Hi Rogue Trader fans!

This week we have a guest designer diary that discusses the setting for Rogue Trader: The Koronus Expanse.

Interesting Ross. As Always looking forward to it.

Finally. RT is getting me excitied. That was the kind of designer diary I was looking for.

August right Ross? And those of us who dont make it to GENCON can order it at that time as well?

Is it written by Reason as in the author of the Principia Infecta site, filled with wondrous, baroque, Lovecraftian but not in any bit purple, prose?

If so, then I shall start a church worshipping this game.

 Yes, that is the same Reason. 

I am going to do an unusual thing (for me) and be a little bit negative about something here: I don't particularly like purple prose. There's a lot of 40k writing out there that is totally overblown and flowery...I don't think it adds anything to the setting.

In my view some of the best 40k writing is still by Rick Priestly and Andy Chambers - relatively pared down, tight and evocative without lapsing into the sort of language you'd hear from the Architect in the Matrix. It's very very easy to accidentally write bad 40 background by using a purple prose style - I know, I've done it!

The best 40k setting stuff consists of simple, loose and non-specific (but intelligent) writing accompanied by totally mad, over the top art. The visual impact of 40k should be purple, not the language used to describe it. 

I did notice a slightly purple tendency creeping into creatures anathema... I know there's going to be a trend towards it in Rogue Trader also. 

I think this should be resisted - Patrick O'Brien is cited as a key influence on Rogue Trader- I think the writers could do a lot worse than look at his style. Almost minimalist, yet all the more powerful for it. 

Dark Heresey nailed "the 40k writing style"  perfectly, I thought...here's hoping RT can knock it out the park too!     

I said that Reason's writing doesn't contain purple prose. It's almost exclusively a bad thing ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PurpleProse ), while what Reason does is akin to Lovecraft's writing (although your mileage may vary on his work) in that it uses obscure and archaic terms in order to build an atmosphere and show the different mindset of the characters, not to seem eloquent.

That said I've just picked my jaw from the floor after reading McCarthy's "The Road" and I believe that his dry, reportive style would fit at least some 40k stories. It's all about finding the right stylisation for the right moment, for example the horrors of the Warp wouldn't be anything scary when described as a "big red guy with horns, smelling of sulphur".

Change the punctuation:

"A Big RED ... guy ... with horns; smelling, of sulpher..."

MDMann said:

Yikes, sounds like my Uncle Edna, drunk on Vodka at the Polka Fest!

Ok, now THAT was a good teaser.  Best Designer Diary yet.

...

I have an Aunt Edna...