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Just now, shinros said:

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. 

Agreed,  we don't need detailed maps as we can make our own :D

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No. A setting needs orientation. Orientation in any system needs at least located anchoring points. Whether it is spatial orientation, just distribution of goods, mathematics, or about anything, the human mind can only share with others if you have anchoring points.

Say an official map of the continent in which Nagashizzar is located is developed, or both sides of Hammerhal, everything detailing a good deal of setting-relevant interest point: what do people who want their own maps lose? 

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40 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. 

Yeah see that is too big for me. Given the Tech Level of the setting the City is just too pointlessly big there is no way for people to move around it without it taking weeks at a time. If a person is inside the city chances are with that size that most of them will never even see outside of it. 

Unless thousands of years passed between the Realmgate wars and now. Hammerhal never could have gotten that big. 

37 minutes ago, chord said:

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

People want official things. They don't just want to make up everything about a setting. 

34 minutes ago, chord said:

Agreed,  we don't need detailed maps as we can make our own :D

You missed the point of what he was saying. The way your views are here might as well as not even be a setting, considering you want no information about about it, or for it to be at all fleshed out. 

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Just now, xking said:

The setting is not to big.  We got skyships.  And the Realms tech level? WE got cogforts and mechanical horses in the setting. We don't know what else the Ironweld Arsenal and the Collegiate Arcane have made.

From this image. 

tLzJNMn.jpg

 

Hammerhal is a just a blip on it. And apparently Hammerhal is the size of a continent.  If you wanted to get to the Living City from there it's going to take months to years to get over there. Even with an Airship it will take months. 

 

This is all just too big. And all cites are too far from each other. A normal human is never going to be able to effect these places in any way. 

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4 hours ago, Aegisgrimm said:

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

 

oAK9vwM.jpg

Now this is where  “but WFB” comments fall down a little for me. That map isn’t from a WFB publication it’s from WFRP a game that ceased production something like 27yrs ago. It’s where all the stuff about “normal” life came from. Most of the stuff in it has been retconned as well. 

It also represents the biggest issue of WFB as a Wargames setting in that is was drawn 30 odd years ago and looks almost extactly the same as the one at the start of the the Endtimes.  The setting did not represent a time of War but rather a time of vast stability with occasional inconsequential skirmishes (much like the worldwide situation described in 1984). No one,not the’mightiest Elf Lord, Slann or Orc Warlord could effect it. It’s was an RPG setting, a good one however thats not what WFB was. 

On the subject of WFRP it did possess a myriad of lesser gods and god like entities that your characters could meet personally and cities on floating islands (a particularly humorous adventure featuring Pygmies) not unlike AoS. 

Now I liked WFB (and actually played it right up until the End). AoS is better.  

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The issue is WHF was more grounded, had a more human element to it. AoS is a struggle of god-like beings, not lesser beings like men. It's harder to feel invested in characters and a setting in which things are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, lack of permanent death etc. AoS is a great setting for visuals, and a game...but not so much a setting where you care about anything that happens.

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3 hours ago, Envyus said:

From this image. 

tLzJNMn.jpg

 

Hammerhal is a just a blip on it. And apparently Hammerhal is the size of a continent.  If you wanted to get to the Living City from there it's going to take months to years to get over there. Even with an Airship it will take months. 

 

This is all just too big. And all cites are too far from each other. A normal human is never going to be able to effect these places in any way. 

I mean like, so the realms are big. It just means people have more

oppertunity to have fun with the game imo. If you’d prefer a smaller world, you can do that within the setting. Places like Hammerhall are large enough that you could fit an entire self contained narrative in there.   

If you’d prefer a larger world with less constrained stories and a bigger scale, you can do that to.

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9 minutes ago, xking said:

Traveling vast distances is what realmgates are for, there are even smaller realmgates that connect to each other in the cities(like Nulahmia) . ONE normal human can not effect those places, But an army can or significantly powerful humans can.  And we don't know how fast skyships are. The Swifthawk Agents can cover those distances in hours.

Any examples of the swifthawk agents doing so.

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1 hour ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Now this is where  “but WFB” comments fall down a little for me. That map isn’t from a WFB publication it’s from WFRP a game that ceased production something like 27yrs ago. It’s where all the stuff about “normal” life came from. Most of the stuff in it has been retconned as well. 

It also represents the biggest issue of WFB as a Wargames setting in that is was drawn 30 odd years ago and looks almost extactly the same as the one at the start of the the Endtimes.  The setting did not represent a time of War but rather a time of vast stability with occasional inconsequential skirmishes (much like the worldwide situation described in 1984). No one,not the’mightiest Elf Lord, Slann or Orc Warlord could effect it. It’s was an RPG setting, a good one however thats not what WFB was. 

On the subject of WFRP it did possess a myriad of lesser gods and god like entities that your characters could meet personally and cities on floating islands (a particularly humorous adventure featuring Pygmies) not unlike AoS. 

Now I liked WFB (and actually played it right up until the End). AoS is better.  

I disagree that AoS is better setting wise. Also you do know there is a new WFRP game coming out this year. With the same people making a Age of Sigmar game. 

And the reason it remained largely the same is because GW only recently became ok with moving settings forward. And we got maps, information about normal life and lots of other stuff in the books too. The RPGs placed there only helped flesh it out more. 

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53 minutes ago, AthlorianStoners said:

I mean like, so the realms are big. It just means people have more

oppertunity to have fun with the game imo. If you’d prefer a smaller world, you can do that within the setting. Places like Hammerhall are large enough that you could fit an entire self contained narrative in there.   

If you’d prefer a larger world with less constrained stories and a bigger scale, you can do that to.

If you want to do something in hammerhal then you sure are not doing something anywhere else given it's going to take a month to get out of the city. 

The fact that in stories I have read it does take years for people to move around this place. It's too big for too low a tech level. The Realm gates go to fixed locations so they are only useful in going to certain spots.  None of those battlefronts will ever meet each other as each one of them is too far away form each other. I would be ok with that map if it was the eternity of Ghyran. But I know it's only a small chunk. So nothing can ever really effect it. As it's on too big a scale. 

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49 minutes ago, Envyus said:

If you want to do something in hammerhal then you sure are not doing something anywhere else given it's going to take a month to get out of the city. 

The fact that in stories I have read it does take years for people to move around this place. It's too big for too low a tech level. The Realm gates go to fixed locations so they are only useful in going to certain spots.  None of those battlefronts will ever meet each other as each one of them is too far away form each other. I would be ok with that map if it was the eternity of Ghyran. But I know it's only a small chunk. So nothing can ever really effect it. As it's on too big a scale. 

This thread has gotten really tedious. You move the goalpost all the time. 


"GW could have forced all the new armies into the old world even do it would have broken most of the established background and wouldn't have fixed any of the other problems!"
"Here is something that is unique to the Mortal Realms"
"Yeah, but thats stupid"
"Its not"
"na-ahh"
 

You are free to miss the world-that-was, no problem, just continue playing 8th edition or use the compendium war scrolls. But it gets annoying really quickly if you keep insisting that the AoS background is bad, in a forum full of AoS enthusiasts. 

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1 minute ago, Gecktron said:

This thread has gotten really tedious. You move the goalpost all the time. 


"GW could have forced all the new armies into the old world even do it would have broken most of the established background and wouldn't have fixed any of the other problems!"
"Here is something that is unique to the Mortal Realms"
"Yeah, but thats stupid"
"Its not"
"na-ahh"
 

You are free to miss the world-that-was, no problem, just continue playing 8th edition or use the compendium war scrolls. But it gets annoying really quickly if you keep insisting that the AoS background is bad, in a forum full of AoS enthusiasts. 

I feel like you people are ignoring what I actually said. 

GW could put the new stuff into the Old World it would not have broken anything it would just be new. And what are these other problems.

I have started to like the Age of Sigmar setting more, but I still have issues that it is too big. Honeslty you guys trying to present stuff cool about the setting has soured me a lot on it. Like I was originally cool with Hammerhal, nice big new city that served as a hub. Then I was informed it was the city was continent sized and I found the city far less interesting. 

And one of my main things is that I like the Age of Sigmar ruleset and I don't want the setting and game to go away. I just preferred the old setting. 

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Aw man, we're on about maps again! Absurdly sized cities and distances don't bother me in a game designed for absurdly sized armies and monsters, especially when the writers can squeeze in all sorts of essentially teleporting tricks.

At least we can all agree on one thing, calling it the "Old World" is wrong. The Old World was a small part of it, alongside the New World, Lustria, Ulthuan etc.

We must all call it the "Old Planet".

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12 hours ago, SeanMaguire1991 said:

As did Fantasy. 

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.

As did Fantasy indeed, but on the discussion of Age of Sigmar, Age of Sigmar isn't 9th edition Fantasy. What we see is that a S/T/WS chart isn't ****** needed to create a nice game and quite honestly a lot of the differences in WS within WFB was also not really there anymore at 8th edition. Likewise the unfortunate thing of S/T was that WFB on a competitive basis favoured S5+ over anything and T was rarely even a factor at the latest stages of the game. If anything killing another model has actually increased in difficulty for quite a lot of units and I believe this is a good thing. The large part of that comes from the flexible unit/model placement allowing you to counter specific attacks from different positioned enemy units.

8th edition wasn't plenty easy to pick up unfortunatly. I think this is where one of it's mayor issues lied. Because what we saw at the end of it was deathstar blocks being a dominant factor in the game and and a massive rise in price of just 10 models. To give a recent example of that, 10 Witch Elves are still REALLY expensive by comparison. For WFB units where required to be sized 20+ and in AoS this isn't so much the case really... I use my 5 Wrathmongers here much better for example... Likewise the effect of my Chaos Warriors in AoS is actually much better as it ever was to me in WFB.
Having played Warriors of Chaos and Daemons of Chaos most actively in 6th and 7th edition (whilst starting in 5th and losing interest in 8th) I really liked the visual design of the books (amazing artwork from Adrian Smith at least) but the models really didn't match up. At the same time I grew bored of Warriors of Chaos because the meta of the game (6th to 8th) was so S5 focused that pretty much everything was chaff unless it had that. Going double units of Skullcrushers was fun for a while, but didn't entertain me for more as a year really... So my personal reason to stop being interested in WFB at the time was:
1. Close to no rule changes over the editions
2. Models didn't match up with the fantastic artwork
3. Costs of units rised in a much more extreme manner as they do now

Going back in time I made the switch to MtG as my most active game because it was cheaper then. Looking back on the last parts I sold last year of that, financially speaking it was a much better idea also. Because funny enough AoS armies are cheaper as my 8th edition WFB army was.

You can't really ever state that simplicity of game design is bad game design. At least not if you have a good understanding of what game design stands for and know what kind of popular games excist because of their simplicity. Objectively speaking simplicity or hard rules do not ever sell a miniatures game. What sells miniature games are again the miniatures.
To give another example of that, recently the kickstarter HATE ended by CMON, I think the game isn't that amazing but I do think the miniatures are. I know that 80% of the backers picked up the game not because of it's rules but the miniatures.

Some might find the WFB lines cooler as the AoS lines. I'm okay with that. But as someone who has ranked up their models for years I will say that I seriously favour this dynamic model design AoS allows for and WFB simply couldn't because their models where virtually limited to a 25/20mmx50/40mm 'cube' most of the time. So what we see is that at least this aspect of AoS is actually working out extremely well for the game. Unsuprisingly really because it's one of the reasons why 40K allows for some incredibly awesome converting.

 

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I wouldn’t put too much thought into absurd descriptions such as Hammerhal is the size of a continent. The description of how it works or the story of Shadows over Hammerhal don’t fit with that. Hammerhal is much more intelligent than this one sloppy sentence. 

The sentence also has its origin precisely as an answer to the criticism that AoS lacks maps. As the first relevant map developed, they overreached by trying to show that this one map is the like of a continent map like the Old World. 

In its youth, AoS does a lot of that: overreaching. But just as youth defects, I would trust time to synthesize all those cool but sometimes absurd ideas into a coherent whole. Remember we are still in the phase of revealing stuff: Ulgu and Hysh are still to be revealed, the aelven legions are still to be revealed, etc.

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3 minutes ago, Turgol said:

In its youth, AoS does a lot of that: overreaching. But just as youth defects, I would trust time to synthesize all those cool but sometimes absurd ideas into a coherent whole. Remember we are still in the phase of revealing stuff: Ulgu and Hysh are still to be revealed, the aelven legions are still to be revealed, etc.

Very true and honestly I think AoS' new aim will also be to constantly reveal new stuff and go into unknows.It's the best way to protect IP also. Because narrative can and will focus on what we allready know while behind the scenes GW is bringing up new ideas.

While I still am not a massive fan of the many sub-sub-factions either I do think GW intends to keep them for the most part because their AoS plan stretches longer as our current imagination. In that aspect it befits the products usually sold with Epic Fantasy styled lines... For example there is no reason to give an end to WoW's equipments and items, end to He-man alternative figures or forced end to Epic Fantasy styles Comics.

Quite honestly the only constant focus GW has shown for AoS is for Stormcast :) But to me this is okay also because it's just a choice to have these warriors act as the Order balance/perfect Order hero. The focus on Chaos will likely also remain because they are always more clearly a form of bad guy. Though once Slaanesh is out I think we will see more Destruction bad guys also. At least I hope we do.

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Re: the continent sized bit, GW always employs ridiculous hyperbole in its scale. Just look at the latest fluff for the size of Ghaskull's Waaagh! in 40k, or *sigh* Kaldor Draigo. Heck, the very fact that it takes four years to make, let alone train, a Space Marine for a Chapter 1000 strong and yet GW will kill off whole companies in throwaway paragraphs of Codex fluff and have them back up to full strength the following month. Let's look at the rate of attrition in the Old World and ask how a population equivalent to medieval Europe possibly sustains all these losses in the face of near infinite daemons and undead and countless millions of beastmen and greenskins? That's before we even get into the physics of dragons or 40k aircraft.

It's for these reasons that no matter how much we claim to like fully detailed settings, most fantasy and sci fi requires a fair bit of handwaving. I also like the balance between having some well fleshed out areas of the realms and others that are relatively unexplored. I may not (yet) care as much about Hammerhal as I cared about Middenheim, but not having every ruler of every decent sized city filled out means I can create a sizeable army led by my own characters, who I definitely do care about. There's a balance to be had - some people want to play the big decisive battles with the named characters, others want room to either build their own settings or put their characters into those big battles. 40k allows both of these, WFB was bad at the DIY side and AOS initially gave too little to the others, but is gradually filling in and providing this. 

 

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22 minutes ago, SeanMaguire1991 said:

I'm talking about 8th Edition 40k which is very easy to pick up 

I know what you were talking about. And I disagree with you - not about 40k 8th ed being easy to pick up, but that AoS should copy it.

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9 hours ago, Envyus said:

Also yeah those maps of pieces of Ghyran and Aqshy just reinforce that the setting is too big given that Hammerhall is the size of a continent. It would take months to years to get anywhere with the Realms tech level. 

One word for you:

”Magic”

A great quote comes to mind:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Magic.”

This one comment you made “the city is too large” is what separates High Fantasy settings from Low Fantasy. (As a literary genre.)

The Kharadron skyships (and the lesser versions made by non-kharadron) could get you from point to point.

The scale of a city that came to being on the back of a giant worm ... that’s been moving forward (at just shy of the speed of a horse) ... and has engulfed whole cities that lie in the way. 

A colossal snake bone giant under a mountain range ridge...

The new world is fantastical. And at the same time, there are stories that delve into the details and humanity at the small scale.

There is reference that some of the Living Cities were “grown” by Magic ... (in Plague Garden as I recall).

It is this huge scale that gives the potential to have chaos Cultists hiding within the cities and their population ... and not just take over. (And my favorite part ... Warhammer Quest.)

The new world is an unending possibility of “what if” scenarios. That include floating mountains and a moon close enough to draw folks into the sky. And a whole world of opportunity to create crazy battle scenarios ... and still have them fit within the physics of the new mortal realms. Are they crazy? Yep. Totally. And that flexibility is what makes it a great launching board for AoS. 

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19 minutes ago, TheOtherJosh said:

The new world is an unending possibility of “what if” scenarios. That include floating mountains and a moon close enough to draw folks into the sky. And a whole world of opportunity to create crazy battle scenarios ... and still have them fit within the physics of the new mortal realms. Are they crazy? Yep. Totally. And that flexibility is what makes it a great launching board for AoS. 

exactly. It's astounding that in the age of the internet there are still people who don't know about different genres. Well, these are those explaining that the WHFB was the most advanced and developed setting I presume... We don't need little and common humans, borders and usual maps. It's a high fantasy genre. HIGH FANTASY. With its own limits and laws and rules. DIFFERENT. We don't need another dull and uninspiring pseudo-Europe to begin with. Thousands of them exist, and much less - more magical settings. 

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Really what I think is so subjective about what's too epic or too magical is that it forms an opinion of fantasy written content for a miniatures game. It's no more or less than that. 
I completely agree that pictures and maps add to the immersion options but unless we are actually talking about a roleplaying variant of Age of Sigmar maps and such arn't even that much needed to make the game work. Proven also by the boost in Age of Sigmar's life in 2016.

When we objective look at sales and the growth options of Games Workshop I think the only reasonable conclusion anyone can make is that it is more succesful as Warhammer Fantasy. Unfortunatly I do not have the numbers of 6th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles sales but I think in terms of financial growth they might be compairable. Which is wonderful but at the same time I also hope that Games Workshop learns from the choices they have made for 7th and 8th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles. I am optimistic about that to say that they did. Because what keeps the game around as a relevant game is indeed FAQ/Errata and thus the suggestion of balanced rules design. Wether or not they are perfectly balanced is irrelevant because the need of many isn't that specific to figure our where all the flaws lie. In addition the Shooting phase thus far has not been adressed within this game nor the double turns and I believe that it's there where design flaws shine trough when we objectively look at Tournament results. What I mean there is that it's still the constant in winning tournaments. A list without options to character snipe is instantly part of Tier 2 or worse.

But to give some honest opinion about Age of Sigmar and it's growth, I too think Games Workshop started out with a little too little in 2015. However luckily the design team and management where quick enough to notice that a particular kind of player wasn't catered too and thus Generals Handbook 2016 gave form to the game that a large percentage of players wanted.

All the narrative development that will drip in will also cater to those wishes. I think that not all Age of Sigmar lore content was really grim dark as Warhammer Fantasy was but I would also say that Malign Portents certainly is. It really is akin to the wrath of the lichemaster content that occured before I was playing WFB. To the point where Nagash's old story is very much a repeat in AoS' current storyline. I like that.

My last thought on the subject is that indeed Epic Fantasy isn't for all, nor is Historical Fantasy. Those who don't like Epic Fantasy too much will also not be very quick to immerse themselves in the lore of Age of Sigmar. I too have to admit that while I am aware of the red line of Age of Sigmar's storyline I know way too little details to explain everything. Most guesswork can apply though because wether players realize it or not a lot of the WFB designs of 1 to 5th edition are basically also found in AoS. The only real difference between AoS and WFB is found in 6th through 8th edition. Those who look deeper will find similar epic fantasy designs and content :) 

10 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

We don't need another dull and uninspiring pseudo-Europe to begin with. Thousands of them exist, and much less - more magical settings. 

Well dull is again a subjective matter. There are aspects I like about the Old World but yeah to each their own. It's really compairing genres and that is a moot point because it's akin to compairing modern art to historical art. "What is better" is extremely subjective.

The political aspects of the Empire where fun, the provinces where cool but at the same time I also think that for non-European's it wasn't all that immersive. After all (and mainly the US) doesn't really care for that because they don't have the same history that relates with that.

What is probably the biggest difference between WFB (all editions) and AoS is that a massive ammount of WFB content was written with a UK mindset, logically also because there wasn't much content like it you could spar with. It's also because of this that I believe that whilst MtG basically took over the world WFB was largely popular in Europe and that's about it. To me the limit of historical Fantasy is that it can be immersive if it somehow matches the history of it's market. In that same vein it's logical that Malifaux is popular in the US because it's narrative revolves more there.

The fun thing really is though that I think Age of Sigmar has the massive advantage of being able to incorporate both and this is why the Realm concept is so strong. For example, it feels logical that Asqhy is full of chaotic actions, emotion and battle, because those are aspects we relate to when we think about 'fire'. At the same time the political aspects most certainly have a place in Age of Sigmar but I'd say they would only occur in realms almost completely in control of Order... I believe this also is the case now.

In a way Death could relate to communism even, where Nagash is the all deciding factor. At the same the Destruction Grand Allegiance could even be linked to current political choices in the war-faring east, where basically the strongest force has the largest saying in the matter...
But all in good time...

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