The Horus Heresy, the foundational story and grand tragedy at the heart of Warhammer 40,000, is an excuse.
Back in the grim darkness of 1988 Games Workshop released the first version of its Epic teeny tiny wargames system, Adeptus Titanicus:
Epic battles between giant robots! Ace!
Except all the "giant robots" in that first box were Imperial, so GW needed to come up with a reason why the humans were fighting each other. And so, one back-of-the-napkin later, we get the Horus Heresy, gengineered brother versus gengineered brother, lots of overwrought high drama, about a million tie-in novels, a spinoff tabletop wargame, and soon a role-playing game.
(We're not counting the "3D Roleplay" graphic on the AT box...)
I'm not convinced by this announcement -- what are players going to actually do in this setting? -- but I'm intrigued.
Never realised the whole Horus Heresy stemmed from GW trying to do their version of Battletech/Robotech/Transformers/etc!
ReplyDeleteSame here! I just always assumed Space Marines are the bread and butter of the franchise, so it's a given that some part of the lore has to be Space Marines vs. Space Marines over Space Marine problems. (Like how the later GI Joe comics were all about ninjas vs ninjas.)
Delete(The main 40k game that has ever drawn me in was that Horus Heresy mobile TCG, and it just seemed natural that everyone must really dig getting a chance to play their favorite chapters, with the other Imperial and Chaos forces just kind of being a little extra dressing...)
There's a lot of funky stuff going on in the early days of the setting. It's all in flux between 1988 and 1993, when it starts to settle into what we know today.
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