Can you make "epic" stories out of 40k?

[Stark]

Are you seriously comparing a rather broken view of a historical event to fucking brand management? The current state of the 40k setting is a) not fucking static and b) 100% deliberate. It's not a struggle against the fucking Kaiser: GW wants it this way. If they wanted to change it, they'd just fucking change it. In any case, while the setting as a whole remains similar, saying there are no ongoing events and the setting is 'static' is complete bullshit.

I can't believe I'm defending 40k.

[Hawkwings]

I can't believe Stark hasn't gone on a hate-rampage yet.

[Stark]

This is my hate rampage... I'm just on the wrong side! I dislike 40k as much as anyone with a brain, but there's no need to misrepresent it to do so. I'm big on honesty.

[Ford Prefect]

No it just makes you look retarded. All of your examples are stupid, and don't matter a fucking damn.

All of my examples are awesome. You can whine all you like about how they're stupid, or they don't matter, but ultimately what you're expressing is totally wrong, and that's all there is to it. I mean, if I actually asked you to tell me why 'Epic is Ibram Gaunt striding out a fox-hole, his cape billowing and his sword singing, rallying his men for the big push into Blood Pact forces.' I know you couldn't. You'd not actually be able to deliver a satisfactory response to the simple question 'why?'. If you'd like, you can go ahead and try.

Stark, who probably dislikes 40k more than you do, has the decency to actually know what he's talking about. Yeah, the setting won't ever move beyond AD 40,999, but so what? Events don't have to change the entire universe, nor do they have to be set at the current day. Lord Solar Macharius and his crusade to the edge of the galaxy, for example, is an event which had a lasting change on the history of 40k. There is no way you can deny this. How about the Heresy? Are you going to tell me that had no effect on the history of 40k? How about the War in Heaven?

Do you actually have any knowledge about the content of the subject at hand?

[Setesh]

Actually Ford 40K passed 40999 quite a while ago, the last major 'in universe' event I can recall was Inquisitor Lichtenstein being declared Excommunicate Traitoris in 41998. And that was when 3rd edition deamon hunters came out so we've most likely advanced again in the later supplements. Despite the name time does keep moving forward, the extreme lifespans of augmented characters like space marines, and the temporal weirdness of the warp (ships appearing before they left, or 200 years later with the crew not a day older) character development can take centuries of in universe time.

[Rye]

I was watching the trailer for that WH Fantasy MMO, and thinking "Wow, that looks pretty epic". And I began to think about the various difficulties in making similarly "epic" stories for 40k. By this I mean the sci-fi equivilant of something like Lord of the Rings.

Such things include a far smaller amount of hidious creatures, having races living entire light-years away, and other things that make big epic confrontations somewhat hard.

One of the major players is Chaos, who could be your next door neighbour or perhaps they have infiltrated the command of the nearest rival hive city and they're marching on everything the main characters hold dear.

On the other hand, 40k is far more fantastical than your average sci-fi, with an abundance of melee weapons, daemons, and even zombies. So it's clear that the potential is there.

So would it be possible to make such a 40k fiction with the right plot conveniences, or is it just not designed to be written that way?

Have you read much 40k stuff? Dan Abnett's Necropolis is like an extended battle of Minas Tirith with tanks and hundreds of thousands of lives lost in an ongoing epic-scale siege. Whole planets are wasted when the tyranids show up, etc. Grey Knights and similar groups frequently turn up on chaos-fucked planets and quest their way through ridiculous odds to blow up gigantic contorted flesh pillars that want to tear reality a new arsehole.

[Peptuck]

Of course, the fact that Kevin J. Anderson is American means there's no guarantee the change will be for the better; the fact that Berman & Braga are American means there's no guarantee there'll be a change at all.

You just gave me the absolutely terrifying mental image of B&B being in charge of 40k.

[NecronLord]

Actually Ford 40K passed 40999 quite a while ago, the last major 'in universe' event I can recall was Inquisitor Lichtenstein being declared Excommunicate Traitoris in 41998.

Huh? Either you've read that wrong (Sure it wasn't 998.M41?) or it's a typo.

[Setesh]

Huh? Either you've read that wrong (Sure it wasn't 998.M41?) or it's a typo.

That's just the 'gothic' way of saying 41998. And according to Critcalhit.uk's timeline, its now 41999 and a really busy year. Its something they came up with so when people are talking 'in unverse' they only refer to the three digit year after establishing what millennium they're talking about.

999.M41 Third invasion of Armageddon led by Ork Warlord Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka. Inquisitor Apollyon detects taint of Chaos on Thracia. Ultramarines defeat Nightlords and traitor PDF units. Turning point in campaign is taking of bridge two-four. Magos Trantor puts forward theories for the workings of Necrontyr weapons. Inquisitor Apollyon reports on the excavation of Adeptus Mechanicus geno-lab on Incunabla by Explorator Marco Pteronus. Secrets regarding the Cursed Founding, five thousand years earlier, are revealed. Creed becomes Lord Castellan of Cadia after members of the Cadian High Command are murdered.

That only covers events up to White Dwarf 283, since WD339 is out the 'in universe date will most likely have advance by now.

[Academia Nut]

M41 is 40000 to 40999, just like the 21st century is 2000 to 2099, so yeah, you're reading the dates completely wrong, and yeah, GW has been cramming more and more stuff into 4099X, which is why everyone keeps saying that they need to move on to M42.

Also, I would contend that if a story written in 40k isn't at least a little epic, you're doing it wrong. The whole setting is big and grand with galaxy spanning events.

[Stark]

Yeah, it's like 'C21' is the same way as saying '2001-2100'. M41 means the '40k' period. I didn't know they were so close to the end of it, though...

[Rye]

Interestingly, the Cain books are set in M42 (as they mention Cain's retirement and redraft), but are memoirs of M41 stuff.

[Chris OFarrell]

http://www.geocities.com/fabricatorgene ... eline.html

Thats a not too bad timeline of stuff thats happened in the 40Kverse (horrible formatting though) and it hasn't been updated in a long time, so a lot of the more recent 'major' events are missing.

Still, look at everything from M41, from Lord Commander Solar Macharius and his crusade, till 999, thats a HUGE amount of stuff in there. I mean the Gothic War was in 142. The most recent Fall of Medusa V was in what, 99something?

[Ford Prefect]

I didn't know they were so close to the end of it, though...

The old saying is that New Years sucks in 40k.