Aren said:
However, I would like to ask everyone on here this: what do we actually want from the WD?
Nice way of focussing the discussion.
I apologise for creating additional reading, but I would like to build up to answering this, addressing a few comments, including my own, on the way. I know I am to a large extent being disparaging, but it's only because I care, and not the opposite. For me, I desperately want to see White Dwarf improve into being more than just a shadow of what it was. To be honest, I don't think they could ever achieve it, but they could certainly make more of an effort to justify its cost.
The fact that until the only minor improvements brought by the White Dwarf redux a few years ago, it was barely even justifying its cost. There's a noticeable discrepancy between effort and attached value with WD, and a number of other GW products (Codexes and Army Books especially). I mean sure it looks nice, but these days it would be absolutely ridiculous if it didn't. The same is true of GW's foray into HD gaming. CAD sculpting, full colour printing, and crisp, photoshopped, professional-looking photography are industry standards for pretty much everything these days. They aren't special.
White Dwarf has toyed with various kinds of content over the years, but since the shift in "attitude" of the Games Workshop attitude, there's been a lot of the typical "tell don't show" that infests recent writing (Ward's fluff is seldom anything else, when it's even readable without inducing vomit) and this has shifted to a lot of material overly favouring what they want to tell you, rather than trying to inspire or involve that they have in previous times.
A number of us who say it was better previously are being accused of having rose-tinted spectacles. I just don't buy it, really. The quality of what GW are willing to put into the White Dwarf has definitely diminished. For me, the time I remember as the best for White Dwarf is the period (in the UK) of issues from about 200-260. There isn't one single reason, but there are a few regular occurrences that contribute towards it that were just, well, better.
For one thing, this being the period of the mid 90s to the early noughties, was the heyday of Specialist Games, and during this period, material for the Specialist Games, even the elephant in the room: Inquisitor, was particularly good. Tuomas Pirinin even published concept playtest rules for Mordheim in White Dwarf. My friends went utterly mad for it, and for the game itself when it came out.
Another thing that was better, Aren has mentioned. Battle Reports. There were some fantastic battle-reports during this time. There was the fantastic 2nd Ed Tyrannid vs. Space Wolves battle amongst that gorgeous crashed spaceship terrain, where the last ditch wolf cry from Ragnar Blackmane had the Space Wolves launch into combat against the Nids and emerge victorious. There was, much later, the 3rd Edition 3 Way Ork Battle where Adrian Wood (who seldom won many battle reports) emerged victorious as the best Ork Player, and one of his opponents was Andy C who'd wrote the Codex.
But for me, the best battle report ever is still The Attack on Glazier's Creek from White Dwarf 222, otherwise known as the Zulu! Battle Report. Featuring Preatorians versus Orks. It featured great terrain, told a great story, and they went to a lot of effort to make sure the balance of rules and storytelling were right. They played it 3 times, until it worked well enough to be a great scenario. They've never topped it, and I think that says a lot.
It's hard to follow, certainly. But I have a hard time thinking that they've actually tried. Even during this time period, the point of the battle report often became the duty of showing the new army of the month winning. I don't think anyone ever, in the history of wargaming itself, actually
cared. So why do they bother?
Another thing that I miss is Chapter Approved. Yeah, it was often flawed, yeah it was often barely playtested, but I get that feeling now about the core rules, so why exactly was CA such a bad thing? It wasn't in my experience anyway. It fuelled loads of cool ideas and modelling projects that kept my hobby going. When Chapter Approved went, I began to lose interest in White Dwarf. I think if anything, this is probably the feature I'd want back the most.
It's exactly the feature I know isn't going to return. For all the talk of the "Hobby", the time period I mentioned actually had hobbyists, and that's why it was a great mag for hobbyists. Nowadays, it's a mag written by corporate gits "playing" at being hobbyists. It's a very shallow affair. Whilst converting is showcased, it's not encouraged for any reason other than aesthetics. Options are rapidly being removed from the core rulesets, not added. There's no incentive to convert, and whilst this isn't the right place to discuss why, it's certainly a primary reason why Chapter Approved wouldn't come back now.
Sure, GW sometimes uses WD for concept Codices, but this is often silly. The problem with publishing important rules updates that supporters of a whole faction will need is that when that mag goes out of print, people will go mental about not having it. As they're one offs, there's no incentive to invest in White Dwarfs in general, you're merely trying to catch that raven as it flies through the hall in-between emerging from one window and trying to exit from the next.
In some senses I feel sympathetic for GW. But the sympathy doesn't last. It's often contrived, and often a self-inflicted bane. GW's primary "running thing" of any frequency is Jervis' standard bearer, and well, it's seldom interesting reading. Blanche's Blanchitsu has been an enjoyable foray, but the cynic in me expects it to be promotion for some new Limited Edition
40k themed Inquisimunda-ish game that has been rumoured. I don't mind this idea necessarily, but that's the only reason it's in. I doubt unless it has some corporate tie-in would Blanche's whims be indulged otherwise. Sadly that diminishes much interest from me.
I would like to see fun rules, terrain making advice, things that are useful, that are not merely portals to "buy X". The cynic in me worries that GW are trying to make things entirely "in-house" but the upshot of that could be that they're trying to compete with the Internet and any other "evil" influence, so that presents the possibility of good content. Whether it'll be vaguely ground-breaking, I very much doubt. But it's possible.
I think this may be the reason why I'm rather cynical of these endeavours. I know I'm not going to get what I want. That's something that is unlikely to be realised. It's just another portal for selling their kits. Their kits are nice, especially the plastic ones, but all I can forsee needing from GW is painting recipes for models, and to be honest, I'm actually pretty passable at painting already, so I'd want to see more difficult and complicated techniques, ideas from the Eavy Metal team, things that can actually challenge CMON, and not just "how to paint this so it almost looks like it is on the front of the box".
I mirror requests for fluff, (although debatable given the fact there's not very much writing talent in GW at the moment) but again, what I really want to see is a real shift in GW to being even vaguely more what they were: hobby-orientated (no, they aren't), keen to share ideas, willing to openly experiment and encourage playtesting, fan-rules (doubt this one) and a bigger emphasis upon appealing to all parts of the hobby community, and most importantly,
levels of ability.
That's what I'd like. What I expect, well... nothing like it.
