Doomed to Repeat it

This article focuses primarily on finding inspiration to adapting your games in order to make them more thematic or unique as needed.

So I've been having some fun getting back into the hobby after recently meeting up with some old friends of mine and playing a game of 40k.  What I've always like is the ability to play what I want, how I want, with absolute freedom.  I like throwing in fun rules for myself that really help me to get into the mood that I'm looking for.  If you've ever read a single post of mine you'd notice that I really lean towards forging a narrative.

The concept that has always intrigued me is actually looking back at how the game has been in the past from all perspectives, be it rules, lore, paint schemes, etc.  What I've been doing lately as a personal project is I've been trying to collect a bunch of older rules that most consider to be worthless.  Ebay has been my friends as I've been working on my collection of 2nd, 3rd, and 4th edition rules (since I have pretty much all of the 5th and 6th edition codexes anyways).  Reading through them is really fun, looking at their visuals, seeing how their rules were themed, how the lore has changed, and so on.

This is exciting to me not only b/c of how things have changed but because of how inspiring they are.  To me they are if not direct rules I can throw into my own games verbatim but at least concepts which can be adapted and applied as necessary.  Similarly to this I like reading through rulebooks of completely different games, looking for something that catches my interest that can be put into different situations.  For instance if I were to play a game which was designed to be particularly brutal to both sides I might incorporate the exploding 6's rule which Spartan Games is so fond of, perhaps in a way that pits 1 horde against another, as a demonstration of the harsh nature of trench warfare or some such environment.

If there's anything that I hope you take away from this its to not be afraid to look at what has already passed for a way to improve what you will do in the future.  Hope you guys enjoyed this article, I'll look into returning with a few more articles every now and then.  As always this has been charging carnifex.