This is awesome.
It would be cool to see what books talk about each world when you click on them. Also to be able to search for books and see what worlds are talked about in them.
There’s something visceral about seeing the places in 3D and their relation to one another. How many books and codices have I read with just random slapped down markers on the galaxy? There’s so much that can be done to extend this project from the lore - logistical movements and timeline accounts of various crusades and invasions. Great project! Thanks for linking it
I think the parent commenter means the description could include where the planets and major events are sourced from, not necessarily a coherent timeline.
This has a lot of similarities to a world map interface I've been tinkering with for a game I've been working on, thanks for the additional inspiration.
The Latin seems quite wrong... e.g. "segmentum pacificus" should actually be "segmentum pacificum" [1] to keep genders correct. Was it the same in the books (which I don't know)?
They have the SEO juice to push out and replace dedicated wikis as the top result, even when there are long-standing dedicated wikis for the game/universe. Fandom wikis then typically have maybe half of the information from the dedicated wiki PLUS a bunch of intrusive ads. There's no instance that I know of where a Fandom wiki popping up for a community was a positive unless they simply didn't have one to start with.
Which is to say, the original authors didn't care and were just writing latinesque gibberish that sounded cool.
One of the critically important things to remember about 40k lore is that the game was originally a joke. Their "real" game was Warhammer (the game to be later called "Warhammer Fantasy"). Originally it was just "Let's put space opera tropes onto a game board and have them fight D&D monsters". Then they shoe-horned the chaos stuff in, then had a (presumably drunken) exercise in lore writing where they "invented" "Grimdark" by essentially turning the Despair knob up to 11.
And then it turned out to be popular, and it was time to start trying to write real stories on top of the mess. And... people loved it. Including a lot of people for whom the comically ridiculous Grimdark stuff turned into a kind of authoritarian wish fulfillment, which wasn't great. But you have to remember it was all a joke to begin with.
It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society.
The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops.
That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial Navy is the British Navy and the Space Marines (who in the older versions were just common criminals, not super-soldiers), are the British Naval Marines.
One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.
Plus, all the rampant materialism, corruption, stratification, militarism, promoted and encouraged by the Imperium. All straight out of 1980's society.
> It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society.
Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment.
[1] Which again, didn't actually include a lot of the later lore. Like, the emperor in the 1e rules was entombed but strongly implied to be actively leading the empire. Likewise the original conception seems a lot closer to dystopian sci fi than "1980's society" to me.
It's dystopian sci-fi based on England though. The later lore is irrelevant, that's when it started turning into crap, especially around the later 2000s.
Here's the original from 1987's Rogue Trader:
""It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."
Definitely a Jesus figure. And a pretty subtly done one.
Yeah, oversold to me, sorry. Just to start with: "definitely" and "subtly done" are at odds with each other. You can't be both. Klaatu is "definitely" a Jesus analog. The Emperor... meh. It's strained, precisely because GW never really went there: fine, he's Jesus, but then what represents the Gospels? The Old Testamanet? The Emperor is only "Jesus" insofar as that's how "Jesus" looks to a 20th century disaffected nerdy atheist. Well... OK I guess?
Also... the 19th century British Empire is... kinda not at all viewed as a theocratic totalitarian autocracy consumed by cult-like worship of a dead god. Like, at all? It was a bourgeois, wealth-focused and extremely secular colonizer power driven by very worldly desires and a vaguely racist idea of How Things Should Be. And there's a lot of valuable source material for fiction there![1] And... GW didn't really do any of it, and almost none of that until much later.
> One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.
Seriously? Wow. Maybe it's because I'm American, but I can't imagine actually saying that to someone. I'd sorta expect them to throw hands if I talked like that about Jesus.
And I'm an entirely secular, non-Christian atheist living among many other such people!
The barrier of entry is admittedly high for playing the game, but it's tons of fun. You have to pick an army, start collecting models (which aren't cheap), then you have to build them and at least sort of paint them. Honestly the best way is just go on to a local store on they 40k open play night (most have one weekly) and ask around. Folks are extremely kind and generous and will often loan you some models to play against them and try out the game. Some stores even have loaner armies in stock for this purpose.
The "pay to win" feeling is really just in the competitive scene. You can choose to chase the ever-changing meta or just enjoy playing more narrative games.
ps. you can learn the basic mechanics of the game pretty quickly by watching "Battle reports" on youtube. Search for 11th edition specifically as it just came out in June and the rules changed a good bit.
Are they doing an edition a every couple of years now? I think I have the 4th edition rules, but haven't painted or played in like 12 years. I do have some of my nicely painted models on display in a cabinet. I mostly stopped buying models when GamesWorkshop stopping letting the UK stores sell online as their models were really cheap compared to what they sold them for in Canada.
I don’t know anything about it, but I imagine there’s an STL file about any W40K figurine out there by now. And, probably, even more fan-made variations.
With hi-res resin 3D printers costing about as much as a W40K starter set, how can Wizards’ biz model hold?
Once you paint the figurine there’s no way to tell if it came from a store or from an at-home 3D printer.
I imagine Wizards may ban such things from official events and tournaments (if those are even a thing).
But do W40K hobbyists frown upon 3D printed figurines?
Really curious how the socio-economic dynamics of this are playing out. Figurine-based games seem to the the one area where consumer 3D printers can produce a 1-1 replacement.
For casual play you can absolutely use 3d printed models, and the STLs are out there in spades. Heck, you can use cardboard or rocks. But yes, for tournaments the rules are stricter. Big tournaments are the most strict. My local store allows 3d printed models but has a max % that can be printed vs authentic.
I recommend the Eisenhorn books if you want to get into the lore. It's a good story and covers a lot of ground without expecting a ton of prior knowledge.
There are multiple legs to The Hobby (tm), the painting and modelling, the game, and the lore.
For me, painting is the fun bit. I find the game broken and totally driven by marketing. Horrible pay-to-win stuff.
Gaming you need people, you gotta get down a shop and say hi. I prefer independents, as they sell other games, but what's available depends on where you are. Even without shops, finding a group isn't that hard, there's an organised one in my very small town. Facebook etc. can help.
For painting, it's easy, just find models you like the look of, the official site can suggest paints, and have a crack. Your first ones won't be great, but it's the progress that's fun. There's an absurd amount of YouTube content. My crew like Cult of Paint.
Lore, I know least about, I find the books unreadable, but the Black Library is vast. The Horus Heresy is the canonical backbone.
A friend actually writes some short stuff on the fantasy side, do him a favour and grab a collection with Jake Ozga.
Great start, awesome idea! Definitely need all the Xenos maps from all the various codexes (Lexicanum usually clarifies which codex has the most recent map for each, IME). The crown jewel, ofc, is to see the Tyranid fleets hitting the galaxy from two sides and then below, then zooming out to reveal the oncoming mass, still flying through the void towards us from Andromeda... Terrifying!
UI wise, there's definitely a sense of latency when just moving my mouse around. Obviously 3D (three.js?) has FPS limits, but this should be preventable. Also, a lot of the text overlaps on my random (medium sized) browser window.
EDIT: Also you gotta take the stars outta the intergalactic void! Would be much cooler to see the occasional super distance galaxy, anyway ;)
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