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Warhammer Live - The First Day of AOS Water Cooler thread for the Battles


Gaz Taylor

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Speaking as someone who's done a fair bit of Youtube BatReps, I can say it's often kinda hard to nail it just right. There's the aforementioned preferences for static shot vs moving camera, and it's a process of continual improvement. The acoustics of a room can make filming with audio a real pig, the game rarely goes to a script so pre-planning is silly, and you're often asking people who aren't professional or at least trained camerapeople to film. (You'd be amazed at how often people underestimate how hard it is to maintain steady, smooth shots while also playing a game.)

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19 hours ago, Rob said:

With regards to the narrative game what would you expect to see more of to make it feel more narrative?

I would like to have seen a narrative, a story, and then a battle within the story played out on the table. In the Realm Gate Wars books and the Battletomes there are a story being introduced and then a Battleplan drawn up to recreate that story. Something similar could be done here.
If you have an hour on hand, then spend the first 15 minutes telling the introduction to the story being told on today's show. Set the stage, introduce the warring factions, draw up their motivation and then zoom in to the details of the battle that is about to be played out - The scenery, the objectives, the specific rules reflecting the narrative.
It would be okay then if the game only lasted 30 minutes or so, leaving 15 minutes at the end to go over the consequences of the battle and lead in into next weeks story/battle.

Having the Narrative event be a like watching a nice TV-series, would be awesome, especially if it is possible to give small nuggets of lore that haven't been published yet. That way viewers would turn in, not just to follow along with the story, but also to find out more and more about the yet-relatively-unexplored world of Age of Sigmar.

 

To put it bluntly I think Narrative play put a lot of emphasis on the 'Why?' where as the competitive play mostly skips right to the 'How'.

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Overall, a very good positive start to Warhammer Live. The potential for it is enormous! 

I had some thoughts on the narrative game. First, the really good bits:

1. Great choice of armies, they were both beautiful and the Order one in particular was so unique and thematic that it was perfect for a narrative game. I hope heavily kitbashed and armies can be shown regularly. It was also a very nice touch to make sure all units had cool names and that these were referenced. Having the introductory close ups of the armies and continuing to show these quite regularly though the game was good as well.

2. The table looked very pretty, so good choice there. The use of camera angles also seemed to develop well as the game went on. The overhead view is essential to give context (particularly for the competitive game i guess) but the closer views are much more interesting and immersive to look at most of the time. These seemed to get better as the game went on. The overhead is almost just a diagram.

3. Campaign - good idea to start a campaign for the narrative games, and good idea to make it the one from general's handbook so that people can easily pick it up at home if they want.

4. Commentary. Rob and Eddie were very engaging and entertaining to listen to and had good chemistry. It must be very challenging to go on live TV for hours on end without really knowing what you are going to say for most of it! I enjoyed the banter and there were lots of interesting nuggets. Well done.

5. The commentators also did a good job of drawing out some of the story elements that came out of the game. For example, the surrounded duardin and the skeletons retreating from the Order general to make way for the dragon to swoop in (there was a wonderful camera shot of that as well, which Rob picked up and made sure they dwelled on).

 

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Further to the really positive points I posted above, here are some hopefully constructive suggestions for possible improvements:

1. The game could have had some more story and in-game objectives I think. I know that this scenario in the general's handbook doesn't have much in the way of objectives, but there's no reason why you can't use the basic scenario from the GH then overlay a couple of story objectives on top.

2. AoS shines when you have objectives, otherwise it can be a bit of a scrum, and narrative games may give you the opportunity to have more "meaningful" or immersive objectives than match play. For example, rather than having to seize some random points on the battlefield for no particular reason other than making for a good game, in narrative play you can give the sides different and thematic objectives if you like.

3. For example, in this game maybe that Order witch could be the long lost sister of the vampire. She has resisted becoming a vampire herself for many years (or maybe she does become a vampire half way through the game and changes sides!) and she has devoted her life to seeing her sister dead. Meanwhile, the vampire is looking to power a mighty spell to raise a terrible undead beast (that will show up in the next game) - perhaps she needs to slay a precise and sacred number of foes (eg 13) to unlock the magic and then make it to the centre of that big green thing to see it cast. Or whatever.

My children are demanding dinner, more thoughts later.

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I think for they could do audio from the table like Formula 1 races do it from the drivers - all the banter is recorded behind the scenes, and then 30-60 seconds later an interesting bit gets pushed to the stream. The commentators are notified that this is occurring in 3 seconds, so they can shut up - "Team radio..."

They definitely need some sort of live feed from the table to know what's going on. A little grot typing in a play-by-play in shorthand that the commentators can see (and possibly us, as well).

In essence - watch how F1 does it, and emulate as much as possible...

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Carrying on with the suggestions I started above. 

4. It would be very cool to see story elements and rivalries between characters develop from what happens in game. For example, that order general that was killed by the dragon in this game. Maybe his broken body was recovered from the battlefield and he has now recovered and vowed to slay the beast. For the next game he could have acquired himself a dragon-killing magic weapon.  But hellish nightmares plague his sleep since his body was broken and he is now prone to bouts of insanity (could have some in game effect). Or maybe he decides to fight fire with fire and calls in the help of a star drake for the next game.

5. It must be very hard for the commentators to keep tabs on what is happening in the game, but anything that can be done to make this easier would be good. Diagrams on screen would be great, and I think they are coming? Maybe the players could pause and alert the commentators when there is a key dice roll. Eg for priority or to slay a key character. Then this could be caught on camera (with some way of making sure the dice stay on screen!) so the audience is fully up with it as it happens. Making sure the players always use different colour dice or roll one after the other, so we know who has rolled what, would be cool.

6. A very short chat with the players pre game so they can introduce their armies and the story of the battle would be cool. This could also be repeated during downtime throughout the day. I guess all these extra "bits" add to production time, but I think this would be very valuable. It was weirdly impersonal to get lots of glimpses of the players backs and heads, without knowing anything about them!

7. Maybe the studio background writers could help with story ideas as they are so familiar with doing this stuff? I'm sure they've got lots on their plate, but just a few cool bullet point story hooks would be great. They wouldn't have to do reams of prose. Or maybe the community could help come up with story and scenario ideas to be incorporated in the next weeks game.

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Ben got to the real issue with the AoS MP game. It was kind of doomed to not be a good show.

Watching a 40k game now between Space Wolves and Thousand Sons. The commentator they've got stepping in for Eddie is pretty good.

IMO they need to step into the gamespace though. There's no competitive reason really to keep the commentary from the players as they aren't working with hidden knowledge (player hands, other team vision/position, etc) and they'll always be struggling with keeping up with what's going on from the booth. I also don't really buy that they need to keep foul-mouthed gamey ****** from upsetting the kids. It's at WHW with handpicked players. I doubt they're going to go off on a racist tirade when they lose priority rolls.

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Watched most of AoS live and last half of 40k as well. Watching first half of 40k now.

The 40k coverage is/was very good and far superior... And I don't even play the game. Best comentary (comentary on matched AoS was also better than the "narrative" one). Best looking boards, armies (Skyre army wasn't even painted!), more epic games, easier to follow action... Let's see how week 2 goes.

And stop moaning about camera angles. They did a massive improvement in layout (from 0 to 100, almost) and cameras over previous streams.

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I thought they did pretty well, the new graphics were great, and the inserts and overlays and they got all that new stuff working since Blood & Glory.

You are seeing an improvement each broadcast, it will get crazy good with time and the right support.

The big question isn't really what is achievable, because the sky is the limit, the question is how much will GW's corporate culture & ownership hold the WHTV team back, and similarly what can we do to show our support for it and help grow it. 

I don't think at the moment they need much FB, those guys know what they are doing. I can guarantee every single thing you have mentioned has already been discussed over a beer in bugmans or on a coffee break somewhere.

I think they need financial support and viewing figures, and positive feedback to management upstairs, so the best thing one can do right now is subscribe and tune in live each week, and maybe email customer services and tell them how much you enjoy it and just throw support at it positively. If every commentor on this thread subscribed, that would be enough to buy a small Arri Lighting kit , or a decent radio mic and LAV kit..the only way this is going to grow and improve is with direct support.

Then in a year or two's time once it has really taken off and established itself in how it wants to be, and they are given the correct platform to perform from and the correct pedestal they need to truely express and show what they can do creatively and achieve, then, and only then would it be reasonable to expect them to listen to community feedback unbiased and without pre-judgement.

At the moment everyone is commenting on a barely hatched idea, give it the time and support and nurture it to grow it into something to really be proud of.

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On 12/16/2016 at 1:45 PM, CoffeeGrunt said:

Speaking as someone who's done a fair bit of Youtube BatReps, I can say it's often kinda hard to nail it just right. There's the aforementioned preferences for static shot vs moving camera, and it's a process of continual improvement. The acoustics of a room can make filming with audio a real pig, the game rarely goes to a script so pre-planning is silly, and you're often asking people who aren't professional or at least trained camerapeople to film. (You'd be amazed at how often people underestimate how hard it is to maintain steady, smooth shots while also playing a game.)

True and than again not true for a company like GW. (I say this as a part time filmmaker)

1. Acoustics of a room can truly mess up your sound. But than again that can easily be managed by using lapel mics or just testing sound beforehand and making simple adjustments.
2. Although camera people are expensive, if they just asked on Facebook for a film student locally who wants to do it... They get a cheap, fairly good cameraman who: only has to focus on the game, knows the game and most likely is better than the players at camera work. 
3. Truly steady and smooth (4K) shots are only a €800 investment away. A DJI OSMO+ should work perfectly for these kind of things (it even has a wide angled lens) and for GW that should be a relatively cheap investment. 
4. Pre-planning does have it's values up to a point. Deciding beforehand when to cut (after every battle round), explanation moments, stuff like that help keep it going smoothly. (of course you are totally right that games can't be scripted, but that adds to the fun)
5. Yes it is a process of continual improvement and you have to start somewhere. So they could do a couple of practice runs to get a better start. 

Most of these restrictions are tricky but if you (as a company) are trying to get into the BatRep game you should be willing to invest time and money. So yes, I perfectly understand that's it's tricky to film BatReps to a high standard as individuals but a lot of those things can be helped with some resources. Although it has to be said filming for YouTube and being able to edit.... whole different ballgame to live streams. 

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