You Won't Believe What Happened: Thoughts About Telling Stories On the Tabletop

Imaginative games and social games without a moderating narrative force (like a DM, for example) are super interesting to me, because your story is constantly coming into direct conflict with another, equally important story happening on the other side of the table. This isn’t exclusive to war games like 40k or AoS, but I think they provide the loosest example where the divide between the narrative world and the tabletop world is the largest - which I fully understand is a huge statement, but bear with me, because I think they help illustrate how rich story worlds can become through play.  

I’m going to put a glossary to explain what some key asterisked things are, but if you see any proper noun just imagine a little plastic soldier of some shape or colour. Truly I was not bothered building in explanations mid-paragraph, but I will put some jargon-decoding stuff at the bottom. You’ve been warned, abandon all hope, all ye who etc etc etc. 

 

I think there’s a fascinating “zoom-in” that creates a canon that happens mid-game, and doesn’t really have to reflect anything other than what is being experienced presently on the table. Say, for example, you are playing the Dark Angels*, you take the Lion*, Azreal*, a dozen inner-circle companions*, and a block of nigh-unkillable deathwing* knights. Your (probably rather beautiful and cultured) opponent takes the Genestealer Cults* and you lose. You don’t just lose; you get completely trounced. 

40k and Street Fighter 4 actually take place in the same universe. 

On the table the Lion killed nothing, Azreal died to a landmine, a single group of four roided up Aberrants* successfully killed a Land Raider* and ten Terminators* with only a single model dying, the Inner-circle companions all fell to a group of seven malnourished children and their equally malnourished genestealer puppy. The absolute best and brightest of one of the most storied and respected chapters in the entire known universe of Warhammer 40k got trounced by a bunch of miners and some dirtbike teens. 

So, what happened? 

Well if we keep thinking inside of a game that has maths, strategy, and tactics, then we can say that maybe you failed to walk towards any single objective, and maybe your models were too recently painted to attract any kind of dice luck. Maybe you failed to use your stratagems effectively and put too much focus on killing things and too little focus on the threats around you and the abilities of your opponent. True and real, but a bit boring, isn’t it? 

So, what actually happened? 

Well, glad you asked, the Genestealer Cults ambushed a group of Space Marines* somewhere, and in the darkest caves of a sad, sad mining world, the great demagogues of the four-armed emperor are spinning a tale. Our loyal comrades took to the field against the hated enemy and his strongest warriors, and while the losses were heavy we beat the forces of the oppressor back and liberated a swathe of the world. The weapons of the overseers broke and shattered in the face of our devotion, and our justice was strong enough to pierce tank armour. But let me tell you about his false warriors - one stood most terribly above his brethren, a fierce warrior of suffocating presence carrying a malign energy, his entire focus the immiseration, the de-enlightenment, the re-enslavement of free spirits and blessed bodies! His name? Well they will never say it, but it was none but the Lion of the Dark Angels himself!

It’s so much fun to play with the idea of narrative through play, and it allows for silly, lore-congruent, and asynchronous storytelling. You don’t need to be playing the Dark Angels to field The Lion on the tabletop, you just to have a hero who showed up on the day and fought with fury and leadership so stunning that a significantly less worldly footsoldier might report over the comm-link the only thing that makes sense to them: “They’ve got an unstoppable Marine, this must be a Primarch*!”

The table narrative, the narrative of recalling what happened how it happened, can always be completely 'true' if the right (or wrong, or most misinformed, or most terrified) perspective is employed.

OUR brave beautiful bug people, THEIR fanatical fascist foot-soldiers.

In a wargame where there is no specific “player” side, I think it is an interesting constraint to think of your army (and your actual army list!) as your army as-understood-by the enemy. We can sort of enter the circle of play already, using the literal function of an army list while understanding that we can move far enough away from the table to treat the events as canon but the ‘facts’ as representative rather than literal. This allows us to take one step further back from the present, table narrative, to zoom-out slightly. If we’re keeping the idea of the (handsome, perfect) Cults led by Some Guys vs the (secretive, perfidious) Dark Angels led by Lion El’Jonson and Azreal and whatnot, then the Cults may be working from simply incorrect information rather than embellished information, because why, exactly, would they know what the Deathwing are? 

So, what happened? 

Well the Genestealer Cults were just mistaken. They may tell great tales of this event, but from the start (and the awful stats displayed at the end back this up) any respected historian would tell you that this must have been the unfortunate massacre of a regiment of slightly taller regular soldiers: a tiny, unremarkable event in the context of a planet-wide uprising. Plus why the fuck would the head of a legion be on the planet Mine-o-Tronius XII in the galactic back end of nowhere? Think about it.   

There were once the tools to pull together a cohesive on-table story that makes sense in-universe, now there kind of isn’t. That’s the short version of this issue, designed to make me sound less old. Named characters, special characters with real lore significance are great, and GW has made these models truly spectacular to the point where you should absolutely not deny yourself the usage of them. This doesn’t mean the storytelling is gone, but it does mean that you should encourage the people around you to get a little more creative with their stories they tell both before and after the battle. 

Keeping a canon isn’t everything either, I think it is funny to make excuses as to why something was or wasn’t what it seemed - they didn’t check the expiry date of the plasma, that’s why they didn’t do any damage. Lion was ill that day, had to get his distant cousin Housecat El’Jonson in. But these are all stories, jokes are stories, they can build worlds with others in weird ways that just aren’t as readily available inside games with stricter boundaries.  

Average lore-accurate Space Marine pictured here on his daily commute.

I’ve always loved the idea of the canon Space Marine vs. the tabletop Space Marine as a concept because it fundamentally changes the shape of the story and warps your battlefields to the purely metaphorical through the power of Main Character Madness. Sure, hypothetically, a squad of five marines could get torn apart by twenty hormagaunts* on the charge, but doesn’t the story make more sense when we embellish the action and interpret it through an SM-friendly lens? 

So…. what happened? 

Was it really twenty ‘gaunts, or was that just a number to reflect the nearly endless swarm of hundreds that overwhelmed them? Did you ‘lose’ five marines from the battlefield because they were killed by twenty hormagaunts or did they assess an unwinnable situation and beat an effective retreat, their ceramite armour and centuries of experience allowing them to drag wounded comrades out of the line of fire, away from the eyes and scent-things of cunning predators and away from the action? If this was literal, if they did die, then why - how long has this strike force been fighting for to be worn down to this point? What heroic deeds did this squad achieve in the twenty uninterrupted days of fighting before their weapons and armour finally gave out? 

I love this kind of narrative, I love how it can build out of nothing and create something collaborative with the person across the table as you build a universe together through choices and dumb luck. 

Every type of social gaming, every kind of play that involves engaging in an imaginative world is enriched by storytelling. There is, I think, a distinctly delightful and youthful (or even youth-regaining) feeling in teasing stories out of your games, and sharing them with others to build a collaborative, creative canon around your play - and also in hearing about the shared canon that others have created amongst themselves. Not every game requires a storytelling, or even role-playing, element, not at all, but I think that every game you play with someone else deserves the opportunity to flourish in an imaginative ground that you and the other players till together, to bloom into connections based on opening the door to transform your play into a whole creative world. 

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh THE END. WHOOPS. GOT A BIT WEIRD THERE, FORGIVE ME.

*I don't know how to add footnotes in Blogger, so here's the glossary. We're doing this in the same font size as the main body!

The Dark Angels: The Dark Angels are the first of the Space Marine legions, they are adorned in a beautiful dark green and have a winged sword as their symbol.

The Lion: Lion El'Jonson is the Primarch of the Dark Angels, which is a fancy term for their leader and genetic sire. Thought dead, he's back for some reason that I haven't read about and he's capable of tonnes of murder.

Azreal: Azreal, the Chapter Master of the Dark Angels. A mighty and storied warrior in his own right, Azreal has been playing second fiddle to the Lion since the Lion returned from his trip to god knows where.

Inner-Circle Companions: New Dark Angels elites who carry big swords and wear cool cloaks.

The Deathwing: The name for the first company of the Dark Angels, the elite veterans of the chapter. The Deathwing wear large terminator armour, and are adorned in a bone white instead of the traditional dark green. Fun fact - the Deathwing originally changed their armour colour to honour a battle some of them fought against the genestealer menace, fun coincidence that didn't cross my mind while writing this. Also this straight up might not be canon anymore lmao.

The Genestealer Cults: Workers and miners in one of the many awful cities or planets of the imperium, corrupted body and soul by an alien menace. Dressed in their work gear and armed with mining lasers and/or whatever they can find lying around, the faction represents a world mid-uprising as they try and retake it and prepare it for the coming of the true, four-armed emperor (a large amount of bugs who will devour the planet). Phenomally cool, 10/10.

Genestealer Cult Aberrants: Large guys who are now more alien bug than human. They swing big ol hammers at stuff.

Land Raider: Just a biiiiiiig tank.

Space Marines: I should've probably started here! The Space Marines are the huge super soldiers of the 40k universe, perfect in nearly every way and capable of all sorts of dumb shit like spitting acid and gaining the memories of their foes by eating them? Weird!

Hormagaunts: Tyranids (space bugs) who leap at things and attack 'em with claws. If you've played the hit game Space Marine 2, you'll have killed thousands of the fuckers.