Depending On The Writer / Tabletop Games

Examples of characterization changing dramatically Depending on the Writer in Tabletop Games.

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• White Wolf tends to have a few problems with this, and one stand-out example is in Changeling: The Dreaming, where the writers kept going back and forth on what "Banality" was, aside from "the death of hope." Banality was trying to define and tie down the world too much... except the nockers kept insisting that the moon landing resulted in the biggest rush of glamour anyone had seen in several life times. So Banality was boring, ultra-focused practicalities... except there were sample NPCs who got Glamour from those activities because of mindset. When it got to the point that LARP was associated with the Autumn People, you knew there was a basic communication breakdown. Sadly, the line was cancelled before The Book of Glamour (which would have laid out some basics on Glamour and Banality) could be released.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Gnomes tend to fluctuate quite a bit depending on who's writing the current sourcebook, largely because, unlike most of the other iconic races, gnomes have never really had a concise "deal." Some of this is down to different settings or different subraces, admittedly, but even then, ask three D&D writers to describe the average gnome, and you'll likely get four different answers. Their exuberance, sense of humor, and creativity are all common traits, but it's barely present in some takes (which basically treat them as even shorter dwarves) and all-consuming in others (to the point of them coming across as a whole race of The Loonie). They can also range from being one of the most spiritual and nature-oriented races, living in wilderness burrows and talking to animals, or one of the most concrete and urbanized races, living in big, well-established cities. Also, due to bleedover from the tinker gnomes of Dragonlance, there's the question of whether gnomes in other settings also boast advanced technology, and if so, how well it actually works. This goes so far that even their most common favored class has changed over the years, going back and forth between bard and illusionist—prior to 3rd Edition, gnomes couldn't become bards at all.
  • Saint Cuthbert, one of the chief gods of the Greyhawk setting. Whether he is a somewhat gruff and majorly strict but overall goodnatured god who also acts as a god of wisdom and sense, or a Knight Templar Lawful Stupid zealot who preaches the eradication of chaos, ranges heavily depending on the edition and who's writing him. In general, if he's featuring in Greyhawk content, he will likely be the former, while if he's featuring in "setting-neutral" content, he will be the latter. Part of this is that Greyhawk has a more extreme Knight Templar god to contrast him, namely Pholtus; if Pholtus is being acknowledged, Cuthbert will be the more sensible and reasonable one. This even extends to his alignment, which is either Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, or one with tendencies of the other.
  • Also hailing from Greyhawk is Robilar, who has basically always been Lawful Evil, but what kind of evil he represents ranges heavily. He was originally conceived of as a Nominal Hero: more or less completely amoral, but not actively malevolent and having lines he wouldn't cross. This changed in the Greyhawk Wars storyline, where he was willing to sell out his friends and try to kill them. Even his creator cried foul on that one, which led to a retcon that it wasn't really him.
• White Wolf hires freelance writers to write their Exalted books, often assigning different people to write different chapters. Normally, it's not that noticeable, but the Infernals book bears mentioning. In some chapters, there are obvious hints that hey, Infernal Exalts don't HAVE to be evil, but in other chapters you're beaten over the head with the fact that all Infernals are horrible evil monsters and can never be good, ever. Word of God has since cleared up what the creators intended to get across, but it's still a hotly-debated subject.
• Warhammer suffers from similar problems as 40k. The amount of content and lore that has been created and licensed over nearly 30 years is basically impossible to keep straight and again to some extent they're not even trying. Even broad concepts like how entire cultures work within the setting vary wildly, although they do tend to have their roots in the same basic concepts.
• Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
  • Many of the differing writers can't seem to agree on wether the new setting is Lighter and Softer than the previous incarnation of Fantasy and their 40k counterpart or not, and nowhere is it more apparent then in the title character. Depending on which author you read, Sigmar is either a God of Good who wants to redeem and save those deceived and corrupted by Chaos, or a Lawful Neutral tyrant who will slaughter anyone with even a degree of corruption, and still others will try to strike a balance between the two, to varying degrees of success.
  • Likewise, depictions of the Cities of Sigmar varies between them being people out to reclaim the homelands they were driven out of in the Age of Chaos, or colonising-exploiters little better than 40k's Imperium of Man. This case is Justified somewhat by the sheer number of Cities, and them being fairly decentralised, so it's plausible that different cities have different ethos. Still, depictions can generally by categorized into three groups: the licensed novels from Black Library will more often tend towards acentuating the negative, with more of a Knight Templar depiction of Sigmarite culture/religion. The books from the Soulbound RPG will instead be portrayed much more sympathetically, and the Battletome rulebooks will fall somewhere in the middle. Word of God is that the Battletomes should be taken as the most accurate depiction of any given faction.
• Warhammer 40,000 has an absurd amount of canon. Even just the core codexes includes dozens of books over the years, and there are also hundreds of stories, other source books, video games, board games, and other assorted media. It would be basically impossible to keep it consistent, and to some extent Games Workshop doesn't seem all that worried about trying. This has lead to the somewhat infamous statement "everything is canon but not everything is true".
  • Perhaps the most consistent rule is that whatever faction is the main focus of a book will kick ass, but only appear in the other codexes to make that side look good. For example the Imperial Guard, who in a Space Marine based book will just run away and die, and in a guard based book will be courageous humans in impossible war situations.
    • There is one rather infamous instance where this was not the case, where a Tyranid codex basically just consisted of listing various Hive-fleet defeats.
  • The Ultramarines have received a particularly nasty dose. They have no less than three overarching portrayals: Graham McNeill's, which portrays them as predominantly hidebound idiots who suffer a psychic fracture at the concept of disobeying the Codex Astartes, even when it's clearly not working; Mat Ward's, which portrays them as a someone who every other Space Marine Chapter wants to emulate on some level; and the rare "middle way" which portrays them as traditionalist but not suicidally stupid about it, and while they're respected no Chapter is exactly going to give up its own rites and ranks to duplicate them (previously thought extinct, it was recently sighted in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine).
  • The authors can't seem to decide whether the Space Wolves are a chapter of headstrong Boisterous Bruisers who love a good fight wherever they can find one, particularly against worthy opponents, or a chapter of grim, battle-hardened warriors who look at fighting and protecting the weak as their solemn, sworn duty. The Horus Heresy books have thrown yet another layer of confusion into the mix by painting the Space Wolves as the Emperor's executioners, to be dispatched to kill off anyone who needs killing, regardless of whether they are ally or friend (which seemingly goes against the Space Wolves' long-established love of honesty and honourable fighting). Different sources also either paint the Space Wolves as fanatically loyal to the Imperium, or as having little tolerance for the Imperium as an entity, but still believing in their duty to humanity. Also, in the novels they tend to be honorable barbarians with Nordic titles that happen to use Wolf totems a lot in their heraldry; in their codexes and campaign books they use the word wolf in the names of absolutely everything and lead packs of wolves into combat while riding bigger wolves.
  • In the Horus Heresy novel series, which fleshes out the 40K backstory, the Emperor is portrayed as a competent and well-meaning ruler who just happens to have the parenting skills of a coffee table (Graham McNeill), a competent but vicious ruler who is willing to go to any lengths to safeguard humanity and doesn't fully comprehend that he's supposed to be a father as well as a commander, but isn't so much malicious as he is very, very ruthless (Dan Abnett), or a sadistic jerk of such magnitude that it's amazing Horus only managed to turn half the Legions, rather than leading all eighteen back to Earth (Aaron Dembski-Bowden).
    • On a similar subject, Perturabo suffers from such a bad case that his personality is listed as 'mercurial', presumably to try and justify why he seems so different depending on which of two writers are handling him that book. He goes between a sympathetic man pigeonholed into the part of a destroyer, cultured beneath a harsh exterior and continually overshadowed by his brothers despite his own legitimate prowess until finally he snaps from a lack of recognition (Graham McNeill) and a cold perfectionist who ordered his legion to decimate itself the second he saw it merely for not living up to his standards and who fights battles largely as a game of numbers, subscribing fully to We Have Reserves (John French)
  • The exact characteristics and abilities of some units or characters vary between writers, especially if the background on them has been vague in the past. For example, Pariahs tend to vary between two main types: (1) they nullify the abilities of nearly psykers and creep people out (typical of Dan Abnett's Pariahs), or (2) their very presence induces severe agony, large-scale Mind Rape, and sometimes even cranial explosions among nearby psykers. Some authors will even give them abilities seen nowhere else, such as one Pariah being completely invisibile to daemons in Fear To Tread, and water evaporating in a Culexus Assassin's presence in Nemesis.
    • Some of this may be explained by the fact that there are different degrees of anti-psychic ability, but only the fittingly-titled Pariah has acknowledged the discrepancies, and only in a couple of throwaway lines.
    • The Animus Speculum helmets worn by Culexus Assassins also either function as Amplifier Artifacts for the wearers' anti-psychic abilities, or as a means of capturing and harnessing enemy psychic attacks, depending upon which source you read (and either kind may or may not double as a Power Nullifier for the wearer's own abilities when necessary). As of the updated tabletop rules released in 2015, the dual amplifier/nullifier interpretation is correct, but with shades of the power absorption type, as the Culexus' innate abilities also now extend to stealing psykers' souls.
  • Tzeentch gets this a lot, owing to his status as the most abstract of the Chaos gods. Somewhat fittingly, given that he is a god of change, the writers can't seem to make up their minds about many aspects of him. Specifically, some writers believe he has a cosmic, overarching Evil Plan that all his schemes are working to achieve (and said plan is so complex, only Tzeentch himself can truly comprehend it). Others write Tzeentch as not having an overarching plan at all, and just scheming for the sake of scheming. Still others write him as a god of randomness rather than planning, where he is quite happy to institute change for change's sake, even if that change works against him.
    • Sometimes happens to Khorne as well. While he's well-established as being the Blood God, and has always had a tendency to be worshipped by crazed berserkers, he has also been described as a god of martial honour. In some cases (particularly older material) he wants honorable combat, however modern Flanderization has pushed him to only want blood and violence for their own sake. It's much more prevalent in works dealing with the version from the other Warhammer setting, who may or may not be the same character.
  • The entire backstory of some races and even the whole universe has changed at times, especially with the introduction and later evolution of the Necrons. Initially they were little more than undead Recycled In Space with no motivation or personality other than the desire to kill, but have also been portrayed as trapped in a Faustian deal with real personalities attempting to rebel against their C'tan masters. The nature of the C'tan and their war with the Old Ones, which ultimately forms the basis of the setting, has varied hugely as well. Were the C'tan innocent SpaceWhales who became corrupted when the Necrons gave them bodies in an attempt to harness their power, or did they deliberately corrupt the Necrons and steal their souls? Are they vulnerable to psychic powers with no connection to the warp themselves (originally how the Old Ones were able to beat them), or is one of the C'tan actually the Chaos god Tzeentch?
  • Genestealers have also changed quite a bit from their early incarnations. Initially an army in their own right, they became first an infiltration force for the Tyranids that served as a vanguard for hive fleet invasions, in the form of Genestealer Covens/Cults, and then became a standard assault troop for Tyranids with no variations of unit types and no army list of their own (Genestealer Cults remained a part of the lore, although they were often overlooked). In 2016, this swung back the other way when Genestealer Cults made their return in a Gaiden Game, and then received a full rule and model release for Warhammer 40,000 proper soon after.
  • Orks are usually not meant to have any connection to the warp, instead generating their own power simply by proximity to other Orks. But some writers have described them interacting with the warp and attracting demons in exactly the same way as human psykers. Their technology suffers similar issues. Generally there is an element of Clap Your Hands If You Believe, with Ork tech working at least in part because they believe it does, but how much varies wildly. In some stories their equipment is crude but functional, and usable by humans if the need arises (although being designed for bigger and stronger beings can make using it tricky). In other instances the Ork "tech" is basically just random scrap in more or less the right shape and only works because Orks think it does.
  • Exactly how ignorant most Imperial citizens are of Chaos varies between authors. Sometimes they may be familiar with legends or rumours about the Horus Heresy, the Warp, or the Traitor Legions and their Primarchs, while at others, they are not only ignorant of Chaos, but also of other, relatively mundane threats like aliens (despite "abhor the alien" being well-established as a central tenet of the Imperial Cult in 40K lore). Even high-ranking Space Marines can vary from knowing almost nothing about Chaos beyond its existence (enforced by mind-wiping any Marine who comes into contact with daemons in some cases), to having a working, if basic, knowledge of the Chaos Gods and their main types of daemons.
  • Depending on the book and author, the Imperium of Man is either an empire whose evils are an appropriate response to how horrible the galaxy is or needlessly cruel and plunging them deeper into self-destruction, nor can they seem to decide if these evils are Inherent in the System and the whole thing was unredeemable from the moment it started, or if the system can be saved by enough good actors. Official statement released in late 2021 is that the Imperium should not be rooted for, fan consensus is that they failed at showing as much.

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