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Suing Bungie? Not for Halo but for their upcoming game. And Corvus Belli should, too. Man, it's 40k meets Infinity. And I love it.

Jokes aside, it's mostly a matter of media. The ChS lawsuit is dealing with an issue of industrial design. If ChS was able to find other instances of wargaming miniatures with similar feaatures to those of GW's Space Marines, they might stand a chance. That way they could argue that their designs are sufficiently generic.

See how Mantic, for instance, has had no troubles in making a race of spacefaring, barbaric green-skinned "orx", but has taken great care that their Enforcers, while conceptually similar to GW's Astartes, remained completely different visually.

It's taking the piss for anyone at GW to pretend that the game world wasn't inspired to a great extent by prior works. Very little of it was originally taken seriously, and large quanties were lifted wholesale from whatever sources the authors enjoyed or found amusing. An Inquisitor named Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau is pretty darn indicative of the attitude and mindset. As is an entire world of overmuscled t-shirt wearing Vietnam-movie style soldiers, including a particularly heroic specimen called Sly Marbo.

While over the years they've clearly become much more interested in adding and delineating original ideas and concepts, they're never going to be able to get away with pretending that Dune, SST, 2000AD and Moorcock weren't major influences, or claiming ownership or origination of concepts like a Space Marine or a Flamer. It's just silly, and I don't think it's anything the original creators would ever have the gall to try.

What's that maxim about defending IP again? The one about how the farther a given defender is from the person who actually invented the thing, the bigger and more zealous a jerk they are in their defense?

 Agent_Tremolo wrote:
Suing Bungie? Not for Halo but for their upcoming game. And Corvus Belli should, too. Man, it's 40k meets Infinity. And I love it.

Jokes aside, it's mostly a matter of media. The ChS lawsuit is dealing with an issue of industrial design. If ChS was able to find other instances of wargaming miniatures with similar feaatures to those of GW's Space Marines, they might stand a chance. That way they could argue that their designs are sufficiently generic.

See how Mantic, for instance, has had no troubles in making a race of spacefaring, barbaric green-skinned "orx", but has taken great care that their Enforcers, while conceptually similar to GW's Astartes, remained completely different visually.

They wont sue Mantic because the British Supreme court has already explicitly ruled that toy soliers are designs and the term for an exclusive design right expires after 15 year at most. Subsequent designs which are substantially based on that original design are timed based on that original design. As a result, space marines, eldar, orks and large portions of the tau and necron armies would be free for other companies to blatantly copy.

As far as preexisting works, look to Asgard miniatures, Ion Age miniatures and most other scifi art that included power armor. Works like Gamma World, Traveller, Cyberpunk and even many of the Battletech books included armor derived from medieval plate. When you start at that point and move towards power armor, you end up at the same point. Things like the shoulder pad are as much an issue of the technology used to create them as it is an actual design choice.

Eilif wrote:

silent25 wrote:
Don't forget the whole concept of the Emperor is taken from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. One little paragraph about how the galactic empire where the emperor is kept alive in stasis fields and his will is interpreted and executed by a ruling council.

Or is that book too lowbrow for this thread

Afraid not, though certain aspects may be woven into the 40k emperor. No doubt some of the 40k writers had read Hitchikers.

Far more likely though that the Emperor is taken from the third Dune Book "God Emperor of Dune". Emperor becoming less and less human, ruling over a universe that has come to worship him as a God, etc, etc.

Hitchhiker's was 1979, 1978 if you count the radio drama. God Emperor of Dune was 1981.

silent25 wrote:

Eilif wrote:

silent25 wrote:
Don't forget the whole concept of the Emperor is taken from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. One little paragraph about how the galactic empire where the emperor is kept alive in stasis fields and his will is interpreted and executed by a ruling council.

Or is that book too lowbrow for this thread

Afraid not, though certain aspects may be woven into the 40k emperor. No doubt some of the 40k writers had read Hitchikers.

Far more likely though that the Emperor is taken from the third Dune Book "God Emperor of Dune". Emperor becoming less and less human, ruling over a universe that has come to worship him as a God, etc, etc.

Hitchhiker's was 1979, 1978 if you count the radio drama. God Emperor of Dune was 1981.

And, Rogue Trader didn't come out until 1987.

I don't argue the dates, but I still favor the Dune series as a stronger influence. Plus as you say it's "one little paragraph" from Hitchikers whereas so much else (lasguns, navigators, etc...) is drawn from the Dune series. Still it's an argument that will go on unless the original writers are on record somewhere.

Eilif wrote:

And, Rogue Trader didn't come out until 1987.

I don't argue the dates, but I still favor the Dune series as a stronger influence. Plus as you say it's "one little paragraph" from Hitchikers whereas so much else (lasguns, navigators, etc...) is drawn from the Dune series. Still it's an argument that will go on unless the original writers are on record somewhere.

Actually it came out in 86, not 87, but was more responding to the comments that Hitchhiker's drew from the same reference.

Foundation was also an influence.
A planet where the capital city of the empire covers the planet?

Trantor. Hive world.
Bil the galactic hero also took the piss out of this trope (losing the street directory has a steep penalty).

It's (foundation) even more dense prose than Dune (but at least he didn't spend 37 pages describing the way the golden sheen scintillated in the sunlight and delve into the backstory of all who had beheld it. So it was less dense than Lotr).

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's taking the piss for anyone at GW to pretend that the game world wasn't inspired to a great extent by prior works. Very little of it was originally taken seriously, and large quanties were lifted wholesale from whatever sources the authors enjoyed or found amusing. An Inquisitor named Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau is pretty darn indicative of the attitude and mindset. As is an entire world of overmuscled t-shirt wearing Vietnam-movie style soldiers, including a particularly heroic specimen called Sly Marbo.

While over the years they've clearly become much more interested in adding and delineating original ideas and concepts, they're never going to be able to get away with pretending that Dune, SST, 2000AD and Moorcock weren't major influences, or claiming ownership or origination of concepts like a Space Marine or a Flamer. It's just silly, and I don't think it's anything the original creators would ever have the gall to try.

What's that maxim about defending IP again? The one about how the farther a given defender is from the person who actually invented the thing, the bigger and more zealous a jerk they are in their defense?

I think this is how most people feel to be honest.

I don't think anyone really has a problem that 40k was influenced by so many sources, and especially considering that 40k has gone on to become such an evocative setting. The problem lies when the same company tries to turn around and start stomping on people for using the same concepts that they themselves borrowed, even when those other examples are quite obviously completely un-connected to what GW are doing.

I would actually posit that the concept, at least though not the name, of hive cities goes back to Fritz Lang's silent movie Metropolis. Also in the movie "Things to Come" based on H.G. Well's book, there is what you might consider a hive city only it is burrowed in to the ground instead of being built up high. That movie also has a couple of interesting parts that seem to be similar to pre-imperial terra, you'll see what I mean when you watch it.

Wells used a lot of the hive city concept. I know it mentioned in When the Sleeper Wakes and that was published in the 1890s. Futurists in the hay-days of the industrial revolution often speculated on how best to deal with the booming urban populations and various forms of hive cities were often the solution which was chosen. Once you had the first major steel and concrete buildings go up, it became almost an assumed fact of things to come.

Regarding official word from the authors' on what inspired them, you have the Lost and the Damned interviews which happened relatively recently and you also have a variety of older interviews where people like Ansell and Priestley discuss the things that they were thinking of when they designed various rules and settings (or cracked the whip to get it done).

http://talesfromthemaelstrom.blogspot.com/2011/09/rick-priestley-interview.html

 chromedog wrote:
Foundation was also an influence.
A planet where the capital city of the empire covers the planet?

Don't forget the machine worshiping religion that kept the masses from understanding technology.

 precinctomega wrote:


I often see SST and Ender's Game cited as being on the "required reading list" for military academies, btw. I can't speak for the US, but I'd be surprised if more than one in ten of entrants at the UK's military academies of Sandhurst, Dartmouth, Lympstone and Cranwell have read either and, if they have, that they see any relevance to their careers.

Can't say anything for actually military academies but I do know that Starship Troopers has been on and off the Marine Corp's professional reading list pretty much since it was published. (Yes Marines read. You're shocked I know)

To the best of my knowledge these books are usually "recommended reading", rather than "required". SST and Ender's Game both contain very relevant material about the mindset amd proper attitudes of an officer and a leader in a military organization.

I would argue that Ender's Game follows Clausewitz in recommending the prosecution of the decisive battle within total war.

This scenario continues to elude modern western forces in their struggles against the Taleban, etc. Thus, other texts should perhaps be consulted in preference.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I would argue that Ender's Game follows Clausewitz in recommending the prosecution of the decisive battle within total war.

This scenario continues to elude modern western forces in their struggles against the Taleban, etc. Thus, other texts should perhaps be consulted in preference.

I'd concur that Ender's Game's military strategy follows that of Clausewitz and Jomni, and that those same strategies are nigh useless when planning for COIN operations. Maneuver Warfare is the more modern strategy followed by the US military, and it's more rooted in Mongolian military theory under Genghis Khan, who I would argue had a pretty fantastic counter insurgent program as well. Hard for people to resist you when you burn a village and make a pile of human skulls at the former center of town. Sadly we can only use his Cavalry tactics instead of that. Hearts, minds and not being a group of despotic psychopaths.

It's been a while since I read Jomini, but wasn't his "Art of War" considered the very root of the Western manoeuvre warfare tradition adopted by Patten and Montgomery et al, right up to Schwarzkopf and beyond?

R.

The theories of Fuller and Liddell-Hart surely had more influence on 20th century warfare post WW1.

Not arguing with that. It just seemed odd to me to ascribe the philosophy of Total War to Jomini, when he is usually Serb as the father of manoeuvre warfare (albeit one based on skirmishers on horse back and professional riflemen).

R.

I've always thought of Jomini as an inheritor to Vaubaun "engineering" military science where Clausewitz copied/adapted to Napoleonic tactics more directly. Both based their theories on Napoleon, who was the real father of maneuver warfare in Europe. I base that on Jomni's mild obsession with the "geometry" of war based on territory control where Clausewitz's "triarch" approaches the concept of warfare from all angles. Of course wiser heads then mine have been debating this sort of thing since the date of publication of Jomni and Clausewitz's respective works. (Though Jomni of course had several)

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's taking the piss for anyone at GW to pretend that the game world wasn't inspired to a great extent by prior works. Very little of it was originally taken seriously, and large quanties were lifted wholesale from whatever sources the authors enjoyed or found amusing. An Inquisitor named Obi-Wan Sherlock Clouseau is pretty darn indicative of the attitude and mindset. As is an entire world of overmuscled t-shirt wearing Vietnam-movie style soldiers, including a particularly heroic specimen called Sly Marbo.

It wouldn't surprise me if a number of younger staff really think it is entirely original. Almost all the people that created the game and laid the foundations are gone, and the company is now old enough that many younger GWers have the bulk of their exposure to SF from GW, and cinema. Neither are original sources for most stuff. While most of the creatives that wrote the original game were SF fans that would have read books like Starship Troopers and Dune as their inspiration, those currently working for GW have largely only digested GW material. That could explain the poor quality of creative content from GW today, which consists of 'kewl' stuff about people slaughtering demons/sisters of battle and packing it full off OTT characters, rather than any grander, more impressive ideas.

Howard... as a guy in my mid twenties who's read and passionately loved the Three Grand Masters as well as Mr. Herbet's Dune I gotta say your post depressed the hell out of me.

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned Gilman's excellent Rhada books (1960s) as inspiration for GW --

"The future is primitive: society is feudal, science is suspect; the past is fragmentary: shards, sonnets, the ruin of the Empire State. Linking the future-present and the fragmentary past are the spaceships built long before, now guided by the incantations of navigator-priests; a further link with the Golden Age when men colonized the galaxy, established a stable Empire, and created cybernetic organisms to do their dirty work is the cyborg star king Tallan. Constructed secretly as the creature of the Regent-Empress Marlana who would usurp the throne and shatter the unity achieved again by Glamiss the Magnificent, he turns against her; to prevent his dominating the galaxy and destroying the Empire, Kier, star king of Rhada, who has previously rebelled against Marlana, challenges Tallan to single combat and kills him, at the possible cost of his reason. So ends the present volume, the first of a trilogy, of which the foregoing is only orientation and outline extracted from a refractory and highly allusive narrative; as the story develops; Rhad is the central figure, and the blind, mind-reading Vulks Gret and Erit are the most interesting. Mr. Gilman (a pseudonym) is of coarse commenting on the human condition from mistrust of knowledge to propensity for self-destruction, assisted by putative and actual quotes at the beginning of each chapter, and he's as up-to-date as Chairman Mao. It's a compelling construct that requires close application and a considerable frame of reference; young people who are assaying adult science fiction for its insights are the likely readers."

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robert-cham-gilman-3/the-rebel-of-rhada/

Speaking of my personal experience, I have never heard of Gilman before today, despite having been an SF fan since the early 70s. As a youth I should have been the prime target for these apparently "young adult market" books. It's easy to suppose that the GW designers, who are of a similar age and cultural background to me, may never have seen them.

I would hold that Dune is the more likely inspiration, owing to the Butlerian Jihad being an obvious model for the was of the Metal Men or whatever 40K calls its "Rise of the Machines" trope. Dune also predates Rhada by several years, and is overall a more famous book.

There is no need to find the well-springs of 40K's Imperium in SF, though. The slide of a mighty empire into decadent collapse and superstitious dark ages is familiar to western culture through the historical examples of the Roman and Ottoman Empires.

True enough. I read "The Navigator of Rhada" as a kid, but I recognise that Gilman's not as popular as he really should be. Took me a while to track down the rest of his books. I do think that one of the things I loved about 40K was that the setting reminded me of Gilman's, though.

I find the medieval link on the first Space Marine figures very clear

Raise your hand here, anyone who thought that Roboute Guilliman was based on Robert Goulet for his work in Camelot? It was an easy mistake for sure especially when you consider the similarities of SM's to knights.

I was never convinced that this was truly the case, however it was the best suggestion at the time, so I went along with it.

Now we know that there was a writer named Robert Gilman, which is a much closer and reasonable source for the name of the Ultramarine's primarch both in name and in the fact that he wrote a setting that is so very prototypical of the 40k empire. Undoubtedly this was far more the inspiration as it never made sense that the writers of 40k would mine a poncey musical's cast for names.

This makes so much more sense!

They mined gay poets for names, though; Lion El'Johnson.

They mined Dante Alighieri's work for the Blood angel names originally - then they added choices from a poll of 12 year old boys for some of the new stuff. See "bloodeverything".
They mined biblical sources for Dork angels.

I read Starship Troops and never heard of Stranger. The only other Heinlein book I have is Pale Horse, so...there is that.

I liked the book and it's politics, but I never got why it has been considered so contraversial. I thought despite the policitical angle it was vanilla sci-fi military and unoffensive.

That said, it does amaze me on how GW is acting as of late in regards to CH and the actions against Spots the Space Marine.
And claim they are the originators of the things they try to claim as IP.

P.S. I to have never read Dune, and only saw the first movie.

In the mid 50s, the idea of a military based government surely would have been quite controversial thanks to WW2 and the continuation of conscription through the Korean War.

I think you have to look at the book within its time of original publication.