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The "logic" of the AoS setting?


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Well it's good to see people staying true to the spirit of barely concealed antagonism in which this thread was started. I'm sure the OP must be delighted.

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To be fair, three to four pages were spent on mostly informative posts. It only really escalated towards antagonism towards the end there, which I'd say was more than justified at that point. 

Staying on track; has anyone read anything regarding the realm of Ulgu? It seems like one of the realms that has gotten (as of yet) less attention due to the aelves residing there not having been released yet, but maybe someone has seen/heard anything along the lines of what @xking has been posting? (Great stuff by the way)

@Silchas_Ruin gonna double down on what @Menkeroth said about ignoring Grimma - Particularly related to the post above me. Let's ignore the guy. The bait is getting obvious at this point, and we're only wasting our own time interacting with it. Just saying this to keep the thread on track, just on the off-chance that his bait had any effect at all on you ;) We see the nonsense of it too, no worries. 

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3 hours ago, Grimma said:

Silchas - it's ok for you to think the game is logical and coherent - I respect your opinion and I'm not here to try to change your mind. I wish you could respect mine, and not get so angry about it.

I think most reasonable people would agree that AoS more closely resembles Mario Kart than it does Middle Earth on the coherence spectrum, and that that has interesting repercussions for the gameplay experience, but if you disagree that's totally ok.

So. Give. An. Example. So far you've made many comparisons which suggest that for you AoS is a bunch of whatever put together for no good reason. However you didn't present any evidance to support your thesis while many other users descirbed logical chains of events leading to existance of even the most unusual races. 

The burden of proff is on your side and you must show why your statement is something else than trolling.

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The other consideration is that if @Grimma actually does want to discuss what he says he does, he's going to have to talk about specifics.  If you want to take about something  in the context of comparing it to other things and how that works for gaming, then you're going to need specifics to say anything meaningful at all.  You need an actual point of comparison rather than an assumed one free of actual content/substance.

The Mortal Realms has X, so that means for gameplay Y whereas this other fictional universe has A, so that means for gameplay B.

Grimma needs to provide specifics to do what he says he is interested in.  Since he is adamant about not providing them, I think there's something disingenuous going on.

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4 hours ago, Mayple said:

has anyone read anything regarding the realm of Ulgu? It seems like one of the realms that has gotten (as of yet) less attention due to the aelves residing there not having been released yet

Yeah we have not gotten much about Ulgu yet. Malerion woke up there and rules it. Him and Tyrion are assumed to have have Slaanesh captured there. Remember something about Slaanesh followers searching Ulgu for him. So Ulgu should be whatever they turn dark elves into (shadowkin) while Hysh with Tyrion and Teclis would be the "good" aelves. Before the age of myth when they joined Sigmar they searched their realms for their kin and didn't find them. Are we assuming they found a way to reach their people by doing something to Slaanesh? The way they limited the information about aelves in general makes me think they are in for major changes. On the other hand tons of people seem to be waiting for the releases, so are they really going to change it all away from stuff people liked.

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So, why is it that when Alastair Reynolds has billion-year-old, post-sentient machines turn a sun into a flamethrower it is hard SF sensawunda; but a company of demi-humans climbing a waterfall of formerly molten silver for four days is considered to be illogical and poorly written?

Here's why I'm reading pretty much all the AoS fiction right now: Some of the exploration of characters exploring their semi-immortality is actually fascinating. Yes, there are a lot of battles, but you know what? Ninefox Gambit is the best book I read last year, it has some amazing, weird concepts and most of it is about a siege. It's also been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and Clarke awards.

Recently I think there's been a tendency to require systems for your magic. Some cool underlying cause for it all. But, really, there's no need for any of that. Why does Gandalf's magic work? The grace of the Valar. I can't remember if a system existed to explain why Ged's naming of things gave him power, but I certainly didn't need it to enjoy the books.

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1 hour ago, Dorimant said:

So, why is it that when Alastair Reynolds has billion-year-old, post-sentient machines turn a sun into a flamethrower it is hard SF sensawunda; but a company of demi-humans climbing a waterfall of formerly molten silver for four days is considered to be illogical and poorly written?

Here's why I'm reading pretty much all the AoS fiction right now: Some of the exploration of characters exploring their semi-immortality is actually fascinating. Yes, there are a lot of battles, but you know what? Ninefox Gambit is the best book I read last year, it has some amazing, weird concepts and most of it is about a siege. It's also been nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and Clarke awards.

Recently I think there's been a tendency to require systems for your magic. Some cool underlying cause for it all. But, really, there's no need for any of that. Why does Gandalf's magic work? The grace of the Valar. I can't remember if a system existed to explain why Ged's naming of things gave him power, but I certainly didn't need it to enjoy the books.

Yeah, systems of magic can be awesome (Brandon Sanderson is my favourite fantasy writer so I obviously enjoy his brand of physics supported arcane)  but they're not neccesary. Sometimes things can be left vague, especially when mistery is a big part of the setting. Such is the situation with Mortal Realms where countless civilisations have come and gone and most of the land might never be explored not mention understanding of it.

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2 hours ago, Zeratan said:

Yeah, systems of magic can be awesome (Brandon Sanderson is my favourite fantasy writer so I obviously enjoy his brand of physics supported arcane)  but they're not neccesary. Sometimes things can be left vague, especially when mistery is a big part of the setting. Such is the situation with Mortal Realms where countless civilisations have come and gone and most of the land might never be explored not mention understanding of it.

Exactly, reading City of Secrets, my first exposure to AoS, and it felt far less like Middle Earth than the ruins of Elric's Melnibone. Long-serving guardsmen are constantly surprised by the city they have grown up in. The forces of Order are not nice and, arguably, not even good. The world is full of corners and nooks that are full of who-knows-what and which are built on the ruins of those who came first.

And the thing about this is that Elric did not have rules to his magic, and incidentally neither did the sorcery Conan went up against. Fantasy and science fiction are pretty much a spectrum and you can roam up and down it as you like. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy was one of the finest deconstructions of Fantasy tropes I've read in a long time and the preciseness of his system was a large part of this. At the other end, M John Harrison's Virconium series is a great criticism of excessive world building and mapping.

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44 minutes ago, Dorimant said:

Exactly, reading City of Secrets, my first exposure to AoS, and it felt far less like Middle Earth than the ruins of Elric's Melnibone. Long-serving guardsmen are constantly surprised by the city they have grown up in. The forces of Order are not nice and, arguably, not even good. The world is full of corners and nooks that are full of who-knows-what and which are built on the ruins of those who came first.

And the thing about this is that Elric did not have rules to his magic, and incidentally neither did the sorcery Conan went up against. Fantasy and science fiction are pretty much a spectrum and you can roam up and down it as you like. Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy was one of the finest deconstructions of Fantasy tropes I've read in a long time and the preciseness of his system was a large part of this. At the other end, M John Harrison's Virconium series is a great criticism of excessive world building and mapping.

Fantasy is, afterall, the most flexable of genres and crippling it's variety by proclaiming that idea is bad or doesn't make sense at first glance can be very foolish. In case of AoS there is methode to (most of) its madness but not everything is or has to be explained. Stormcasts work as main characters in many ways not despite of but because of how powerfull they are when compared to an average human. It allows them to go wherever writer wants and explore the Realms relatively freely.

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Anyway, what's really good is that high-fantasy and manyfold nature of the mortal realms allows GW not to explain everything to write about everything, and in such a setting things like a sudden 10k army of uruk-hai would seem much more appropriate.

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1 hour ago, xking said:

What Aos Books have you read so far?(besides City of Secrets I mean)

Well, since City of Secrets I've been working my way through the Realmgate Wars of which I've read the collection of the first three books, Wardens of the Everqueen, War East and the Fyreslayer and Sylvaneth books. I'm currently working on the Pestilens book.

City of Secrets was excellent, I can absolutely see why Warbeast has a Gemmel nomination and the Fyreslayer stories are making look at a Runefather and ponder the feasibility.

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17 minutes ago, Dorimant said:

City of Secrets was excellent,

To put it mildly, I was very surprised to find out this. It's well written, full of intrigue, developed characters, logic and life of everyday matter - the best AoS story so far I'd say.

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If you want to read thoroughly detailed Fantasy stories with structured and logical magical systems, you should read anything by Lawrence Watt-Evans.  In particular his Eshthar, Obsidian Chronicles, and Lords of Dus series of novels.  He started out with creating his settings for homemade RPG systems, and so it has a structure that follows that scalable and almost-quantifiable quality.  Good characterization, satisfying endings, and captivating his writing style keeps you gripped in.

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11 hours ago, Silchas_Ruin said:

Yeah we have not gotten much about Ulgu yet. Malerion woke up there and rules it. Him and Tyrion are assumed to have have Slaanesh captured there. Remember something about Slaanesh followers searching Ulgu for him. So Ulgu should be whatever they turn dark elves into (shadowkin) while Hysh with Tyrion and Teclis would be the "good" aelves. Before the age of myth when they joined Sigmar they searched their realms for their kin and didn't find them. Are we assuming they found a way to reach their people by doing something to Slaanesh? The way they limited the information about aelves in general makes me think they are in for major changes. On the other hand tons of people seem to be waiting for the releases, so are they really going to change it all away from stuff people liked.

If memory serves right, either Call of Archaon or Call of chaos had a part set in Ulgu. Searching for slaanesh and hacking their way through its innhabitants.

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Uhm, what happened to this thread? Seems after Yodhrin stopped writing some other guy came in, argued for 5 pages then threw a tantrum and deleted all his posts? Maybe this thread should be locked at this point and a new one made for a fresh start?

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22 minutes ago, Nevvermore said:

Uhm, what happened to this thread? Seems after Yodhrin stopped writing some other guy came in, argued for 5 pages then threw a tantrum and deleted all his posts? Maybe this thread should be locked at this point and a new one made for a fresh start?

Well, it's up to us to continue. What happened to this thread is that some are not well informed or ill-informed on AoS narrative.

Mind you I don't know all lore either, I only have read what is possibly interesting to me as a Khorne fan. I like the Blades of Khorne book a lot because it puts more focus on the Khorne Legion and much less reflects that Bloodbound is basically all there is to Khorne armies. The fact that Blades of Khorne has incorporated Daemons, Bloodbound and even mentions some slivers of information of Slaves to Darkness Khorne armies is just fantastic because it's more fitting the design of a MASSIVE army and less of a splintergroup Warband. 
With this in mind I can immagne that a lot of the lore will gradually become better. GW writers can inspire each other in writing something that ideally is better as what was laid as a foundation before. As in most cases what people precieve as better is practically the same as 'more detailed'. At least I know I'm guilty of that.

So some might think, what did I dislike about the Bloodbound Narrative and the focus on Khul? 
Most of the stories in Bloodbound are decent, it's just the endless repeat of headloppin' that becomes a bit of a boring story. I also feel the same about Khul, he was an undefeated character fighting for Khorne doing all sorts of amazing things by himself but he also didn't found any truely worthy opponent. Once that part was put in there and mentioned in Blades of Khorne the whole character is less perfect as the initial design showed. This is good because for many it then becomes relatable. 

Though in general I will say, I believe that too much character focus in Narrative can kill the Narrative anyway, for a game that is so much focused on creating different armies. What I like is to have a lot of figures be on equal footing. The fact that Archaon has no equal within Chaos to this point for example is boring to me. What I'd like is that 40K-esque vibe where EVERY ARMY has a massive character capable of destroying worlds. That option is what makes 40K click to me, it's what Ive always found lacking in WFB and is what I hope to eventually see in AoS. 

In general though, to come back on topic again. I too would love to read what readers liked and disliked about the AoS lore so far. I see it improving because we get more details, this makes it all more relatable. One of the prime reasons why I as an ex-WFB can semi-enjoy the stories is because the universe realms are based on the older Magic lores, I think thats really cool.

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In all honesty I think the factions still need more fleshing out but that's an impossible task to do in a single book if you ask me. As it is I'd like for, say Kharadrons, include the figure of women pirates, females that shun customs and instead of just becoming stockists (since it's more efficient, actually) they join the thick of the action. Have them, for example, be prominent in Barak Mhornar and have a female character hail from there, something along the lines of Chinh Sinh.

Ironjawz could also use more division. Maybe have Dakkbad declare himself the fist or blade of Mork or have the Skybasha Warclans become prominent yet unruly.

 

Maybe, if you want to keep with the mythic aspect, have demigods or beings pop in the order rosters as beings of extreme worth but unpredictable.

The setting's been set, it needs to gain more figments in my opinion.

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Absolutely, but all will come with good time. Its exactly as previous pages and topics about consistancy. Age of Sigmar's lore isn't finished, therefor inconsistancies will happen.

To give the most recent Khorne example again, Bloodbound mentions that every Khorne Axe has a Daemon imbued into it. Luckily Blades of Khorne doesn't mention it at all. I say luckily here because if ALL axes of khorne would be imbued with Daemonic powers you'd get restricted in how to make a weapon special. For example the way the Mighty Lord of Khorne's axe works now is allready something to scratch your head around. Why GW choose to mention that it's capable to cut reality and not just mention that it's a savage axe capable of cleaving anything in two is a bit beyond me. 

The reason I give Khorne examples again is because I know them but the way you word abilities in lore and the more powerful you make them the higher that roof should be. It's something I think AoS suffers a little bit from because things get a bit unbelievable if a Wrath of Khorne Bloodthirster would be capable to kill hundreds but can't even manage to survive a charge from your regular 200+ point unit in game, who in many cases arn't even a hundred guys.

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24 minutes ago, KillagoreFaceslasha said:

The setting's been set, it needs to gain more figments in my opinion.

They do it actually, step by step, for everything requires time - settings are not written so fast, they require decades at best. For not it's really interesting what in the plot is next.

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9 minutes ago, Menkeroth said:

They do it actually, step by step, for everything requires time - settings are not written so fast, they require decades at best. For not it's really interesting what in the plot is next.

Even more importantly! Narrative is easier written as whole new armies are created.

I am very certain that the writers could make up whole unseen armies who'd be fantastic and awesome for narrative reasons, adding flavour, different looks, adding perhaps even details to characters that even show which particular village they stem from.
For AoS, a miniatures game, this can lead to complications very quick. Therefor, new models can have new narrative, older models usually have a narrative improvement (BoK vs Kharadron Overlords for example).

New stuff gets people upset all the time (Top hat Kharadron Overlords/Tzaangors), improvement is rarely talked about (Blades of Khorne Army). 

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As always. Fans of WH are one of the worst kind really, and it is because of them FB failed in the first place, so yes, they mostly only complain and what is good remains unseen. Although this is mostly old stuff getting lew life or being rethought and redone.

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