The setting itself is tailored such that the IoM is the only reasonable form of government, and there is more freedom tolerated in the IoM than our current western regime. Total homogenization and control over every aspect of life is neither desired nor pursued by the Imperium. Most planets are left to operate in any way they see fit as long they pay their taxes and don't mess with chaos or xenos, although some interaction with xenos is tolerated. The Imperium puts all its effort into protecting its borders and citizens.
Yup. In a world where demons manifest in physical reality (much like our own), the only reasonable position is to aggressively repudiate them and destroy them.
Call me a Pessimist Pete, but I think this attack vector might actually be the one that allows them to do meaningful damage. We've seen GW come out and make statements on issues they didn't need to. We've seen how widespread and deep the Facism freakout has been over the last few years.
Maybe, but it could be suicidal for the franchise. For as much as progs scream and piss about the Imperium, not only is more popular than all other factions in 40k combined, but the entire universe is built to justify its brutality so that it doesn't become a parody of itself.
Progs have been occupying the 40k hobby for years, but their attempts at subversion have always been weak. The problem for them is that the themes of 40k are reactionary at their core, so it's difficult for progs to get their proboscises in when the entire franchise is corrosive to them.
This article is a good example. It's just grasping wildly at straws. Look at their "popular channels." They're tiny by 40k standards. It's pathetic.
It would absolutely be suicidal for the franchise. They're already on thin ice as it is, their last financial report was pretty damning if you get a chance to read it. Their streaming service flopped on itself and it seems like even the scalpers have backed away considering you can buy brand new product at fire sale prices because of how induated they've made the market. That's not even touching the elephant in the room which is 3d printing and that's getting cheaper and more user friendly by the day.
Their core audience is males with a high disposable discretionary income, so if you alienate that you're going out of business. You can't just blue ocean stragety your way out of that, like you will never get women or these progressives to buy $60 models and have them sit down and paint them for hours, and then play an autistic wargame that goes on for at least three hours at the lower point values.
If it is suicide for the franchise... oh well. 40k itself is a franchise built on a setting, lore and goodwill of people who haven't worked for Games Workshop for decades. The company is one of the most dysfunctional IP holders in gaming today.
If they die at least there's a chance the IP would get bought by a company that pretends to give a damn.
If they die at least there's a chance the IP would get bought by a company that pretends to give a damn.
In all likelihood it'd be Hasbro. We've seen how they've handled D&D and MTG, making piecemeal changes here and there in a futile effort to appease clown-haired cunts. If they got full ownership of Warhammer they'd have to do a hard reboot of the whole thing.
Hasbro might buy it. Might. They're not having a good year, and they've been burned on a lot of acquisitions before. They're even pushing to integrate DnD into an always online paid subscription for goodness sakes, that's how desperate they are for revenue.
As for Magic, the less said the better. The game never recovered from the whole "whoops turns out our tournament judges are heavily staffed with felony sex criminals" thing.
40k itself is a franchise built on a setting, lore and goodwill of people who haven't worked for Games Workshop for decades.
Ain't that the truth. I got out when the awesome eldritch horror got turned into Space Egyptians because I could tell then that things were pivoting in a shitty direction and everything I've seen when I've checked back since has vindicated my choice.
There is one drawbridge GW cannot drop, and that is the nature of the hobby itself.
Casual consoomer retards are not going put down $100+ for unassembled, unpainted plastic soldiers, only to then be told they need another $100 of paints, to then spend two months painting up an army, to learn 400 pages of rules, and then possibly wait another two months to get a decent game in.
Tabletop wargaming is NEVER going to attract any significant quantity of women/NPC's or anyone else that isn't deep, deep into delayed gratification.
It literally will not matter what GW do with the fluff. The hobby itself is kryptonite to the very people these fags fantasize about attracting to it.
That's not the one that concerns me. I don't care whether or not leftists engage with the hobby at the level of player and customer, I care whether they're the ones writing the books and making PR decisions. And even if they don't engage on that level, GW's already licensed out their IP for 40K Funko Pops, so extracting money from "casual consoomer retards" as a lifestyle brand clearly isn't beneath them.
Yeah but even if they burned the franchise down tomorrow there is still 35+ years of content out there they can't touch and that's just 40k and not even touching Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. The amount of books, magazines, videogames, editions of the game, models is staggering. You could read a new book or play a new game every day and you'd probably die before you get to end of it.
Yeah but even still the setting wasn't erased from existance. You can still read the books, buy models and even play Warhammer Fantasy with your friends. The fans have also made at least three seperate "9th Edition" efforts and army lists for every single army mentioned in the fluff.
That's also ignoring the elephant that GW has reversed themselves and they are making The Old World and will support that with years of content.
I get your point, but fanmade 9th edition isn't the same as the official product. No major tournaments, no offical support, less clubs and players, etc.
The only reason I never got into Warhammer 40k is I don’t feel my painting skills are good enough. I love the lore but don’t want to drop the scratch on an army and fuck up the painting on it
I just started getting in a few months ago and I've been anxious about messing up my paint jobs. As long as you do some research on how to paint, I'm sure you'll do a good job. If anything, you can repaint them or strip the paint and start over.
I don't even know when I'll get to play with my models on the tabletop but just building and painting is already very enjoyable. I found that it's nice to have a hobby working with my hands and that isn't focused on looking at a screen.
Painting is not as hard as it looks, and even mediocre paint jobs will still look good in numbers.
If you're nervous about wrecking pricey models, you could try sourcing some of the old metal minis from the 80's and 90's - they're smaller, simpler, and crucially, made of metal, so you can dunk them in the nastiest paint stripper you can find as many times as you like and you won't melt them.
only if you go by prageryew definition that only uses how much control government has over economic policies and disregard anything else, like you know, actual politics.
Individualism, natural rights, and liberty, ya goon. The right of the little guy to be left the fuck alone to not have to engage with the machinations of sociopaths, or collections of cultists.
Says you. I was born in a Country whose founding documents state that there are such things as natural Rights. They were already Fought for, and that is proved by the existence of this Country. I may have to fight to uphold that, but those Rights are my birthright by virtue of being born here. Blood was spilled. It may be spilled further, but it was spilled, to sign this contract.
The part that confuses me is why, besides simple greed, they would ever want to steal a franchise like this one. We're talking about a setting where one of the four demon gods of literal not metaphorical hell, was created by degenerate sexual behavior. A setting where the divinely inspired leader of the human species is heavily implied to be Jesus of Nazareth. A setting where the best case outcome for deviancy of any kind is a bullet to the back of the head, because the alternative is being burned alive amidst uproarious laughter.
This is the anti left. The fact that they're after 40k so hard lends credence to the idea that the left simply seeks to corrupt for corruption's sake and not for any actual coherent material goal.
Because its popular among people they don't like. That's it. Even if most people don't play the tabletop, they know of the franchise and likely played one of the games.
Their enemies cannot have anything whatsoever, so everything must be taken from them and ruined enough that they abandon it.
Your talking about a setting where the more freedom you have, the more you risk a psyker slipping through the cracks, getting possessed and cracking your planet in two as demons flood in and begin to rape and kill everyone (aka LA)
Here's the problem with 40K in a nutshell: Games Workshop never cared. They never cared about the lore, which they deemed non-canon, they never cared about the fanbase, which they sought to milk like cows, and they never cared about the game, making it a pay-to-win scheme where the newer units get buffed while older units get nerfed. Games Workshop always saw this whole thing as an exercise in getting more money. Take a good look as to how they handle their lore:
"With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. [...] Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
Gav Thorpe, Lead Designer, Games Workshop
"It all stems from the assumption that there's a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or 'true' representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."
Andy Hoare, Game Designer GW
"There is no canon. There are several hundred creators all adding to the melting pot of the IP."
Aaron Dembski-Bowden, co-author Horus Heresy series
.
"Keep in mind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are worlds where half truths, lies, propaganda, politics, legends and myths exist. The absolute truth which is implied when you talk about "canonical background" will never be known because of this. Everything we know about these worlds is from the viewpoints of people in them which are as a result incomplete and even sometimes incorrect. The truth is mutable, debatable and lost as the victors write the history…
Here's our standard line: Yes it's all official, but remember that we're reporting back from a time where stories aren't always true, or at least 100% accurate. if it has the 40K logo on it, it exists in the 40K universe. Or it was a legend that may well have happened. Or a rumour that may or may not have any truth behind it. Let's put it another way: anything with a 40K logo on it is as official as any Codex... and at least as crammed full of rumours, distorted legends and half-truths.
I think the real problem for me, and I speak for no other, is that the topic as a "big question" doesn't matter. It's all as true as everything else, and all just as false/half-remembered/sort-of-true. The answer you are seeking is "Yes and no" or perhaps "Sometimes". And for me, that's the end of it. Now, ask us some specifics, eg can Black Templars spit acid and we can answer that one, and many others. But again note that answer may well be "sometimes" or "it varies" or "depends". But is it all true? Yes and no. Even though some of it is plainly contradictory? Yes and no. Do we deliberately contradict, retell with differences? Yes we do. Is the newer the stuff the truer it is? Yes and no. In some cases is it true that the older stuff is the truest? Yes and no. Maybe and sometimes. Depends and it varies.
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It's a decaying universe without GPS and galaxy-wide communication, where precious facts are clung to long after they have been changed out of all recognition. Read A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller, about monks toiling to hold onto facts in the aftermath of a nuclear war; that nails it for me. Sorry, too much splurge here. Not meant to sound stroppy. To attempt answer the initial question: What is GW's definition of canon? Perhaps we don't have one. Sometimes and maybe. Or perhaps we do and I'm not telling you."
Marc Gascoigne, former head and chief editor of the Black Library
And of course, the original 40K was made as a woke series in the first place. 40K lore author Rick Priestley talks about how brutal and self-deluding the Space Marines are, which is why he is mystified as to why the new lore treats them like heroes:
"To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they're brutal, but they're also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don't know whether he's alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There's no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft. It's got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten."
Rick Priestley, Warhammer 40K lore author and creator, in a December 2015 interview with Unplugged Games
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40K as an IP has one of the most leftist, SJW inspirations a series could ever have. More so than Star Trek. More so than Disney Star Wars. Their whole premise for 40K is that the religious nationalist types, as exemplified by the Imperium of Man, are bad. Their Empire is a den of superstition, authoritarianism, and backwards-ass thinking, they shoot themselves in the foot so many times, from the Horus Heresy, to the regime of Goge Vandire, to the 10K years of suffering, chaos, war, and poverty that the Imperium went through because they're led by retarded religious nationalists who shoot anyone that can be a potential ally and don't even bother advancing their tech over 10K years. That's why things are so grimdark: not because of the threats humanity faces, but because humanity is controlled by religious nationalist types who have their heads so far up their power-armored butts they're screwing humanity just as much as the aliens, daemons, and heretics are.
For 10K years, they've been using the same stupid bolters, flying the same stupid starships, and leading the same large masses of cannon fodder armed with flashlights, all because their religion makes them backwards and retarded, and their Imperium is a bastion of superstition, infighting, callous murder and death, as well as a massive waste of human life. That's basically the opinion these people have about religious and nationalist regimes: they take the worst of the Black Legend, and they amplify it with the worst of the Industrial Era and put it in space. Note how the "enlightened" and "wise" Emperor of mankind is anti-religious, while the people who turned his Imperium into a superstitious nightmare are religious as all hell. You don't get any more leftist than by having your Space Messiah be an anti-religious zealot who hates being worshiped, but is turned into a god by religious nutjobs seeking control over the populace.
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And all of this because the original writers of 40K were a bunch of leftist nancyboys who were butthurt over Margaret Thatcher and the conservatives having power in England during the 80s. Thatcher and her pals were nowhere near as authoritarian as the Imperium of Man in 40K or the Judges of Judge Dredd, but that's how the leftists who wrote 40K, Judge Dredd, and Watchmen saw it. Some lady rises to power as Prime Minister, with political opinions to the right of Karl Marx, and all these writers, from Alan Moore to Rick Priestley, all start using their works to whine about how such a government is potentially fascist. Basically, the root of 40K and many other British sci-fi works from the 80s is how anyone who isn't a socialist is a Nazi at heart waiting to awaken, just as modern-day SJWs call people Nazis for not agreeing with their left-wing propaganda.
Not to mention that Games Workshop is still based in England, a country so dipped in Soy you might as well sell it in an Asian food market. Of course they were going to go this direction. Of course they were going to appease SJWs. The whole "grimdark" phase was just to show bad things are under right-wingers: how bad things are in the Imperium because of people like them, how the people would rather turn to daemon worship or to the Tau rather than remain under Imperium control, how the war is being run so bad because "boo-hoo, right wing religious nationalists throw masses of soldiers into battle without caring for their lives!" Notice how the socialist Tau can actually give humans a good life, along with permanent contraception so they won't have to worry about kids-something Europeans love with them focusing more on contraception and sex without kids rather than raising the next generation.
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If GW can chuck the whole "grimdark" thing off the boat to sell generic Space Marines to kids, then they'll do it, especially since kids have parents with fat wallets that spend a lot on things like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Fortnite, while the adult fans range from penny-pinchers who don't like the new prices, people who whine about GW not being consistent with the lore, and people who make their own models. So of course, throwing away an older fanbase for one that has more capital is something GW can and will do, especially since the newer fans are closer to GW's desired SJW demographic, while many of the older fans are the same religious and nationalist folks that the OG 40K was trying to lampoon, which is ironic in itself.
The subversion of 40k can be stopped if fans of the franchise refuse to recognize anti-canonical subversion by GamesWorkshop. There are enough autistic 40k nerds that this should be possible.
For example, lets say GamesWorkshop introduces female Primaris marines. A number of 40k fans cry heresy. At a certain point the outcry becomes significant enough that the 40k Lords of Terra, a council of (some number) highly respected 40k personalities, convene. They cast votes on this issue: Is GamesWorkshop's introduction of female Primaris marines a heretical element?
If no, the element is accepted as canonical. If yes, then the 40k Council considers this element of lore non-canonical. Council members must come to an agreement on how this element is treated, and then update a website that collects lore and rulings related to lore. This resource is maintained solely by the community and is the primary way of tracking the fan-canonical universe.
Eventually if Games Workshop pushes things enough, then the universes diverge. Fortunately, the efforts of the Council up until this point are essentially a version-history of the universe. If GW diverges enough that the universes are no longer compatible, then fans have essentially created their own universe and could easily file the serial numbers off and launch the fan-universe as its own IP.
Way to completely misread "A Canticle for Leibowitz" in which a small group of passionate and faithful devotees successfully reinvent civilization and herald mankinds journey to the stars lol.
The abandonment rate of Warhammer is staggering and they are just committing suicide like the trannies they want to emulate now. If you play Warhammer (fantasy here) forge your own universe canon and print your own units, update your own rules like I did.
And watch them throw a hissy fit if you suggest they make their own characters or find a hobby they already enjoy instead of entering a hobby and demanding that it change
The setting itself is tailored such that the IoM is the only reasonable form of government, and there is more freedom tolerated in the IoM than our current western regime. Total homogenization and control over every aspect of life is neither desired nor pursued by the Imperium. Most planets are left to operate in any way they see fit as long they pay their taxes and don't mess with chaos or xenos, although some interaction with xenos is tolerated. The Imperium puts all its effort into protecting its borders and citizens.
Thought of the day: “An open mind is like a fortress with it’s gates unbarred and it’s doors unguarded.”
Me reading that at 14: lolol imperium catholic space nazis hurr durr 🥴
Me reading that at 29: You know that's actually pretty salient. 🤔 "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out."
Yup. In a world where demons manifest in physical reality (much like our own), the only reasonable position is to aggressively repudiate them and destroy them.
Call me a Pessimist Pete, but I think this attack vector might actually be the one that allows them to do meaningful damage. We've seen GW come out and make statements on issues they didn't need to. We've seen how widespread and deep the Facism freakout has been over the last few years.
Gatekeep or be Gatekept.
Maybe, but it could be suicidal for the franchise. For as much as progs scream and piss about the Imperium, not only is more popular than all other factions in 40k combined, but the entire universe is built to justify its brutality so that it doesn't become a parody of itself.
Progs have been occupying the 40k hobby for years, but their attempts at subversion have always been weak. The problem for them is that the themes of 40k are reactionary at their core, so it's difficult for progs to get their proboscises in when the entire franchise is corrosive to them.
This article is a good example. It's just grasping wildly at straws. Look at their "popular channels." They're tiny by 40k standards. It's pathetic.
It would absolutely be suicidal for the franchise. They're already on thin ice as it is, their last financial report was pretty damning if you get a chance to read it. Their streaming service flopped on itself and it seems like even the scalpers have backed away considering you can buy brand new product at fire sale prices because of how induated they've made the market. That's not even touching the elephant in the room which is 3d printing and that's getting cheaper and more user friendly by the day.
Their core audience is males with a high disposable discretionary income, so if you alienate that you're going out of business. You can't just blue ocean stragety your way out of that, like you will never get women or these progressives to buy $60 models and have them sit down and paint them for hours, and then play an autistic wargame that goes on for at least three hours at the lower point values.
If it is suicide for the franchise... oh well. 40k itself is a franchise built on a setting, lore and goodwill of people who haven't worked for Games Workshop for decades. The company is one of the most dysfunctional IP holders in gaming today.
If they die at least there's a chance the IP would get bought by a company that pretends to give a damn.
In all likelihood it'd be Hasbro. We've seen how they've handled D&D and MTG, making piecemeal changes here and there in a futile effort to appease clown-haired cunts. If they got full ownership of Warhammer they'd have to do a hard reboot of the whole thing.
Hasbro might buy it. Might. They're not having a good year, and they've been burned on a lot of acquisitions before. They're even pushing to integrate DnD into an always online paid subscription for goodness sakes, that's how desperate they are for revenue.
As for Magic, the less said the better. The game never recovered from the whole "whoops turns out our tournament judges are heavily staffed with felony sex criminals" thing.
Ain't that the truth. I got out when the awesome eldritch horror got turned into Space Egyptians because I could tell then that things were pivoting in a shitty direction and everything I've seen when I've checked back since has vindicated my choice.
I got out in 4th edition, after Gav Thorpe ass fucked the codex balance so badly. The game's army roster variety never recovered.
Step 0 of gatekeeping is to be the man holding the gate. I don't own the IP or the company, so I can't force GW not to drop the drawbridge.
There is one drawbridge GW cannot drop, and that is the nature of the hobby itself.
Casual consoomer retards are not going put down $100+ for unassembled, unpainted plastic soldiers, only to then be told they need another $100 of paints, to then spend two months painting up an army, to learn 400 pages of rules, and then possibly wait another two months to get a decent game in.
Tabletop wargaming is NEVER going to attract any significant quantity of women/NPC's or anyone else that isn't deep, deep into delayed gratification.
It literally will not matter what GW do with the fluff. The hobby itself is kryptonite to the very people these fags fantasize about attracting to it.
That's not the one that concerns me. I don't care whether or not leftists engage with the hobby at the level of player and customer, I care whether they're the ones writing the books and making PR decisions. And even if they don't engage on that level, GW's already licensed out their IP for 40K Funko Pops, so extracting money from "casual consoomer retards" as a lifestyle brand clearly isn't beneath them.
Yeah but even if they burned the franchise down tomorrow there is still 35+ years of content out there they can't touch and that's just 40k and not even touching Warhammer Fantasy and Age of Sigmar. The amount of books, magazines, videogames, editions of the game, models is staggering. You could read a new book or play a new game every day and you'd probably die before you get to end of it.
That will lead to the same problem that Total Warhammer had. The setting that people were invested in simply not being there anymore.
Yeah but even still the setting wasn't erased from existance. You can still read the books, buy models and even play Warhammer Fantasy with your friends. The fans have also made at least three seperate "9th Edition" efforts and army lists for every single army mentioned in the fluff.
That's also ignoring the elephant that GW has reversed themselves and they are making The Old World and will support that with years of content.
I get your point, but fanmade 9th edition isn't the same as the official product. No major tournaments, no offical support, less clubs and players, etc.
The only reason I never got into Warhammer 40k is I don’t feel my painting skills are good enough. I love the lore but don’t want to drop the scratch on an army and fuck up the painting on it
I just started getting in a few months ago and I've been anxious about messing up my paint jobs. As long as you do some research on how to paint, I'm sure you'll do a good job. If anything, you can repaint them or strip the paint and start over.
I don't even know when I'll get to play with my models on the tabletop but just building and painting is already very enjoyable. I found that it's nice to have a hobby working with my hands and that isn't focused on looking at a screen.
Painting is not as hard as it looks, and even mediocre paint jobs will still look good in numbers.
If you're nervous about wrecking pricey models, you could try sourcing some of the old metal minis from the 80's and 90's - they're smaller, simpler, and crucially, made of metal, so you can dunk them in the nastiest paint stripper you can find as many times as you like and you won't melt them.
sounds like heretic talk.
also, fascism isn't right wing no matter how much you keep saying it is.
based
only if you go by prageryew definition that only uses how much control government has over economic policies and disregard anything else, like you know, actual politics.
there is no conservative argument for fascism. it's inherently radical and revolutionary.
what are you even conserving? muh gdp?
Individualism, natural rights, and liberty, ya goon. The right of the little guy to be left the fuck alone to not have to engage with the machinations of sociopaths, or collections of cultists.
There's no right to that, you have to fight to have those
Says you. I was born in a Country whose founding documents state that there are such things as natural Rights. They were already Fought for, and that is proved by the existence of this Country. I may have to fight to uphold that, but those Rights are my birthright by virtue of being born here. Blood was spilled. It may be spilled further, but it was spilled, to sign this contract.
muh rugged individualism, forget about blood and culture, flood the country with Mexicans and Africans, i don't care, leave me alone with muh freedom!
muh muh muh bluh bluh bluh try not sounding like a retard
Fucking Slaneshi cultists. Where is the Inquisition when you need them.
Is there an actual game/gaming website that does reviews and talks about games that isn't pozzed faggotry?
Nope.
The part that confuses me is why, besides simple greed, they would ever want to steal a franchise like this one. We're talking about a setting where one of the four demon gods of literal not metaphorical hell, was created by degenerate sexual behavior. A setting where the divinely inspired leader of the human species is heavily implied to be Jesus of Nazareth. A setting where the best case outcome for deviancy of any kind is a bullet to the back of the head, because the alternative is being burned alive amidst uproarious laughter.
This is the anti left. The fact that they're after 40k so hard lends credence to the idea that the left simply seeks to corrupt for corruption's sake and not for any actual coherent material goal.
Because its popular among people they don't like. That's it. Even if most people don't play the tabletop, they know of the franchise and likely played one of the games.
Their enemies cannot have anything whatsoever, so everything must be taken from them and ruined enough that they abandon it.
It's never about things they want to do, it's about taking away their enemy's ability to do anything at all.
It's about taking the things you like away from you, and making all popular things theirs.
"Warhammer is for everyone. Except you. And you. And you. And you. And..."
Your talking about a setting where the more freedom you have, the more you risk a psyker slipping through the cracks, getting possessed and cracking your planet in two as demons flood in and begin to rape and kill everyone (aka LA)
Pasting a rant I saw elsewhere. ahem
Here's the problem with 40K in a nutshell: Games Workshop never cared. They never cared about the lore, which they deemed non-canon, they never cared about the fanbase, which they sought to milk like cows, and they never cared about the game, making it a pay-to-win scheme where the newer units get buffed while older units get nerfed. Games Workshop always saw this whole thing as an exercise in getting more money. Take a good look as to how they handle their lore:
"With Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000, the notion of canon is a fallacy. [...] Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 exist as tens of thousands of overlapping realities in the imaginations of games developers, writers, readers and gamers. None of those interpretations is wrong."
Gav Thorpe, Lead Designer, Games Workshop
"It all stems from the assumption that there's a binding contract between author and reader to adhere to some nonexistent subjective construct or 'true' representation of the setting. There is no such contract, and no such objective truth."
Andy Hoare, Game Designer GW
"There is no canon. There are several hundred creators all adding to the melting pot of the IP."
Aaron Dembski-Bowden, co-author Horus Heresy series .
"Keep in mind Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 are worlds where half truths, lies, propaganda, politics, legends and myths exist. The absolute truth which is implied when you talk about "canonical background" will never be known because of this. Everything we know about these worlds is from the viewpoints of people in them which are as a result incomplete and even sometimes incorrect. The truth is mutable, debatable and lost as the victors write the history…
Here's our standard line: Yes it's all official, but remember that we're reporting back from a time where stories aren't always true, or at least 100% accurate. if it has the 40K logo on it, it exists in the 40K universe. Or it was a legend that may well have happened. Or a rumour that may or may not have any truth behind it. Let's put it another way: anything with a 40K logo on it is as official as any Codex... and at least as crammed full of rumours, distorted legends and half-truths.
I think the real problem for me, and I speak for no other, is that the topic as a "big question" doesn't matter. It's all as true as everything else, and all just as false/half-remembered/sort-of-true. The answer you are seeking is "Yes and no" or perhaps "Sometimes". And for me, that's the end of it. Now, ask us some specifics, eg can Black Templars spit acid and we can answer that one, and many others. But again note that answer may well be "sometimes" or "it varies" or "depends". But is it all true? Yes and no. Even though some of it is plainly contradictory? Yes and no. Do we deliberately contradict, retell with differences? Yes we do. Is the newer the stuff the truer it is? Yes and no. In some cases is it true that the older stuff is the truest? Yes and no. Maybe and sometimes. Depends and it varies. .
It's a decaying universe without GPS and galaxy-wide communication, where precious facts are clung to long after they have been changed out of all recognition. Read A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter M Miller, about monks toiling to hold onto facts in the aftermath of a nuclear war; that nails it for me. Sorry, too much splurge here. Not meant to sound stroppy. To attempt answer the initial question: What is GW's definition of canon? Perhaps we don't have one. Sometimes and maybe. Or perhaps we do and I'm not telling you."
Marc Gascoigne, former head and chief editor of the Black Library
And of course, the original 40K was made as a woke series in the first place. 40K lore author Rick Priestley talks about how brutal and self-deluding the Space Marines are, which is why he is mystified as to why the new lore treats them like heroes:
"To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic. The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they're brutal, but they're also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don't know whether he's alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There's no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft. It's got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten."
Rick Priestley, Warhammer 40K lore author and creator, in a December 2015 interview with Unplugged Games .
40K as an IP has one of the most leftist, SJW inspirations a series could ever have. More so than Star Trek. More so than Disney Star Wars. Their whole premise for 40K is that the religious nationalist types, as exemplified by the Imperium of Man, are bad. Their Empire is a den of superstition, authoritarianism, and backwards-ass thinking, they shoot themselves in the foot so many times, from the Horus Heresy, to the regime of Goge Vandire, to the 10K years of suffering, chaos, war, and poverty that the Imperium went through because they're led by retarded religious nationalists who shoot anyone that can be a potential ally and don't even bother advancing their tech over 10K years. That's why things are so grimdark: not because of the threats humanity faces, but because humanity is controlled by religious nationalist types who have their heads so far up their power-armored butts they're screwing humanity just as much as the aliens, daemons, and heretics are.
For 10K years, they've been using the same stupid bolters, flying the same stupid starships, and leading the same large masses of cannon fodder armed with flashlights, all because their religion makes them backwards and retarded, and their Imperium is a bastion of superstition, infighting, callous murder and death, as well as a massive waste of human life. That's basically the opinion these people have about religious and nationalist regimes: they take the worst of the Black Legend, and they amplify it with the worst of the Industrial Era and put it in space. Note how the "enlightened" and "wise" Emperor of mankind is anti-religious, while the people who turned his Imperium into a superstitious nightmare are religious as all hell. You don't get any more leftist than by having your Space Messiah be an anti-religious zealot who hates being worshiped, but is turned into a god by religious nutjobs seeking control over the populace. .
And all of this because the original writers of 40K were a bunch of leftist nancyboys who were butthurt over Margaret Thatcher and the conservatives having power in England during the 80s. Thatcher and her pals were nowhere near as authoritarian as the Imperium of Man in 40K or the Judges of Judge Dredd, but that's how the leftists who wrote 40K, Judge Dredd, and Watchmen saw it. Some lady rises to power as Prime Minister, with political opinions to the right of Karl Marx, and all these writers, from Alan Moore to Rick Priestley, all start using their works to whine about how such a government is potentially fascist. Basically, the root of 40K and many other British sci-fi works from the 80s is how anyone who isn't a socialist is a Nazi at heart waiting to awaken, just as modern-day SJWs call people Nazis for not agreeing with their left-wing propaganda.
Not to mention that Games Workshop is still based in England, a country so dipped in Soy you might as well sell it in an Asian food market. Of course they were going to go this direction. Of course they were going to appease SJWs. The whole "grimdark" phase was just to show bad things are under right-wingers: how bad things are in the Imperium because of people like them, how the people would rather turn to daemon worship or to the Tau rather than remain under Imperium control, how the war is being run so bad because "boo-hoo, right wing religious nationalists throw masses of soldiers into battle without caring for their lives!" Notice how the socialist Tau can actually give humans a good life, along with permanent contraception so they won't have to worry about kids-something Europeans love with them focusing more on contraception and sex without kids rather than raising the next generation. .
If GW can chuck the whole "grimdark" thing off the boat to sell generic Space Marines to kids, then they'll do it, especially since kids have parents with fat wallets that spend a lot on things like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Fortnite, while the adult fans range from penny-pinchers who don't like the new prices, people who whine about GW not being consistent with the lore, and people who make their own models. So of course, throwing away an older fanbase for one that has more capital is something GW can and will do, especially since the newer fans are closer to GW's desired SJW demographic, while many of the older fans are the same religious and nationalist folks that the OG 40K was trying to lampoon, which is ironic in itself.
This is the correct take, HOWEVER:
The subversion of 40k can be stopped if fans of the franchise refuse to recognize anti-canonical subversion by GamesWorkshop. There are enough autistic 40k nerds that this should be possible.
For example, lets say GamesWorkshop introduces female Primaris marines. A number of 40k fans cry heresy. At a certain point the outcry becomes significant enough that the 40k Lords of Terra, a council of (some number) highly respected 40k personalities, convene. They cast votes on this issue: Is GamesWorkshop's introduction of female Primaris marines a heretical element?
If no, the element is accepted as canonical. If yes, then the 40k Council considers this element of lore non-canonical. Council members must come to an agreement on how this element is treated, and then update a website that collects lore and rulings related to lore. This resource is maintained solely by the community and is the primary way of tracking the fan-canonical universe.
Eventually if Games Workshop pushes things enough, then the universes diverge. Fortunately, the efforts of the Council up until this point are essentially a version-history of the universe. If GW diverges enough that the universes are no longer compatible, then fans have essentially created their own universe and could easily file the serial numbers off and launch the fan-universe as its own IP.
/thread
Way to completely misread "A Canticle for Leibowitz" in which a small group of passionate and faithful devotees successfully reinvent civilization and herald mankinds journey to the stars lol.
Never heard of it.
Looking it up...not gonna lie, this sounds pretty cool!
It's my favourite book. We should nominate it for the book club because it is awesome.
I swear I remember when polygon actually was a gaming site. Is this a case of getting bought out by morons who are clueless?
no, they've always been shit since day one.
Do you remember their role in Gamergate? They haven't been a good site for at least the last decade
https://deepfreeze.it/outlet.php?o=polygon
I guess I’m remembering 90s and early 00s gaming sites
Clearly these people have been listening too much to the local Genestealer Cult
The abandonment rate of Warhammer is staggering and they are just committing suicide like the trannies they want to emulate now. If you play Warhammer (fantasy here) forge your own universe canon and print your own units, update your own rules like I did.
Sounds like conspiracy theory drivel where they aggressively defend games workshop for catering to violent extremists such as themselves.
Jordan Carroll looks like a colossal faggot.
And watch them throw a hissy fit if you suggest they make their own characters or find a hobby they already enjoy instead of entering a hobby and demanding that it change