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The Politics of Tabletop RPGs

Eliar said:
In what way?
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Well The Empire in WHF are not actively bad guys. They have flaws sure but they are very much portrayed as a faction that is working for a good cause. Same with the Brettonians, Dwarfs, High Elves and Wood Elves. The end is coming but they are giving their best without stepping down to their enemies level.
 
Axslashel said:
How is blowing up WHF in any way getting rid of the heinous crap? They scrapped the less problematic setting on favour of the more problematic one.
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I would say that while 40k is more fashy than fantasy, the later is definitely more old timey racist than it's sci fi brother. Nearly every race is the equivalent of a real world counterpart with many following a sorta colonial British logic to them. Orcs are brutal spear chuckers from the hot wasteland continent. Ogres are a rampaging horde of barely intelligent man eating raiders from the east with top knots. Etc etc. It really starts to look like one of those cartoons from the 1800s with anthropomorphizations of various counties and continents.
 
Alex said:
I would say that while 40k is more fashy than fantasy, the later is definitely more old timey racist than it's sci fi brother. Nearly every race is the equivalent of a real world counterpart with many following a sorta colonial British logic to them. Orcs are brutal spear chuckers from the hot wasteland continent. Ogres are a rampaging horde of barely intelligent man eating raiders from the east with top knots. Etc etc. It really starts to look like one of those cartoons from the 1800s with anthropomorphizations of various counties and continents.
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The Orcs are British football hooligans. Where do you get spear chucker from hot wasteland continent from? While the world map very much do look like twisted version of Eart I would say the badlands south of Tilea are one of the regions that have no clear counterpart. Balkans? I guess you have a point with the Ogres but as far as I know they are a bit more than "barely intelligent". They are entirely willing to sell their services as mercenaries to anyone willing to pay. If anything they are toxic capitalism personified.

EDIT:
They scrapped Warhammer Fantasy in favor of Age of Sigmar, not in favor of 40k
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I meant they scrapped WHF instead of scrapping 40k. Which makes total sense from a business perspective. 40k sells better and there are more things in that setting GW can copyright.
 
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Axslashel said:
The Orcs are British football hooligans. Where do you get spear chucker from hot wasteland continent from? While the world map very much do look like twisted version of Eart I would say the badlands south of Tilea are one of the regions that have no clear counterpart. Balkans? I guess you have a point with the Ogres but as far as I know they are a bit more than "barely intelligent". They are entirely willing to sell their services as mercenaries to anyone willing to pay. If anything they are toxic capitalism personified.
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They literally have a unit named spear chuckas.

Edit: most savage orc models dip heavily into fairly sensitive imagry of primitive triabals. Lots of bones through the nose, grass skirts, crude spears etc with their wizards being shamans with wooden masks and magic body paint. It's not really subtle.
 
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Lupercal said:
So the post by GW is fairly boilerplate "Brand says sorry" stuff apart from the bit where they say that Nazis should leave and take their money with them. That's actually a big thing for a buisness to say
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It's not as if they have much choice at this point. Their brand has gotten very much entangled with Nazis and quite a lot of people would interpret the usual mealy mouthed waffling as silent endorsement by the company.
 
Azel said:
It's not as if they have much choice at this point. Their brand has gotten very much entangled with Nazis and quite a lot of people would interpret the usual mealy mouthed waffling as silent endorsement by the company.
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That's definitely a choice though? And they did choose the better option.

At a time when we see a brand like AT&T directly funding a neo-nazi media outlet and then lying about it, GW is looking pretty great by the light of this statement.
 
earthboy said:
That's definitely a choice though? And they did choose the better option.

At a time when we see a brand like AT&T directly funding a neo-nazi media outlet and then lying about it, GW is looking pretty great by the light of this statement.
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Can't say that you are wrong, but I think that "not actively funding Nazis" shouldn't be the bar we measure against.
 
Alex said:
They literally have a unit named spear chuckas
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The spear chukka is a bolt thrower. If you want to imply that the orcs are stereotypes of african people ( I assume that is what you meant with hot wasteland continent, feel free to correct me). I don't think this is the best unit to use as an example. If you had mentioned the savage orcs I might have taken the argument a bit more seriously but the spear chukka? And even the savage orcs are only one group of orcs among many.
 
Axslashel said:
The spear chukka is a bolt thrower. If you want to imply that the orcs are stereotypes of african people ( I assume that is what you meant with hot wasteland continent, feel free to correct me). I don't think this is the best unit to use as an example. If you had mentioned the savage orcs I might have taken the argument a bit more seriously but the spear chukka? And even the savage orcs are only one group of orcs among many.
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lol edited my post to talk about savage orcs before I saw the quote. Yeah I would say Savage orcs are the worst of it. Still, I think in the context of this stuff, deliberately naming a unit "spear chucka" spelled like that does definitely suggest there are some parallels in the designers mind.
 
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Azel said:
Can't say that you are wrong, but I think that "not actively funding Nazis" shouldn't be the bar we measure against.
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Okay, alternately they could have deflected / quibbled about it like Twitter and Facebook, maintaining a double-standard for acceptable content which favored their fascist customers in the hopes of getting more money.

GW looks good by that standard, too.

In fact, it feels like a brand taking a firm stand against neo-nazis is depressingly uncommon.
 
Azel said:
Can't say that you are wrong, but I think that "not actively funding Nazis" shouldn't be the bar we measure against.
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I think we should measure them by the standards of what corporations typically do, in which case they pass with flying colors.

Which is not the best bar but they are a corporation, no one should treat GW as saints but it's also important to recognize that they're standing more strongly against reactionaries than many companies would in the same position.
 
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earthboy said:
Okay, alternately they could have deflected / quibbled about it like Twitter and Facebook, maintaining a double-standard for acceptable content which favored their fascist customers in the hopes of getting more money.

GW looks good by that standard, too.

In fact, it feels like a brand taking a firm stand against neo-nazis is depressingly uncommon.
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It is not very common, precisely because most companies want to not hurt their bottom line by scaring away the customers of theirs who just happen to be fascists. The only instances I know where companies took genuinely firm stances is when they are themselves heavily associated with leftist values, LGBTQ+ rights and similar topics, so that they don't exactly have fascist customers in the first place, or who are so heavily colonized by Nazis that other customers are beginning to avoid them. GW is in the second category. They have a Nazi problem so severe that it hurts their bottom line, so they come out much harder and louder against them. That other companies like Facebook or Twitter can still coast by on plausible deniability (or at least believe so) does not impact the practical conditions that make economically more advantageous for GW to take a clear stance.

Back in the early 2000's, the clothing company Lonsdale became extremely heavily associated Nazis here in Germany to the point where their products were getting banned in schools. They then started to strongly distance themselves from fascists, donated to LGBTQ+ causes and tried to clean up their image, which tanked their sales with their former customer base. Did they do this because of a heartfelt desire to oppose fascists? Or was it a desperate effort to not have their brand turned radioactive and to go out of business? I've not been party to the board meetings, so I can't say. Neither can I say with GW.

But all other things being equal, I find it much more likely that a company has run the cynical calculus of what would best serve their business interests and found "get rid of the Nazis" their best option, then to assume that GW, which has a history of quietly tolerating the fascists other problematic parts of their fanbase for many years, has suddenly found their conscience.
 
Rakaziel said:
Maximum Overtroll :D
Not making light of nazis but I am fairly certain he did that on purpose for exactly that result.
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That's..... not trolling. At all. Showing up in a bunch of neo-Nazi symbols while calling yourself 'the Austrian painter' is just being a Nazi. How would it even be trolling? What's the joke?

And based on the articles (links in Spanish) written by someone who spoke to the actual team that had to face down the Nazi dude and his team-mates, the reason he did that was not as some sort of scoring trick, but because he was in fact, a Nazi, who believed Nazi things and wanted to make it clear and blatant to everyone around him that he really, really loved genocide.
 
NotInventedHere said:
That's..... not trolling. At all. Showing up in a bunch of neo-Nazi symbols while calling yourself 'the Austrian painter' is just being a Nazi. How would it even be trolling? What's the joke?

And based on the articles (links in Spanish) written by someone who spoke to the actual team that had to face down the Nazi dude and his team-mates, the reason he did that was not as some sort of scoring trick, but because he was in fact, a Nazi, who believed Nazi things and wanted to make it clear and blatant to everyone around him that he really, really loved genocide.
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I feel like this conversation is the quintessential example of why "lol I was just trolling" is a terrible excuse.

Because if the only way onlookers can tell a troll apart from the real deal is the persons own word, then all it takes for the real deal to get away with it is to just go "lol trolling bro".
 
Axslashel said:
Well The Empire in WHF are not actively bad guys. They have flaws sure but they are very much portrayed as a faction that is working for a good cause. Same with the Brettonians, Dwarfs, High Elves and Wood Elves. The end is coming but they are giving their best without stepping down to their enemies level.
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The Empire's flaws are primarily those of Renaissance European societies, which makes sense: WHF is basically a tuned-up, high fantasy historical fiction.

I think we're supposed to see the Empire as imperfect and morally-flawed: the Empire is a highly stratified society with an entrenched aristocracy and mercantile class that monopolises wealth and power at the expense of the urban and rural poor. It engages in a number of repressive practises such as torture and other forms of corporal punishment, jailing people for unpaid debts, etc.

I think what primarily distinguishes WHF from 40k is that the Empire's flaws are not treated as justified in the name of defeating their enemies. If anything, the Empire's problems make it more vulnerable to Chaos, the Skaven, Beastmen, etc.

Alex said:
lol edited my post to talk about savage orcs before I saw the quote. Yeah I would say Savage orcs are the worst of it. Still, I think in the context of this stuff, deliberately naming a unit "spear chucka" spelled like that does definitely suggest there are some parallels in the designers mind.
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Admittedly, savage Orks have been so sidelined in favour of the more typical "Greenskins" as embodied by Grimgor Ironhide and co. that I honestly find them borderline irrelevant to the modern WHF setting. In the Total War: Warhammer games, there are no Savage Orks at all despite the fact that Greenskins have a lot of content releases. All Greenskins are just depicted as some flavour of Ork or goblin without any of the attendant "the natives are restless" ugly stereotyping.

Like, Savage Orks are problematic, but they've also been pretty sidelined to the point of near-nonexistence.
 
Madam Carstein said:
In the Total War: Warhammer games, there are no Savage Orks at all despite the fact that Greenskins have a lot of content releases. All Greenskins are just depicted as some flavour of Ork or goblin without any of the attendant "the natives are restless" ugly stereotyping.
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While your overall point stands I will note that this isn't correct, Savage Orcs are present in Total War Warhammer. It's just very easy to miss them given that they are inevitably either crushed or absorbed by Grimgor Ironhide.
 
Madam Carstein said:
Admittedly, savage Orks have been so sidelined in favour of the more typical "Greenskins" as embodied by Grimgor Ironhide and co. that I honestly find them borderline irrelevant to the modern WHF setting. In the Total War: Warhammer games, there are no Savage Orks at all despite the fact that Greenskins have a lot of content releases. All Greenskins are just depicted as some flavour of Ork or goblin without any of the attendant "the natives are restless" ugly stereotyping.

Like, Savage Orks are problematic, but they've also been pretty sidelined to the point of near-nonexistence.
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Not entirely true, there was an LL flavored entirely around Savage Orcs, but it's literally the only thing involving them they've gotten and they've been sidelined pretty hard in favor of the Pseudo-Mad Max angle typically found in Orcs.
 
Madam Carstein said:
I think what primarily distinguishes WHF from 40k is that the Empire's flaws are not treated as justified in the name of defeating their enemies. If anything, the Empire's problems make it more vulnerable to Chaos, the Skaven, Beastmen, etc.
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I mean, I would say the same is true in 40k. As part of that setting's core conceit of over the top dystopia, the Imperium is only making everything even worse. It even is in that infamous blurb, the one that coined the term "grimdark" - the "most repressive regime humanity has ever seen". It wouldn't fit if that Imperium were a necessity and hence a positive thing, because all factions are supposed to be negative. Humanity is preyed upon by Chaos, Orks, Dark Eldar pirates, etc etc, and the Imperium only makes everything even worse.

But of course that is not quite how it is presented sometimes...

In any case, I would say that is the difference: The Empire is just... human. Imperfect, yes, but only in a manner appropriate to the reference epoch. Basically,a historicalesque state with fantasy additions. Not like, actively, over the top dysfunctional and evil. And the Imperium is that.
 
Madam Carstein said:
Admittedly, savage Orks have been so sidelined in favour of the more typical "Greenskins" as embodied by Grimgor Ironhide and co. that I honestly find them borderline irrelevant to the modern WHF setting.
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Fourthspartan56 said:
While your overall point stands I will note that this isn't correct, Savage Orcs are present in Total War Warhammer. It's just very easy to miss them given that they are inevitably either crushed or absorbed by Grimgor Ironhide.
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Also Grimgor is actually a "Black Orc" and not at all what you could call a "more typical" Greenskin.
 
Madam Carstein said:
I think what primarily distinguishes WHF from 40k is that the Empire's flaws are not treated as justified in the name of defeating their enemies. If anything, the Empire's problems make it more vulnerable to Chaos, the Skaven, Beastmen, etc.
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The Imperium's flaws aren't exactly justified by the narrative.

Now maybe, maybe the 30K Imperium flaws can be interpreted as such in a 'superhuman precog leader picked the least bad path' sort of way but even that's ambiguous: the whole Heresy can also be interpreted as 'superhuman precog leader screws himself by not understanding how to treat others'.

In the year 40K the Imperium's flaws aren't portrayed as justified but as horrendous, Roboute Guilliman explicitly called it a rotting carcass driven by hate, fear and ignorance concluding: "Better that we had all burned in the fires of Horus' ambition than live to see this."

That's not exactly a ringing endorsement on the state of the Imperium in 40k. Even before Roboute got healed the many problems of the Imperium were explicitly recognised even in universe including by a significant faction of the Inquisition.

Out of the universe a lot of the WH books explicitly called the Imperium out as a pile of cruelty and ignorance from the front blurb - not sure how Games Workshop could have been more explicit that the IoM is quite terrible than by openly calling out its flaws, in big bold letters straight from the beginning.
 
There are works which portray the Imperium in a more nuanced/heroic light but it's often kind of hard to judge them because of how loose GW's canon is. Dan Abnett is probably the most prolific Black Library author by this point, who wrote some of the foundational works of the setting (Eisenhorn was literally written to advertise and explain the Inquisition etc) and he is pretty clearly writing in his own version of 40k that feels free to reject large sections of nominal "canon".

Just as an example, one of the more recent Gaunt's Ghosts novels has an entire sub-plot that hinges around the fact that Commissars in Abnett's world execute people only rarely, that it is a punishment used for actual crimes (in this case attempted rape), and when they do so there's a whole investigation into the affair by an unaffiliated third party to make sure it was a valid use of Commissarial judgement. This contradicts large swathes of "canon" and indeed some of the earlier Ghosts novels, but Abnett wants to do it so he does it.

(It's always a bit awkward figuring out where Abnett's works stand in relation to canon because he straight up wrote a lot of it in the first place)
 
30K imperium is definitely a case of the Big E screwing up massively. Stuff like the Heresy or 'The Last Church' portray him as prone to human errors, foibles and spite.

One of the constant things I see with the Imperium is that my brain auto-corrects a lot of their stuff because it is honestly stupid. My suspension of disbelief literally requires that the Imperium be better run then it is often portrayed.

Oh and random headcanon but I like to think that the big dramatic intro is what The Emperor would say when describing the state of the galaxy.
 
Warhammer Fantasy has the advantage of being set in a gritty pre-modern world, based on social systems and values seen by most to be inherently unjustified and backwards. Especially now that the modern perception of fantasy being informed more by Game of Thrones than Lord of the Rings. It'd kinda hard for reactionaries to act all fashy within the WFB fandom without looking like they're caping for feudalism, aristocracy, witch burnings and the like. Not that it's always going to be seen that way, depending on how it's portrayed.

For WH40K, part of the problem is that if one fan sees it as a wild exaggeration of fascist thought, another fan sees it as a wild exaggeration of the necessary role of the state and military in enforcing cultural and ethnic orthodoxy for the sake of social order. And the wild exaggeration part is what can convince people to rationalize the Imperium's actions as in-universe necessary. Compared with WFB which is less of an exaggeration than 40K is.

Also, reactionaries who get moony-eyed over medievalism and divine right of kings and all that shit tend to be the biggest weenies who's rhetoric makes them look like fucking dorks. The bulk of reactionaries wanna see guns and space cops and rah-rah military shit. That's the stuff that attracts people like nerdy vets who make other right wing dweebs look cooler by association. Compared to some kid who's conservatism is informed by reading dusty ass books in his rich parents house.
 
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