Tabletop Community Watch

[Judge Dredd]

They note that Games Workshop no longer cares about them

This is something that baffles me coming from older fans. Games Workshop never cared about fans, especially not back in the day.

Source: I was playing in the latter days of second edition. I remember the release of Dark Eldar (Spiky bits!) and Legion of the Damned.

There was always some element of the fanbase loudly complaining about something. "Why don't we have new models for X?" "I want new codex for Y!" "How much longer until the new Necromunda?" "Tau are weeb trash and I won't play a game with them!" and so on. And GWs response? Either ignore it, or if they did address it, they gave the British equivalent of "lol get fucked.".

It's why I was surprised they pandered to woke at all.

Edit:

I'm still quite surprised at how GW made far more money after they started pissing off their fans as compared to before they did so.

This has been answered, but I want to expand it a little.

As others said, fanboys are consoomers who will buy any old shit as long as it has the GW logo on it (I guess Warhammer company these days). But then there's what Corn Flakes said.

Even if the complainers never bought anything, we're still dealing with the silent majority here. So long as the game is fun (or addictive) enough to hold a playerbase, people are going to buy it.

This is the core of what's going on I think.

As a teen, most of my games were played on bedroom floors, or maybe the wooden panel from the top of a sewing machine. With boxes and coke cans as terrain.

I know gamers in general love to complain about "dumbing down", I'm a big proponent of "streamlining". Not everyone has the space, time, or inclination for a massive game room full of detailed terrain and several thousand pounds of plastic soldiers, all lovingly painted to a professional standard.

Age of Sigmar would be perfect for me if I hadn't sworn off GW years ago. Most people want to buy some guys that look cool, assemble them, and play a game for a couple hours every other weekend. It vastly lowers the barrier to entry, which the biggest hurdle of getting into the 40k community.

It's why I love the idea of Kill Team, and why I think GW should bring back Epic.

 

[Shaka Brah]

It's why I was surprised they pandered to woke at all.

It's almost never pandering, but rather forming an illusion of consensus by forcing it onto a market. "Woke" products never make more money than "unwoke" ones, but they do create an illusion of mass societal acceptance, which is generally what their proponents want. What's more likely is that, like in every big game company, new hires with an agenda formed a big enough tumor on the company to make "woke" decisions in product marketing and development.

 

[SITHRAK!]

I think GW should bring back Epic.

LOL fuck no. I loved Space Marine but by the time 3rd Ed was released and it’d been renamed to Epic and the rules had been needlessly complicated.
Seeing as how classic games like Necromunda have been redesigned by millennial shitheads with no love for, or appreciation for them, Epic would likely be a complete shitfest.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

This is something that baffles me coming from older fans. Games Workshop never cared about fans, especially not back in the day.

Source: I was playing in the latter days of second edition. I remember the release of Dark Eldar (Spiky bits!) and Legion of the Damned.

These fans thought Games Workshop cared about them-back then when a lot of the novels that they liked came out and they were first getting into the hobby. That illusion was shattered when GW saw dollar signs in streamlining both the game and the lore, and proceeded to do so in 8th Edition. Then the fans of 3rd Edition to 7th Edition realized how the fans of 1st and 2nd Edition 40K felt when 3rd Edition came around: they were left behind.

GW pandered to the edgy people in the 90s and early 2000s because edgy shit was cool back then; things like Diablo, Fallout, and Starcraft were selling, and anything that opposed the clean, sterile 90s culture of kid-friendly fiction was something the older kids and young adults thought was cool. I remember kids going through that phase in the early 2000s where they discovered edgy shit like adult anime for the first time and it got them psyched. GW played to that love of edgy shit by making 40K edgy as fuck from 3rd Edition onwards. Instead of the campy parody of fascism, you got the edgy grimdark world which was taken very seriously by the plot. And of course, the kids, teens, and young adults of the late 90s and early 2000s loved that shit and bought it up.

What they didn't realize was that it was a marketing gimmick from the start. Just as 8th Edition is now. The fans just didn't see it back then because they didn't think that GW was just pandering to them to get their money-they thought GW was out to make something that was Ars Gratia Artis, to push the boundaries of what was acceptable taste in order to make a profound statement. They were so caught up in the grimdark stuff, didn't realize that GW was pandering to edgelords on purpose just to get to their wallets.

There was always some element of the fanbase loudly complaining about something. "Why don't we have new models for X?" "I want new codex for Y!" "How much longer until the new Necromunda?" "Tau are weeb trash and I won't play a game with them!" and so on. And GWs response? Either ignore it, or if they did address it, they gave the British equivalent of "lol get fucked.".

It's why I was surprised they pandered to woke at all.

They pander to the woke for social points, not for consumer points. And yes, that whole "LOL GET FUCKED" attitude is still very strong with them, since they obviously know that a good number of 40K's fanbase are reactionaries and right-wingers, they know pandering to the woke would offend those folks, and they still did it, even saying that they don't need the fans who won't support them in going woke. Which of course, was the woke, polite way of telling the reactionary fans to "get fucked".

But seeing as how most of their financial base comes from the wallets of tournament player-types and people who just want to buy shit to win, it seems that GW were vindicated in the end. The reactionaries who love 40K fell in love with the novels, the edgy lore, and the "FUCK ALL ALIENS AND HERETICS" vibe coming from 3rd Edition onwards. They weren't tabletop fans, they were lore fans, they spend most of their money on the novels and barely have a painted army or two, and losing them barely even hurts Games Workshop, while pandering to the whales who want to win games with shit like Primaris Marines worked rather well for Games Workshop. Their profit margins have more than doubled since 2016.

This has been answered, but I want to expand it a little.

As others said, fanboys are consoomers who will buy any old shit as long as it has the GW logo on it (I guess Warhammer company these days). But then there's what Corn Flakes said.

This is the core of what's going on I think.

The Warhammer fanbase has the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that Lucasfilm and Disney probably wish the Star Wars fanbase had. When Disney Lucasfilm tried to push woke shit and told the fans to get fucked, their profit margins dropped like a rock as toys rotted on shelves and SW movies dropped in revenue, and the company was forced to pander to fans with stuff like Season 7 Clone Wars, the Mandalorian, and Bad Batch. Games Workshop pisses off the mostly-reactionary fanbase by going woke and making a new edition of 40K that shits on the lore and the people who have collected armies for years, and yet their revenue stream doubles despite the fans complaining up and down that GW was worse than the devil for what they did to 40K. When SW fans throw a shit fit, people in Lucasfilm and Disney get nervous and try to appease them for fear of losing money. When 40K fans throw a shit fit, Games Workshop executives laugh in their face while snorting cocaine off hooker's tits and smoking cigars wrapped in $100 bills.

As a teen, most of my games were played on bedroom floors, or maybe the wooden panel from the top of a sewing machine. With boxes and coke cans as terrain.

I know gamers in general love to complain about "dumbing down", I'm a big proponent of "streamlining". Not everyone has the space, time, or inclination for a massive game room full of detailed terrain and several thousand pounds of plastic soldiers, all lovingly painted to a professional standard.

Age of Sigmar would be perfect for me if I hadn't sworn off GW years ago. Most people want to buy some guys that look cool, assemble them, and play a game for a couple hours every other weekend. It vastly lowers the barrier to entry, which the biggest hurdle of getting into the 40k community.

It's why I love the idea of Kill Team, and why I think GW should bring back Epic.

People always whine about things being streamlined or dumbed down, from videogames, to tabletop, and so on. But things that streamlined always see more success. Aside from 8th Edition 40K, there are two big videogame examples: Skyrim and Mass Effect 2. Both games were far more dumbed down than their predecessors, and yet, not only did they sell better, they were also more popular, too, with only a tiny, loud minority complaining that they're shit for dumbing down, yet a large chorus of fans love those games to the point of buying them multiple times for multiple console releases. It turns out that streamlining is good for business, especially when it lowers the barrier to entry and more people get into the game and pay more money to the company.

 

[Judge Dredd]

When SW fans throw a shit fit, people in Lucasfilm and Disney get nervous and try to appease them for fear of losing money. When 40K fans throw a shit fit, Games Workshop executives laugh in their face while snorting cocaine off hooker's tits and smoking cigars wrapped in $100 bills.

There is a big difference. With Star Wars, Ghost Busters, etc. The woke came at the expense of quality. GW has never sacrificed quality. They point in a direction, and head that way, and ask customers to come along with them.

With 40k, the change from 2 to 3 was largely well received at the time, as 2 had become bloated with floating modifiers and clashing special rules. 3 got rid of most of that. I might have it wrong, but I remember a lot less looking up tables in 3rd edition.

Aside from 8th Edition 40K, there are two big videogame examples: Skyrim and Mass Effect 2. Both games were far more dumbed down than their predecessors, and yet, not only did they sell better, they were also more popular, too, with only a tiny, loud minority complaining that they're shit for dumbing down, yet a large chorus of fans love those games to the point of buying them multiple times for multiple console releases. It turns out that streamlining is good for business, especially when it lowers the barrier to entry and more people get into the game and pay more money to the company.

It's not just good for business, it makes for better games. Skyrim is a good example of why streamlining works in most cases.

Oblivion had a lot of stupid shit in it. Most notably the need to jump around like your character is on a pogo stick to level acrobatics instead of athletics. Your character who is an expert swordsman picks up a knife and doesn't know which end is the pointy bit. And of course, the level scaling that made the game unplayable if you didn't level efficiently. Fans can scream "dumbed down" because there's no athletics skill or levitation spell, but that's a small price to pay for the improvements provided across the board that removing those things provided.

And as for Morrowind. The less said about that games combat, the better.

Dumbing down can be bad, like when Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil became action games instead of horror. Having not played 40k 8, I can only guess which is the case.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

There is a big difference. With Star Wars, Ghost Busters, etc. The woke came at the expense of quality. GW has never sacrificed quality. They point in a direction, and head that way, and ask customers to come along with them.

With 40k, the change from 2 to 3 was largely well received at the time, as 2 had become bloated with floating modifiers and clashing special rules. 3 got rid of most of that. I might have it wrong, but I remember a lot less looking up tables in 3rd edition.

The only thing that matters for GW is that the whales who buy shit and want to have cool-looking models are satisfied, and with the new models, they are. They can fuck the lore ragged and tell the non-woke fans to go fuck themselves, but so long as the model and tournament players are happy, they're going to see windfall profits. All they need to do is not shit the bed and make good-looking models with OP crunch numbers, and they're good to go. GW could come out tomorrow with new lore that says that the God Emperor was a brown transsexual Mexican woman and that Rowboat was a closet homosexual, and so long as the whales don't stop buying models, no amount of whining from the lore addicts would even hurt GW in the least.

With Star Wars, the lore and story IS the product. Their main selling points are the movies, the cartoons, and the books. Sure, there are the toys, but you need to have cool characters to move figures. So when Lucasfilm fucked with the lore and made subpar stories, the fans walked away and Disney got in some really hot water. That situation was only mitigated by Dave Filoni and Jon Favreau winning the fans back with fanservice, and now, fans want them to have a free hand to mold SW canon to their liking, even if it means torpedoing the sequels.

It's not just good for business, it makes for better games. Skyrim is a good example of why streamlining works in most cases.

Oblivion had a lot of stupid shit in it. Most notably the need to jump around like your character is on a pogo stick to level acrobatics instead of athletics. Your character who is an expert swordsman picks up a knife and doesn't know which end is the pointy bit. And of course, the level scaling that made the game unplayable if you didn't level efficiently. Fans can scream "dumbed down" because there's no athletics skill or levitation spell, but that's a small price to pay for the improvements provided across the board that removing those things provided.

And as for Morrowind. The less said about that games combat, the better.

Basically, yes. Oblivion was their first big hit, and Skyrim was a bigger hit than that. Prior to that, the Elder Scrolls series was barely a blip on the radar. Morrowind was barely competition against RPG blockbusters like KOTOR or Final Fantasy. But when Skyrim hit, everyone from Nintendo to CDPRed tried to copy their formula. Skyrim is what made Bethesda into the juggernaut that it is today.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

Yes-I know the new models are selling like crack cocaine. The problem is, WHO is buying this new stuff? The old fans have been clear about their distaste for Nu40K, down to the point where some even 3D-print their shit. So I'm trying to figure out which group has been dumping loads of money onto GW, to the point where they're making twice the amount of money that they were making back when they were pleasing the old fandom. And as I said, I've narrowed it down to two possibilities:

A) The older fans have Stockholm Syndrome and despite all their complaints about GW alienating them, they keep dumping more and more money into GW's products as the years go by.

or

B) The kid-friendly shit is working and more kids are joining the hobby and spending more and more money on GW products than the past fans have before 8th Edition came out.

Either we have a 40K fandom filled with kiddie whales who are newcomers dumping all this money, or the old 40K fanbase, for all their talk of not wanting to go with GW's current direction, have been dumping twice as much, if not even more money into GW's coffers despite GW pissing on their faces.

I mean, it's not like what happened to Star Wars where after Last Jedi, the franchise was in serious trouble after they pissed off the fans, so they had to call in Dave Filoni to stabilize things with stuff like Season 7 of Clone Wars, the Mandalorian, and the Bad Batch. GW's current output outright puts newer, younger fans in focus over the older lore nuts and the older players who want a balanced ruleset. And yet they're making even more money than ever before, which means that either the kid-whales are functioning as GW thought they would, or all the old fans who were swearing up and down that they will never support GW's new direction.......are dumping more money in their faces than ever before.

Its C) Millennials and Zoomers who either played the game when they were younger and are coming back or people who have been introduced to the hobby through the Internet.

When have talked with players on tabletop simulator those are the answers I get for when they got into the hobby. "I got into it in third edition and now I have come back" or "I got started a few months ago and now I have X points of models".

What Games Workshop did is focus not just on selling miniatures, but selling miniatures for a tabletop game. They went from a 70+ page rulebook to a 40 page rulebook with easily understood instructions and different ways to play their games. Every unit contains its own special rules on its datasheet, no longer do I have to flip back to my core rulebook to look up the list of magic items I can use.

The models are well detailed and starter sets are designed to give you a functional army at a discount.

Games Workshop's policies, coupled with the recent rise in demand for board games, has led to its financial success with a incoming consumer base that enjoys the hobby as much as the older fans do. We just need to the enthusiasts in and the consoomers out.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Its C) Millennials and Zoomers who either played the game when they were younger and are coming back or people who have been introduced to the hobby through the Internet.

When have talked with players on tabletop simulator those are the answers I get for when they got into the hobby. "I got into it in third edition and now I have come back" or "I got started a few months ago and now I have X points of models".

What Games Workshop did is focus not just on selling miniatures, but selling miniatures for a tabletop game. They went from a 70+ page rulebook to a 40 page rulebook with easily understood instructions and different ways to play their games. Every unit contains its own special rules on its datasheet, no longer do I have to flip back to my core rulebook to look up the list of magic items I can use.

The models are well detailed and starter sets are designed to give you a functional army at a discount.

Games Workshop's policies, coupled with the recent rise in demand for board games, has led to its financial success with a incoming consumer base that enjoys the hobby as much as the older fans do. We just need to the enthusiasts in and the consoomers out.

The problem is, it seems that the Consoomers are the ones paying the most for the hobby. They buy all the new models to win games, and couldn't give less of a shit about how GW is fucking with the lore. The enthusiasts are at their wit's end with GW, to the point where they're tired of GW's fucking with the lore and they want to 3D print models, whereas it's the whales who want to win official tournaments who are throwing boatloads of cash at GEEDUBS to get the newest models so they can crush the competition. With GW banning 3D-printed models from official games, it seems that the future of GW is the same as the Pokemon card game: dominated by whales who will buy whatever they need to win battles, while giving little to no care about how GW handles the lore or everything else.

 

[A nameless trool]

There are 4 types of Warhammer fans:
Gamers: People who want to play the game at a friendly and/or competitive level and will buy the latest models/armies to build a new list that is more powerful/interesting.
Some will get burned out by power creep and abandon the hobby.

Modelists: People doing painting or conversions and will buy new, good looking models despite playing them or not. Probably the most loyal customers but may get to commitions for others too and cut back on buying stuff.

Lorefags: Maybe they bought an army back in 3rd/4th/5th but ragequit when a new codex nerfed their army or got assmad their night lords could now get dedicated chaos units or Deathwing could also have non-terminators in it or even Inquisition allies.
They do not buy models as a general rule.

Mathhammer fans. They are only interested in coming up with broken lists that they will probably never buy and might as well be unplayable in a real game.

GW is catering to the first two categories and makes bank.

 

[Imperial Citizen]

Dumbing down can be bad, like when Dead Space 3 or Resident Evil became action games instead of horror. Having not played 40k 8, I can only guess which is the case.

Having started in 5th and playing since then, 8th edition cleared a lot up. There is no chart for determining Weapon Skill hit rolls, no strength versus toughness wound chart. Hit rolls are on a D6 with reroll and modifiers coming from characters and strategems (special abilities that allow you to do loreish feats like Space Marines shrugging off lethal wounds, daemons manipulating the warp to damage psykers). Anything can wound anything, as vehicle have the same rules as infantry (but with a larger wound characteristics), but your lasguns and bolters are going to wound a land raider on a 6+ so you'll be lucky if you can plug off a wound or two.

It has made the game easier to understand and get into. And 9th edition has changed the meta by having games focus on objectives rather than killing units. You can gain points for doing actions which usually means whatever unit is doing the action can't shoot or charge in your turn. So now you have to be selective with which unit you want to perform an action and whether you want small infantry units to maximize board coverage or large units to hold a specific objective.

 

[SmokeyMcRunFast]

Does anyone here play Flames of War or Team Yankee? I stopped playing in 2009 and am recently thinking of getting back into it. Poking around online I saw they dropped a 0 from the points lists and I’ve seen some articles that complain about the loss of various specialty units and options along with simplification of lists that came with Flames of War 4th edition/Team Yankee 2nd edition. I’m curious how much of this is people being MATI and how much is legitimate grievances.

 

[Your spare disc drive]

Oh, God, this. A lot of noobs who enter into the lore through loretubers don't realize how bad some of the books are, and they basically enter through with rose-tinted goggles.

40K lore youtubers and especially the people who watch them are fucking annoying. I really dont care if warhammer could beat star wars/trek/halo/mass effect or whatever and I have never once laughed at a comment like:

When the Empire kills an entire populated world, it shocks and horrifies the entire galaxy. When the Imperium kills an entire populated world... It's Tuesday.

 

[EnemyStand]

40K lore youtubers and especially the people who watch them are fucking annoying. I really dont care if warhammer could beat star wars/trek/halo/mass effect or whatever and I have never once laughed at a comment like:

The most annoying thing about all this is that it infected other tabletop games as well. Malifaux Youtubers insist on making lore videos now, even though THERE'S A FUCKING RPG! It's pointless because between the RPG which gives you all the setting info you could ever possibly need and the character lore which will cost you only about $140 if you really want them all the loretubers are absolutely pointless because the lore in that game isn't spread out over 8 editions and hundreds of Black Library books.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

So TSR is back, reformed by one of Gygax's kids. And they had an interesting take today:

https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406

And the little goblins who have never thrown dice in their lives but know all they need to know about tabletop because they watched some poseurs on youtube pretend to play it for attention reacted exactly as you'd expect.

"[BRAND] is tweeting about politics!"
"NICE!"
"No, they're saying to keep our POLITICS out of their games!"
"WHAT?! [BRAND] shouldn't speak about politics! [BRAND] should stick to [PRODUCT]!"

"It must be so nice to be so privileged not to have to deal with IRL problems in games. Not like me, who has to make sure to make every fucking thing in my life about politics and activism otherwise I might have to stop for 5 minutes and recognize that I'm not actually a good person and a bunch of insane trannies and pedophiles online have convinced me to waste my life advocating for them."

No one could possibly care what *checks notes* TSR Games, ran by the son of Gygax, the creator of D&D could possibly think about ttrpgs in 2021.

This is how you can tell your hobby has faggots that think they have successfully taken it over.

ARE YOU PAYING THE DANEGELD?! WELL, ARE YOU?! YOU HAVE TO PAY THE DANEGELD! YOU MUST. YOU MUST. YOU MUST. GIVE US THE DANEGELD. GIVE IT TO US!!!!! WE ARE OWED THE DANEGELD, YOU MUST GIVE US THE DANEGELD.

And they actually started replying:

 

[Your spare disc drive]

the trove was taken down by cloudflare today and the twitter account has been suspended. Hailed as a victory for indie creators everywhere on twitter

This is really unfortunate. I remember paying a fuckton of money for out of print stuff like paranoia before finding out about the trove. Still they had it coming with advertising on twitter.

 

[Shaka Brah]

the trove was taken down by cloudflare today and the twitter account has been suspended. Hailed as a victory for indie creators everywhere on twitter

This is really unfortunate. I remember paying a fuckton of money for out of print stuff like paranoia before finding out about the trove. Still they had it coming with advertising on twitter.

That's fucked up. I wonder which tranny got mad they were distributing some gay 1-page RPG of theirs and DMCA'd them.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

I'm sure the Trove will be back, but, yikes. Never did dive too much into it, but I meant to go see what Shadowrun and Battletech books they had.

 

[Your spare disc drive]

That's fucked up. I wonder which tranny got mad they were distributing some gay 1-page RPG of theirs and DMCA'd them.

This guy is pretty funny

NOOOOO YOU HAVE TO WORK FOR FREE OR ITS IMMORAL
Mabye they should replace the logo with a soviet flag once they come back and then the twitterfags will shut up

 

[Shaka Brah]

This guy is pretty funny
View attachment 2295180
NOOOOO YOU HAVE TO WORK FOR FREE OR ITS IMMORAL
Mabye they should replace the logo with a soviet flag once they come back and then the twitterfags will shut up

Man he's really going ape. Sounds like he needs to chill out a little. His WHFB knockoff didn't sell poorly because Trove stole it from him, it's because nobody liked it.

 

[Inquisitor_BadAss]

So TSR is back, reformed by one of Gygax's kids. And they had an interesting take today:

View attachment 2295105

https://twitter.com/TSR_games/status/1408566618628710406

And the little goblins who have never thrown dice in their lives but know all they need to know about tabletop because they watched some poseurs on youtube pretend to play it for attention reacted exactly as you'd expect.

View attachment 2295108
View attachment 2295109
View attachment 2295111
View attachment 2295112
View attachment 2295113
View attachment 2295114
View attachment 2295116
"[BRAND] is tweeting about politics!"
"NICE!"
"No, they're saying to keep our POLITICS out of their games!"
"WHAT?! [BRAND] shouldn't speak about politics! [BRAND] should stick to [PRODUCT]!"

View attachment 2295118
View attachment 2295119
View attachment 2295121
"It must be so nice to be so privileged not to have to deal with IRL problems in games. Not like me, who has to make sure to make every fucking thing in my life about politics and activism otherwise I might have to stop for 5 minutes and recognize that I'm not actually a good person and a bunch of insane trannies and pedophiles online have convinced me to waste my life advocating for them."

View attachment 2295125
No one could possibly care what *checks notes* TSR Games, ran by the son of Gygax, the creator of D&D could possibly think about ttrpgs in 2021.

This is how you can tell your hobby has faggots that think they have successfully taken it over.

View attachment 2295126
View attachment 2295127
ARE YOU PAYING THE DANEGELD?! WELL, ARE YOU?! YOU HAVE TO PAY THE DANEGELD! YOU MUST. YOU MUST. YOU MUST. GIVE US THE DANEGELD. GIVE IT TO US!!!!! WE ARE OWED THE DANEGELD, YOU MUST GIVE US THE DANEGELD.

View attachment 2295129
View attachment 2295130
View attachment 2295131
View attachment 2295132
View attachment 2295133

And they actually started replying:
View attachment 2295134

This is what privilege looks like.