I forgot to forget

Aka: life happened and nothing got done for the blog. This may happen a lot in the next little while. Regular posting to resume eventually.

bean out~

ch-ch-ch-Changes

CONTEST!

Wow. What can I say, As of tomorrow, this blog is one whole year old. I'm actually kind of impressed. I started it as a little side project to see if I could do it and because a large number of people I know asked me to do something like this. Here we are, a year later and I'm still writing (intermittently admittedly, but I am!). In the last year I've learned quit a few things, amongst them how surprisingly difficult it can be to write posts regularly! But I'm still keeping at it.
But seeing as we're a whole year into this project and my life has changed drastically, Two massive changes are in order:

Back once more!

Long time no see

 

And we're back! Took a little longer than I had expected but it is what it is: the results of moving houses (and land mass... from a teeny tiny little island to a significantly larger island... which is still considered part of the mainland?), Painting the new apartment (mostly.. still a few walls to do), getting settled in, eating delicious food (Omg I can get pizza delivery again!!!), and figuring out the area.
I now have access to 2 FLGStores (much better than the none within a 7 hour sojourn)! Technically I have 3 gaming stores within easy access of my new place... Though I wouldn't say GW, as a business, is friendly, though the employees are nice. I may, or may not (I did), have hired 2 of the 4 while I was still a Manager for GW, and of the remaining 2, One is a guy I worked with when he took over on of the stores I managed and is a pretty great dude. In between all of that I still found time to bring the samurai commission I've been working on up to about 80% completion, build, base coat and wash 10 marines for an upcoming army for 40k (The Vorpal Swords! look them up. they are pretty ace) AND throw down with a large pledge in the form of WARZONE!

That's right kiddies, I threw down at 'The Five" level with my bro AND managed to get a few others to throw in for their own as well, so expect a fairly large number of posts to come in June regarding that topic.

Mo0-moo-Mooooving on up!

Interruption of Service

So I'm moving house in less than a week so I'm going to be muay muay busy in the next little while. Alas this leaves me little time to blog. Thusly, I'm putting the Blog on hold for a few weeks while I get everything moved over, moved in and... uh.... moved up? Does that make sense?
Anyways, Off to pack more boxes...

Until I return,
Where did I put the packing tape?
Bean out~

Thwack Thwack Thwack

They've done it AGAIN. GW you magnificent bastards, you give the blogging community nothing but hilarity in your persuit of mutual self destruction. I'm now convinced that there is some kind of suicide pact amongst the upper echelons of GW HQ. Perhaps Kirby and Merrit were all
Kirby - "You know... we've made some money, had some laughs at our clientele's expense... LITERALLY! BAZING! AND driven a beloved company and IP into the ground... What do we do next?"
 Merrit - "I dunno... write a note onto one thousand one hundred pound notes saying :HA HA HA: and Kill ourselves to avoid the pogrom evident on the horizon from our once loyal fans?"
Kirby - "RACE YOU!!! HEEHEEEHEEE!!!"

Oh... what's that? you're not sure what I'm talking about? Observe and be enlightened:

 Read it here

courtesy of HiveStar on the BoLS lounge.

When is a +1 sword not a +1 sword?

Behind the Screen

Strike me down....

First thing's first: Sorry about the missed post on Saturday. I would like to blame it on prepping to move house in just over a weeks time (truth). I'd love to blame it on finally getting my MRI and was in the hospital (didn't happen). But alas it was all down to playing Mass Effect 3 multiplayer with my brother. Ahhhh good times. Damn that Talon Merc is awesome.....

ANYWAYS, Sorry about that. To be fair I wrote a post and forgot to schedule it because I'm a knucklehead. I'd post it in the future but it effectively boiled down to:

ERMAGERD TAU BE COMING! WOOHOO!

and therefor is now out of date so.... <content deleted>.

Once upon a time, I had a small Space-fish-with-hooves army, painted up like the RDF from robotech (because f*** Macross!) that I spent months trying to turn into a pope-bomb melee army for shiggles. Alas it was not viable and I sold it. Mayhaps I'll get a small 500-1000point detachment to use as allies as I'm a sucker for giant robots with giant guns and that Riptide Mech tweeks my brainy meats in  just the rightway. Maybe I'll convinve my buddy who bought the army to let me take pics of it and throw it up on here sometime...

Moving on, The subject of this post is a slightly more personal rant than anything. You see, I've been playing D&D for many ages, in many iterations. I started with AD&D (Black bordered 2nd edition) when I was of the tender age of 12 and have since gone on to play every single version of the game (OD&D, Moldvay's boxed set, AD&D 1st edition, 3.0, 3.5, 4e and have even dipped my toes in D&D Next) so I'd like to think I have some experience with the game.  And included in all of that experience is a few biases that I've developed over time, specifically what edition I like the most (AD&D 2e/Black Border), which one I hate the most (3.5, because I am not a fan of book-keeping and easily abused systems... *cough cough* d20 *cough cough*), and what simple things drive me up the wall. Included amongst the latter-most of those grumps I have is something I find incredibly irksome: The subject of magical items, or rather the mechanics vs. the roleplay aspects.

You see, I firmly believe a magical item is only magical if it has a backstory, something which, for the majority of categories, is covered for every item type barring the two most important: WEAPONS and ARMOUR. 

Kicking that ailing horse...

Rants

I lack a picture of a horse being kicked...

I know I know, I said I wouldn't say anything more in criticism of GW for a while... But after reading this I couldn't help but share it. This comes courtesy of Classic 40,000 (A wonderful blog from a fellow lover of models older than many of you).
Anyways, here we are. Be prepared: It's long and all transcribed [sic] including Ork of Legend's comment..

Here is something from deep in my archives. From what I can see this is not currently posted anywhere else on the internet, so I will post it here to stop it being lost to the community. It is a reply that Jervis Johnson made on a mailing list some time in 1995. He was replying to the accusations that Warhammer 40,000 had been dumbed down in the change from 1st to 2nd edition.

I have left the spelling and grammar alone in the posts and reproduced them unchanged. Note: the second section of Jervis’ post is about using house rules, only the first and third sections are to do with the edition change.

Firstly, here is the original post that prompted Jervis to reply:

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 I recently got my hands on (albeit temporarily) on the Rogue Trader and the Compilation 40K first edition books. I was amazed at their quality and level of detail.

 1st ed 40K seemed almost like a role-playing game with scenarios, monsters and rules for creating just about any vehicle in existance. I especially liked the robot and dreadnought creation rules. In addition, the modeling articles were quite excellent, in particular the ones which showed you how to construct vehicles from deodorant cases and ZOIDS toys.

 I am trying to figure out what happened to the 40K game universe since those memorable 1st ed games. If you were to try to bring in a custom vehicle or robot to the table these days most people (with the exception of your established group perhaps) wont play against you since its "unofficial."

 Did the spirit of player innovation die with the second edition? Maybe its just me having to play with "official" rules policemen, but do most people out there play with all the nifty fan-created custom vehicles, characters and races? Or do people read the Dark Library and posts here, say "thats nice!" and then go back to playing the fully "Chapter Approved" 40K game?

 I am just wondering why the designers (AC and JJ if you are out there) made the second edition so much more simplistic than the 1st edition. Why were all the cool rules for monsters and special terrais taken out? What about robots and custom vehicles?

Ed Etkin

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And here is the (very long) reply that Jervis made:

------------------------------------------------------------------

 The following post is from me (Jervis) only, and therefore, even more so than most of the other things we post, it represents a personal view. It's been put together late at night at home, and so may get a bit incoherent at times, but hopefully the gist of what I'm saying will be clear.

1st & 2nd Edition WH40K

 Recently Ed Etkin commented on some of things he liked about 1st edition Warhammer 40,000 compared to the 'simplified' 2nd edition, especially with regard to 1st edition's greater emphasis on making up your own scenarios, scratch-building models, and a 'darker' tone to the background.

 Although it may surprise some people, we actually agree with almost all of the points Ed made, and in fact had identified the same problems ourselves some time ago. That's why we brought out the Citadel Journal, with its articles on scratch-building models, new scenarios and advanced rules, and also why we tried to use the battle reports in WD to illustrate alternative ways of playing. Now that the Codexs are almost finished we'll soon have time to concentrate on other projects of a similar nature. For example, we're planning to bring out a range of scenario packs in 1997 that will show different ways of playing other than strict 'head-to-head' competition, while the extra 40 pages in the new style WD have been added almost exclusively to allow us to address topics that will appeal to more experienced players, such as different painting techniques, scenarios and so on (oh, and Q&A of course!) Finally there's Necromunda, which we very much see as a Warhammer 40,000 variant that illustrates an alternative way of using the rules and background to create an entirely new game.

 As to the darker and more brooding aspects of the background, suffice to say I've done my best to make sure that Angels of Death lets people know that not all Space Marines are 'white than white goody two-shoes'. As to those players that want to write things like "die! die! die!" on their Space Marines helmets (which in our experience is what people are *really* talking about when they say the 1st edition background was 'darker'), don't despair, because if we get our way a lot of this style of iconography will be included in the Chaos Codex...

House Rules When GW Play

In digest 200 John Phelps raises a number of interesting points about us using house rules, if this is a problem, and more specifically about letting players know about them.

 The first point that I'd make is that it's our job to use house rules - we're rule writers after all and as such we're constantly trying out different ideas and rules. Some of the new rules stick, and when this happens we try to let people know about them, either through WD magazine in battle reports and (now) the Q&A page, or in the Citadel Journal, or (now) on the net. However we don't really want people to see these house rules as being anything other than highly recommended optional rules that should only be used in a game with both players consent. In the past we've been very wary of publishing house rules and even Q&A because we're worried about the confusion that might result, but we're starting to be a bit more free and easy about the whole process. In fact we hope to include a section on the Q&A page called something like "Jerv and Andy's House Rules" where we can deal with stuff like the unmodifiable save ruling we've tried out on the net, starting in WD193.

 Secondly, if you're worried about whether you're playing exactly the same game as us (since we may be using house rules you don't know about), especially in tournament conditions, please don't be! I know I've said it before, but it's difficult to understate the case when I say that what we present is a starting point. As long as you're happy with the version of the game you're playing that's fine by us! The same applies to tournaments, except that here it's up to the tournament organisers to decide if there are going to be any variations to the standard rules. Again, as long as the tournament organiser's happy, well it's the same for all the players taking part, and they don't have to play if they don't want to!

 On the same subject, in digest 204 Pat Marstall made a number of sensible comments in reply to John's original post, especially with regard to the fact that the house rules we use don't in any way invalidate the original rules in the game. In most cases it's pretty much a toss-up as to which version works best anyway, so you should simply go with the version you prefer. The same applies if you prefer the old 1st edition rules (use them, we won't mind), or Warzone for that matter (OK, we'll mind a bit in this case, but Bill King's our mate so we won't get to upset). Of course the the rules gives them a certain gravitas, and especially when playing against new opponents this means that you'll probably have to use a vanilla version of the rules (or a vanilla version with our recommended house rules). But what can we say, other than that life is very rarely perfect!

Simplified for Kiddies

 Finally, I would like to take issue with one thing Pat said, which is roughly that the published rules are deliberately simplified for 12 year olds and that we use complicated house rules because we're 'grown-ups'. Leaving aside the 'classic-car' syndrome of this argument (they don't make 'em like they used to you know!), what people need to understand is that we (the designers) change the rules for ourselves and nobody else (this ain't no democracy ya know!). In fact we're constantly fiddling and tweaking the rules and background in order to try and improve them, the we in question being mainly Rick, Andy C, Alan Merrit, John Blanche, Jez Goodwin and myself. Obviously others contribute to, but generally when stuff gets changed it's our fault!

 So you see, the stuff we publish is quite simply the way _we_ like to do things, it really is. The truth is that we've tended to simplify rules and stuff more with recent editions of our games because, as we get older and wiser, we find that in gaming, as in art, 'less is usually more'. Speaking for myself, as I have matured as a game designer I have come to believe more and more strongly that it is usually what is left out that's important, rather than what is put in - in other words sometimes rules and clever background stuff can simply get in the way of having good game, without adding anything in terms of flavour, tactics or fun!

 Therefore you should look on 1st edition Warhammer 40,000 rulebook as an evolution of the 1st (grey box) & 2nd (red box) edition _Warhammer_ rules. In their turn the 1st edition WH40K rules heavily influenced the way the 3rd edition (orange book) Warhammer Fantasy Battle rulebook was written. By the time we came to do the current editions of both Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 (4th and 2nd editions respectively) we had decided that we'd made the hardback books too wordy and over-complicated, and that we actually far preferred the way things had been done way back with the 1st and 2nd edition Warhammer rules. Therefore what you see now is a return to the way we originally did things, because we liked it better that way, rather than anything especially new.

 But evolution never stops, and now looking back we can see that although we're happy with the current level of complexity in the rules themselves (except that I'd like simplify the vehicle rules!), we miss the stuff in the hardback books talking about things like designing your own scenarios, or making terrain, and that kind of thing. That's why, as noted above, we agree with a lot of Ed's comments on 1st & 2nd edition WH40K.

 Which is where I started, so that's quite enough of my rambling thoughts and comments for the time bein at least. It's going to be interesting to see what you guys make of them. Have fun...

-Jervis

Anyways, It's definitely food for thought and sheds a tiny bit of light about the VAST changes between editions, especially 5th to 6th (despite being short 80% of the people listed by name). Lemme know you're thoughts in the comments (and over at Classic 40,000, He works hard and deserves some more views!).

Until next time,
Punch, kick, it's all in the mind.
Bean out~