The impending Black Crusade has driven me to library, and again unleashed two of the classics, Slaves to Darkness and The Lost and the Damned. In my opinion, two of the best books written on chaos (and some of its foes). The vast amount of background information is a treat and the chaos renegade warbands offer tons of interesting material for both players and GM's.

If you have the books, or are forced to look on the internet for information, give them a peek. Great for Dark Heresy as well, obviously. Of course, being GW produce there are some inconsistencies here and there, but after all, it is chaos...But extra's as the history of the God-Emperor (most of it not even known in game), the future of Man as a psychic race and the danger of a new chaos power being born by the fall of Man are just some of the tidbits on offer.

Friedrich van Riebeeck, Navigator Pirmus, Heart of the Void

I think the fate of any race is to fully develop psychic powers and create a chaos god for themselves.

I remember buying these and a couple of the early WHFRPG adventures at a 2nd hand bookstore back in around 1991 for practicaly nothing at the time, mostly using them for D&D game inspiration. Plus the art in them was kind of cool.

Since then, they get dragged out for the mutation tables, a lot

They offer vast amount of deep background and some good ideas in their Renegade warbands. Give them a look, they can really complement Black Crusade well.

FvR

I recall buying them for like $90 a piece off of ebay less than a decade ago. I am glad that somethings from them got retconned away...mostly because I think the Sensei and the Star Child don't fit the current iteration of the 40k universe.

I don't mind the Sensei and Starchild as concepts, (they're extremely lame as far as naming goes like a lot of things from the era) but obscure enough that I can use them in very long term meta-plots/end of the world as you know it events, where all but the very oldest WH players in the group won't have a clue about them. In hindsight, I think a lot of the 40K lore has diminished a little away from its more original story lines, fluff and become a bit dumbed down over the years to the point I got bored with it years ago (along with ugly, expensive mini's). If anything, we can thank the current lot of FFG products for giving it a bit of integrity, depth and wider appeal that it didn't have before.

Fully agreed there. The calculated strategy of increasing the appeal of WH40k for younger players has not really enhanced the background or the logic. Especially for the often quite discerning roleplayers. And not that I am against a 12 year old trying out Space Marines, but you cannot really offer them the mature background, complexity and themes that I for one need in an RPG.

FvR

Hi,

Agreed here too. Spent years resenting GW for ripping out all the stuff I loved and dumbing it down. Have since realised it did at least make sense busines wise, and very glad they have finally allowed an rpg option to be leased out. Took bloody long enough though.

Still remember our group getting these two books as 14yr olds. And how much I laughed when my mates mum banned him from reading it after she caught a glimpse of a particularly fetching lass sporting some promotional slaaneshi fashion, and an "I'm completely f***ing insane but you know you want it" look in her eyes...

I would like to point out that WD 107 contains an errata for Slaves to Darkness (since inconsistencies etc. had been mentioned).

Alex

MKX said:

Thing is, the 40k material in the Realms of Chaos books wasn't meant to have been in there; Chaos wasn't part of 40k, originally, nor was it intended to be (otherwise it would have been mentioned in the rulebook, as it was in the WFB and WFRP rulebooks of the era), and while the "damage" is done, not all of the concepts in there were accepted and retained. It should be remembered that the late 80s were an extremely eclectic period for the 40k setting, which hadn't been defined in any coherent sense whatsoever.

The move to 2nd Edition was an opportunity to sit down, rearrange things and tidy up the insane heap of random background that the last half-decade or so had produced, and more than a few things were confined to "don't like that idea, let's put it in a box in the corner and not talk about it ever again" - such as the Squats, after many attempts to do something with them - and I don't honestly blame the designers of the time for doing that, even if chunks of the fanbase inevitably regard "removing something I liked that the designers apparently didn't in hindsight" as "dumbing down".

I don't think the 40K lore has been 'dumbed down' at all. Really, it's much more consistent that it was in the earlier days. It is also much stronger thematically than the sort of scatter-shot approach it took in the early days.

It certainly hasn't been made more 'kid friendly'. It's one of the least kid friendly settings around, there are no 'good guys' whatsoever, and (with the exception of the Eldar), no 'pretty' people running around either.

Let's just say that if I would run a Slaaneshi themed adventure, I would not do it for 12 year olds. Not that it will devolve into smut and silly giggling, but if Fomori can do it, Slaanesh can do it as well.

On the other hand, it is so that there was a load of different material out there at the end of the '80. Lots has disappeared. Squats are one thing, Fimir another, and who remembers Zoats? On the whole, they did a reasonable job in keeping things consistent (well, barring the fact that companies were conquering planets, but that is tabletop focused lore) and removing really strange oddities, but I still like the 'adventurous' feel of those old produkts that were not sleekly fitted in the production line, aiming for as much sales as possible. Not that I blame them, they are after all a company. But the athmosphere of those two old books, darn, if FFG get's close to them they are doing a real good job. And I am looking forward too it.

FvR

I remember zoats. And sometimes bits of the old fluff come back and make cameo appearances like the sensei being mentioned in the 3rd ed Rulebook or the zoats being mentioned as Hive Fleet Colossus (I believe) in a recent Tyranid Codex.

If anything I think 40k Lore has been made much better than it used to be, and the Tabletop minis game has been dumbed down to appeal to 12 year olds.

XiMao626 said:

I believe the lore is definitely better. I've played the wargame since the second edition box came out, it is more simple now. That's a good thing though as it was needlessly complex in the early days. I don't see how anything with such an expensive buy-in could ever appeal to 12 year-olds.

Actually they are bring Zoats and Fimir back for the Storm of Magic WFB expansion.

And I recall a later story about how the Inquisition wiped out a supposed Tzeentch cult calling themselves the Sensei, that makes me laugh.

Draggah said:

Because some 12 year olds have rich parents that don't curb their kid's spending. Also to some 12 year old boys, Guns and Killing things is cool.

Firstly, Fomori coming back!?! WOOT! Favourite WFB/WFRP thing ever for me.

Draggah, Eldar may be pretty on the outside, but remember that on the inside they are highly manipulative creatures that sacrifice one of their own to awaken a blood god of war, as well as some of them focussing their lives, even sacrificing their own personalities, to the dedicated pursuit of war. Their weaponry can be regarded as among the most horrible weapons used in 40K (harle's kiss, death spinner, d-cannon etc) and just to top it all off, an argument can be made that they are necromancers as well.

Finally, as to the good old Realms of Chaos books, great books indeed! MK, mine weant missing (thanks to the person that made other books of mine appear at a 2nd hand bookstore at a guess). No chance those ones have my name in it is there?

Speaking of fimirs, I planned to do them IN SPACE! for a RT campaign.

Major alien races (Eldar, Orks, Tau,...) are supposed to be only a part of the alien. Many of them are in small numbers (compared to them), so I wanted to make an adventure with a different one. And, I thought it would be fun to transplant a fantasy archetype, and a bizarre one. Just for fun.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I fully understand the designers have to streamline rules and so forth to make it easier to play, but in a sense I think that takes a lot away from the hobby of Wargaming and moves it into an area better catered for by Real Time Strategy PC games. My overall impression having come from Rogue Trader, 2nd Ed and Necromunda eras before moving back to Fantasy, then in the contemporary period as a GM hunting around for ideas, is that everything from Codex's has been generalised to the point that different species, troops and weaponry is more or less the same, with a different name and not a lot to differentiate them from an equivalent force tactically.

A lot of the fluff + rules backing them up is next to non-existent anymore and (subjectively) some of it from the most recent releases is just plain awful... in fact it goes past that into being extremely painful in some cases. Its not so much the reduction of choices as they did add more army lists like Dark Eldar and Witch Hunters, but they're really just more "human analogues in space" and sadly, that only really leaves things like Tyranids that are genuine xenos... more annoyingly, they're just dumb, bitey bugs with no personality and not really worthy of good old fashioned loathing! Not all is lost. Forge World still produce some excellent material, convincing me to part with a couple of minor organs to purchase it is another story.

"MK, mine weant missing (thanks to the person that made other books of mine appear at a 2nd hand bookstore at a guess). No chance those ones have my name in it is there?"

Actually, I didn't know you in 1992 when I bought them! ...which is both a scary reflection of that time period and more worrisome, I've found a lot of the WHFRPG stuff from that era digging around, but the particular books in question are either buried under a tonne of moldering 2000AD comics from the same era, or "loaned" to someone I last saw in about 1997 with a rampaging smack addiction. Yes I wasn't real happy about all my Shadowrun and CP2020 stuff being nicked by probably the same arsehole that nicked your books, if I do see him again, there may be a kicking in order

We may both be, as they say, "f**ked"

Lord Ork said:

Oooh... oohhh... I'm going weak at the knees. Consider this idea well and truly *yoinked* for my own game. Lets teach them PC's to fear the mist!

Hygric said:

That's pretty much my point, no good guys and even the 'pretty people' are psychopathic jerks.

@MKX- 3rd edition was too simplified, and it's Codices were indeed sucky. The newest edition seems to have reversed a lot of that, while still maintaining a streamlined set of rules. I think they realized that they went too far, and moved more toward the center. I skipped 4th edition entirely.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

At the risk of reflogging dead horses, rationalising a disparate background into a unified theme (the process you describe, which is a perfectly reasonable and logical thing for GW to have done) doesn't necessarily require whole lines of product and background to be cast aside in such a way that they are no longer compatible with the ongoing setting. I speak (you realise with a groan of disappointment and a roll of the eyes) of the Squats of course.

Speaking as someone who dropped a good £250 on a GW Epic Squat army back in the day, I was more than a little unhappy with glib comments along the lines of "oh they got eaten by the Tyranids" from GW developers who just didn't like the idea of them and couldn't be bothered to support them.

"I can't be bothered to support them" is of course one thing. I could have lived with that. Instead GW went with the "Let's write it into the setting that they're all dead" option. What was originally an offhand remark by a senior developer has crept its way into BL novels (the updated reprint of the Inquisitor Draco trilogy) and by extension the wider background.

There are aspects of the setting I dislike and can live without, but I tend to think that if people are likely to have spent money on them, and indeed invested in them, (by, for example, painting hundreds of the now useless tiny little plastic b*stards ) then those aspect of the setting should be respected.

As Andy Chamber once said, the 40k Universe is a big place, and it's simply not necessary for definitive statements (like "the squats are all dead") to be made about it.

I fully accept that my posting this moan, I am squarely indentifying myself as a member of the fan dumb moaning about GW "removing something I liked that the designers apparently didn't in hindsight," but I don't believe that in this case this was an example of "dumbing down" so much as just a really dumb way to cease support of a product line that could have had a life of its own for years. The Squats weren't hurting anyone, poor little devils, they could have just been left to gently die the same peaceful death as Orlocks, Spirers, Gorkamorka etc etc... Instead they were murdered in their beds by GW and the Tyranids!

Anyway, these are just the bitter moanings of someone so incredibly tight (you couldn't pull a needle out of my backside with a tractor) that I get antsy whenever I waste money!

Ouch, you really got....errrm, let's phrase it more delicately, they really did you a disservice there. Please accept a foaming mug of the best Squat beer the internet can bring to you.

FvR

Lightbringer said:

That "glib comment", if memory serves, was made (at a Games Day, IIRC) only after several years of quietly ignoring the Squats and being subjected to an almost non-stop barrage of "when is the Squat codex coming out?" for all those years, because they were tired of being asked the same question over and over again. Even after that, it took years more for it to actually appear in any published background (and even then, only very rarely), given that it was essentially just a glib comment made to try and quell a persistent and irritating question.

So, in truth, the Squats were left to go quietly... but a vocal part of the community (later joined by a part of the community who thought it'd be funny to keep asking the same old question) unwittingly caused that plan to fall apart.

As for Gorkamorka and the various elements of Necromunda - GW still sells Necromunda models, and the planet Necromunda is still in the 40k background. Similarly, the distant world of Angelis, upon which Gorkamorka was set, is still part of the setting, and the Gorkamorka rules themselves were available as a free download from the old Specialist Games website until it was closed down during GW's big website reshuffle a few years ago. While they're not adding anything new, those elements still exist and are acknowledged in some form (Gorkamorka, for example, added fairly significantly to the background and style of the Orks, even if the game itself never really went anywhere).

A better comparison is the Sensei and the Star Child - other elements that GW have chosen to ignore in the hope that they'll go away.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

So I guess we're agreeing really: GW handled the Squats differently than they did all other "discontinued" aspects of the setting. I have some sympathy for developers getting irritated with being asked the same old question over and over again, I guess... Although I remain disappointed over the way they handled that irritation. After all, handling an occasionally irritating fanbase (hell, I'm me, and even I find me annoying at times) is part of the fallout of having a popular product and a fanbase at all.

And one imagines that this whole episode has influenced how GW handles discontinued game lines: "Don't handle it like we handled the Squats."

And I would stress that I'm not one of those who's vocal about the squats because I think mentioning them is funny: I'm a genuine Squat fan, with a large Epic Squat army. I always loved those hairy little fellas, and I'm sorry to see them go!

I do think that the best way for GW to redeem itself (not that they'll like the suggestion that they need to) on this front would be for Forge World to write a huge 3 volume Vraksalike history of how the Squats coped/failed to cope with a colossal Tyranid invasion, with accompanying Forge World minis, and some guidance on the subsequent masssive Inquisitorial coverup.

Not that GW will ever consider it, but it's nice to dream!