What do you think of the 3 ways to play?

[KrrNiGit]

A tale of 3 ways to play

The core book for Age of Sigmar (AoS) has 3 ways to play; narrative, open and competitive (in the core book competitive play takes 8 pages while narrative takes 33 and open 8 (this does not include the 222 pages of actual narrative in the core book)). I don’t think most of us take this split seriously. Most events and clubs seem to be competitively focussed, or at least the ones that put themselves out there/I could find easily are. The people I have met there play competitively so any discussion with them shares that focus. Talking about competitive play is easy; who won, what armies are doing well, what are the stats etc. We spend hours making cool lists that will crush our enemies, see their war dollies driven before us and hear the lamentation of their self-esteem. I find it much harder to talk about a narrative or an open play game. If I try to tell someone the story of my little army I get embarrassed; what will they think of me? It’s not like we are all nerds playing with tiny figurines or anything. There is no set language for talking about it either. Open and Narrative games have a context that exist solely for that game. A competitive tournament has a context that is already understood by the majority of AoS players. Competitive play is already universally understood, it has a language and focus that does not exist in Narrative or Open play. If you have played a competitive game you have a good idea of what any competitive game will be, if you have played one open play or narrative game you have played one open or narrative game.

This imbalance is worth talking about. Should we care about all of the 3 ways? Should we bother to keep them? If one of the ways wasn’t worth the effort surely the others would benefit from getting the effort redirected to give them more attention.

 

  

or 

 

 

What is GW saying by keeping these 3 ways to play consciously part of their core game? Wouldn’t they get a better return on their effort by focussing on the competitive community over other players? What does having a designated space for narrative and open play say about our game?

By keeping the 3 ways to play GW are saying that the game can and should be played multiple ways. They want it to be enjoyed in a variety of ways by a variety of players. Have you ever felt bad that you were doing it wrong? Then don’t, Warhammer is for you! Makes sense for GW as a company, the more excuses people have to play the more people have excuses to buy GW. So for (what at times feels like) a minimal effort GW increases their customer base and therefore sells more models. What about us though? What does having open and narrative players in our wider AoS community mean for us?

Our game is wider than we give it credit for. Look at a competitive tournament. While it focusses on competitive play, they tend not to be exclusive in their focus. Not only are there competitive games, but also painting awards and sports awards. A good tournament rewards all types of players and gives them all a place to hang out together. After a tournament some people talk about the cool armies, some about the winners and some about the cool moments in the games they played. All had a valid experience at the event and TOs should be looking at rewarding and welcoming them all. Because if giving more people an excuse to play works for GW it should also work for any TOs trying to build our community.

While there is a separation of these “ways to play” in the core book, I think all 3 permeate the entire game to certain extents. Look at how GW writes rules:  

The rule has an evocative name, followed by flavour text and finally rules text explaining what it does. The rule is not just there to be a game interaction but to support an emotional experience for the players and tell us something about the characters who have them. Look at chess as a counter point. The pieces have thematic names (knight, rook, pawn, etc.) but the rules covering how they interact is not trying to create an evocative moment about the pieces (i.e. the knight charges over the silly pawn and wipes out the foolish bishop) but rather a game moment (this piece takes that piece creating this game state). These moments can be just as memorable but not from the story they tell in the world of the game but in the interaction between the players at the table. A good game of chess is played between two good players across a board, a good game of Warhammer can be the same, but it can also be played within the world of the game. They don’t have be nameless pieces but rather their own individual characters interacting in their own world. Good narrative play tries to push the players beyond the mechanics and into the world of the game itself.

 

Narrative play: the play’s the thing

So if the narrative is imbedded within every part of the game, why do we need a specific narrative way to play? Hopefully by looking closer at this section in the Core book we can find some answers. In the core book we are given a campaign mode (Path to Glory) and some narrative battle plans.

The idea of a narrative battle plan should not be that unreasonable or unknown to most people. People in history have never fought over who has the most people standing within 3 circles on the battlefield. Instead there is always a reason for each armies objective, its only in the abstraction required for balanced matched play have we lost this. When we tell the story of an historic battle, it is who fought there and why, what did they want to achieve. In the story of the battle of Thermopylae, the Spartans held the pass to prevent the Persians from conquering all of Greece, not just them plonking their army on a spot and camping more points than their opponents before they were tabled.  In our narrative battle plans we can recreate moments and retell them through our games. Most importantly the narrative helps give our games purpose. They help us build a context to our play rather than just scoring more points than our opponent. Even senseless violence can have justified reasons (even if they are not reasonable). Narrative battle plans try to bring this into how they work. We aren’t battling for a circle, instead we are battling for a single pass across a mountain range, or for a pile of gold or for (in certain sci-fi setting) the high ground. More over these battles imply consequences and stakes beyond one player winning and the other one losing. We held the pass and stopped the evil empire from conquering helpless Greece.

Path to glory, our campaign type of narrative play builds out how these stakes go beyond the game itself. It is a campaign mode which is designed around creating and driving story hooks for your characters (see Warhammer weekly from the 13 Oct 2021 for a great deep dive of this mode). This is NOT your parent’s path to glory. Gone are the random tables and limited options. Instead the focus is on the campaign mechanics. There are restrictions and bonuses, balancing factors and risks. It very much is about creating a way to play out a story with twists and turns, about getting you involved with the world your little figures inhabit, getting you invested before the game pulls a red wedding and kill all your heroes. This is not cobbled together junk to keep those narrative fan boys happy, this is a serious attempt to create a way to play focussed on your engagement with the world of your models.

Narrative play then is about building out the world our miniatures inhabit. It gives us a context and purpose for our games, it gives us stakes to play for. Having a narrative enriches our play, it gets us invested not just in the game but in the world GW has created. By playing a narrative game you are not only playing the game across the table, but you are playing in the world your models inhabit.

 

What about open play? Open play: where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter.

This section of the core book seems to get derided the most. It’s just “baby mode” where you push toys around and make mouth noises while yelling WAAAAGH for no reason. But is that really the case? If it were this section may as well be a kid’s colouring play mat or removed entirely. Instead there are a lot of pages dedicated to it. The Open Play section contains different deployments, objectives etc. and a way to generate your own unique missions.

To use an analogy it is taking the hood off the car and letting you tinker with the engine. Want to play uneven battles? Well, here is what you need to tinker with to get that. Want to play a game with random objectives each turn? Well here’s a table you can roll on. Whatever you want to do, open play is for you. It is full of options and examples of how you could play differently. Open play opens the heart of the game to the players so they can turn it into something great. This space is the modders section of AoS and personally I am waiting for someone to come along and craft the DOTA of AoS and revolutionise our war game.

In D&D and other TRRPGs the idea of house rules, or modifying the game engine to suit what the players want out of it, is common and accepted. Their game is about having a shared experience between players and they understand that the rules are there to give them a framework to have that experience within. Their rules are not sacrosanct. The Open Play section can do a similar thing for us AoS players. It demonstrates how we can modify and change our game to have a better shared experience between the players. Having an Open Play section tells us players that the rules are there to help us reach our desired outcome of playing, not that the rules out of the box are the only way. Open play gives us the option to ask our opponent ‘how do you want to do this?’ and the tools to make it happen (or at least it should).

Some of my earliest experiences playing Warhammer games were in the late 90s. A Warhammer store (a Games Workshop store at the time) had just opened at the local mall and me as a young 10ish year old fell in love. As you can imagine back then I was more the kids play mat type of player making mouth noises at my friends. Any sort of matched play game would have gone way over my head, my attention span and my budget. However every Friday night at the store they played a big multiplayer game. Everyone brought in a squad that they had painted and plopped it on the one table. The red shirt (GW staff at the time wore red shirts) would then split the units into two rough teams and we had one big battle. Looking back on it, it was dumb and not at all correct, but it was hilarious fun and something I remember fondly many many many years later. Playing in games like these helped me feel included and part of the store’s community even if I was too young to 100% grasp what was going on. For me this was an example of the Open Play mindset. The red shirt took the rigid game ruleset and bent it to create a fun shared experience which helped build his store’s community.  

Having this section in our core book codifies this approach and mindset as part of our hobby. Our ruleset is not some holy relic we must follow (or you aren’t playing pure AoS) but rather they’re more like guidelines. We are the boss and it is up to us to shape the game to help us get what we want out of it.

 

TL:DR

Looking at the 3 ways to play has helped me see our game differently. It has invigorated my curiosity and got me enthused for trying out the different game modes on offer. I even have some ideas for potential mods I’d like to build.

Do you consider yourself a balanced player? Do you think it is worth giving some of the other ways to play a try? 

If you could change anything about AoS what would it be? Why don’t you give it a try and see how it goes?

 

[zilberfrid]

My three ways to play with AoS minis:

Cooperative : D&D/Pathfinder 2 or Rangers of Shadowdeep

Skirmish: Frostgrave

Unit based: Oathmark, though we've only done that once, because Frostgrave and Stargrave are as fun, and require less setup.

[jjb070707]

I actually have been working on narrative campaigns using the AoS (and Age of Fantasy by opr) sets for my wife and best friend and I to play through. They are heavily into dungeons and dragons and play together several times a week, so the girls highly appreciate weird scenarios and campaigns that tell a story. For that I think the path to glory rules do a pretty good job actually of allowing one to become attached to their general or specific units as they carve out their place in the realm of the story. I would want to see these styles of play become the focus of GW involvement in rules and gameplay, as a way to put their narrative writers, illustrators, and model designers into a role they excel at without often subjecting the community to poorly considered and unproofed rules with long life cycles and slow and inefficient methods of FAQ/errata/correction. The competitive rules and points are often a mess especially when first released, I think narrative play is actually what GW does best.

I have been a fairly vocal advocate of focus on rules and balance, and in designing armies that play well, but where I actually see GW fitting into wargaming (as opposed to just being a modeling company) in the future is in the wacky campaign setting kind of publication. Imagine if you will, a tabletop RPG crossed with a narrative wargame, to accompany their detailed and well crafted model lines they produce full color campaign settings and interesting stories of what the four factions are doing to inspire players to fit their lovingly created little warbands into the story of that book. For example, a campaign book that tells the story of the battles over Ghur to mimic what is going on now, and numerous sets of scenarios that might be applicable between the different types of factions and their activities in Ghur so gaming groups could help tell the story. Perhaps even in an interactive manner of some sort, where user submissions as to the successes and failures of different "real" warbands shapes future story development. People would eat that kind of experience up, and these wacky scenarios would help cover for GW's utter incapability in writing tight rulesets for tournaments, if the imbalance of their proposed interactions leads to skewed results, it simply drives the story onward. (Chaos was MEANT to win in Ghur this season, its not that we didn't understand the implication of save stacking and rerolling saves on Archaon...)

This kind of regular release blend of narrative and strong brands/intellectual property justifies their desire to output paper books at a high rate (they see this as core to their business) while focusing on what they excel at, and giving their modeling studio continual source material. (As we fight through Ghur, we encounter these new Kruel Orks, and our studio has put them together the first wave for you guys to try out; how will your fledgling regiment fare against this new and interesting threat?) Which is more more compelling than "Here buy these three books in rapid succession because we screwed up the rules too badly the first time, and then our production pipeline caused us to not be able to deliver half the product so we had to split this release in two..." Instead, a campaign book tells of the encounters of the first half of these orks, and as battles are fought we discover more and more Kruel ork lairs deeper in the swamp. The same real world implications (no bolt boyz boxes still due to pipeline issues?) all of a sudden don't impact the ability to play the game, or feel bad to the player base, and story justification for any issues becomes more seamless.

It may be in their best interest to pursue this kind of path and ship strategic balance and rulesets/points to real strategic game gurus/studios. Where the competitive scene is run by an outside source that better understands asymmetric strategy games and can focus their efforts on balance and user experience, which GW seems far too stretched to do effectively.  And without the burden of writing rules for models, the narrative writers who appear to have been shoehorned into a game designer role can go back to writing compelling and interesting stories. And things like the new seraphon grand strategy which is simply a current strategy with extra steps (instead of just have a wizard alive, have it alive, in a certain place, and prevent all opposing wizards from also being in certain places) which while narratively cool, is poor game design when the simpler option exists, never get pushed through to the competitive game, but remains in fun narrative battles where that strategy as the victory condition are both compelling and interesting in both gameplay and story implications. The new grand strategies as a whole seem to feel like excellent scenarios, and terrible standard competitive play staples, and offer credibility to the idea of GW being shifted to a narrative focused campaign producer as opposed to the lead designer for a strategy wargame.

 

[Ahriman]

3 ways to play is genius from my point of view.

Gives clear language you can use with your opponent about what you intend to get out of a potential game.

I'm not sure it matters which is more popular, and you're spot on with the fact that Matched is easier to talk about online (and in person), so is the most visible.

I, for example, play largely narrative, and have a whole story and goal for my Stormcast Path to Glory that I'm working through - but generally no one cares so I share it with myself and those I know rather than online.

For places like gaming clubs they typical host games of people who didn't know each other prior to going there, so again the path of least resistance to get a game in is to use Matched play so that tends to be what you see there. 

Which I think is awesome, each is a different tool to use in the best situation so people can enjoy playing toy soldiers.

 

[Praecautus]

When 40k first came out it was very much a narrative type game, so much so it needed 3 players. One per side and a GM. I have fond memories and still remember the scenarios we created and fought over, my space orks trying to reclaim the booze and dubious magazines my friends space wolves had ‘confiscated’ (hey we were teenagers!) is still clear in my mind. However as an adult now I am playing pick up games at my club and that makes matched easier.  Saying that some of my best recent memories of games are using the open ear cards as the random scenarios are fun. I did try to get a narrative campaign going but it took a lot of effort and fizzled out 😥 

Recently my son and nephew have got more interested in AoS so this may be a time to revisit the open / narrative and try a short campaign with them.

 

[Baron Klatz]

Matched play: The big boi of the game and very useful for quick set-ups that two new players can agree on(which was always the biggest hurdle in the pointless days, people like the Illusion of fair play even in a Rng game based around 50% chances).

I really love it for getting a fast battle in between skirmish size to medium forces(750 to 1500).

 

Narrative play: 100% my jam. Stories, homebrews, hero building & using the Anvil of Apotheosis, building army background in your favorite realm, Path to Glory goodness and just a fun and light hearted time all round.

Seeing them taking more and more Narrative elements and add them to Matched Play so even a quick battle can have lots of fluff is a wonderful balance that I feel AoS3 does really well. (Though I have those AoS2 Realmscape narrative rulelists stored away for a reason )

 

Open play: Underrated gem. It's Narrative on steroids and great for wild unbalanced games with good friends that we all have a soft spot for with the insanity of Warhammer and rolling tons of dice between armies we only "eye-balled" instead of min-maxed.

The glory days of AoS1 when anything was possible and players and hobby stores were making crazy living-ship battles, zombie swarms last-stands and hero dog-piles on a god to see who gets the most hits in before going down. I'll never be able to express how happy I am they kept it alive with Open Play and keep giving it such fun support.

Really need to break out Aether War rules now that there's some normalcy in the world.

[EccentricCircle]

Narrative is far and away my favourite. I'm not a very competitive player at all, and really its all about the story that we create. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't actually enjoy playing mass battle wargames for their own sake. I really enjoy painting big armies, and creating entire tables of terrain to fight over, but playing the actual game often leaves me burnt out. I find it frustrating, tiring and not especially rewarding. What I think I really want is a sprawling strategic scale RPG, where warhammer battles are used to resolve big scale conflicts, and every battle advances the plot of the more personal and story driven RPG campaign. I suspect that's quite an unusual stance though!

[Praecautus]

3 hours ago, EccentricCircle said:

Narrative is far and away my favourite. I'm not a very competitive player at all, and really its all about the story that we create. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that I don't actually enjoy playing mass battle wargames for their own sake. I really enjoy painting big armies, and creating entire tables of terrain to fight over, but playing the actual game often leaves me burnt out. I find it frustrating, tiring and not especially rewarding. What I think I really want is a sprawling strategic scale RPG, where warhammer battles are used to resolve big scale conflicts, and every battle advances the plot of the more personal and story driven RPG campaign. I suspect that's quite an unusual stance though!

Maybe look into War of the Ring. It’s an amazing board game that is very narrative and strategic. 

It’s hard to do it justice, but maybe this review will

 

[RexHavoc]

I zero interest in anything but narrative games for AoS and we don't allow any kind of meta chasing within my group.

I get that people do enjoy playing with random people, but personally never understood it and don't see why after playing with someone once or twice, you'd continue to rely on GW to deliver balanced rules that let you play pick up games without some form of communication with the other party. Especially when GW have a poor record of ever managing to release complete or balanced rules.

So personally I find the match play rules a waste of resources in the games development, more so since spending so much time and money developing match play rules only to keep releasing new models and books that creep in power and scale anyway.

Tin foil hat maybe, but I honestly don't think GW care about match play past it being the money cow to milk to keep the suits happy. Every edition of Warhammer I've ever picked up in the past had a creed of playing for fun and talking to your opponent to solve rules or balance issues and leant towards being narrative driven.

I do dislike the notion that narrative & open play are just there to be abused by players wanted to own all other players by whacking down 12 bloodthirsters and 6 nagash models. This logic is dumb, because what is then stopping the opponent doing the same +1. This is the same kind of silly logic that tournament players must get when people say that all tournament play is toxic.

This is all just my own personal opinion though, I don't begrudge anyone for wanting match play or for being a player that finds match play/tournaments fun. Its just not for me.



 

[EccentricCircle]

1 hour ago, Praecautus said:

Maybe look into War of the Ring. It’s an amazing board game that is very narrative and strategic. 

It’s hard to do it justice, but maybe this review will

 

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll check that out!

[Lord of the Isle]

It’s interesting that so many of you answer 100% narrative (so would I, 1000%) and yet most discussion here focuses on rules / tactics / combos

Coming back to the hobby after a 15 year hiatus, I wonder if the shift from narrative written to video battle reports has at least something to answer for?

[EccentricCircle]

4 hours ago, Lord of the Isle said:

It’s interesting that so many of you answer 100% narrative (so would I, 1000%) and yet most discussion here focuses on rules / tactics / combos

Coming back to the hobby after a 15 year hiatus, I wonder if the shift from narrative written to video battle reports has at least something to answer for?

The narrative crowd here have discussed why this might be a few times. We've largely come to the conclusion that there is just more to talk about when it comes to rules and matched play. People are constantly discussing lists, rules, advice, army building etc. All of that is quite faction specific, and so spawns a lot of different threads. Whereas there tend to be just a couple of pretty contained threads when something major happens regarding the lore or background. It just doesn't generate as much discussion.

What you do see people post as narrative players are hobby blogs, or threads where they share their fiction and background. However, these don't really inspire debate. They are fun to read, but all you can often post is "This is great, keep doing it!" Everyone's narrative lore is their own at the end of the day, and so it doesn't need to be policed or interpreted in the way that rules changes do. Those sorts of threads also take a lot of work, as do those that post the story or set up of a narrative campaign in a lot of detail. Its far easier to casually interact with the threads on matched play than it is to dive in to writing up all of your narrative, even if that's what you are having most fun doing with your games.

Narrative threads also tend to be tucked away in the narrative section, where they don't get nearly as much traffic. I know that despite describing myself as a 100% narrative player, I rarely have time to read that section in depth, so tend to just skim a handful of threads here in AoS discussions.

I'm not sure there is really a solution, but rest assured when a narrative thread does spring up, we will all be there to discuss it in a heartbeat!

[RexHavoc]

3 hours ago, EccentricCircle said:

The narrative crowd here have discussed why this might be a few times. We've largely come to the conclusion that there is just more to talk about when it comes to rules and matched play. People are constantly discussing lists, rules, advice, army building etc. All of that is quite faction specific, and so spawns a lot of different threads. Whereas there tend to be just a couple of pretty contained threads when something major happens regarding the lore or background. It just doesn't generate as much discussion.

What you do see people post as narrative players are hobby blogs, or threads where they share their fiction and background. However, these don't really inspire debate. They are fun to read, but all you can often post is "This is great, keep doing it!" Everyone's narrative lore is their own at the end of the day, and so it doesn't need to be policed or interpreted in the way that rules changes do. Those sorts of threads also take a lot of work, as do those that post the story or set up of a narrative campaign in a lot of detail. Its far easier to casually interact with the threads on matched play than it is to dive in to writing up all of your narrative, even if that's what you are having most fun doing with your games.

Narrative threads also tend to be tucked away in the narrative section, where they don't get nearly as much traffic. I know that despite describing myself as a 100% narrative player, I rarely have time to read that section in depth, so tend to just skim a handful of threads here in AoS discussions.

I'm not sure there is really a solution, but rest assured when a narrative thread does spring up, we will all be there to discuss it in a heartbeat!

Exactly all of this.

Narrative is a more personal 'adventure' that doesn't promote as much discussion, even if people do enjoy reading/looking at narrative threads. There is very little traffic to the narrative, and even the painting threads don't get a huge amount of comments (Not just here, even big facebook groups and other forums have the same issue) It takes time and effort to create narrative posts but it takes more work to read through them and leave some discussion underneath. (There's blogs I follow but I either have time to read them, or to skim through & leave a comment!)

It can also only take one bad comment or bad take on a narrative thread to dissuade someone from spending the extra time and effort of creating narrative posts. There is also a good percentage of the community see anything outside of the 'official' lore as made up and not worth the time to invest in. 

 

[Slayerofmen]

From at least a personal point of view matched play is always just the fastest way to "get a game" whether the outcome of the game itself feels like I got a game that's up for debate. 

Narrative us always something I want to do but never get to. 

From a game design standpoint it makes a lot more sense to build the game to match play then just remind people that they don't NEED points and army structure to play the game, they did this in 6,7,8 fantasy and I actually played a heap if narrative in those days. AoS1 was great for some maybe many but it is a telling factor that they have put so much effort into putting those structures in that maybe a no structure format doesn't suit the masses.

 

[Lord of the Isle]

I was on a lot of Warhammer forums mostly in 6th edition and there was far more lore discussion and far more writing, both fiction and narrative battle/campaign reports. I think one of the paradoxes of a looser setting is it makes people’s stories less mutually engaged, and technology has also played a role…

[Enoby]

24 minutes ago, Lord of the Isle said:

I was on a lot of Warhammer forums mostly in 6th edition and there was far more lore discussion and far more writing, both fiction and narrative battle/campaign reports. I think one of the paradoxes of a looser setting is it makes people’s stories less mutually engaged, and technology has also played a role…

Yeah, I think that's one of the downfalls of such a vague setting. Sure, I'm much more interested in my guys than I am in any of the official characters, but there's no reason anyone else would care about my guys so I can't exactly discuss them with people online. On the other hand, in a tight setting with clear lore and implications attached to that lore, I may find it hard to be as creative as I want to be with my characters, but it's a lot easier to discuss that online. 

While 40k is a much larger franchise, its subreddit has 429,000 members and AoS's subreddit has 103,000. So around 4× as many people generally interested in the game.

40k Lore's subreddit, on the other hand, had 146,000 members and AoS Lore has 6600 members - there are 22× the number of people discussing 40k lore. 

While AoS being newer will mean it's less established, general interest seems about 4× lower whereas lore interest seems massively smaller. 

[KrrNiGit]

Nice to know that my initial thoughts weren’t completely off base.

It’s cool hearing all the rad stuff you all are doing with the game. I would love to see the rules you have set up for your little narrative adventures. Is there a place where people have shared their modules? I would love to see what tweaks people have made to the game to help tell their stories. While reading someone else’s narrative is fun, reading their module could inspire me (and others) to play in their world (or give me new ideas for how to play in my own). Anyone else interested in this? Or just me?

I am also a bit surprised that the response to my post is pretty much 100% from “narrative players” (not that there is such a clean delineation between player types in reality). Maybe it is because there were too many words in it for competitive players? And not enough pictures for open ones :P? Either way there seems to be a silent “majority” (not really any way or point to proving which way to play has the most active players in my opinion) of narrative players in this hobby. Which to some extant makes sense, there are games with a lower barrier of entry (and less nerd stigma) if you want a solely competitive experience out there. There seems to be something about AoS that draws people who want to create and experience stories as they play it not just win a game.

I guess my follow up question then is how do we help new people to the AoS community into narrative play? How do we show them the breadth of what’s possible? Or is this something people need to do on their own?

[RuneBrush]

On 10/16/2021 at 8:41 AM, KrrNiGit said:

Wouldn’t they get a better return on their effort by focussing on the competitive community over other players?

The short answer to this is no.  The competitive part of AoS is likely smaller than the other parts - what it does have is the most screen time and some of the loudest voices.  There are a huge number of games played by people in the privacy of their homes that we never hear about.

I think one of the biggest issues that the 3 ways to play actually causes is when people view the ways as immutable.  Over the past 20 years gamers have become less inventive with the rules and more focused on the "right and wrong" way to play.  I can remember "playing" 40k with a mate when I was in my teens - we got most of the rules wrong, only had a dozen models a piece and the terrain was a bedroom carpet with books and socks.  It was some of the best gaming ever because we'd discuss how things should work and make up stuff because it felt "right".

On 10/20/2021 at 12:58 AM, KrrNiGit said:

I guess my follow up question then is how do we help new people to the AoS community into narrative play? How do we show them the breadth of what’s possible? Or is this something people need to do on their own?

Little bit of A, little bit of B 😊  I think broadly speaking we need to raise the profile of narrative gaming.  That includes things like streamed coverage at narrative events and showing that running a narrative game doesn't really require any more effort than a matched play game - just giving your heroes names is normally enough to give that attachment to your army.

[Lord of the Isle]

I agree that the popularisation of 3 types seems unhelpful in its effects. Back in 6th it felt like everyone was interested both in lore and rules, now the general vibe often seems one or the other

Might also be a result of less characterful mad lore-based comedy rules? Less elaborate magic items etc customisation? More emphasis on nigh on compulsory special characters?

[Slayerofmen]

The core game systems themselves, lend themselves to a more analogue "just win not fat" style of play V old editions

Was the wizarding hat on a goblin warboss a good idea? No... was the outcome hilarious....always. no days items aren't funny bad they are either used or just so bad they aren't even funny bad. Which comes down to how the games themselves work

[DOGGED]

On 10/16/2021 at 9:41 AM, KrrNiGit said:

A tale of 3 ways to play

[...]

 

TL:DR

Looking at the 3 ways to play has helped me see our game differently. It has invigorated my curiosity and got me enthused for trying out the different game modes on offer. I even have some ideas for potential mods I’d like to build.

Do you consider yourself a balanced player? Do you think it is worth giving some of the other ways to play a try? 

If you could change anything about AoS what would it be? Why don’t you give it a try and see how it goes?

 

I started at both 40K and Warhammer in a friendly competitive way and always stayed the same, while looking for other games (historical ones) for narrative playing. AoS definitely changed that and even got me playing narrative 40K. These and every other GW game I tried or might try, even when playing competitively (again, in a friendly manner), I do so now from a narrative perspective, and will to play in the narrative mode too. With games with a lore that extense as AoS, narrative is a boon that takes them beyond the tournament and offers the chance to actually play all the things we have read about and which, for a good lot of us, have hooked us to the games.

So yes, it is worth giving a try to the different modes; while matched affords for setting up games on the fly (for example), narrative gives the opportunity to grow characters and armies and build a name and a history for them, or to replay "historical" battles from the lore.

 

On 10/20/2021 at 1:58 AM, KrrNiGit said:

[...]

I guess my follow up question then is how do we help new people to the AoS community into narrative play? How do we show them the breadth of what’s possible? Or is this something people need to do on their own?

Path to Glory should be the way to introduce new players, because of its obvious low level introduction and progressive escalation. Both Underworlds and Warcry are good introduction games too, in a more indirect way. Using multiplayer forces with new players leading Path to Glory warbands as part of the different armies comes to mind as a way to use such warbands beyond Path to glory.

[Skreech Verminking]

I’m really enjoying the narrative part of the game.

The revamp of path to glory, just made the game so much more enjoyable.