Topic: Has Fantasy Died

[The Peacemaker]

I heard that protastant is all the rage now'a'days. Or was I thinking of the Islams? meh...

I had a feeling someone was going to quote me and correct the mistakes.
I was getting pretty tired but I was ranting and couldn't be bothered to fix and edit when my fluffy pillows were beckoning.


And my auto-spell check for my computer doesn't seem to work on forums. Great for emails though.

[Mathi Alfblut]

Hold your horses there! I am here to judge any claims of commited heresy and I deemed Padre is not guilty. Sigmar never had any problems with said... Anyway, everyone who has properly studied their teology know that Ulric is the father, Sigmar is the Son and the Holy spirit is... Never mind it is incredibly holy anyway!

[Maza]

Sorry if I contributed to pushing this thread off topic. I just could not resist the possibility to evoke some old school christian feelings of guilt. There is nothing quite like it! To avoid eternal damnation, I will try to push the thread back on track:

I don't think WHFB is dead, but it may be interesting to speculate on its future. (My point of reference in the following is the 80's and early 90's. )

The future of a fantasy wargame would probably depend on it's ability to attract the kids. Today, I guess many kids who would have been potential WHFB-players are instead drawn to the very well developed computer and console games culture. Computer gaming does not necessarily require the same effort, but many of today's games are really sophistcated and fun.

I also think that Fantasy - as a general literary, aesthetic and narrative genre - is much more mainstream these days than in the 80's and early 90's. It was pretty geeky and subcultural to be interested in fantasy back then. Maybe it still is, but not to the same extent (I think). If computer gaming is a "threat", the mainstreaming of fantasy would have to be a good thing, meaning that the content of WHFB is accessible and understandable to larger groups of kids?

Just speculations, of course, but what do you think?

[phillyt]

The issue with table top gaming is that it struggles against the ease of playing Xbox or PC games.  You can get a nice Warhammer like fix on the PC with many different RTS games.  You can get a sweet fantasy groove on with many games like Skyrim and the like.  What Warhammer Fantasy lacks is a sense of immediacy.  There is no patience in todays generation.  I know, I teach them.  My students are 12 years old.  That is the beginning of the Warhammer interest area.  My kids think the models are great, but the idea of spending the equivalent of an Xbox with full regalia would terrify and sicken them.  They would be lost and confused as to why they would spend so much.

Warhammer will never break away from the niche at the table top level.  Now as a IP and used as a source for multi-media, that is something they can do very well!

[Maza]

the idea of spending the equivalent of an Xbox with full regalia would terrify and sicken them.

I see your point. Still:

What Warhammer Fantasy lacks is a sense of immediacy.  There is no patience in todays generation.

You may be right, but was this not always the case, to some extent? I mean, in the early teens, interests tend to change rapidly. A commitment such as painting an army (at least months of regular hobbying) is beyond many in that age, simply because they rapidly find out new stuff about life and about themselves in that age.

The modern computer games are surely yet another distraction. I don't want to be old and grumpy about this, however. Considering the quality of many games, I think your students are perfectly sensible. Can't help to think that they miss out on something though, if they focus too much on the digital games. Not just WHFB, but whole dimensions of fantasy subculture: books, boardgames, pen-and paper RPG's, miniatures, even the thrill of rolling a simple dice!

[Warlord]

Imaging designing an empire list -knowing- you will have mindrazor. Suddenly Spearmen are -much- better than halberdiers, and still more useful than swordsmen.

To me, that says the spells are unbalanced. Each spell in a lore should be equally viable, and they should be a tactical choice like any other unit in the army - rather than an exercise of 'I hope I get the mega destruction spell so I can roll all 6 dice from my 60pt L1 wizard'

[phillyt]

But the randomness is what allows for unequal power levels.  Now if it was like 40k where spells have a fixed value, it would be fine.  Mindrazor might cost you 100 points or so.  OWuld certainly put a damper on taking it everytime.

[Warlord]

Agree. That was kinda my point.

Either they remove randomness and make the spells balanced, or keep it how it is.
You can't have it both ways.

Points cost for spells would be a good way to balance it too.