That's literally Narrative play games what he wants. "Other players like to let their imaginations run wild and come up with maps and house rules for sprawling campaigns with a dozen or so players taking part, and that feature bespoke rules which govern how the armies manoeuvre, conquer territories and secure supply lines." AOS 3 Core book
I mostly agree with Crendor. That other guy just sounds like he rather plays DnD and is upset that wargames aren't the exact same. Also, with a bit of imagination and creativity you can already do all those narrative things with wargames as they are now. The rules aren't laws, just get some friends together, add or ignore rules as you like, and you can easily create the DnD wargame experience.
I firmly believe that getting the competative side right (Tight, clear rules with properly balanced armies) makes the narrative and casual play better. ESPECIALLY balancing units. If there are no "Bad" units (for their cost/army) then you can play what you want without problems arising.
I think most Warhammer players prefer having rules that don't require needing an umpire to play, and matched play is popular because for example it allows for easier pick-up games. A lot of people just want to play the game, not spend their time building a narrative. He seems like he doesn't understand how people can enjoy wargaming in a way that is different to him. "You're not meant to play it that way" sounds arrogant. Narrative play exists, people can make campaigns etc if they want, and GW already pumps out endless lore for their games.
I think the inherent narrative is part of the appeal of warhammer universe, and I’ll lean on the 40K universe in particular. You can be a very competitive tournament player running your meta space wolf list but when you draw your opponent who is playing thousand sons you know prospero has to burn.
Historicals and many other games do everything he is talking about. You can still do map campaigns with Warhammer, they still appear in white dwarf. He is a lil too focused on stores instead of clubs that do let him play the way he wants
You touched on it really well I think. I'm a competitive first player but I love to see the STORY of the fight. Had 2 tournaments in a row back in 9th where Vulkan He'Stan fought off (by himself mind you) an Avatar of Khaine that I sent him off to fight to buy me time to score points elsewhere AND a Bloodthirster a month later at a different event. with a similar strategy in mind. That man was a decorated hero and monster slayer on the back of his 3+ Invuln and me and my friend who was the Eldar player in this story still talk about that round 5 finals of my first ever GT to this day.
Thanks Crendor. I started to see that video and stopped almost immediately because of the arrogance of his first statement. Nice to know I'm not the only one scratching my head at where he gets his impression of the wargaming hobby from.
As someone who loves narrative games and even writes games for my friends, you are right and he is so off. You can't have your friends over for a 5 hour game where they get bodied that easily. There must be rules to hold up the story elements and individual games need to be fun, not just the campaign. It isn't D&D.
The guys fundamental points are just wrong. He starts from the position of " everyone wants what I want but the game companies are keeping it from us" And neither of those things are true - every aspect of what he described made me go " no thanks" and games workshop ect aren't stopping him from doing this. Probably what's stopping him and a bunch of other people doing this is the logistics of getting 4-5 people, building a world, making their own rules for certain stuff, and finding an umpire for it all.
"I want narrative games that let me be creative and tell a story with my friends" *waves hand at literally every major wargame having those exact elements* "No not like that though"
Tabletop is a social games, and social games are determined foremost on who you're playing with, not what you're playing. You could be playing the most "balanced" or "engaging" game on the planet, but if you're playing with people insufferable to be around, you're gonna have a bad time.
As someone who plays a lot of Mordheim and Necromunda now. Narrative is fun yeah, and guess what? Both games have tables that let random events happen for the game... on the flip side too these are both skirmish games that you can just read the rules, play a game with someone and call it a day. No need for injuries, exploration, reputation any of that. I think he's just looking in the wrong spot for what he wants to play. Agree a lot with Crendor on things here, a lot of it too is just play the game you wanna play it, its okay to enjoy what you want to enjoy.
Nobody wants to admit this but games aren't fun without restrictions and rules. Everyone pretends they want some loosey-goosey narrative game until they're actually confronted with the reality of it.
I was reading a book called "Homo Ludens" by Johan Huizinga, haven't finished it yet but he stated something similar as rules are what makes a game a game, -as far as I understood from what I have read so far anyway-.
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time of time thinking about this exact video and I agree with you for the most part. I completely disagree with every conclusion he came to, but I do think he does touch on an actual truth about modern wargaming. Like, I think this is a Mark Rosewater "Players are great at finding flaws but horrible at fixing them." situation. I think that, in recent years, Wargames have transitioned to what I call "Box games", because previously Wargames felt like they "went beyond the box" where as now it feels much more like you purchase your box of guys and you play your box of guys. As an example, in ToW which you talked about you can just very easily convert characters, super easily. There are entire units that just don't have actual models, they're intended to be kit bashed with little guides on how to do it. The game lives outside of the box the models come in. Wargear options, even dumb little things, really add to this sense of realism and scale. It makes the game feel less like a game and more like "simulation" like old wargames originally were. I kind of view it as the "texture" component to games, similar to "flavor" but slightly different. You can have a "box game" that's super flavorful, I absolutely LOVE ASOIAF Miniatures and it's a super flavorful game. It's also not really got any "texture", Starfall Knights are Starfall Knights, they're the same kind of heavy knights the other heavy knights are but they have X instead of Y. There are flavorful differences between the models, units, and factions but there aren't really any "textural" differences. It's the difference between purchasing a squad of Space Marine Outriders and purchasing bikes for your Space Marine Assault Squad to ride. The end position could be the exact same unit, but the act of purchasing a bike for your marine to ride, the presentation of it, changes how it's experienced and how it feels. That "Outside the Box" portion of the game, if done well, leads into an amazing hobby-game-hobby feedback loop where you play a game, realize you want a new model or unit, it drives you to a new hobby project because you realize you can kitbash something or pick up a new kit or what have you, and then you play a game and repeat. Not to say that both styles or "genres" or game aren't great, I actually love 10th edition 40k with the new Pariah missions. I just think it's legitimately a different type of game now than the game was back when I started in 4th edition. That's okay, but both styles of games are different with different groups that will prefer them. I think it's possible though to have a version of 40k or AoS where we have that texture alongside all of the good more modern game design aspects, we're just not there yet.
The ability to field dozens of units that you have to build out of bits and conversions is what drew me to Warhammer, and the lack of it in 9th and extreme lack of it in 10th drove me to 30k. It's great.
I think if he's using at least 40k as an example, Games Workshop does a decent job with updating Crusade. There are rules and options for narrative play, the game has simply evolved over time where people want to run the setting in a quick pick up game style.
In a perfect world, I would 100% want narrative games… in the real world, I’m fully aware of how impossible it would be to set that up with a half dozen random strangers… It’s hard enough to get my MtG commander group together and I know those people personally…
"God offal like Kruleboyz" Ow that dagger to my heart. Edit: More I watch this...seems like this dude wants wargames to be video games, like Stellaris, with 100s of mods installed.
no hate to the guy you're reacting to, cause they're not being toxic or anything, but i feel like they're just taking their own feelings and anecdotal experience and then projecting it onto the wargaming community at large. im still new to warhammer, but i have not met a single person who values narrative over easy no-narrative pickup games. every person i have met enjoys narrative in the same way that you mentioned- something crazy happens in the game randomly, and you can use your imagination to feel a little immersed and to imagine what that would have actually been like on a battlefield, but there is no overarching narrative, there is no war, there are no named characters, etc. theres nothing wrong with valuing what they value, but its strange to me that they decided to make a public piece of content kind of criticizing the scene as a whole, when they seem to be in a very niche minority. like nobody is stopping players from playing narratively
All of the things he is describing can be done in the game as it is now. The limiting factor is that you need someone to do that, and it almost sounds like he doesn't want to do that. He can be making content to help create a framework that people could use to show that the system works and I think that would be neat! But this video is so weirdly focused on the wrong things to take away from a war game.
I think the fundamental dynamic that warps online discourse about wargaming, particularly Warhammer, is that regular players are a tiny fraction of the people consuming the hobby. The narrative vs competitive conversation tends to draw this out most clearly because for the people who play at all regularly the easiest dynamic to lean into is matched play games and the regular updates help keep that portion of hobby consumers engaged. By contrast the narrative appeal of wargaming is appealing to a larger portion of the overall hobby consumers but very few of them play regularly.
More echoes for the chamber: there's nothing stopping any player, including the fellow from the video, from creating whatever narratives they want from the core rules. Having more balance doesn't prevent that. The competitive scene doesn't prevent that. He sounds like he's just upset that he doesn't enjoy the way a lot of players engage with the game and has couched his opinion as fact in his essay.
No one actually wants to really play a narrative wargame, it's just something people like to daydream about because it sounds cool but ends up being way too much work and less fun than a regular game in the end.
No people do want to play them and they in fact do , but its done in its own unique way, GW even ran their own narrative games big ones even effecting the lore Big one I can think of is Fantasies Storm of Chaos OR the original 13th black crusade narrative campaign for 40k witch were quite popular also you can have narratives going on even outside Narrative games For example, at my Local GW we had a Tyranid player who had a hormagaunt called Skippy a very lucky Hormagaunt who always over-performed You can create little narratives like that I've had models that did so well they became characters all unto themselves , I had a Khorne berserker who was my designated skull champion who I always used as a sacrifice to bring out my Daemon Prince or Bloodthirster back when I played table top due to how well he always perform
What Im hearing is he just wants to hate on GWs mainstream stuff because its not how he wants it without acknowledging its popular partly because that of that reason. Plus GW makes the games hes looking for but he clearly hasnt bothered to look beyond 40k and AoS. And thats not to mention all the none GW games out there. Battletech is super narrative driven from my understanding and pretty much describes what he wants.
10th edition 40k is probably the most balanced and fair the game has ever been. It's also the most boring the game has ever been. If you're playing competitively, then there is zero opportunity for creative self expression beyond what color you paint your models. You take the units GW tells you to take, especially now because there's no real decisions to make when writing a list. Weapons and gear don't have any cost, so you take the optimal loadout every time. Units and characters have almost no options for customization because you just take the optimal loadout every time. Playing competitively can be fun if both participants know what they're getting into. The problem is how GW is now taking the "ESports approach" and writing game rules primarily to push product to competitive players that need to buy 6 boxes of Accused Cultists and 3 boxes of Dark Council units to stay competitive until the next "balance pass" where suddenly Warp Talons are competitive so they need to buy 3-6 boxes of those, until the next balance pass where now maybe Terminators are good so they need to buy those boxes, so on and so forth.
This video was kinda not true. The wargame with a dm spawned two types of games, wargames and roleplaying games, so the split occured on the dm and amount of minis. The warhammer brand started making dnd minis and catered to fans who wanted to play battles and not roleplay, so they are catering to their market well. Now another thing can be said about the removal of fluffy rules, models, rules written for rules lawyers and the overall fun of the game, all these have become worse over time, great example to compare is 40k 10th edition which is miles worse than 5th for fun, there is a great video on it called "Old Warhammer was Beautiful", but thats a different topic.
Not gonna lie, im not sure ive ever met someone who would say narrative style play is their favorite, im sure they exist, but usually peoples experience with narrative play is like "me and my buddies tried crusade/path of glory once, it was aite" or "once a year me and the old buddies do a big 8k pts narrative game" I dont really hear about anyone playing weekly narrative games, but the way the other video talks about it youd think people were playing hamms like its DnD
This guy could have just said "I think a roleplaying game where you command an army and all the other players command armies would be cool", but instead he said "wargames should be like this very specific idea I have, and when they're not like my idea they suck. Also everyone agrees with me they just don't know it."
Two choices: He is like 70% of the community of any warhammer. He saw some space marines in game/trailer w/e, and thought "what a fun thing" I'm going to explore this, and stays in the state of never even playing actual wargame, probably not even buying shit, coz it's just not hobby for him, and yet is yelling at any update to lore/model range Or He is just childish, get the one turn wipe scenario and never played matched play again, coz CoOleSt mOdElS In hIs OpIniOn are always out of meta, and he's demanding cheat codes in normal game, coz nobody want to play with him the way, the game isn't inteded to play :v
I 100% agree with Crendor. Matched play pick-up games are the standard experience for a good reason and all the constant balancing is good for competitive play (and for sales). Also, no one is stopping this guy and people like him from sticking to one edition (no keeping up with new books/rules), and making up narratives and story-driven scenarios. They have whole sections for narrative stuff like Crusade and have even included quirky, unbalanced battleplans based on important narrative moments in the official lore! If people want to integrate roleplay into wargames, that's fine, but I don't think that's what the average joe is really looking for in their wargaming experience.
Someone should just link the dude the Path to Glory and Crusade rules on Wahapedia since he seems to have completely skipped over that section in his core rule books.
Sounds like he wants to play a mixture of 3rd Ed onwards D&D (which focuses on narrative) with armies I applaud the GW team for attempting narrative rules, but the game doesnt really lend itself to RPG with armies Chainmail, OD&D, and bits of AD&D can do that -- but modern D&D cant get the army part and modern wargames dont get the RPG part Reminds me of the painter guy who complained about AoS because he wanted to play a skirmish game (despite Underworlds and Warcry existing)
And tournaments do have "referees" if you think about it They just float between tables and only intervene when asked He says he doesn't want competitive play and then asks for an umpire Or really, a Dungeon Master Play old school D&D
Like others have said, 40K and AoS have narrative and campaign rules designed to provide what he’s asking for; and games like Necromunda have an established Arbiter role for a GM, to handle campaign mechanics and guide the narrative. This really just boils down to a personal preference in the games/ types of experiences this person wants to play. There’s nothing wrong with wanting deeply intricate campaigns, where your decisions in the narrative impact the gameplay; but I think saying this should be the preferred method for the community is a bit folly. Even Blood Bowl, a game designed and themed around football tournaments, where a big part of the “campaign” is losing & recruiting new players, is commonly played as pickup-and-play with your set team roster. I think if you have a group of like-minded players in a gaming store, you can pick-and-choose and create whatever rules or campaign you guys want to play, and go completely wild with it. My fear would be, his idea of campaign choices massively impacting gameplay (to the point where a mercenary faction joins the fight against you), probably wouldn’t work great at 40K army size. Like Crendor says, I don’t want to play a 4 hour game, where I was screwed from the start. Maybe he should start with smaller scale games, like Kill Team or WarCry, and really get into narrative gaming in those systems. 😅
At first I was like "oh he wants narrative, fluffy games, those are great, as a 30k guy we build a lot of our lists around the fluff, and then do campaigns around that" (especially as 30k doesn't get the FAQ attention 40k does so if something is broken, it's simply gentlemen's rules that you won't surprise your opponent with 15 Dreadnoughts) Then I watched the whole video. I don't want to live in this lame hell scape this guy wants. I didn't spend 2 months painting up two legions for me and my one friend to play with, just so I can go make a third friend with someone who was in drama club to be a whimsical dungeon master who decides my terminators got stuck in a swamp he decided exists in that spot on a whim.
I feel that’s everyone’s experience with this vid. You can agree to the initial parts as a Narrative player that it’s about fun…. Then the guy just goes straight off the deep end 3/4th of the way through contradicting himself multiple times and making what he wants sound more and more absurd because he wants to force his expansive gonzo 5 hour DND session with rules attendants & random charts as the main way to play everything. Bizarre.
Don't go into a burger place and bitch that they don't have meatloaf and mashed potatoes even though they have food made from ground beef and potatoes. If someone wants to play a more narrative game then find others who want the same and play. Can say the same thing for war gaming. If its not a thing then make it, that's what I heard happened with AoS 1st ed, they had no point costs so the players made their own points for units. If you and other people agree on the rules of something then those are the rules, don't need to follow the already set rules, that's called homebrew and almost every table has them and homebrew can turn into its own system.
It sounds like this guy wants to play Dnd and not warhammer thats fine just go do that? Variety is great also whos saying you cant add in a scenario into war games as long as both players agree to it not everythings competitive alot of it is casual
just finished the video the summary is 'boohoo warhammer isnt played exactly how i want so therefore lets change it to what i want and thats more fun for everybody'
I really couldn't disagree more with the video. The first and most obvious issue is how matter of fact he is about how most players like to play, I've rarely played or seen others want a narrative driven game over matched play. Moreover in the case of warhammer, GW does have more narrative focused systems/rules for those interested in them and more importantly you can easily add in homebrew rules while using core rules as your base. For someone that emphasizes wanting to be creative I find it odd he can't just do so from a core set of rules. Generally I just play straight forward casual/competetive matched play games with my friend group. Normally the most narrative we do is a basic reason for the battle, highlight unique or unexpected moments like Crendor's example, and sometimes we'll name models that we like or have achieved notable accomplishments in the game. Every once in a blue moon though we'll do a more narrative focused game, but we do so using the matched play rules as our base and just make more unique objectives, deployments, terrain setups, interactable objects (like shield generators, mine fields, turrets ect.), 'npc' enemies, map/weather effects, and maybe make custom characters using old custom character rules in the case of 40k. We just all lay out and agree upon the added rules beforehand so it still feels largely balanced and doesn't require a judge to play. With enough creativity you can change and make a narrative game out of any games core rules. It's far easier to add and change competitive rules than to take an open ended narrative driven game like dnd and make a balanced competitive match out of it.
Videos like this guy is making are so annoying to keep seeing pop up and they always speak in the same cadence and tone. It's always a half baked opinion piece but they're talking like they're saying something profound. I'd agree with crendor in that if you want to play any game a certain way then find a like minded group.
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
That's literally Narrative play games what he wants. "Other players like to let their imaginations run wild and come up with maps and house rules for sprawling campaigns with a dozen or so players taking part, and that feature bespoke rules which govern how the armies manoeuvre, conquer territories and secure supply lines." AOS 3 Core book
I mostly agree with Crendor. That other guy just sounds like he rather plays DnD and is upset that wargames aren't the exact same. Also, with a bit of imagination and creativity you can already do all those narrative things with wargames as they are now. The rules aren't laws, just get some friends together, add or ignore rules as you like, and you can easily create the DnD wargame experience.
I firmly believe that getting the competative side right (Tight, clear rules with properly balanced armies) makes the narrative and casual play better.
ESPECIALLY balancing units. If there are no "Bad" units (for their cost/army) then you can play what you want without problems arising.
I think most Warhammer players prefer having rules that don't require needing an umpire to play, and matched play is popular because for example it allows for easier pick-up games. A lot of people just want to play the game, not spend their time building a narrative. He seems like he doesn't understand how people can enjoy wargaming in a way that is different to him. "You're not meant to play it that way" sounds arrogant. Narrative play exists, people can make campaigns etc if they want, and GW already pumps out endless lore for their games.
I think the inherent narrative is part of the appeal of warhammer universe, and I’ll lean on the 40K universe in particular. You can be a very competitive tournament player running your meta space wolf list but when you draw your opponent who is playing thousand sons you know prospero has to burn.
I just feel bad for umpire Ricky
You can 100% already do all the stuff he wants. No one is stopping you.
Historicals and many other games do everything he is talking about. You can still do map campaigns with Warhammer, they still appear in white dwarf. He is a lil too focused on stores instead of clubs that do let him play the way he wants
You touched on it really well I think. I'm a competitive first player but I love to see the STORY of the fight. Had 2 tournaments in a row back in 9th where Vulkan He'Stan fought off (by himself mind you) an Avatar of Khaine that I sent him off to fight to buy me time to score points elsewhere AND a Bloodthirster a month later at a different event. with a similar strategy in mind. That man was a decorated hero and monster slayer on the back of his 3+ Invuln and me and my friend who was the Eldar player in this story still talk about that round 5 finals of my first ever GT to this day.
Thanks Crendor. I started to see that video and stopped almost immediately because of the arrogance of his first statement. Nice to know I'm not the only one scratching my head at where he gets his impression of the wargaming hobby from.
As someone who loves narrative games and even writes games for my friends, you are right and he is so off. You can't have your friends over for a 5 hour game where they get bodied that easily. There must be rules to hold up the story elements and individual games need to be fun, not just the campaign. It isn't D&D.
The guys fundamental points are just wrong.
He starts from the position of " everyone wants what I want but the game companies are keeping it from us"
And neither of those things are true - every aspect of what he described made me go " no thanks" and games workshop ect aren't stopping him from doing this.
Probably what's stopping him and a bunch of other people doing this is the logistics of getting 4-5 people, building a world, making their own rules for certain stuff, and finding an umpire for it all.
"I want narrative games that let me be creative and tell a story with my friends"
*waves hand at literally every major wargame having those exact elements*
"No not like that though"
Tabletop is a social games, and social games are determined foremost on who you're playing with, not what you're playing. You could be playing the most "balanced" or "engaging" game on the planet, but if you're playing with people insufferable to be around, you're gonna have a bad time.
As someone who plays a lot of Mordheim and Necromunda now. Narrative is fun yeah, and guess what? Both games have tables that let random events happen for the game... on the flip side too these are both skirmish games that you can just read the rules, play a game with someone and call it a day. No need for injuries, exploration, reputation any of that. I think he's just looking in the wrong spot for what he wants to play. Agree a lot with Crendor on things here, a lot of it too is just play the game you wanna play it, its okay to enjoy what you want to enjoy.
Feels like something that is dependent on the type of people you play with.
Nobody wants to admit this but games aren't fun without restrictions and rules. Everyone pretends they want some loosey-goosey narrative game until they're actually confronted with the reality of it.
I was reading a book called "Homo Ludens" by Johan Huizinga, haven't finished it yet but he stated something similar as rules are what makes a game a game, -as far as I understood from what I have read so far anyway-.
It's all fun and games until the umpire picks favorites and decides to give your opponent a massive advantage
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time of time thinking about this exact video and I agree with you for the most part. I completely disagree with every conclusion he came to, but I do think he does touch on an actual truth about modern wargaming. Like, I think this is a Mark Rosewater "Players are great at finding flaws but horrible at fixing them." situation. I think that, in recent years, Wargames have transitioned to what I call "Box games", because previously Wargames felt like they "went beyond the box" where as now it feels much more like you purchase your box of guys and you play your box of guys.
As an example, in ToW which you talked about you can just very easily convert characters, super easily. There are entire units that just don't have actual models, they're intended to be kit bashed with little guides on how to do it. The game lives outside of the box the models come in. Wargear options, even dumb little things, really add to this sense of realism and scale. It makes the game feel less like a game and more like "simulation" like old wargames originally were. I kind of view it as the "texture" component to games, similar to "flavor" but slightly different. You can have a "box game" that's super flavorful, I absolutely LOVE ASOIAF Miniatures and it's a super flavorful game. It's also not really got any "texture", Starfall Knights are Starfall Knights, they're the same kind of heavy knights the other heavy knights are but they have X instead of Y. There are flavorful differences between the models, units, and factions but there aren't really any "textural" differences. It's the difference between purchasing a squad of Space Marine Outriders and purchasing bikes for your Space Marine Assault Squad to ride. The end position could be the exact same unit, but the act of purchasing a bike for your marine to ride, the presentation of it, changes how it's experienced and how it feels.
That "Outside the Box" portion of the game, if done well, leads into an amazing hobby-game-hobby feedback loop where you play a game, realize you want a new model or unit, it drives you to a new hobby project because you realize you can kitbash something or pick up a new kit or what have you, and then you play a game and repeat.
Not to say that both styles or "genres" or game aren't great, I actually love 10th edition 40k with the new Pariah missions. I just think it's legitimately a different type of game now than the game was back when I started in 4th edition. That's okay, but both styles of games are different with different groups that will prefer them. I think it's possible though to have a version of 40k or AoS where we have that texture alongside all of the good more modern game design aspects, we're just not there yet.
The ability to field dozens of units that you have to build out of bits and conversions is what drew me to Warhammer, and the lack of it in 9th and extreme lack of it in 10th drove me to 30k. It's great.
Speaking of Wargames in a Board game box, have you seen the Mutant Year Zero:Zone Wars core box?
It's crazy value for money.
I think if he's using at least 40k as an example, Games Workshop does a decent job with updating Crusade. There are rules and options for narrative play, the game has simply evolved over time where people want to run the setting in a quick pick up game style.
In a perfect world, I would 100% want narrative games… in the real world, I’m fully aware of how impossible it would be to set that up with a half dozen random strangers…
It’s hard enough to get my MtG commander group together and I know those people personally…
"God offal like Kruleboyz" Ow that dagger to my heart. Edit: More I watch this...seems like this dude wants wargames to be video games, like Stellaris, with 100s of mods installed.
no hate to the guy you're reacting to, cause they're not being toxic or anything, but i feel like they're just taking their own feelings and anecdotal experience and then projecting it onto the wargaming community at large. im still new to warhammer, but i have not met a single person who values narrative over easy no-narrative pickup games. every person i have met enjoys narrative in the same way that you mentioned- something crazy happens in the game randomly, and you can use your imagination to feel a little immersed and to imagine what that would have actually been like on a battlefield, but there is no overarching narrative, there is no war, there are no named characters, etc.
theres nothing wrong with valuing what they value, but its strange to me that they decided to make a public piece of content kind of criticizing the scene as a whole, when they seem to be in a very niche minority. like nobody is stopping players from playing narratively
All of the things he is describing can be done in the game as it is now. The limiting factor is that you need someone to do that, and it almost sounds like he doesn't want to do that. He can be making content to help create a framework that people could use to show that the system works and I think that would be neat! But this video is so weirdly focused on the wrong things to take away from a war game.
I think the fundamental dynamic that warps online discourse about wargaming, particularly Warhammer, is that regular players are a tiny fraction of the people consuming the hobby. The narrative vs competitive conversation tends to draw this out most clearly because for the people who play at all regularly the easiest dynamic to lean into is matched play games and the regular updates help keep that portion of hobby consumers engaged. By contrast the narrative appeal of wargaming is appealing to a larger portion of the overall hobby consumers but very few of them play regularly.
More echoes for the chamber: there's nothing stopping any player, including the fellow from the video, from creating whatever narratives they want from the core rules. Having more balance doesn't prevent that. The competitive scene doesn't prevent that. He sounds like he's just upset that he doesn't enjoy the way a lot of players engage with the game and has couched his opinion as fact in his essay.
No one actually wants to really play a narrative wargame, it's just something people like to daydream about because it sounds cool but ends up being way too much work and less fun than a regular game in the end.
No people do want to play them and they in fact do , but its done in its own unique way, GW even ran their own narrative games big ones even effecting the lore
Big one I can think of is Fantasies Storm of Chaos OR the original 13th black crusade narrative campaign for 40k witch were quite popular
also you can have narratives going on even outside Narrative games
For example, at my Local GW we had a Tyranid player who had a hormagaunt called Skippy a very lucky Hormagaunt who always over-performed
You can create little narratives like that
I've had models that did so well they became characters all unto themselves , I had a Khorne berserker who was my designated skull champion who I always used as a sacrifice to bring out my Daemon Prince or Bloodthirster back when I played table top due to how well he always perform
What Im hearing is he just wants to hate on GWs mainstream stuff because its not how he wants it without acknowledging its popular partly because that of that reason. Plus GW makes the games hes looking for but he clearly hasnt bothered to look beyond 40k and AoS. And thats not to mention all the none GW games out there. Battletech is super narrative driven from my understanding and pretty much describes what he wants.
Oh noes, Crendor fell into reaction videos trap again. Now we will have a reaction to a reaction to a reaction to a reaction...
10th edition 40k is probably the most balanced and fair the game has ever been. It's also the most boring the game has ever been. If you're playing competitively, then there is zero opportunity for creative self expression beyond what color you paint your models. You take the units GW tells you to take, especially now because there's no real decisions to make when writing a list. Weapons and gear don't have any cost, so you take the optimal loadout every time. Units and characters have almost no options for customization because you just take the optimal loadout every time.
Playing competitively can be fun if both participants know what they're getting into. The problem is how GW is now taking the "ESports approach" and writing game rules primarily to push product to competitive players that need to buy 6 boxes of Accused Cultists and 3 boxes of Dark Council units to stay competitive until the next "balance pass" where suddenly Warp Talons are competitive so they need to buy 3-6 boxes of those, until the next balance pass where now maybe Terminators are good so they need to buy those boxes, so on and so forth.
Good on you Crendor!
someone's gotta tell this guy that narrative campaigns and different combat scenarios are a thing
I agree crendor
This video was kinda not true. The wargame with a dm spawned two types of games, wargames and roleplaying games, so the split occured on the dm and amount of minis. The warhammer brand started making dnd minis and catered to fans who wanted to play battles and not roleplay, so they are catering to their market well. Now another thing can be said about the removal of fluffy rules, models, rules written for rules lawyers and the overall fun of the game, all these have become worse over time, great example to compare is 40k 10th edition which is miles worse than 5th for fun, there is a great video on it called "Old Warhammer was Beautiful", but thats a different topic.
Not gonna lie, im not sure ive ever met someone who would say narrative style play is their favorite, im sure they exist, but usually peoples experience with narrative play is like "me and my buddies tried crusade/path of glory once, it was aite" or "once a year me and the old buddies do a big 8k pts narrative game" I dont really hear about anyone playing weekly narrative games, but the way the other video talks about it youd think people were playing hamms like its DnD
This guy could have just said "I think a roleplaying game where you command an army and all the other players command armies would be cool", but instead he said "wargames should be like this very specific idea I have, and when they're not like my idea they suck. Also everyone agrees with me they just don't know it."
Two choices:
He is like 70% of the community of any warhammer. He saw some space marines in game/trailer w/e, and thought "what a fun thing" I'm going to explore this, and stays in the state of never even playing actual wargame, probably not even buying shit, coz it's just not hobby for him, and yet is yelling at any update to lore/model range
Or
He is just childish, get the one turn wipe scenario and never played matched play again, coz CoOleSt mOdElS In hIs OpIniOn are always out of meta, and he's demanding cheat codes in normal game, coz nobody want to play with him the way, the game isn't inteded to play :v
I 100% agree with Crendor. Matched play pick-up games are the standard experience for a good reason and all the constant balancing is good for competitive play (and for sales).
Also, no one is stopping this guy and people like him from sticking to one edition (no keeping up with new books/rules), and making up narratives and story-driven scenarios. They have whole sections for narrative stuff like Crusade and have even included quirky, unbalanced battleplans based on important narrative moments in the official lore!
If people want to integrate roleplay into wargames, that's fine, but I don't think that's what the average joe is really looking for in their wargaming experience.
I get your points and pretty much agree but my rts-only brain is massively triggered by your moba analogies
Someone should just link the dude the Path to Glory and Crusade rules on Wahapedia since he seems to have completely skipped over that section in his core rule books.
I don't know how you can miss them when they're smack in the middle of all my essential rules. So damn annoying they aren't moved to one end.
Sounds like he wants to play a mixture of 3rd Ed onwards D&D (which focuses on narrative) with armies
I applaud the GW team for attempting narrative rules, but the game doesnt really lend itself to RPG with armies
Chainmail, OD&D, and bits of AD&D can do that -- but modern D&D cant get the army part and modern wargames dont get the RPG part
Reminds me of the painter guy who complained about AoS because he wanted to play a skirmish game (despite Underworlds and Warcry existing)
And tournaments do have "referees" if you think about it
They just float between tables and only intervene when asked
He says he doesn't want competitive play and then asks for an umpire
Or really, a Dungeon Master
Play old school D&D
Like others have said, 40K and AoS have narrative and campaign rules designed to provide what he’s asking for; and games like Necromunda have an established Arbiter role for a GM, to handle campaign mechanics and guide the narrative. This really just boils down to a personal preference in the games/ types of experiences this person wants to play. There’s nothing wrong with wanting deeply intricate campaigns, where your decisions in the narrative impact the gameplay; but I think saying this should be the preferred method for the community is a bit folly. Even Blood Bowl, a game designed and themed around football tournaments, where a big part of the “campaign” is losing & recruiting new players, is commonly played as pickup-and-play with your set team roster. I think if you have a group of like-minded players in a gaming store, you can pick-and-choose and create whatever rules or campaign you guys want to play, and go completely wild with it.
My fear would be, his idea of campaign choices massively impacting gameplay (to the point where a mercenary faction joins the fight against you), probably wouldn’t work great at 40K army size. Like Crendor says, I don’t want to play a 4 hour game, where I was screwed from the start. Maybe he should start with smaller scale games, like Kill Team or WarCry, and really get into narrative gaming in those systems. 😅
At first I was like "oh he wants narrative, fluffy games, those are great, as a 30k guy we build a lot of our lists around the fluff, and then do campaigns around that" (especially as 30k doesn't get the FAQ attention 40k does so if something is broken, it's simply gentlemen's rules that you won't surprise your opponent with 15 Dreadnoughts)
Then I watched the whole video.
I don't want to live in this lame hell scape this guy wants. I didn't spend 2 months painting up two legions for me and my one friend to play with, just so I can go make a third friend with someone who was in drama club to be a whimsical dungeon master who decides my terminators got stuck in a swamp he decided exists in that spot on a whim.
I feel that’s everyone’s experience with this vid.
You can agree to the initial parts as a Narrative player that it’s about fun….
Then the guy just goes straight off the deep end 3/4th of the way through contradicting himself multiple times and making what he wants sound more and more absurd because he wants to force his expansive gonzo 5 hour DND session with rules attendants & random charts as the main way to play everything.
Bizarre.
Competitive play must be done away with.
Why?
Don't go into a burger place and bitch that they don't have meatloaf and mashed potatoes even though they have food made from ground beef and potatoes. If someone wants to play a more narrative game then find others who want the same and play. Can say the same thing for war gaming. If its not a thing then make it, that's what I heard happened with AoS 1st ed, they had no point costs so the players made their own points for units. If you and other people agree on the rules of something then those are the rules, don't need to follow the already set rules, that's called homebrew and almost every table has them and homebrew can turn into its own system.
It sounds like this guy wants to play Dnd and not warhammer thats fine just go do that? Variety is great also whos saying you cant add in a scenario into war games as long as both players agree to it not everythings competitive alot of it is casual
just finished the video the summary is 'boohoo warhammer isnt played exactly how i want so therefore lets change it to what i want and thats more fun for everybody'
I really couldn't disagree more with the video. The first and most obvious issue is how matter of fact he is about how most players like to play, I've rarely played or seen others want a narrative driven game over matched play.
Moreover in the case of warhammer, GW does have more narrative focused systems/rules for those interested in them and more importantly you can easily add in homebrew rules while using core rules as your base. For someone that emphasizes wanting to be creative I find it odd he can't just do so from a core set of rules.
Generally I just play straight forward casual/competetive matched play games with my friend group. Normally the most narrative we do is a basic reason for the battle, highlight unique or unexpected moments like Crendor's example, and sometimes we'll name models that we like or have achieved notable accomplishments in the game.
Every once in a blue moon though we'll do a more narrative focused game, but we do so using the matched play rules as our base and just make more unique objectives, deployments, terrain setups, interactable objects (like shield generators, mine fields, turrets ect.), 'npc' enemies, map/weather effects, and maybe make custom characters using old custom character rules in the case of 40k. We just all lay out and agree upon the added rules beforehand so it still feels largely balanced and doesn't require a judge to play.
With enough creativity you can change and make a narrative game out of any games core rules. It's far easier to add and change competitive rules than to take an open ended narrative driven game like dnd and make a balanced competitive match out of it.
Videos like this guy is making are so annoying to keep seeing pop up and they always speak in the same cadence and tone.
It's always a half baked opinion piece but they're talking like they're saying something profound.
I'd agree with crendor in that if you want to play any game a certain way then find a like minded group.
This dude needs Milarki. Narrative and competitive doesn't have to be separate