Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I am surprised that I haven't seen a lot of people talking about this- but the Black Library has announced that they'll be releasing a series of middle grade 40k novels (audience age 8-12).

https://warhammeradventures.com/




The art style is probably as far from Blanche as you can get- it absolutely does not scream "Grimdark." Seeing their Ultramarine Primaris in this style is really weird.

But then I started wondering- how Grimdark is the Games Workshop fiction anyway? While their setting certainly fits the bill (with millions of innocents being executed every day just to stave off extinction) the fiction seems to focus on the heroic aspects of the setting- the places where Right and Wrong are really clear cut, and the protagonists are nigh invincible action movie stars (often, the criticism of the Guant's Ghosts novels is that Imperial Guardsmen aren't that good in the game).

So, these books would have to not deal too directly with the mass execution of psykers, or the genocide of mutants. The Lure of Chaos is up in the air- but it seems like they're happy to start out with Necrons as the primary antagonist.

And I consider that I started getting into GW games at age 10 with Space Crusade. The lore in that game was all correct for 40k- they just chose not to tell of some of the darker parts.


Anyway- what does everyone think of this?



Glossary of terms

Grimdark- A descriptor used by fantasy authors and fans to describe particularly hopeless settings. Usually nihilistic in its approach to good and evil. The term originates with the 40k quote "in the Grim Dark of the Far Future, There is Only War." The idea is that there cannot be anything good or happy in the setting .

Children's Literature- a term encompassing all books with a target audience betwen 0 and 17. This includes picture books, chapter books, middle grade and young adult.

Middle Grade- genre of novels primarily targeting grade school boys, and secondarily grade school girls (age 8-12 fit in here). These feature protagonists usually a year or two older than the target audience.
Right and wrong are usually clearly defined, with protagonists on the 'good' side of things. Middle grade books are usually bought by parents of the readers.

Young Adult or YA- genre of novels primarily targeting teenage girls and secondarily boys and older women/men. They feature teenage protagonists. Good and evil are usually blurred somewhat. Mature themes are very common- explorations of violence, morality, sexuality, mental disorders, murder, rape, etc. Dystopian literature is common. Most YA novels are purchased by the readers, so content approval of parents isn't really an issue.

Warhammer Adventures are not being advertised as YA. 40k YA novels wouldn't be a contradiction at all. In fact, if you'd like to read a fantastic YA novel that is grimdark enough that it might have taken place in the Imperium, check out The Armored Saint by Myke Cole.

Old news already discussed extensively in N&R aeons ago when it was first announced.

 BrookM wrote:
Old news already discussed extensively in N&R aeons ago when it was first announced.

Such as here - https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/757260.page

I plan to buy at least the first books in each GW setting to see if I should let my son read them.

When will they be available?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I plan to buy at least the first books in each GW setting to see if I should let my son read them.

When will they be available?

February 2019.

Thanks!

Anyway, I wonder if there's anything in these books that could traumatize children like an 80's kid's movie. Or even 80's children's books.

I very much doubt it given what we've seen so far. It may traumatise or upset veteran fans of the setting, but I think they'll manage somehow.

I can't say it really interests me, but I have been enjoying watching a few people get really, really mad about it on other message boards and Facebook groups
Of course, I imagine the rage surrounding this will soon be overshadowed by the reactions to 40K Munchkin.

Yeah- Munchkin 40k is a crazy thing.

Wasn't Star Munchkin already Munchkin 40k?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Thanks!

Anyway, I wonder if there's anything in these books that could traumatize children like an 80's kid's movie. Or even 80's children's books.

“Warpship Down”, anyone?

Star Munchkin I always thought was more Trek with a bit of Star Wars. Been a while since I dug it out but I don’t remember many obviously 40k digs in it.

Pilum wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Thanks!

Anyway, I wonder if there's anything in these books that could traumatize children like an 80's kid's movie. Or even 80's children's books.

“Warpship Down”, anyone?
.

Yeah if kids could make it through Watership Down - Plague Dogs - Animals of Fathering Wood and all that era of animation I'm sure they can survive Warhammer Adventures.

 Overread wrote:
Yeah if kids could make it through Watership Down - Plague Dogs - Animals of Fathering Wood and all that era of animation I'm sure they can survive Warhammer Adventures.

Oh! Animals of Farthing Wood! I remember watching that animation series! It was good.

For some reason I expect the sheer amount of overly salty reactions by people is going to stay the best thing about Warhammer Adventures.

I'd rather people did not resort to being so overly rude towards the authors of these books.

 BrookM wrote:
I'd rather people did not resort to being so overly rude towards the authors of these books.

I'm honestly kind of sad how much anger/hate this generates from some. It's like they forget that GW had Top Trump cards and adverts with kids way back in the day (yeah early TV adverts had kids playing space hulk).

I think many also seriously underestimate the importance of new generations coming into the hobby. Many of my other hobbies have very senior memberships of their clubs; You are young if you are under 40 and they might only have one or two under 20 (and they are often just brought by another of the regular members).

A lot of hobby clubs really suffer from this because they lack an active younger population rising up. GW clearly recognises this and clearly wants kids to get involved because they are at a prime age to get interested in things; then to carry that forward to their teenage, adult and beyond

Plus how many adults like to involve their own kids in their hobbies and interests; this is an ideal avenue to giving them a vector to encourage their kids to at least pay attention to their hobby. Doesn't mean that they'll like it, but it gives it a chance.

I suspect like most things it's a lot less "anger and hate" and more "negative opinions people are reading extra emotion into so they can feel more reasonable and rational by comparison". Perhaps with a little side order of associating all negative views with the most extreme ones despite the latter being a comparatively tiny minority.

This is the thing though; most of us got involved when we were kids, and we didn't need a special sanitised version of the IP. I was six when I started messing about with Warhammer Fantasy models and none of the gnarlier stuff bothered me because I was six and didn't have a scooby what the allegories and innuendos were about.

What kept me interested during the kid-to-teenager transition where you usually shed a lot of the stuff you did when you were wee was that as I grew up I began to understand things I hadn't initially and realise just how deep and broad these settings were.

Thing is though, I doubt the same would have been true if I'd come to associate Warhammer with a tame, cartoony version when I was first getting into it. That seems like the kind of thing that would have gotten the boot along with Transformers and other "kid stuff" before I got a chance to realise what it was I'd have been discarding. Not to mention that you have you be really careful with "kid stuff" because if you pitch it wrong for whatever level of maturity you're aiming at, the kids(who are typically a fair bit more knowing at any given age than adults give them credit for) will feel you're insulting their intelligence.

TBH it seems less like a purposeful drive to get new folk into the hobby and more like another symptom of modernity's "Nerd Dad Syndrome". Loads of folk who got into nerdy stuff as kids now find their hobbies socially acceptable and have children of their own, of which they are usually over-protective, so we get kiddy-Warhammer and eleventy-bajillion videogames about Dad and Boy.

https://twitter.com/cavanscott/status/1005198649276747777

In the last couple of weeks, I have had people try to post comments on my website saying they hope I get terminally ill. I am, apparently, a cist on humanity’s corpse. Why? Because I’m hired to write children’s book for properties the commenters love.

The over-reaction is just ridiculous, isn't it?

I'm sceptical as to worth/necessity of these books for bringing in new customers, catching them while they're young. Like Yohdrin I got into GW stuff via standard products like Space Hulk when i was 8 or 9 and as I got older appreciated the grimmer aspects I'd not noticed beforehand, because aliens vs. dudes with space armour and big guns was cool enough to hold my attention at the start. From my own experience I conclude there doesn't really need to be a specialised gateway.

With all that in mind the extent of some of the criticism that greeted the release announcement and the wastes of oxygen populating twitter with their excessive hate of something they could choose to ignore is really quite depressing.

I don't think GW is saying that these are nessessary because otherwise kids won't get into Warhammer; but more that this provides a new way to get kids that otherwise might not get into Warhammer; into Warhammer. Many hobbies are interesting once you get the curiosity and drive to get involved so reaching out to new markets and testing the water of different segments of the population can be very helpful.


And in the end it means a chance of more players; more sales; more stuff from GW; bigger clubs and more players to play against. It's basically win-win.



Most of the hate seems to be "OMG they'll take away all the cool stuff I like" or just some "I don't like this I hate it" and not forgetting those who just join in to troll (who can often be the most vile because they seriously don't care - they've no foot in the camp they are just there to stir the pot can cause trouble like looters at a protest)

 reds8n wrote:


https://twitter.com/cavanscott/status/1005198649276747777

In the last couple of weeks, I have had people try to post comments on my website saying they hope I get terminally ill. I am, apparently, a cist on humanity’s corpse. Why? Because I’m hired to write children’s book for properties the commenters love.

It really can be a toxic fanbase sometimes, can't it?
Obviously it's the vast minority reacting like this, but it still makes me feel bad by association.

Hell, I got into WH40k with the boardgame Tyranid attack at age 12-ish. Space Marine scouts venturing through the acidic body of an Alien hive ship trying to kill its guts!

Remembering what me and my friends were like in the 8-12 age range and having taught plenty at the upper end (UK secondary school ages are 11 - 16), kids/pre-teens appetite for and resilience to grisly/horrific/serious/complex stuff is a lot greater than adults often credit. End of the Summer term I gave my year 7's (11 - 12) the option of watching a film from whatever was on amazon prime with an 12 age restrictionand they'd overwhelmingly vote for something horror inflected if they could like Woman In Black or Warm Bodies. Of course they'd always beg to watch stuff with and even higher rating and most were watching 15's 18's on the internet anyway.


For my part I vividly remember sneak reading Alien comics in our local library by age 10 and setting the VCR to tape sci-fi and horror films late at night without my parents knowledge (ah the early 2000s, not that long ago, but a practically medieval compared to today's technology).

I suppose Overread's right, though, it's an attempt to reach kids whose predilictions don't run that way/parents who like to gifft more 'wholesome' entertainment to their kids, blissfully unaware of what their kids are actually watchingand reading online...

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Hell, I got into WH40k with the boardgame Tyranid attack at age 12-ish. Space Marine scouts venturing through the acidic body of an Alien hive ship trying to kill its guts!

I feel like 12 is around the age most kids would be reading the Black Library novels, and that these new Adventures were aimed more at 6-8 year olds. Either way, It's nice to have a variety of story telling options in a setting. They won't affect the regular, adult fandom any more than the existence of children's books affected Star Wars.

A thought which just occurred to me.

Tin foil millinery may be required.

It’s sometimes brought up that the next big problem facing the industry is widespread 3D printing.

It is also pointed out that the widespread residual affection of and the loyalty inspired thereby toward the Warhammer IP’s is one of GW’s main strengths, and arguably went a great deal towards keeping them alive during (ahem) recent corporate history.

I also hear that the current financial report has talk of expanding the reach of said IP, the headline part of which is looking at live action and animated shows.

But why could ‘kids’ books sneaked into the ‘school library’ market not also be part of this? And yes, I also appreciate, acknowledge and plead mildly guilty to the charge of “uncomfortable gamer dad” mentioned above.

3D printing keeps getting touted as the next big revolution, but honestly I don't see it happening. People forget that the vast majority of people can't even put a flatpack together - they don't want to make their own toys at home. Also 3D printing won't do away with costs; in fact they put up the material and waste costs considerably - not to mention you've got to wait for it to actually print the model and account for any potential errors.

3D printing might secure itself a niche but I see it as decades if ever before it actually becomes the house-hold means to manufacture.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Hell, I got into WH40k with the boardgame Tyranid attack at age 12-ish. Space Marine scouts venturing through the acidic body of an Alien hive ship trying to kill its guts!

I feel like 12 is around the age most kids would be reading the Black Library novels, and that these new Adventures were aimed more at 6-8 year olds. Either way, It's nice to have a variety of story telling options in a setting. They won't affect the regular, adult fandom any more than the existence of children's books affected Star Wars.

To an extent, but Star Wars wasn't really an "adult" property in the first place, it's a space fairy tale. A good one that adults can happily enjoy, but the level of sinister and otherwise "inappropriate" content is pretty mild and even the worst of it is usually confined to implication. 40K is a setting that fairly revels in being excessive, where "good guys" rarely exist and when they do mostly get crushed by evil and/or bureaucracy/ignorance/superstition, and where the main human protagonist factions are horrifying totalitarian dystopias. The "danger" in creating a sanitised version of that for kids is you're risking creating a generation of hobbyists(and, more importantly, their parents) who's perception of 40K is of the simpler, sanitised version and who would reject the proper, "grimdark" version when presented with it - now, assuming these kids books are a success and bring in a lot of new people, and if many of them were to prefer the version of 40K with all the sharp edges sanded off, who is GW going to cater to - the ever-declining proportion of adults who like 40K as it was, or the constant stream of new kids and their parents who want a child-safe version they can play together? The one thing GW can always be trusted to do regardless of any other factor is to follow the money, and if they money turns out to be in a tamer, less interesting version of their IPs that's what they'll make. People who prefer things another way aren't irrational for being a bit concerned, but since apparently performative statements of disassociation are now required; of course that mild concern doesn't justify threatening authors

 Overread wrote:
3D printing keeps getting touted as the next big revolution, but honestly I don't see it happening. People forget that the vast majority of people can't even put a flatpack together - they don't want to make their own toys at home. Also 3D printing won't do away with costs; in fact they put up the material and waste costs considerably - not to mention you've got to wait for it to actually print the model and account for any potential errors.

3D printing might secure itself a niche but I see it as decades if ever before it actually becomes the house-hold means to manufacture.

3D printing will potentially never be a household means to manufacture as the inept tech-journos leapt to insist it would be, certainly not with the current three main methods, but if you think it's going to be years and years before it has any impact on wargaming I think you're wrong, it's already having an impact. A lot of people might be reluctant to mess around with stuff themselves, but when you present them with a printer for less than 200 quid that can produce high quality models for pennies(I dunno where you're getting the "puts up costs considerably" thing) it changes things, and it is changing things - the amount of people who can barely check their email or change a lightbulb who're going out and buying Ender 3 printers to make terrain for SW:Legion or minis for their D&D groups is exploding, and I see more and more local clubs using the terrain budget or running collections to buy two or three CR-10S machines. It's also having a big impact on the business side of things - it's "affordable" resin printing that has enabled a lot of smaller companies to switch to CAD design, and if you look at SW:Legion most of the companies selling physical terrain(rather than STL files for home printing) sell 3D prints, because it's cheaper for them to run a farm of machines than a resin casting production line.

Yodhin - I was (maybe incorrectly) under the impression that the higher end machines and materials (suitable for home making of high detail 3D models) were rather on the expensive side compared to the cheaper materials used for more blocky and less high detail creations.

I know that the machines certainly are; but the materials I though also were still on the expensive side.

Yodhrin,

1. The BL books are already mostly sanitized compared to the fluff, with heroes and happy endings galore. Look at the most popular titles: Gaunt's Ghosts was basically WW2/Sharpe in space; Ciaphas Cain was a less disturbing Flashman; Space Marine Battles books are all fairly straight forward; and the Horus Heresy is just tipping its toe towards Grimdark. The most Grimdark book I can think of was The Carrion Throne, and not only has it received mixed reviews it also uses implication to the same degree as Star Wars.

2. Star Wars is just as adult as 40k. You yourself stated that you entered as a child and you assume everyone else did, too. Just like Star Wars, 40k was a property designed to cater to all customers, including a hefty dose of mature themes and content. Both series have implied torture, but I can't remember any main named character in 40k being tortured, seeing her family and home world die, and being raped as a sex slave, all in pursuit of a goal that she will see turn to bitter ashes when her child murders his peers, billions of innocents and his father. Just because a series has some toys aimed at the young doesn't mean it can't be dark and disturbing.

3. 40k hasn't been the Grimdark setting you're thinking of since 5th edition. The fluff isn't going to get any worse than that just due to a kid's book. Besides, you can ignore the book the same way you ignore the Uktramarines movie.

The only thing I am interested in with this garbage is the miniatures.

From what I have seen of it, and not available yet, it is just more of the same that is being pushed out there for "Young Adults" which isn't saying much.

If you want your kids to get into 40K, go on and just pull the trigger, its not any different then the last 20 years. o.O

"Young Adults" need this crappy book series about as much as they do another hole in their heads. What is out there already should be enough for you to tell your kids to go read Deathwatch, or The Last Chancers, or Gaunt's Ghosts. Making kids Mary Sue's is just pandering to a nonexistent fanbase, and honestly young teens don't take to this sort of thought. They want good stories that can be relatable, as they learn about something new.

But this isn't a young-adults series?

Also surely its best to save at least the ire and hate for the content until its, you know, actually published and we know what's inside