I don't know if they're making it more kid friendly but I'd argue many aspects of the grim dark tone WH40k was originally known for is disappearing.

"IT IS THE 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

YET EVEN IN his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperors will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

TO BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods."

The passage above sets the mood and makes the reader think he's going to be experiencing The Road but in the future with aliens and demons.

Wrath of Iron is perhaps the only grimdark book published by BL in a long time.

 

I wouldn't use the "toning down" but yes I do think that the fluff is now more "kiddie" orientated, OTT characters (draigo the uber pawner), units and indeed armies with one very very strong and over emphasied characteristic (spaceWOLVES!).

Part of this change is from the Codex's being from the race in questions POV rather than the Inq's, I'm not a fan of this change personally.

I want the old style back dam it!

 

imho grimdark has been "washed up" since 3th edition. The moment 40k stopped being a sidegame of fantasy and become a profitable (hopefully so) brand, GW had to enlarge the number of possible customers. And teenagers are the best pool of customers, hence the...simplification. I can't fell nothing odd in this. I can't even feel too much the issue, since if we want, we can go deeper in the background (maybe even the past bg, written in previous codexes) and be grimdark to the bones!

 

The game is recommended for 14 and up, so anything that steps out side what is appropriate (across a butt tonne of different cultures and countries) is going to be very polarising.

Polarising means reduction in sales which is the last thing any company wants.

 

It's 14 and up in Australia? It's 12 and up in USA. But I have seen younger than that playing and the same with Magic:The Gathering. It's for 12+ and I see kids as young as 6 collecting, as young as 8 playing and it's a lot darker than 40K.

It is true that as a hobby becomes more mainstream public outcry may force it to become "friendlier." Not like that is a bad thing. We need fresh blood. :grin:

But I have to ask Magpie. Could this "appropriate for all potential cultures and countries" be a cause for delays to certain armies: Sisters? There are many people who feel women have no place as soldiers. Afterall, there are places in the world that banned Minnie Mouse for not wearing enough clothes. She's an anthropomorphic, cartoon mouse!

 

So because BL expanded upon WH40k lore through its books as opposed to only pumping out tabletop scraps of lore, the grimdark feel was lost?

Doesn't make sense to me.

 

I think is more like D&D, as the game and it's players aged the companies have targeted younger players. If you compare the first few editions of D&D to current versions you see the same mainstream whitewash of content. When I was a kid D&D was a tool of the devil. Now my kids kindergarten teacher thought it was great we included my kid. Her reasoning, it is a great tool for teaching math skills....

 

When I was a kid D&D was a tool of the devil. Now my kids kindergarten teacher thought it was great we included my kid. Her reasoning, it is a great tool for teaching math skills....

Isn't that funny, I am currently working on a 40k activity for autistic children from much the same reasons.

 

Yah each of my kids teachers have been overjoyed that we include her in the gaming. Throws me after my childhood of scorn or worse on the subject.

What throws me is people in the other thread seem to be outraged by this. I don't get why plastic army men need to have rated R or worse fluff to be acceptable. Some of the posts from that thread sound almost cultist. I mean come on being 'initiated into the same fluff', shit like that is what make the hobby be frowned upon.

 

If you go right back to Rouge Trader - and the contemporary version of Fantasy - it was so much grim as Hobbit fantasy comedy (with if I remember just a couple of pages of fluff on the Emperor)

I've only flicked through the Codexes for years but they dont seem too dummed down...and boy, the drawings are often ten thousand times better!

 

Its funny about the target market being 14+, means you can have gore galore yet the slightest hint of a titty and/or a sexual scene its cut by the editors (BL books). I remember ADB on here talking about he wanted to do a Dark Eldar book with tonnes of violent sex (as well as tonnes of violence) but the BL editors told him no way as soon as he mentioned sex.

A dark eldar book full of violence, sex and killing... isnt that EXACTLY like the DA?

 

I'm not sure the 'grim dark' has been toned down, just the way it's being presented. Once grim dark was space marines eating peoples brains to learn things; there was a more overt and 'shocking' grim darkness. Now grim dark is the overall feeling of the setting, things were told that set the atmosphere but not much shown about.

Thinking on it i think the difference is grim dark was previously 'shown' to us, now we're 'told' about it. We used to be shown how grim dark it all was- horrible situations and people etc being viscerally shown to us, but now were just told about it. We told that life is horrible slaving away on a factory world, we're told the borders of man are crumbling and paranoia and suspicion are rife. But we're shown, now, the glorious heroes, the Calgars, the Logan Grimnars; the fluff is more centered on hero characters now. Our characters are squeaky clean good guys, paragons.

It's certainly more serious now though. You don't see anymore Mad Chainsaw Johnsons, hero of the White Scars.

 

Spot on, Rems.

Incidentally, showing instead of telling is a quite common literary mistake. There's certainly a time to quickly pass information to the reader, but other times you simply lose the impact you're trying to convey.

It's a shame, because the contradiction of these "heroes" (who truly believe in courageous deeds and their role as protectors of mankind) and the methods they employ, as well as the nature of the realm they protect, is one of the most interesting elements of this brand. When you take away the impact of the awful things that they do or the impact of the awful nature of the Imperium itself, you lose so much.

 

I'd say they're toning it down. I mean, they got rid of the daemonettes with the boobs. I loved it when daemonettes had boobs.

 

Like B. Subtle said - though whether this is a change, or just the way it has always been, I don't know - a strong example is the books published by BL. 'Adult' themes (extensive violence aside) are not touched upon by BL, besides AD-B's comments on the Dark Eldar, I remember him saying that his initial draft of The First Heretic had Cyrene raped in Monarchia (whether just referenced or portrayed I don't know) but that it was subsequently removed by the editors. Shame really, because such themes can really enhance the level of characterisation.

 

'Adult' themes (extensive violence aside) are not touched upon by BL,

I disagree. In reading BL books with my son I note that the Dark Eldar in the Tome of Fire series were getting quite close to the wire with sexuality and in fact I editorialise a lot of it out when reading to my kids.

The Red Duke to an extent and the Ulrika the Vampire series as well contain substancial "Adult Themes" as the Australian Censors would term it.

Even Grey Knight and The Emperor's Gift touched around the edges.

 

the Caine books skirt the subject, hes always bunking with the Inquis agent or commenting on various females Décolletage (if you can read french or use google you'll know what that is) lol

also (read lot books last year so not able to nail down) do recall reading about imperial guy turning to chaos and doing something to a mother and daughter mutilating them in some ritual.

The gore/grimdark is still there just not in your face layered on with a spoon like modern torture porn films.

 

As I said in the OP though, those are not the actual game fluff. The BL books are much less watered down. The fluff of the game itself though......

 

I would not mind a two tier fluff system with some books geared more toward the adult reader, some of those B.L writers are quite talented and I would like to see them be able to write without restriction about the "grim dark" 40k, I have found that the codex fluff and B.L stuff has turned a bit into bash butcher and stomp the bad guy.

 

I'm just gonna go ahead and give special mention to Lijah Cuu of Gaunts Ghosts. At one point, the end of Guns of Tanith, he freely admits to raping and later killing a woman.

 

I don't think the act of raping should be an indicator of grim dark.

I think Wrath of Iron got it right to an extent. A small victory at the cost of no one surviving, etc.

 

Whilst they've not toned down the amount of death they have toned down a lot of the more overt themes. The Imperium is less fascist than before, Space Marines aren't just Space Nazi's anymore. That's the sort of thing that's changed in the fluff.

Blood Angels and Dark Angels are a lot less evil now than they used to be.

 

Great post.

 

I think there is a flip side to the idea that GW is toning things down: We're becoming desensitized to it.

The older we get, the less we're affected by it because we're becoming more and more used to it. Is it really as shocking now to read about thousands of IG dying to take a hill now, than it was ten years ago when you were younger?

I think we reach a point after a while were we read enough of the fluff and become so familiar with it that it stops being shocking, horrifying, or frankly anything other than "there". It doesn't mean the setting isn't dark, just that our "eyes" (or rather our personal interpretations, but I'm using a metaphor here) have adjusted to it and see all the different shades of darkness and don't see it as so pitch black as we once did.

 

'Codex' Fluff has been toned down drastically from all i have read; They now seem to use fewer 'Big' words and more colloquial and contractions. Formality has all but been lost within the blocks of text presented in them.

That's not to mention the copious amount of grammatical errors as well maybe they employ children to write the Codices now.

 

I don't think codex fluff, our three game in general is being watered down right now.

10 years ago it surely was being watered down. 40K became a lot more cartoony and significantly more child friendly, in the 10-12 year old range.

That was when a great deal of the detail in the chaos fluff was leached out, the models were redesigned, look back over the 4 generations of daemonettes, or the keeper of secrets.

 

All this talk of lightening the fluff and no one's brought up the Tau.:laugh:

Then again they've been generally shafted in the fluff lately, especially in the novels but that's a whole other rant.

Anyway I don't think as a whole 40k has gotten too much lighter. Yeah I've seen lighter fluff in the Codices and novels that is lighter but at the same time I've some dark and grim stuff there as well. The Gaunt's Ghosts series is a great example for the 40k fluff as a whole. You have sections of the novels that are grim and dark, shifting to moments of bloody, gritty violence, to uplifting moments of courage and heroism to humanizing down to earth moments.

To me you can't have everything grim and dark, you need at least some light in there otherwise the universe becomes bleak, depressing and hopeless, even if they don't win in the end.

Take the second Word Bearers novel...

There's a subplot about a man trying to save this orphaned boy he found while they're world is being invaded by the Tyranids. In the end he manages to get the boy on the last transport leaving the planet before the Exterminatus, unaware that the boy was infected by a genestealer. It was terribly dark and grim yet at the same time the man dies without regrets, knowing that he saved a child's life, adding something positive to what was otherwise dark and depressing.

 

I'll admit the the Necrons have gone from being a race of Terminator-like machines in thrall to Lovecraftian horrors from beyond but so what? The Night Bringer still imprinted the image of himself in almost all the sentient races to create the fear of death. The Oustsider is still a being that brings madness and destruction and the Void Dragon is still a being of limiltess power and oblivion. You think it matters that the Necrons can be reasoned with in the grand scheme? Ovcourse not. Before they weren't on the Tyranid radar and now they are threatened by the Great Devourere as well so instead of being predators they are prey. That was my issue with it. When the Necrons were first written would you have ever pictured an alliance with the Astartes of all factions? Ovcourse not.

Creatures like the Orks that exist to only destroy and warfare can be toned down how without making them an illegitimate threat to the galaxy? How about the Dark Eldar? Even in the regular Warhammer Universe they are at least "R"rated are. They had a freaking blood orgy in the Malus Darkblade saga. The whole concept of 40k is telling of zero hour to the destruction of mankind and how they got there. Go ahead and elaborate to a child that he or she is playing with these "army-men" in a fanstasy simulation of how the human race ends. I can see Disney lining up to get their hands on the movie deal.

Ovcourse GW would want to appeal to a larger group demographic. They are a business not a cult. I think that letting children play the game itself is fine as long as the overall story is left out of it. The adult themes in this book are not for children. Characters like Chaos Gods emobdy concepts that can negatively influence a mind that isn't matured. It's like parents who complain about violence in the media but by their kids Call of Duty games.Changing a few characters or factions story still doesn't change the premise. This is the story of the Armageddon war between Chaos and Order.

 

If kids, learn something from the game, math. Well I learned lot of math from games too. The game rules does teach logic and thinking.

Is anyone saying that that is "toning it down for kiddies", I don't think it is.

If the kids play it, they should not mature enought to watch things like hellraiser or Texas Massacre. Hopefully the kids are adolescent, I don't think it is good for small kids,

When I was 11, kids shows on TV that I liked, where much more kid friendly than they are now. For me Ninja Turtles was scary, Transformers and Heman was not.


Yes, I think GW does tone it down.

I also think the only reason I pick up this hobby, is for the old grim dark black versus black universe

I am certain, that most players that like the new necrons are kids tops 13 and probably emos or goth wannabees. Or they are causal players. Same things for those who like the new Eldar Codex. Actually I think all the casual players and the players with bad style are kids.

Everyone who had their adolescence before the 2000 will think like me, period.


I used to invest time in rpgs before, to be sickened by the way cannon White Wolf went and more sickened by my attempts to accept the changes to justify all the time and money spent. Now we are here again, but with wargames.

Everything after the dark 90thies is crap. 90thies where the golden age of cynicism and dark cool things. We had cool comics, cool movies and cool computer games and rpg and cool warhammer fluff.

After 2000, everything went crappy optimistic, vulgar and brainless. And kids friendly...

Even the darkness got a conscience now.

A new sentence does not require a new line. Try to write more like this now.

-Serpa




Wrong on all accounts. They are a cult. All these things rpgs, wargames are cults of fans, anything else is a causal player.

Sentience is one of the most, humanization aspects of any race. It matters a lot, just imagine if zombies could be reasoned with. Zombies are scary because they are not sentient.

Your reasoning is just a bravado of endless hyping. It's so funny you mention the Orks. Do you think anyone takes the Ork seriously? Sure they are gory and grim dark but Orks are funny, black comedy at worst. Orks are not scary because they are so absurd, they are just splatter fun! The old Necrons are serious and scary. Making any race a prey is just a cheap way to justify a role for them. Absurd to think that the Necrons could be prey to the Tyrandids, they are each others opposite. The strongest manifestations of death and life.

Try formatting like this.

- Serpa

 

I am certain, that most players that like the new necrons are kids tops 13 and probably emos or goth wannabees. Or they are causal players. Same things for those who like the new Eldar Codex. Actually I think all the casual players and the players with bad style are kids.

Everyone who had their adolescence before the 2000 will think like me, period.

This is rather presumptuous and also rather wrong. My younger years were during the nineties as well, and I have fond memories of the entertainment available back then. But I still see the value and merit in the current codexes and source materials available today. Many of my gaming or hobby related friends are of a very similar opinion and a lot of them are older than me.

Granted, the codexes are pretty tame, only alluding to how evil some races are without going into great detail. This is simply a device to widen the market, not a sign of going soft.

After 2000, everything went crappy optimistic, vulgar and brainless. And kids friendly...

In a general sense, I can agree with this stance. *glares at Cartoon Network now compared to fifteen-twenty years ago* However, GW have rarely acted in this kind of manner or tried to follow "popular" trends.

 

What is this formatting? :shok:

I'd say it's been toned down. Relaunch the Daemonculabula project, remove that shitty, kinda-dirty kinda-not description of the Circle of Carnality in the Daemons book and replace it with 50 Shades with more Daemons and torture, etc. Especially in the Chaos and Daemons books - they're not 'Traitors with spikes who are evil because they are selfish' or 'They're anger/pestilence/depravity/knowledge made solid so they're evil'. They should be real nasty.

However, the new books are a little more promising. The Dark Angels fluff does a very good job of depicting the Dark Angels as heroic saviours of humanity, filled with self-sacrifice for the sake of mankind's continued survival... that also prolong their victim's lifespan that they may keep them alive long enough to inflict agonising tortures on them for months on end. Great stuff. The bit about Azrael sticking his sword into a hidden cleft was funny too.

Midnight