Editing Advancing the Storyline (section)

==Other points==
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 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, half of the Orcs and Goblins characters and now ALL the [[Skaven]].) 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. Don't forget about Aun'va. (Tycho is a bad example here because GW has obviously been trying to make it so no one plays him anyway because his rules are a steaming pile of shit that get worse every edition. So, yeah?)

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.