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This kind of topic will never have a winning answer. If GW were to make "cultural" models, they'd be accused of cultural appropriation or racism no matter what they did, full stop. When you engage in moral and cultural relativism, morality becomes subjective. Which in turn means that you're opening yourself up to an infinite number of subjectively based criticisms, all offering different reasons for why you're wrong.

In fact, the central conceit of post-modern thought is the criticism and deconstruction of all institutions, social constructs, ideas and creative works from any fathomable direction a person can conceive of. That's literally the purpose of it in itself. While that is often engendered from the well-intentioned goal of breaking down the status quo in order to make way for a more equitable order, it's a matter of philosophical principle that this aim can never be satisfied, since any objective measures of its success would themselves become targets of deconstructive analysis.

Even after saying all of that, my personal feeling is that it would never be possible to do "honor" to minority ethnic groups or cultures in a medium such as fantasy wargames. There is simply no way you could make them distinct without appealing to some kind of stereotype or trope. The only safe course would be to completely ignore ethnic and cultural differences in the 41st millennium and simply feature more people of different skin tones in official artwork and model demos as if they were all just interchangeable meat for the grinder.

It's a game that EVERYONE loses eventually, and as such, the only winning move is not to play.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I know the "Noble Savage" trope but how exactly it is racist, or at least, more racist than all other tropes related to the culture of the individual? You can have "noble savages" represented as barbaric gauls, or vikings, etc... just as common as to amerindian tribes.

It stereotypes the race in a way that is false and lacks depth and dimension. I am not aware of the trope applied to Gauls or Vikings as such, but it is very common with Native Americans, from the very beginning.

Well then you should read the bello gallico. It is a way to descibe stuff to make yoursellf better. You can't just say you over run other dudes by superior numbers, and paying off half of the other side. It also can be use for local stuff. When Cezar writes that waging constant war vs germans that live on the other side of Denub, and nod doing "merchanting" keeps the feminity away from gallic man. He shows the reader what traits in citizents he wants to promote.

Or if you want to accuse another country of genocide, maybe hide your own or attack the party that is currently ruling, you say the people they are fighting a noble human beings, and that "The People" should do everything to stop the massacer. The british did this to the dutch and german when they were purging kongo or the hottentot tribes.

Karol wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Galas wrote:
I know the "Noble Savage" trope but how exactly it is racist, or at least, more racist than all other tropes related to the culture of the individual? You can have "noble savages" represented as barbaric gauls, or vikings, etc... just as common as to amerindian tribes.

It stereotypes the race in a way that is false and lacks depth and dimension. I am not aware of the trope applied to Gauls or Vikings as such, but it is very common with Native Americans, from the very beginning.

Well then you should read the bello gallico. It is a way to descibe stuff to make yoursellf better. You can't just say you over run other dudes by superior numbers, and paying off half of the other side. It also can be use for local stuff. When Cezar writes that waging constant war vs germans that live on the other side of Denub, and nod doing "merchanting" keeps the feminity away from gallic man. He shows the reader what traits in citizents he wants to promote.

Or if you want to accuse another country of genocide, maybe hide your own or attack the party that is currently ruling, you say the people they are fighting a noble human beings, and that "The People" should do everything to stop the massacer. The british did this to the dutch and german when they were purging kongo or the hottentot tribes.

Isn't the whole bello gallico anyways kinda his magnus Opus as a politician.
Additionally he very much was succsessfull to a large degree in his genocide of the helveti.

Caesar managed to make the helveti look like a bloodthirsty tribe that could neither be integrated nor controlled. Ironically a greek historian that first described the helveti as " rich on gold but peacefull "

 Luciferian wrote:
This kind of topic will never have a winning answer. If GW were to make "cultural" models, they'd be accused of cultural appropriation or racism no matter what they did, full stop. When you engage in moral and cultural relativism, morality becomes subjective. Which in turn means that you're opening yourself up to an infinite number of subjectively based criticisms, all offering different reasons for why you're wrong.

I agree and to be honest I don't know what is worse. No female or other human race models among w40k line, or having 2 token female models and one to two non white dudes in every unit. This means females and other races are not added to better the setting, but just to avoid being called out.

And cool racial stuff can be part of a game. Haqqislam in Infinity is an awesome faction with a ton of cool fluff for its sub factions. I would like to see stuff like that in w40k.
A faction based on 1000 nights tales monsters or stories. A knight household based around Partian Cathaphract or Kurdish warriors Saladin had.

The must have X% of Y or woe be you, is stupid to me. But am not the owner of GW, nor am I living in the west. Living in the west is dangerous .


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Not Online!!! wrote:


Isn't the whole bello gallico anyways kinda his magnus Opus as a politician.
Additionally he very much was succsessfull to a large degree in his genocide of the helveti.

The is more the bello civili. De gallico is his racist stuff. He was a very good writer and knew how to play the reader.

But the best thing to read as political satire goes is Apocolocyntosis divi Claudii by Totally-not-Seneka. SNL skits have nothing on it.

Did edit my comment above. @Karol. Caesar anyways was as dirty as a politician can and could be. Furthering his own agenda on the cost of others. Dehumanizing his enemies whilest also furthering his own glory as a great general /statesman.
In other words he mastered propaganda.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Did edit my comment above. @Karol. Caesar anyways was as dirty as a politician can and could be. Furthering his own agenda on the cost of others. Dehumanizing his enemies whilest also furthering his own glory as a great general /statesman.
In other words he mastered propaganda.

Been a while since I brushed up on my Roman history but I recall even at the time many politicians were calling Caesar out for going to far. This was likely motivated by his rivals looking for a reason to knock him down a peg but you had to have been pretty bloody for getting cries of genocide back the.

 Luciferian wrote:

Even after saying all of that, my personal feeling is that it would never be possible to do "honor" to minority ethnic groups or cultures in a medium such as fantasy wargames. There is simply no way you could make them distinct without appealing to some kind of stereotype or trope. The only safe course would be to completely ignore ethnic and cultural differences in the 41st millennium and simply feature more people of different skin tones in official artwork and model demos as if they were all just interchangeable meat for the grinder.

It's a game that EVERYONE loses eventually, and as such, the only winning move is not to play.

I suppose the best possible move is to do what the designers originally did with the Eldar. Eldar design is influence by a number of different cultures, but these are numerous, and the blending is very strong. Separate single elements is easy but is difficult to "accuse" the Eldar to be a ripoff of a specific culture.

 Luciferian wrote:
This kind of topic will never have a winning answer. If GW were to make "cultural" models, they'd be accused of cultural appropriation or racism no matter what they did, full stop. When you engage in moral and cultural relativism, morality becomes subjective. Which in turn means that you're opening yourself up to an infinite number of subjectively based criticisms, all offering different reasons for why you're wrong.

You're missing the minor detail of the quantity and quality of objections. If a thousand people object poorly but a hundred thousand support it well then there really isn't much of a problem. If there will always be someone out there who'll complain the lesson to be taken from that is to not fully gak yourself when a complaint happens. A minimum of integrity comes in handy.

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Did edit my comment above. @Karol. Caesar anyways was as dirty as a politician can and could be. Furthering his own agenda on the cost of others. Dehumanizing his enemies whilest also furthering his own glory as a great general /statesman.
In other words he mastered propaganda.

Been a while since I brushed up on my Roman history but I recall even at the time many politicians were calling Caesar out for going to far. This was likely motivated by his rivals looking for a reason to knock him down a peg but you had to have been pretty bloody for getting cries of genocide back the.

Estimates range from total anahilation to severly crippled. 2/3ds dead supposedly albeit grain of salt.
Btw the greek i quoted earlier in regards to the helveti was hekaitos of milet estimated 500bc and at that time in massalia.
Anyways enough sidetracking.

Not Online!!! wrote:

Did edit my comment above. @Karol. Caesar anyways was as dirty as a politician can and could be. Furthering his own agenda on the cost of others. Dehumanizing his enemies whilest also furthering his own glory as a great general /statesman.
In other words he mastered propaganda.

Well considering how he started his career under Sula, avoiding being killed like most of his male relatives, and then what he had to do in Pont, the rest is a normal conclusion. I don't think he was de humanizing his opponents, at least not most of them, but most of his schtick was X was super awesome and kicking butt, and it took me Cezar to beat them. There is some rough stuff durning both De Belli, but I put it down to most people not having much to do with day to day working of classical era war.

He was not no Pompei, but his troops loved him and he was able to control them most of the time. Only time he lost control of them, was when some of his troops made a turtle to break a wall or gate , and the rebels droped a ballista on the turtle dudes. There were some really liked guys among those, and the cezarians got a bit angry about it.

Shame he died, and the republic ended up with Augustus. One could draw parallers to Cezar getting Brutused, the emperor getting killed by Horus, and what the imperium/republic ended up as after their deaths. To make matters worse w40k ended up with living breathing Krassus at its helm. Worse then female marines that is.

Rosebuddy wrote:
You're missing the minor detail of the quantity and quality of objections. If a thousand people object poorly but a hundred thousand support it well then there really isn't much of a problem.

If 100,000 white people think it's OK to refer to black people as "spear chuckers", and 1,000 non-white people object to that, it actually IS a problem.

 SHUPPET wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Draco wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


If you scroll up a page or two, I linked to the Pygmy caricatures that the Perrys sculpted for GW, racist names and all. This also carries over to naming things, like the "Spear Chukka" (spear chucker is derogatory against blacks). Things that they've had in CJ with racist pejoratives painted on them. And so on. It's not an isolated incident in the past, it's a pattern that spans decades when they should have known better.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-FI/Grot-Spear-Chukka

I don't think those are racist, even they name is grot spear chukka.

Pygmies are unknown to me but Found this
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Pygmies_(Warhammer_Fantasy)

If you don't think "spear chucker" is racist, just ask a black stranger if what he thinks, and let us know how it goes.

Hmmm I don't have another black stranger on hand at 7 am, but I instead asked my black wife if naming a unit "goblin spear chucka" is racist, she just laughed. For your sake I asked if she would find it offensive to name it just "spear chucka" and she said, well if it made any allusions to her race then maybe. Does it? Or are we being ridiculous?

Quite ridiculous, my good sir.

Not Online!!! wrote:

HoundsofDemos wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

Did edit my comment above. @Karol. Caesar anyways was as dirty as a politician can and could be. Furthering his own agenda on the cost of others. Dehumanizing his enemies whilest also furthering his own glory as a great general /statesman.
In other words he mastered propaganda.

Been a while since I brushed up on my Roman history but I recall even at the time many politicians were calling Caesar out for going to far. This was likely motivated by his rivals looking for a reason to knock him down a peg but you had to have been pretty bloody for getting cries of genocide back the.

Estimates range from total anahilation to severly crippled. 2/3ds dead supposedly albeit grain of salt.
Btw the greek i quoted earlier in regards to the helveti was hekaitos of milet estimated 500bc and at that time in massalia.
Anyways enough sidetracking.

Nah they always write stuff down like that, it same in the migration period and the middle ages. Full anihilations, no one left alive, we are all bavarians or burgunds. And then you check the burial rites, or start to wonder why are there still etruskan rituals, including human sacrifice being performed 200 years after Roman writers claim they were wiped out. Now am not saying things weren't brutal back then, or that people were killed en mass. But full wipes of cities or armies were really rare. Alexander wiped out one or two cities to the ground, no slaves taken. Canna ended with republican legions being wiped out, because they had no where to run. Most deaths came from plague and disease. Some historians even argue if one of the "best" weapons of early roman legions wasn't malaria they brought around with them.

Yeah, context is important. Spear Chucka isn't being used to people here, its referring to a ballista. Which greenskins would call a spear chucka because that's what it does, just as we would call a ballista a bolt thrower.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
You're missing the minor detail of the quantity and quality of objections. If a thousand people object poorly but a hundred thousand support it well then there really isn't much of a problem.

If 100,000 white people think it's OK to refer to black people as "spear chuckers", and 1,000 non-white people object to that, it actually IS a problem.

Only for the non black people, from the sociaty point of view it is all good. Works in reverse too. If most population thinks that taking of land from white farmers in any way is ok, and the white farmers think it is not ok, and the white farmers are not the majority, it will be seen by people as ok.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
[
I suppose the best possible move is to do what the designers originally did with the Eldar. Eldar design is influence by a number of different cultures, but these are numerous, and the blending is very strong. Separate single elements is easy but is difficult to "accuse" the Eldar to be a ripoff of a specific culture.

I would agree that's a good way to use a range of influences to create a fantasy race, but it still wouldn't satisfy anyone who would claim that Warhammer isn't "representative" or "diverse" enough when it comes to accurately representing contemporary minority and ethnic groups in a futuristic fantasy setting. I'm just "wargaming" various possible complaints and criticisms because when it comes to a topic like this they will be raised by someone.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, context is important. Spear Chucka isn't being used to people here, its referring to a ballista. Which greenskins would call a spear chucka because that's what it does, just as we would call a ballista a bolt thrower.

Stupid question, in which country is spear chucka used as an insult/racial derogatory term?


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 Luciferian wrote:

 Kaiyanwang wrote:
[
I suppose the best possible move is to do what the designers originally did with the Eldar. Eldar design is influence by a number of different cultures, but these are numerous, and the blending is very strong. Separate single elements is easy but is difficult to "accuse" the Eldar to be a ripoff of a specific culture.

I would agree that's a good way to use a range of influences to create a fantasy race, but it still wouldn't satisfy anyone who would claim that Warhammer isn't "representative" or "diverse" enough when it comes to accurately representing contemporary minority and ethnic groups in a futuristic fantasy setting. I'm just "wargaming" various possible complaints and criticisms because when it comes to a topic like this they will be raised by someone.

Well if you go by that metric you would have to find the most influencial groups right now, and ask them to redesign the game from ground up. No change would be good enough. Heck, even stuff like, the changes are being made by mostly white man, could be used as an argument against the changes.

The question is would this mean we would end up with w40k in the marvel comics form, or the marvel Movies form. The movies are good to great, the comics are insufferably hard to read.

I mean in a world where a costume for kids is problematic everything could be possible. For example is it ok, for a white man to play with an army of female dark elf snake women? remember when some people were angry about fur being modeled on GW miniatures? Sky is the limit as far as being outrage goes, specialy if it is your method of generating income.

 Luciferian wrote:

I would agree that's a good way to use a range of influences to create a fantasy race, but it still wouldn't satisfy anyone who would claim that Warhammer isn't "representative" or "diverse" enough when it comes to accurately representing contemporary minority and ethnic groups in a futuristic fantasy setting. I'm just "wargaming" various possible complaints and criticisms because when it comes to a topic like this they will be raised by someone.

Karol wrote:

I mean in a world where a costume for kids is problematic everything could be possible. For example is it ok, for a white man to play with an army of female dark elf snake women? remember when some people were angry about fur being modeled on GW miniatures? Sky is the limit as far as being outrage goes, specialy if it is your method of generating income.

Fair enough.
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Karol wrote:

Only for the non black people, from the sociaty point of view it is all good. Works in reverse too. If most population thinks that taking of land from white farmers in any way is ok, and the white farmers think it is not ok, and the white farmers are not the majority, it will be seen by people as ok.

This is a very dangerous ground. It makes sound an invasion or abuse of power from a bigger nation to a small and defenseless one as automatically right in some way.

This is a very dangerous ground. It makes sound an invasion or abuse of power from a bigger nation to a small and defenseless one as automatically right in some way.

That is exactly how it works in the real world. Iraq invades Kuwait, gets wacked by the whole world. Any of the main members of the security coucil invade anything other then each other? no reaction. Heck you can have a treaty sign up Ad Perpetum by UK, US, Russian Federation and I think France too, and it can be walked over. As long as the country doing the walking has a nuke stock pile.

Not a new thing in history either. If some dutchy in germany in the XVI century decided to do the stuff France did, it would end up wiped out.

As J Stalin once said, international laws are there to bind the weak and enbolden the strong. And IMO he was right on that one. One of our own writers once said something simiular. That when a great country does something A-holic it still has the grandour of a great country, when a weak country does something A-holic it is just A-holic.


By the way I do not try to promote doing A-holic things here. IMO the good stuff GW can do, is to add copy of cool stuff from other countries folklore. There is a ton of cool, new stuff they could, and am not affraid to say it, steal. Trying to make all people happy, including those whose main source of income is being unhappy all the time, is a lost couse, and can only end up bad for the brand.
So more Kosciey Knights, More not-Djin, more not-Mpanku stealing the moon from the Red Dragon and less we need to have 25,98989898989% female in every box or the world ends. It is insulting to female too, By forcing an X % of anything, one more or less insinuates that on its own the X would never be interesting to the whole population , and as the SoB example shows us this is not the case.

Karol wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

Rosebuddy wrote:
You're missing the minor detail of the quantity and quality of objections. If a thousand people object poorly but a hundred thousand support it well then there really isn't much of a problem.

If 100,000 white people think it's OK to refer to black people as "spear chuckers", and 1,000 non-white people object to that, it actually IS a problem.

Only for the non black people, from the sociaty point of view it is all good. Works in reverse too. If most population thinks that taking of land from white farmers in any way is ok, and the white farmers think it is not ok, and the white farmers are not the majority, it will be seen by people as ok.

I didn't know that you were a fan of Mugabe stealing the land of white farmers in Rhodesia

I think we're done here.