The Thing About Fans Is…

…they’re a curse and a blessing. On the downside, they’ll over-analyse everything you’ve created, ask awkward questions, put words in your mouth, misquote you for their own ends, claim you’re not up to the job and generally make themselves a pain in the arse. On the upside, they always deliver the spark of passion that motivates you to carry on. They’ll tell you when you get it right, and let you know just how much they enjoy what you produce, or what a difference you’ve made to their lives. For instance, I’ll never forget the teenager in the Netherlands who thanked me for my work on Warhammer 40,000, a hobby which helped him to avoid falling into drug addiction. Not every story is that dramatic, but when they tell you that you made them laugh and cry, that they had to turn the next page and couldn’t put down the book, it’s a great feeling.

Fans Care

They really do care about whatever it is they’re a fan of, which is both their moment of glory and their downfall. On the positive side, this means as a creator you can draw on that enthusiasm, take it as a reward. On the negative side, this means that sometimes fans develop a love-hate relationship with the thing that they are fanatical about.

I have a friend who is a fan of a local football team. The result of a match can define his mood for hours, even days. When they win he’s happy, when they lose, he’s sad. More often than not it’s the latter. He has a season ticket and goes to every home match, often just to shout at the players and referee, but occasionally to celebrate a goal. As fans go, he’s reasonably self-aware, never says that he could do the job better and always tries to be a realist about the team’s abilities and potential. That doesn’t stop him from saying ‘I hate football’ after a bad Saturday afternoon. His team has been lacklustre, the decisions went against them, the manager seems clueless and there’s no end to the dark tunnel of despair… And you know what? At that moment he really does hate football, I’m sure of it. And what else? Next Saturday, he goes again, with hope if not expectation, and goes through the same rollercoaster of highs and lows.

Why does he do this? What manner of person would visit such self-torture upon themselves? A fan, of course. He’s not going to abandon his team, as a supporter it’s his job to go there every week to cheer and sing and boo, and if he does that then he knows he’s done as much as he can. As much as he might hate every game, despise the manager, players and even his fellow fans, he loves football and cares about it.

The same is true of all other fans. Sports fans are fairly widespread, but there are fans of all sorts of things, from gaming, to writing, to art, to music, to tv shows and stage musicals. To listen to some of them (or frequent discussion forums and message boards) you might think that some people exist purely to be negative about something. They constantly bitch about movies, have the lowest expectations about the next series of X or feel that the Book Y is rubbish. They never seem happy. That’s because…

Fans Want Perfection

Most fans don’t expect perfection, but deep down they want their experience of whatever it is they are fans of to exactly match what they want from it. My football fan friend may not expect or even hope his club to play brilliantly from front to back, scoring a dozen spectacular goals, and refund his ticket price for being such a loyal supporter, but somewhere that’s what he wants.

Fans Love Detail

In the quest for that perfection, fans will break something down into every constituent atom and analyse it piece-by-piece, looking for the flaws. Take the most ardent ‘fanboy’ (surely there are ‘fangirls’ as well?) who will defend his (or her) love to the death, and even they will be able to tell you something that flaws their love, be it ever so small. It might be just that one tiny thing, if only it had been done in this way or that, that mars the perfection.

For the others, the so-called ‘haters’, imperfection abounds. One might think they must despise everything about their chosen object of fandom when one encounters the sort of vitriol unleashed. Sometimes the question gets asked, ‘If you hate X so much, why are you on this board/ at this convention/ stalking this author?’ Because they are fans! See my friend earlier, who can hate football seven days earlier and yet still queues up at the turnstile.

Fans are People Too

Why do fans exhibit such ridiculous behaviour? It is because they are people and people are, without exception, rubbish. We are. To greater or lesser degrees we’re each a roiling bag of self-aggrandisement, self-pity, self-involvement, self-destruction and self-loathing. Some people are glass half-full; some are glass half-empty. Some are mean-spirited and vocal; some are generous of heart and meek. Some wonder how the world is going to continue revolving when they die; some wonder if the world even knows they exist.

If MagnoliaFan wasn’t bitching about Jay and Silent Bob on Poopscoop.com, he’d be bitching about his family, or his neighbours, or his work colleagues. If Fanboy_28 wasn’t singing the praises of Stargate: Atlantis (poor soul) he’d be singing the praises of his country, or the company he works for, or the local council planning decisions. They do this because they’ve made their fandom part of their lives, with all the attendant frustrations and fulfillment that come with that.

Moaning in the Pub

It used to be the case that people would air their views and heartaches and triumphs amongst friends and colleagues  in the pub (or other venue of choice). They might disagree with each other, fall out, argue and do all the other things people do, but they start out with a (generally) self-selecting audience.

Now we have the interweb, with a potential audience of millions. Our voice can carry to distant corners of the globe (this has always confused me, globes and corners…) to find both the like-minded and the opposingly-viewed.

There are two big differences between ‘net communication and ‘real life’ communication. First is that the audience isn’t confined to those that know us personally. Strangers can wander into the conversation at any point. This means that you don’t know them and, more importantly, they don’t know you. The only judge they have of you, your character and opinions is what you write, there is no other social context. You could be the most balanced, mild-mannered, good-humoured individual on the planet, but if all they have to go on is a tirade about The Phantom Menace they may well form the view that you’re an angry, negative tosser. Or, conversely a naive, impressionable dolt. So it’s important to be aware of what you say and, just as importantly, not make instant judgements about other people, their lives and their views based on very marginal information. Many an internet debate has turned nasty through such assumptions.

This is because of the second difference – distance and anonymity. If you get into an argument with your boss or your husband, you have to see him the next day (or maybe not if it was a really bad argument). If you get into an argument with Rioxxor_101, it means nothing. The entire event can be temporary, ephemeral and without consequence. Some may think this is a good thing, but of course it isn’t entirely without guilt or consequence. Chances are you may end up angry or upset, or aggrieved or guilty. In ‘real life’ you might apologise, try to mend things and get on with life. This happens so little on the internet because people forget the person behind the username, sometimes even themselves.

Ding Ding! Course Correction

I didn’t intend to go off on such an internet tangent, sorry about that. Let’s get back to what I was meaning to say. Where was I?

Right, moaning in pubs.

The main thing about moaning in pubs is that it is done in the privacy and comfort of friends, usually out of earshot of those we are moaning about. When my friend whines about the latest result, he doesn’t storm into the team dressing room and start ranting, though I expect he would like to now and then. He is also fairly certain that the object(s) of his scorn aren’t going to wander in and start hearing him. The same is not true of t’internet. People used to write letters, be it fanmail or hatemail, now they can post on discussion boards and leave comments on blogs. They can directly address their views to the people concerned with far less effort than composing and posting a letter.

I’m old school, during my time at Games Workshop I was told from day one that we reply to letter that get sent in, even if only to acknowledge their receipt. I think it’s only common courtesy to do so. The sheer volume of electronic communication these days can make that impossible, so the courtesy often has to stop at simply reading what people have written without being able to address every question or comment.

But that isn’t my point… A phenomenon that has increased in the electronic age is a misplaced sense of entitlement by fans. I don’t know if it’s a personal thing, a generational thing or something else, but more and more one can be left with the impression that a whole bunch of fans seem to think that what they have to say is the most important thing in the world. It’s not just fans (see Fans are People Too), but a strange culture has developed over the last two or three decades around individuality. It’s a bizarre contortion of free market democracy that seems to have forgotten the idea that it’s majority vote that counts, not the single person. Everyone has a choice and everyone has a right to express their opinions. I firmly agree with that. What I don’t agree with is the idea that each individual view has to be listened to or acted upon. News programmes want us to text in with our opinions, entertainment shows want us to have the vote on which act is best, sports shows want fans to call in. We’re all individual consumers and customers and our choices matter.

It’s a lie. Who cares? Really, who cares? Isn’t this just pandering to the part of all of us that just loves the sound of our own voices? Isn’t it utterly disingenuous to propagate this myth of self-power in a world where increasingly the powers that control our lives, both governmental and commercial, are beyond our accountability? Does it actually make us feel better to express our views, or does it ultimately lead to more frustration when it seems that no matter what we say, it doesn’t affect any significant change?

With regards to fans, this means remembering that it isn’t always about you. Decisions made are not taken to personally affect you, and while in an ideal world everybody gets what they want, that is usually not the case. The idea that because you have a differing opinion this somehow entitles you to expect some kind of action based on that opinion is delusional. If umpty million people go to see Transformers: The Movie, does it matter one jot that I think it’s the biggest pile of steaming crap to stain a cinema screen since the remake of Planet of the Apes? Nope. Not one bit. In fact, much to my horror they’ve made a sequel! Oddly enough, I don’t think that would have changed even if I’d filled every movie-related message board and website with my views. We’re each just one voice crying out for justice amidst the roaring approval of the masses and if we don’t recognise that, we’re in for some serious disappointment.

I’m a Fan Too

Throughout this post I’ve often used ‘you’, by which I mean ‘me’. I’m a fan of all sorts of things, and I fall prey to all the same delusions of grandeur that other fans possess. I play a lot of Call of Duty, have put in considerable time, effort and money to the point I would consider it a hobby and myself a fan. And I disagree vehemently sometimes with things that are done with that game. I feel that the developers don’t understand me (and by extension the many thousands  of others that I must surely represent) when they leave tanks out of every single new map pack (grrr!). Clearly they’re just pandering to those Halo-jumping/ sniping/ camping (insert disparage epithet of choice) crowd who don’t want to play the game properly?

Or those executives over in the US who decided to cancel great shows such as Firefly and Reaper. The bastards! Clearly, short-sighted, money-grubbing, spineless suits who can’t see genuine quality and are only concerned with the bottom line. Forget that they have advertisers to be accountable to, and families to feed, they’re all a bunch of back-scratching morons mass-producing crappy pseudo-science detective programmes and Friends wannabes!

See, this fandom thing is easy!

One of the things that separates me from those vocal fans is that I can bitch and whine with my mates, who will undoubtedly share many of my views because that’s why we’ve become friends, but I feel no urge to visit the Call of Duty message boards to post ‘Treyarch Suck Donkey Dick!’, or sign an online petition demanding that I am given a personal apology by the CEO of Fox for cancelling my favourite show. Maybe it’s because a) I’m just too lazy (not a ‘proper’ fan), or b) the mediocrity of the world has worn me down over the years, or c) all of that time and energy is better used doing something productive like campaigning for true free trade agreements and human rights (I don’t do those things either, but that’s because the real answer is ‘a’).

And that’s my last point about the nature of fandom, and the biggest pitfall. It’s not that we want everyone to agree with us on some superficial level, it’s that we want other people to share our fandom with us, to see the world as we see it. Fans have a strange urge to want their niche to become mass market. If only everyone else read comics, watched sci-shows, read fantasy novels, played with toy soldiers, the world would be a better place. Possibly it would…

The shame is, the very act of being a niche is what gives many of these things their appeal. Cult movies get their followings because they are not mainstream. The underground music scene appeals because it hasn’t been commercialised by publishing and marketing interests. Mainstream is, on the whole, about the average, the least offensive, the lowest common denominator. Mainstream is risk-adverse, appealing in a shallow way to a lot of people rather than deeply to a few. Being niche, being geeky, being a nerd is something we have to accept about ourselves, and revel in it. Just because a lot of ‘other people’ like or don’t like some thing does not affect our personal experience. As I’ve said before, quantity is not a quality of its own. Is the weirdo who dresses up like Rincewind and pesters Terry Pratchett any more or less pathetic than the fat bloke wearing his Rooney shirt shouting unheard in a crowd of eighty thousand people?

Wear your anorak with pride!

[Addendum] The other great thing about fans is they get drunk and do things like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RCdTtAu9Mo

(Apologies to Guy, apparently what happens on YouTube doesn’t stay on YouTube )

[Extra addendum] I forgot the entire reason why I started composing this post… Thank you to everyone I met at Games Day last Sunday. It’s always great to talk to people, sign their books and hear what they have to sayin person. Bless all your little cotton socks.

[Yet another addendum] It is a common belief that ‘bottling up’ anger is not good for you, and that it is healthier to let it out rather than allow it to fester until you turn into a raving psycho who wants to knife next door’s dog. Apparently this is not true. As this study shows, angry outbursts are habit-forming, perhaps even addictive,  and therefore the more we allow ourselves to have tantrums and rants, the more likely we are to get angry again. So, next time you feel like unleashing your wrath upon the world, take that chill pill, count to ten and do something more useful (like reading this).

The Glory of Chaos

Woah! Thank you to everyone who has joined the discussion about Chaos armies in 40K. To say that my previous post sparked some interest would be like saying the Atlantic Ocean is ‘a bit wet’… To put things in perspective, here are a few stats from the last few days. My previous ‘best day’ came about from the Dark Elves Q&A, which generated about 800 visits in its best day. The day I posted ‘Differences of Opinion‘ brought in more than 1200 visits and I thought ‘That was busy!’. The next day that went up to 1400+ and I thought we’d peaked. Then last Sunday, there were more than 8,300 visits to Mechanical Hamster. Clearly 40K players like to do their web surfing on the weekend! Up until then, the most popular post on the site was Realism is Fake, an essay about dialogue that benefits from a link on TVTropes. It’s been up more than a year and has been  beaten into second place in just four days!

Enough of the numbers, thank you all for the comments as well. Some of them are quite lengthy and detailed, but I have read them all. It isn’t practical to write a response to each and every one, so I’m going to pick up on the main themes raised and address them here.

Not My Job, Guv

First off, as some of you pointed out, I left the GW Design Studio and this discussion is purely as a former games developer not a current one. I have no influence in any way on the direction of future Codexes, this is just a debate on theory not a consumer feedback exercise. As such, I am also not privy to GW’s current thinking about Chaos, this is all hypothetical.

Ice Cream!

HBMC used the analogy of the ice cream store to represent the many different Chaos armies. I like ice cream, so let’s run with it. He described a store in which you could only buy vanilla ice cream. Well, vanilla is certainly the finest of the flavours (bonus points for knowing where that lyric is from) and one of its biggest strengths is its versatility. You can have it on its own, you can put sprinkles on it, or many flavoured syrups, or serve it with pie, or with cake (mm, cake). The problem with your cookie doughs and phish food flavours is that they’re ready-made. The shop is offering only the flavours they’ve created and not giving you any information about the cool stuff they’ve used to make them up. What if there were, say, five different ice cream shops, each one a flavour specialist? There’s the vanilla shop with all its versatility, but there’s also a shop dedicated totally to rocky road, with special rocky road-themed extra toppings, and it also served different types of rocky road, so that you can have it with extra marshmallow, or no nuts, or… I’m running out of things you can out into rocky road ice cream, but I’m sure you get my point. And next door is a special cookie dough shop that does the same with its ice cream. The other good thing about the multiple shops is that they don’t charge you for looking at other flavours of ice cream that you aren’t interested in. If you like all flavours of ice cream (as HBMC clearly does judging from his ice cream collection – er, I mean different armies!) you can visit as many shops as you like. If you’re all about the rocky road, the vanilla, cookie dough and tutti-frutti boys aren’t going to hit you up for some extra cash just to disinterestedly peruse over their wares.

Practical Issue

Er, this analogy is creaking, so let’s talk reality. The background and diversity of Chaos is big. As big as the Imperium almost. Let’s say we want to create the ‘perfect’ codex, that covers everything anyone would want. That means giving people proper amounts of background about the different types of armies, all of the troop types, pictures of models and so on. An army is more than just a few rules and an extra option or two of wargear, and if you’re just coming into the hobby there’s a lot of information to absorb which we can’t just skip over like the last Codex did.

Let’s start by combining the contents of Codex: Chaos Space Marines and Codex: Daemons. 192 pages of cool Chaos stuff. But we don’t have any god- or Legion-specific stuff yet. This is where any potential developer faces the first big decision, and there’s no right or wrong answer. The background of Chaos is divided along two separate yet overlapping themes.

You have the Traitor Legions on one hand, some of which are dedicated to a specific god, some of which aren’t. Like those loyalist scum, each Legion has a slightly different way of fighting. Are these presented as sub-lists (as they were in Index Astartes) or is everything rolled into one big list and players are given the background info to shape their armies for themselves? Let’s take Night Lords as a random example. Infiltration and terror tactics. Should Chaos Space Marine squads have an upgrade that represents the Night Lords? Or, should there be a separate army list entry, perhaps called Night Lords Squad? Or, should there be a separate entry for an infiltrating, terror-causing squad that could represent Night Lords but could equally be used for other infiltrating, terrorising squads devised by the players’ imaginations?

The end result in rules terms could be exactly the same, but the presentation of those rules has a profound effect on the way some players perceive them. Is it better to call them Night Lords and then have players change the names for themselves (such as using the Dark Angels for one of the other Unforgiven), or is it better to keep the presentation generic and let players know that using ‘Infiltrating Chaos Marines’ is how they can represent Night Lords on the table?

And just how flexible do we want players’ armies to be? Do we say that the Night Lords can’t have Khorne Berzerkers and leave it up to players to ‘break the rules’ if they want to represent a combined force of Night Lords and World Eaters? If the army list functionally allows you to represent forces from different Legions and Chapters, there’s nothing to stop someone (by the rules) painting their Khorne Berzerkers in Night Lords colours. At what point do the Codexes force players to adhere to the background and when do they inform them of that background and leave it to their discretion?

[I prefer the approach of informed freedom, the encompassing of many 'what if?' situations, since the purpose of the Codex is to allow players to collect a load of toy soldiers, paint them however they see fit, and then play a game with them if they want to. Is important whether a Chaos Space Marine is painted red or blue? It's an unanswerable question except with reference to our personal tolerances and preferences. One might say an WWII German army has too many Tiger tanks because there is historical fact. With 40K, everything is a) fictional, and b) deliberately written to allow hobbyists to come up with their own ideas and form their own opinions. World War II happened and is documented, 40K is a vast sandbox for players to create and explore.]

With regard to our physical Codex and its length,  both ways of doing things will add about the same number of pages. Rules-driven guidance means more army list entries (and more pages in the Forces section), a flexible list might mean more options for generic troop types but more required in the form of background and sample armies to inform players choices if they want to pick a Legion-themed force.

For the sake of argument, lets say it take about 8 pages per Legion to do this justice – origins of the Legion and how they’re organised, extra or extended Forces pages to describe their troop types, additional army list entries and colour pages. That’s another 72 pages, bringing our book up to 264 pages. If there were actual full sub-lists for each I would expect this to be even longer.

The Gods Issue

The Legions are one of the two strands that Chaos players like to theme along; the other are the four Chaos gods. We come back to presentation issues. You want to collect Khorne, but not paint them in World Eaters colours? Should you be allowed Berzerkers or only Khorne-marked units (since Berzerker technology is known only to the World Eaters supposedly)? What about non-Emperor’s Children Noise Marines? The odd one in the mix are the Thousand Sons, who are not just ’super marked’ Marines but something entirely unique to that Legion thanks to Rubric and his hi-jinks. So, there’s an argument that there should also be some form of ’super-marked’ magic Marine for Tzeentch, in addition to Rubric Marines, like anti-Grey Knights or something. And then there’s all the Terminator Berzerkers, World Eater war engines, tank variants, Defiler types and whatever else we would need to make a proper World Eaters army. How much of that is transferable and how do we differentiate in the army list?

And then we get to the issue of cross-god armies. Have Thousand Sons and Khorne Berzerkers ever appeared on the same battlefield? Plague Marines and Emperor’s Children? We have the hardline view that such a thing would never, ever, ever happen. Or there’s the realistic view that the chances are at some point the goals of warbands and personalities dedicated to different gods have found common cause. We come back to the grey area of whether the separations are hard-wired into the rules (in which case players can play ‘outside the Codex’ if their opponents are happy with it), or if the army list allows it but the background makes a point of demonstrating how this might come about to give the army its proper context.

Let us assume that we’re going to allow non-named forces to be represented by some of the named troop types. This requires further information to be put in the book – examples of named ‘historical’ Khornate forces that weren’t part of the World Eaters, more examples of toy soldiers and armies. Let’s make it neat and tidy and say four pages for each god, a nice 16-page complete section to bring up our total page count to 280. Thats about two dozen pages short of the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook.

All The Small Things

But wait! This isn’t Codex: Chaos, so far it’s only be Codex: Chaos Space Marines. We need mutants, renegade guardsmen, daemon-possessed psykers and cultists. I’m sure folks can see where I’m going next, so let’s just cut to the chase. To do this justice (that means more background, more Forces pages, more army list entries), let’s add a very conservative 32 pages.

So our awesome Codex: Chaos runs to roughly 312 pages (a little more than the rulebook). It contains everything every player would ever want out of Chaos. Okay, it’ll be a few quid more than a regular Codex, but look at everything you’re getting, right? Let’s not even worry about how long that would take the write, or issues caused by one book supporting a huge swathe of the miniatures range (cos we need miniatures for most of this cool stuff too, because they’re in the Official Rules now and you can’t expect people to convert everything).

A Many-splendored Thing

Or we can go back to our five different ice cream shops, by which I of course mean our five separate Codexes. Actually, maybe six if we did one regular Chaos Marine, one Daemon and one for each Chaos God (remember, not a definite plan, just discussion). A Codex is usually 80 pages long, sometimes 96 and for a few special cases more than that. Let’s just keep to that basic 80 pages. Over the course of six different Codexes, that means a whopping 480 pages of Chaos goodness, more even than our super-Codex.

But we know there are issues with multi-Codex armies from much of the discussions that arise around the Imperial Space Marines. Why does the Reaper Autocannon have different rules for Khorne’s armies than for Slaanesh ones? Why does an Emperor’s Children Daemon Prince not have the psychic powers allowed to a generic Slaaneshi one? And so forth. The benefit of the one book solution is that at least it’s all in one place and gets updated in one swoop.

Another question comes back to the flexibility issue. Do we allow Chaos Space Marines to take units from the other books, particularly Daemons, or are they (as now) completely separate? Even if every single unit was perfectly fair and balanced within its own list, what are implications for cross-lists and game balance? Actually, this applies to any multiple-list format whether in one book or several.

Every entry has to serve not just one purpose (and on the evidence of some of the dislike for Dreadnoughts, Spawn and Possessed some feel even that hasn’t been achieved), but multiple purposes. At a fundamental level, an army that contains so much diversity, the ability to pick-and-mix from such a plethora of different troop types is going to have as many optimal, cookie-cutter builds as any other. Mixing cheap cultists with deep-striking Daemons, rockhard Terminators, and so on, will create an army that doesn’t have any weaknesses, and from that point of view it doesn’t have much gameplay character either because an army is as much about what it can’t do on the tabletop as what it can.

Yet another problem with multi-volume armies is that the information is not self-contained. Where, for example, does Codex: Space Marines tell you that they can be included in a Witch Hunters force? Having faced exactly this issue with Hordes of Chaos and Beasts of Chaos in Warhammer (not to mention ongoing issues with the Dogs of War), I can safely say that multi-volume armies are a pain in the arse. The purpose of a Codex is to contain everything you need to collect and game with the toy soldiers it covers. Imagine you’ve been collecting your Chaos army for a few months and then go to your first club night or tournament, only to find out the guy or gal on the other side of the table has got Daemons in their army.

‘How do you get those?’

‘They’re in this book.’

‘Another book?’

‘Actually, three other books, and there’s another one coming out in a few months’ time.’

‘Wah?’

So all the books have to be planned at once, because the first book in the series has to make reference to the future books (which I did in the Hordes of Chaos intro). Which is a commitment. Commitments are fine right until circumstances changes, or you have a better idea, and then they become a binding oath. What if the books are so great and so successful, there’s scope to do another one? You have to change all the references in the ones already published to make it clear there are now seven books tied together, not six.

Another problem is simple finances. Without getting into a discussion about pricing, nobody wants to feel that they have to buy all six books to keep their edge. With self-contained books buying more than one Codex is a choice players can make, out of interest, to collect mutiple armies or to get the lowdown on the opposition.  Little Johnny walks into his gaming store of choice, says he likes the look of the Marines with spikes on and then is promptly told by the learned staff member that he has to read this, and this, and this, etc. Urk. Maybe those pointy ears with the flying tanks are cooler…

Lastly, there’s the time factor. You can’t release them all as a block (because all the non-Chaos players want some love now and then) so it would take years for the set to be complete. At least if each book is self-contained, it lives and dies by its own merits rather than simply being seen as part of an as-yet incomplete work.

In Summary

There ain’t no single foolproof answer to the questions posed. No easy-fix. Compromises will always have to be made due to the diversity of demands placed on a Codex by the many different hobbyists that will use it. Make it a cornucopia of Chaosness and the competitive players will complain that Chaos is broken; make it too restrictive and the more hobby-driven players will feel that they’re vision and creativity is being compromised. Put it in one book and depth and detail will suffer; spread it over a lot of books and it becomes complicated and hard to access.

The developers cannot legislate for every eventuality, though Pete made a valiant effort with his Codex on the rules front. This is where the choice and responsibility passes over to the players. Remember that for every player who sees 40K as a tactical challenge, there’s a collector who wants to theme an army around an obscure reference in the timeline. For every ‘fluff nazi’ (miaow-splat!) there’s the ‘what if?’ creator dreaming about the time Angron asked Fulgrim to repay that favour he did during the Flange IX Burning.

Wargaming isn’t ice cream; we get to make up whatever flavours we like; some of them follow specific recipes, others just throw a bunch of stuff into the freezer to see if it works. It’s usually worth giving them a taste to see what they’re like, because otherwise we might miss out on a great new flavour.

And Finally…

Again, thanks for the comments and discussion. However, this is a blog not a forum and isn’t really set up for ongoing debates between commentators. Please post your comments and your thoughts, I enjoy reading them (even the negative ones). Please also use the many fantastic community discussion boards for responding to each other, they are a far better place for it (incidentally, Bell of Lost Souls is winning with the redirects at the moment, with Warseer and Dakkadakka trailing in their dust).

Rules questions and debate. As with the Dark Elves Q&A, I’m not going to enter into detailed rules discussions or provide answers to specific questions. With the first, Codex: Chaos Space Marines was jointly written with Alessio and I’m not going to do him a disservice by second-guessing decisions he made whilst writing the rules or put words in his mouth. On the second point, I am not a games developer any more and answers I give may well end up being different to the FAQs issued by Games Workshop. Let’s not even get into the manbane thing again!

Thank you all for lasting this long. Have fun and happy gaming.

[Addendum - Daemons in the 2nd edition Codex. This was my poor memory playing tricks on me, but the point stands that not everything in the Daemonworld army list (including Trolls and beastmen! ) was also available to the Chaos Space Marines. Sorry for the confusion.]

Differences of Opinion

I’d like to take a digression to address some of the comments raised in the Signing News post, regarding decisions that were made on Codex: Chaos Space Marines. For those Hamsterites not familiar with the way the main Games Workshop games are structured, they consist of a core rulebook that contains the rules for the game and a series of supplements that detail each of the individual armies that people can collect and game with (called Army Books for Warhammer, and Codexes for Warhammer 40,000).

To start with, let’s make one thing clear. Reasoned criticism of a work is one thing, attacks on the creator of that work are another. I’m fine with the first, I am not fine with the second, in any arena. The internet does not entitle somebody to conduct themselves without the usual consideration and manners I hope they would employ in other forms of communication. It is also too easy for some folks to forget that quite often they are expressing their opinion, not objective fact. It is entirely possible that other people have a different opinion, and it is usually of little use arguing opinions rather than explaining how those opinions were formed. I firmly believe that an informed opinion is far better than an uninformed one, even if that opinion differs from mine. I have had many players contact me or talk to me expressing their approval of the revised Codex: Chaos Space Marines and their preference for the approach that was taken. For example: http://bootae.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=10574

To that end, here’s some of the thinking behind the changes that were made. They were not done on a whim and the decisions were taken with some thought and consideration.

An army (and a Codex) are more than just a set of rules. In the scheme of things, rules come and go; they are an abstract mechanical representation of something else. The exact rules representation may change from edition to edition, but hopefully they fundamentally represent the same thing. The previous edition of the Codex was over-the-top on rules, trying to legislate for every eventuality on the tabletop and trying to represent in detail every aspect of a player’s miniature army.

This approach has two main problems. Firstly, it creates a mindset of false legitimacy. This isn’t just in gaming, it’s in wider society as well. Some people feel entitled to place all responsiblity on the rules-makers (or lawmakers…) with the argument, ‘Well, the rules say I can do it.’ This fundamentally diverts the choices a person makes onto somebody else, absolving them of blame (in their mind). By moving away from a set of rules that tries to legislate for every single possibility, and instead return to the original idea that these books are as much a guide to players as they are rulebooks, we sought to bring back both the responsiblity and the power for players to make the decisions for themselves. They are a framework for players to collect an army of miniature soldiers not a dictat on the way they must do so.

The second problem with this approach is at the opposite end of the scale. By having a minutiae of rules covering very detailed elements of a players army, it can also trigger the response, ‘I can’t do this because the rules don’t say I can’. By listing very specific allowances and restrictions, the old Codex essentially presented very narrow interpretations of the background, again removing the choice from the players. This is particularly the case with the Legions  and Power-specific lists. While they did introduce some cool new options (which I’ll get back to later) the majority of those sub-lists were about restriction, not choice. It presented a very defined view of what was and was not possible in the vast galaxy of the 41st millenium. Some troop types never, ever appeared on the battlefield together according to the previous iteration of the rules. Some Legions never, ever used certain types of wargear. These restrictions removed lots of ‘What if…?’ situations, cementing a very rigid and literal interpretation of the background within the mechanics of collecting an army. They were unrepresentative of the anarchic and fluctuating nature of Chaos forces.

It is also important to consider the Codex in the context in which it was created – a broad platform for a typical Chaos Space Marines army. In both Warhammer and 40K, Chaos has always had an immensely diverse background, with many, many different troop types, war engines, characters and so forth. The decision was taken, as it was in Warhammer, that such diversity couldn’t be given a proper treatment in just a single volume. Rather than dismiss some of the most entertaining parts of the background (and potential miniatures) as footnotes, it was decided that they should be given books of their own, to delve into their histories and personalities and armies with separate volumes (and, of course, cool new miniatures). I don’t work in the Studio anymore, so I can’t say whether that is still the strategy, or how plans for this are continuing. I can say that a the time we were working on Codex: CSM there was a lot of enthusiasm for the possibilities this approach allowed – new god-specific troop types and war engines, in-depth background of the various Legions and what they’ve been up to, renegade Chapters and warbands that had dedicated themselves to one god. Bear in mind that a lot of the variant armies people associate with the old Codex were not in fact from the Codex, but from the Index Astartes articles, which themselves made up two extra volumes (if one dismisses all of that Loyalist stuff!). As a lot of those tweaks and variants weren’t in Codex: CSM, the possibility of extra Codexes addresses that issue in a way that would be far more satisfying than a few pages in a White Dwarf. I hope that it is still the intent of GW to go down this route at some stage, I think there’s immense scope for some exciting and unique armies out there.

Which kind of brings us to Daemons. There’s a simple argument for why Daemons were given their own Codex. In the huge sweep of galactic history, there are countless occasions when Space Marines and Imperial Guard have fought on the same battlefield. However, why isn’t GW inundated with complaints that you can’t take Imperial Guard in a Space Marines army? The same is true of cultists and the Lost and the Damned list – there are all sorts of other Imperial troops like the Arbites, Sisters of Battle, Planetary Defence forces, Assassins, navy crews, Adeptus Mechanicus and many others. Yet I never received a complaint that these could not be used in a Space Marines army… The book was briefed as Codex: Chaos Space Marines, and therefore deals with Chaos Space Marines. The outlook on this seems to come from a purely traditional approach – that there was a Daemons list and a cultists list in the 2nd edition 40K Codex: Chaos. Even then, they were separate lists! They were only folded into the Chaos Space Marines in the previous version of the Codex.

I’m a very flexible gamer, I have no problem with people trying out stuff for the hell of it. If you want to take a force of Chaos Space Marines and have a few Daemons joining the fun, I’d be happy to play you. By the same token, I’d happily play against your Space Marines and Sisters of Battle allies, or your ‘Traitor Guard’ army with a few squads of Black Legion.  Got a Basilisk in Iron Warriors’ colours? Bring it on! This goes back to my second point – using your imagination and doing what you want with your toy soldiers is your choice, not the games developer’s. I’d like to see more in WD and on the GW website reminding players that they are perfectly entitled to do this sort of thing.

Somebody is bound to bring up the subject of tournaments at this stage. Tournaments are an artificial environment, laying down restrictions and criteria to provide a competitive environment. I’ll reiterate my point that with both GW-organised and independent tournaments, by far the most army list mistakes (often costing the payer concerned valuable tournament points) occurred with the old Codex far more than any other book around at the same time – including Witch Hunters, Craftworld Eldar  and other complex multi-volume armies.

Random selection of cool Chaos stuff I’ve just found with a Google image search:

http://www.fightingtigersofveda.com/fsym.html

http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Ian%27s_Slaaneshi_Chaos_Marines

http://www.lounge.belloflostsouls.net/showthread.php?t=1279

http://www.area52.com.au/galleries/ttg/army_focus/matt_clifford_death_guard.htm

http://media.photobucket.com/image/chaos%20space%20marines%20%20%252522counts%20as%252522/Xardian1/Chaos%20Marines/Raptorswithchamp-unpainted.jpg

(Oh dear! He’s got that awesome axe, but there aren’t any rules for it… What are we to do?)

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=150542

Word Bearers – with Cultists! I think the cultists-as-summoned daemons is one of the best ‘Counts As’ intepretations around.

If Daemons didn’t have their own Codex, you wouldn’t be able to have battles likes this one:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/229220.page

If I have a regret about Codex: Chaos Space Marines, it would be not having the space and resources to showcase more of this kind of stuff – in the book and White Dwarf. The creativity of players doesn’t need justification by rules – it’s  treating (and showing!) 40K as the broad hobby it is, not just a game with a set of rules.

I’ll finish by saying that I’m not writing this with the illusion that the current Codex: Chaos Space Marines is perfect. It does the job it was intended to do, in the context of the brief that was given at the time and the ongoing strategy that was being considered. I’m not writing this to say that some people are wrong in their opinion, it’s just a matter of two very different approaches to addressing the same issue – the sheer Chaosness of Chaos armies! The former Codex was a very rules-driven attempt to encapsulate the wildness of Chaos, the current Codex is about a very simple foundation that allows players to make hobby-based, aesthetic decisions regarding their army without worrying about the gaming implications.

Some people prefer the first approach, some the second. That’s the way the world is, and long may it continue that way.

Signing News

Man Versus Alien in Desperate Battle

Just a quick one to highlight my visit to Warhammer World this Saturday (5th September). I’ll be there from 11am to 1pm signing my new Space Hulk novella, and copies of the game for that matter, as well as anything else folks would like to bring along.