Octavulg

I know I'm a bit late to this discussion, but having actually put an issue together I can offer some insight. As to the specifics: too much content is definitely a problem. If I were eyeballing it, over the timeline described I'd say people can handle 2-3 articles each, tops, and the overall editor and layout guy should do none (depending, of course, on how positions are broken down). Reviewing the imprint, I wrote like five articles and edited like five more. Or more than that, even. That's too much. Checking those dates, the draft table of contents is in May of 2011 (though some notes in the files make me think we started well before then), the issue released in...whenever it released. So at least 13 months, probably more like 18. I remember thinking the time it was taking was ridiculous. There WAS a significant wait between having it done and release, but not that significant. Do something smaller, and definitely aim for showcasing what already exists rather than creating new content. At most one new-to-issue thing per issue. That said, I think one new-to-issue thing per issue could serve a useful purpose. A BIG bottleneck was the difficulty of having to do all the layout, because it's very hard to break that down over multiple people. I would urge either extremely simple layout, or only one person having to do it. I did it in Word, since that's what I had. Surprisingly doable, also surprisingly annoying. I would also note that people need to be using the same software for editing and drafting. I had Word, others had other stuff (I think. It is over a decade ago now), making the articles play nice together was a nightmare, especially since we were doing all the coordination through PM since that was how the board was set up at the time (and things like Discord did not yet exist). That bit would likely be easier today for a bunch of reasons. You'll also need to ponder whether you want content submitted, content you find, or both. And whether you want to showcase already popular stuff, or try for more obscure things. The Librarium was, in theory, supposed to serve much the same purpose as this magazine seems to intend (and I think a magazine may be a better format for it), but if you are selecting stuff it hurts the feelings of those overlooked, and if people are submitting stuff you may become a quality indicator or end goal whether you want to or not. Careful thought is required regarding that aspect. As to the footnotes, I did not 'impose' them (at least I certainly don't recall anyone particularly wanting endnotes), nor were they overkill given the purpose of the articles containing them. Footnotes were used in the fluff articles for two reasons: first, endnotes are the devil and inferior to footnotes unless your note is extremely lengthy (barring internal PDF linkage or hyperlinkage, in which case they're roughly equivalent). Second, hobby discussion at the time had a huge trend of "oh, I read somewhere" and the footnotes put the original source of the information right there, on the page, where even the most stupid of readers can find it. Basically, the idea was to prioritize the actual official material over "some guy wrote it and put it on the Internet." I recall that being one of the explicit goals of the articles (which were written by the sort of people who care about that sort of thing, so minimal human misery was created by requiring actual citations). I used them in the campaign report because stopping the battle report to explain the rules seemed disruptive to those who did know them, while making people check the end of the article for needed explanation seemed unwise. There are many things about the Imprint I'd do differently now. But footnotes were the right choice, and I'll fight the man who says different. :P Good luck, Dos. Hope it's worked out. :)

Neat, if somewhat complicated. "Everything backwards" is always a complicated concept, of course, because of where to draw the line on what is to be reversed. Anyway... I'd have the Primarchs be created by the Emperor from Chaos magic - he seeks to rule Chaos, after all. Then they turn on him because his Warmaster is convinced of the wisdom of Malal. Or atheism. Or an alien coalition, seeking to use the forces of humanity to wipe Chaos from the galaxy. Or all three, even. One can even argue that each Primarch represents a different facet of Chaos. There are several reasons to do this, but most prominently is it keeps them much more unified conceptually and related to each other. If they were really scattered across the galaxy, their armies would all be wildly different and probably not Space Marines (and clones of Primarches =/= Space Marines). If they all start from the single source, it simplifies things, and you still get your Emperor-as-Daemon-Prince and Chaos-as-tool options. Also, if the creation of a Space Marine involves Chaos magic, there is an obvious source for corruption etc, yet also a reason for Chaos to be being approached in a systemic-as-a-tool fashion. I'd lean toward the alien council idea, or possibly having some of the more looks/efficiency/whatever-obsessed Primarchs become disgusted with the Chaos corruption the Emperor is pushing. If the Orks are orderly and regimented, it is hard to explain how incredibly disciplined and intelligent fungus-spore-men don't literally own the galaxy. Also, the Laer should definitely be pro-Emperor somehow.

If you mean "don't have companies that hunt the Fallen in the DA sense" that would be hard (relatively). If you mean "their Fallen-hunting formations aren't set up like those in other DA chapters" that's probably easy - a shortage of Terminator armour can explain a power-armoured First Company. As to the lack of a Ravenwing...it's not like hunting the Fallen across space requires bikes and speeders. They just think the Codex is a little better suited to their situation than having the unique DA formations. Perhaps the Fallen-knowing is more evenly distributed among the companies than is otherwise usual?

If you have enough of the fleet survive to flatten the Fortress-Monastery, which they have to do because it's been overrun by the enemy, that would work fairly simply and avoid some of the lack of equipment issues.

Sigh. It is and it isn't. The Blood Angels have, by the 25th founding, developed a reputation for having unstable geneseed that leads to them going nuts and trying to eat people. This is generally seen as a bad thing. These things were already trying to be fixed in the 21st Founding. So it would be extremely odd for a Chapter to be founded using Blood Angels geneseed after that. On top of that, if you've got some weird secret disaster in your Chapter's past, it really does make more sense for it to have happened more than two thousand-odd years ago. That's not really that long for Space Marines. Especially Blood Angels, who live an extremely long time. An older founding in this case moves that stuff further into the past, making it more plausible that no one actually remembers what was going on. Creation: I see it more as the storm becoming so large that it swallowed a whole system into it becomes a reason to have a Space Marine presence nearby. Chaos incursions and other fiends(Daemons, Eldar, Etc) could sprout from it and start attacking "valuable" imperial worlds. That doesn't seem like that big a warp storm, honestly. The Imperium has more planets than it does Space Marines - I'd expect a bigger warp storm before a full Chapter of Marines were needed to police it. Most sectors likely don't face an even division of threats. On top of that, most threats don't have the courtesy to hang around not murdering Imperial citizens for the right company to get to the right place. Space Marines are spread THIN. They can't afford to specialize except to the degree forced by circumstance. Hell, even Space Marine specialists are doing five or ten different things and still have a hefty amount of generalist training. I can't think of a way for a company to specialize that doesn't make less sense than them NOT specializing. Developing experience against a particular foe makes sense. Dedicating a formation to fighting a foe that may not be what they actually end up fighting seems unwise. Anyone reading DIY 40K fanfiction probably knows the basics of the universe. So do we all. Well, mine were loyalist Thousand Sons, but the effect is much the same. This raises a couple of problems, though. First, when a Chapter has just more or less failed utterly and given in to the Black Rage en masse, my first move (as a High Lord) would not be giving them more recruits and resources and saying "here, try again". Easier solution, to me, would be having them be the same Chapter (having survived this) and the dedication on Chaplains is because Chaplains are those who guard the Death Company and watch to prevent the Black Rage. Regardless, I would expect those succumbing to the Black Rage to be executed or something like that, and for the Chapter's attitude toward it to be extremely negative. That's not really coming across. Who do you mean by "they"? The ancient and glorious art of not-actually-that-subtle hint-dropping. So you have a Chapter. They succumbed en-masse to the Black Rage. This has to have happened in their home system, or it doesn't require the Chapter to cover it up beyond picking up the bodies and glassing the place. First, they probably overran their Fortress Monastery, slaughtering serfs, destroying infrastructure, etc. The same thing would almost certainly happen to their fleet. Possibly even to the population of their home world (either through bombardment (which is a little out of character for the Black Rage) or through the population all living close enough to the Fortress Monastery for the Space Marines to kill them all (or a combination of the two). I'd expect a small group of survivors fleeing with a small amount of resources to one of the other planets in the system while it all died down. The good/bad news is that the Black Rage is 100% fatal. This means that the problem would eventually take care of itself. The bad news, of course, is that there's no reason your Chapter couldn't just wander back over to where it was and proceed with their lives (just wiser). So, that produces two possible solutions - there was some kind of enemy involved (which would help wipe out the people and explain why your boys can't just pick everything back up, raise some new recruits, and just be really cautious in future) OR the Fortress Monastery got blown up somehow (whether from the inside or the outside). Such things happen, of course. Either way, Monastery's blasted flat and your boys need to rebuild from the ruins. Would lead to a shortage of equipment and a cautionary view toward the former planet (which they guard to prevent anyone learning about the old fortress monastery etc). I would suggest an older founding for this (so people don't just remember it like it was last week - plus, a new chapter immediately succumbing to the Black Rage kind of demonstrates exactly why they stopped raising Chapters from the BA). Once you figure out exaclty what happened, then you can be coy about it at an appropriate level. Until then, not possible to do well.

I like this (and I almost never like Iron hands successors), but think you need to explain more about the keys at the front end. Exactly what they do, for example. A reminder of who, exactly, The Beast is would be a good idea as well.

You know who I hear deals well with pirates? The Imperial Navy. Dandy fellows. Just stellar at it. Among other things, their ships are designed to fight other ships, they have enough personnel to actually capture enemy vessels, and they have enough ships to hang around waiting for pirates to show up and get sucked in to escorting convoys. What do you mean by anti-piracy? Because if you just mean typical 40K pirates, they're not a space-marine level threat, and Space Marines aren't that well-suited to fighting them. If they have a quickly-expanded fleet, repurposed navy strike vessels would make more sense. You know what I love about the new fluff? The bit where even Roboute Guilliman apparently thinks the Codex isn't really that great. Fragging? Gakking? Oh, Lysimachus. You can do better than that. I believe in you. Also, if he's captaining a Grand Cruiser, he's the leader of a couple of thousand people, minimum. He doesn't sound impressive enough. Warriors, not braves. Trust me on this. Eh? What? How? What self-respecting Chapter can't indoctrinate good and hard? A typical Chapter, last I checked, doesn't believe in the divinity of the Emperor. Your Chapter, personally tasked with a mission by the Emperor's son (who, y'know, met the guy), and who are more secular than usual, somehow DO. I am confused. Diverse how? It feels like you're just talking ethnicity here, which is a weird thing for 40K to bring up. I mean, to paraphrase Terry Pratchett, in the grim darkness of the far future black and white have put aside their differences and ganged up on green. Dull. You can and have done better. If you didn't want weirdo goth marines with weird missing implants, why pick Raven Guard at all...? * * * I like them. Then again, I like most things you do. But I don't like the term platoon. Too Imperial Army. How about Section or Patrol or Group or Assault Group or Troop or Commando?

You have 3200-odd words in about seven paragraphs. That's...not a good ratio. I'd strongly recommend breaking it up a little more to make it more readable.

Oh, it has been a long time since I did this... I feel old. You know, I genuinely don't think I've ever seen anyone just put this at the top like this before. Good for you. So convenient. Crimson Sons or Sons of Vengeance would both be more conventional and less of a mouthful. Blood Angels gene-seed was generally avoided in later foundings. ...Who counts serfs? ...They're more loyal to Sanguinius than to the Emperor? HERESY! Seriously, though, that's heresy. :) Why would a warp storm lead to the creation of a chapter? Concerns about chaos incursion? It swallowed the last chapter? You talk about the tragedy several times before explaining what the tragedy is (I'm assuming the exterminatus?). If it's NOT the Exterminatus, that's just confusing and why not tell us what the tragedy was. I like the planet. Mentioning its reconquest up here would make more sense. Having independently-operating but highly specialized Battle Companies seems like a recipe for the battle companies ending up in places where their specializations aren't much use. The Imperium's a big place, remember, and the Space Marines are spread very very thin. Given what you describe about the population's character earlier, I think there would be a lot of room here for you to explore whether their sneaky cranky suspicion is from being Chaos-corrupted, a result of the tactics the Chapter used to cleanse the Chaos corruption, a cover for ongoing Chaos corruption, or something else entirely. Eh. Warband commanders are always doing that sort of thing, and Space Marines are always vowing eternal vengeance about it. What makes this example unique. The name is great, the battle a little dull. Is it the Fortress of Lies because it's a center for foul Tau propaganda, which had wormed its way into the hearts of Imperial citizens throughout the subsector, twisting their once-pure thoughts with odious xeno trickery? ...It's a dead world. Why not just nuke it again? Space Marines are GOOD at that. Being vague about the tragedy is no fun for the reader when you're THIS vague. Vague is fun when we get a picture of what might have happened. Vague is NOT fun when we just get random hints that something happened but there's no picture. Your boys already have a lot going on. Adding in the possibility of occult practices etc means things are getting pretty busy. I think it might be good to expand on the tragedy, then link other stuff in to the tragedy. If this doesn't link in to the tragedy, I think it's unnecessary. The first bit could be reduced to "The Crimson Sons generally use similar equipment and tactics to their progenitors, the Blood Angels. They heavily favour assault squads, with five in each battle company (replacing three tactical squads), and with the seventh company serving as an additional assault reserve company." You'd have to renumber so the 6th stayed tactical and the 9th stayed devastator, but it's a slightly simpler explanation. Your description of scout training sounds pretty standard to me... The Captain serving as battlefield commander while the Reclusiarch is the off-field commander sounds like it would provide for slightly more interesting character dynamics, but the current way is also interesting. It would also mean the Captain had more of a purpose. It may be worth explaining what prompted this change - surely they would have started out with a Chapter Master. A list of ships isn't really necessary, and definitely disrupts the flow of reading. That's...pretty standard, I think. Barring recruits who die. I quite like the last paragraph in this section. I also rather like all the stuff I then skipped over because I'm running out of quote tags. :) I will quote someone who once commented on my first IA: "If one more chapter's shrouded in mystery, we won't be able to see around the ruddy forum." He was wise. You're leaning on this too much. Too much shade. Explain a little more. What are the mysteries you're actually going for - you don't have to explain them in your article itself, but as-is it's not unique enough to be interesting and it's taking up a lot of time. * * * Neat. Your English is a little rough, but that's not something that needs a ton of worrying about right now. Normally I don't much like Blood Angels successors, but these guys were interesting for reasons I can't quite figure out. And I liked the emphasis on artistry. What are you going for here? What do you want?

I'm going to engage in a bit of light threadomancy because damn it, I'm entitled. Such are the rewards of being ancient. Settle in now, children, for I shall tell you many long and rambling tales. And then you shall agree with me. Just like the good old days. Alternately, you will tell me I am wrong. So it goes. If you’ve missed me, now you get to know where I’ve been. If you haven’t missed me, you probably shouldn’t read this. It will only upset you. I think there are three major sources of change that I think have resulted in the way things are. Changes in 40K, changes in people, and changes in the Liber/the board. A quick note about the Librarium, before I get into those, though. Since people are bringing it up: the Librarium suffered greatly from a lack of clear vision and leadership. Reviewing long-ago discussions from the internal Librarium board about what appropriate standards would or would not be with the benefit of ten years of further thought and experience, I am comfortable saying that it was not possible for it to do what everyone expected it to do. It was not good at serving as any sort of ultimate goal, doing so was probably incompatible with its original principles, and under the circumstances it is probably better gone. Sad, but true. The irony of me saying this given that I am possibly the last Lexicanum is not lost on me. :P Anyway! On to the other stuff. Changes in 40K GW used to do one thing very, very well. I found they did it less and less as time went by. They used to encourage you to take parts of the universe and expand on them. As part of this, there was a LOT of scope for DIY chapters. There were a massive number of DIY schemes in the 3e space marine codex. I don’t think any since has had as many – indeed, each following that has had less and less. It makes a good metaphor – the empty spaces in the game where you could fill in the blanks yourself have, on paper, remained as large or larger. But the implicit encouragement to actually do it has dropped. Then you add in the Horus Heresy, which shifted a LOT of attention onto the Heresy and pre-Heresy eras, where there’s naturally less scope for the Liber. The Heresy era also resulted in changes in the fluff, and was expensive if you bought all the books. Indeed, major changes to the fluff became pretty regular. And the books are even more expensive than they used to be, which is saying something. The general rise of the Black Library is also a problem. More and more of the fluff is now about the major characters described in novels and what they do there. The focus feels like it’s very far away from whatever my chapters are doing. Not to mention that the intelligence of a lot of the new changes was definitely debatable. Hell, a lot of the newest stuff reads as a checklist of “things people used to gripe about being hinted at in the fluff and were told they were overreacting.” So basically, DIYs stopped being encouraged, and the context of the 40K universe changed a lot. It cost a lot to keep up, and actually keeping up gave you the dubious privilege of consuming stuff and trying to work with stuff that was...not exactly great. Working to make a DIY in a universe that isn’t interesting and which keeps feeling like an uncreative moneygrab is not fun. Especially when it feels less and less like what you created is actually part of that universe. As a rule, when hobbies stop being fun, people stop doing them. Changes in people I’m busy. I work a lot and I live somewhere with even less of a 40K community than I used to have. On top of that, I find each passing edition to be less and less interesting from an actual “playing the game” perspective. Looking at 8th edition, I am reminded that 1980s game design had some real strengths, and am intrigued by how GW continually doubles down on all the weaknesses while missing all those strengths. The games I do enjoy are older, no longer supported, half-retconned, and I have to provide all the pieces. Not exactly compatible with being busy. I still like a LOT of stuff about 40K. But the bad definitely started to outweigh the good a long time ago for me. This is, BTW, most of the reason I am no longer around. Changes in the Liber Browsing through the front pages of the Liber and this thread, there seems to be both a shortage of new content being posted and a shortage of feedback being provided on it. I think that stems from two things. Shortage of content As others have mentioned, the IA series was a long time ago. And focus has shifted. And the cool kids post on Instagram. And the kind of people who make serious DIY articles probably aren’t as common in the fanbase as they once were. All of that together would lead to fewer DIY chapters. Personally, I always liked discussing the fluff and developing people’s ideas. I never was as keen on the group projects. Not sure why. Probably their oft-noted tendency to break down into half-finished chaos. That seems to be a lot of what’s in the Liber now, and while I admire the work involved it’s not something I’m as interested in myself. I’m not sure why. The Liber also suffers a bit from the inability to be much more than an idea showcase. Most discussions that are common in other forums don’t work in the Liber, because they’re based on things that the chapters in those forums have in common. The Liber doesn’t work that way – discussions that make sense in the DA or UM forums do not make sense here because most of the people posting don’t have any investment in the topic. Sad but true. So the Liber ends up working like the painting forums, but less popular. Shortage of feedback Others have touched on this, so I will as well. Things don’t work quite the way they used to. Once upon a time, people complained the Liber was mean and told them what to do (the thread Conn cites is a good example. Please note my comment in it about how someone brought up the same complaint every few months or so). There was some truth to that (though never as much as people claimed there was). And so we pushed back against that. We were right to do so. I did it myself at various times. But the problem with “leave people alone to do what they want” is that it leads to people being left alone to do as they want. Rightly or wrongly, you’re not going to get as many people providing feedback if you dedicate significant effort to telling them that the author’s creation is more important than their enjoyment of that creation. I will quote Ace here: People often forgot the second part of that: if I don’t like part of your work, I am right and you have to change it if you want me to be happy with it. And it was an extremely good idea to push back against the idea that the happiness of the Liber denizens with your idea was the most important thing. But from a community perspective, why the hell is anyone going to hang around a forum and read stuff when they have been told their opinions about the stuff don’t really matter and aren’t what the forum’s about? Why are people going to offer their opinions when they’ve been implicitly told their opinions aren’t important? Answer: they may not, unless they enjoy providing feedback purely for its own sake, without any desire to invest in what they’re reading. And that’s a LOT rarer. Note that this is not necessarily bad. A cliquish Liber that tries to force everyone to adhere to their standards is a bad thing. But it’s harder to have a community if the community isn’t invested in each other’s ideas and isn’t as concerned about working toward a shared version of those ideas. And it’s harder to get invested in an idea if you’re surrounded by reminders that what you think about the idea isn’t important. The shift in attitudes Conn points out (which had begun before then in any case – I KNOW I complained about people being mean to new posters in the first version of the Octaguide, and I think that was in 2009) changed the tone of the community, and that leading to a change in the behaviour of the community is unsurprising. You have to care about something to consistently post lengthy critiques and provide lots of feedback. And it's harder to care about something if you are constantly telling yourself that your opinion about it doesn't really matter that much. Which is a lot easier for people to do then get really invested in a work but not strangle the author when they do something stupid. :P In which I say the above may be meaningless THAT said, the Old Liber often encountered this problem of a lack of feedback. I still recall several times over the years where I went through the first two or three pages of the Liber providing feedback on stuff that no one else was providing feedback on. Which meant pretty much everything except two or three threads. Most of the feedback in the Liber has usually come from only a few people at any one time. Whether the Liber’s not getting as many new people providing vast volumes of critique as it used to because of the shift in focus is probably not knowable. Even if it were knowable, and even if it were true, I’m not sure it’s actually bad. Just different. Frankly, I remember the old days, and they were filled with people parroting received wisdom. And I remember what happened when you provided feedback on thirty threads – two or three replied, tops. It probably isn't because everyone is deep in the throes of apathy. But just in case it is: your opinion is important, and someone posting here probably does care what you think. You should go tell them. Remember that it really hurts to come up with an idea you care about and have no one else care. Go care about something and tell them what you think. Now. Think of what it would have meant to you when you were young.

The length is OK. But the distribution of that length needs some work. More time to establishing stuff, a bit less to the result.

...On the 29th of January, the Octaguide will be five years old. Considering I remember the heated debates and veiled insults that spawned it, that makes me feel old. And I'm too young to feel old. That said, that means it's time for an update. So, anyone who's willing, rip it to shreds. Or tell me things you feel people currently lack guidance on. And so on.

I like the concept (though I would). And disagree that this is somehow missing the point of using the DA - mucking around with the Fallen is the whole point of using the DA, and that can include pointedly NOT using the Fallen. Looking at it, you're moving through things too fast. There needs to be some more establishment of the chapter as-they-were. Then build things up slowly. You race through to the decision, then dwell on it. Spread things out a bit more. AoA is a good call for this. I'm not sure your portrayal of them rings true, though. They won't accept guilt for the Fallen, but will accept guilt for these guys? Doesn't seem consistent. Me, I'd leave the ultimate reaction of the rest of the Unforgiven unresolved - swords of Damocles are more fun than answers.

Nova Hawks. By miles. Throne Knights, if Nova Hawks doesn't suit.