As all of us fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls on this board know, the point of tabletop game lore is to sell us miniatures and rulebooks. However, it seems that sometimes the lore was written separately from the need to sell minis in some games such as Warhammer 40,000 where it was stated that the Imperium of Mankind is a technologically stagnant* (and in some case, backsliding) regime, clashing with the need to sell plastic crack.*In my opinion, the lore for tabletop games needs to account for the fact that they need to sell product with the lore team coordinating with marketing first to write the initial lore of a tabletop game. This means that certain tropes like lost technology needs to be avoided so that there is an open door to new miniatures and rulebooks to spend your money on.*And with the introduction of the Primaris, that part of the Imperium being technologically stagnant seems to be tossed out.*At least BattleTech realized that making Mechs irreplaceable (it was mentioned that the factories in the earlier editions of BT were destroyed and utterly gutted) was a bad idea for a tabletop game if they need to add new mechs.
>>98594852
>>985967394chan requires that you post an image for a thread, remember?
>>98596739This board is on its last fucking legs, AI slop, constant demoralizing threads And this nigga STILL does his little gimmick of “use the general”
>98596739You will never be a board.
>>98596690>namefag>is retardedA tale as old as time. Have a (You), hope you get better.
>>98597047What I was wanting in the OP was to discuss if the lore should be written in conjunction with the marketing to sell minatures for tabletop games. Because I've seen how it can cause inconsistencies if the lore clashes with the miniatures as seen in Warhammer 40,000 where the Imperium being stagnant technologically gets in the way of making minatures as seen with peoples' reaction to the Primaris initally. I suspect it's because during the Rouge Trader era, the lore people were'nt on the same page as the marketing team or did not have someone to check that their stories were internally consistent.
>>98597173You know that they already do that shit, right?>What do you mean “where did the new space marines come from”? Clearly they made them>What do you mean “where did the new battle mechs come from”? The researched them>What do you mean “where did this new faction of aliens come from”? They came from space, duh>Niw shut up and buy our overpriced crap, you disgusting male nazichudcel
>>98596690Fuck lore. Especially GW lore which is a joke. Sell me generic power armoured soldiers that I can make into what I want.
>>98597202Arrgh, sure there's that, but the lore exists for a reason (to sell plastic crack and rulebooks by getting you invested) . So having a little bit of communication between marketing and the lore writers helps to ensure some internal consistency.If not; why is it in pre 9E 40k that they say 'Forget the power of technology and science for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learnt' in it's intro blurb? Either explictly clarify the rules the Adeptus Mechanicus have on innovation in a sourcebook or retcon the fact that the Imperium is stagnant technologically to explain some of the new toys.**Especially since finding an STC fragment (one of the AdMech's jobs) for a new thing tends to be the type of job that pays handsomely. (Some guys discover a fragment for a better Astartes knife, they get a governorship)
>>98597263Like I will acknowledge the spirit of what you’re saying, that a lot more consistency and care should go into the background elements of a setting if you’re going to include it in your marketing. But there are times where two statements aren’t a contradiction, which is how the marketing gets you.Like to take your example, a statement like “The imperium is technologically stagnant” isn’t at odds with “The Adeptus mechanicus is inventing new technologies”. In practice, it could mean that the things the mechanicus is inventing aren’t widespread enough to counter the general decline of the imperium, or that their innovations are hyper specific in a way that isn’t doing enough to combat said decline. Like how the Germans in wwii were so busy inventing tank super weapons or searching for the holy grail that it are up a lot of money and research that could have been used elsewhere more efficiently, that kind of thing.Gee dubs uses a lot of weasel words and “I didn’t say that specifically” when it comes to lore changes. It’s lazy and cheap as hell, but it works enough for selling plastic shit. I get you’d prefer something more like how they reintroduced the space dwarves as the Votann with a logical history and proper recontextualization of everything involving them until their reintroduction, but you’re more likely to see the Femstodes “There’s always been female custodes, you just assumed otherwise you chud” kinds of retcons. That’s just how lazy writing and Gee Dubs works.
>>98596690>namefag OP is retardedShocking.
>>98597340At least that's why I think BattleTech is a bit more appealing, the lore is a bit more internally consistent with the need to also sell models with little retcons that don't mess with canon.**One of the few canon changing retcons they did was to change the fact that BattleMechs were not being produced anymore as stated in BattleDroids (1st edition BattleTech) and second edition (when the BattleTech name was used) to still being produced but Mechs were still hard to replace. Turns out that having your titular BattleMechs be irreplacable in the lore is detrimental to something meant to sell a tabletop wargame.
>>98597388Then that’s more a problem of the writers of these miniature war games being lazy pricks more then anything, considering children’s shows like Saturday morning cartoons and tokusatsu can better introduce relevant backstory for their toy characters than warhammer 40k can explain where the Primaris came from.
>>98596827I would rather it be dead than be inane repetitious questions about stupid shit no one cares about.
>>98596690>And with the introduction of the Primaris, that part of the Imperium being technologically stagnant seems to be tossed out.They specifically tortured the lore so that Primaris were kept in cold storage for 10,000 years back from when the Imperium could manage projects like that. Which is your answer, it's 40k lore, you can make up any reason for new shiny and nobody really cares.I don't know about the 'terrible thread' and 'demotivation thread' comments, I think the toyetic-ness of a franchise is worth discussing, but you beefed your primary example.
>>98596690>the Imperium being technologically stagnant seems to be tossed outNo it doesn't.There's no tech in primaris gear and vehicles that didn't exist previously. None. Zero. All the fake grogs parroting the above seem to have not been around when GW introduced Razorbacks, Centurions, Stalkers, Stormravens, or the other many things that didn't exist in-universe until M36 or later.The imperium is technologically stagnant, which means that they've barely advanced in 10,000 years. It doesn't mean that they don't try new stuff using what they have.The main limitations are political. The AdMech will always try to keep Marines with just what they need. Because the AdMech are a bunch of stingy bastards and they remember the Legions. But when it suits them, suddenly all the excuses for the lack of Terminator suits or whatever dissapear, and magically marines get new STCs or load of stuff previously rationed. Or you get a guy like Cawl that get's away with breaking the political status quo because he has a fucking Primarch as a patron.Which is why so many marine vehicles and gear were introduced not just in M41, but also in M36. You know what happened , do you?
>>98598218I recall Andy Chambers justifying the 'new' chaos terminator weapons (viz, twin linked bolter, reaper cannon) as being because the Imperium did actually 'invent' (or perhaps refine), just at the speed of an arthritic tortoise and invariably in weaponry and wargear. So the storm bolter and assault cannon were retconned as the Imperium deciding fire rate was more important than accuracy (twin linked) or brute force (reaper had a higher strength, iirc, though the AC did have rending so...). I had a soft spot for that bit of hand-waving.
It should be written to cater to my personal fetishes, autistic hyperfixations and political power fantasies
>>98598287>my personal fetishes, autistic hyperfixations and political power fantasiesHi, GW writer here. Tell us these so we can correct the lore for you.
>>98597388Battletech chose the opposite. That whoever wanted to add some new dumb stuff would just make battletech: the next generation and throw in whatever they felt like, and so on. It's frankly pure luck that the dumbest thing put in through a buyout was the dark age. You're lucky you didn't get some fuckhead executive demand they put in aliens or whatever.
>>98597505Well shit son you certainly care enough to come reply to this thread.
>>98596690>>98596801>>98597173>>98597263>>98597388Lore to sell toys and in Warhammer's case is to sell miniatures and that is always in a constant "tug of war" or "pendulum" between being what the tfwiki article jokingly calls "to sell toys." Ideally you want the emphasis more on the lore fitting the universe's tone and "limits" than to sell toys but not too far that will mean that the sales don't do well.But excessive in lore flattery can be bad and too little also is bad.>excess flattery We can talk about Primaris when introduced getting excessive praise in universe that is the slang term "glazing." It was too much too forced felt weird. I would argue that was lore to sell toys being too blatantly desperate in trying to sell toys. This was when GW was desperate and had to revamp the marine line to stay afloat. >too littleThe Elysians of ForgeWorld. They were never going to do as well as the Krieg and their lore didn't try to fight that.The Elysians were SUPPOSEDLY done dirty in their Imperial Armour books where their lore and rules were. Basically perpetually losing to the point where they got the slang "jobber" reputation. At least the DKOK got a high costing victory. I think the premise for their deployment was also better executed for them than the Elysians got. >middle ground (I think)The Macharius tanks. "Budget baneblades" the tank. It is a simple premise that grows into interesting lore about how Mars supposedly is hesitant to allow other ForgeWorlds to have the means of making Baneblades and material costs also mean looking for cheaper alternatives. I think the lore reason is in case the ForgeWorld falls to enemy hands and Imperium being Imperium.Enter the Macharius being an in between the tank and super heavies. Their existence makes sense in universe and flattery is kept minimal while at the same time they aren't too negatively treated even though their whole thing was being a bargain bin version of a better tank.
>>98596690You're already fucking up in a couple ways. First, its fluff. Lore is a bullshit term bade up by nerds who wanted knoing about imaginary spacemen's space gun calibres and which backpacks had articulating vents to have some special significance. Fluff is for people who know the story is fun but also the pretext for playing the game so not overly important or needing much depth. Secondly, no company that sells entertainment plans on having a continuous IP for 4 decades. That's not a thing you initially plan for, nor can you build a plan to do with how markets and generations shift over that long a period of time. Thirdly, most people don't read the books. >the fact that they need to sell product with the lore team coordinating with marketing first to write the initial lore of a tabletop game.Doesn't matter. Most consumers aren't reading that. They'll look at the splash art, skim and maybe, if you're lucky, read the rules to the point they understand them. But don't cont on it.
>>98598218>There's no tech in primaris gear and vehicles that didn't exist previously. None. Zero.
>>98603220>baby carriers didn't exist before the Phobos Avatar turd
>>98603153>First, its fluffWrong, talking about "fluff" is okay, but so it's "lore". Stop larping as an uppity snob about a triviality.>Secondlyyes>Thirdly, most people don't read the books.Yes, you included. So shut up and stay on your lane.
>>98603883Nah I'll keep being right.
>>98602366It's really not different than any other medium, something is always sacrificed for something else. Movies will sacrifice story for runtime or mass appeal (look at what happened to Avatar), vidya has to balance gameplay and story or will run into ludonarrative dissonance (a running joke with Destint is that you're fighting metaphysical cosmic god-entities...that can be defeated by six niggas running gymnastics and shooting at it), a book relies on the reader's personal mental image of the scenes described (people had very different mental images of Middle Earth before the movies standarized them), and so on.
>>98603220That's literally just a dreadnaught with a shittier cockpit and a still healthy marine pilot. It's a shitty idea but not exactly outside of the realm of imperium capabilities to create.
>>98603848>baby carriersi'm dead
