The Imperial Character - Why Warhammer Has Good Settings

Warhammer - and its daughter setting, Warhammer 40.000 - is generally known for being "grimdark"; that is, "in the grim darkness of [the far future/fantasy Germany], there is only war, disease, starvation, mutation, fanaticism, corruption, and misery. Oh, and closedmindedness - doncha go forgettin' the closedmindedness." Phony Texan accent aside, there's a point to the perception - Warhammer is grim and dark, and it's also, once you get down below the magic and the scifi, very real, in a way few RPG settings attain.

No, not "realistic" - the magic and scifi kinda puts paid to that. It's "real", in that the people are very realistic - they strike true in a manner humans seldom do outside of history books and Pratchett novels. The people of Sigmar's Empire, and its sister civilization, the Imperium of Man (the sexist nomenclature in this instance perfectly reflecting the entity itself), are very hard indeed to nail down - they are stupid, brave, naïve, stubborn, enlightened, backwards, urbane, closedminded, corruptible, contemptible and worthy of respect, all of them in combination or alone. Above all, they are human, all too human, struggling against unfathomable odds and losing, some of them dying, some of them turning traitor, some of them closing their eyes and going on about their business, and some, perhaps the largest fraction, fighting back, blindly, ignorantly, without weapons or knowledge, to the bitter end, often for little gain.

It's a dark mirror of an ugly, yet glorious humanity - in the case of the Imperium, a humanity that long since left its heyday behind and is fast fading, perhaps taking the last, best hope of victory against Chaos with it, but just won't admit it, even to themselves; and, in the case of the Empire, filled with potential, right on the brink of true greatness, in the form of the Renaissance and the modern world, but all too likely never to achieve it due to the threat of Chaos. Both cultures are doomed, and though they don't know it consciously, they seem to be aware, in their hearts, that victory is a longer road than ever, and defeat a razor's edge away. And they react to it appropriately.

More than any other fantasy setting I know, humanity in Warhammer is engrossing and interesting. They have a culture, a character, and an identity, one full of foibles and with as many reprehensible traits as admirable ones, if not more, and one not afraid of voicing its opinion, whether we'd agree with it or not.

I realized how engrossing I find the human cultures of Warhammer when I came across a stack of WFRP books recently, and the first book I eagerly cracked open was not Dwarfs: Stone and Steel, but Marienburg: Sold Down the River - instead of reading about the Dwarves, my favourite stock fantasy race for quite a while, I chose to read about fantasy counterpart Holland. No other setting has ever made me eager to read about Holland, fantasy counterpart or no, so that's one plus in the margin of GW.

Anyways, enough rambling.

Player Handouts - How To Make Them Look At home

Michael Curtis over at the Society of Torch, Pole and Rope recently posted on a nifty little program that can turn your own handwriting into a usable font for your computer, making those little kustom details on your handouts that much easier to tweak to satisfaction.

In that regard, I'd like to share a dirty little secret: I've never used custom fonts for my handouts. Or, indeed, much of anything. As a rather fresh GM, I have primarily run Dark Heresy, a system built on the old Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rules but set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000. In that setting, I've personally gotten very good results simply typing up my documents in Notepad, which gives a very retro-technological, bureaucratic, somewhat clunky feel to the text. I started using it as much out of convenience and lack of a proper word processor on my computer as anything else, but later I started receiving compliments from my players on the quality of the handouts, specifically the font.

So, there you have my dirty, little secret: Notepad. It makes a pretty fine Imperial font - simple, free, and preinstalled. Just watch the spacing; line wrap-arounds aren't pretty.

Order of the Stick: Book 4 announced

The fourth/sixth installment of my very favourite comic, titled Don't Split The Party is available for preorder. Finally. Now, to save up some money...

And don't spoil me! I'm one of those weirdoes who wait for the print version.

Only one question remains: Why pink?

While We're At It - The Alexandrian

A sadly seldomly-updated page, The Alexandrian, by the redoubtable Justin Alexander, is a page that focuses mainly on theatre - which is not my cup of tea - book reviews, and very deep, in-depth analyses of RPG design. It is fascinating and very well-written - less straight-out funny than Young, but very thorough and well-thought-out.

I recommend it, even though the update schedule is disturbingly reminiscent of my own.

Twenty Sided - A Confession

I have added another link to my sidebar. Yeah, I know, the foundations of society tremble...

Twenty Sided. a blog run by American Shamus Young, is my personal favorite repertoire of interesting stuff on the web, complete with insightful and funny commentary on whatever new stuff he's got on his mind. Seriously, the man writes about FPSes and I lap it up, eager for more, because the writing's just that damn good.

So, enough with the me yakkin'. Y'all wanna click that link, now, and see his blog. It's superior to mine. But, of course, you already knew that, his being famous and all.

Dragon Age - How The Dwarves Met Their Fate

Recently I played - and enjoyed quite a bit - Bioware's recently-released Dragon Age: Origins, which can best be described as a cross between Baldur's Gate and Mass Effect. The NPCs are particularly well-written, with what seems like hundreds of different, unique personalities, most of them convincing. It feels less like Fun With Excel or Pong 2009, and more like a novel - a rather well-written one, at that.

Which leads us to my main complaint about it - the enemies. Now, the enemies are rather typical fare - evil, twisted monsters, bandits, Ladies & Gents Of Questionable Morals, animals, and the like. Problem is, the world feels real - and so my real-life morality kicks in quite heavily. I found that the main fault of the game was that I had to kill these people and animals, most of whom didn't really deserve it. I felt less like "Hey, whatever, I'm gonna level up!" and more like "But... I don't wanna kill him! Let me talk him down... He attacked!"

This is particularly bad because the game follows the good, ol' tradition of having more enemy NPCs than friendlies - as such, during my murderous rampage through Ferelden, my kind, compassionate, goody-two-shoes ended up murdering more people in her heroic quest than she saved by completing it. The Dwarves, in particular - their numbers already depleted to the pain threshold - suffered, as I killed the 2/3 of their numbers that consisted of criminals. Without getting any choice, because the main quest would not advance until they were dead. Sigh.

Bioware, you guys make great games, but... pacifist option, please?

Undercoating - Do It

Had my first Chinese lesson today - was pretty much what you'd expect. Mandarin seems to have 5 identical consonants, but somehow the teacher still manages to hear when I use the wrong one. Oh, well - it was exciting understanding my first proper Chinese sentence, and I can now say "hello", "thank you" and "goodbye" in addition to my old arsenal of "go away", "draw swords" and "yes". Less likely to start a fight with a gang of Chinese ren-faire equivalents unintentionally this way.

Ahem.

Anyway,

This post will be about undercoating - that mysterious act of getting miniatures white or black before painting proper, also known as "priming". I've been stunned recently to learn that otherwise intelligent and reasonable people paint their miniatures without doing this. This is a bad idea. The paint will not stick properly, the pigment will take on a greyish tone from the plastic or metal of the miniature, colours will go flat, cats and dogs will rain from heaven. What I'm getting at is, it's a good idea to prime your miniatures. "But, guy, I don't have the space, I don't have a well-ventilated area to spray, I don't..." Well, you don't need to spray-prime 'em. Sure, the spray is better, but even just giving it a one-over with your brush, loaded with black or white, will function as a primer. It's not hard, and it gives a much better result, I'm sure you'll agree.

This is the Mimes of Moria Public Service Announcement System, signing off.

The Fourth Great King

Yesterday, I came across this:

YouTube - The Dark Lords of Hattusha.

It's quite interesting, isn't it? An entire superpower rises up, becomes recognized, and falls - and then is forgotten completely. "The empire that fell due to greed and arrogance" is a familiar theme for most of us, but most of us also kinda assume that any great superpower-empire would leave enough behind that it would be kinda hard to just forget all about. Well, not in this case - Hattusha left behind only just enough that after it was stumbled across by chance, a dedicated team of archaeologists spent the better part of a century learning anything about it.

And the "stumbled across by chance" part is also quite an accurate description - the only reason Hattusha was discovered was that 1) - a mysterious individual was named "Great King" by pharaoh Ramses II of Egypt, a title reserved for the leaders of Egypt, Ashuria and Babylonia but here used for somebody who was not, and 2) - a strange city of unusual dimensions was discovered in the mountains, far away from any location of interest or import.

Still - "Great King Hattie"?

GW Price Differences

Yesterday, while browsing the Games Workshop homepage, I decided to give the localized Norwegian site a try. Lo and behold, it displays prices in NOK instead of £. Happily skipping along on this, I took a look at some products, and everything was peace and happiness. But something nagged at me, so I returned to the British version and looked up the same product I'd been viewing in the Norwegian site. Then I entered that into a currency converter, and looked at the Norwegian price. Then I did that for all the localized versions except for those within the Eurozone, where I only tested twice. The results:

Country - cost:
GB - 100%
US - 103%
SW - 111.5%
EU - 116.5%
NO & CA - 133.5%
DK - 137%
AU - 170.5%

The lesson? If you live outside GB, you pay more for the same stuff. Let's, however, look at the same product sold at a different site:

Maelstrom Games - 92%

The lesson is clear, and I've taken it to heart myself: Buy your stuff from independent online stockists, not from GW. Maelstrom Games is hardly alone in offering better deals than GW, though it is the one online stockist I personally can vouch for. There are only two cases where I still buy my stuff from GW: If Maelstrom doesn't carry it - which happens distressingly often - and if I want a specific model (Say, if I want Dark Elf Assassin #2, and Maelstrom only offers a random one). (Of course, if you poor, unlucky bastards live in Australia, even this much may be extravagancy. In that case, eBay also offers cheap and useable GW minis.)

"But, Somebody," you ask, "what about shipping?" Maelstrom Games apparently ships for free worldwide. Yeah, I know, I didn't believe it myself. But enough of the sounding like a Maelstrom Games shill for today.

RIP Warpstone

Warpstone, the independent Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (WFRP), announced in their last issue, issue 28, that issue 30 will be the last. This is bad news for the WFRP community, as the magazine is both well-written, informative and very interesting. I myself have had the misfortune of getting onto the bandwagon late, having missed most of their issues, but I have been greatly impressed by it - especially the recent article detailing the little-known Chaos Dwarfs and their even less well-known cousins, the Tainted Dwarfs, was excellent.

Best of luck to the magazine's editor, John Foody, and the rest of his staff.

Warpstone's sister web publication, Legion, looks like it's still going strong.


News and trivia - I do not guarantee the accuracy of the below, but I believe they are probably correct:

In other news, a mysterious white spot has been spotted on Venus - apparently not an uncommon occurence, but this time the ESA hopes to be able to analyze the spot and discover its make-up. [Source: ABC Nyheter]

Several vaccines against cancer are apparently nearing readiness, and may be available within the next 5 years.

It has been confirmed that heart cells do, in fact, regenerate, but only very slowly.

And a groundbreaking new design of wheelchair for children has been designed, intended for use by children below the age of 6. The design incorporates proximity sensors, in order to help the child avoid any crashes. [Source: Illustrert Vitenskap #11 2009]

Holiday

This blog will be inactive for about a month due to vacation. If I find the opportunity to post, I will, of course, but it's unlikely. Despite the unfortunate timing, only two days after start-up, the blog will most likely continue to be updated according to the rigorous and demanding update scheme I outlined in the introduction.

Meanwhile, enjoy one of the web's most amusing webcomics: Darth and Droids.

TV-Tropes

This is an urgent message to all internet denizens: Visit TV-Tropes.org! The link can be found in the right-hand bar, under "links". It is, I think, a fitting candidate for the first link I post, as it is my favorite web page. Do not be fooled by the name - it doesn't only revolve around TV. It also contains material on [deep breath] video games, movies, music, literature, comics, tabletop games, web fiction, web pages, culture, urban legends, mythology, newspapers and real-life events of interest.

The basic conceit is that of a wiki devoted to gathering all those things that you've seen happen over and over in different media - and in reality - and categorizing them in an amusing and informative fashion. Have you ever seen a villain proclaim a chain of completely unpredictable events to be "all part of my plan"? Have you ever walked away from the TV during a commercial break, only to suddenly think "Hey, that didn't make sense!" about something you just accepted ten minutes ago? Have you ever come across a depiction of Nazis with implausibly advanced technology? Then you're not alone.

It's generally a good read, but be warned: If you go in there to read a single page, be prepared for sudden realizations of "Oh my god, it's been 13 hours and I'm supposed to be at work ten minutes ago!"