Topic: A Take on the End of the Warhammer World & the Shift to Age of Sigmar

[Irisado]

Age of Sigmar and the death of High Fantasy - Ex Profundis

The author of this blog post ought to write for GW's marketing team, however, he does raise some interesting points, most of which I either do not agree with or I think are lacking in terms of evidence to support them.  Despite this, I was interested in what he had to say, so I was wondering where other members of the forum here stood on the issues that he raises.

I find the author excessively critical of Tolkien. As an adult, I am still rather fond of high fantasy, so I think that the article makes too many assumptions about peoples' preferences without the evidence to support making such points. In addition, Age of Sigmar still has a long way to go to match the richness of the Warhammer World in terms of the narrative, although some progress is being made with Malign Portents.

What do the rest of you think?

[Calamity]

I think he raises a lot of good points.  It’s not that the old world was terrible or anything like that.  It’s just that (to me at least) it was quite limited in its scope.

It was one planet, not too different from the real world, enhabited by renaissance era Germans, medieval French/Arthurian knights, Aztec lizard men, Egyptian mummies, Dracula’s minions, Tolkien dwarves and elves and Highlander hooligan orcs.  Chaos and the skaven were the only truly unique aspect of it.

Now we have the mortal realms, which are as varied as the planets of 40k (or even more so).  The races are even more fantastical and in my opinion, interesting to boot.  It also avoids the issue of explaining how the different factions end up fighting each other.

You’re right about AoS having a long way to go in matching the old worlds depth, but I think it’ll get there in time.  Recent developments have been very promising.

[Lord of Winter and War]

I agree with the article as well.

I never played Fantasy, and I did like the setting, but it wasn't that much different than any other fantasy setting. Age of Sigmar is a unique universe, unlike anything else. I love how involved the Gods are in the setting, and how important magic is (and the nature of the realms are), in shaping the civilizations which live (or struggle to live) in them.

It's hard to compaire the two games as apples to apples, as Age of Sigmar is such a new setting. It's only been around for a couple of years, while Warhammer Fanasy had nearly 30 years to develop it's setting and narrative. Of course the setting of Fantasy was richer, it had more time to grow. But, that setting still exists in the past, so it's still something you can draw from in Age of Sigmar. You could have a civilization decended from folks who were rescued from the old world, or be inspired by thier ansestors in the world that was. A number of the more immortal characters, would still remeber the old world.

What I am most excited about, is that the creative team has no single established world they are stuck sticking too, so future releases could be, really, anything. Kharadron Overlords would not have been a faction that would have existed in the old world, for example.

I agree the setting has a long way to match the old world, but that's to be expected. They've also only scratched the surface of what the realms have to offer. The only really big sources of 'world building' we have, were the Realmgate Wars books, Firestorm, the Season of Life campaign, and Malign Portants. These all only took place on the realms of Fire, Metal, Life and Death. The realms of Shadow and Light, have not even been visited at all yet, and we are only now learning about what happened to the Aelves.

I'm excited to see what GW has in store for the setting, and to see what new and excited factions and locations they have to come up with.

Additionally, the game is a lot of fun, and (in my opinion) better balanced than warhammer 40k

[Wyddr]

I think this guy accurately points out that Age of Sigmar makes it much easier to introduce new ideas because they don't actually have to care what the old ideas set up. All the fun of world building, but none of the actual work having it make one whit of sense.

Which is not to say I dislike the Age of Sigmar set up, but I hardly think we need to ascribe to it some kind of creative genius award. Nor should we crap all over high fantasy just because the Old World was stale (which I disagree with--their ideas of what to *do* with the Old World were stale, which are different things).

As for heralding the "end of high fantasy," that's somewhat hilarious. Yes, NOBODY plays Dungeons And Dragons anymore. Who'd want to be an elf or a dwarf or a halfling and go on some dragon-slaying quest?

Oh, that's right--freaking everybody.

[kim]

I'm Reading the article as:
- A set of arguments against 'old' school "Journey of the Hero" style storytelling of Tolkien and High Fantasy. (ref. Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces).
- The need for GW to save one of their main product lines.

The "death of the Journey", to give it a name, is just something quite popular; Superman is dirty, Jedi's is dirty, Tolkien's elves seem dirtier, etc. What the article, and the "Return of the Jedi" director, don't get; is the "Journey of the Hero" is 10 000+ years old. It's how  we narrate stories. I think the "High Fantasy" will return, we just stare at the Hero standing on "Crossing the Treshold" stage, looking at Uncle owen and Aunt Beru, maybe weeping, thinking how cruel the Empire is.

Main part: Saving the product line. What GW needed, was to reboot the line, to save it from becoming "analogue pc strategy games", and sell something people with computer games, think is fun. Getting rid of the square pikemen formations who, frankly scared newbies, maybe saved the game. I do not think "High Fantasy" is gone, that's maybe just a phase, until they make all the square bases round, and remakes their lineup to fit the current rules.

[Wyddr]

The grand irony about trying to escape Campbell is the extent to which all those stories *still* fit the Monomyth, even if the hero wears a black hat.

Want to escape Campbell? Read Kafka. Know why you're so uncomfortable the whole time? Because it isn't Campbellian and you actually hate that.

[Sir_Godspeed]

I remember reading this back in 2015 and I didn't like it. Not saying it didn't have some points, but it seemed to stem more from an annoyance with Tolkienesque fantasy than with anything else. It frankly smacked of the "Seinfeld is Unfunny"-trope, ie. someone not getting all the hullabaloo over a classic after they've read all the stuff that was inspired by it.

Also, the kicker: Age of Sigmar is still High Fantasy. Perhaps moreso than Fantasy was. It takes place in a secondary world. It has influential heroic figures. It features a great deal of actual magic. And lastly, it has good versus evil (or close proximates) as a key conflict. The only difference here, in my opinion, is that Age of Sigmar is more high-concept.

Basically, if Fantasy was a derivation of Tolkien, Age of Sigmar is a derivation of Magic: The Gathering, or DnD's Planescape.

[Wyddr]

Exactly. We've still got dwarves and elves and wizards and dragons--it's the same subgenre.

Of course, I'm guessing this author has an imperfect knowledge of fantasy as a genre, anyway, so this is to be expected.