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just wondering!

There are a million things that have inspired the 40K setting's design. Everything from HP Lovecraft to Dredd to Dune and Starship Troopers and Alien can be seen in the 40K aesthetic.

Specifically? Yeah, Arbites are almost exclusively designed after the Dredd-verse. A mix that isn't too difficult considering that the major human faction in both 40K and the Dredd universe is a fascist, dystopian police-state.

In 40k's lore, there are the Adeptus Arbites, which are the Imperium's police force on planets.

This is the part of 40k that borrows extensively from Judge Dredd.

GW will claim they came up with this idea all on their own.

GW is the biggest copy cat! They go around stealing ideas and fighting in court. Their writters and artist came up with it on their own? Complete and udder cruddance.

GW use to publish the Judge Dread/2000 AD RPG back in the day, with rules similar to Rogue Trader but more roleplayer friendly.

SJ

GW used to publish LOTS of stuff.

They had a licence for JD from 2000AD (also Strontium Dog and Rogue Trooper turned up in the miniature lines) back in the day.

They also had a licence to print Call of Cthulhu for the UK/Euro market (and since we got most of our rpg stuff via the UK back then, Australia ended up with a lot of GW imprinted CoC stuff) as well as D&D and Paranoia (this is the main reason that they used to have articles about those games in White Dwarf).

Elements of JD found their way into 40k by way of X gives inspiration to Y.
Elements of Rogue Trooper (Nort and Southern trooper minis
also found their way into 40k as pirates or mercs).

They used to do floor plan sets for the JD rpg, and the "citi-blok" set had a couple of pages showing how to use them for 40k also.

Let's not forget Orwell's 1984 either, to me it pretty well describes the kind of world a lot of Imperial citizens live in.

Any large enough thing will have more references to things than a person can imagine. Heck, Gee-Dubs and Blizzard did work together for a period of time, and even Blizzard has infinite references in their games now that their big enough, I mean a good chunk of WoW is just pop culture references.

Another good example is that a lot of people think Tau are anime inspired, which is only vaguely true. The Tau are actually modeled off of Chinese foot soldiers, Battle Tech (Which was taking anime aspects and merging them with Western features), Space Marine Dreadnoughts, and more according to the people who designed them.

I always felt that Tau represented how GW views the US military, all high-tech but can't shoot worth a damn.

SJ

Hive cities as well come from 2000AD I believe, same as the idea of mutants living in the underhives and to an extent I think the gang warfare that Necromunda was based on.


If you've never seen any Judge Dredd I suggest going and watching the most recent movie, Dredd (2012 iirc). There is an older one with Stalone but is generally viewed as a less faithful, more comedic version of the source material.

Dune has a mini series you can find too, and the Starship Troopers movie is the best damn B movie you will ever watch.

All very good, and very obviously inspired large parts of the 40k setting. Combine all the above with the Tolkein-Fantasy in space that was 1st edition (space orcs FTW) and you probably have built the entire 40k setting bar a few little things.

GW used to make a Dr. Who game as well.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I always felt that Tau represented how GW views the US military, all high-tech but can't shoot worth a damn.

SJ

Is that like a thing? I never heard it, am I that out of touch o_o? Do white people really smell like wet dog?

But yea, nope the Tau were based off of the Chinese, at least for the non-mech stuff. It also makes sense since the repeating crossbow and the like were Chinese, and those were mostly about peppering the enemy than accuracy.

Note that the tau aren't 'bad shots' - BS 3 like a guardsman is "professional soldier" standard.

The new Dredd movie was good, but didn't do so well, I think partly because of the Stallon version. Read the comics though! They were great, and GW definitely borrowed from them. Just as Blizzard borrowed from GW. The Zerg are just Tyranids with some minor changes. That's why the Dawn of War games never had nids, they were afraid people would go on about how they just stole the Zerg from Bluzzard.

locarno24 wrote:
Note that the tau aren't 'bad shots' - BS 3 like a guardsman is "professional soldier" standard.

To be fair, doesn't that make sense? The Tau are a rather small and new race, so they have a lot of soldiers with basic training, but not ones that are exactly elite. Something like the FSE is focused a lot more on the elite soldiers who are provided with advance technology, but it doesn't mean they exactly have better aim, simply they have more resources.

In short, the Tau don't really seem to be in a place where they can be as pedantic about shooting skills as the IOM, and while BS3 isn't good, it doesn't mean everyone is firing at BS 3, it means that's the average. Some Fire Warriors are probably firing at close to 80%+ hit rate, while others are missing the majority of their shots, and the squad average ends up being BS 3.... The Cadre Fireblade is a good example of this as they are soldiers who have proven themselves, but not advanced in rank, and they have BS 5, which shows that they probably always exceeded the squad average, and if you're like me who always rolls poorly, that one die that always hits, that's a future Fireblade being awesome D:

The imperium, with its shattered emperor and legions of super-soldiers, is basically Dune. Evena throwaway comment like "X% of Space Wolf recruits don't survive" is taken straight from Frank Herbert's description of the Sardaukar. The reliance on and development of human powers over machines is another theme.

The struggle between Law and Chaos is straight out of Michael Moorcock - something he complained about bitterly. The eight-pointed star of Chaos is Moorcock's invention.

Nemesis the Warlock from 2000AD is a powerful chaos sorceror; he fights diverse legions of Terminators who are trained to hunt down the racially and genetically impure. Their orders include Inquisitore, assassins...

In fact you could spend days pulling references put of 2000AD alone. Much of the satire, humour and pop-culture references in early GW (40k and WFB) have a distinctly 2000AD feel.

Someof the "grimdark" is from the real world. There was indeed a penitent who wore a lighted brazier on his head. The Imperial Guard's attitude to its disposable troops is distinctly WWII Soviet (or at least Eastern Front).

Much of the rest of Scifi has been happily plundered by GW - no prizes for guessing where Tyranids and Necrons came from, although Tyranids seem to combine elements of both Alien and Lovecraft.

Momotaro wrote:
The imperium, with its shattered emperor and legions of super-soldiers, is basically Dune. Evena throwaway comment like "X% of Space Wolf recruits don't survive" is taken straight from Frank Herbert's description of the Sardaukar. The reliance on and development of human powers over machines is another theme.

The struggle between Law and Chaos is straight out of Michael Moorcock - something he complained about bitterly. The eight-pointed star of Chaos is Moorcock's invention.

Nemesis the Warlock from 2000AD is a powerful chaos sorceror; he fights diverse legions of Terminators who are trained to hunt down the racially and genetically impure. Their orders include Inquisitore, assassins...

In fact you could spend days pulling references put of 2000AD alone. Much of the satire, humour and pop-culture references in early GW (40k and WFB) have a distinctly 2000AD feel.

Someof the "grimdark" is from the real world. There was indeed a penitent who wore a lighted brazier on his head. The Imperial Guard's attitude to its disposable troops is distinctly WWII Soviet (or at least Eastern Front).

Much of the rest of Scifi has been happily plundered by GW - no prizes for guessing where Tyranids and Necrons came from, although Tyranids seem to combine elements of both Alien and Lovecraft.

Peach Boy pretty much hit all of the points I was going to. If I have to give 40k's genome it would be Tolkein, Herbert and Moorcock in Space by way of 2000AD and heavy metal albums.

As for a very direct influence, minis for GW's Judge Dredd Game (and I think their Elric Line as well) were repurposed for the early days of Rogue Trader. The early IG designs to me look exactly like the Civil Defence troopers from early Dredd comics. I think the original Rogue Trader book even shared some artists with 2000AD.

So yes, not only in fluff but in real, tangible, human terms there is a lot of shared DNA between 2000AD and Rogue Trader.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS, IIRC Moorcock did not invent the Chaos Star but took it from someone else. But that's just something 2nd had I remember from similar discussions.

Chaos mutations however are a very Moorcock thing and the Emperor on his Golden Throne is very much from Moorcock's Hawkwind books.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PPS oh and here's a link a great blog showing how some unreleased RT figures were just modified Dredd minis.

http://rogueheresy.blogspot.com/2015/08/go-buy-now-unreleased-warhammer-40000.html



Note the puttied over badges.

Now granted these are UNRELEASED (currently available from Foundry BTW) but they show how GW was thinking when they developed Rogue Trader.

40K is essentially a huge rip-off of Asimov's Foundation series of books. Give it a read, many ideas, the unique approach to language and the general atmosphere are lifted wholesale. It borders on shameless.

One other source of "inspiration" I rarely see brought up is Rogue Trooper, down to the name. So much of the military stuff in 40K is taken from this series of comic books, including drop pods and their original Epic look.

"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research." Combining the different inspirations into a relatively cohesive whole is itself original work. After all, Dune and Foundation themselves have fairly obvious sources of inspiration; Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, although Herbert added some T.H. Lawrence, Zen and an OPEC allegory.

As well as those minis Kid_Kyoto posted, quite a lot of the original Imperial Army models were re-purposed Norts and Southers from the Rogue Trooper range. If it's in a gasmask, it's likely a Rogue Trooper model.

(Also, the title and plot of Dan Abnett's Traitor General is a rairly obvious reference to the original Rogue Trooper story. He did work at 2000 AD, after all.)

Judge Dredd? Surely you mean Arbitrator Foreboding?

 jonolikespie wrote:
Hive cities as well come from 2000AD I believe, same as the idea of mutants living in the underhives and to an extent I think the gang warfare that Necromunda was based on.


If you've never seen any Judge Dredd I suggest going and watching the most recent movie, Dredd (2012 iirc). There is an older one with Stalone but is generally viewed as a less faithful, more comedic version of the source material.

But the older one even had a jetbike!

 Aben Zin wrote:
Judge Dredd? Surely you mean Arbitrator Foreboding?

Arbitrator Foreboding has nothing on Inquisitor Obiwan Sherlock Clousseau.

As well as Arbitrator Foreboding, the Ciaphas Cain novels had plenty more references.

 Aben Zin wrote:
Judge Dredd? Surely you mean Arbitrator Foreboding?

I am so stealing that and never ever looking back.

Hive cities are a bit like Mega City One, but the idea of a planet covered in a metal city appeared in The Foundation by Isaac Asimov in the 1950s. It was Trantor, the capital of the galactic empire.

The rules of the Judge Dredd RPG by GW bear relatively little resemblance to the rules of Rouge Trader and the Warhammer family.

 Tinkrr wrote:
Any large enough thing will have more references to things than a person can imagine. Heck, Gee-Dubs and Blizzard did work together for a period of time, and even Blizzard has infinite references in their games now that their big enough, I mean a good chunk of WoW is just pop culture references.

40k is influenced by so many things it's hard to keep track. My personal favorite, that isn't commonly listed among the sources for it, is a novel called Canticle For Liebowitz, which forms the broad concept behind the Adeptus Mechanicus.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

PS, IIRC Moorcock did not invent the Chaos Star but took it from someone else. But that's just something 2nd had I remember from similar discussions.

He talked about this in an interview. He's actually rather annoyed by that claim because he distinctly remembers scribbling the original design on a napkin or something and the most persistent ones are insisting he received the symbol as a vision from some actual 'chaos force's or something.

Chaos mutations however are a very Moorcock thing and the Emperor on his Golden Throne is very much from Moorcock's Hawkwind books.

The Emperor himself is so blatantly the Eternal Champion it's actually funny.

Tinkrr wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I always felt that Tau represented how GW views the US military, all high-tech but can't shoot worth a damn.

SJ

Is that like a thing? I never heard it, am I that out of touch o_o? Do white people really smell like wet dog?

But yea, nope the Tau were based off of the Chinese, at least for the non-mech stuff. It also makes sense since the repeating crossbow and the like were Chinese, and those were mostly about peppering the enemy than accuracy.

High tech but sloppy is generally the British opinion of the American military, yeah. Amongst civilians, anyway.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

Tinkrr wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
I always felt that Tau represented how GW views the US military, all high-tech but can't shoot worth a damn.

SJ

Is that like a thing? I never heard it, am I that out of touch o_o? Do white people really smell like wet dog?

But yea, nope the Tau were based off of the Chinese, at least for the non-mech stuff. It also makes sense since the repeating crossbow and the like were Chinese, and those were mostly about peppering the enemy than accuracy.

High tech but sloppy is generally the British opinion of the American military, yeah. Amongst civilians, anyway.

And no good in a close in fight! Don't forget that.