Codex Astartes - interested?

[Kiro]

Quite simple: if Black Library were to do a Codex Astartes in the same manner as the Uplifting Primer, would you be interested in getting your hands on it?

[shadowhawk2008]

Hah, can you imagine the internet rage?

[Londinium]

I'm split really. While I'd love BL to put out more books like the Uplifting Primer and the Codex Astartes would certainly be interesting, it'd cause no end of internet nonsense with people stating marines in BL novels aren't following the rules and it'd revive the never ending argument of the Codex as hard and fast rules or guidelines etc etc. More source books should definitely be produced though, now that Forgeworld are essentially producing Heresy campaign books, I wish BL would return to those old books.

[Kiro]

Oh? I'm surprised at that; even without a meat-and-two-veg CA to glance through now, we can already infer, from Index Astartes and other source material just how much individual Chapters adhere/stray in regards to the Codex. Besides, BL could always be lazy and use extant marine tactics and organisation from their novels to fill the book in. Too much work, I know, but still...

[Killgore]

Hell I'd buy it.

I'd use it during games by shouting out random paragraphs when moving my Ultramarines across the table.

[The bearded one]

I read the first page, and then I just started skipping swathes of the 'back-and-forth' text

I wouldn't really want them to do a codex astartes, at least not anything that has to seem realistically logical apart from 40k'ish quotes, simply because no matter how good they might pull off a CA section, it'll still feel lacklustre. It's like trying to write a book from the Emperor's point of view, it's just impossible to capture it in a appreciable way, regardless how good you manage.

Furthermore, reading it would probably feel more like homework, than reading fiction for fun.

[The Dude]

Let's try this again, shall we?

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The Dude
The Warseer Inquisition

[Wyrmwood]

I don't think it would work. The Uplifting Primer worked because it was a good vessel for some humour, the Codex Astartes on the other hand would be the complete opposite. No, I think it's better that extracts crop up from time to time in other publications; whether they be roleplaying supplements, novels, codices, Imperial Armour and what not.

[MajorWesJanson]

Would I be interested? Sure.
Will it happen? The codex Astartes is one or two massive textbooks, not just a little pamphlet book handed out to the guard. So I don't expect it to ever happen.

[Nazrax]

I think it would be a difficult thing to pull off but I think it would certainly be possible.
I think you would probably need to have a rather strongly worded forward from the author/publisher and in no uncertain terms state that it is meant to be understood as only one possible version much like the different uplifting primer books. You could say that this book is a version that is widely used in say the northern part of the Ultima Segmentum and it differs from the one used by the Ultramarines in the southern part of Ultima Segmentum or something like that. Obviously this would have to be carefully worded and done by someone like Gav, ADB or Abnett. Someone who is widely accepted by a majority of the fans and who is able to write with consideration in regards to the importance of such a Codex.
I think that you could play up the fact that the book is not a complete and exacting copy of the original and that it has evolved over time and space. You could do this in both the forward and in the book itself with various passages and quotes from different chapters and members of chapters and anyone who had taken part in the development and evolution of the Codex over the 10k years of its exsistence(Calgar, Dante, Lysander, etc. etc.-these of course, arent the be all/end all for this but just as an example. It could include any number of people and they could be from not just SM chapters/legions/primarchs but also various Magos from the Ad Mech and administratum types, maybe even highlords.)
You could even write a few "different" versions of the Codex and have them intended to represent the various changes at different times throughout the history of the Imperium.(It would-at the least, sell more books, lol!)

All of what I have written is meant as an example and not intended to offend or insult anyone reading it.