Warhammer Fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons: A divergence?

[t209]

So I kinda keep noticing about Warhammer Fantasy and Dungeons and Dragons.
While both of them can trace back to Chainmail along with Warhammer Fantasy being result of White Dwarf's sales of DnD to UK, both of them seem to diverge in terms of tone and concepts later on aside from Warhammer Fantasy being more wargame focused and DnD being more tabletop focused.
Warhammer: Good vs. Evil is questionable on the Good side. Elves are arrogant, Dwarves are vengeful, and Humans are short-sighted with the setting being more dirty and bleak. This can be seen in Roleplay since the characters are just lawyers, laborers, and even literal hobos trying to survive in a doomed world where you would die from an infected wound during a scuffle with a drunkard.
DnD: Settings may vary, but majority of the settings ran on good vs. evil. Elves are noble, Dwarves are proud, and Humans are versatile with setting being hopeful. Average party will involve up and coming warrior, mages, and rogues trying to stop a greater evil where they might become greatest legend if they survive.
Other also said that this was due to DnD trying to be "kid friendly" in 80's Satanic Panic while Warhammer was too obscure to be targeted (thus ability to retain its older audience focus) along with being more in line with 2000AD influence in contemporary times. Also DnD staff being pop culture focused while Warhammer staff being more fluent in history (or at least willing to add nitty-gritty parts of medieval and renaissance era).
So feel free to give a feedback on how they diverged and the reasons behind it.

[Saintheart]

Speculation: Warhammer wanted to sell models, D&D wanted to sell books.

Thus why good v. evil was a bit muted in WH. You want them to buy all the factions, not just the "heroes".

[Bavarian itP]

I don't know that much about the history of the games, but I always assumed since Warhammer is a wargame, you need an in-game reason for every faction to fight against any other faction and even against itself. If there's a faction that is entirely "good", it's harder to find that reason. And if the theme of your game is war, it makes sense to take place in a crapsack world, because the eternal war turned it into one.


You want them to buy all the factions, not just the "heroes".

This worked super well in Warhammer 40K.

[Satinavian]

Both D&D and WH started not with good vs. evil but with order vs. chaos as was somewhat popular at the time. Now there was a long time the idea that order was generally more pleasant as chaos was full of violent anarchists but too much order would lead into repression and tyranny.

Eventually D&D caved in and split good and evil from law and chaos because most stories it drew inspiration from didn't care at all about the latter. WH however didn't really. It still uses order and chaos to group factions. It fully embraced punk aesthetics for the more chaotic side. And while it relevs in excess and essageration in every form, it never really embraced good vs. chaos and really like subjective positions.


As for how "pseudo-medieval societies are portrayed", yes, there is also a huge difference. But i would chalk that one up to one being an American game and one being a European one. People who grew up between castles have other ideas about them than those only knowing them from movies. And while WH is full of details referrences to real histpry, it is very very far from being accurate in most topics. It is not something the creators cared much about. But well, being better at representing those times than D&D is a very low hurdle that pretty much every other European fantasy system passes as well.

As for "how extraordinary/powerful are characters", it is, well, the WH RPG lets people start often at the bottom, but the tabletop is full of superspecial powerful and elite characters and troops. That is not much of a difference.

[Anonymouswizard]

Speculation: Warhammer wanted to sell models, D&D wanted to sell books.

Thus why good v. evil was a bit muted in WH. You want them to buy all the factions, not just the "heroes".

It's actually simpler, they just need an excuse for every faction to fight itself, in case half the armies at a tournament are Empire or Dwarfs or whatever.


As for "how extraordinary/powerful are characters", it is, well, the WH RPG lets people start often at the bottom, but the tabletop is full of superspecial powerful and elite characters and troops. That is not much of a difference.

To be fair the latest edition has become more friendly to the idea that you might reach the heights of generic Lords of not special characters, primarily via not requiring trappings before advancing a career. It's not likely, and you're unlikely to have the careers of army book Heroes/Lords, but it is possible.


Warhammer also embraced comedy much more openly, both of the dark can and of the 'one faction is literally football hooligans' kind. It's grim and bitter, but it's humourously grim and bitter

Oh, and those orcs are an example of drawing upon different cultural references. Those dwarfs are your stereotypical proud Yorkshireman up to 11, not Scots or Scandinavians. Yes they are influenced by some of the same material, but they come from two quite different cultures.

[Mordar]

Eventually D&D caved in and split good and evil from law and chaos because most stories it drew inspiration from didn't care at all about the latter. WH however didn't really. It still uses order and chaos to group factions. It fully embraced punk aesthetics for the more chaotic side. And while it relevs in excess and essageration in every form, it never really embraced good vs. chaos and really like subjective positions.

Not sure I understand the "caved in" portion here. I started around 82, and by that point it was very much the characters expected as forces of good (in the law-chaos spectrum)...not because of (to my perception) "caving in" for PR but rather emulating the fiction that all of us read. We wanted to be Arthur/Lance/Galahad, Aragorn, Gandalf, Bilbo and the rest. Maybe a sprinkle of Mouser, or Conan...and once in a while some edgelord-before-edgelords-were-a-thing wanted to be Elric.

I think if nothing else, WHFRP (launching well after the even AD&D) was looking for a way to distinguish itself from (A)D&D and the host of other games that were already out there...so it went with grittiness aimed at an older demographic. That seems to fit my recollection of a handful of games at the time (Traveller, for instance) and likely fits the perception we had of the UK at the time...more serious, more fatalistic and more recently struggling with recession and economic issues. Again, if my memory serves.

Don't see historical fluency playing a big role here...more cultural feel than academic bent, IMO.

- M

[RandomPeasant]

Warhammer may call their bad guys Chaos, but there's not really any practical difference between that and Evil. Fighting a sexy lady daemon who serves the Chaos-aligned Slaanesh is not meaningfully different from fighting a sexy lady demon who serves the Evil-aligned (and also Chaos-aligned) Malcanthet.


Speculation: Warhammer wanted to sell models, D&D wanted to sell books.

Thus why good v. evil was a bit muted in WH. You want them to buy all the factions, not just the "heroes".

D&D sells plenty of books about Evil. Though, honestly, the majority of content in D&D is largely or entirely disconnected from the alignment system. You could take a book like Martial Power or Complete Adventurer and adapt it to work under any fantasy morality you wanted, or no fantasy morality at all, in maybe an hour.

[Eldan]

Warhammer may call their bad guys Chaos, but there's not really any practical difference between that and Evil. Fighting a sexy lady daemon who serves the Chaos-aligned Slaanesh is not meaningfully different from fighting a sexy lady demon who serves the Evil-aligned (and also Chaos-aligned) Malcanthet.


Bit edition dependent. It wasn't quite that clear early in Warhammer's history when there were still Gods of Law and the chaos gods had working societies and (small) positive aspects.

[Mordar]

D&D sells plenty of books about Evil. Though, honestly, the majority of content in D&D is largely or entirely disconnected from the alignment system. You could take a book like Martial Power or Complete Adventurer and adapt it to work under any fantasy morality you wanted, or no fantasy morality at all, in maybe an hour.

I think Saintheart probably was alluding to the idea that GW needs everybody to reasonably be able to fight against everybody...so having one group of armies that are all paragons of goodness would seem to limit the reasons why they would march to war against one another.

Aside: How many of those D&D books about evil present evil as the protagonist or PoV?

- M

[Anonymouswizard]

Bit edition dependent. It wasn't quite that clear early in Warhammer's history when there were still Gods of Law and the chaos gods had working societies and (small) positive aspects.

I'm fairly certain the Gods of Law are still around, they've just been pushed into the background as the forces of Chaos and Neutrality battle it out.


I think Saintheart probably was alluding to the idea that GW needs everybody to reasonably be able to fight against everybody...so having one group of armies that are all paragons of goodness would seem to limit the reasons why they would march to war against one another.

*Insert Stormcast Eternals jab*

Although honestly they might be universally flawed and split into radical factions, the setting pitch for Age of Sigmar bores me to death compared to the Old World. That and the fact that they turned Warhammer into the Lord of the Rings game

It's why I own WFRP4e and know absolutely nobody who owns Soulbound. One friend is even running Warhammer Fantasy games in GURPS, because it kind of works and he's doing things WFRP is unsuited for.

[RandomPeasant]

Bit edition dependent. It wasn't quite that clear early in Warhammer's history when there were still Gods of Law and the chaos gods had working societies and (small) positive aspects.

Sure, there are takes on Chaos that are not all villains. But honestly, there are takes on Evil that are like that too. Maybe not in D&D (though I can't speak to the full history of the game, and Eberron sort of gets there), but A Practical Guide to Evil has protagonists who are both explicitly Evil (in the same cosmological sense as people are in D&Dland), and largely reasonable people with positive qualities. I would submit that the conclusion to draw here is that any "these are the baddies" alignment system is probably a bad idea to put in your game, not that there's any real difference between Chaos and Evil as names for Team Black Hat.


I think Saintheart probably was alluding to the idea that GW needs everybody to reasonably be able to fight against everybody...so having one group of armies that are all paragons of goodness would seem to limit the reasons why they would march to war against one another.

Only for a fairly narrow understanding of "Good", I think. In A Practical Guide to Evil, there are plenty of instances of Good people (even Good nations) coming in to conflict, and unless your conception of Good is "absolute moral perfection, with universal agreement on all issues", it's pretty easy to come up with reasons why different groups of Good people might fight. Sure it's slightly harder than "the war god's cultists want to fight because they are pro-war", but it's not really difficult. Warhammer is grimderp because the authors wrote it to be grimderp, not because you need a setting like that for a wargame.


Aside: How many of those D&D books about evil present evil as the protagonist or PoV?

Most D&D books don't have a protagonist or PoV character, but there are plenty of player options that are explicitly Evil to one degree or another (though some would argue those are intended for NPCs, or designated Evil campaigns).

[Satinavian]

Warhammer may call their bad guys Chaos, but there's not really any practical difference between that and Evil. Fighting a sexy lady daemon who serves the Chaos-aligned Slaanesh is not meaningfully different from fighting a sexy lady demon who serves the Evil-aligned (and also Chaos-aligned) Malcanthet.
Yes, demons, sure.

But looking beyond those, the chaos factions are chaos barbarians (pseudo-Vikings, pseudo-Mongols and others) invading kingdoms and empires all the time, we have tribal beastmen and we have the eternally infighting and backstabbing Skaven. And yes, ok, chaos dwars. If we go beyond direct chaos warshippers and other factions regularly put on the chaos side when sorting people for order vs. chaos, we get all the carious kind of greenskins and their antics. Undead surprisingsly flipp-flopped here a couple of times and depending on whether the sub factions had their own army books.

Couple that with the general unpredictability of demons and the randomness of the Warp and i stand by my previous assassment that WH is more about Order vs. Chaos than about Good vs. Evil.

[MoiMagnus]

Couple that with the general unpredictability of demons and the randomness of the Warp and i stand by my previous assassment that WH is more about Order vs. Chaos than about Good vs. Evil.

In the D&D alignment, I'd put the conflict as a "Lawful Any (Good and Evil) VS Chaotic Evil".

[Vahnavoi]

I'd argue game mechanically, the split was due to company/business reasons, but thematically, it happened due to TSR deciding to market 2nd Edition AD&D to kids and thus emphasizing "players play Heroes, who are the Good Guys fighting the Bad Guys" narrative, with the company's official stance (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/) being that anything too spicy shouldn't be done (even if that stance was only hypocritically followed).

GW, we can deduce, had very different content guidelines, because they went balls deep with Chaos and really embraced "the world now doomed piece of crap" angle, culminating in full "grimderp", as a poster above called it. It's this choice to thematically emphasize Chaos that really made Warhammer into the thing it is today.

[Eldan]

Arguably, there's a few edge cases in lore of non-chaotic chaos. For example, there's at least one older lore text that says there's an officially tolerated Tzeentch cult amongst the courtiers and scholars of Cathay. And the chaos dwarves are pretty lawful evil, too.

[Anonymouswizard]

I'd argue game mechanically, the split was due to company/business reasons, but thematically, it happened due to TSR deciding to market 2nd Edition AD&D to kids and thus emphasizing "players play Heroes, who are the Good Guys fighting the Bad Guys" narrative, with the company's official stance (https://shaneplays.com/rpg-history-tsr-code-of-ethics-dd-comics-code-authority-rules/) being that anything too spicy shouldn't be done (even if that stance was only hypocritically followed).

GW, we can deduce, had very different content guidelines, because they went balls deep with Chaos and really embraced "the world now doomed piece of crap" angle, culminating in full "grimderp", as a poster above called it. It's this choice to thematically emphasize Chaos that really made Warhammer into the thing it is today.

There's also differences in what was viewed as acceptable for children, when I was growing up there were still fairly strong elements of 'teenagers play 40k, adults play Fantasy Battles', and WFRP was itself practically out of print.

I suspect that I Warhammer had been hit with social pressure to be more kid friendly it would have upped the black comedy rather than pushing the 'you play heroes' angle. Because that's what the more kid-oriiented version did

[Tanarii]

Couple that with the general unpredictability of demons and the randomness of the Warp and i stand by my previous assassment that WH is more about Order vs. Chaos than about Good vs. Evil.
This is far more the case in Warhammer 40k than in Warhammer FRP. The Empire in FRP isn't as repressive and the fight against corruption of Chaos is far more often framed as actually being a grimdark but ultimately heroic endeavor, as opposed to Inquisitor and Priestly propaganda just trying to frame massive excesses in that way.

[Anonymouswizard]

This is far more the case in Warhammer 40k than in Warhammer FRP. The Empire in FRP isn't as repressive and the fight against corruption of Chaos is far more often framed as actually being a grimdark but ultimately heroic endeavor, as opposed to Inquisitor and Priestly propaganda just trying to frame massive excesses in that way.

Don't forget that, unlike the fading Imperium, the Empire is actually technologically progressing on a roughly real-world time scale. They can't produce more Steam Tanks at the moment, but they'll work out how In three or four hundred years.

Of course Age of Sigmar removed that element, although I hear it reduced the grim dark and shone the light harder on the heroic fantasy aspects of the franchise.

[paladinofshojo]

Speculation: Warhammer wanted to sell models, D&D wanted to sell books.

Thus why good v. evil was a bit muted in WH. You want them to buy all the factions, not just the "heroes".

Probably why Warhammer focuses on group skirmishes and armies rather than individual heroes.

[Wraith]

Both D&D and Warhammer Fantasy started out life as Lord of the Rings knock-offs. This isn't meant to be an insult or criticism, it's just a fairly obvious summary of pretty much all of western fantasy that took place after about 1955. :smalltongue:

The difference is the country wherein the systems were made. The USA took LotR and to make it popular they added idealism. Britain, meanwhile, took LotR and in order to cover their tracks they added satire.

LotR with American Idealism made every character a hero, destined to fight evil and eventually to become legends in their own right, with riches and even god-hood within their grasp. Defeat evil, save princesses, and if you get stabbed along the way then don't worry - miraculous magical powers will fix that right up and you can go straight back to hero-ing.

Something something "Boomer Generation", something "American Dream", something something "Post-war exultation".

Meanwhile in late 1970's Britain, we had just had the worse decade since the last one. Mass poverty, record-breaking unemployment, political decline... We were not in the mood for happy-shiny stories about Knights saving damsels in distress. We wanted something as miserable and pissed off as we felt.
Enter Warhammer, wherein even the beautific elves were xenophobic jerks, the Hobbits were gluttonous and idle, and *if* you survived long enough after having filthy swords shoved into your guts to find a helpful wizard, the magic that might save you was expensive and unreliable. Also the guy casting it was going to slowly lose his soul and then come after yours.

We've both gotten better at either side over time, as media has become more global and Warhammer Fantasy chased the family friendliness of D&D which in turn was chasing the edginess of... well, probably something like Cyberpunk 2020 or Call of Cthulhu, to be fair, but the thought still counts and they haven't yet quite met in the middle. :smalltongue:

This happened in pretty much all media. The USA had The Dark Knight Returns, and we had Watchmen. They had RoboCop, we had Judge Dredd. They had The Avengers and the Justice League, we had The Authority. They had Shadowrun, we had SLA Industries.

In short, Warhammer is a British product, and we like our fantasy to be a little bit nasty. Call it a product of its time, or call it a self-awareness of our own long-term history, but we kind of know there's no such thing as a truly heroic hero, especially the ones who make their own stories.

[RandomPeasant]

In the D&D alignment, I'd put the conflict as a "Lawful Any (Good and Evil) VS Chaotic Evil".

Exactly. None of the factions being described there are things people would have any trouble putting down as the bad guys in a D&D game. Warhammer has different enemy factions than D&D has traditionally focused on, but if you replaced D&D's frog people villains with Warhammer's rat people villains, no one would think that you had totally broken the tone of the game.


Arguably, there's a few edge cases in lore of non-chaotic chaos. For example, there's at least one older lore text that says there's an officially tolerated Tzeentch cult amongst the courtiers and scholars of Cathay. And the chaos dwarves are pretty lawful evil, too.

I agree that the more nuanced takes on Chaos are better than the "Chaos is the bad people" takes the pervade the mainline lore (bizarrely, Dungeons: The Dragoning has one of the better ones), but at the same time that's true of D&D's Evil too. The Drow are more compelling if there's some kind of reason the Drow can give you why worshipping Lolth is a good idea, rather than them just being stuck with it for some reason. Compelling villains aren't the ones who kick the most puppies and eat the most babies, they're the ones whose motives are comprehensible to a regular person. Particularly for cults, whose whole thing is recruiting regular people to their team.

[Catullus64]

I think Warhammer Fantasy, at least the versions I'm familiar with, remains a pretty good example of the classic D&D law-vs-chaos alignment system. (My source of Warhammer lore is mainly 6th-Edition onwards, mind you.

The "good guys" of the setting are good not because of the moral character of their peoples, but because they are generally interested in preserving and advancing civilization. Likewise, even though the baddies are not universally morally bad, their goals are inevitably oriented towards the destruction of civilization. That, to me, is classic D&D morality to a tee: civilization, with all its faults, pitted against teeming hordes that bring destruction.

I think that the most interesting factions that don't quite fit this mold are the Lizardmen and the Dark Elves. In the case of the former, their vision of civilized order puts them in fierce opposition to the usual forces of destruction, but is so alien to the other forces of order that they can hardly be called allies of civilization. Dark Elves I think fit the nine-axis concept of Lawful Evil very well; they are monstrously cruel and hateful, but in a way very much defined by tradition, history, and the absolute authority of the Witch King.

[RandomPeasant]

The "good guys" of the setting are good not because of the moral character of their peoples, but because they are generally interested in preserving and advancing civilization.

I would say that for many definitions of "moral character" and "civilization", those are in fact the same thing. Organizing your society more efficiently so that you can grow enough grain that people no longer have to starve is "advancing civilization", and I don't consider a moral system where that is not "Good" to be particularly legitimate.

[Florian]

I would say that for many definitions of "moral character" and "civilization", those are in fact the same thing. Organizing your society more efficiently so that you can grow enough grain that people no longer have to starve is "advancing civilization", and I don't consider a moral system where that is not "Good" to be particularly legitimate.

I try to keep the answer as vague as possible. Currently, we have two prevailing mind-sets, let's call them soldier and scout.

Soldier is a defensive mind-set. It's either us or them, judgement is always harsh and instant, power is always distributes vertically, any change is resisted for as long as possible because change could upset the status quo and so on.

In context of this topic, those are the builders of stable and lasting societies, with the price been adherence to the rules, a lot of tradition and "well, this is just how we always did it" and a low tolerance when it comes to individuals that don't fit in.

Scout is a truth-based mind-set. Amongst other things, that means looking at things how they are instead of how we want them to be, power is distributed more horizontally and so on.

In context of this discussion, this can lead to people seeking to form "tribes" with like-minded individuals who share the same outlook on the truth and prevent forming a bigger, more homogenous society.

Warhammer Fantasy portrays this quite well. The Empire is a very stiffling place held together by shared culture and believes, it itself is deemed more important than the people who actually make up that empire.

[Satinavian]

I think that the most interesting factions that don't quite fit this mold are the Lizardmen and the Dark Elves. In the case of the former, their vision of civilized order puts them in fierce opposition to the usual forces of destruction, but is so alien to the other forces of order that they can hardly be called allies of civilization. Dark Elves I think fit the nine-axis concept of Lawful Evil very well; they are monstrously cruel and hateful, but in a way very much defined by tradition, history, and the absolute authority of the Witch King.
I don't see much problems seeing Lizardmen as archetypical order faction. Hierarchy, tradition, clinging to really old codes and dedicating themselfs to the assumed plans of the Old Ones... Just because their cities got an Mayincatec look doesn't mean they are not civilized or dedicated to order.

However the one faction i think really breaks the mold are Wood Elves. With their civilization hate, their regular "hunts" and their close-to.natural ccycles shtick they would fit far better on the chaotuc side of things.

[Florian]

I don't see much problems seeing Lizardmen as archetypical order faction. Hierarchy, tradition, clinging to really old codes and dedicating themselfs to the assumed plans of the Old Ones... Just because their cities got an Mayincatec look doesn't mean they are not civilized or dedicated to order.

However the one faction i think really breaks the mold are Wood Elves. With their civilization hate, their regular "hunts" and their close-to.natural ccycles shtick they would fit far better on the chaotuc side of things.

Hm? You are contradiction yourself there. Same as with some of the older gods that seem to be a little hide-bound and old fashioned, Wood Elves just cling to their traditional ways and don't see any gain in making progress.

[Zombimode]

Maybe there is a difference between Warhammer FB as depicted in the tabletop game and as depicted in the roleplaying game.

The tabletop setting is too over the top and too focused on facilitating endless war to be taken seriously. The main problem is (both WHFB and 40k) that there is no hope. The world is doomed and there is nothing you can do to change that. My response to that is: then why should I care?

None of the stories I'm interessted at would work in the Warhammer settings. At least in the tabletop version.

Maybe the RPG version is more open and nuanced.

[Satinavian]

Maybe the RPG version is more open and nuanced.The RPG version is extremely empire centric. While there are setting books for other factions, those never got nearly the same support.

[Eldan]

Maybe there is a difference between Warhammer FB as depicted in the tabletop game and as depicted in the roleplaying game.

The tabletop setting is too over the top and too focused on facilitating endless war to be taken seriously. The main problem is (both WHFB and 40k) that there is no hope. The world is doomed and there is nothing you can do to change that. My response to that is: then why should I care?

None of the stories I'm interessted at would work in the Warhammer settings. At least in the tabletop version.

Maybe the RPG version is more open and nuanced.

Yeah, there's like seven different Warhammer Fantasy settings. Different Warhammer tabletop editions have very different tones. The RPG has a very different tone and level of detail from either, and the RPG had four different publishers/writers, GW themselves, Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight and Cubicle 7, and they all did very different things with it, too. Plus, both games have been around for almost 40 years now.

Basically, this is not modern GW:
https://i.imgur.com/8FiJOHS.jpeg

As for no hope... yeah, that's not given in most Warhammer Fantasy versions. Massive Chaos Invasions have beaten back several times. The Empire has held for 2000 years. They have collapsed more than once, they are riddled with cultists, but they are holding. And technology is advancing.

Things are getting better in many ways, even if the current Renaissance setting means student riots, religious war between inquisition and heretics, plague, etc. But they also have printing presses, human rights movements, universities and the first newspapers. And the world is getting smaller and more connected, there's now a Cathayan ambassador in Altdorf.

[Florian]

The main problem is (both WHFB and 40k) that there is no hope. The world is doomed and there is nothing you can do to change that. My response to that is: then why should I care?

None of the stories I'm interessted at would work in the Warhammer settings.

The RPG material caters to both, complete gonzo over-the-top and very realistic style.

Therefore, the whole "There is no hope"-thingie is a little bit harder to answer, but it's also very thought-provoking and is a good source to work more mature themes from.

Basically, the Empire is and has always been its own source of doom. It's this huge monolith that started to just preserve itself and the status quo at any and all costs, buying stability at the price of stagnation and not really being able to handle dissent and differences.

For example, the majority of the human population are simple serf either toiling for their respective aristocrats or are being drafted into the army to fight the Chaos and Ork hordes. So it's basically no wonder that various cults spring up as quick as they can be stamped out because the offer those people freedom, individuality and so on.

[Glorthindel]

Massive Chaos Invasions have beaten back several times. The Empire has held for 2000 years. They have collapsed more than once, they are riddled with cultists, but they are holding. And technology is advancing.

Things are getting better in many ways, even if the current Renaissance setting means student riots, religious war between inquisition and heretics, plague, etc. But they also have printing presses, human rights movements, universities and the first newspapers. And the world is getting smaller and more connected, there's now a Cathayan ambassador in Altdorf.

I think this is what made me so angry about Age of Sigmar. The Empire (and Bretonnia, Kislev, and the other centres of civilisation) had hope. Sure, things were bleak and unpleasant, but the line was being held. Then GW went "**** that, everyone dies" (apart from the half a dozen named characters we still want to make models for, they can still be around). Sure, you can ignore this stuff (I personally am now running WFRP in my own made up "after the End Times" where some things survived), but it does leave a sour taste knowing that canonically, nothing a WFRP character can do anymore matters, cos they are all going to die, no matter what.

[Anonymouswizard]

I think this is what made me so angry about Age of Sigmar. The Empire (and Bretonnia, Kislev, and the other centres of civilisation) had hope. Sure, things were bleak and unpleasant, but the line was being held. Then GW went "**** that, everyone dies" (apart from the half a dozen named characters we still want to make models for, they can still be around). Sure, you can ignore this stuff (I personally am now running WFRP in my own made up "after the End Times" where some things survived), but it does leave a sour taste knowing that canonically, nothing a WFRP character can do anymore matters, cos they are all going to die, no matter what.

Didn't they retcon Storm of Chaos in order to have the End Times happen? Now SoC is just before my time, but the End Times leave a sour taste in my mouth.

I see nothing of the things I like in Warhammer in Age of Sigmar. Even it's RPG seems to be about playing your favourite model, whereas last time I sat down to roll up WFRP I ended up with a leather worker. Made me wish it was for a game, I had decent weaponskill and could make leather jerkins for everybody without armour during downtime.

[Glorthindel]

Didn't they retcon Storm of Chaos in order to have the End Times happen?

Yeah, which is particularly awkward for WFRP since 2nd ed was specifically set in the aftermath of the Storm of Chaos, and a lot of the adventures and the setting descriptions actively reference it and its events.

[Eldan]

Didn't they retcon Storm of Chaos in order to have the End Times happen? Now SoC is just before my time, but the End Times leave a sour taste in my mouth.

I see nothing of the things I like in Warhammer in Age of Sigmar. Even it's RPG seems to be about playing your favourite model, whereas last time I sat down to roll up WFRP I ended up with a leather worker. Made me wish it was for a game, I had decent weaponskill and could make leather jerkins for everybody without armour during downtime.

They retconned Storm of Chaos very soon after it happend. Storm of Chaos was Archaon's big invasion, and it failed. Instead of going with that and writing a new threat, they just rolled the setting back to "Archaon's big invasion is happening soon."

Which is a shame, really, since Storm of Chaos had some fascinating political setup in the Imperium. (For example, someone in the Imperial leadership had the possible reincarnation of their god assassinated and there were four or five good suspects.)

[Catullus64]

The "no hope" thing has always actually struck me as a positive of the setting. I appreciate the thematic core of inevitable decline, of heroic resistance even in the face of impossible odds, of civilization making its last stand against the darkness. And in Fantasy, the good guys are just good enough for that heroism to feel worthwhile, unlike the grotesque spectacle that is the Imperium of Man.

My problem with the End Times wasn't the mere fact of it, the destruction of the world and the victory of the Dark Gods, but the mind-boggling amount of derp with which it was executed, the number of character derailments and posterior-pulls needed to reach GW's intended outcome, the number of factions and characters unceremoniously killed off. I would have loved an End Times in which the forces of destruction secure the physical victory, but the forces of order win the moral victory even as they fall.

[Talakeal]

Didn't they retcon Storm of Chaos in order to have the End Times happen? Now SoC is just before my time, but the End Times leave a sour taste in my mouth.

I see nothing of the things I like in Warhammer in Age of Sigmar. Even it's RPG seems to be about playing your favourite model, whereas last time I sat down to roll up WFRP I ended up with a leather worker. Made me wish it was for a game, I had decent weaponskill and could make leather jerkins for everybody without armour during downtime.

SoC was quietly ignored.

Very little that occurs in End Times actually contradicts Storm of Chaos, mostly just the circumstances of Valten’s death iirc, so its easy enough to rework the setting so that both happen if you want.