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i mean i'm running a TTRPG campaign right now where the PCs are imperial citizens cornered between loyalty and morals, and where I'm trying to portray Chaos as a genuine threat without casting revolution or dissent as automatically doomed / counter-productive, so getting into the nitty-gritty here is actually of immediate practical use to me  especially when it comes to keeping up with recent developments (i have neither the time nor the stomach to read tons of 40k novels) and speculative "well what if they did X" scenarios
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Jun 12, 2023 19:11
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Megazver posted:Are you guys not tired "Warhammer is fascist, actually?" Like, come on. drat dude I hate it when people talk about the industry in the talk about the industry thread
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Jun 12, 2023 19:31
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disposablewords posted:In theory - in theory, mind - there's an extra layer there where, with how the Warp and Chaos work, the Imperium is making its own problems even on that end because the Warp just reflects the psychic state of the real world. Psychic in the mental health sense, not the "cool rad powers" sense. For all that the Emperor was trying to weaken the gods, really he was feeding them with so much about the Great Crusade. Khorne would have loved the violence and hatred the Emperor mandated, biological weaponry like the virus bombs may have encouraged Nurgle, stuff like that. You can creditably make the case that the galaxy would actually be way better off if humanity didn't exist, or at least the Imperium didn't, because the Emperor for all his Galaxy Brain Masterminding was completely playing into giving Chaos more power and eventually handed them some of their favorite tools. There's plenty of fertile material both in the Heresy and a lot of stuff ever since about how fascists will absolutely eat their own, and gladly create internal enemies even when they do still have external enemies of their choosing. This is an explicit plot point in some of the novels. There's a group that wants to use the death of humanity to kill or severely weaken Chaos.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:49
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Ego Trip posted:This is an explicit plot point in some of the novels. There's a group that wants to use the death of humanity to kill or severely weaken Chaos. Yup. There is also, as I recall, an idea that the Heresy was necessary toward this end because it made the Chaos gods go all-in on humanity way more than any other possible servants, and eventually the Imperium and Chaos will succeed in burning each other out of existence. With 10+ millennia of abject horror to get there, but at the end of it there's going to be nobody who relates to the Warp in the same way with the same kind of numbers, so the Chaos gods will be shadows of their former selves and the Warp might finally calm the gently caress down from this nightmare feedback loop.
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Jun 12, 2023 20:01
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Megazver posted:Are you guys not tired "Warhammer is fascist, actually?" Like, come on.
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Jun 12, 2023 20:09
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:
It’s gauche as poo poo to quote your own work instead of explaining why someone is wrong, so I’ll do both: Kirby established an incredibly damaging corporate culture that led to the legions of embittered ex GW vets. Whatever he did with the company’s stock price (largely wide some waves of Ansell’s making and suffer through some slumps of his own), his “only sins” should include the creation and support of a truly brutal, callous, anti-union workplace environment, one that demanded pay freezes so that shareholder dividend could be paid, and one that was run according to the deranged black book. You’re wrong on the financials of MESBG v fantasy as well, or at least as wrong as I can find out by combing through reports and talking to senior national and international sales staff. That’s a rumour, as is that fantasy was outsold by paint (though that’s not far off). As you are on his argument to shareholders. It was never “we don’t know how the business works” it was always we know exactly how the business works - they will buy whatever we put out at any price. We mocked jewel like objects of wonder, but rowntrees GW has more than doubled down on it. Kirby’s GW did all the market research they needed and by Christ it worked - make whatever will sell, vaguely know what sells, sell it at a higher cost, because whatever we do, the paypigs will eat. And he consistently returned that fat dividend to the big shareholders. Eventually, his time runs out because he made incredible bank moving shares around and in his weird interim role as a star chamber, and the way is greased by the new leaders who know that for all that Gw made money under Kirby, they could make astronomically more under someone with a modern outlook.
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Jun 12, 2023 20:16
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This doesn't answer my question.
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Jun 12, 2023 20:26
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i mean beyond the incredibly basic level of "art is communication, meaning things and conveying them to other people is literally the entire point" there's a significant social element re: who an overtly fascist fictional universe attracts as players and fans
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Jun 12, 2023 20:42
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You can't really square the circle of making cool minis and then trying to make satire because cool minis make money, and satire makes thinkpiece articles, so the lore is always going to go toward legally distinct IPs of new, badass minis. It's why gw would never make a 'this is a codex for pretty much any faction that's normal humans', they instead make the trademarkable "Astra Militarum".
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Jun 12, 2023 20:57
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Arivia posted:Honest question: what does it matter if 40k is a parody? It's a miniatures game, it doesn't need to have a message. If people want to play fascists (presuming the Imperium of Man is technically one, idk) in the war of fascists against fascists in the grimdark battle to rule the galaxy, that's their choice. Actual answer: If 40k is an honest attempt at parody, GW has a message about authoritarianism somewhere and they could in theory make a version of the setting with enough teeth to drive away some of the people who are fashy about it. But if there's no satiric intent, it's just a corporation making a bunch of media about how cool edgy authoritarian imagery is. I'm not saying that everyone who likes edgy authoritarian imagery is a fascist, because I'm as much of a 40k nerd as anyone else here, but fascists tend to like edgy authoritarian imagery and they're going to show up if you don't stop them. The point is, you need some kind of ideological backbone as an organization to get rid of fascist elements in your audience and to write an actual parody of grimdark authoritarian imagery, and GW overall seems to be willing to just take money from fascists.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:11
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I mean really it comes down to 40k as a setting having been written by dozens of writers over 35 years. Some of those people definitely intended it as a satire, some of them definitely didn't. That's why there's no clear answer, because there's no consensus among the people who made it.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:16
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Colonel Cool posted:I mean really it comes down to 40k as a setting having been written by dozens of writers over 35 years. Some of those people definitely intended it as a satire, some of them definitely didn't. That's why there's no clear answer, because there's no consensus among the people who made it. Yeah, this just seems to be like people worrying about fascists in Warhammer 40k fandom and not an issue with the actual game itself - or expecting a big publicly traded (I believe) company to make some really strong internal stance about facism (on top of the other stances they've already taken like Warhammer Is For Everyone). So okay, whatever, forcing the fash out of a game community is a good thing, but this all feels a bit overblown in terms of attacking GW themselves.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:23
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Colonel Cool posted:I mean really it comes down to 40k as a setting having been written by dozens of writers over 35 years. Some of those people definitely intended it as a satire, some of them definitely didn't. That's why there's no clear answer, because there's no consensus among the people who made it. OK, but there could be. Let's take the other great example of 70s and 80s British sci fi about futuristic fascism: Judge Dredd. Dredd is explicitly written as an authoritarian. He's also explicitly written as the hero because the alternative to him is worse. However because the comics have a relatively clear editorial and authorial line - despite being written by dozens of writers over 45 years - there isn't a point where even a first time reader could read the Dredd comics coming out and think "wow, this is the way to structure a society". Partly this is because the Judge Dredd comics are significantly more overt in their satire. Part of it is because the product was the comic, not millions of plastic figures. But it's an example of how if you have a clear editorial line you can have characters who are the focal point of the story without saying they're morally justified.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:48
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I’d bet a lot that if Judge Dredd became a gaming IP instead of one based around comic and movies that the strong editorial line would be broken quickly and repeatedly.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:55
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Arivia posted:Yeah, this just seems to be like people worrying about fascists in Warhammer 40k fandom and not an issue with the actual game itself - or expecting a big publicly traded (I believe) company to make some really strong internal stance about facism (on top of the other stances they've already taken like Warhammer Is For Everyone). So okay, whatever, forcing the fash out of a game community is a good thing, but this all feels a bit overblown in terms of attacking GW themselves. There have been (and continue to be) cogent arguments about the decision in wargames to treat SS forces as "elite," largely because that actually means buying into fascist rhetoric instead of being historically accurate. But the complaint against modeling fascists in a game as "better" has solid ground both in terms of its inaccuracy, and in terms of the ways in which reinforcing real-world fascist rhetoric through elements of the games we play helps real-world fascists. And honestly, I think scale/popularity/reach matter here, too. You wanna run an RPG for six people where Adolf Hitler turns out to be the hero, either as a satire or seriously? Sure, fine. You know your players and you're not doing any large-scale harm. (If you're forcing it on your players or otherwise being abusive, that's obviously not good.) But designing and publishing a game that valorizes fascists and gets played by millions of people can't be equated to doing something limited with a group of consenting people. "We don't tolerate fascists playing our games" while actively deploying fascist tropes and imagery in ways that present it as cool or even heroic must be subject to criticism. Whether GW is actually doing that right now is certainly subject to disagreement. But I don't think anyone arguing honestly can say it's no longer a problem in any way for the Warhammer franchise. Aside from you and a few others being disinterested in the discussion, I'm hard-pressed to identify any harm done by it.
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Jun 12, 2023 21:57
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Narsham posted:There have been (and continue to be) cogent arguments about the decision in wargames to treat SS forces as "elite," largely because that actually means buying into fascist rhetoric instead of being historically accurate. But the complaint against modeling fascists in a game as "better" has solid ground both in terms of its inaccuracy, and in terms of the ways in which reinforcing real-world fascist rhetoric through elements of the games we play helps real-world fascists. I don't think it's harmful, I just also don't think it's an issue. I also think there's a very big difference between identifying SS troops in real world reenactment wargames as elite forces and identifying I guess, what, is that Space Marine Terminators as elite forces? Like I'm not a huge fan of GW stuff, so maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think GW has said Terminators are meant to be a tribute to the SS or other elite forces of fascist troops. I'm also, again, not familiar with GW wargames but my understanding is that Space Marines are not "better" in terms of game balancing, unless there's some new mechanics or ideas in 10th edition that are like "UNLESS YOU ARE PLAYING AN IMPERIUM FACTION YOU GET THE BAD RULES" explicitly stated. I also think that it's reasonable to expect people to have the media literacy to understand that the grimdark 40th millennium is not the real world and a heroic narrative about the Imperium is not a real-world parallel, unless there's some material in what GW is producing that's specifically advocating that. I think it's okay for people to want to play a game about being the grimdark warriors of the far future and fighting other grimdark warriors of the far future, and I don't think that's innately wrong or bad. There seems to be some sort of idea here that liking the Imperium as a fictional faction in a wargame says something about you as a person, and that needs to be morally policed - and I think that's really a bad idea, and I think it's wrong to pretend it's a parallel to people being fans of playing fascist forces in historical real world wargaming.
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Jun 12, 2023 22:07
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Lamuella posted:OK, but there could be.
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Jun 12, 2023 22:08
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FMguru posted:My example of a satirical 1980s SF gaming dystopia is the setting for Paranoia, which wears its Kafka/Orwell roots on its sleeve and never ever hints that life in Alpha Complex under Friend Computer is another other than an arbitrary totalitarian shitshow. Nobody is arguing that Alpha Complex is bad but the in-setting alternatives are worse, or drawing fan art of their favorite politicians as High Programmers. Iirc at one point an adventure has the PCs discover the survivors topside already have a functional agrarian/nomadic society. The lack of BBB branded vending machines and official uniforms is presented as the zenith of sanity-shattering horror. It's a pity Paranoia has had the awful run of luck recently, what with the new edition misfires and the total disaster that was the PC game. Who's running the show there? Father Wendigo fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jun 12, 2023 |
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Jun 12, 2023 22:54
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whydirt posted:I’d bet a lot that if Judge Dredd became a gaming IP instead of one based around comic and movies that the strong editorial line would be broken quickly and repeatedly. Now I'm wondering how the table top Judge Dredd game by run-with-ex-GW designers Warlord Games handles it.
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Jun 12, 2023 23:15
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Arivia posted:Honest question: what does it matter if 40k is a parody? It's a miniatures game, it doesn't need to have a message. If people want to play fascists (presuming the Imperium of Man is technically one, idk) in the war of fascists against fascists in the grimdark battle to rule the galaxy, that's their choice. Insofar as it "matters" it's because, I would argue, the "it's a parody, why don't these unironic fascists GET IT?" is a really weak and shoddy defense that a bunch of people constantly rush to like it should be super obvious, except 40K hasn't really been a parody in a long time. I do not actually think you can "fascist proof" media, but from a perspective of critical analysis or even like baseline surface level critique, 40K as a setting/franchise/whatever has very thoroughly distanced itself from the days of overt 2000 AD comics style Judge Dredd goofiness and done a lot to recast the Imperium in very "molon labe" terms. You can decide that doesn't matter or not, idk, but I think the fact that tons of people keep parroting the "it's a parody!" line like it's supposed to be a magic ward against fascism suggests that a bunch of people have a myopic view of what contemporary 40K is sold as, and if those people feel like they have some sort of onus to keep their 40K scene from becoming the allegorical Nazi bar (the last time I saw a bunch of people going on about the parodical nature of 40K as though it should be obvious was this incident involving a literal neo-nazi at a tournament in Spain which resulted in GW issuing a statement in response), then they might want to consider that their view of the setting is pretty significantly out of date.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:28
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FMguru posted:My example of a satirical 1980s SF gaming dystopia is the setting for Paranoia, which wears its Kafka/Orwell roots on its sleeve and never ever hints that life in Alpha Complex under Friend Computer is another other than an arbitrary totalitarian shitshow. Nobody is arguing that Alpha Complex is bad but the in-setting alternatives are worse, or drawing fan art of their favorite politicians as High Programmers. I think Paranoia, like Warhammer 40k, is a pastiche where the satirical elements are largely inherited from the source material. The key difference is arguably the audience's familiarity with what's being pastiched: people have enough awareness by osmosis of 1984 and of those Star Trek episodes with societies run by tyrannical computers to recognize that Friend Computer is the bad guy. Whereas Warhammer 40k is drawing on things like Judge Dredd that are less familiar to (especially American) audiences. The other big difference, of course, is that the player characters in Paranoia are expendable clones in constant danger of being arbitrarily killed by Friend Computer, while the wargame elements of Warhammer 40k tend to encourage identification with the Space Marines.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:43
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Silver2195 posted:The other big difference, of course, is that the player characters in Paranoia are expendable clones in constant danger of being arbitrarily killed by Friend Computer, while the wargame elements of Warhammer 40k tend to encourage identification with the Space Marines. To an almost hilarious degree, speaking as someone who bought into Dark Eldar around 6th edition with a codex where the opening fiction was about how the Dark Eldar hosed up and teleported a Salamanders ship into their home city and only barely survived until the Salamanders got bored and hosed off. Even the power fantasy in the xenos codexes is sometimes just about how cool the Space Marines are.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:48
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Space Marines are 1000% the figurehead of 40K and it's pretty indicative of the shift in tone that they started out as "these guys are street thugs who get turned into slavering killbots who engage in training, prayer, and indoctrination 23.95 hours a day with 5 minutes for personal time" to an extensively detailed and chronicled assortment of badass manly men doing badass manly things and having doomed but badass last stands against the forces of degeneracy etc. From a marketing and business perspective it's great, that stuff sells product like nothing else. From a "but it's a parody!" perspective it's pretty much a non-starter.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:57
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that was definitely the most disorienting thing coming from Privater Press to Games Workshop titles. all the Xenos armies especially are so often described in terms of, like, some third party Imperial observer instead of their own internal notion of how awesome and right they are especially jarring because my faction in hordes (Legion of Everblight) is basically led by a dork-rear end edgelord teenager dragon with daddy issues and the disconnect between how smart and perfect he thinks he is and the reality that he's basically stumbled from gently caress-up to gently caress-up while occasionally being in the right place to take advantage of other people's work is one of the best running gags in the setting
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Jun 13, 2023 01:02
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I had thought this discussion was based on this article by Tim Colwill recently posted elsewhere but it looks like some folks haven't read it. It is admittedly a pretty long read but if you don't know much about the history of 40k and how it evolved over time from an overt parody to, really, not a parody at all, it's a great primer. I could nitpick one or two details but on balance he's put into words and supported with a lot of evidence some vague feelings I'd already held but couldn't quite pin down.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:21
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lenoon posted:It’s gauche as poo poo to quote your own work instead of explaining why someone is wrong, so I’ll do both:  I'm not sure why you felt the need to come at me with both barrels there, I just googled "Tom Kirby Market Research and instantly found it four results down: https://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/2013-14-Press-statement-final-website.pdfquote:We do no demographic research, we have no focus groups, we do not ask the market what it wants. These things are otiose in a niche So idk what you want from me
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Jun 13, 2023 01:37
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Given that he wrote that in a positive press release about a good year the correct way to read that is definitely bragging, not self-deprecating. "We don't do market research because we don't need to" is the implication, not "... because we don't want to."
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Jun 13, 2023 01:42
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Were you in the GW death threads back in the day? A lot of posts were made looking into just how loving awful Kirby was and it went way beyond just his ridiculously unprofessional shareholder reports. From blowing a million pounds (via his wife, IIRC) on a new website that didn't work, to closing off community portals, to severely escalating the abusive employment practices of the company, to converting swathes of shops all over the UK into single-employee operations, he was an awful CEO in every respect. And the death thread was first triggered by some really terrible financial returns, the company in one year really only making a profit because of the video game licenses pushing them from the red into the black. He stepped down more or less because he was forced to by shareholders tired of his antics. So I would guess lenoon's reaction is to you enumerating his "only sins" but leaving out a lot of additional sins, although of course I don't speak for lenoon. Also maybe when you said you always liked him for saying those absurd things, you were using sarcasm, but it'd be easy to read that as serious.
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Jun 13, 2023 01:48
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Leperflesh posted:Were you in the GW death threads back in the day? A lot of posts were made looking into just how loving awful Kirby was and it went way beyond just his ridiculously unprofessional shareholder reports. From blowing a million pounds (via his wife, IIRC) on a new website that didn't work, to closing off community portals, to severely escalating the abusive employment practices of the company, to converting swathes of shops all over the UK into single-employee operations, he was an awful CEO in every respect. And the death thread was first triggered by some really terrible financial returns, the company in one year really only making a profit because of the video game licenses pushing them from the red into the black. He stepped down more or less because he was forced to by shareholders tired of his antics. Oh I despise GW, mostly for their lifestyle brandification of the hobby, and with that all leading to obsessive control of what we do with our products, rulebooks etc: https://twitter.com/DiceysDelves/status/1660802871225626624?t=i78FyJCB-07i0YAqGr_Unw&s=19 Mind you, as long as people were like, not easily suckered in by new shiny things this wouldn't even be a thing. There's no reason WHFB should have died with 8 editions of books out there! Blood Bowl survived its death so hard GW brought it back because money was on the table. I was saying I liked Kirby in the same way its trendy to call someone acting like a jerkoff a gigachad. TheDiceMustRoll fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Jun 13, 2023 |
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Jun 13, 2023 02:36
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moths posted:The big shift is that the Emperor foolishly attempted to leverage that Evil. That's pretty much always been the case. Most of the rebel primarchs had solid reasons for hating their dad, because he hosed them over hard.
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Jun 13, 2023 02:53
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I'm honestly interested how other wargame companies handle their trash. I mean Privateer Press doesn't have to worry since no one plays their game but I've heard some bad things about battletech fandom and general good things about Infinity crowd
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Jun 13, 2023 06:00
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Covermeinsunshine posted:I'm honestly interested how other wargame companies handle their trash. I mean Privateer Press doesn't have to worry since no one plays their game but I've heard some bad things about battletech fandom and general good things about Infinity crowd A local Infinity player I met once was banned from most local stores and events because he want on repeated Islamaphobic and misogynistic rants in a Haqqislam lore thread on the official forums
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Jun 13, 2023 06:05
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Covermeinsunshine posted:I'm honestly interested how other wargame companies handle their trash. I mean Privateer Press doesn't have to worry since no one plays their game but I've heard some bad things about battletech fandom and general good things about Infinity crowd Battletech’s Reddit just had official community managers come in and kick out the fan managers running things due to transphobia over a recent fan zine.
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Jun 13, 2023 06:07
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It's rather funny given a lot of nerd hobbies have stereotypical old guards of grognards being at best crotchety white male nerds with everything you expect but the actual current, active and growing fans are overwhelming younger and have possibly disproportionate LGBTQ+ representation. And a lot of the big names have or had the Local Games Store issue at large where they remain focused on toxic customers who barely actually buy anything at this point and drive away the rest. But at this point I think WotC is the only big player still flinching at the imagined outrage of a no longer remotely significant demographic.
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Jun 13, 2023 07:35
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TheDiceMustRoll posted:
Yeah I fully read you as serious, my apologies for tone.
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Jun 13, 2023 07:58
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admanb posted:A local Infinity player I met once was banned from most local stores and events because he want on repeated Islamaphobic and misogynistic rants in a Haqqislam lore thread on the official forums And you can certainly find some Deus Vult types into PanOceania.
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Jun 13, 2023 09:27
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I honestly would expect chuds being into Ariadna
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Jun 13, 2023 09:42
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Eh, I think most people are more into how the tabletop minis look than the lore behind them, in terms of what they pick.
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Jun 13, 2023 10:49
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Ghost Leviathan posted:But at this point I think WotC is the only big player still flinching at the imagined outrage of a no longer remotely significant demographic. The new MtG set depicts Aragorn from LotR as a Black man, which feels like someone there is finally telling the hateful contingent to get hosed.
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Jun 13, 2023 12:02
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Covermeinsunshine posted:I honestly would expect chuds being into Ariadna Nah, the Ariadnans look like army dudes, which gets you a different kind of guy than the guys who have Catholic power armor.
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Jun 13, 2023 12:03
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