i know people emulate the tabletop game but i often wonder if anyoneâs tried to implement the kind of damage/status/probabilities/ranges UI you get in something like the owlcat game for it, since every time iâve tried to follow a battle report video on YT i get really lost in the layers of dice chucking
Itâs normal for me to look at Warhammer 40k, see how 96% of its media is about the Imperium of Man, and make the obvious conclusion about it, right?
3 Likes
what is the obvious conclusion for those of us playing along at home? âuncritical enthusiastic supporting the genocidal fascism of the Imperiumâ?
1 Like
âGame that was very explicitly initially intended as a satire of fascism that like many satires unfortunately has attracted a lot of people who didnât get that it was satire?â
4 Likes
OK, good, just wanted to make sure my prejudice wasnât causing me to miss a larger picture. Only WH game that ever interested me was the one about Ork Boyz in Planez that looked like Crimson Skies or Rogue Squadron.
2 Likes
it seems like it was more obviously goofy when there wasnât nearly like 35 years of dense lore and merchandising fattening it up to bring in more punters but the setting still seems fundamentally cautionary and miserable to me
i think despite it all gw are still verhoveninâ uih
4 Likes
Dakka Squadron? (why do I know this) damn, those ork vehicle designs whip
when you say media I suppose you mean videogames? there are sure a lot of recent games with single campaigns for human factions only
lol, trying to find a video of Fire Warrior without commentary, big midwest accent âwait, space marines are the bad guys??!â
3 Likes
Yeah GW had their own sanctioned grindcore band in the 80s even, so the sneering social commentary was pretty clear at one point
5 Likes
i have to wonder how much of them only making warhammer games about humies is because a bunch of the fans are shitheads or if there is just a general disinterest because for a brief four year period in the late 90s and early 2000s they made two entire games where you donât play as the imperium like that SSI game where you play as the eldar rites of war or the aforementioned fire warrior. ever since then itâs been basically imperium protagonist media the whole way down minus I guess that 40k armageddon dlc where you can play as the orks that isnât very good
and donât get me wrong lol iâm a simpleton who sees the guard and goes yes please but come on I guess. it took SO LONG for them to add playable tyranids into the 40k videogame world that you have to wonder if theyâre just leaving money on the table on purpose at this point. itâs part of why Iâm like hell yeah at owlcatâs dark heresy game besides the fact itâs owlcat
4 Likes
GW is just grotesque hypercapitalism in company form and they use âsatireâ as a fig leaf to peddle extremely lucrative nazi shit
The rare case of someone agreeing with me about how â40k is satireâ was only barely true in 1987, and not at all since then
Following the launch of Rogue Trader and then into Second Edition, a decision was made that Space Marines were not âpotentially-female super-criminals with barely-controlled psychotic killing urgesâ, but in fact were âexclusively-male, noble warrior-knights who tragically sacrificed themselves for the good of the Imperiumâ.
Although the major driver for the launch of the new Primaris Marines was to convince players to purchase a very slightly larger version of their existing miniatures all over again (and to avoid future embarassing failed copyright disputes), an unintentional side effect of the new Tacticool Marines appears to have been to make the United States Armed Forces â the worldâs largest environmental polluter and global champion of committing war crimes â feel comfortable enough to openly recruit at Warhammer 40,000 tournaments. But donât worry everyone: the Armyâs team of tabletop gamers are definitely feeling visibly uncomfortable under the biting criticism of military jingoism which is self-evidently inherent to 40K âs setting.
Readers of Warhammer 40,0000 âs lore are allowed to learn that war is bad as long as they also learn that it is necessary, that the Imperium is deeply corrupt and evil but that there is simply no better or more viable alternative, and that even seemingly advanced, friendly alien races are actually ânot quite as shiny and nice as some might thinkâ, which makes it okay to engage in a bit of cheeky genocide.
5 Likes
yeah i think this is really telling if you look at how theyâve treated the tau over the years itâs amazing how much effort theyâve put in to be like âactually these guys might be WORSE than the imperiumâ lmao because people liked the mecha battlesuits too much and warhammer fans went ballistic over gay anime shit in their game
i liked vanilla dawn of war where the imperium is the protagonist faction but the balance team were eldar fanboys so youâd mow these guys down in the campaign and shit then whenever youâd play multiplayer youâd get completely bodied playing find the webway gate for 2 and a half hours and forced to completely waste your time every time anyone picked eldar because they objectively could not lose
and for what itâs worth i have never ever played a warhammer 40k pc game where the message is anything less than that the imperium can only be failed by individuals and itâs not like the system is really that bad when you think about it itâs all these guys having negative thoughts or doing gay sex or whatever and becoming evil. the blood ravens arc in dawn of war 1 and 2 is literally just this. all of this wouldnt have happened if some of our guys didnt go evil from thinking badly!
like i will say this for warhammer 40k the guys writing it would be great propagandists they really know how to stay on message consistently and that message is that DEGENERATES are threatening human society from within and without
3 Likes
everyone should really read that article tulpa linked lol
In 2019 Games Workshop took things a step further and launched a new Warhammer Adventures line featuring racially and ethnically diverse tweenage protagonists, with the goal of accessing the disposable income of the parents of children aged 8-12. This move raised eyebrows even among the more laid-back members of the Warhammer 40,000 community who pointed out â quite reasonably â that maybe a universe where there was canonically nothing but endless war and violent death wasnât something to try and sell to children.
[âŚ]
the Adventures series openly openly pitches Space Marines to children as the âsworn defenders of humanityâ who ârisk all to protect the Imperium against the forces of Evilâ
4 Likes
i suppose if your bread-n-butter is a relentless savage tabletop wargame you have to keep populating with exciting new weapons youâre kind of stuck with this context, though i definitely prefer the older concept art that generally seems less marketable and gnarlier, such that you didnât really need to go digging in the flavour text to learn âoh no everyone and thing is still a sicko and a bastard despite presentationâ
which is maybe why that trench crusade game has popped off actually, i canât ever see that one having a kidz edition
1 Like
looking at the history of the tabletop meta (my youtube recs are not short of this stuff now) it seems like regular-degular space marines are basically never owning every other species which is quite funny, like as soon as you want to get serious about winning you swiftly get into actual demons, horrible bugs or doomed space elves which also seem a lot harder to paint well
3 Likes
the satire certainly is underplayed from 2nd edition onwards. GW suffers from WH40Kâs incredible success attracting business heads for a fundamentally creative company, a âdo not negatively impact the brandâ boot stomping on the artistsâ expressing personal opinions, political commentary, anything potentially unprofitable. and then making the worst gaming systems
I enjoyed the message in The Tithes 3-episode series (still has too-heroic space marines), but itâs not blatant enough & is still possible to interpret along âthis is what weâre up against, any sacrifice is justifiedâ
even the most effective satire will have people âWow!! Cool robot!!â it. GW isnât very effective and they should be doing more. more games about exterminating the thunder warriors for impurity
4 Likes
space marines are also hard to paint well, but still look ok with average paint jobs. certainly helped their early wide appeal, plus the western crusader knight inspiration
1 Like
I think if they adjusted the space marines to be more in line with the 1980s incarnations, less fascist hero worship, more portraying them as a 2000AD version of modern american militias
they could credibly claim satire
Back when they were âspecially selected from the galaxyâs toughest psychopathsâ and looked like a hybrid of landsknechts, mad max villains, and football hooligans
7 Likes
I donât know how other people react to it but this is the only illustration of space marines Iâve seen that makes me interested in them. A bunch of gross psycho goons in mismatched power armor is way more fun to me than po-faced warrior cults dedicated to protecting an undeserving humanity
3 Likes
at most charitable you could suggest current models are more uhhh authentically shaped like IRL fascism (and are still daft under the slightest interrogation) but thatâs asking a lot of a broad audienceâs semiotic sophistication and thatâs demonstrable waning
a corporate cowardice reading seems much more stable
2 Likes
oh games workshop are absolutely cowards but i do still think itâs a solid assessment to say the satire, what little there was, has been totally buried under a mountain of bullshit so heavy at this point that thereâs no digging your way out of it. i mean this is inevitable when you have like 100 people writing a game setting. like you could deal with the problem but at that point youâre making a new game you know.
5 Likes