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Well Warhammer was generic superficially. I mean Dwarfs are still Dwarfs in the traditional sense. Live underground in great mines/kingdoms, Elves are Lithe and Magical, Humans Easily corruptible and petty, etc.

It's just that GW had their own spin on it that was all it's own. I mean the number of times I have seen the discussion as to who was responsible for the War of the Beard were always enjoyable no matter how many times it has been rehashed.

Weren't the dark elves mostly responsible for the 'War of the Beard'? The other part was dwarf pride and elven arrogance/smugness.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Weren't the dark elves mostly responsible for the 'War of the Beard'? The other part was dwarf pride and elven arrogance/smugness.

That's just Ulthuanian propaganda!

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Weren't the dark elves mostly responsible for the 'War of the Beard'? The other part was dwarf pride and elven arrogance/smugness.

Initially yes they attacked a Dwarf trade caravan, but the events that unfolded afterward were very much a product of each civilizations own making. The arrogance of the Phoenix king, The stubbornness of the Dwarfs, all that happened without the Dark Elves involvement.

Locally, it didn't end (8th).

It just fractured in a transdimensional sort of way.

GW shenanigans over the last few years were driving their player base away anyway - and the "death" of WHFB just created the chaos star from its player base.

Some were exodited, saw the numbers on the wall and left after 7th, turned their backs on gaming and left, ne'er to return.
Some went to Kings of war.
Some left for other games completely (dropping whfb for epic) but didn't leave GW.
Some went to AoS
Some went to 8.5 (houseruled 8th ed).
Some went to 9th age.
Some went to warmachine/hordes
Some went to other game systems by smaller companies and had crab-loads of fun.
Some went to

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Weren't the dark elves mostly responsible for the 'War of the Beard'? The other part was dwarf pride and elven arrogance/smugness.

Initially yes they attacked a Dwarf trade caravan, but the events that unfolded afterward were very much a product of each civilizations own making. The arrogance of the Phoenix king, The stubbornness of the Dwarfs, all that happened without the Dark Elves involvement.

I really enjoyed the Time of Legends novels covering this period and the war - had a nice sense of tragedy running through them............also did a good job of how the wood elves began.

I love the Warhammer world and as far as I am concerned the End Times are a alternative future.........one that was averted in the main Warhammer world..........indeed we know from the Archeon novel that there were many many possible futures.....

Age of Sigmar I am quite enjoying - the game is ok not great (although it could have been) but with a comp system as much or more fun than WFB. But then I don't like chaff or limited visibility or army killing magic spells............not a huge fan of ranked units tbh. We are actually enjoying Dragon Ramant with our Warhammer models more than WFB or AOS. Just looking at adding some rules for artillery and war machines and a few tweeks for bigger games but its fast, fun and tactical.

re the Warhammer background - like all fantasy settings it builds on what has gone before - be that the fables of classical antiquity, the Norse saga's or the works of Howard and Tolkein. Moorcock was as others have noted a massive influence - especially since GW used to produce Stormbringer (another one of my beloved worlds/games).

Like the best worlds Warhammer did have its own style, its own way of doing things and its own creations - Skaven - now there is a unique idea, the sheer unpleasantness of them and their society, the way they talk, their approach to tech - ramshackle dangerous steampunk and total self servingness- all of it was in their from the beginning - I have the citadel journal where they were introduced and its great. As far as I can see this was a pure GW creation - I don't think there was anything like it before?

Age of Sigmar has some good fun stuff - its massive and over the top and I don't mind that...........I do enjoy some of the worlds they have given partial brush strokes too and want to see more and its beginning to happen........

There are other equally great worlds for me.............

Stormbringer and the multiverse I have already mentioned.
Stephen Erikson's convoluted and wonderfully High fantasy world/s described in The Malazan Book of the Fallen
The Land in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

but Warhammer is my favourite.............

I hope this is getting too off topic, but the question of origins intrigues me. As far as I can tell, Skaven seem to be inspired by the Secret of Nimh rats with the whole Chaos/life is cheap spin. And while ratmen are pretty widespread and certainly predate WH, I do not know of any other setting that portrayed ratmen in this manner. Leiber used wererats who were cunning and devious, and the whole infiltrating civilization while everyone is either ignorant or in denial seems to borrow heavily from this, but they were not the techno mad scientists types (which seems to be more of a trope that developed for goblins).

I have noticed that in addition to Moorcock, Chaos borrows heavily from OD&D for it's greater daemon imagery. Compare the Lord of Change with the Type I/vrock and the Keeper of Secrets with the Type II/glabrezu. The Bloodthirster is just a reskin of the Type VI/Balor (itself a copy of the Balrog), and so a sort of copy of a copy. The Great Unclean One doesn't seem to match the pattern and the closest I have found so far is Chet from Weird Science which was released in 1985, 4 years before the first GUO, so maybe a source of inspiration?

I have less luck finding clear analogues for the lesser daemons. Crab clawed bald ladies seems to be original to GW. The lesser Bloodletters are based on older art that seems heavily inspired by Alien and the ridged parts look almost tech-tubelike. Horrors are pretty nondescript and look like malformed goblins in the original sculpts, but the coloration seems unique (though it later overlaps Slaanesh color territory). Plague bearers seem inspired by the old Harryhausen Cyclops.

 jmurph wrote:
I hope this is getting too off topic, but the question of origins intrigues me. As far as I can tell, Skaven seem to be inspired by the Secret of Nimh rats with the whole Chaos/life is cheap spin. And while ratmen are pretty widespread and certainly predate WH, I do not know of any other setting that portrayed ratmen in this manner. Leiber used wererats who were cunning and devious, and the whole infiltrating civilization while everyone is either ignorant or in denial seems to borrow heavily from this, but they were not the techno mad scientists types (which seems to be more of a trope that developed for goblins).

Probably 'Pinky and the Brain' as far as mad scientists go. GW has always been known for borrowing or ripping off IP's (starship troopers, judge dredd, 'sly marbo'/sly stallone as rambo) which is odd how they got so protective of their IP after a while. Seems a bit hypocritical.

I just don't see the difficulty in keeping the Old World alive in fluff, but with different games. I can easily do it with my buddies.

Skirmish for me would be either Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes or the new "not-Mordheim" fan-game from the Kings of War setting- not to mention just full on good old-fashioned Mordheim.

Because of how they structured the game to steal disenfranchised Warhammer players, it works just fine for games in the Old World. Hell, I'm playing games in the Old World that aren't even 28mm scale!

 Spinner wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:

It depends really. D&D comes to mind, simply because how diverse and varied all those games are, not to mention the ongoing support and developement of new editions. I'm not a fan personally, since I preffer Dark Fantast setting, but I do respect the classics and D&D is the biggest classic of them all.

Oh and yes, I know that they are also not original in many cases. However there are just so many flavors and variants of them, including really unique ones, that it dosen't really matter in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but it really feels like you're giving a pass to other stuff that you're calling out Warhammer for. What D&D are you talking about? The 'base setting'? It's hard to get more generic than that. Most D&D campaigns have brutal, thuggish orcs. Most D&D campaigns have murderhobo PCs. Yeah, there's a lot more out there, but D&D is really a system and framework rather than a setting, and it's kind of unfair to say "look at all this variety!" when pointing to lots and lots of different campaign worlds as opposed to just the Old World.

...which can get pretty varied, actually. I recommend doing a quick Google for 'The Shadow of the Sun'; it's a second-edition Warhammer Fantasy Campaign writeup, and my second-favorite campaign to read about (the first being the fantastic All-Guardsman Party). It's set in the Border Princes in the wake of the Storm of Chaos, and you've got a lot of the standard archetypes - an elven noble, a wizard's apprentice, a grumbling dwarf - but everyone's put their own spin on things. The dwarf, for example, is using the excuse of grudge-settling in order to buy more time away from his arranged marriage. There's so much creativity involved, all rooted in the Warhammer setting and mining some really long-standing background for cool moments. You don't have to put some bizarre new spin on classical monsters or move away from real-world inspiration to make a setting interesting. You just have to know how to hook people with it.

I meant mainly Dark Sun and Ravenloft (yes, I know that it's a Bram Stoker ripoff basically). They are certainly not heroic, not nice and murderhobos don't have an awfully long lifespan in these settings.

I'll check out the campaign that you've mentioned. Thanks.

 Xathrodox86 wrote:

 Spinner wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:

It depends really. D&D comes to mind, simply because how diverse and varied all those games are, not to mention the ongoing support and developement of new editions. I'm not a fan personally, since I preffer Dark Fantast setting, but I do respect the classics and D&D is the biggest classic of them all.

Oh and yes, I know that they are also not original in many cases. However there are just so many flavors and variants of them, including really unique ones, that it dosen't really matter in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but it really feels like you're giving a pass to other stuff that you're calling out Warhammer for. What D&D are you talking about? The 'base setting'? It's hard to get more generic than that. Most D&D campaigns have brutal, thuggish orcs. Most D&D campaigns have murderhobo PCs. Yeah, there's a lot more out there, but D&D is really a system and framework rather than a setting, and it's kind of unfair to say "look at all this variety!" when pointing to lots and lots of different campaign worlds as opposed to just the Old World.

...which can get pretty varied, actually. I recommend doing a quick Google for 'The Shadow of the Sun'; it's a second-edition Warhammer Fantasy Campaign writeup, and my second-favorite campaign to read about (the first being the fantastic All-Guardsman Party). It's set in the Border Princes in the wake of the Storm of Chaos, and you've got a lot of the standard archetypes - an elven noble, a wizard's apprentice, a grumbling dwarf - but everyone's put their own spin on things. The dwarf, for example, is using the excuse of grudge-settling in order to buy more time away from his arranged marriage. There's so much creativity involved, all rooted in the Warhammer setting and mining some really long-standing background for cool moments. You don't have to put some bizarre new spin on classical monsters or move away from real-world inspiration to make a setting interesting. You just have to know how to hook people with it.

I meant mainly Dark Sun and Ravenloft (yes, I know that it's a Bram Stoker ripoff basically)

Considering that the Ravenloft setting grew out of a let's do a Dracula campaign, sure.

But more Hammer and cheesy 70s films Dracula than actual Bram Stoker.

 Xathrodox86 wrote:


I meant mainly Dark Sun and Ravenloft (yes, I know that it's a Bram Stoker ripoff basically). They are certainly not heroic, not nice and murderhobos don't have an awfully long lifespan in these settings.

I'll check out the campaign that you've mentioned. Thanks.

Honestly, I'd say Ravenloft is less original than Warhammer - I never played in the setting, but everything I've seen relies heavily on established characters and settings as a backdrop. I mean, the overarching conceit of the Mists and Darklords and so forth is very uniquely Ravenloft, but those tend to be used as an excuse to introduce your PCs to a realm ruled by Dracula or have them bump into Frankenstein. Not a bad thing in the least, and it looks like you're acknowledging that, but still.

Hope you enjoy reading the campaign! I need to go back and finish it sometime.

 Spinner wrote:

 Xathrodox86 wrote:


I meant mainly Dark Sun and Ravenloft (yes, I know that it's a Bram Stoker ripoff basically). They are certainly not heroic, not nice and murderhobos don't have an awfully long lifespan in these settings.

I'll check out the campaign that you've mentioned. Thanks.

Honestly, I'd say Ravenloft is less original than Warhammer - I never played in the setting, but everything I've seen relies heavily on established characters and settings as a backdrop. I mean, the overarching conceit of the Mists and Darklords and so forth is very uniquely Ravenloft, but those tend to be used as an excuse to introduce your PCs to a realm ruled by Dracula or have them bump into Frankenstein. Not a bad thing in the least, and it looks like you're acknowledging that, but still.

Hope you enjoy reading the campaign! I need to go back and finish it sometime.

It's true and I fully realise that there's really no such thing as 100% originality in any setting. After all it's the essence of popculture - borrowing stuff from other sources and improving it, changing it. I don't mind that. It's just that at some point it's not enough.

Reading the campaign and so far loving it. Great stuff right there.