Advancing the Storyline

Advancing the Storyline is what a great number of neckbeards believe that Games Workshop need to do with Warhammer 40000. On /tg/, Warseer, Bolter and Chainsword, and Dakka Dakka, people complain and grumble about how the storyline never moves beyond the year 999.M41, with Abaddon the Despoiler's 13th Black Crusade on the very brink of taking Cadia, for real this time, the Tyranid Hive Fleets closing in on Terra, the Astronomican flickering and fading, and the Golden Throne one Adeptus Custodes's sneeze from shutting down permanently.

Why they're wrong

Some people - Aaron Dembski-Bowden being one of its most frequent proponents - hold the view that this attitude is a load of shit, and that it completely misunderstands the nature of the 40k setting.

This is because 40k isn't a story, and in fact, doesn't have a "storyline"; while events from it, such as the Black Crusades and the Badab War have had their stories told, there's no one story that the setting exists to tell (unlike with universes such as those of Star Wars or Doctor Who; even though other stories exist in those settings, they're based on a single one). 40k is a setting in which stories take place, and has 10 thousand years and a whole galaxy in which to set them, so expecting the timeline to "advance" to "continue" or "finish" the "story" is a stupid idea.

The other, more practical issue with advancing the storyline that a major change to the storyline is likely to have severe reprecussions on one or more of the different factions, which may not always be welcome changes. To use the most obvious example, consider what effect story progression would have on the Imperium of Man. The majority of 40k players favor one of the many Imperium-aligned factions-assuming that the God-Emperor doesn't get resurrected and the Golden Throne isn't fixed before it fails (which itself is rather unlikely and has a good chance of causing problems of its own), the sheer number of threats that the Imperium faces on a constant basis will tear it apart as soon as the Emperor snuffs it, leading to the enslavement and/or destruction of humanity. No Imperium means that about half of the armies currently in the game will no longer exist, leaving numerous fa/tg/uys stuck with unusable armies and a serious grudge over being given the Squat treatment. Needless to say, Games Workshop's profits would be hit incredibly hard by the departure of so many paying customers, so they have no choice but to keep the Imperium afloat. Although this has the infuriating side-effect of causing the setting to grow stagnant and unchanging (much like the Imperium itself), GW can't afford to appease one group of complaining neckbeards over another which would complain even more loudly if their armies were suddenly made unusable.

At the same time, it would be equally risky for GW to risk upsetting the status quo for any other race- for example, if the Tyranids started arriving in full force, the Tau would cease to exist as well because they'd be the first to get nommed. Naturally, this would infuriate Tau players, and the Eldar dying out completely and forming Ynnead would meet from an equally chilly reception from both Eldar and Slaanesh players. Similarly, reunited Necrons would be such a juggernaut that they'd be able to wipe out all other factions effortlessly, which is also something GW wants to avoid. If the removal of the Squats (which were always a rather small army with only a handful of players) was enough to produce a major outcry, then the rage produced by the removal of a major faction will be truly unimaginable.

tl;dr Advancing the story would logically spell death for a playable faction, and GeeDubs has no reason to kill off a playable faction. Would you want to play a faction that gets canonically boned no matter how well you play? No, no you would not, and GeeDubs won't ever do that to you WRONG, see the End Times below.

Why they're right

On the OTHER hand, Privateer Press has managed to pull off a metaplot in a wargame just fine with WARMACHINE and Hordes, likewise Battletech, and there's no reason that it should be any different for 40k. Besides, given the fact that GW is already expanding the scope of the game to include the previously untouchable events of the Horus Heresy, it's perfectly possible for them (and probably quite profitable since it would give them an excuse to make a new line of minis) to start encompassing events further into the future as well as into the past of the setting. (Some can say that they're already doing so now with the increased emphasis on the "Time of Ending" in the current Codexes.)

On top of that, it can be argued that the central story of 40k is the story of the Imperium's fall from glory and slow decline, which must by definition end with either the Emperor getting revived or the destruction of the Imperium of Man, and failing to resolve this central storyline is slowly causing the whole story to stagnate as it runs out of events and gaps to fill in. Even the evolving stories that your dudes could once be capable of can no longer exist because there is simply nothing left to evolve. Remember how the Eye of Terror Campaign ended in a victory for Chaos? Instead of allowing its results to change the background (via Abbadon taking Cadia), GW instead decided to backpedal in a way that ultimately made the events of the campaign utterly meaningless. How can you have an emergent narrative take place when any sign that it might upset the way things are now results in it being retconned or otherwise made insignificant?

Another major problem caused by the setting's stagnation is the presence of numerous plotholes which form as a byproduct of GW's insistence in squeezing the shit out of 999M41- a good example of this is the Knights of Blood to defend Baal AND also to attack the Farsight Enclaves on the same year despite the fact that they should be on the opposite sides of the galaxy from one another. The only way to fix that would be to retcon the date, which would create problems of its own depending on where they inserted the new date, or to use warp fuckery since warp travel occasionally has you appear at your destination some time before you left because there's always a helpful retcon lying around.

The biggest problem is that Games Workshop loves their status quo. They'll advance the story in bits and pieces but never anything that changes the status quo. In 40K, in Games Workshop's vision;

• The Imperium will always be stagnant and rotting, but they'll never be destroyed or fractured (helps that they're a Creator's Pet and, due to all the updates and attention from GW, the best selling faction).
• The Eldar will always be full of arrogant people, dying and trying to rebuild their empire, but never progress, succeed or go extinct.
• The Tau will always be a new, expanding empire with hints of Grimdark beneath their benevolent façade, but never get too Grimdark or expand to the point where they threaten the Imperium.
• The Chaos Space Marines will always be trying to overthrow the Imperium, have a grudge against it and be under Abbadon's leadership, but never succeed in a way that puts the Imperium in jeopardy or puts someone besides Abbadon in charge.
• The Chaos Daemons will always be corrupting things and fighting, but never win a lasting victory or suffer a permanent setback.
• The Necrons will always be an ancient empire slowly reawakening with each faction following the dictates of their Overlord, with the C'tan either enslaved or in hiding planning to restore themselves to their former might; but never fully awaken, fully be destroyed, fully unite and the C'tan will never be completely enslaved to the Necrons or completely free.
• The Tyranids will always be a major galactic threat answerable to the Hive Mind and not ally with non-Tyranids, but will never win, be wiped out or wipe out or weaken a playable faction.
• The non-playable factions will always get a token mention, but never get time in the limelight or become powerful enough to challenge a major faction.

It was thought the Orks will always just wage wars for fun, but never unite to pose a threat to the galaxy. Surprisingly, given Ork nature, this makes sense. However, 7th Edition Ork Codex advances Ghazzy's storyline, describing how he broke off from his fight with Helbrecht and Yarrick to get all other Orks together in one, galaxyspanning WAAAGH. So the Orks are actually getting their shits together.

Other stuff

There is also the matter that some of the Ciaphas Cain books take place in the early years of M42 (though his adventures are not exactly Imperium-shaking events)- if those can be considered part of the fluff now, what's to stop it from going further than that?

It also bears worth mentioning that changes can be made to the storyline without altering the tabletop. Warhammer Fantasy kills off major characters (for example all the named characters currently available to the Vampire Counts army, and half of the Orcs and Goblins characters) and they are still fieldable in the game. The plot of the setting progresses beyond that point and introduces new characters, encouraging players to not simply play "in the present" but instead just pick someplace in the timeline for their battle. Sure you run into inconsistencies when someone long dead is fighting the army of someone not even born when they were alive. But hey! Necromancy, gods intervening, and Chaos fuckery make a good explanation, as does the age-old rationalization of "shut up and just play the game". If one were to take that approach to 40k via advanced technology of some kind, Warp-related time distortions, or the aforementioned Chaos fuckery, then anyone can appear at any time if the players wish it despite them being killed off in canon. Plot can progress, everyone gets to keep their favorite canon from the past, everyone wins. In fact, this has already happened in canon- Captain Tycho has been dead since the Third War for Armageddon, as is Lord Solar Macharius, but that doesn't stop either of them from being playable. Hell, even Eldrad was dead for a while before the retcon hit.

TL;DR- While shaking up the setting some might leave some people rather grumpy, making significant changes has just as good of a chance of making things better instead of worse for the players, and if handled well those chances go up. Unfortunately, GW is really, really bad at it.

Beyond the 41st Millennium

Of course, while Games Workshop may never enter the 42nd Millennium, that doesn't stop us from writing up fanfics that do so (or from bickering over which possible portrayal is more likely to actually occur).

• The ship moves, a setting where, in the grim darkness of the 51st Millennium, the God-Emperor of Mankind orders the construction of a giant ark to leave the failing Imperium behind.
• Story:The Shape Of The Nightmare To Come 50k, a plot that manages to become even MORE grimdark than it already was, with the Emprah croaking, the Imperium splintered into Khaine-knows-how-many pieces, and several other incredibly crappy things changing the universe even further.
• Return of the Primarchs, where the fall of Cadia coincides with the fleets of the fallen/dead Primarchs from before the HH, the Lost Primarchs get found and they all band together to help the living ones get up and bring the Imperium to a more presentable state.

Fundamental Misunderstandings

The problem in 40k is basically the date. That's it. The fluff writers can really can just play grab ass going back and forth over and over for another ten thousand years with no real setting defining changes easily enough. After all they've already done that once - The whole timeline from the heresy to today has resulted in basically no major changes but has still felt interesting. The status quo doesn't need to change, but there really does need to be some space for new fluff going forward so it's not just being stuffed in around existing events. We already have canon conflicts, and it'll only get worse to the point where everyone in the fluff is established as being at one specific place in 999.M41 and that's it. No more new fluff. You can leave out the major events, just takes us some number of years forward so things are actually interesting again.

Warhammer Fantasy

Unlike Warhammer 40k, the plotline of Warhammer Fantasy does advance, but in small increments. Each edition and army book usually adds a smattering more fluff in the past (and maybe a retcon or two), rarely an update to the big prophesied battle between good and evil that decides the settings future, and a plot hook in the present. For example, the 8th edition Vampire Counts and High Elves army books (Codex for 40k players) added a new story to the end of the army timelines that mentions how Mannfred von Carstein kidnapped the Everqueen's daughter Aliathra, and is going to sacrifice her like a Frazetta painting to bring back the settings big BIG bad Nagash and that the greatest hero of the High Elves, Tyrion, has saved her and is riding at the head of a large High Elf army about to clash with a large Undead army.

Smaller updates (mainly gimmicks to sell a book and some models) like Storm of Magic will add a whole new event that extends the "present day" by a few months to a year. The infamous Warhammer Online was entirely non-canon which may have been what doomed it from the start. Regardless, Fantasy isn't THAT adventurous about advancing its plotline, but advancing it some hasn't sunk the ship.

The End Times: The Ultimate Argument against Advancing the Storyline

In late 2014, GW finally decided to advance the storyline just as the players wished by bringing back Nagash as a superpower in his own right. Heroes were killed and Chaos was for once not the big title threat...except for the Empire. The general consensus of this was pretty cool.

However, as the event toiled on, the deaths piled up even higher to the point that it became absurd. Bretonnia was literally obliterated offscreen because of how neglectful GW is, leading to the only forces remaining being composed of a few ragtag forces. Countless other human countries got blown to bits by the Skaven uprisings or daemon incursions.

The Glottkin book saw the Empire become levelled between the titular triplets, Festus, and the others, and little else happened.

The Khaine book was the book where the outlook of the End Times started whipping around. All of a sudden, Teclis became a master manipulator bar none, Malekith was revealed to be the true king all along and everyone was just a usurper. Tyron became an utter asshole and turned into Khaine incarnate, only to die like a bitch to Malekith and Alith Anar. The end result meant that all the elves got slapped into a single army, which caused frustration among the separate bases.

Thanquol just made things even worse, as the rest of the Empire finally collapsed with Valten's head, Lustria gets blasted, the surviving Lizardmen go "fuck this" and fly off into space, the Skaven destroy everyone who isn't the Empire or Bretonnia, and more Dwarfs get chopped. Also Gobbla got eaten, cue Goblin tears.

Now Archaon was where shit broke. To make things short, Chaos wins and everyone dies, and there wasn't a damned thing anyone could do to stop it. And that they had been doing this to every universe that had preceded the then-current one, so they would just keep winning over and over again no matter what anyone did about it. By the end of the book, the entire setting had ceased to exist and every army and named character was killed off if they weren't already dead. In short, it was what GW wanted Storm of Chaos to be but without that irritating "player interaction" messing up the plot they had planned out.

In a sense, one could see this as a monkey's paw wish; the fanbase finally got the Fantasy setting to advance, but it led to it becoming destroyed (at least until 9E, and even there people are assuming it will be changed beyond recognition, to say nothing of how the writing team flat-out said Chaos would win in that remade setting too). One could fearfully wonder now just what would happen if the End Times treatment happened to 40K, and the general consensus is "even the complete stagnation we have now is better than their insane ideas of 'progression". But if Games Workshop does the same to 40k, it likely means they're going out of business, because that setting has, among other things, their creator's pets.

Of course, that may have been Games Workshop's plan; by destroying the Warhammer Fantasy world they could want to use this as a deterrent to asking them to advance the storyline. Or just focus on 40k sole as its what they're seem to be doing.

See Also

• Your dudes