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Belphegor wrote:it's like an entire universe of New Jersey

I don't normally do this.. but sigged. Greatest 40k quote ever.

H.B.M.C. wrote:That's because the typical LotR player only spends about 5 or so mins in the store when his mother leaves him there whilst she ducks into the drug-store on the way back to the car park.

BYE

See, this sort of thing is what I'm talking about. We're holes.

From what I've heard, LotR outsells WHFB. I don't see GW dropping it anytime soon.

mercutio531 wrote:So I listen to a few Podcasts (D6G and Podhammer in DA hizzzous)... Ahem.... Anyways...

It was mentioned on both shows, and now recently joining Dakka it is even more apparent that 40k is far and away the more popular game.

Im curious as to WHY?

I play fantasy, my friends play fantasy. They dabble in 40k a bit, but not near enough as WHFB. For the past several years Ive heard them go on about the rules in 40k being horrible. (there was even a running joke where one friend would turn to another and say 'Hey, quick game of 40k?' and then proceed to do Rock Paper Scissors) 4th Ed help a lot I hear, and 5th ed is coming out now, so hopefully it will be better.

Mechanics aside, why are people drawn to 40k over fantasy? At least to cause such a large discrepancy between the number of players. Is it the fluff? the models? the huge giant machine guns trying to compensate for something else?

Okay, bashing aside, Id like to hear why people play 40k and not Fantasy. What is your take and reason?

Why do you play fantasy?
The same argument could be asked of you.

As for your other stuff, ther is always Necromunda or Mordhiem if you want a comparison.

It is about like asking if you want to take off someones head with an pointy stick,axe, or a chainsaw, OR just shoot them in the face with a plasma pistol.

Pariah Press wrote: From what I've heard, LotR outsells WHFB. I don't see GW dropping it anytime soon.

See, now that doesn't really surprise me. Despite covering nearly identical Fantasy ground (mostly because WFB is little more than a LotR univese rip-off, two steps removed), LotR is much better-known than WFB thanks to the films. Plus, LotR starters are available at bookstores and such.

Grot 6 wrote:
Why do you play fantasy?
The same argument could be asked of you.
As for your other stuff, ther is always Necromunda or Mordhiem if you want a comparison.

No, thats fair enough. My main reason wasnt really WHY people play 40k, but why so MANY MORE people play 40k. I play Fantasy because, like many others here who play one game or another, thats what my friends play. I resisted for over a year, cursing Warhammer as being too expensive and daunting on an epic scale. Then a friend Gave me, LITERALLY GAVE ME, like 1500 points of Orcs and Goblins. So I was in, and have since expanded that army quite a bit.

When I would go to my local gaming store (here in inner city Minneapolis) watching other players I saw a lot of Fantasy there too. Also, yes some kids. One kid was fielding like 60 skinks. Knowing now what I do about Skinks Id slap the out of him. But while there was always a 40k presence, it was never to the point of being far outnumbering the fantasy players, especially at the ratio on a global scale. So when I learned that 40k was vastly more popular it kinda hit me like a rock. I had no idea. All of my friends had given up on 40k because of the flaws with the rules. I simply never got into it.

Oh, I was reading the GTA IV thread a bit and someone mentioned Zelda.

Zelda is fantasy. Zelda is insanely popular. So I dont think its quite as simple as Sci Fi vs Fantasy. And Sci Fi isnt quite as new as some would think. Starship Troopers, 2001, Brave New World, all very old books. Also there is just as much bad Sci Fi out there as there is bad Fantasy. Possibly more.

Both games have the same pros and cons. It can be said that there is alot of luck in both games, also it can be said there is little. In my experience even more ridiculous events can occur in Fantasy(Dragon makes 1/4th of army run). I see alot of tragedies unfold in Fantasy and very few in 40K. The bottom line is there isn't much variance in a D6 system.

People just accentuate certain aspects of the different games depending on their personal tastes. Different strokes for different folks.

I have noticed alot of 40K players seem indifferent to Fantasy while I've heard many Fantasy players derail 40K. Kind of hateful me thinks.

Grot 6 wrote:
It is about like asking if you want to take off someones head with an pointy stick,axe, or a chainsaw, OR just shoot them in the face with a plasma pistol.

Plasma pistol? Surely that'd mean getting your own arm blown off at the same time...

mercutio531 wrote:And Sci Fi isnt quite as new as some would think. Starship Troopers, 2001, Brave New World, all very old books.

???

Well, they're older than I am. That doesn't make them very old by book standards. Heck, they're not even very old by science fiction standards.

Pariah Press wrote:

mercutio531 wrote:And Sci Fi isnt quite as new as some would think. Starship Troopers, 2001, Brave New World, all very old books.

???

Well, they're older than I am. That doesn't make them very old by book standards. Heck, they're not even very old by science fiction standards.

Well, thats my point. Sci Fi has been around for a very long time. These books were from like the 60s or something... Jules Verne was writing at the end of the 19th Century... Some people were saying "Fantasy" was tired and over done. "Sci Fi" has as well.... If you wanna break it down to the MOST generic of those terms...

Well, SF as a genre could probably be said to have started with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818). Fantasy is a bit trickier, as it kind of blends into mythology and legends, but Wikipedia seems to think that George MacDonald's Phantastes (1858) would be a good place to start if the continuity of the genre is to be taken into account. So the genres are pretty close in age, with only a generation or so separating them.

Unless of course we realise that most fantasy is simply based off of medieval legand and folkhood which would make it in the wester world roughly a thousand years old and in the orient well over 3000 for recognisable current day aspects. (though the devil and dragon aspects have been around for well over 4000 years)

So by comparison sci-fi is really REALLY younger than fantasy. (oh and you quoted wikipedia, which doesn't count cause its wikipedia)

As for wondering about LOTR players on the site, it may have to do with the utter lack of LOTR support and forums on this site? If it was set up Im sure we would get posts.

As for the outselling of LOTR, I chalk it down to the price, for 35 dollars in canada I get 20 uruk hai, for 35 dallors that gets me either 5 space marines without any upgrades or 6 orcs for fantasy. Gee, I can put an actuallly decent army together for under 100 dollars, thats like what? A 500 point army of 40k? (speaking in canadian monies here) and a 250 pt army of WH?

Also I find the rules are much easier to play against and you don't have the going first problem that you get in 40k, seeing as calling a heroic action lets you go first in that phase regardless of who has priority for that turn.

Not too mention that heros, monsters, and hordes actually behave like they are supposed to it simply rocks. The only thing I have against it is the time it takes to play it at larger pt values and lack modelling options for the troops, most comeimgn preasselbe and all you have to do is slot them in and add the shield.

Ratbarf, fantasy as a genre is not necessarily the same thing as myth, legend, or folklore, or if it is, one may as well call Genesis science fiction.

Pariah Press, we can probably date science fiction a bit earlier than that. Voltaire wrote "Micromegas" in the 1700s.

Yeah, before I started "researching" on Wikipedia, my gut feeling was that Fantasy as a genre started with Spenser's Faerie Queen (16th C).

Anyway, the point that Fantasy is "tired and overdone," as a poster stated above, doesn't really hold up, IMO. I'm not a huge Fantasy fan, but I've read a decent selection, and the genre seems perfectly vital to me. From Howard's "Conan," to LotR, to Elric, to Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire," there are some completely different types of Fantasy story, from different generations. Obviously Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap") applies to Fantasy as it does to just about anything (except crap itself, of course, which is 100% crap).

Ultimately, I think that the 40K setting is simply more original and the Warhammer World setting. Warhammer is pretty much Tolkien, with a dash of Moorcock, and some distinctive visual elements. 40K draws from a much wider array of influences, allowing it to take on a more unique character, in my opinion.

@ TG

How come then almost all of the races or gods are based off of the elements from many different religions, myths, and legends? In WH itself almost all of the stuff in it comes from either history itself, (Holy Roman Empire, Medieval Britain/France, Aztecs, Egyptians, etc) or different western european myth? (I find that quite a bit of the dwarf, and chaos northmen are based on Norse mythology. Not too mention the inclusion of dark elves and elves.) What im sayying really is almost everything that WH is based upon existed up to a 1000+ years ago. (and personally I think some of the chaos gods aspect is taken from norse gods. They sure sound like a loki to me.)

Back to the original question, my friends and I all started out in Warhammer Fantasy back around 95 or so since we were all into D&D, Fantasy Novels, etc. Now we've all switched to 40K (though I still paint up Empire figs every now and then). Mostly it has to do with the background. WFB is too close to "our world" for my taste and some of the things they've come up with lately (Ogre gut magic? That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard) are just plain silly and dumb. Additionally, because the WFB world is so established, it's hard to come up with a new personal idea whereas in 40K, if you want to come up with a whole new army based on a specific planet you made up, you can.

"Brave New World" was published in 1932. ( during the great depression, and one year before my dad was born)

"Starship Troopers" was published 1959. (Dwight Eisenhower was still president)

"2001" was published in 1968. (Three years before I was born and the year when racial segregation laws in the US were formally made illegal in the whole country by a Supreme Court decision)

So yeah, sci-fi has been around for quite a while.

While 40K has sci-fi elements it's really more of a fantasy setting with magic (sometimes hand waved as psionics) and physics that exist completely serve the plot and setting. We aren't really supposed to believe that 40K can ever be the future of mankind even though we are supposed to PRETEND that it could be.

I don't care which game is better so much. The fantasy setting is just so... so... SO tired.

That's the big nail on the head for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish Tolkien was never born. How long am I going to have to put up with dwarves and elves in absolutely every geek game under the sun?

Also Dicemonkey, since you've left the group has gone the other way. Most of the tools are fantasy now.

mortal888 wrote:

I don't care which game is better so much. The fantasy setting is just so... so... SO tired.

That's the big nail on the head for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish Tolkien was never born. How long am I going to have to put up with dwarves and elves in absolutely every geek game under the sun?

Also Dicemonkey, since you've left the group has gone the other way. Most of the tools are fantasy now.

But...you could say the same thing for the "dystopic universe #2123489 with a hopeless future" background. I'm not into Star Trek, but did watch a good number of the old and newer series, and it's funny to see how the series' popularity tanked when the focus changed from a bright future full of exploration to a fear of technology. See also the presence of Babylon 5, Battlestar, and other "yeah, space and the universe isn't what it's cracked up to be" series.

What about Doctor Who? It has always ploughed a different furrow to US series, and the renewal of the past few years has been very successful.

Sorry for OT.

mortal888 wrote:
That's the big nail on the head for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish Tolkien was never born. How long am I going to have to put up with dwarves and elves in absolutely every geek game under the sun?

Fact is, without Tolkien you would never have gotten Warhammer, and then 40k. DnD and the like may never have come around... Maybe someone else would have written it, it didnt HAVE to be Tolkien perhaps... But then your post would simply read "I wish <insert last name here> was never born. Tolkien's popularity gave the geeks of the 70s the inspiration to just run with their imaginations. And then one product inspired another product and so on and so forth...


Oh, and for geek games without Elves or Dwarves? Star Wars. Or Exalted. Exalted is a huge high Fantasy setting with no elves or dwarves. System is a little odd, but the setting is pretty awesome. You are the child of a Sun God, and you have the power to back it up.

As many have said, the fluff really drew me into the game. The 40k universe is just so massive; large enough to have history, heroes, and villains but also room for new things and your own imagination. Also as HBMC said you can just kinda toss all the combat together and make it possible in a sci-fi world. Guns, tanks, sword fights everything!

mortal888 wrote:
That's the big nail on the head for me. It's gotten to the point with me that I wish Tolkien was never born. How long am I going to have to put up with dwarves and elves in absolutely every geek game under the sun?

If Tolkein hadn't written it, people would've based their fantasy on The Worm Ouroboros or even *gasp* Norse mythology, just like Tolkein. You'd STILL have Elves and Dwarves.

For the record, didn't Tolkein infamously not define these fantasy critters beyond some background, the most general appearance and a (in some cases exhaustive) look at their language? I feel like a lot of credit goes to the accumulated fantasy design and permutations by the thousands who have worked on the collective (and varied) genre since the Big T ...

- Salvage

Tolkien exhaustively defines the appearances of his races in books like the Silmarillion.

As far as him being the SOURCE of any fantasy races... ever heard of mythology? Dwarves (Dvergar/Svartalfr; Norse Myth), Elves (Alfr; Norse Myth), Dragons (Various) & etc ad nauseam.

Some people also give him credit for establishing the "Behavior" of Dwarves or Elves and their interracial bickering. These people need to read mythology, specifically things like the Volsung Saga, Norna-Gest, and the Nibelungenlied.

If any one single person deserves credit for preserving ancient norse mythology which lead to the basis of modern "fantasy" settings it would be a feller named Snorri Sturluson.

There are a lot of good points posted above. I agree with them all, but I also think it comes down to one thing for me.

Fighting with a sword = cool

Fighting with an electrically charged sword and gun = way cooler

Tolkien was a hack. He stole LotR from Gygax who stole stuff
from Blizzard Entertainment.

Oh Malfred, you tease!!!!!

We all know the Wachowski Brother/Sisters made up Elves....

Bull. Everyone of culture knows that everything was stolen from Saul Zeantz's "The Lord of the Rings". So much so that he wasn't able to make the second half. Pity.