Fluff Problems

[Charles]

I am still reading the Realmgate Wars and they are very entertaining. The quality improves over time for sure but it’s very entertaining and original take on bread and butter fantasy.

Just over half way through Fury of Gork at the moment and it’s da best!

[Menkeroth]

19 minutes ago, Charles said:

I am still reading the Realmgate Wars and they are very entertaining. The quality improves over time for sure but it’s very entertaining and original take on bread and butter fantasy.

 

True. Quest for Ghal Maraz with which I have started the campaign was captivating enough to go further, and maps of Chamon are stunning. But then all have their own merits, quite a good campaign that actually had the start, end and consequences.

[chord]

Don't mistake the novels and the campaign books. The campaign books cover stuff outside the novels and vice versa

[VBS]

I think something just doesn't add up in the recent Morathi fluff.... Like she is deceiving her followers to worship a dead god for her own benefit. Couldn't any of the elven gods that were around when Khaine died just let everyone know? I mean, Malekith could go: "Oh you know your god is dead? Yeah, my mother is just lying. She does that a lot. Always was a manipulative *****, that ol' hag".   

[Mirbeau]

17 minutes ago, VBS said:

I think something just doesn't add up in the recent Morathi fluff.... Like she is deceiving her followers to worship a dead god for her own benefit. Couldn't any of the elven gods that were around when Khaine died just let everyone know? I mean, Malekith could go: "Oh you know your god is dead? Yeah, my mother is just lying. She does that a lot. Always was a manipulative *****, that ol' hag".   

 

On the face of it yeah. But we don't know too much about the other elven deities or their intentions (besides Ararielle yet) and the gods in AOS don't seem to be omniscient like the Abrahamic ones - as evidenced by Sigmar not knowing Nagash's plans, Morathi stealing more than her share of souls etc - so they simply may harbour suspicions but don't know enough yet.

[Wraith01]

I love the Fluff, specially the Realmgate Wars. I especially like the fluff in the Campaign books much more than the novelizations I've read. I'd just recommend having an open mind and not comparing it to the Old World (stories), after all they are still working on establishing the Realms and explaining the lore.

 

 

[flemingmma]

The improvement in the fluff from the early realm gate wars stuff to now is significant, you can pick up the hammerhall and other stories collection for super cheap and it shows just how good the newer aos fluff is (as well as the better old stuff)

[Aegisgrimm]

Frankly I'm at a kind of crossroads with fluff and my games, due to the fact that 90% of the games I will play will be at my house, mostly between either a long time friend, or my father, who I am getting back into gaming with now that I have moved back close to where I grew up.  So I pretty much get to dictate fluff.

So on one hand, I am debating rewriting the end Times to include Stormcast in the Old World.  Basically making the End Times and several decades after into the Time of Chaos.

Or, just so I can have fun with you guys here, have my games set in a section of Ghyran which was kept Nurgle-free (as none of the warbands that will see play around here are Nurgle).

 

[TheOtherJosh]

3 minutes ago, Aegisgrimm said:

Frankly I'm at a kind of crossroads with fluff and my games, due to the fact that 90% of the games I will play will be at my house, mostly between either a long time friend, or my father, who I am getting back into gaming with now that I have moved back close to where I grew up.  So I pretty much get to dictate fluff.

So on one hand, I am debating rewriting the end Times to include Stormcast in the Old World.  Basically making the End Times and several decades after into the Time of Chaos.

Or, just so I can have fun with you guys here, have my games set in a section of Ghyran which was kept Nurgle-free (as none of the warbands that will see play around here are Nurgle).

 

Given the breadth of the new mortal realms you could entirely base a campaign in your own pocket of the mortal realms.

The Firestorm campaign box handles that pretty nicely and you can create your own cities with their own populations. (It’s a solid map based campaign.)

Sure you could base them in Ghyran, but there are a whole bunch of other realms available ... and the scale is huge. And you’re now looking at over 100 years since the Realmgates were opened.

 

[shinros]

25 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Given the breadth of the new mortal realms you could entirely base a campaign in your own pocket of the mortal realms.

The Firestorm campaign box handles that pretty nicely and you can create your own cities with their own populations. (It’s a solid map based campaign.)

Sure you could base them in Ghyran, but there are a whole bunch of other realms available ... and the scale is huge. And you’re now looking at over 100 years since the Realmgates were opened.

 

Yup, we have a map of ghyran but we have to remember according to lore in context it's far larger than the warhammer world. The city of Hammerhal is almost the size of a Continent. 

[Menkeroth]

And even more, in fact, consisting of two huge districts in two Realms. Marvellous.

[Lucio]

I like a lot of the fluff I've read so far, though up until City of Secrets came out, along with Shadows over Hammerhal, it wasn't clear how "normal" folks lived

Now we have a taste of what it's like for regular folks, the whole thing starts to come together.

What we're still missing is how the non human factions live. We've seen a little about the Bonesplittas, living in nomadic tribes hunting for beasts and monsters but there needs to be more.

[shinros]

2 minutes ago, Lucio said:

I like a lot of the fluff I've read so far, though up until City of Secrets came out, along with Shadows over Hammerhal, it wasn't clear how "normal" folks lived

Now we have a taste of what it's like for regular folks, the whole thing starts to come together.

What we're still missing is how the non human factions live. We've seen a little about the Bonesplittas, living in nomadic tribes hunting for beasts and monsters but there needs to be more.

Oh yeah I really want some information on destruction hence why I want them to win this week in order for them to keep the new moon that has popped up. More Death and destruction lore is something I really want. 

[HorticulusTGA]

17 minutes ago, shinros said:

Yup, we have a map of ghyran but we have to remember according to lore in context it's far larger than the warhammer world. The city of Hammerhal is almost the size of a Continent. 

Well, we have 2 big maps of the Innerlands of Aqshy and Shyish (from the Traveller's Guide video. From the MP website we also have a map detailing the Marches of the Shyish Innerlands, and from Firestorm we have a map detailing the center of Aqsh'y Innerland - this one linked to the smaller maps in Path to Glory (south of Hammerhal Aqsha) and Stormcast Battletome). The Ghyran and Chamon maps (that are probably Innerlands maps too, i.e. maps of the central, more settled area of the Realms) are not as large or as complete as the Shyish and Aqshian ones we have. 

I hope the DoK battle tome will have a map of Ulgu. I'm quite sad it wasn't the case for Legions of Nagash, but then we have the MP website for Shyish. 

About Hammerhal : we have the map of the city in Aqshy, and it is really NOT continent sized. You can make the comparison of the Cinderfall district in the WHQ booklet. It's a gigantic city, but not continent sized - GW writers sometimes seem to like to exaggerate to make things more "epic", but it sometimes only makes things less relatable (remember when they described the Realms first, without any comprehensive maps or the concept of Realmspheres ?)-

[Menkeroth]

5 minutes ago, Lucio said:

I like a lot of the fluff I've read so far, though up until City of Secrets came out, along with Shadows over Hammerhal, it wasn't clear how "normal" folks lived

 

In fact it was. From the start.

5 minutes ago, Lucio said:

Now we have a taste of what it's like for regular folks, the whole thing starts to come together.

 

The whole thing became together much earlier, actually.

6 minutes ago, Lucio said:

What we're still missing is how the non human factions live. We've seen a little about the Bonesplittas, living in nomadic tribes hunting for beasts and monsters but there needs to be more.

We know a lot of them. Bonesplitterz, Ironjawz and all ogres are nomadic tribes and clans, greenskinz and all grots lead more civilized live and inhabit different regions of the realms. And so on.

[Envyus]

I vastly prefer the Old Warhammer world still.  It just does not make sense to throw out a well developed setting that people like. 

The Mortal Realms as a setting have grown on me, but they are still inferior to the old world.

My biggest problem is that they are simply too big for the tech level. The shortstory Pantheon showed off perfectly how they are simply too big. It takes an incredibly powerful Mage, who Sigmar, Teclis and Nagash acknowledge as being among the greatest Wizards ever, Six whole years to make the trip to the nearest notable Dwarf settlement. Then another four to get to his next destination.  

40k's large setting works because of the Tech level. They have space ships and teleporters and veracious ways to make travels of long distance relatively quick. Here they don't the closest things are the realmgate portals but those go to fixed locations and pretty much everyone else is restricted to the old horse and cart method of travel.

[Envyus]

8 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

In fact it was. From the start.

The whole thing became together much earlier, actually.

We know a lot of them. Bonesplitterz, Ironjawz and all ogres are nomadic tribes and clans, greenskinz and all grots lead more civilized live and inhabit different regions of the realms. And so on.

No this is not true. 

[HorticulusTGA]

22 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

In fact it was. From the start.

The whole thing became together much earlier, actually.

We know a lot of them. Bonesplitterz, Ironjawz and all ogres are nomadic tribes and clans, greenskinz and all grots lead more civilized live and inhabit different regions of the realms. And so on.

But it wasn't detailed at all. 

Since Gates of Azyr, we only had the point of view of surviving, post-apocalyptic "normal" humans (the nomadic tribes of the Age of Chaos, with maybe one not really important fisher village in the Call of Chaos series). There was plenty more things to learn about the many cultures of the Realms, mainly the Age of Myth cultures  ; we have now informations of some of those old civilizations (the Katophranes, the Lantic Empire, the Agloraxi Empire, etc.) - but only since a 1.5 years. In Grand Alliance : Order, we got a bit more fluff about Azyrite culture and people, and it was great but quite short (and the article about Azyrheim itself should absolutely have been in the Main book).

I think AOS' background has since its start a greater potential than WFB fluff (which I still love and always will). As the AOS universe is larger than WFB and was so new in 2015, it was only natural for it to be very vague, but I'm still convinced the informations found in the Traveller's Guide should have been in the Main book alongside some Innerlands maps (I'm sure the reason we didn't got those is GW writers themselves wasn't sure of the very nature of this new universe at that time).

Every Battletomes since Sylvaneth have been great (Fyreslayers, Ironjawz, but mainly Flesh-Eater Courts and Everchosen being IMO the best quality BT ante-GHB 2016 - the RGW was also great, but lacking contextualization - only All-Gates hadn't this problem. Since then (Season of War), almost every fluff bit has been awesome. 

[Menkeroth]

1 hour ago, Envyus said:

I vastly prefer the Old Warhammer world still.  It just does not make sense to throw out a well developed setting that people like. 

 

They had no choice.

1 hour ago, Envyus said:

The Mortal Realms as a setting have grown on me, but they are still inferior to the old world.

 

They are not even if we remember that AoS is far younger.

1 hour ago, Envyus said:

No this is not true. 

In fact it is true.

56 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

But it wasn't detailed at all. 

 

It was, just not that much as could have been. Of course it takes time.

56 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Since Gates of Azyr, we only had the point of view of surviving, post-apocalyptic "normal" humans (the nomadic tribes of the Age of Chaos, with maybe one not really important fisher village in the Call of Chaos series). There was plenty more things to learn about the many cultures of the Realms, mainly the Age of Myth cultures  ; we have now informations of some of those old civilizations (the Katophranes, the Lantic Empire, the Agloraxi Empire, etc.) - but only since a 1.5 years. In Grand Alliance : Order, we got a bit more fluff about Azyrite culture and people, and it was great but quite short (and the article about Azyrheim itself should absolutely have been in the Main book).

 

Yes, and that is because GW was focused on the RW campaign, so it is logical - after all, we got world pwned by Chaos. As it recovers from the Age of Chaos, so is the peaceful life.

56 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

I think AOS' background has since its start a greater potential than WFB fluff (which I still love and always will). As the AOS universe is larger than WFB and was so new in 2015, it was only natural for it to be very vague, but I'm still convinced the informations found in the Traveller's Guide should have been in the Main book alongside some Innerlands maps (I'm sure the reason we didn't got those is GW writers themselves wasn't sure of the very nature of this new universe at that time).

 

True, like they should have released "Getting started with the Age of Sigmar" far earlier. And a book about Realms in details, not a few words in the first book.

56 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Every Battletomes since Sylvaneth have been great (Fyreslayers, Ironjawz, but mainly Flesh-Eater Courts and Everchosen being IMO the best quality BT ante-GHB 2016 - the RGW was also great, but lacking contextualization - only All-Gates hadn't this problem. Since then (Season of War), almost every fluff bit has been awesome. 

They all have their merits. I would say than in terms of all other fluff bits save war FEC, BCR and Sylvaneth are the most informative. But then all of them have their own interesting bits, and yeah, KO tome is by far the most detailed in all respects.

[S133arcanite]

50 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

It fact it is true.

In fact it is false

 

[Envyus]

23 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

They had no choice.

They are not even if we remember that AoS is far younger.

It fact it is true.

They had a ton of choice. What kind of ****** is that. They can revive the setting if they want and they never had to destroy it. 

I just stated that in my opinion the Mortal Realms is inferior to the Old World. That is true 100% true because it's my opinion.  

 

And it is not true that we got information on how everything worked at the start. 

[HorticulusTGA]

Let's face it, the AOS launch was (rules and) fluff-wise quite hit and miss, with some incoherencies (are the Realms finite, localized, giant planes (like flat earth), or planets, or infinite giant separate dimensions ? - Or  ; did the Battle of the Burning Skies happened before or after Nagash and Sigmar broke their alliance ? Because in the fluff it says "after", but then Nagash is present at the battle - etc.) and a lack of details on the different Mortal Realms native cultures (one mention of a nation in a timeline entry is not enough, hence the "not detailed").

What I mean is that this lack of proper, general contextualization (both in space and time) was unacceptable for a company that have (almost every time) great, experienced background writers, storytellers and world builders.

And of course : almost all of the above is not a problem anymore, but still, it does show that AOS was at launch a grand test, and not a finished product.

Anyway : with the General's Handbook system, the 3-ways-to-play concept and the more streamlined rules in general (so great, even bestselling 40k took it), and the fluff "harmonisation" we got with Malign Portent (which notably means : greater accessibility to new hobbyists) I can really say that from a hobby point of view (i.e. a point of view that mixes background, painting, models and playing approches), Warhammer Age of Sigmar is now, in 2018, the best setting Games Workshop ever made (IMO   ). 

[Killax]

17 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

And of course : almost all of the above is not a problem anymore, but still, it does show that AOS was at launch a grand test, and not a finished product.

What most seem to forget is that this is true for every new game. Even a redone Grand Allegiance can suddenly dissapear from tournament relevancy. E.g. GH2016 Death was very much able to kick around, GH2017 Death was suddenly crippled, 2018 Legions of Nagash brought the balance where it should be for the whole Grand Allegiance (again). 
The consistent thing we see with Games Workshop since their new CEO and policy adapted in 2015 is that GW is changing. It can even be argued that whilst the WFB line wasn't completely dead it was killed off to kickstart this new idea. Because a thing as bad marketing actually doesn't excist if it generates enough attention (and it certainly did). 

Regardless of the lack of details in narrative from the start of Age of Sigmar the newer line is generally seen as better models, more dynamic, more detailed and likely at the backend of Games Workshop even easier to mass create and produce since it's now all based on digital sculpting. 
There are a lot of reasons why GW might have want to get rid of WFB, besides their narrative timing certainly allowing for it as the build up was made for 2006's Storm of Chaos also. One of this could be to implement more new lines with a better IP design and a design that matches the current 'fantasy style that is popular' because if we look at different media it's Blizzard who likely has the most compairable gamer market that could be interested in miniatures also and now a vast slew of GW miniatures sygn up with the pop culture popular fantasy style. Something we saw in the early 90s also with the He-man figures from Hasbro.
For whatever reason Games Workshop stopped going Epic Fantasy with Warhammer Fantasy Battles with 6th edition (2000's). It seemfully wanted to focus on a more historical reletable design with WFB. What we see is that this decade plan actually backfired.

With this epic/mythical design Age of Sigmar didn't lack details really but what it did lack was the same narrative vibe the historical fantasy WFB had. With this I mean that the step from historical fantasy and epic fantasy is so massive that most 'couldn't handle it from the start'. The funny thing is that as time passes the former customer's panic settles down, they look into it and ultimately if they like the models they will buy it.

GWs narrative is relevant, but they are first and foremost selling miniatures. Narrative will bend towards selling those miniatures and miniatures will not suddenly change to the narrative. This is why AoS has that epic fantasy style design but has kept many models from WFB. Because from a business standpoint that's the cheapest and savest thing to do anyway.

Forums are a fantastic subjective way to judge narrative content but more than often it seems that the 'lore fans' forget that what GW is primarely selling is miniatures and really good miniatures don't even require any narrative at all to be sold.

[Menkeroth]

23 minutes ago, S133arcanite said:

In fact it is true

 

Agree, thank you, sometimes I type too fast

23 minutes ago, Envyus said:

They had a ton of choice. What kind of ****** is that. They can revive the setting if they want and they never had to destroy it. 

 

They tried but "faithful fans" acted like always did - with buying third-party miniatures instead of GW's and crying "we've seen that before, where is new?", "it's bad, give us back old stuff" and playing not the game and WH but ugly ETC house rules. GW had no choice because of this and lots of mistakes from the start. So it's everybody's fault at the same time. All this "I would have done differently" and all is false when you are a CEO of a very large company.

26 minutes ago, Envyus said:

I just stated that in my opinion the Mortal Realms is inferior to the Old World. That is true 100% true because it's my opinion.  

 

I don't argue your opinion. I just want to point out that AoS is different to the WHFB and is quite young, so you can't really compare them, and even then they are not inferior - just another thing, and of course you can't compare 4 years and 20+. Likewise the concepts (high fantasy and less magical one) also are different.

27 minutes ago, Envyus said:

And it is not true that we got information on how everything worked at the start. 

But we got, not in full, but, for instance, for me it was all clear. 

18 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Let's face it, the AOS launch was (rules and) fluff-wise quite hit and miss, with some incoherency (are the Realms finite, localized, giant planes (like flat earth), or planets, or infinite giant separate dimension - or  ; did the Battle of the Burning Skies happened before or after Nagash and Sigmar broke their alliance ? Because in the fluff it says "after", but then Nagash is present at the battle - etc.) and a lack of details on the different cultures of the Mortal Realms (one mention of a nation in a timeline entry is not enough, hence the "not detailed").

 

Well, that's not possible to do at once, it always takes a lot of time. But even the first book gave enough info to imagine what's going on.

19 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

And of course : almost all of the above is not a problem anymore, but still, it does show that AOS was at launch a grand test, and not a finished product.

 

No product can be truly finished - if it's finished, it dies or the company goes on to the next one. It has to develop itself constantly in order to survive.

20 minutes ago, HorticulusTGA said:

Anyway : with the General's Handbook system, the 3-ways to play and the more streamlined rules in general (so great, even bestselling 40k took it), and the fluff "harmonisation" we got with Malign Portent (which notably means : greater accessibility to new hobbyist) I can really say that from a hobby point of view (i.e. a point of view that mixes background, painting, models and playing approches), Warhammer Age of Sigmar is now, in 2018, the best setting Games Workshop ever made (IMO   ). 

Completely agree.

 

[HorticulusTGA]

12 minutes ago, Killax said:

Forums are a fantastic subjective way to judge narrative content but more than often it seems that the 'lore fans' forget that what GW is primarely selling is miniatures and really good miniatures don't even require any narrative at all to be sold.

I agree to the other things you've said, but narrative is in fact the central point of miniature designing ; you can not have "design" without a story, a visual universe, i.e. a setting in which to set your models.

When what makes you great is your Intellectual Property, that is.

GW's IP, i.e. GW's force as a creative company, is a mix of narratives and aesthetics / designs (or if you prefer ; an interdependent, reciprocaly caused creative process). And indeed, rules come only after.