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There's a few different definitions of high and low fantasy running around out there - I prefer the 'low fantasy has magic and fantastical elements, but they're in the background and the focus is decidedly on relatively ordinary people; high fantasy has the focus on demigods, mythic heroes, and magic' definition, since it's an easy one to distinguish.

The debate about high/low fantasy is one that I've participated in enough times to not want to be dragged in one again so I'll drop it here . The good thing is most people in wargaming will know what you mean when you say high/low fantasy.

 Spinner wrote:
There's a few different definitions of high and low fantasy running around out there - I prefer the 'low fantasy has magic and fantastical elements, but they're in the background and the focus is decidedly on relatively ordinary people; high fantasy has the focus on demigods, mythic heroes, and magic' definition, since it's an easy one to distinguish.

I'd always understood similar - low fantasy, Henrik McPoomp spends his entire life shovelling manure and eating turnips, until one day a guy in glowing armour riding a griffon appears, smashes his house up as he flies past, and disappears forever. Henrik later dies from tetanus caused by a splinter from a wooden fork.
High fantasy, everyone eats breakfast off the floating mystical plates of Az'gla'munc:k, flies to work on a dragon-younger, and is an apprentice mage at the monastery-citadel of the ancient order of the celestial dawn makers.

Doesn't really matter to me whether it's high or low fantasy. (Though I do prefer low)

As long as it's dark or grim fantasy.

Dark fantasy, George entered his house after a weary day of repairing the destroyed defenses of the citadel after the horrors of madness smashed it down and killed half the population in the city. Then George remembered, his house was destroyed amongst the devastation. Crunch!

 Spinner wrote:

Spoiler:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Spinner wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


I'm a Dogs of War player, and literally *ALL* of my favorite characters are gone. Same with my favorite units. And my non-favorites, too. Complaining about losing "official" rules for a handful of very old characters would be like me being upset that GW isn't supporting the original Regiments of Renown from waaay back when GW used leaded pewter. If your army had been Squatted, I think you take a different tack over losing a few models versus the whole fething thing. It's really fething petty is what it is.

Coming up with good backgrounds is not easy. Tolkien spent years refining Middle Earth, much as GW spent years building up the Old World. They are rich worlds, and the average gamer simply does not have the time, ability or inclination to make something like this in their spare time. Also, the Old World is awfully full. The very richness of detail that GW has added over the years has progressively removed places for players to make their own. With the broad development of Fluff and emphasis on hordes, Fantasy had become more pseudo-historical gaming than actual "fantasy" gaming.

Being able to make stuff up allows me to play my Dogs of War without "points" cost issues. For me, that's a good thing. I don't see what's gone too far.

One could argue that all our armies have been squatted. They no longer receive any official support for Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Dogs of War were pretty neat! I liked the concept of adding mercenaries to armies and can remember going up against them once or twice. Good games, even if they ended horribly for my wolfboyz. If you don't like points as a concept, well, I guess that's your preference, but I never had an issue with squaring off against the Dogs of War. Did they get an updated list for Age of Sigmar?

I'd think it would be obvious losing the setting overall is more important than losing special characters. Not trying to be petty, just trying to give a counter-point to Matt's first point. Sorry if that offended you.

Now, as for the rest of the post...

Warhammer's basically always been pseudo-historical, at least in the background. Apart from the obvious real-world parallels - have you looked at any of the old, OLD WHFRP stuff? Lots of interesting little bits. In fact, I'd argue that recent developments moved it closer and closer to 'fantasy' gaming, what with the focus on giant monsters and magic and people turning into demigods because of said magic and all the other things that bothered me about End Times That was it's own unique flavor, and it's sad for me to see that be swapped out for some loosely inspired Norse mythology/Warcraft hybrid.

The fullness of the Old World never stopped me from writing background. It inspired it, actually. I'd poke around the map and see what looked interesting, then see if anything had already been written for it, and bam! Incorporate that. This character's a goblin warlord living in the Border Princes who picks on caravans going to Malko. That one's a Bretonnian knight who believes himself to be the rightful lord of the Hautmont. For me, it's always easier to build interesting background with a seed to work with. And, on that subject, I know I'm not alone. I was involved for years with a series of online campaigns that did just that - picked up on bits and pieces of fluff, then really fleshed them out, made them its own, and made Warhammer magic. In, by the way, the GM team's spare time. We hit Araby (twice!), Cathay and Nippon, Estalia, and Norsca...and each time, the GM team had an enormous resource pool to draw on. From maps to concept art to fan-based speculation...and that was a massive help, not an impediment. That argument just doesn't make sense to me.

One cannot argue that the bulk of armies were Squatted in AoS, given that GW provided new lists for them, unlike Dogs of War. DoW did not get a GW official AoS list. Haven't had one from GW since WFB 6E, carryover midway into early 7E, memory holed during 7E, non-existant during 8E. I made an AoS list so I can play my DoW, and have gotten in more 8E games under AoS than all of WFB 8E.

As a DoW player, I strongly disagree with losing the setting being important. During 8E, the Old World setting was still there, but DoW Special Characters (and army) were Squatted.

I started into WFB at the very tail of 5E, and the AoS armies look a lot more like what we saw at the end of Herohammer than pre-End Times 8E - a skirmish game ruled by huge things with some small units to fill the deployment line. Pre-ET 8E is "pseudo-historical" in the sense it's about huge numbers of models on the board, elephant-equivalents not withstanding. ET was a good move, because it brought WFB back to having Fantasy things instead of boring block infantry. Aside from a Border Princes campaign early on, it's just been even points fixed list battles.

I'm sorry, I can't be reading this right. Did...did we switch positions? Last post you said it would be petty to complain about losing special characters when the setting had been done away with, and...now you're saying that the fact that your army and characters never got updated means you don't care about the setting?

See, I disagree that throwing in more 'fantasy' things was a good move - the Warhammer flavor (at least for me) is grim-and-gritty low fantasy, and if you've got giant mystical monsters and people imbued with the essence of magic itself dueling back and forth everywhere, that takes the focus off the halberdier who wasn't even equipped with shoes - but I guess we're just looking for different things here. Although I'm not sure how you pull off Dogs of War without relying on block infantry.

As for the fixed list battles thing - which I guess is all you played in eighth edition, is that what you were saying? - sounds more like an issue with a gaming group than the game itself. Eighth had plenty of scenarios, nothing stopped you from writing your own - or, in fact, updating Dogs of War to eighth edition like you have with Age of Sigmar! - and there was even less to stop people from using scenarios that had been published during earlier periods (Whee! I get to reference the General's Compendium again!)

...now I REALLY want to break that book out again and play the Siege of Nuln. Starts with goblins disguised as washerwomen sneaking past nearsighted checkpoint guards, ends with a massive setpiece battle on a giant bridge. Cinematic, narrative - all those buzzwords GW likes to throw around, and it's got points, so we should all be happy :p

I think it's petty to complain about losing a few characters when others have lost their entire armies, because one can do without special characters if you still have an army. I think it's worse to lose your army than a setting, because it's harder to make up an army list.

Warhammer is definitely high fantasy, just gritty; I suppose one can focus on the mundanity of being a basic footman, but that kind of gets away from why one plays Fantasy... Dogs of War are a semi-elite army, where some blocks are needed, not a horde army like Gobbos.

By 8E, I was kinda going through the motions, stuck with an army 2 steps back on the power curve and having no official support. Updating DoW to 8E would have been a lot more work, what with the need to make spell lists and assign proper "points" to everything. AoS has less stuff to update / convert.

I've done scenarios, but as above, when you're not even close to competitive on an "even points" basis, it's a little discouraging. For our group, 8E was the straw that broke the camel's back.

RoperPG wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
There's a few different definitions of high and low fantasy running around out there - I prefer the 'low fantasy has magic and fantastical elements, but they're in the background and the focus is decidedly on relatively ordinary people; high fantasy has the focus on demigods, mythic heroes, and magic' definition, since it's an easy one to distinguish.

I'd always understood similar - low fantasy, Henrik McPoomp spends his entire life shovelling manure and eating turnips, until one day a guy in glowing armour riding a griffon appears, smashes his house up as he flies past, and disappears forever. Henrik later dies from tetanus caused by a splinter from a wooden fork.
High fantasy, everyone eats breakfast off the floating mystical plates of Az'gla'munc:k, flies to work on a dragon-younger, and is an apprentice mage at the monastery-citadel of the ancient order of the celestial dawn makers.

Those names are perfect. I'm using Henrik McPoomp in an RPG.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Spinner wrote:

Spoiler:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Spinner wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


I'm a Dogs of War player, and literally *ALL* of my favorite characters are gone. Same with my favorite units. And my non-favorites, too. Complaining about losing "official" rules for a handful of very old characters would be like me being upset that GW isn't supporting the original Regiments of Renown from waaay back when GW used leaded pewter. If your army had been Squatted, I think you take a different tack over losing a few models versus the whole fething thing. It's really fething petty is what it is.

Coming up with good backgrounds is not easy. Tolkien spent years refining Middle Earth, much as GW spent years building up the Old World. They are rich worlds, and the average gamer simply does not have the time, ability or inclination to make something like this in their spare time. Also, the Old World is awfully full. The very richness of detail that GW has added over the years has progressively removed places for players to make their own. With the broad development of Fluff and emphasis on hordes, Fantasy had become more pseudo-historical gaming than actual "fantasy" gaming.

Being able to make stuff up allows me to play my Dogs of War without "points" cost issues. For me, that's a good thing. I don't see what's gone too far.

One could argue that all our armies have been squatted. They no longer receive any official support for Warhammer Fantasy Battles.

Dogs of War were pretty neat! I liked the concept of adding mercenaries to armies and can remember going up against them once or twice. Good games, even if they ended horribly for my wolfboyz. If you don't like points as a concept, well, I guess that's your preference, but I never had an issue with squaring off against the Dogs of War. Did they get an updated list for Age of Sigmar?

I'd think it would be obvious losing the setting overall is more important than losing special characters. Not trying to be petty, just trying to give a counter-point to Matt's first point. Sorry if that offended you.

Now, as for the rest of the post...

Warhammer's basically always been pseudo-historical, at least in the background. Apart from the obvious real-world parallels - have you looked at any of the old, OLD WHFRP stuff? Lots of interesting little bits. In fact, I'd argue that recent developments moved it closer and closer to 'fantasy' gaming, what with the focus on giant monsters and magic and people turning into demigods because of said magic and all the other things that bothered me about End Times That was it's own unique flavor, and it's sad for me to see that be swapped out for some loosely inspired Norse mythology/Warcraft hybrid.

The fullness of the Old World never stopped me from writing background. It inspired it, actually. I'd poke around the map and see what looked interesting, then see if anything had already been written for it, and bam! Incorporate that. This character's a goblin warlord living in the Border Princes who picks on caravans going to Malko. That one's a Bretonnian knight who believes himself to be the rightful lord of the Hautmont. For me, it's always easier to build interesting background with a seed to work with. And, on that subject, I know I'm not alone. I was involved for years with a series of online campaigns that did just that - picked up on bits and pieces of fluff, then really fleshed them out, made them its own, and made Warhammer magic. In, by the way, the GM team's spare time. We hit Araby (twice!), Cathay and Nippon, Estalia, and Norsca...and each time, the GM team had an enormous resource pool to draw on. From maps to concept art to fan-based speculation...and that was a massive help, not an impediment. That argument just doesn't make sense to me.

One cannot argue that the bulk of armies were Squatted in AoS, given that GW provided new lists for them, unlike Dogs of War. DoW did not get a GW official AoS list. Haven't had one from GW since WFB 6E, carryover midway into early 7E, memory holed during 7E, non-existant during 8E. I made an AoS list so I can play my DoW, and have gotten in more 8E games under AoS than all of WFB 8E.

As a DoW player, I strongly disagree with losing the setting being important. During 8E, the Old World setting was still there, but DoW Special Characters (and army) were Squatted.

I started into WFB at the very tail of 5E, and the AoS armies look a lot more like what we saw at the end of Herohammer than pre-End Times 8E - a skirmish game ruled by huge things with some small units to fill the deployment line. Pre-ET 8E is "pseudo-historical" in the sense it's about huge numbers of models on the board, elephant-equivalents not withstanding. ET was a good move, because it brought WFB back to having Fantasy things instead of boring block infantry. Aside from a Border Princes campaign early on, it's just been even points fixed list battles.

I'm sorry, I can't be reading this right. Did...did we switch positions? Last post you said it would be petty to complain about losing special characters when the setting had been done away with, and...now you're saying that the fact that your army and characters never got updated means you don't care about the setting?

See, I disagree that throwing in more 'fantasy' things was a good move - the Warhammer flavor (at least for me) is grim-and-gritty low fantasy, and if you've got giant mystical monsters and people imbued with the essence of magic itself dueling back and forth everywhere, that takes the focus off the halberdier who wasn't even equipped with shoes - but I guess we're just looking for different things here. Although I'm not sure how you pull off Dogs of War without relying on block infantry.

As for the fixed list battles thing - which I guess is all you played in eighth edition, is that what you were saying? - sounds more like an issue with a gaming group than the game itself. Eighth had plenty of scenarios, nothing stopped you from writing your own - or, in fact, updating Dogs of War to eighth edition like you have with Age of Sigmar! - and there was even less to stop people from using scenarios that had been published during earlier periods (Whee! I get to reference the General's Compendium again!)

...now I REALLY want to break that book out again and play the Siege of Nuln. Starts with goblins disguised as washerwomen sneaking past nearsighted checkpoint guards, ends with a massive setpiece battle on a giant bridge. Cinematic, narrative - all those buzzwords GW likes to throw around, and it's got points, so we should all be happy :p

I think it's petty to complain about losing a few characters when others have lost their entire armies, because one can do without special characters if you still have an army. I think it's worse to lose your army than a setting, because it's harder to make up an army list.

Warhammer is definitely high fantasy, just gritty; I suppose one can focus on the mundanity of being a basic footman, but that kind of gets away from why one plays Fantasy... Dogs of War are a semi-elite army, where some blocks are needed, not a horde army like Gobbos.

By 8E, I was kinda going through the motions, stuck with an army 2 steps back on the power curve and having no official support. Updating DoW to 8E would have been a lot more work, what with the need to make spell lists and assign proper "points" to everything. AoS has less stuff to update / convert.

I've done scenarios, but as above, when you're not even close to competitive on an "even points" basis, it's a little discouraging. For our group, 8E was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I'm not sure I'm reading this right either, because what it seems like is that you're saying no one can complain about background changing and units being taken out except Dogs of War players, Chaos Dwarf players (unless you count Tamurkhan!), and anyone who built an army around the Storm of Chaos rules. Which...makes little to no sense. I never used special characters anyway, it was much more fun to come up with my own, but I still don't think that 'my favorite special characters are gone!' counts as a misconception when my favorite special characters ARE gone. For the record, I do think Dogs of War should have been updated, but I disagree with a great many of GW's choices.

Did Morglum Necksnapper actually have any rules? Anyone know?

I have to strongly disagree with you on the 'it's harder to write an army list than a setting' statement. I mean, you COULD write a very simple, blank-canvas setting, but we're not talking about that, we're talking about the Warhammer World. The Old World alone is incredibly rich and detailed. I'm not saying that writing an army list is easy, but I am saying that tweaking some points to bring a list in line with current lists would be a lot simpler than coming up with an entire setting. You wouldn't even need to make special spell lists; it's a generic mostly human army, they get the Eight Winds same as the Empire.

And yes, I know they're not goblins or skaven, but they're not exactly elves or ogres either. As I recall, there were a lot of basic block type units (pikes and so forth), generically named mercenary units (heavy cavalry, light cavalry, ogres), and some interesting and colorful 'special character' regiments. I guess you could do a cav army, but I was always drawn to the pikes. Just try it, cavalry bus, see what happens!

In fact WHFB flipped and flopped between being high and low fantasy, depending on GW's strategy each edition.

Early WHFB was very much high fantasy, it was all about the heroes and wizards, the bog standard troops were only there for scenery for the villains to chew.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made the rank and file more important.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made big heroes and monsters and war machines more important.

Etc.

From this perspective, AoS is definitely high fantasy. It's a skirmish game between small forces of powerful units, with lots of monsters and so on.

It won't actually work as a low fantasy mass battle game, because the movement and combat mechanics are not streamlined.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In fact WHFB flipped and flopped between being high and low fantasy, depending on GW's strategy each edition.

Early WHFB was very much high fantasy, it was all about the heroes and wizards, the bog standard troops were only there for scenery for the villains to chew.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made the rank and file more important.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made big heroes and monsters and war machines more important.

Etc.

From this perspective, AoS is definitely high fantasy. It's a skirmish game between small forces of powerful units, with lots of monsters and so on.

It won't actually work as a low fantasy mass battle game, because the movement and combat mechanics are not streamlined.

High model count =/= low fantasy
Low model count =/= high fantasy

It's to do with the fluff. Mordheim is a low fantasy for example.

The distinction between low and high fantasy is not who a story focuses on but on the abundance of fantasy tropes in the story's universe.

When you've got dragon riding wizards shooting lightning bolts at orcs, it's high fantasy. If you ride a tornado into a magical land and go on adventures with a lion, tin man, and scarecrow, that's high fantasy. Low fantasy is stuff like the Elves and the Shoemaker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Preacher - stuff that largely takes place in the real world with fantastic elements.

There's probably a middle spot between low and high where things like Conan, Berserk, and Game of Thrones fit - things which are high fantasy, but still take place in a largely realistic world and the fantastical elements are not commonplace to the world's inhabitants. Conan is technically part of the Cthulhu mythos, so I guess it also qualifies as horror/scifi.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The distinction between low and high fantasy is not who a story focuses on but on the abundance of fantasy tropes in the story's universe.

When you've got dragon riding wizards shooting lightning bolts at orcs, it's high fantasy. If you ride a tornado into a magical land and go on adventures with a lion, tin man, and scarecrow, that's high fantasy. Low fantasy is stuff like the Elves and the Shoemaker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Preacher - stuff that largely takes place in the real world with fantastic elements.

There's probably a middle spot between low and high where things like Conan, Berserk, and Game of Thrones fit - things which are high fantasy, but still take place in a largely realistic world and the fantastical elements are not commonplace to the world's inhabitants. Conan is technically part of the Cthulhu mythos, so I guess it also qualifies as horror/scifi.

Couple of things I'd like to touch on here.

The distinction between low, and high fantasy I feel is better explained not by abundance but by accessibility. A low fantasy world can contain dragons, it can contain wizards, it can contain orcs and lightning magic. It may even have a climatic combination of all three. If you see something like this on a weekly basis however, when these different tropes and themes become commonplace, that is where we transition from low to high fantasy. Another example would be to look at the Hobbit, with only a handful of elves and dwarves and a single wizard who doesn't use much magic as low fantasy, contrasting with Lord of the Rings with elven armies, a legion of robed wizard-like figures riding dragon-like creatures and more wizards than you can shake a staff at.

Your latter examples (not touching Beserk as unfamiliar with that one), I would call Conan and GoT certainly low fantasy but moving toward high fantasy as the world grows smaller the more it's explored. Specifically on your comment on Conan being part of the Lovecraftian mythos, I don't believe that is the case. Robert E. Howard and Howard Phillips Lovecraft were good friends in life, and often wrote back and forth to each other and put little easter eggs or nods to one another in their works. They were not the same world or story, simply two friends giving subtle nods that we've had decades to catalogue.

Collateral Jim wrote:

The distinction between low, and high fantasy I feel is better explained not by abundance but by accessibility. A low fantasy world can contain dragons, it can contain wizards, it can contain orcs and lightning magic. It may even have a climatic combination of all three. If you see something like this on a weekly basis however, when these different tropes and themes become commonplace, that is where we transition from low to high fantasy. Another example would be to look at the Hobbit, with only a handful of elves and dwarves and a single wizard who doesn't use much magic as low fantasy, contrasting with Lord of the Rings with elven armies, a legion of robed wizard-like figures riding dragon-like creatures and more wizards than you can shake a staff at.

The Hobbit has elves, dwarves, magic, dragons, ogres, giant subterranean cities built inside a mountain, and a ring that turns people invisible created by basically an evil god king to rule the world. The Hobbit is high fantasy. In fact, one could argue that because The Hobbit set up most of the fantasy tropes we now consider commonplace, it is THE high fantasy. And the movie trilogy is WTF Fantasy.

Your latter examples (not touching Beserk as unfamiliar with that one), I would call Conan and GoT certainly low fantasy but moving toward high fantasy as the world grows smaller the more it's explored. Specifically on your comment on Conan being part of the Lovecraftian mythos, I don't believe that is the case. Robert E. Howard and Howard Phillips Lovecraft were good friends in life, and often wrote back and forth to each other and put little easter eggs or nods to one another in their works. They were not the same world or story, simply two friends giving subtle nods that we've had decades to catalogue.

The Cthulhu Mythos didn't begin as an organized effort to create a multi-author canon. Even Lovecraft's work doesn't have continuity between stories or use its own mythology consistently. A large part of the organized mythos came from - I want to say Clark Ashton Smith or August Derleth. Anyway, Robert E. Howard definitely wrote some works that were distinctly mythos, like Worms of the Earth, but many of the Conan stories do have references and generally follow the whole cosmic horror angle - though Conan is less horrific and more the sheer power fantasy of uncivilized barbarism (he can beat the gak out of eldritch gods because he only wears a loin cloth and knows not the deceit and corruption of civilized man).

We're off topic here but hey, whether or not the gamer has changed genre moving from WHFB to AoS could be seen as a misconception

 Sqorgar wrote:
The Hobbit has elves, dwarves, magic, dragons, ogres, giant subterranean cities built inside a mountain, and a ring that turns people invisible created by basically an evil god king to rule the world. The Hobbit is high fantasy. In fact, one could argue that because The Hobbit set up most of the fantasy tropes we now consider commonplace, it is THE high fantasy. And the movie trilogy is WTF Fantasy.

I disagree massively here, the Hobbit is a fairy tale, not some high fantasy epic.

For reference, here is how wikipedia defines the term 'High Fantasy':

High fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy, defined either by its setting in an imaginary world or by the epic stature of its characters, themes and plot. The term "high fantasy" was coined by Lloyd Alexander in a 1971 essay, "High Fantasy and Heroic Romance".

Technically from that anything set in an imaginary world seems to count but these days that is every fantasy so lets disregard that part of the definition. Epic characters, themes and plots is not how I would describe the Hobbit. The movies they made yes, the characters and events within it viewed in the context of the narrative of Middle Earth yes, but the original book itself absolutely not. Gandalf is not a demi god, the ring is not THE one ring, and the fate of Middle Earth does not hang in the balance. It is just a few dwarves and a wizard who casts like maybe 2 spells in the whole thing on a nice little adventure across the country.

By the same merit I think that WHFB could be presented as high fantasy by one author and then low fantasy the next. A lot of the BL stories where just about your average Joes who never had to contend with the likes of dragons or world shaking events like a chaos invasion or the Sundering, but then there where these epic characters and events that become the focus of the actual wargame itself, if not the 'setting' as a whole.

 Sqorgar wrote:
The Cthulhu Mythos didn't begin as an organized effort to create a multi-author canon. Even Lovecraft's work doesn't have continuity between stories or use its own mythology consistently. A large part of the organized mythos came from - I want to say Clark Ashton Smith or August Derleth. Anyway, Robert E. Howard definitely wrote some works that were distinctly mythos, like Worms of the Earth, but many of the Conan stories do have references and generally follow the whole cosmic horror angle - though Conan is less horrific and more the sheer power fantasy of uncivilized barbarism (he can beat the gak out of eldritch gods because he only wears a loin cloth and knows not the deceit and corruption of civilized man).

Is any world ever born as an organized effort to create a canon? Certainly not multi-authored, as in both Lovecraft and Howard's case, as both settings were reworked after each authors death and much of the popularity we enjoy today never occurred in their lifetimes. Did Lovecraft ever intend his works to have a set continuity? From the way he wrote them, they're very much crafted as almost lone pieces with shared motif in grand horror and madness at the scope of an uncaring universe. There is no protagonist, there is no order of reading, this is intentional. As for Howard, he took inspiration from some of the mythos of course, this is not being contested. Worms of the Earth is not a Conan story, I would be wary linking a tale of Bran and his much more historical setting that includes direct Lovecraft mythos to Conan and his fantasy world which do not. I am surprised that you didn't choose the original draft of Pheonix for your arguing point, as before release it had much of Lovecrafts mythos by name.

What I am trying to get across is that these are two authors inspiring one another, and having playing references to each other in their individual work but never taking the step to link the two worlds together.

 Bottle wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In fact WHFB flipped and flopped between being high and low fantasy, depending on GW's strategy each edition.

Early WHFB was very much high fantasy, it was all about the heroes and wizards, the bog standard troops were only there for scenery for the villains to chew.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made the rank and file more important.

Then GW realised they could sell more stuff if they made big heroes and monsters and war machines more important.

Etc.

From this perspective, AoS is definitely high fantasy. It's a skirmish game between small forces of powerful units, with lots of monsters and so on.

It won't actually work as a low fantasy mass battle game, because the movement and combat mechanics are not streamlined.

High model count =/= low fantasy
Low model count =/= high fantasy

It's to do with the fluff. Mordheim is a low fantasy for example.

I don't play fluff. I play wargames.

Cool story. Doesn't change what Low and High fantasy refer too. You can have a small band of farmers against a strange beast and that's Low fantasy. You can have armies of dragons squaring off against each other and that's High fantasy.

Yes, and GW flip-flopped between the importance of peasants and dragons during the lifetime of the game.

 Collateral Jim wrote:
Worms of the Earth is not a Conan story, I would be wary linking a tale of Bran and his much more historical setting that includes direct Lovecraft mythos to Conan and his fantasy world which do not. I am surprised that you didn't choose the original draft of Pheonix for your arguing point, as before release it had much of Lovecrafts mythos by name.

Honestly, I haven't read Robert E Howard in years, and when I did, I read through basically all his stuff in quick succession, so a lot of it is jumbled in my head. There was one where Conan visits a dead city with an eldritch horror stalking around, and I think the elephant guy in the tower was a god from beyond the stars. Honestly, Worms of the Earth was the only story I remembered the name of

It's been a while. I really should go back and reread all that stuff.

Yes, and GW flip-flopped between the importance of peasants and dragons during the lifetime of the game.

Doesn't matter what the power builds were. There's never been anything stopping you having low fantasy games of Warhammer, and age of Sigmar is no different. You can make an Empire army with few magical units.

In the name of bringing this back on-topic, I'd like to try and tackle OP. Been hesitant to do this because I didn't want to write an essay so will try to be selective with my points.

MongooseMatt wrote:
All my favourite characters are gone!
Just about all Chaos characters are still present. The Chaos Gods took their favourite servants and moved them to the Mortal Realms. Your Glottkin is still working hard for Nurgle (and doing a damn good job, as it happens, seriously kicking Alarielle’s rear end).

Obviously, Alarielle is still around, and she seems to be significantly more powerful. Tyrion and Teclis are still a thing.

Speaking from an artistic point of view, Gotrek had to die. Of all the characters from the world-that-was, he was the one who was always going to be killed…

We don’t yet know the full extent of who survived the End Times and while many have gone, there are still strong links to the Old World.

Manfred, for example, has just popped up...

This sounds like a confusion between the fluff of End Times and the fluff of Age of Sigmar. Characters died in End Times, quite a few of them and many changes in very significant ways that upset a great many people. I don't believe any are technically 'dead' however, and certainly not gone. The Sigmar fluff speaks of a great cloud of souls, and a cycle of reincarnation with all the great heroes of the past able to be reborn (at such a time which GW wants to make some bucks). So everybody died, but nobody died. I don't have so much problem with character death, as I do with a complete lack of gravity to their deaths. I may be upset when someone I like dies on Game of Thrones, but at least I know they'll stay dead and the stage is open for interesting new characters unlike anytime Superman or Robin dies. It just feels like the writers don't trust the audience to be able to cope with changes, whilst blasting out major changes.

Age of Sigmar is failing
No one (except a few at GW HQ) knows anything about how the game has been selling. One store, or even a bunch of Internet forums, do not a firm basis make for this conclusion. The first clue we will get will be next year in GW’s financial reports, and we may not really know for 2-3 years.

It really is okay to wait and reserve judgement for later. There is no requirement to make a decision on this immediately!

This is a very good point, and one I too try and explain to people. Age of Sigmar is new, brand new as far as brands go and whilst it retains the Warhammer name it does not stand as a new edition of Fantasy Battles. It is effectively a new product and has to be treated as such. I feel we will have a very good idea by next financial report, well before 2-3 years of waiting.

I too am reserving judgement.

There is no balance in Age of Sigmar
There is, but it is in your hands.

Even if we leave the ‘dick issue’ to one side (basically, don’t be one, and have as much consideration for your opponent’s fun as your own), there are now a handful of points systems available for AoS, and they are all community-made. As time goes on, they will become more accurate and more balanced. They are there and available for your use right now.

It is no secret that you don’t have to go far on a gaming forum to see people complaining about points imbalances in Fantasy Battle or 40k, and in these rants someone always bemoans the fact that GW does not engage in community-led pointing for units. After all, if thousands of people are submitting results, and points costs are updated, they will be far more accurate, right?

Well, that is what you have, right now, for Age of Sigmar. What is more, if you do not agree with one system (a certain points value for a unit will not be agreeable for everyone, you can be sure of that), then there are already others to try.

If competitive gaming is your thing, tournament organisers are now free to pick the points systems they feel work for them best – or simply come up with their own…

Given time, what can be more balanced than that?

But they could have added a points system, and all those ‘narrative’ gamers could have just ignored them – then everyone would have got what they wanted
This is true (leaving aside the benefits of community-pointing for a moment). However, there is another problem and, speaking as a games designer, this is a very real one.

If you put a points-based system in, 99% of all players will use it to the exclusion of all else. Yes, they could just ignore points. But they won’t. Gamers just won’t.

How a game presents itself has a direct effect on how it is played, generally speaking. And this, I know, was a very real issue for the guys at GW in the past. During the days of 3rd Edition 40k, to cite an example, the vast majority of games played used the Dawn Assault mission because, for some reason, people had got it into their heads that it was the ‘fairest’ mission. They also tended to default to 1,500 points.

The problem for the designers is that they have all these other types of battles, and worlds, and models to show you, but if you are just playing 1,500 point Dawn Assault games, you are not getting any of it. You are missing out on a massive amount.

If you are the games designer responsible, that is a big issue. You are creating all this wonderful material, and none of it is getting used. It also means the game is going to stagnate – at some point, you will get bored with Dawn Assault, but if you have been conditioned to think that this is the only way of playing 40k, you may not be looking for alternatives.

I know this sounds ridiculous. But it is a very real thing, and it is very common.

By taking the points out of Age of Sigmar (and by the way they present scenarios), there is no ‘standard’ way of playing. You are being forced out of the comfort zone, and this is where the designers want you. They want you to experience Warhammer in a variety of formats that will keep you gaming for, well, forever.

This is a very hotly contested issue. The way I look at it is one of convenience. I can negotiate with an opponent what models to use and not use. What story to play out. What themes and ideas we want. Or I can throw a standard point value army in the car and swing past the local game store and see if someone wants a pick-up game without much notice. The latter is far, far more common everywhere I've been, and whilst I don't write off the former, it feels very much reserved for casual play between friends and not strangers.

Another thought I've had with all this is regarding the community approach to point and comp systems. Quite simply, I feel that any company providing a product that is unusable out of the box is breaching ethics with their consumers. You don't buy a car with assembly required. You don't buy a toaster and need a third party to let it do crumpets instead of just bread. It is not the responsibility of the consumer to fix a product.

You could argue that GW doesn't intend for points, and the community is entitled and assuming that what they want from a game is what GW has a responsibility to provide. I would agree with you, GW doesn't have a responsibility to cater to what people want. I would say that if they're not listening to their customer-base then they're at the very least missing their target and suffering from poor business practices.

The free rules are a marketing trick. GW wants you to buy the big, expensive hardback books
Umm, yes. Of course they do. GW need to make money every month or they go bust, and then you will get no more Warhammer, of any flavour.

You can play Age of Sigmar with just the free materials (and, with the ‘legacy’ Warscrolls, there is a lot available for free) and go a long with just that. However, there is a lot more out there – eight entire worlds, in fact.

The hardbacks will give you new ways to play the game, via the Battleplans and Time of War sheets. However, their other purpose is to give you the story behind Age of Sigmar. The background behind Age of Sigmar is at least as important as the actual gaming system – and by this, I mean it is important to the structure of the game as a whole. It might not be important to you personally, as you may find mechanics to be the over-riding component necessary to you in the hobby. I know players who, when they get a new Codex, turn straight to the army list and it may be months before they read the background chapters, if at all. Age of Sigmar, as it stands, may not be for them.

The hardback releases (and those from the Black Library) are the direct driving force behind Age of Sigmar and, I imagine, always will be. If you are not into the storyline, then Age of Sigmar may not be for you. But the free rules are not a trick – the storyline is a fundamental component of the game.

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of free/paid rules on the part of someone offering a complaint. Free rules are always going to be the baseline, there so that there is no barrier of entry to playing the game if you already have models or just want to dip your toes and try it out. Physical rules are there as a premium product, big and colourful for collectors who want the story and art.

My bigger issue with this is, the almost exclusive focus on drip feeding new rules and keeping information on the setting to an absolute minimum. We don't know the world, the realms. We don't know how the races have changed except for the name-swaps and we most importantly don't even know what books are coming. Will I see a book about Aelfs within the next 2 weeks, or 2 years? I don't know. Nobody knows, and so nobody can tell me. It is one thing to be able to step in on a new world at the ground level, another thing entirely for that new world to receive no support for the existing fanbase to help everybody find their footing.

“AOS is still for simpletons & peons. Enjoy your crappy game.”
This is an actual quote from a forum. The level of disrespect present in this comment towards other people (forget other gamers, people in general), is simply breath taking. It would be nice to simply assume he is a maladjusted teenager but, unfortunately, he seems to be in his thirties.

If the guy who said it does not really believe this, then he was being disingenuous at best. If he really does believe what he says, then he is a moron, with no room in his tiny, tiny world for anything other than his own point of view. I can imagine he spends most of his time in a state of bliss.

Offence is never given, only taken. Yes the guy who said this was being a jerk, but you don't have to point it out and jump up and down with added personal insults. You took insult, and you're far more ruffled than he is. Just like, be excellent to one another.

It is just stupid to stack models on top of one another
Yes it is. But it does not happen in Age of Sigmar.

This is something that cropped up early on forums when Age of Sigmar was released, the idea that models could be placed on top of the bases of others to help with getting more models into combat, and it seems to have stuck.

I need to be clear on this point: Nowhere in the rules of Age of Sigmar does it suggest you can do this. Nowhere.

But, someone might say, it doesn’t say you can’t!

The trouble with this line of thinking is that it also does not say you can’t jam two dice up your opponent’s nostrils, then punch him in the ears so they blast out of his nose. The writers at GW do presume a measure of common sense when writing rules. And I do not think that is completely unreasonable.

Bases are ignored for the purposes of measuring ranges. That is all.

A little convoluted for an explanation, but we're in agreement. Nowhere in the rules does it say you should stack your models. It just says bases don't count, but you have to be within range to attack and people take RAW and get confused how a swordsman can reach a flying bloodthirster with his 1" weapon when the 'thirster is 2" in and 3" high. Really, this is nitpicking and should just be shrugged off as such.

I am more concerned that I've had staff tell people to do the base stacking thing instead of just measuring from the base like nearly every other game on the market.

 Sqorgar wrote:
Honestly, I haven't read Robert E Howard in years, and when I did, I read through basically all his stuff in quick succession, so a lot of it is jumbled in my head. There was one where Conan visits a dead city with an eldritch horror stalking around, and I think the elephant guy in the tower was a god from beyond the stars. Honestly, Worms of the Earth was the only story I remembered the name of

It's been a while. I really should go back and reread all that stuff.

They're well worth reading again, I got my room-mate to pick up the complete Lovecraft works and hopefully the Howard works too. It's always great when you can share the things you love with the world!

 Collateral Jim wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
When you've got dragon riding wizards shooting lightning bolts at orcs, it's high fantasy. If you ride a tornado into a magical land and go on adventures with a lion, tin man, and scarecrow, that's high fantasy. Low fantasy is stuff like the Elves and the Shoemaker, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Preacher - stuff that largely takes place in the real world with fantastic elements.

The distinction between low, and high fantasy I feel is better explained not by abundance but by accessibility. A low fantasy world can contain dragons, it can contain wizards, it can contain orcs and lightning magic. It may even have a climatic combination of all three. If you see something like this on a weekly basis however, when these different tropes and themes become commonplace, that is where we transition from low to high fantasy. Another example would be to look at the Hobbit, with only a handful of elves and dwarves and a single wizard who doesn't use much magic as low fantasy, contrasting with Lord of the Rings with elven armies, a legion of robed wizard-like figures riding dragon-like creatures and more wizards than you can shake a staff at.

I'm sorry, but did you watch the same Hobbit movies I did? Desolation of Smaug, Battle of Five Armies?

HUGE Dragon laying waste to an entire city is low fantasy?


Can you even count the number of Elfs here?

Is that what you call a "handful"?

How about Elfs jumping over Dorfs climbed on other Dorfs?

Is that low fantasy?

I'm pretty sure it's high fantasy.

Ew, no one mentioned the Hobbit movies.

Hey, those movies were great. Best warhammer movie I've ever seen. (Strange lack of gunpowder, though)

Can't wait for a movie to come out about the Hobbit book.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ew, no one mentioned the Hobbit movies.

He said to " look at the Hobbit" - looking is visual, as in a movie. If he had said to "consider what was described in the Hobbit", you might have a case.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ew, no one mentioned the Hobbit movies.

He said to " look at the Hobbit" - looking is visual, as in a movie. If he had said to "consider what was described in the Hobbit", you might have a case.

I can 100% guarantee you he meant the book.

Reading is...pretty visual, too :p

AoS involves small bands of gods, demons, monsters and supernatural warriors whacking each other with swords, lightning, and so on, across a variety of elemental themes supernatural planes of existence, which are filled with huge magical artefacts that affect the combat action.

I don't see how that possibly can be seen as low fantasy.

To be fair, they think the Hobbit is low fantasy, despite things like the Desolation of Laketown and the Battle of Five Armies being high fantasy no matter how one looks at it.

Kilkrazy wrote:AoS involves small bands of gods, demons, monsters and supernatural warriors whacking each other with swords, lightning, and so on, across a variety of elemental themes supernatural planes of existence, which are filled with huge magical artefacts that affect the combat action.

I don't see how that possibly can be seen as low fantasy.

JohnHwangDD wrote:To be fair, they think the Hobbit is low fantasy, despite things like the Desolation of Laketown and the Battle of Five Armies being high fantasy no matter how one looks at it.

Oh come on man, I feel like you're missing the point on purpose this far in. You're the only person referring to, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, who continues to bring up The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and implies other people refer to The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Everybody else has simply said The Hobbit. The classic childrens fairy-tale that was read to us in bed by our parents.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
AoS involves small bands of gods, demons, monsters and supernatural warriors whacking each other with swords, lightning, and so on, across a variety of elemental themes supernatural planes of existence, which are filled with huge magical artefacts that affect the combat action.

I don't see how that possibly can be seen as low fantasy.

I thought you didn't play fluff?

Play a game of Empire vs Bretonnia with few magical units, across a normal looking segment of the realm of life (these realms are infinite after all) and choose only Inspiring, Deadly or Sinister for the terrian pieces and you have a low fantasy game.

I don't play fluff. It still exists, though, and the fluff says there is no world, but a collection of magic elemental realms, etc, being attacked by immortal warriors souls bound into gold armour, and so on.

I'm not interested in playing a skirmish with 20 Brettonians against 30 Empires. I think the rules of AoS are very limited and dull.