtier.

 

And when GW woke up, realized the error of their ways, and remedied the situation, I came back. And if all of the Court, Beast and Grotesque units stay gone in 11th, I will punish GW again by removing my dollars from the hobby, and eventually GW will come crawling back to me once they realize the mistakes they've made. But I will still be here, watching and waiting for them to get it right again... Only to screw it up again four editions later and force another rage quit, because THAT'S the cycle.

 

You may not get a post in the club for a month, a year.... And you might not feel the desire to post there either... Until you do, and then you might pick up 4 new members in a matter of months, go through a "Golden Age" that sees MASSIVE deleopment for a year... Only to fade again. I will STILL be there.

 

Will you?

 

 

 

 

[Arikel]

Just not what I would be interested in. I have enough trouble keeping up with current lore through lack of interest as it is, I have never been a big fan of the fiction side of warhammer and felt it ruined the setting for the most part anyway, what used to be mystery is surely detailed now in some horus heresy novel.
 

Good luck in your endeavours though. I could see a small handful of people coming together to hash out an alternate history, but it will take time to build that, during which you will need to update and move forward with the project yourself, in order to attract those people .

[Antarius]

Echoing what others have said, I think it's simply not very realistic to find a lot of people willing and able to dedicate the necessary amount of energy and time to a project like this.

To elaborate a bit, it's both a huge project and a niche within a niche (within a niche, if you consider the whole hobby niche to begin with), so that limits your audience from the get go.

There's also another obstacle that any homebrew project faces - everything you do that deviates from the established lore is a potential division point, and you're effectively asking strangers to trust a stranger here. I mean at this point it's basically "maybe you'll do good work and maybe you won't" - which is not to say that you won't, but that's the calculus that anyone wanting to join you has to make before hitching their wagons to your project. Bluntly speaking, those aren't good odds for anyone without an established track record (I mean Andy Chambers or Jervis Johnson would get a comparative lot of members, but it'd still be quite few compared to "mainstream" 40k), especially not if the project isn't very clearly defined (which I guess is sort of the point here and that isn't bad, it just narrows your odds further).

 

Finally, tastes differ and there's only so much time and attention you can spent on all the different elements and stories you find awesome about the hobby, so you're effectively competing with everything else for people's hobby time. Again, it's not that you shouldn't do it, I think creative projects are wonderful and can be super fulfilling (as well as super frustrating if they're your own), but it's not going to be an easy sell.

So, my advice to you, assuming you want it, would be:
- Accept that you're going to be doing almost all of the work and that people won't have the same drive as you, regarding your project. The flipside is that you get to do what you want with a project that's your brainchild. The prize is that you get to do your thing and that when you're done, you will have created something that wasn't there before.

 

- If you want to continue with your own project and recruit people to take part, flesh it out some more. Show people that a) this is a real project, not just a loose idea that might or might not materialise, and b) you're capable of doing a lot of good work and you're in it for hte long haul, so they should get on board. This will make it more likely that a few people take notice, but accept that you will still have to be the driving force and the one who sees this through on your own, if need be. That's just the nature of the beast, with these things.

- Alternatively, If you don't want to go it (mostly) alone, look for the people, not the project. Collaboration is amazing if you can find someone with (mostly) similar tastes and who is willing to put in the same amount of work you are. But it's very, very difficult to find someone creative, talented and driven who's as gung-ho for your project as you are. Bluntly speaking, that kind of person is going to have their own projects that they feel as strongly about as you do with yours, so they're unlikely to throw those away to work on your idea. So the best bet is to start from scratch with a common project that you can define together or make up as you go along.

 

I really hope this is not discouraging or that it seems dismissive of you and your ideas, because that is very much not my intention. It's just my experience based on how I myself, have had many (more or less) wonderful ideas flounder and started many projects that I did not see through, simply because I wasn't committed enough or didn't go in with the right perspective (and then there's my monumental laziness, of course). So let me finish by saying: you can do it! It's just a question of how and if you want it enough.

[Antarius]

Oh and also - you're not reaching a lot of people here. That's obviously something to keep in mind too, before you get too pessimistic about your idea. But if you need 20+ people, you're going to have to cast a wider net.

[Moonstalker]

I'm someone who has something of the opposite problem.  I've written and drawn comics, stories, etc, and I generally have to turn down offers to help.  I tell people, "No thank you, this is my sandbox.  I'm happy that you like what I'm building here and you're welcome to look, but please just let me build my thing how I want it built."

 

From that perspective, the advice I would give you is that you just need to get started.  Make something that excites and interests people - the concept alone being enough to draw in a lot of creatives and get them jamming together on it is really rare.  Putting out something that gets people interested, that gets one guy to say, "Hey, that's cool!  I've got this neat idea that'd go really well with that..." is what you need.

 

You also need to overcome a stigma.  Frankly, big idea fan projects are a dime a dozen, and most of them end up in shallow graves - especially when they rely on big commitments from the community and aren't just one guy's passion project.  It's quick and easy to dream up some structure and a bunch of roles for everyone to fill, but making something takes time, effort, and skill.  Coordinating everyone and keeping the whole project moving and going generally the same direction takes even more.  If there are people out there who are interested, it helps to demonstrate that you have the skill and commitment necessary to see the project through and that you're bringing something to the table.

 

For instance, I have some friends who wanted to make a visual novel game.  They wanted me to do the character art for it.  I made some noncommittal noises about, "Maybe if my supporters on patreon get behind it."  Told them they should get a vertical slice done, use some stand-in art, figure out all the characters, poses, expression sets, etc that I'd need to draw.  These friends went about organizing themselves; one of them is a writer, another is a programmer, they naturally have the skills you'd need to make a video game, so the roles they'd fill in the team were obvious.  But nothing ever happened.  The writing never progressed beyond a basic outline, I'm not sure the programmer even made a project folder or git for it.  The project died quietly because despite having the skills, they didn't have the commitment.

 

I didn't jump into the project because I've seen that same thing happen time and time again.  But y'know what?  If just one of them shed the rest of the dead weight of the team, bought Visual Novel Maker on Steam, and just started making something?  Yeah, I might've start contributing.  Maybe it would've dragged the other people on the project forward too, and gotten them to kick in some effort, maybe it still would've died.  If you want this to have a chance at success, you need to get in there and lead the way.  You need to make something and get people excited about participating, and show that what they put in won't be wasted effort.  An empty list of roles to fill and things that need to be written isn't making something.  A one paragraph blurb isn't making something.  Write how your Bertram and Chelsea characters meet.  Write how they figure out there's something wrong with the timeline.  Write about how the Ordo Chronos came to exist, or how your Inquisitor was inducted into it.  Write about a mystery or anomaly without an answer, that gets people speculating.  Do all of that, with patience (you started two weeks ago and you're complaining?) and persistence, and might start building something.

[Kaede45]

First off, I want to thank everyone who responded.

 

I want to apologize for the overall vibe of my post as, while it may not have been intentional consciously, I’m sure it was subconsciously.

 

My main fear when I started the project was that my ADHD would cause me to lose interest in the project rather quickly if there was no interest from others. It’s a common trend for me that I become hyper fixated on something for a time, only to lose interest & move on to something else, abandoning what I had done, before starting the cycle anew. A trend that has gotten worse as I have fewer friends than I did in high school & even fewer who share my interests outside the internet, not to mention a family that often views my interests as detrimental… but that’s neither here nor there. I also have depression & a narcissistic self-loathing complex, which is why I constantly seek validation & get upset when others don’t comment on my posts.

 

I think part of the reason I even decided to make the project was because of my Christian faction, Ordo Celestia, & wanting to give them a place in the universe. I have published a couple of fan stories on the forum & they weren’t exactly well received, on top of wanting to flesh out the Primarch I had chosen for them & not wanting to step on the toes of what has been long established. I've seen on YouTube an incredibly alarming amount of people talking about those who infiltrated the hobby & started making changes that antagonize the established fan base & attempt to force them out. A trend which has already been seen in other forms of entertainment. I don’t want to be one of those people who walks in & seeks to change everything to fit my worldview, but I also like changing things to better facilitate my own enjoyment &/or morals. I like the grimdark setting, but I also prefer stories with clearly defined good & evil. I don’t mind that the imperium are not all good guys, in fact having good people in an evil faction can be used to make a compelling antiestablishment narrative that shows the dangers of blind obedience & the necessity of doing what’s right over what’s commanded of you.

 

All of this to say, I’m sorry for shoving my mental issues & real world views on you guys & thank you all for humoring me & giving me feedback. Seriously, it really helps me to put things in perspective & helps me sort out my feelings. I’ll leave the club up & open, maybe I’ll throw in my own ideas or setup some more characters to hopefully inspire others to contribute &/or give feedback & mayhaps one day it can grow organically.

 

Until then, thank you very much for your time & as always, God bless!

[Xenith]

It's hard to start something from the ground up. You need a leader to drive things forwards, ad once things get traction, they will naturally attract more people. I'd look to @apologist's threads and clubs, such as the War of the False Primarch to see how one can get a club or group off the ground. 

 

Generally you need a good narrative hook, and maybe not enough people were hooked by your idea. 

[Arikel]

 Heyos @Kaede45 The best part about the internet and especially the BnC is that you can generally archive stuff here, disappear for several weeks/months/years , and when your hyperfixation swings back to 40k you come back and it’s all waiting here again for you, with almost everything just where you left it. Easy enough to pick back up anyways. Admittedly the site may close someday, but hopefully not before my quest to finally finish up my Iron boots 4th company, their Armata Strigoi allies, and their story is complete. It’s been roughly 20 years now though, but all of it has been time well spent in my own opinion, though I am sure no one much cares about it much at all, except me. 

 

My tendency to fall off for long periods of time is another reason I wouldn’t much join in to a group project like yours. While I always have 40k running round my brain, my focus definitely ebbs and falls and switches frequently, both naturally and through the realities of existence(I have made an executive decision to not have kids when I grow up, the 4 I have now are more than enough thank you). I always come back to it though, so I’m happy to have a place I can come to, open the door so to speak, and all my projects and pictures and stuff is there just where I left it, an unpolished hideous lump of ideas that I can once again prod and poke at and maybe convince some unsuspecting internet denizen to spend time reading and maybe even commenting on. With any luck it’s entertaining enough they don’t feel their time had been wasted;)

 

If it’s something you want to do, just start sketching out ideas in a blog attached to your club, and see what happens.

 

 

[Antarius]

On 10/9/2025 at 5:10 PM, Kaede45 said:

I've seen on YouTube an incredibly alarming amount of people talking about those who infiltrated the hobby & started making changes that antagonize the established fan base & attempt to force them out. A trend which has already been seen in other forms of entertainment. I don’t want to be one of those people who walks in & seeks to change everything to fit my worldview, but I also like changing things to better facilitate my own enjoyment &/or morals.

First off, don't worry about being one of those people - if they actually exist outside of nerdrage/paranoia, they're a vanishingly small minority and creating your own lore or fanfiction absolutely don't make you one of them. People have always had different takes on the lore and people have always created their own stories and characters withing the broader 40k setting - it's just a question of how radically yous diverge, but even full-fledged alternate 40K universes and timelines are absolutely fine; it's your hobby and you can and should do what makes you happy.

Personally, I find the appeal of the setting to be that there aren't really any good guys (or rather, that there may be individuals we can recognise as heroic, but not actually "good" factions), so I'm sort of at the opposite end of the scale from you, but that doesn't mean your idea is bad or shouldn't be realised - I just won't be part of it, but I am 100% supportive of you giving your ideas a go. There are definitely people out there who don't feel that way, but you shouldn't let them dictate what you do and don't do with your own hobby.

As for the focus thing, I think most of us know the feeling of being all fired up on a new project and then getting distracted. Your situation might be more extreme in that regard, but most hobbyists will know and understand the issue; so if you do decide to go ahead, I think your project has equally good odds as most other projects - you might just need to take more precautions against burnout and distraction and structure your project accordingly.