Taking Stock

After detailing the Hows and Whys of my decision to turn my Warhammer games into my Oldhammer games, it's time to stop prattling and start doing something. To the drawing board!

The idea, as previously mentioned, is to quit being such a hobby butterfly and concentrate on projects with a predetermined goal instead. In keeping with the Oldhammer spirit, which is to tell a story as well as playing the game, I do feel that the preparation phase ideally does not start with drafting an army list, but already at the collection and terrain building stage. My desire to start fresh and stay focused means that I will have to separate my Oldhammer projects from the other parts of my hobby, which includes unrelated Warhammer stuff.

I currently own three 40k armies that are compliant with fifth edition rules: a Praetorian Imperial Guard force that can be played as an infantry or tank army, a Thousand Sons warband and a mechanized Iron Hands detachment. I may use parts of these as opponents in my games while I build my true Oldhammer forces, but apart from that, there are no plans for them.

My old school Orks have been getting repainted one by one to go into the cabinet for quite some time.  This is fine, they will wait. I have a lot of them and I know that if I start doing something with them, I will get sidetracked. Also, whenever I feel like taking a break from the painting chores connected with the current project, I can do an Ork in between to keep myself motivated.

Your time will come...

Disenfranchisement, Age and Hobby (Part 2 of 2)

Last week I was talking about my disenfranchisement with Games Workshop - this time, the topic will be a little more personal, as it is about me, my generation and my hobby.

First things first: I am an 80s kid. For those who were not alive back then, the 80s are a time of shoulder pads, cheap synthesizer pop and weird hairdos. For me, it's Star Wars (the original trilogy in all its analogue glory), Mad Max, Robocop, Philip K. Dick (and, although he does not fit into this list, Stephen King), Terminator 1 and 2, Alien, Isaac Asimov, Blade Runner, and the list could go on and on. This was our science fiction - it was dark and dystopic, and it was like that because, as science fiction always does, it takes commonly perceived elements of the present and strips the fat away until only themes remain. In the 80s these were, to name but a few, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the threat of nuclear extinction and the general feeling that the west was not at all "holier than thou".

It was the last heyday of the Cold War - mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) was still very real, and  it created the necessity to look on the other side of the iron curtain in order to understand the people who were threatening you (just as you were threatening them). It bred a thinking in greys instead of blacks and whites, because whenever a crisis arose, careful steps of de-escalation were needed if one did not want to continue on a downward spiral. The Reagan era nonwithstanding, it had become mainstream to expect that communism was always going to be around, and that maybe it was merely a different outlook on human society instead of inherently evil. At least in the west, where this was possible, almost any action in the Cold War provoked a series of protests, discussions or subversive pin-back button wearing. Contrast this with today's conflicts, where there seems to be a great rush of newspeople, commentators and even politicians to immediately identify one side as "good" or "bad", making the other side the polar opposite by default. Understanding a situation before reacting? How old school, and how unnecessary if you already know who the bad guys are, anyway. This simplistic way of viewing and explaining the world is beginning to ingrain itself on the younger generation, which in turn influences the art aimed at it - the books, the movies, and indeed the games.

The 40k of Rogue Trader or even early 2nd ed. days lived off the idea that there were no good guys, and that the definition of evil changed as you changed between points of view. Forget the Kenwood chainswords and the Punk hairdos for a moment, and Rogue Trader's bleak depiction of a chaotic society in eternal war with outside and inside forces is actually more serious and thoughtful than today's version, with its host of misguided-but-genuinely-trying-to-do-the-best heroes and likeable-but-comically-evil villains. The setting is moving to accommodate players viewing "their" faction as the good guys who are ultimately right, and entitled to do whatever is necessary to further their own goals.

It is this utilitarian notion of a good end that justifies all the horrible means which is turning me off about the current tone of the setting. To me, that is much more cynical than the previous impartiality, which was able to acknowledge that none of the options presented were justifiable or even sane. This is why "my" 40k will always be the loony, hopeless and anarchic 80s' version, and why reading the Oldhammer blogs of like-minded people always seemed like a breath of fresh air to me.

In the grim darkness of the far future there is only Hair Metal