Fluff Problems

[Menkeroth]

It's not. Only several things could fit and only loosely. Most of them - no, never. Which is not surprising at all.

[Envyus]

2 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

It's not. Only several things could fit and only loosely. Most of them - no, never. Which is not surprising at all.

And I am asking you to give me examples of what would not fit. Cause I don't believe that for a second. 

Or do you not have any ideas and are just saying this with nothing to back it up.

[Aegisgrimm]

Not much of a big deal if you are playing with others who are onboard with it. .  Of all the new armies, only the Overlords and Stormcast don't fit without huge fluff additions, for sure.     Most of the others could be seen as traditional armies taken to the extreme, like all-Slayer armies, Ghoul uprisings, and Athel Loren going crazy and introducing more types of dryads and treemen.

Do armies like Ogres even have any non-rebranded Warhammer units when it comes to Age of Sigmar?  I know Lizardmen don't, as well as the traditional undead beyond the Mortarchs, really (assuming things like Nighthaunt and Deathrattle would be rolled together to  effectively represent Vampire Counts).

Then you have all the Humans, Dwarven disposessed and Elves which are just rebranded WHFB forces with no AoS-centric additions yet.

I'm not hugely versed in AoS, but seems pretty easy to do in a relaxed enviroment with other players of a like mind.

[Aegisgrimm]

Sorry, doublepost.

 

[Envyus]

6 minutes ago, Aegisgrimm said:

Not much of a big deal if you are playing with others who are onboard with it. .  Of all the new armies, only the Overlords and Stormcast don't fit without huge fluff additions.     Most of the others could be seen as traditional armies takes to the extreme, like Slayer armies, Ghoul uprisings, and Athel Loren going crazy and introducing more types of dryads and treemen.  Do armies like Ogres even have any non-rebranded Warhammer units?

 

Indeed

And even the Stormcast and Overlords could be brought in with just some extra fluff.

The Stormcasts could be mysterious protectors of the empire suddenly emerging on bolts of lighting to aid them then vanishing in a flash. Some of the Emprie thinking they are divine allies sent by Sigmar, others thinking they are a trick from the forces of Chaos. 

The Overlords could be a subset of Dwarfs that decided to get over their technology hang ups and actually decide to improve and create new stuff. One Dwarf alone going against the wishes of his guild was able to make a working Airship. Surely an entire group of them realizing that their dogmatic adherence to tradition and distrust of new things was holding them back could create tons of new technology.  

Other Dwarf clans would distrust or dislike them. But the Emprie could easily seem them as very useful allies. 

 

Also Ogres indeed do not have any non rebranded Warhammer units from my knowledge. (Which is little cause I don't pay too much attention to Ogres.)

[VBS]

I always thought GW could do something along War of the Ring for AoS, as a form of "revival" for WHFB. Build upon current AoS to give an alternative, one that people that liked WHFB can additionally enjoy without taking anything out of AoS.

You don't need to maintain a "third game" or range of models, just put out a book and eventually give FW or specialist range some ownership to put out some supplement from time to time (some not so ambitious version of Tamurkan or whatever). I think it would be beneficial for the company considering there is a market for that and the upkeep cost would be limited considering how it can overlap on many aspects (rule bases and miniature range) with AoS.

I think it would be cool, and as BunkhouseBuster said, more gaming options is a good thing. Especially if it should most likely be viable, have a crowd and not really have a negative impact of other games. More for all, and would call down a lot of the "my game against your game" that appears to happen whenever AoS is mentioned. My humble opinion, as someone who doesn't see WHFB or AoS as something bad or incompatible.

[Envyus]

3 minutes ago, VBS said:

I always thought GW could do something along War of the Ring for AoS, as a form of "revival" for WHFB. Build upon current AoS to give an alternative, one that people that liked WHFB can additionally enjoy without taking anything out of AoS.

You don't need to maintain a "third game" or range of models, just put out a book and eventually give FW or specialist range some ownership to put out some supplement from time to time (some not so ambitious version of Tamurkan or whatever). I think it would be beneficial for the company considering there is a market for that and the upkeep cost would be limited considering how it can overlap on many aspects (rule bases and miniature range) with AoS.

I think it would be cool, and as BunkhouseBuster said, more gaming options is a good thing. Especially if it should most likely be viable, have a crowd and not really have a negative impact of other games. More for all, and would call down a lot of the "my game against your game" that appears to happen whenever AoS is mentioned. My humble opinion, as someone who doesn't see WHFB or AoS as something bad or incompatible.

Yeah this is pretty much exactly what I have been trying to say.

[SeanMaguire1991]

2 hours ago, Killax said:

The real reason why 8th kept it or only slighty altered it is because it had 7 preceding editions that allready made up a clear statline.

As did Fantasy. 

2 hours ago, Killax said:

The real question is if it's as easy to understand and pick up as AoS Warscrolls and in reality it isn't. While it adds some additional roll influencer applying it to all of Age of Sigmar's Warscrolls at this point would be a ton of work to do and not really that benificial to the system.

I'm sorry but no. 8th Edition is plenty easy to pick up and play and yes it would be a lot of work but that's my point a complete overhaul for 2nd edition would be welcome and would make the system better as the 8th ed rules would be altered when necessary to accommodate the more melee and positioning focussed gameplay of AoS. most of the existing abilities can easily transferred with little to no changes. People who complain about their battletomes being invalidated? Welcome to wargaming this happens all the time. 

Having a strength and toughness stat means can interact with each other and gives a wider range of unit diversity with weapons that provide buffs to specific factors to deal with certain threats.  

Keeping it simple for simplicity's sake is just bad game design in my opinion and given that AoS was rushed out the door by the old Ceo I think we can agree that taking notes from 8th Ed will bring more good than bad.

[TheOtherJosh]

8 minutes ago, Envyus said:

And I am asking you to give me examples of what would not fit. Cause I don't believe that for a second. 

Or do you not have any ideas and are just saying this with nothing to back it up.

Hammerhal, which is a city that spans two realms ... via a Realmgate ... the realm of Life and the Realm of Fire.

The issue with the “old world” is that it isn’t truly “High Fantasy” ... and Aos is entirely High Fantasy. The physics of the universes are different. The people inhabiting the old world ... not as fantastical.

Sure, one could have these different groups, but the high Fantasy universe ... with cities on the backs of giant worms ... where the scale is that they don’t ever and haven’t ever had to diverge from their path ... and eats entire civilizations. Compared to the old world .. which scalewise is pretty small in comparison.... and entirely defined. The entire  map was known and laid out ... 

As for supporting WHFB, In a universe where there is endless cash, and endless resources. Sure... but at the time it wasn’t making money and it was generic enough that it wasn’t trademarkable or copyrightable. (Everyone had dwarves, elves, knights, wizards, Priests, orcs, Goblins, vampires, skeletons ... all the generic fantasy tropes... and the list goes on ....) GW is ... at the end of the day ... a business. It exists to make money. It needs to protect its IP, create value for shareholders.

To continue supporting “the old world” they’ve branches out into video games. And the Blood Bowl universe is entirely still in the old world. (Including the new written novels.)

I enjoyed the old world. And I enjoy the new world. But the world and the scale itself can’t be created in the old world.

[Gecktron]

1 hour ago, Envyus said:

Indeed

And even the Stormcast and Overlords could be brought in with just some extra fluff.

The Stormcasts could be mysterious protectors of the empire suddenly emerging on bolts of lighting to aid them then vanishing in a flash. Some of the Emprie thinking they are divine allies sent by Sigmar, others thinking they are a trick from the forces of Chaos. 

The Overlords could be a subset of Dwarfs that decided to get over their technology hang ups and actually decide to improve and create new stuff. One Dwarf alone going against the wishes of his guild was able to make a working Airship. Surely an entire group of them realizing that their dogmatic adherence to tradition and distrust of new things was holding them back could create tons of new technology.  

Other Dwarf clans would distrust or dislike them. But the Emprie could easily seem them as very useful allies. 

 

Also Ogres indeed do not have any non rebranded Warhammer units from my knowledge. (Which is little cause I don't pay too much attention to Ogres.)

Sure, you could always force the new armies somehow into old-world sized pieces but that doesn't mean that it would work.
It doesn't matter with explanation GW would come up to introduce these new armies. The Warhammer Fantasy player would not have accepted them. Just remember the nerd rage during the 8th edition releases. Demigryphs, Sky cutter chariots, Wildriders, even the frost heart phoenix, all of them were unacceptable for a very vocal segment of the community (and are still hated by some of them. Just take a look at the CA Total War: Warhammer forum whenever they come up, so much hatred).
 

Im still standing by it, GW did the right thing by moving past the world-that-was. Fantasy was too cluttered to introduce something new without alienating core parts of their player base without being accessible enough for newcomers.  

[AdamR]

1 hour ago, SeanMaguire1991 said:

 

Keeping it simple for simplicity's sake is just bad game design in my opinion and given that AoS was rushed out the door by the old Ceo I think we can agree that taking notes from 8th Ed will bring more good than bad.

Well I don't agree for one, so you may want to rethink that! 

[Turgol]

1 hour ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Hammerhal, which is a city that spans two realms ... via a Realmgate ... the realm of Life and the Realm of Fire.

The issue with the “old world” is that it isn’t truly “High Fantasy” ... and Aos is entirely High Fantasy. The physics of the universes are different. The people inhabiting the old world ... not as fantastical.

Sure, one could have these different groups, but the high Fantasy universe ... with cities on the backs of giant worms ... where the scale is that they don’t ever and haven’t ever had to diverge from their path ... and eats entire civilizations. Compared to the old world .. which scalewise is pretty small in comparison.... and entirely defined. The entire  map was known and laid out ... 

Concepts such as “cities on the back of giant worms” are where I draw the line between the jewels in AoS lore and bad taste that needs to go away. A universe with its own logic, planet organization and communication means: sure! Making it bigger, not about survival of towns, cities and countries with a given name; but about full scale war between gods: why not! I always hated the feeling of utter insignificance of order factions in WHFB. 

Extreme aesthetics with new concepts evolved from old world design: yeah, give us more please!

But continent size worms and giants, freezing and defreezing an ocean so that a scenario can be made about it? Please no! I hated those bad taste, absurd concepts with no thoughts for world development and only for battle plans that made the Realmgate series.

And we need more cities and fixed key places (and detailed maps) such as Hammerhal, Druchiroth or Nagashizzar! You can always restrict mapping to those places and have enormous room for original development later.

[Gecktron]

39 minutes ago, Turgol said:

Concepts such as “cities on the back of giant worms” are where I draw the line between the jewels in AoS lore and bad taste that needs to go away. A universe with its own logic, planet organization and communication means: sure! Making it bigger, not about survival of towns, cities and countries with a given name; but about full scale war between gods: why not! I always hated the feeling of utter insignificance of order factions in WHFB. 

Extreme aesthetics with new concepts evolved from old world design: yeah, give us more please!

But continent size worms and giants, freezing and defreezing an ocean so that a scenario can be made about it? Please no! I hated those bad taste, absurd concepts with no thoughts for world development and only for battle plans that made the Realmgate series.

And we need more cities and fixed key places (and detailed maps) such as Hammerhal, Druchiroth or Nagashizzar! You can always restrict mapping to those places and have enormous room for original development later.

Leave the worm out of this! 

But seriously, the worm city is way better than it sounds. Josh Reynolds did a great job making the city believable. Just read Spear of Shadows.

[Envyus]

2 hours ago, TheOtherJosh said:

Hammerhal, which is a city that spans two realms ... via a Realmgate ... the realm of Life and the Realm of Fire.

The issue with the “old world” is that it isn’t truly “High Fantasy” ... and Aos is entirely High Fantasy. The physics of the universes are different. The people inhabiting the old world ... not as fantastical.

Sure, one could have these different groups, but the high Fantasy universe ... with cities on the backs of giant worms ... where the scale is that they don’t ever and haven’t ever had to diverge from their path ... and eats entire civilizations. Compared to the old world .. which scalewise is pretty small in comparison.... and entirely defined. The entire  map was known and laid out ... 

As for supporting WHFB, In a universe where there is endless cash, and endless resources. Sure... but at the time it wasn’t making money and it was generic enough that it wasn’t trademarkable or copyrightable. (Everyone had dwarves, elves, knights, wizards, Priests, orcs, Goblins, vampires, skeletons ... all the generic fantasy tropes... and the list goes on ....) GW is ... at the end of the day ... a business. It exists to make money. It needs to protect its IP, create value for shareholders.

To continue supporting “the old world” they’ve branches out into video games. And the Blood Bowl universe is entirely still in the old world. (Including the new written novels.)

I enjoyed the old world. And I enjoy the new world. But the world and the scale itself can’t be created in the old world.

I am talking about the armies and new units. Not the fluff. I have no issue with the settings remaining seperete. Or even doing something like using the Mortal Realms as a outer planes thing. 

Of course the fluff is in compatible with each other they are very different settings. Menkeroth in response that most of the factions and new units could fit in the old world said they could not. Then failed to give a reason as to why. 

My biggest issue with the Mortal Realms is that it's TOO High Fantasy. I prefer a more grounded fantasy setting. 

 

[Envyus]

2 hours ago, Gecktron said:

Sure, you could always force the new armies somehow into old-world sized pieces but that doesn't mean that it would work.
It doesn't matter with explanation GW would come up to introduce these new armies. The Warhammer Fantasy player would not have accepted them. Just remember the nerd rage during the 8th edition releases. Demigryphs, Sky cutter chariots, Wildriders, even the frost heart phoenix, all of them were unacceptable for a very vocal segment of the community (and are still hated by some of them. Just take a look at the CA Total War: Warhammer forum whenever they come up, so much hatred).
 

Im still standing by it, GW did the right thing by moving past the world-that-was. Fantasy was too cluttered to introduce something new without alienating core parts of their player base without being accessible enough for newcomers.  

Yet there are tons of poeple that love those units too and the old world. Those guys could easily be intergerated. And outside of that vocal minority most Fantasy players would not complain. 

No more then the ones that complain about Age of Sigmar releases and such. I say GW can have both settings and it would be nothing but a good thing to bring Fantasy back while making it compatible with Age of Sigmar.

22 minutes ago, Gecktron said:

Leave the worm out of this! 

But seriously, the worm city is way better than it sounds. Josh Reynolds did a great job making the city believable. Just read Spear of Shadows.

It was not that interesting. It felt more like Spectacle and large scale for the sake of Spectacle and large scale. 

 

 

 

[Aegisgrimm]

Yeah, I'm personally finding quite a bit of the spectacle pieces in AoS are along the same lines of the alien mothership in Independence Day: Resurgence, where instead of the original 'huge' one  in orbit being ten miles across, this next is dialed up to 13, being the size of the entire Atlantic Ocean, with one side over France and the other touching the US and would destroy the world by landing on it.  In other words, unnecessarily huge just for shock and awe.

But that's kind of been AoS from day one, with Sigmar's orbital ring of workshops being one of the first pieces of art.

[Turgol]

I know it has been around since day one. I just think that we are in a much better place since Hammerhal: everything used to be Mothership style in the beginning. Now we have many less of those. I wish we could have even less and every time more key, fantastic, huge but not about spectacle things like Hammerhal. And asI have said I do think we have many of those: The underworlds are a splendid concept, the Allpoints is a nice idea, having every time more capitals (Druchiroth, Nagashizzar, Hammerhal, Azyrheim) is encouraging, etc.

[Aegisgrimm]

Yeah, I think what the fluff needs is a few traditional, detailed maps, even if it was of the "Kingdoms" around the cities that are being named.  Nothing crazy, just good, old, normal overland maps that all games have- NOT like the ones that exist so far that are like an acid trip.  There can definitely be some great fantastical high fantasy locales on them, but I find that good maps inspire me more than anything else about a game's fiction.  The Old World had some great maps, especially from the Roleplay game(s).

[shinros]

29 minutes ago, Aegisgrimm said:

Yeah, I think what the fluff needs is a few traditional, detailed maps, even if it was of the "Kingdoms" around the cities that are being named.  Nothing crazy, just good, old, normal overland maps that all games have- NOT like the ones that exist so far that are like an acid trip.  There can definitely be some great fantastical high fantasy locales on them, but I find that good maps inspire me more than anything else about a game's fiction.  The Old World had some great maps, especially from the Roleplay game(s).

Like this one? We saw maps of Asqhy and Shyish in the traveler's guide to the mortal realm it will take time before they fill it out. The point of the setting is that it's high fantasy and one realm is vastly bigger than the warhammer world. Hammerhal in the size of a continent, the pictures on the side also display some of the locations on the map. 

 

Ashqy

Shyish

 

[Aegisgrimm]

I meant more like the Old World map from Fantasy Roleplay, it even has Bugman's Brewery on it!

 

[shinros]

2 minutes ago, Aegisgrimm said:

I meant more like the Old World map from Fantasy Roleplay, it even has Bugman's Brewery on it!

 

So what's the difference? You got the locations of major lands, realmgates, battles and cities along with the context of how vast the realm is. What are you looking for?

[chord]

I don't think we need detailed maps.  Much better to have high fantasy style maps that people can use as they need. Detailed maps, are harder to use for your own.

[shinros]

1 minute ago, chord said:

I don't think we need detailed maps.  Much better to have high fantasy style maps that people can use as they need. Detailed maps, are harder to use for your own.

See I don't really have that problem because they are rather clear how huge the realms actually are. Considering hammerhal is the size of a continent there are plenty of places to place "your dudes" anywhere. Let's not forget there are pocket realms, planets etc. 

[chord]

2 minutes ago, shinros said:

See I don't really have that problem because they are rather clear how huge the realms actually are. Considering hammerhal is the size of a continent there are plenty of places to place "your dudes" anywhere. Let's not forget there are pocket realms, planets etc. 

True,  so people who want detailed maps can make their own.  Problem solved. 

[shinros]

Just now, chord said:

True,  so people who want detailed maps can make their own.  Problem solved. 

Well yeah I can easily make a map of my kingdom and I can slap it almost anywhere without any problems even if we have maps of the realm there is room everywhere.