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

Disenfranchisement, Age and Hobby (Part 1 of 2)

In this week's introductory post, I mentioned that I want to document all of my journey into the Oldhammer hobby, and that I want to do this chronologically. When I look back at how this interest awoke, I see that I could not possibly talk about the beginning without talking about my relationship with the hobby in general. As I drafted this post, and it got longer and longer, I also realized that it would need to be split. This first part will be about the company that created Warhammer in the first place - it will be about Games Workshop. Save your sighs (or hide your disappointment); this will not be a rant. Well, maybe a little.

Before I was even a teen, I discovered some 40k miniatures in the window of my local game store (not that I knew back then what a game store was). I did not really get what was going on with those little guys on their green felt mat, but it was excitingly different - those were not toys, but it clearly wasn't a boardgame either. My mother took me into the store, and the rest is history. I will not bore you with details; chances are that if you are reading this blog, your experiences will have been very similar.

My first purchase was a box of miniatures, no rules yet, and by the time I wanted to learn those as well, the second edition of the rules, colloquially called "2nd ed.", had taken over. Although I have very fond memories of that edition, in hindsight I see a lot of the seeds that would grow into my eventual disenfranchisement, but we are not there yet.

Back then my armies grew erratically, as the miniatures were rather hard to come by, so I (and many others) bought what was available rather than something that we actually planned to buy. This meant that armies back then were very much a "looks first, rules second" affair, and the armies showed that with a diversity that I have never encountered since then. To supplement my ailing forces, models from other manufacturers were mercilessly pressed into service, and nary a vehicle that could not be represented by a card box after the clever application of some straws, aluminum washers and left-over bits.

Terrain was all home-made; apart from the cardboard ruins from the boxed starter set, and some cardboard-and-plastic-bulkheads fortifications, there simply was none to speak of. So, guided by my own, still very childlike, imagination and a heap of helpful suggestions from White Dwarf magazine, every piece of scrap in the household was salvaged and turned into *something* by me.

My games were chaotic, zany, unimaginably fun affairs as you can only have them in your early teens. To this day, I remember my friend's Inquisitor hiding behind a building to wait for reinforcements, just to be incinerated by an Ork buggy's multi-melta after it careened off its intended path, or Makari the Gretchin slaughtering that poor Screamer-Killer one day (true story).

All was fine until 1998, when third edition dropped. To this day, I would love to see my face after opening the White Dwarf highlighting the most important changes: Gone were my army compositions that had served me faithfully for years (quite a normal thing in wargaming really, but the first time it happens is always a shock I guess), gone was the ability to hide, provide overwatch fire or even throw a grenade (as opposed to ramming it into your opponent's mouth at point blank), three thirds of the weapons profiles were eliminated... it was a disaster that catapulted me right out of the hobby for a number of years.

This is great news!