Necromunda The Sump: General hobby venting thread (Beware: old men shouting at clouds)

[spafe]

At minimum it will help those without imagination. But why are they even thinking about taking the role of an arbitrator?

Why hello there!

I'm not sorry to say, I massively fall into this. I have no imagination and am not a creative person. I am however logistically minded and capable of herding cats gamers. This has meant I end up being the arbitrator for our groups campaigns at times (although our group is generally laid back enough we need little herding). These ideas are fun and give a jumping off point.

That said, the idea of a arbitrator not particpating... personally I find that means its going to be rare to see these ever used as most players want to.. well... play! So I think its a nice idea but rarely going to be used.

And I do agree, if it breaks the mechanics, its specifically an arbitrator esk thing so its not really a big deal. Just by its nature this makes it very niche

 

[ntw3001]

Curious what motivation people have to play miniature games in general when it comes to narrative vs rules driven / game mechanics. And in particular when they're in conflict. M

I don't know about the nemesis rules. But this idea of rules vs. narrative bugs the hell out of me. Bad rules are so commonly excused with 'oh but the game is about  narrative'. If the rules and the narrative are in opposition, in what way is the game about narrative? Obviously, the opposite is true. The game is  opposed to narrative. No, Redditors (it's Redditors btw), what you're saying is that the game is  bad. You just prefer to say it in a way that preserves the value of your buy-in.

it's wild that so many people are somehow convinced that rules and story are opposing forces. I get that a lot of people are stuck in the GW bubble, but are they really working with the tacit assumption that games are just inherently bad? Like, they don't even have the idea that a game could yield a story. A game is the  opposite of a story, everybody knows that!

 

[almic85]

I fall into the same category as Spafe.

Not so much imagination, yet I always seem to be running everything.

So fortunately for me the Apocrypha Necromunda gives me useful tools and tips to run off.

It also means I can finally bugger off the three random white dwarfs, the Dark Uprising rulebook, and the gang war booklets that are taking up space on my book shelf.

Now I just need to also consolidate all the extra rules hidden across the rest of my rulebooks and accessory books so I can move those along as well.

If they didn’t have so much repetition of rules between books I think I’d have half a book shelf back to fill with Bloodbowl supplements and reprints of Mordheim.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Didn't mean to step on any toes. I'm not very imaginative either when it comes to narrative or game mechanics, which is why I prefer to have someone do it for me. However, we had how many campaigns now? How many fighter profiles? After seeing the same content being released again and again in "new" variants, it's not hard to see the pattern.

When it comes to the other part of the new book, "Living Settings", it's basically a behind the scenes step-by-step guide to how GW makes their campaigns. Summarized as follows:

• Population
  • Hired Guns
  • Nemesis
  • Monsters
• Commerce
  • Trading Post
  • Black Market
  • Wealth
• Environment
  • Battlefields
  • Maps
  • Territories (what I like to call 'Resources')

Sounds familiar? Isn't this exactly what was done behind the scens for Dominion, Law & Misrule, Uprising, Outlander, Ash Wastes and Succession 1-3? Feels like GW is selling their recipe here.

I get that some input is needed (depending on how many books you have read). Having read all books, it feels like this offers little new in terms of ideas or understanding the blueprint of making a campaign.

 

[Heart of Storm]

I imagine it's useful for people who haven't gone through the full development cycle of Necromunda, don't own every book printed and haven't analysed the difference between each in detail, which I suspect forms the bulk of players, particularly newer players.

 

[TopsyKretts]

That's fair, but it sounds weird to me if you haven't already played a few campaigns, to make your own from scratch?

 

[GQuail]

That's fair, but it sounds weird to me if you haven't already played a few campaigns, to make your own from scratch?

I think a lot of GW ideas make sense when you remember what it was like to read them aged 11 rather than now!

Yes some of the stuff in Apocrypha seems overly simplistic to the demographic on Yak and for sure its a game whose player base probably skews older than 40K or AoS but someone is reading for the first time ideas on generating their own campaign settings and how they can tweak them

 

[Tiktaalik]

Can't begin to imagine how that spans out. "The Nemesis should shoot at this fighter from your gang", "no, it should charge that fighter from your gang instead"...

Maybe one week the weakest gang controls the nemesis. Or the players are attacked on all sides during a multiplayer game and they have to attack themselves using the nemesis gangers nearest to their own models. A crazy super villain with 5 skills and OP gear would probably appear at the end of the campaign in full force and try to prevent all of the gangs from reaching some objective. During the normal campaign they would probably just send squads of goons or murder cyborgs to do their dirty work.

 

[TopsyKretts]

Yeah, it's also mentioned that the villain can progress according to the gangs during the campaign.

 

[Spenetrator]

At the risk of being too positive, I can't hate the idea of GW making official rules for something I was already planning/ kind of doing. Making a narrative seting peopled with a series of 'NPC' threats. I like the idea of the NPCs being controlled by arbitrator/non-regular player(s)/player(s) without a game.

Don't have the book yet, so may end up cursing them for suggesting something worse than my idea, but because it's sinilar & in a book, people prefer it!

 

[Greyhart]

Oh for Pete's sake!

Seriously GW?!

I'm painting a sprue of tiny Marines for Legions Imperialis..

.. and the Captain has a TACTICAL ROCK?!?!

I'm making a t-shirt, bumper sticker and whatever else I can think of with a picture of a foot on a rock with the caption, "Just say NO to Tactical Rocks!"

.. or maybe, "Friends don't let friends do Tactical Rocks."

Or better yet a picture of a foot, "This is your foot." Followed by a picture of said foot being smashed by a rock, "This is your foot on Tactical Rocks. Any questions?"

Okay.. yeah, I'm done.

<wanders back into the depths of the Dump muttering> .. in my day we didn't have this silly nonsense of 'tactical rocks' and we were happy about it. "Tactical Rocks". Hmmph.. that's when you got no ammo left so you pick up a rock and bash something with it.. or someone..

I'm really done now.

 

[Burgraph]

It puts Its foot on the rock unless It wants a Corpse Grinder release again.

 

[ntw3001]

These days you're lucky if you get a nice generic rock rather than something tying your army to a specific location. Oh I guess we're all fighting in a ruined Tau outpost again, cool. Except brother Poraliandermaris, and captain Blenatharalanwilsenwyn, they're always on a Necron tomb world for some reason. And I'm starting to get concerned about where brother Ghreimosamaranth is finding all these freshly-severed Tyranid heads :/

 

[Space Truckin]

And therein lies the problem. There seems to be a core of very affluent customers who think nothing of paying stupid money, and GW know this. And so the rest of are steadily being pushed out of the hobby.

The warhammer.is for everyone campaign comes back to mind.

 

[Luke82]

I think tactical rocks are the goblin green base rims of today, in 15 years hobbyists will look back at it as turbo-naff.

 

[MusingWarboss]

Ok, it will have 16 book required to play because that’s normal for GW these days.

Turns out it needed five depending on your army choice.

That still sucks GW.

I think tactical rocks are the goblin green base rims of today, in 15 years hobbyists will look back at it as turbo-naff.

Then after that people will be actively adding them again due to nostalgia.

 

[Gunkaiser]

I never had any with the Goblin Green Base rims but when I paint any 2nd ed figures, well...

 

[Greyhart]

I can neither confirm nor deny the presence of sand covered Goblin Green bases on any of my miniatures..

<hides my original metal Grey Knights with sand covered Goblin Green bases>

 

[Punktaku]

First I refused to paint bases. Then for multiple decades everything was goblin green with flock and small rocks except Necromunda. Which was kinda space wolf gray? There were some later ones with green/rocks, but for the last few years I’ve tried to paint them to match my Necromunda board.

 

[MusingWarboss]

I will still Goblin Green bases for my 2nd Edition armies (haha, collection of partly assembled and painted stuff) because I want something that’s evocative of that era.

Modern stuff I’ll do whatever I fancy.

The one I never liked was drab brown. That became a thing everywhere in the 2000s. Everything brown everywhere. Even our weather map changed from green to brown at that time.

Now though the weather map is back to green unless it’s summer in which case it looks like a burnt pizza even though its only 22°C out.