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AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Have to agree to disagree. Even though they did little with that material, they still gave us enough insight into it to know what it was and how it would end up looking whenever they got around to it.

I don't think anything they've done in AoS could not have existed within WHFB. Enough of the world was left unexplored that even if there wasn't a pre-existing place that had the theme they wanted, they could have just carved out a section of the world to make it. The only thing is that something like Sigmarines don't really fit with the vibe of the world, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been shoehorned in if you really wanted to ruin the setting

And just because you think you know what it was and how it would end up looking doesn't mean it would turn out how you think if and when it finally did get fleshed out. Maybe the parts described in the few existing sentences don't become the focus of that lore expansion, and another part they didn't talk about much or at all becomes the central theme. Even within our existent world, if someone writes a few sentences about a place or a people group your own experiences when you go visit yourself could be wildly different.

Again, agree to disagree. Many of the Age of Sigmar factions would be difficult to incorporate into WHFB on the simple basis that they occupy the same design space as the more established factions of the old setting, and in order to justify them as standalone factions you would have to tear apart and split established factions in order to make them work. You could introduce Daughters of Khaine units into a Dark Elf army easily without the need for any real fluff changes - creating them as a distinct entity/faction within the fluff as presented in AoS however would require you to pull apart the Dark Elf faction and rewrite their lore to justify why Morathi and a bunch of elves were now snakefolk that stood apart from the rest of Dark Elf society, you would also likely need to explain them in relation to the already existing snakefolk found in the Hinterlands of Kush. Nighthaunt could likewise easily be introduced into a Vampire Counts army - establishing them as a separate entity with their own motivations, etc. would require you to pull about a third of the Vampire Counts army apart into a separate faction. etc. etc. etc.

You're correct that aesthetically all these things fit in the old setting - realistically speaking quite a bit of it probably began life before The End Times with the intent of incorporating them into WHFB instead of being spun-off into a separate setting - but in doing so you would have to frame them in reference to what was already established within the WHFB setting instead of being given the freedom to work them as you please. Nighthaunt and Daughters of Khaine are far more compelling and interesting factions that have strong identities and unique themes, etc. as stand-alone independent factions than they would if they were relegated to mere subsets of their parent factions in the WHFB setting - in both cases the other themes present in Vampire Counts/Dark Elves would only serve to water them down and make them feel more generic.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Also, it sounds like a lot of you don't actually want a wargame--it sounds like you want a RPG. Check out "Soulbound" to see how they're running things for AoS on that front.

They're doing it pretty well, actually! Much more inspired in its design than the new 40k one.

Coenus Scaldingus wrote:
It only gets limiting if you merely want to constantly write about cataclysmic world changing events and characters with the powers of gods, and that's where WHFB was certainly "too small" - and based on what they're doing in AoS, that's what they wanted to write about. Maybe some or many customers are also interested in that kind of stuff, but to me it just feels like a sequence of superhero movies. Big powers, high stakes, slight change in the status quo, and on to the next instalment. Unfortunately, I'm personally far more interested in the motivations and limited powers of Samwise Gamgee and Tyrion Lannister than the godlike powers of Superman or Morathi.

Yep. GW wants us to buy crazy models of godlike things, so they needed a bigger setting.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

It only gets limiting if you merely want to constantly write about cataclysmic world changing events and characters with the powers of gods, and that's where WHFB was certainly "too small" - and based on what they're doing in AoS, that's what they wanted to write about.

I don't understand how people find that appealing. When everything is always over the top epic, nothing is epic. It just becomes the new status quo. It becomes boring. I also find age of sigmar's lack of grounding in anything relatable makes it harder to get into. If you can make up infinite new settings with massive scales, why does any one scenario matter? Why should I feel attached and care?

And all of that is before you add in GW's inability to write anything decent.

The reality is that writing is harder than people make it out to be, writing settings is harder than that, and a setting does not even have to be that coherent to be good. Even classics like Lord of the Rings have gaping holes and nonsensical baggage if you are looking for it but that's just it; someone who wants to dislike a setting can always find justification. Given the way WHFB ended and AoS started, I'd say there was a strong sentiment of anger and a lot of people who did not want to like the new setting. Early AoS did not make this easier, as the writing of that period was at its poorest compared to what we got later. Even then I would not call it bad, there is simply way too much room on the lower end of that quality scale.

As to answer your question directly jojo, AoS is not a novel or show but a setting first. This means the stories are secondary and exist to push the setting rather than the other way around so the traditional 'pulls' aren't quite the basis anymore. Instead of having characters that are engaging and/or relatable it is about creating a world people want to explore. If people find the setting interesting and want to read more about it they will naturally come to care about what happens to it. There is also the 'army factor' where players have room to put their own army with its own fluff into the setting and now they have another reason to care what is happening. If a normal story is a person that you interact with, AoS is a tourist destination.

FWiW, AoS is not infinite; there was some early snippets that leaned in that directly but we found out via short story that realms had an edge, then 2nd edition fully clarified that they have finite dimensions. While not strictly defined best estimates suggest each realm is approximately one 'world' in size. So still an immense setting but relatively speaking quite small.

To illustrate, I raise 40k. People care about stuff that happens on a planet in 40k. They certainly care what happens to the Imperium with ~1 million of themd. The milky way has over 100 billion systems in it. One planet within that is nothing. The equivalent of a few trees in the entirety of the WHFB world at most. The entirety of what happens on a given planet in 40k is utterly, incomprehensibly insignificant as related to the whole setting. GW can keep creating new planets within it indefinitely. There is less relatable about it than AoS. But people can still care about what happens on a given planet, or even a given battle on a given planet, because there is context that makes it matter.

Dunno how much that all makes sense. But regardless, your experience with AoS is still entirely valid. I am just trying to offer insight into why the people who do care, care.

Sidenote: Personally, given the setting that we live in these days I want to get away from it. I don't want a setting to be relatable.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I have found that about half of people expressing like or dislike of AoS lore vs WHFB lore are just looking for 'excuses' because they feel "it just isn't my thing as much as the other one is" is a not a legitimate argument. Which is sadly ironic, because that is the most legitimate argument.

My intention wasn't to express like or dislike at all, but rather try and figure out the broad appeal of WHFB vs AoS.

Obviously individuals have their own preferences for what they like vs what they don't, I figured that went without saying.

Wasn't responding to you specifically, though in hindsight I can see why it seemed that way. As your your last line; it should go without saying and for a long time I thought it did too. Turns out it doesn't.

There's a difference between High and Low fantasy (which describes the story) and a relatable world vs an alien one.

Middle Earth was high fantasy with princes and wizards and the fate of the world, but that world was grounded in English folklore and history. Star Trek is basically a navy ship but in space, Star Wars the hero's journey in space. Things like the Empire replacing the Republic or a frontier cantina are instantly accessible.

The Olde Worlde was a bit of fresh air since it was centered on Germany and the early Renaissance (vs England and middle ages) and a grubbier world than most fantasy settings. But still we all recognized and responded to it. Whether a story was about a homeless dwarf murder hobo or a mighty prince we got a sense of where they were and what the rules were.

Age of Sigmar... just felt like word hash and madness to me so I never even bothered to try and get into it.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
There's a difference between High and Low fantasy (which describes the story) and a relatable world vs an alien one.

Middle Earth was high fantasy with princes and wizards and the fate of the world, but that world was grounded in English folklore and history. Star Trek is basically a navy ship but in space, Star Wars the hero's journey in space. Things like the Empire replacing the Republic or a frontier cantina are instantly accessible.

The Olde Worlde was a bit of fresh air since it was centered on Germany and the early Renaissance (vs England and middle ages) and a grubbier world than most fantasy settings. But still we all recognized and responded to it. Whether a story was about a homeless dwarf murder hobo or a mighty prince we got a sense of where they were and what the rules were.

Age of Sigmar... just felt like word hash and madness to me so I never even bothered to try and get into it.

And the early writing of AoS certainly didn't do itself any favors. I would suggest borrowing a second edition rulebook sometime to read the baseline they are operating off now (as opposed to like... a few pages worth?). It may still be a hot mess for you, but I think GW made a big enough improvement in lore with 2nd ed AoS to earn a second chance.

Also, your shirt says "Merry Christmas" when it should have said "Happy Holidays" and I say "should have" because Christmas was over a week ago, you heathen.*

Sarcasm, obviously.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Also, your shirt says "Merry Christmas" when it should have said "Happy Holidays" and I say "should have" because Christmas was over a week ago, you heathen.*

Sarcasm, obviously.

Christmas is a 12 festival ending on January 6, Day of the Epiphany you philistine!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Also, your shirt says "Merry Christmas" when it should have said "Happy Holidays" and I say "should have" because Christmas was over a week ago, you heathen.*

Sarcasm, obviously.

Christmas is a 12 festival ending on January 6, Day of the Epiphany you philistine!

I speak of the real Chrismas; commercial Christmas!

Edit: Wait, Holidays!

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

Also, your shirt says "Merry Christmas" when it should have said "Happy Holidays" and I say "should have" because Christmas was over a week ago, you heathen.*

Sarcasm, obviously.

Christmas is a 12 festival ending on January 6, Day of the Epiphany you philistine!

I speak of the real Chrismas; commercial Christmas!

Edit: Wait, Holidays!

Commercial Christmas is not real Christmas
real Christmas is from 25th - 6th

chaos0xomega wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Have to agree to disagree. Even though they did little with that material, they still gave us enough insight into it to know what it was and how it would end up looking whenever they got around to it.

I don't think anything they've done in AoS could not have existed within WHFB. Enough of the world was left unexplored that even if there wasn't a pre-existing place that had the theme they wanted, they could have just carved out a section of the world to make it. The only thing is that something like Sigmarines don't really fit with the vibe of the world, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have been shoehorned in if you really wanted to ruin the setting

And just because you think you know what it was and how it would end up looking doesn't mean it would turn out how you think if and when it finally did get fleshed out. Maybe the parts described in the few existing sentences don't become the focus of that lore expansion, and another part they didn't talk about much or at all becomes the central theme. Even within our existent world, if someone writes a few sentences about a place or a people group your own experiences when you go visit yourself could be wildly different.

Again, agree to disagree. Many of the Age of Sigmar factions would be difficult to incorporate into WHFB on the simple basis that they occupy the same design space as the more established factions of the old setting, and in order to justify them as standalone factions you would have to tear apart and split established factions in order to make them work. You could introduce Daughters of Khaine units into a Dark Elf army easily without the need for any real fluff changes - creating them as a distinct entity/faction within the fluff as presented in AoS however would require you to pull apart the Dark Elf faction and rewrite their lore to justify why Morathi and a bunch of elves were now snakefolk that stood apart from the rest of Dark Elf society, you would also likely need to explain them in relation to the already existing snakefolk found in the Hinterlands of Kush. Nighthaunt could likewise easily be introduced into a Vampire Counts army - establishing them as a separate entity with their own motivations, etc. would require you to pull about a third of the Vampire Counts army apart into a separate faction. etc. etc. etc.

You're correct that aesthetically all these things fit in the old setting - realistically speaking quite a bit of it probably began life before The End Times with the intent of incorporating them into WHFB instead of being spun-off into a separate setting - but in doing so you would have to frame them in reference to what was already established within the WHFB setting instead of being given the freedom to work them as you please. Nighthaunt and Daughters of Khaine are far more compelling and interesting factions that have strong identities and unique themes, etc. as stand-alone independent factions than they would if they were relegated to mere subsets of their parent factions in the WHFB setting - in both cases the other themes present in Vampire Counts/Dark Elves would only serve to water them down and make them feel more generic.

In 6th they were doing it without fracturing the main books. They were referred to as "appendix lists" as most of them were found in the appendix at the end of the army book. Dark Elves? They had the main book list, a Watchtower Patrol list that was published in a White Dwarf, A City Garrison list that was also pushed in a White Dwarf, and a Cult of Excess list in Storm of Chaos. A pure Daughters of Khaine list wouldn't look out of place in that regard. Other books had even MORE appendix lists to run to flavor. Variant lists or builds don't need their own 120 page book to be viable.

FyreSlayer Release in Warhammer, with the SoC Slayer List already being there, would have been no problem

if those are more independent or just a Supplement is a minor detail

for AoS you can take it as 4 Factions and everything else are Supplements to those, as well each of them just being their own (Sub)Faction

blowing up the Old World, does not destroy it but opens Realm Gates all over it
so now the gates are not only on the poles open to the Realm of Chaos, but all over the world, open to all kind of Realms (the Realms of Magic as we know from AoS) or just giving a direct connection from the Empire to Cathy

Warhammer 2800 and you could get all the AoS Factions as they are now into the world

Free-Cities are the big Empire Cities rebuild after the EndTimes
Stormcast the new poster boys build by Sigmar in a different Realm coming thru the Gate in Altdorf
OBR being the new (evil) "Khemri" and so on

there is nothing that could not have been done that AoS is doing now

@Kodos, yes, exactly!

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I remember having this discussion back in the 90's with one of my mates talking about WHFB vs 40k and why WHFB was a better setting for stories. In 40k you have Space Marines and infinite worlds to fight on, and Space Marines are cool, but they elevate the setting above regular people. In WHFB, you have the regular people of the Empire and Bretonnia fighting against exceptional odds on a world not dissimilar to our own. Now that doesn't necessarily make WHFB a better setting for a game, because the cool factor of Space Marines goes a long way for a table top game, but for forging compelling narratives, we both agreed WHFB was the better setting.

I never got that argument.

The only reason why anyone would think WFRP is a better story setting than 40k is because no one made an RPG where you can play a Hive sludge collector, a Ratskin, or a low level scribe.

Getting off topic but I would LOVE Necromunda the RPG!

I wonder if perhaps sorting out using the Dark Heresy Or Rogue Trader ruleset could easily achieve this. It’d take a GM with good lore know,edge of Necromunda to create a campaign and the setting, but the rules are there..

 Mr Morden wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
So what lore have you read? Genuinely curious here, as the early stuff is as bad as early WHFB stuff was.

What is a good starting point? I’d be interested to read some of the most un-WHFB AOS novels to get a feel for the setting’s flavor. However, current BL prices make me hesitant to pick up a book that has mixed reviews or takes place entirely in one little part of one AOS city (negating the scope of the setting and making me nostalgic for WHFB novels instead).

The Following are great: (IMO)

Court of the Blind King https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/the-court-of-the-blind-king-ebook-en-2019.html
Spear of Shadows by Josh Reynolds - https://www.blacklibrary.com/all-products/spear-of-shadows-ebook.html
City of Secrets: https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/city-of-secrets.html
Dark Harvest https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-horror/dark-harvest-ebook-2019.html
The Serpents Bargain https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/quick-reads/the-serpents-bargain-2019.html
Thieves Paradise https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/thieves-paradise-ebook-2019.html
Code of the Skies https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/code-of-the-skies-ebook-2019.html
Scourge of Fate https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/advent-2018-25-scourge-of-fate-ebook.html
Bone Desert https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/the-bone-desert-ebook-2018.html
Soul Wars https://www.blacklibrary.com/warhammer-age-of-sigmar/novels/ebook-soul-wars.html

It’s a shame you can’t lend out ebooks
I’ve got several of these and so far they are pretty good, I’m also only just getting to the novel side of AoS having been keeping up on discussions or reading about the setting - it’s certainly nice to read a proper story about it.
The horror stuff I’m really enjoying. The short stories anthologies are pretty good for a cheap price too (several deals on audible too if you like a listen).

Fantasy will always have a high place in my heart, but it is nice reading some current stories that are good (I’d say the first few books that came were maybe weaker, but they really went into the setting more recently..)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
FyreSlayer Release in Warhammer, with the SoC Slayer List already being there, would have been no problem

if those are more independent or just a Supplement is a minor detail

for AoS you can take it as 4 Factions and everything else are Supplements to those, as well each of them just being their own (Sub)Faction

blowing up the Old World, does not destroy it but opens Realm Gates all over it
so now the gates are not only on the poles open to the Realm of Chaos, but all over the world, open to all kind of Realms (the Realms of Magic as we know from AoS) or just giving a direct connection from the Empire to Cathy

Warhammer 2800 and you could get all the AoS Factions as they are now into the world

Free-Cities are the big Empire Cities rebuild after the EndTimes
Stormcast the new poster boys build by Sigmar in a different Realm coming thru the Gate in Altdorf
OBR being the new (evil) "Khemri" and so on

there is nothing that could not have been done that AoS is doing now

Hell, the Old World could have been the world that links all the realms that get created from the End Times event.
The all points thing, then it would be a true continuation.
New factions could come in from the realms, with stuff still taking place in each realm as it does now (basically just AoS as present, but the old world still technically being there).

chaos0xomega wrote:
Again, agree to disagree. Many of the Age of Sigmar factions would be difficult to incorporate into WHFB on the simple basis that they occupy the same design space as the more established factions of the old setting, and in order to justify them as standalone factions you would have to tear apart and split established factions in order to make them work. You could introduce Daughters of Khaine units into a Dark Elf army easily without the need for any real fluff changes - creating them as a distinct entity/faction within the fluff as presented in AoS however would require you to pull apart the Dark Elf faction and rewrite their lore to justify why Morathi and a bunch of elves were now snakefolk that stood apart from the rest of Dark Elf society, you would also likely need to explain them in relation to the already existing snakefolk found in the Hinterlands of Kush. Nighthaunt could likewise easily be introduced into a Vampire Counts army - establishing them as a separate entity with their own motivations, etc. would require you to pull about a third of the Vampire Counts army apart into a separate faction. etc. etc. etc.

I think you exaggerate. You don't need to tear apart and split factions to create those forces any more than Space Marines had to be torn apart for Space Wolves to get Grey Hunters, Blood Claws and Fenrisian Wolves.

You just write some fluff about how a certain group/sect/cult/whatever encountered magic or were blessed by a god or discovered a shrine or have their own city shrouded in mystery or decided to rebel and start their own group and voila, that's sufficient to create a unique sub faction with its own army organisation chart, special rules, special units, etc.

You can just shoehorn that sort of crap in as much as you want into the WHFB world, there's a bunch of reasons you can come up with to create a subfaction with unique troops and rosters.

I don't know why you say things like "you would also likely need to explain them in relation to the already existing snakefolk found in the Hinterlands of Kush". Why exactly would you need to do that? Just create it as a separate faction, and gamers can guess that maybe there's a relationship, or maybe there isn't, maybe they're completely different snakefolk, maybe you expand on that in a campaign event 5 years from now.

The Warhammer world was big enough to introduce a whole heap of stuff. Take that empty forest, that open area of land, that isolated mountain that ocean with nothing in it and introduce what you want. That's without even doing things like redrawing the maps, expanding further east / west, or just using existing easter eggs.

The only real retconning that maybe needs to be done is to introduce interactions with other races, but even that's only a "maybe", you could just move the story forward to reveal or create new factions without having to rewrite existing history. I remember back when End Times started, before people realised they were actually killing the game, a lot of folk were happy that GW was finally moving the story forward. Turns out they were only moving it forward to kill it and the excitement was short lived.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Middle Earth was high fantasy with princes and wizards and the fate of the world, but that world was grounded in English folklore and history.

Middle Earth is quite clearly inspired by Midgard from Germanic and Norse mythology. Which is where the idea of dwarves comes from too.

Just in case you wanted to know.

well, Middle Earth was created with the idea that there is no detailed british acient "how the world started" mythology
so Tolkien created a lore that should be british version of the Edda

that is why it is kind of "grounded" because the initial idea was that it will end in the "real" world

Seems like the point of the Old World is not to be putting AoS factions into it.

 DarkBlack wrote:

Kid_Kyoto wrote:Middle Earth was high fantasy with princes and wizards and the fate of the world, but that world was grounded in English folklore and history.

Middle Earth is quite clearly inspired by Midgard from Germanic and Norse mythology. Which is where the idea of dwarves comes from too.

Just in case you wanted to know.

IIRC it was an answer to Norse Myth, Greek, Roman etc, an attempt to bring together English folklore to create a uniquely British myth that could stand shoulder to shoulder with them.

And given the global success of Tolkienesque fantasy I think he succeeded.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:

FWiW, AoS is not infinite; there was some early snippets that leaned in that directly but we found out via short story that realms had an edge, then 2nd edition fully clarified that they have finite dimensions. While not strictly defined best estimates suggest each realm is approximately one 'world' in size. So still an immense setting but relatively speaking quite small.

The recent fluff has been fairly clear that the size of the realms is massive, each larger than the World That Was, and that it would take several lifetimes to travel from the center of any realm to its edge. It was also clear that the "edge" is less a geographical line or boundary and more of a magical one - anyone crossing the "perimeter inimical" (as its called) spontaneously combusts or transforms, etc. (depends on the realm) which makes it Impossible to travel further. As described, physically the region beyond that bleeds into other realms and domains (Slaanesh has apparently claimed a lot of this territory for himself and connected it directly to his domains in the Realm of Chaos). Effectively speaking, this does make them infinite.

In 6th they were doing it without fracturing the main books. They were referred to as "appendix lists" as most of them were found in the appendix at the end of the army book. Dark Elves? They had the main book list, a Watchtower Patrol list that was published in a White Dwarf, A City Garrison list that was also pushed in a White Dwarf, and a Cult of Excess list in Storm of Chaos. A pure Daughters of Khaine list wouldn't look out of place in that regard. Other books had even MORE appendix lists to run to flavor. Variant lists or builds don't need their own 120 page book to be viable.

You're very much missing the point here. All those appendix lists were subsets of a main faction built using the same units found in the main faction. Fluffwise all those appendix lists existed as a subset of that faction and were inextricably linked and tied to their parent faction. That is very clearly not the case with Daughters of Khaine or Nighthaunt. Daughters of Khaine are *not* Dark Elves, they are an independent faction with their own beliefs, goals, agendas, society, etc. that stand distinctly separate from other factions. Nighthaunt are not vampire counts - they aren't even vampires - they also have their own goals, agendas, beliefs, society, etc. Relegating them to an appendix list or a subset of a parent faction would fundamentally alter them by their very nature and dilute their themes and "brand". It would also dilute the themes of the parent faction (at this point, Nighthaunt have about as many units as the entire Vampire Counts army list did, introducing Nighthaunt into WHFB as part of Vampire Counts would have fundamentally altered the faction from "Vampires leading an army of spooky undead" to "An army of ghosts and their vampire and undead friends").

FyreSlayer Release in Warhammer, with the SoC Slayer List already being there, would have been no problem

Except the Fyreslayer fluff doesn't work at all with the WHFB dwarves fluff. Grimnir in WHFB was not a fire god the way he is in Age of Sigmar. Fyreslayers are also not deathseekers the way slayers in WHFB are - Fyreslayers also wear armor (although most of it is runic gold hammered into their flesh, aside from various more conventional helmets, wristguards, etc.), this is entirely at odds with the slayer oath of WHFB where slayers forsake armor entirely.

OBR being the new (evil) "Khemri" and so on

there is nothing that could not have been done that AoS is doing now

This kinda just proves the point - can Ossiarch Bonereapers and Tomb Kings exist in the same design space? You seem to think no, based on this, and that the Ossiarch would have had to replace the Tomb Kings. As it stands - theres just about zero similarity between Tomb Kings and Ossiarch Bonereapers in terms of fluff, they are almost night and day. So you are either replacing something that already existed in WHFB with something new, and thus taking something away, or you are pigeon-holing OBR into a pre-existing and predefined context/concept as defined by the more limited setting and thus limiting what can be done with them fluff-wise.

I think you exaggerate.

I think you have your head in the sand.

You don't need to tear apart and split factions to create those forces any more than Space Marines had to be torn apart for Space Wolves to get Grey Hunters, Blood Claws and Fenrisian Wolves.

Disagreed and an inept comparison. In your mind, its pretty clear that Daughters of Khaine would be relegated to being a a sect of Dark Eldar, Nighthaunt would just be a sect of Vampire Counts, Fyreslayers would just be a sect of Dwarves, etc the same way Space Wolves are just one chapter of Space Marines that share common goals and beliefs and use 90% of the same equipment and have a handful of unique organizations/formations and associated beliefs/traditions. In Age of Sigmar, all of those things are unique factions with distinct societies, distinct fluff, distinct themes, separate agendas, separate goals, separate beliefs, and often separate empires, etc. The two are not really equivalent.

The Daughters of Khaine (like Idoneth Deepkin) exist pretty specifically because elves went more or less extinct save a literally handful of elven souls who weren't devoured by Slaanesh. These survivors tried all sorts of different ways to rebuild the elven race and save it from extinction. In Morathi's case she tried weird shadow-blood-sex magic which failed spectacularly giving birth to Khinerai and Melusai (and an unseen race of deformed male slave drones), which are generally regarded as mutants and freaks and hated by most normal "aelves". Thankfully the other elf-gods figured out a better process and created a race of actual Aelves, some of whom flocked to Morathis banner and helped her establish her own empire with her own domains. In Teclis/the Idoneth Deepkins case, he created the Cythai, who rebelled and decided to go live underwater because their souls had been saved from Slaanesh (albeit temporarily) by way of Mathlann and thus had some sort of innate longing for the sea - but their souls were still tainted by Slaanesh and many went mad over time and their children were born with weak souls that rapidly withered away and thus required souls to be harvested in order to sustain their life forces. Lumineth are a second try and are basically would-be mary-sue elves, the most perfect of perfect beings, blah blah blah, except this is Warhammer so nothing perfect ever really actually is.

How do you justify that fluff in WHFB without removing Dark Elves, High Elves, and Wood Elves from the game or fundamentally altering their established identities and histories? Sure, you could add the minis for these factions into the game easily enough with different fluff entirely, *BUT THATS NOT THE POINT*. With those three factions still present in the game, theres basically zero justification for why elf-gods would be trying to recreate the elven race and in the process creating entirely new races with their own distinct societies, kingdoms, subfactions, etc. And notice how the Sylvaneth are *just* tree people, but they seem to behave a lot like the Wood Elves of old? Theres a reason for that - fluff-wise their lore doesn't entirely work with Wood Elves still hanging since a central part of the Sylvaneth lore can basically be boiled down to "we don't need no stinkin elves to help us, we can do what they used to do ourselves", and Alarielle and the Sylvaneth consider the Wanderers (basically would-be Wood Aelves) to be cowards and traitors who are sometimes uneasy allies and other times outright enemies bearing the brunt of Alarielles anger. Could you incorporate Sylvaneth into WHFB? Yeah - but you would have pissed off the entirety of the wood elves playerbase in the process and have had to rewrite a significant chunk of their lore, they probably wouldn't be welcome in Athel Loren anymore at a minimum at which point you've basically gutted the heart and soul of the faction from itself.

Which is why I go back to saying that AoS is an open-ended setting where they can do basically whatever without running afoul of established lore, and its big enough that there is room for a lot of things to coexist that wouldn't have made sense in the significantly smaller, more limited, and much more well established setting that was WHFB.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Yeah, +1 for dragons and vorpal swords. I don't know what most of you are talking about, I don't give a rats arse about scribes and rat-catchers, I see humans literally every day and I barely care about the real ones let alone some rando peasant. I certainly don't want to spend my free time playing some poorly dressed Landshneckt, gimme elves and dragons and orcs and ogres. If high fantasy "just turns them into superheroes" then...well, good! That's what I want!

WHFB as a setting was great because it DID have all that high magic and high fantasy in it. I mean, the two most popular book series were about a dark elf riding a velociraptor who had his soul permanently bonded to a demon, and dwarf berserker and his human bard taking down vampires and dragons and mages. Y'know, normal peasant stuff. Clearly the "Low-fantasy" stuff is the most popular aspect of WHFB /rolleyes

Hell, if I could have Stormcast Eternals in ToW I'd be 100% cool with it, fluff be damned. A bunch of plate armored superhumans is why I made an Undivided Mortals of Chaos army to begin with!

From what it looks at the moment, they try to get themselves a fresh start in the same general concept of the setting, without having to adhere to the decisions about the fluss and design of specific areas of yesteryear. From my point of view, that is a smart move, as it avoids a lot of the controversy and retconning of the old world, they would´ve had if they set it in the timeframe just before the end times.

The interesting question for me will be, how much fantasy will be in this game? While Kalamadea wants Dragon riding heroes with magic swords, I would be happy if my dwarf hero has a magic axe that never breaks or gets dull. They shifted towards more epic and elaborate stuff towards the 8th edition, like the war sphinxes and the luminarium or star machines on dinosaurs, and that was already enough for me to lose interest in the setting, or at least be critical.

And while Gotrex and Felix are definetly not everyday peasants, they still have to work for food and shelter, rely on other humans / dwarfs to get around and don´t kill a dragon or troll each week. That is what makes them heroes and relatable, in my eyes, while I cannot really identify with Teclis or a greater demon.

But now that we have AoS, and it does not seem to go away, it would be nice if the new old game was more about the "low" (or whatever you want to call it) fantasy setting and rank and file units matter.

chaos0xomega wrote:
...its pretty clear that Daughters of Khaine would be relegated to being a a sect of Dark Eldar...

Watch out, Vect ! Morathi is coming for your space throne !!


Just kidding. The debate about would it have been possible to keep the WFB universe for AoS new releases is honestly endless - each side has its own views and tend to stand their grounds no matter the arguments of the other side. I know, I have been there.

What's really important is that GW thought it wasn't the case at that time and that's why they destroyed the Old World to make Age of Sigmar. Anything else is just a "what if ?" question that will have all the answers you want to have.

The down-to-earth aspects of WHFB were definitely important parts of it. The lack of it is why AoS isn't WHFB and why people are interested in a revival.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The reality is that writing is harder than people make it out to be, writing settings is harder than that, and a setting does not even have to be that coherent to be good. ...

As to answer your question directly jojo, AoS is not a novel or show but a setting first. This means the stories are secondary and exist to push the setting rather than the other way around so the traditional 'pulls' aren't quite the basis anymore. Instead of having characters that are engaging and/or relatable it is about creating a world people want to explore. If people find the setting interesting and want to read more about it they will naturally come to care about what happens to it. ...

FWiW, AoS is not infinite; there was some early snippets that leaned in that directly but we found out via short story that realms had an edge, then 2nd edition fully clarified that they have finite dimensions. While not strictly defined best estimates suggest each realm is approximately one 'world' in size. So still an immense setting but relatively speaking quite small.

To illustrate, I raise 40k. People care about stuff that happens on a planet in 40k. They certainly care what happens to the Imperium with ~1 million of themd. The milky way has over 100 billion systems in it. One planet within that is nothing.

I would say that people care about planets with a history, but not planets GW pulls out of hat for the purposes of a campaign. If the planet is like a red shirt on star trek and exists only to get beaten up in that one passing scene, does it matter?

Age of Sigmar feels similar from where I stand. Admittedly, I absolutely failed to make the jump from WFB to AoS, so I am fundamentally biased. The things I've read of the setting haven't drawn me in because it feels like a lot of what I referred to above in relation to 40k--fighting over properties that exist only as a means to an end. This is the same thing that has always been a barrier to me getting into mainstream comics or games like world of warcraft. There's always a new "biggest baddest" antagonist every new story run that is like the last one +1. And when the dust settles, things are largely the same as how they were before.

But I get that a lot of people still get caught up in that and that it makes them happy. I'm not going to say they're wrong for that. I just can't get into it myself.

savemelmac wrote:
But now that we have AoS, and it does not seem to go away, it would be nice if the new old game was more about the "low" (or whatever you want to call it) fantasy setting and rank and file units matter.

You risk being rather disapointed in my opinion. From the few snippets we were given. It seems that you will have armored giant bear cavalrry and ice-mage amazon warriors as units of Kislev. These are signs that big models with lots of magical powers and abilities will be rather common in my opinion. It seems that most of the legacy characters will still be around like Teclis, Tyrion, Morathi, Malekith, Archaon, etc. That's unless this is a completely "alternate" old world universe in which those people don't exist and frankly that could be smart. It's probably going to be the 30K of AoS though.

epronovost wrote:

savemelmac wrote:
But now that we have AoS, and it does not seem to go away, it would be nice if the new old game was more about the "low" (or whatever you want to call it) fantasy setting and rank and file units matter.

You risk being rather disapointed in my opinion. From the few snippets we were given. It seems that you will have armored giant bear cavalrry and ice-mage amazon warriors as units of Kislev. These are signs that big models with lots of magical powers and abilities will be rather common in my opinion. It seems that most of the legacy characters will still be around like Teclis, Tyrion, Morathi, Malekith, Archaon, etc. That's unless this is a completely "alternate" old world universe in which those people don't exist and frankly that could be smart. It's probably going to be the 30K of AoS though.

Rare units could get odd, though, so that there will be bear-riding kislevites (wasn't that in Warmaster, anyway?) isn't inherently a cause for concern or anything. I mean, orcs could have giants. Giants! Who would stuff you down their trousers! And there where whole armies of the walking dead. There were ghosts, man.


If they're core troops then that's meh but rare warrior ice witches is well within established parameters. Or if they're 0-1 choices.

epronovost wrote:

savemelmac wrote:
But now that we have AoS, and it does not seem to go away, it would be nice if the new old game was more about the "low" (or whatever you want to call it) fantasy setting and rank and file units matter.

You risk being rather disapointed in my opinion. From the few snippets we were given. It seems that you will have armored giant bear cavalrry and ice-mage amazon warriors as units of Kislev. These are signs that big models with lots of magical powers and abilities will be rather common in my opinion. It seems that most of the legacy characters will still be around like Teclis, Tyrion, Morathi, Malekith, Archaon, etc. That's unless this is a completely "alternate" old world universe in which those people don't exist and frankly that could be smart. It's probably going to be the 30K of AoS though.

The powerful stuff was always in the lore - its only more recently that they could do models to match it.

Plenty of super powerful figures have had rules in early editions - if they really wanted to go for it they would have gone for the Time of Legends when the Dwarfs had massive walking statues, the Elves had hundreds of Dragons and Sigmar and Nagash went toe to toe.

Warhammer has always covered both the small stuff and the gods walking the earth. To pretend otherwise is to select small parts of the lore and focuss only on those - which is fine but its not what Warhammer has ever been - in the same was as rules for Giant War Machines was in 1st Ed 40K although some try to ignore this.

Yeah don't forget Man O War had some big war engines and if Warmaster has got underway it would have had them too. Airships and such just didn't appear in the tabletop because making them out of lead/white metal or even plastic in those days would have been an insanely high cost.

Heck dragons were all serpentine not just because its an old design, but again because of size and practicality to cast and make.


Lots of high magic stuff happened, Gotrek was fighting living cannon and corrupted demon spewing living face fronted siege towers years back in Old World. It's just it didn't all translate to the tabletop game side of things.



AoS merges a bit closer, but still has issues - eg Cities of Sigmar are lacking a lot of the steam punk elements that their story versions clearly display.





aS for Realm size I think its undertaken a bit of a shift due to GW's shifting attitude toward AoS. Early stories have the Realms as insanely vast to infinite; latter stories talk about vast distances, but not beyond comprehension. Eg early stories talk about how travelling to the edge is near impossible; whilst latter stories talk about Nagash moving whole trains of Skeletons to the edge to harvest grains of sand.


One issue is that the setting has very little chronological links. so it can be hard to work out distances and travel times and events that relate to each other because you basically navigate by major event markers. Before or after Age of Sigmar; before or after Necroquake; before or after Morathi arises etc...

The change of Age of Sigmar in both the lore style and miniatures is something I really can't see happening to this project. As others have already said, the completely different style of Fantasy of Age of Sigmars Mythic/Epic fantasy or whatever the proper term is for it, is something that just let them do all sorts of exaggerated, absurd things, I don't see it as indicative of anything beyond that. To me that change removed a huge part of what made the WHF setting interesting, where it was a relevantly normal world with a few extra-ordinary things and it was quite grounded and gritty. There just feels like a loss of stakes and depth with AoS when there's a faction of magical supermen, Dwarves that are focused on Magical Gold, Another that uses magical gas to make sky ships etc along with all the different magical realms and actual gods walking about and all that. The setting feels a lot less 'real' from what I've seen where it's less like an actual coherent place but just a jumbled collection of whatever they want to shove together. It's had the ceiling of things moved so high up that it's like anything goes now, so those aspects that were at the forefront and the main viewpoints of the WHF setting before are now quite irrelevant overall. It's like there's a swap from a fairly normal world that just has some magic things, to a magical setting with a few normal things.

That's also what seems to have resulted in the elaborate miniatures and theming, not anything to do with the lawsuit but rather the change in setting and focus now requires/allows far more unique stuff in order to fit in within the world and use it to a proper extent. Having a new faction that feels relatively normal within Age of Sigmar wouldn't really fit in well I don't think, as it's no longer that style of fantasy in the same way it used to be. It's a little worrying though when the only faction we have seen for The Old World so far is one that follows those more exaggerated high fantasy stylings with magical weapons and such, but fortunately those things were already established as part of Kislev's lore so they aren't too out there, hopefully it's not indicative of what's coming from the settings tone overall and stays within what was already defined.

I just don't think they'd do something like, as suggested, change Bretonnia to a look and theme that is no longer Medieval Tournament Knights, because that's iwhat's conic to the faction/setting, things being "more unique" isn't required because of Chapterhouse as some seem to think, and it's the tone and fantasy style that allowed those stylistic changes of AoS. Turning The Old World into Age-of-Sigmar-lite where things end up vastly differently now from their original depiction would be just utterly absurd.

 kodos wrote:

Mentlegen324 wrote:
I feel like this is just baseless speculation rather than something with anything to back it up though. The trademark side of things with the more unique names for stuff is obviously something they've done, which is absolutely fine, so it's not the trademark part that's really relevant to this.

well, everything regarding TOW is pure speculation from our side
but Names that can be trademarked are to be expected and with them changes to make things more unique

HRE Lantzknechts are a very common theme and easy to get in plastic, why should one buy the generic GW models if he can have more for less with the same quality and specially in an R&F game were only the first rank need to look good

we won't see State-Troops but more likley "Reiklanders" or "Middenheimers" and they will look more different to historical minis than the old ones

They'll likely get a name that can be trademarked, but Like I said there's nothing in the lawsuit that means they now have to be different from the basis on historical miniatures.

If we're counting Man O War we had giant dragons with castles on their back and the Gigantic Flying Magical Tzeentch Castles.

People want to think WHFB is low magic, that's not what that term means and trying to redefine it is not going to happen.