How will GW progress the narrative?

[Redmanphill]

The Realm Gate Wars books didn’t sell. I don’t think we will see the company repeat what they did in releasing a series of books like that. What did sell was the Grand Alliance books however. They seem to have sold really well. What I’m wondering now is if they will combine the narrative into books like the Grand Alliance books as the game progresses. With Malign Portents coming it would seem like we are getting essentially a rerelease of Grand Alliance: Death with advanced narrative and all the keywords rearranged and provided with functional allegiance abilities. 

The main question is: will each of the other Grand Alliances get a similar treatment in time and is that how we can expect the story to advance?

[Sheriff]

10 minutes ago, Redmanphill said:

The Realm Gate Wars books didn’t sell. I don’t think we will see the company repeat what they did in releasing a series of books like that. What did sell was the Grand Alliance books however. They seem to have sold really well. What I’m wondering now is if they will combine the narrative into books like the Grand Alliance books as the game progresses. With Malign Portents coming it would seem like we are getting essentially a rerelease of Grand Alliance: Death with advanced narrative and all the keywords rearranged and provided with functional allegiance abilities. 

The main question is: will each of the other Grand Alliances get a similar treatment in time and is that how we can expect the story to advance?

Those realmgate books were crazy expensive, don't know anyone that got them. Anything with that price tag will struggle unless its cheap paperback, as its competing with free downloadable copies, so needs to add value (physical copy, low weight and hassle) whilst being affordable. (they also focused on stormcast rather a lot...)

Seems they will go down the route of having plenty of lore and campaign info for all factions, but I suspect that won't be the perception of potential buyers given that the theme of the campaign is Death, and are pushing the new Deathsoup 2.0 book. Would welcome a Destruction-soup book though. 

My lesson learned from firestorm is that only one person in your group needs to buy a campaign book, and the rest can just download it if needed. And if you're playing in a store then just use the store copy. 

They'll probably entice people to buy it by putting in matched play rules, but again lessons learned from firestorm is that TOs will just ban those rules anyway. 

Regardless, i'll buy it, but I don't blame others for not bothering. 

[Ollie Grimwood]

I bought them. I know I’m not the only one but that’s hardly proof either way. I’ve seen it stated before that the campaign books didn’t sell but does anyone have any references/evidence of it? 

[MrCharisma]

12 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

I’ve seen it stated before that the campaign books didn’t sell but does anyone have any references/evidence of it? 

I doubt you’ll ever get the sales breakdown for any GW product. They like to keep their SKU’s rolled up in financial breakdowns. 

I imagine the lack of Firestorm support in the major tournament scene has driven down the sales potential of Firestorm, thus the lack of poor sales comments. 

I only know a handful of people in my local community (a capital city)  who own in, and GW stores seem to be some the few who are playing it. I’ve had two stores almost beg me to play in their campaign (I assume because they’re struggling to keep it going). 

[someone2040]

My suspicion (and hope) is that this will be more of a Storm of Chaos like event.

The Malign Portents book itself, will have all the fluff and stuff going into the Malign Portents. It'll have rules and scenarios that you can play during the 'Malign Portents' era, and perhaps even include some warscrolls and warscroll battalions revolving around the 4 Heralds.

 

But the bulk of it will likely be on the website and through the fluff in the battletomes to come this year. This will be the main driver, and we'll likely be fighting over certain area or territories to shape the narrative to come. Hopefully, GW actually increment the narrative monthly or something along those lines, taking into account what has occurred.

I think there'll obviouslly be key points that don't change through the narrative. The appearance of new factions will likely tie closely into narrative events taking place. It wouldn't surprise me if we get to the Black Pyramid and there's a super-mega Deathcast release (or something along those lines) as Nagash's elite legions march out to destroy the forces of Destruction, Chaos and Order that have made it that far.

[RuneBrush]

I don't think GW will follow a hard and fast rule on the way the proceed as I don't think there's "one" winning formula - if you look across this forum alone we all enjoy a mixture of different things across the hobby, and they want to give all of us something to enjoy.

The reason I didn't pick up the Realmgate War books was initially price and secondly because I didn't know what the hell was going on at that point!  My feeling is that Malign Portents is shaping up to be a mix of both hard releases (books, models etc) and soft releases (things on social media, websites etc).  Building the narrative quickly online and then supporting with some books and models.  I also see the website playing an essential role - we're getting 2 free stories each week and I think they'll use that to push the direction of things based on how many people participate and similar.

[chord]

On ‎1‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 5:28 PM, Ollie Grimwood said:

I bought them. I know I’m not the only one but that’s hardly proof either way. I’ve seen it stated before that the campaign books didn’t sell but does anyone have any references/evidence of it? 

Agreed.   I bought them, they are/were great value!   You got so much in each one. 

[Sith'ari]

14 hours ago, chord said:

Agreed.   I bought them, they are/were great value!   You got so much in each one. 

Same! I bought everyone of those books and love them all! Every time I need inspiration for an army or a battle plan I’m cooking up for my latest campaign I grab one off of the shelf and spend an hour just looking through the art and reading about the realms. Plus they have like a gazillion battle plans and time of war sheets - top stuff!

Regarding the future, I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next. I know we’re entering a dark time (considering It’s Nagash being Nagash I expect nothing less! ) I just hope that we don’t go full old world Grimderp forever more. Cycles of hope and darkness is what I’m hoping to see. 

[Elmir]

At some point in time, AoS would benefit from having a rulebook like 40k has. It won't be here any time soon... But in the future (if they ever do a second edition), it would not be bad to have a bunch of fluff pages in the core rulebook that contain the most important events from end-times to what happens in Malign portents and any other future story arcs. 

But for now, Phil Kely did say in his latest twitch stream that GW has a very hard job doing justice to every army/race because they have so many of them. A story progression like malign portents isn't a bad way to focus in on some factions (as it will most likely not just be death) and for those who like a  GA/faction that's been left a bit, all  he could advice was a bit of patience....

But as I've said a few time on this forum: I would love to see a battletome that consolidates some scattered subfactions. One for the followers of Gorkamorka for destruction and one for the ogors for instance would be a great idea.... For now, there's still options to do that in a "light version" in GHB18 however. 

[RuneBrush]

Another way it appears that GW have started to progress the narrative is by restarting Inferno.  For those of you who aren't quite as old as I am, this was a monthly/bi-monthly collection of short-stories from various authors (both brand new and existing).  It was brilliant and quite a lot of novels started off with a short in Inferno.  Part of the Twitch yesterday was saying that they had open-submissions for this

[Sith'ari]

I’m working on my submission as soon as I finish work! Loved that mag as a kid, so fingers crossed! 

[Redmanphill]

I doubt Black Library would be given the lee way to advance the lore, they will definitely expand it but I doubt they will advance it. I’m waiting for either Malign Portents II or four battletomes based on the Harbingers to come out by the end of the year where the conclusion or second part of Malign Portents is told.

[BunkhouseBuster]

I like how GW has been doing things lately with their releases being every 3 to 6 months apart.  Firestorm and Malign Portents are a pretty good way to release things aside from the Black Library publications.  Anything much more frequent than that would be too much to keep up with, and I would rather they take their time with it and have fewer better things than more things of dubious quality.

I have not got the Realmgate Wars books yet, but they are on my list to get someday.  They are pretty low on the list, but they are still on there!

[Mandano]

5 minutes ago, BunkhouseBuster said:

Realmgate Wars books

 for me these are the best purchases I have made in my short time in the hobby. 

[S133arcanite]

On 1/11/2018 at 1:06 PM, chord said:

Agreed.   I bought them, they are/were great value!   You got so much in each one. 

Me too!

 

The fury of Gork alone is amazing as inspiration. I am beginning 'The Tzeentch-raven coven idea' as a project, and I know someone who wills start doing a gore-grunta army like the ironjawz in that book

[AGPO]

I think there's always a little bit of anecdotal bias when it comes to whether or not a product is popular. If you only play with tourney enthusiasts then  you're not going to encounter many people keen on splashing out on almost entirely narrative driven source books. Likewise if your club love narrative gaming many of you would have rushed out to buy the next copy ASAP. 

Much like the majority of people think they are a good example of an "average" member of their society, most gamers I've met think their club or store is typical, even though in reality there is very little consistency.

[Lucio]

Malign Portents is a great way to advance the narrative of AoS, a mix of an interactive campaign and a small release with miniatures and a book really helps.

The Realm Gate wars were good for fleshing out the general world, but they're expensive books and didn't deliver much in the way of rules, so better suit the superfan. They're akin to the big setting books of an RPG, useful info but not essential.

I'm hoping we'll see more small books in the future, between £15 to £25 which contain a mix of short fluff and some rules

[chord]

3 hours ago, Lucio said:

Malign Portents is a great way to advance the narrative of AoS, a mix of an interactive campaign and a small release with miniatures and a book really helps.

The Realm Gate wars were good for fleshing out the general world, but they're expensive books and didn't deliver much in the way of rules, so better suit the superfan. They're akin to the big setting books of an RPG, useful info but not essential.

I'm hoping we'll see more small books in the future, between £15 to £25 which contain a mix of short fluff and some rules

They had quite a few battle plans, times of war rules and battalions.  All-Gates even had siege rules and regiments of renown rules.  To say they had no rules is misleading.

Additionally if you compare the price of something like Malignant Portents , the Realm-gate wars were a better per-page dollar value. (some of RW Campaign books pushed close to 300 pages)