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Ok I've been in this hobby for a while but I must admit I have terrible memory when it comes to specific instances on old fluff. Anyways I saw this post on Tv Tropes, yes that TV Tropes, and it really caught my eye. To you fluff experts, is this accurate or some skewed perspective?


Fom "Lighter and Softer" trope (when a series actually gets LESS dark and edgy)

Warhammer 40000. I joke not. During 3e , there were chaos cultists on Terra, the Imperium was losing worlds by the hundreds and High Lords did not care, in fact most of them had been driven insane by imperfect deageing treatments. This was before the Horus Heresy, before the Imperium's methods were justified by dozens of books. There was no Ciaphas Cain, no likable or sane character to be found. The Sisters of Battle fielded suicide bomber cadres, the Space Marines were a shadow of their power in later editions, and even more insane: imperfections in their half forgotten surgical techniques rendered 9 out of 10 recruits dead and the survivors deranged. The Religious Horror was at its peak, the artwork like of things that can barely be called human hugging and kissing undetonated artillery shells, begging the gods of war for salvation has never been reprinted, the forces of Chaos, later Ultimate Evil, were simply presented as an alternate form of insanity to that of the Imperium's. By 5e, Warhammer shows an Age of War where humanity's survival hangs in the balance. 3e showed an Age of Insanity where the spirit of man was long dead.

The reason for this is because Games Workshop realized that almost everyone saw the storyline as a huge joke because it was too Grim Dark.

I've been around since the early 90s and I remember none of what he's describing.

I think he's confusing fan stuff and GW's

I have stuff as old as 2E, and whoever wrote that excerpt there was... completely clueless. Well, the bit about the Space Marine genetics killing 9 in 10 recruits has pretty much always been true... but other than that? No.

It was never quite as dystopian as he's making out, but at the same time it's still more grimdark than people seem to think.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Psienesis wrote:I have stuff as old as 2E, and whoever wrote that excerpt there was... completely clueless. Well, the bit about the Space Marine genetics killing 9 in 10 recruits has pretty much always been true... but other than that? No.

He's on the right track, it's just a bit over-blown. Astartes are flying rodent gak crazy killers with no regard for human life, the high lords really couldn't care less about losing hundreds of worlds, so on and so on.

The actual setting and events are largely the same in terms of grimdark.

What has changed is Matt Ward-esque overly heroic depictions of Imperials to "brighten" things a bit. Space Marines are much more angelic and basically are completely pure/noble. In the olden days they came off much more as xenophobic genocidal battle monks.

The Necrons got a similar treatment with 5e (and no surprise Ward was involved). Making them far nobler, removing the Lovecraftian element,. and depicting them far more "human".

So basically setting and events are the same, the depiction of the factions connected to certain authors is different (for instance I find the 5e Dark Eldar to be even darker than 3e)

Harriticus wrote:What has changed is Matt Ward-esque overly heroic depictions of Imperials to "brighten" things a bit. Space Marines are much more angelic and basically are completely pure/noble. In the olden days they came off much more as xenophobic genocidal battle monks.

Nope.

The Necrons got a similar treatment with 5e (and no surprise Ward was involved). Making them far nobler, removing the Lovecraftian element,. and depicting them far more "human".

Aaand nope. Only someone who has never read Lovecraft would call the old Necrons 'lovecraftian' except in the most broad sense. The Necrons were instead personalised allowing me, as a player, to build an army that wasn't just a clone of every other Necron army.

Kaldor wrote:

Harriticus wrote:What has changed is Matt Ward-esque overly heroic depictions of Imperials to "brighten" things a bit. Space Marines are much more angelic and basically are completely pure/noble. In the olden days they came off much more as xenophobic genocidal battle monks.

Nope.

The Necrons got a similar treatment with 5e (and no surprise Ward was involved). Making them far nobler, removing the Lovecraftian element,. and depicting them far more "human".

Aaand nope. Only someone who has never read Lovecraft would call the old Necrons 'lovecraftian' except in the most broad sense. The Necrons were instead personalised allowing me, as a player, to build an army that wasn't just a clone of every other Necron army.

The Newcron fluff undoubtedly makes them less dark. There's a noble angle. They're far more obsessed with honor more then any other race and do things like allow people to evacuate a planet because "the etiquette of battle dictates" (I'd love to even see an IG commander do this). They overthrew the more malevolent entities in their fluff and this was an obvious ploy to make them more sympathetic. They're humanized and given independent personalities, ambitions, and hopes/dreams. In addition they're far less threatening given their fractured nature and the fact that even the largest/most powerful Dynasty is just a few dozen worlds on the Eastern Fringe. They removed the hatred for all life that the Necrontyr had in 3e. Indeed many (if not most) Necrons now want to be organic again.

You can talk about how you like to build armies that are "personalized", but you really can't argue that they're as or more dark as they were before Newcrons. Silent genocidal horde of merciless machines seeking to harvest life at the behest of ancient hungry Gods s not less or as dark then what are basically a proud warrior race that is trying to rebuild their old civilization and recover from what has been inflicted upon them. They went from Vampire Counts to Protoss.

As for Space Marines, reading back my copies of the 3rd edition codex I do find them darker in the sense that their noble and pure defenders of the innocent aspects are second to their battlefield ferocity and fanatical devotion, while the reverse is true these days. Though this may more be influenced by the massive amounts of Space Marine books coming out these days. However the difference isn't nearly as striking as it was with Necrons, most because even going far back Astartes always got a "cleaner" depiction.

The fluff has certainly changed during the years but the description is fairly strange and certainly talking about extremes.

If we go back to 1ed (yes Rogue Trader, I'm that old) there was certainly human bombs in the guard armies. And chaos wasn't even fleshed out as a specific army, but then again we had Squats running around and Beastmen working side by side with other guardsmen. Mutants were abhorred but most often tolerated

In 2ed it started to get more streamlined, the fluff regarding the heresy got properly established. Mutants were something to be killed outright. Tyrandis got a proper biology and a full army. Necrons were introduced as a small raider force with no proper background.

In 3ed Squats suddenly disappeared. Orks could all of a sudden spread in a fungi-like manner. And Necrons became a full blown threat inspired by the lovecroft mythos of eldar gods and worhsip gone to far (the designer notes in white dwarf explicitly stated this). Most of the 3rd ed codexes had little to no lore/fluff in them because of GW thinking that more rules less lore would be a good marketing scheme. At the end of 3rd (sometimtes referred to as 3.5) they returned to the lore-rich format. Introducing the Inquistion as viable armies (the inquisition in itself ahd been around since 1ed) and at the same time moving SoB from its own codex to a Inquisitor hang around version.

4th didn't upset much of the lore but continued to flesh stuff out.

5th changed the background of the Necrons as stated above. Otherwise a fleshing out existing lore was basically done.

That's how I've seen it at least through all these years YMMV.

It's definitely less Grim than it used to be, it's also less funny, Orks were the comic relief, these days they are just Aggressive fungus, back in the day they had a comedy randomness (some of their Artillery was hilarious when you used it, it was a case of cross your fingers and hope it killed more enemy then orks).

It's become more established and a bit bland, the only way to spice it up is to keep re-writing it and then bringing out models and saying "Storm-Ravens have been around for 10,000 years" Yeah whatever. I think as they fleshed out too much of the universe, it has become very set and therefore the freedom of players to make stuff up has slowly faded. There were only two rules, Make it brutal and make it depressing. But brightly coloured marines kind of make it look kindergarden, unlike say the 1st Legion "Dark Angels" with their Gothic looks, The Blood Angels Vampire tendancy's and the Space Wolves as the Werewolf element.

The Ultramarines and their progeny have made the Human universe all noble and honour bound. I remember back in the early days it was dystopian madness it all had elements of "Brazil", "Blade Runner" "Mad Max", "Conan the barbarian", "The Exorcist". Hells Angel bikers, Mental homicidal Crusaders in armour, Dwarves with grudges, Orks and perverted, twisted, blood worshipping god squad types, or Alien Cults. It was edgy, it was rough around the edges, it was dark and it had a tongue in cheek style. Now it's more corporate, for gods sake we had an Ork Leader named after out Prime Minister Maggie T.

Could you imagine it today - Warboss Davo' Camo-runt, (yes our current Prime minister) or perhaps Warboss Barak o Bomma?. Since those heady days of tongue in cheek it's kind of lost a bit of it's soul.