Cult Of Games XLBS: Should Wargaming Timelines Advance?
August 30, 2026 by crew
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Happy Sunday CoGs, OTTers and of course, the Backstagers!
Happy Sunday
Counter question : why is (lack of) progress in historicals not an issue ?
Or is it because there is a built-in progress regardless of era as there usually is a start, middle and end of a conflict?
WW2 is usually divided into early, mid- and late war segments.
Fictional settings could do with that kind of division as well.
And they could model it after real world conflicts for some additional inspiration.
Things like the 80 year war were not constant war. There were times of relative peace as well. (future historians may very well label the time we live in now as a 70 year war for all we know … )
There is one big issue with Mantic’s method : science/society has to progress as well …
You can’t be stuck in an eternal medieval-like period forever.
I don’t get what you mean about lack of progress in historicals? History is a constant state of progression which is why you don’t see Romans fighting Gustavus Adolphus. If you’re fighting a certain period it’s all baked in, you don’t suddenly add Turcopoles to Fenian uprising simply because you’re lacking a decent light cavalry option.
As I pointed out in the show, science doesn’t have to progress at all within a fantasy setting, society can and indeed is as the fiction Mantic have been producing shows.
We Canadians would have handed the Turcopoles the same beat-down we did the Fenians. 🇨🇦👹
Happy Sunday! I struggle to get excited about moving timeline vs static timeline. Horses for courses, don’t really care… But what I did find myself thinking during the conversation was about the impact consumer demand has on game evolution. It’s certainly easier to keep your game static if nobody buys it! And so perhaps a more interesting question – “Is consumer demand good for games?” I think it would be fascinating to explore that in a future discussion!
I would counter that with GW sells quite a considerable amount and has kept the game static. But your question does raise an interesting point that’s worth exploring
Yes I didn’t mean to say that high demand necessarily drives timeline change, but it does drive a business decision on how to sell more product. Can businesses without that ‘problem’ create a ‘better’ game? Easier to balance, certainly, but you then also have the challenge of keeping your player base interested over time. A topic without an answer perhaps…so should be an interesting debate!
I think Guildball is an interesting case in point. The game was “complete” then it died. And it likely became one of the best games around before it did.
X-wing is another fascinating example for different reasons. Demand is there but expansion of range is impossible.
If you look at Battle tech, they have advanced the time line and introduced new mechs and technology. They don’t obsolete mechs, you just pick a time line and then select the mechs from that time line. But if you want you could still pick mechs from outside that time line.
I have the impression that the advancement of the Infinity time line is just to introduce new models.
yeah BTech always appealed to me as a hard sci-fi timeline. It’s like playing historical periods in the future, and makes perfect sense within the universe they have created.
Obligatory reference to Traveller : New Era …
And then there’s the obvious one : Star Trek and Star Wars …
Happy Sunday
18:00 Not only the Commandos had proper uniforms but the Stormboys as well. With lightning rune on their caps and all. Polished boots and belts.
20:00 ZOIDS
24:00 Question people rarely ask: .What’s your favourite dinosaur?
25:41 or Orks playing 7TV @avernos
29:30 Why is there no adblocker? ADBLOCKER!
38:30 Back in the day 40k Armageddon felt like “things will change with the community” but after all was done it didn’t really felt like it changed anything.
43:00 Khorne, Mork and Gork. Best friends with a similar hobby
51:00 Technically Star Wars is (by the definition set for this discussion) a fantasy game BUT things can’t progress. Why? Because it’s a licenced IP. Unless The Mouse changes anything SW:L can never evolve in a big way
1:06:00 They are very far away!
And now: a larch
Great GBs this week. Congratulations to the winners.
Interesting topic. As an historical player I am used to moving up and down a time line and backwards and forwards through technological developments. This seems like something that doesn’t happen too much in fantastical games. That’s probably because the background lore needs to be very deep and rich in most cases for players to find enough content and context to be able to play around a timeline that is beyond that dictated by the game writer. Sometimes changing timelines doesn’t feel right. The old MERP RPG system was set in the middle of the Third Age, some 1400 years before the events of the War of the Ring. I’m sure that got them around some licensing difficulties but as a player you did want the opportunity of running into the human or hobbit characters you had read about in the books, not some randoms ICE had made up.
Abaddon the Despoiler should be painted orange from now on, he’s won so many wars that have had zero reality. 🤡
Hi XLBSers an COGz
Your bad like the Michael Jackson bad 👍
Just said it’s a tribute t-shirt Gerry
That’s a fantastic set Orks
Hay Ben that Ork wizard would be good for a Dwarf Wizard 🤔👍👌
Don’t forget Cawl he started the Primaris project around ? the beginning of the heresy kickoff 🤔 🤷
Look at all the lost city’s they are finding in South America lost under the trees the diggers are finding out now
Fab show guy’s
Static vs dynamic timeline? From a story view you are picking between single volume against a series (time jumps not included). Given the march of technology the conflicts we play around with would really get skewed in odd directions if time went all “wibbly”. I highly recommend the anime series “Last Exile” for an interesting watch to see some exploration of that.
Regarding the stagnation versus innovation in games, I think its an inverse of the “Back to the Future Connundrum”. I saw a video discussing the advancement of technology. One person discussed the possibilities of certain advances and a second person disagreed with the manner in which the first came to the matter. The second described the matter as Back to the Future trying to describe the future with the technology of that present time (look at Max Hedroom for a shock of citizen journalism). The progress of a magi-tech world would just be shoehorning the world into what we know now (look at The Flinstones). If a living world system were utilized then a living rules set would need to exist and accommodate that evolved as people repeatedly broke it. GW tries that but the game would need to be an RPG with updated information as the players progress through.
I say static for tabletop one-off without story and progress if going campaign narrative (homebrew the narrative by the club for “unending conflict”?)
@dignity it’s incorrect to say the the BAR wasn’t issued to US troops during WW1. They were and were used in combat from July of 1918 through the Armistice in November. To be fair major combat operations with them didn’t start until the Meuse-Argonne in September, so roughly the last two months of the war.
So in this case, if you’re playing a WW1 wargame, you’re doing a ret-con to allow US armies to take BARs. So how would you handle this in gaming terms? Expensive and rare. Expensive because it’s better, rare because it’s limited in availability.
Throughout history, technological innovations in warfare have been the exception rather than the rule. The Bronze Age lasted over 2000 years. The Iron Age lasted just under 700 years. Gunpowder weapons were introduced almost a thousand years after the _end_ of the Iron Age. Flintlock muskets, with bayonets, come nearly 700 years after the first firearms.
Massive technological innovations in warfare doesn’t start until the Industrial Revolution, late 18th, early 19th centuries and the rate of change accelerates. Flintlocks to cartridge firing rifles occur within sixty years. Hand cranked Gatling guns to belt fed machine guns occurs within 20 years.
During WW1 Napoleonic linear tactics to modern (modern-ish) combined arms using fire and maneuver occurred within 4 years. Aircraft became obsolete at a rapid rate. The Albatross DIII lasted two years. The Fokker triplane Dr I lasted just over a year. Its replacement the Dr VII, less than one. The Sopwith Pup lasted two years. The Sopwith triplane about 18 months. The Sopwith Camel just over one year.
On a completely different note; BattleTech handles ret-cons by calling the older material enemy propaganda.