Historical Parallels With The Empire And The Real World

[BrokenWing]

You know what it is more than anything? It's the names. Taking inspiration from history is nothing new and that wouldn't bother me, but seeing names like "nippon" and "sylvania" does the opposite to me of what I think it's supposed to. Instead of seeing a cleverly placed cultural wink, I see a reason to roll my eyes. As with 40k though, I write my own army fluff and do rather enjoy doing that and linking my army with the armies of my friends. I love the Fantasy game and I don't hate the fluff, but I do have problems with it and no amount of clever twisting is going to make them go away.

[Faultie]

GW have done it rather well though. How many people even realise Ulthuan = Britain?

Oh? Then what is Albion?

[eldargal]

Celtic Britain.

[condottiere]

You know what it is more than anything? It's the names. Taking inspiration from history is nothing new and that wouldn't bother me, but seeing names like "nippon" and "sylvania" does the opposite to me of what I think it's supposed to. Instead of seeing a cleverly placed cultural wink, I see a reason to roll my eyes. As with 40k though, I write my own army fluff and do rather enjoy doing that and linking my army with the armies of my friends. I love the Fantasy game and I don't hate the fluff, but I do have problems with it and no amount of clever twisting is going to make them go away.

It's lazy, but they're literary cues, just as modelling the miniatures with selected aesthetics in hair styles, hats and costumes are visual cues. You say Elf, Dwarf or Orc, and everyone knows what to expect. Empire implies a predominating culture, Bretonnians France with an influx of British culture (in this case the Arthurian one), though Tilea gives no clue whatsoever, unless you remix the letters.

Tomb Kings, while not really appealing to me, shows an interesting train of thought, as to how far the cult of death can evolve. While it might not have figured in the initial drafts, the Nile is life, making everything desert gives a visual lack of it, rather than death itself.

[BrokenWing]

Literary cues can be done well, or you can use names like "Sylvania" and "Nippon" and "Cathay." Two of those names aren't even an adjusted spelling of the actual word. Better examples of them doing it well are the Lizardmen, where the names and iconography (and map) give you the cues, not something like calling them "Mayapan." Tomb Kings were also done better, Khemri instead of "Egyptia" or something equally lazy. Chaos is a mixed bag, you have some done well, and then you have some that were really badly done. The new Orc book made me roll my eyes with their new special character "Atilla da hunta" but at least it wasn't just straight up "Atilla da Hun."

The obvious ones make me roll my eyes, the ones that are more well done I actually appreciate the effort they want through to not use badly adjusted, or not even adjusted, names.

But it's cool, it's not like I'm offended by someone liking what they did, I'm just not going to pretend that I liked what they did. It took a combination of getting burnt out on 5th edition 40k for awhile, loving the 8th Edition rules set and finding a way to play Chaos again (Fantasy) and actually enjoy it for me to really get into Fantasy. I'd dabbled before, but the fluff always turned me off. Chaos however, is Chaos (at least in Fantasy) and I love me some Chaos.

[fantasard]

A really interesting discussion, good to read.

We are going to focus on much more Game vs History content in our podcasts.

We are going to be looking at more WHFB, World War One (Paths of Glory), The French Indian War (Wilderness War), The Reformation (Here I Stand), The 100 years War (Warriors of God)....plus material on The American Civil War and the War of Independence....

We are looking forward to it!

Team Fantasard

[BrokenWing]

I'm glad you brought the subject up actually. As a Historian, it's almost impossible for me to miss these things and I enjoy talking about them, even if I don't always like that they're there.

[eldargal]

Though Sylvania just means 'land of forest' so its not a big issue, for me anyway. Nippon is though, never liked that. One reason I like the Empire so much is while it is clear what its inspiration is, it is very much its own entity, not just 'fantasy HRE'.

[Verilance]

While you may hate it now, the original fluff of WHB was very much tongue in cheek, for example McDeath and there was another module I remember seeing about Dwarves in the "new world." Unfortunately for me it has been over 20 years since I read this stuff so my memory is a bit hazy.

the way I see it seriousness (such as it is) came much later, back then the fluff didn't matter so much

[NonComPoop]

**there was another module I remember seeing about Dwarves in the "new world." Unfortunately for me it has been over 20 years since I read this stuff so my memory is a bit hazy.***

I think you may be thinking of "The Magnificent Sven" that came in the 2nd ed. Warhammer rulebook in 1984. It was totally Heart of Darkness with dwarves.

Ilike the fact that the warhammer races are built around a certain historical aestetic somehow it feels comfortable, like putting on an old pair of boots. With fantasy I have always found the best art and movies tend to be those that borrow heavily visually from history. Those that don't always seem cheap and a bit goofy.