We Don't Need Another Warhammer

[Nordic1980s]

Edgy long post inbounding!

My journey began in 1990 with Finnish translations of HeroQuest and Space Crusade 'roleplaying' board games (they were advertised as such locally). Got my first metal figures also then (Chaos Renegades mistaken for Chaos Warriors, the blister card depicted a fantasy warrior). Read adverts of translated D&D (BECMI version) from the Action Force GI Joe magazine. Had been a NES Shadowgate gamer before that, not knowing until recently that the game designer knew Gary Gygax personally. Read all the gaming magazines available and back then these same magazines covered also tabletop games, 40K universe, Japanese comics, J.R.R. Tolkien and whatnot.

Became a proper 40K gamer in 1997 and became instantly hooked on the old school looks as I still had some of those 40K 1st ed and WFB 3rd ed models around. I never bought into the newer-is-better-hype and for me personally these games, regardless of medium (PC game, NES game, tabletop game...) are about 90% of visual experience and rest 10% if the rules make actual sense. Considered myself an Oldhammer and OSR activist when they were a cool underground thingie and still in 2024 collect classic figures (e.g. late 1980s to mid 1990s Grenadier, Grendel, Heartbreaker generic fantasy lines, please see here, here and here). Have been a WFRP 1st ed and MERP 2nd ed GM previously, am currently an active D&D (BECMI version) DM. Tried Battletech once again, was instantly reminded why I never became a Battletech player in the 1990s (way too slow game format). Generic sword and sorcery fantasy in Middle-Earth, Frank Frazetta style, is where I keep coming back again and again. Did make in the 1990s house rules and own rules, trying to fix 40K 2nd ed by loaning elements from Kill Zone and Laserburn (the 1990 Finnish edition, see here and campaign sourcebook legally available here).

Nowadays I do not hoard games, have sold off many for other collectors as it dawned on me that I would never actually play them. I don't care for the board gamer book shelf looks, though I feel box art is nonetheless important. I still look at games both old and new with an eye for useable house rules and gaming art to lift, the latter for rpg campaign uses where there is an endless need for well made illustrations. Whereas in the 1990s I considered miniature games and rpgs complitely different game types, today they have merged into use of miniatures in rpgs and miniature battles taking place and shaping the larger background of rpg campaigns. Regardless of whether the player characters are present in that miniature battlefield or the rules used are the same.

Agree with Robosmith. Do think that in 2024 the D&D and Warhammer are starting to see actual cracks, both due to being victims of their own previous success (arrogance regardless of current performance level) and politics alienating their own customer bases (e.g. official Bretonnia lore of current Warhammer Old World). Many people seem to jump ship from D&D to Pathfinder and I question if they really did jump anything as the graphics, general feelings, company politics and such are about or even more the same as with WOTC and Hasbro. The original post and the linked blog post are interesting. Some comments on the ideas presented there:

If you completely re-skinned a game like Warhammer 40K and released it, there would be a small audience.  Look at Void as a great example.

Pathfinder seems currently to be a succesfull clone where (I would argue) former D&D people mostly do not jump the actual "ship", but only the company prodiving that ship. Most Warhammer clones (Battlesystem 2nd ed, Fantasy Warriors, Fantasy Warlord, Chronopia, Kill Zone, Kryomek) and non-D&D fantasy games failed because they were lackluster in presentation quality and/or even weaker rules wise, I count most of the indie miniature games in this category also. Typical category error is lack of thematic genre coverage - where are all the "better" rules for sieges, flying great eagle vs. dragon battles, campaigns, followers, henchmen and so on. Mostly they do not exist at all and are often (but not always) the first thing the OSR game designers axe off their "better" versions of the D&D wargame. Other typical own goals include even further more limits on troop types and usages that exists in GW/D&D games (e.g. holy moly at the troop type limits in Fantasy Warlord, the troop formation limits in Oathmark), nonsensical dice requirements (D10 as standard dice in Oathmark... wtf?) or abstract rules in an individual character game that normies have difficulty comprehending, asking what single real-world actions the rules are trying to represent (even GW occasionally steps on this land mine - a Warhammer "failed charge" has no real-world parallel to it). Putting the games side by side like this, one can clearly see why the alternate games are often from rational customer-gamer viewpoint much weaker than the main ones, even if one leaves out the pre-existing customer base for one brand of game.

Many people may disagree with me, but I would argue that success of likes of Warhammer and early 40K was because they were so generic or generic-compatible (cultural imaginery presented relatable by normies). If a person in 1985 or 1991 bought a pc or Amiga game, saw a film at movie theather, saw toys in a toyshops and went to purchase a game, the standard cultural imagery was shared by all providers alike and all were mostly better for it (manufacturers, game shops, consumers). Good luck trying that in 2024, though! A society disagreeing on basic male-female axis can't decide on what a 'troll' or a 'dragon' looks alike and the presentations are overwhelmingly ugly ones, so any sensible would-to-be gamer customer keeps at least 10' pole away from any such "products" at the "shops". It's no coincidence that back in the day the (A)D&D monsters were the Japanese Ultraman monsters translated to us westerners (e.g. umber hulk, hook horror), or that Battletech Wasp is Macross Valkyrie is Transformers Jetfire, or that in the cover of the legendary Heroquest boxed set one can see no other than Conan the Barbarian along with Gimli and Legolas of the Fellowship of the Ring, battling Skeletor's orcs in mines of Moria. People could choose any medium or platform they wanted, but the genre was retained as the same. They also used actual artists back then, so the product covers in the shops did not scream pseudo-Satanist, spiky-spider-monster-with-diarrhea-in-purple-teal-colours aesthetics to any potential customers wishing to part with their money (this is a big thing in current rpg and pc game publishing). When was the last time a mainstream game's first impression looked looked this good? Oathmark is an expectionally serious player here, methinks.

For example, if you bring a big, stompy robot game to the table and it does not have some sort of Heat or similar friction mechanic people look at it sideways.

No mister, the very opposite! Heat sink issue has been FASA's retarded anti-Battletech own goal as long as the game has existed. Robo-gamers want this pacing of action, but the actual rules tend to present this instead. Battletech game minus the slowness and absurd heat sinks would be a game of gods, a whole complete game in one box! (Another such wet fantasy is the D&D Rules Cyclopedia or WFRP 1st ed rulebook in a boxed set complete with GM's screen, character sheets, quality dice and whatnot plus all the erratas applied, akin to Cry Havoc game. One can always dream...)

A simple re-skin of an existing game is not sufficient.  Why not just buy the original game?  As the designer, you have to have a compelling answer to that question in your design.  No one wants another Warhammer Ancient Battles

The easy success of WAB underlined what many people have commented over the years, namely that Warhammer (or D&D...) is partially so used because it's so near perfect generic rule system (one house rule here, another there and voilà!). The comedy gold joke on mankind is that the standard Warhammer game always allowed for historical medieval games - all the GW had to do was to remove elements of the game (magic, fantasy races...) to make it suitable for historical gamers. Is that inverted game design..? 
 

I know many of us miniature wargame designers often start by wanting to build a better Warhammer. STOP! No one wants that, and you don't either.  The market all ready has Warhammer.

Historically many games began as set of additional house rules for a pre-existing game. In theory, instead a creating a wholly new game, one could publish a set of house-rules and put all effort in making that the standard reading of the rules (more common thing in rpg world). That would of course require a sort of shared understanding of the basics in the sense how chess or card games are not property of any single corporation. Currently there is a massive market gap hole for a boxed locally available D6-only generic fantasy miniature wargame and rpg plus a similar boxed D6-only generic scifi game that are campaign world agnostic and handle the actions at the at least the same real-world correspondence as Warhammer games of the 1990s. Battletech and Cyberpunk would otherwise fit the bill but either use wrong dice (Cyberpunk) or have peculiar slowness issue (Battletech). Oathmark has the issues described above. It's so weird that no-one seems to go for the obvious golden route, perhaps thinking (wrongly) that rules themselves can be copyrighted and would thus be off-limits to use as the base. Just as chess makers compete at prices on one end and on high-end luxury looks on the another end, but need not re-invent the core game system, there needs to be a competition between who delivers the best looking, rule system wise the most diamond solid, no-unneccessary-extras-needed-to-play (weird dice, gaming cards, tokens...) common-sense presentation of fantasy miniature wargame (Warhammer) or fantasy roleplay game (D&D) or giant robot battle game (Battletech) etc. Where every dice roll, unit action etc. represents a real-world parallel e.g. in a skirmish level game a to hit attempt in game represents a single real-world attempt to strike in hand-to-hand combat. No woo-woo of abstracted actions, feats, legendary actions, bonus actions, Chaos-special-rules-because-Chaos or other such nonsense.

[jon_1066]

I think you might have missed the point a little.  We don't need another Warhammer because at its core Warmhammer is actually not a very good game.  Taking the base mechanics from Warhammer to create Warmallet is not a good path to go down because you will end up with a game that has none of the attractions of Warhammer (large player base, huge range of models, great fluff, lovely artwork, sumptuous books, etc) and all the bad bits (clunky rules based on rules concepts from the 1970's)

Tying yourself to D6 is also part of the problem.  Having granularity is quite difficult with D6 since + or - 1 is a large swing.  To get granularity you have to roll them quite a few times - hence you end up with roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save.

[Dubbya]

I really thought we were past the stage where anything other than D6 was weird?

Every person I know who isn't into wargaming, but are nerdy enough to know rpgs, board games, video games etc. see different sided dice as equally valid.

Historically, yes. I recall the makers of the Dragon Warriors rpg books regretting not using D6!

[Barking Monkey]

The relative success of "Kings of War" would seem to rebut the argument that there's no player base for another Warhammer.  As far as games being too innovative to be successful, I'm not sure I buy into that either.  It may seem old hat now, but when D&D 1st came out it was 100% innovative and took off pretty massively. 

As far as 'real' wargames go, the example that pops into my head is 'Piquet'.  When it was introduced it was EXTREMELY innovative - I kinda think that was it's main attraction.  It made a splash and had a hardcore following for awhile, though it appeared to eventually drop off when the publisher ran out of energy/interest in promoting it.  It was sort of the entry point for card driven systems, which have become more popular with time, and it was an early adopter of the troop-quality-expressed-through-dice-type that I first saw in StarGrunt2.

SAGA is a more recent game/system that's been popular while being very innovative.

I think creativity and innovation are not a hindrance to game popularity, as long as they are done well and serve a purpose.

[SteveBurt]

Seems to me a lot of this discussion is pertinent only to fantasy and sci-fi games. Historical gamers have always used their figures for different rule sets, helped by many sets using compatible basing or being basing agnostic.
There has been a lot of innovation and new mechanics in historical games over the last 40 years. DBA, Fire & Fury, Volley & Bayonet, Black Powder, Crossfire, Saga, Lion Rampant, Maurice, Longstreet, To the Strongest, Chain of Command, Rommel, Blucher, Lasalle, and that’s just the ones that come to mind. They all have novel ideas, and they are all good games as well as being reasonable simulations of history.

[Easy E]

Seems to me a lot of this discussion is pertinent only to fantasy and sci-fi games. Historical gamers have always used their figures for different rule sets, helped by many sets using compatible basing or being basing agnostic.
There has been a lot of innovation and new mechanics in historical games over the last 40 years. DBA, Fire & Fury, Volley & Bayonet, Black Powder, Crossfire, Saga, Lion Rampant, Maurice, Longstreet, To the Strongest, Chain of Command, Rommel, Blucher, Lasalle, and that’s just the ones that come to mind. They all have novel ideas, and they are all good games as well as being reasonable simulations of history.

Yes, and all of those are their own unique take on those periods.  LaSalle is not trying to be Volley and Bayonet.  Saga is trying to be Lion Rampant.  They may cover similar periods, but they have their own unique and very different take on things. 

However, as you say; in the Fantasy and Sco-Fi space you see a lot of people trying to "tweak" GW systems instead of just being their own unique thing.

[SteveBurt]

Part of the issue is that GW has been so dominant that many aspects of Warhammer are simply taken as the way things are in the fantasy rules realm. Nobody queries things like rolling a dice for every model, rather than once for a unit, having to roll three times (hit/wound/save) rather than say, once, having to use d6, or having to use dice at all rather than cards. Being able to activate all your models every turn, having no command and control rules, having perfect information, having a ton of special rules for different units.
I suspect a lot of authors are either so far inside that box that they can’t think out of it, or that they are afraid if they do, it will be too alien for the players.
I mean, Crossfire is easy to make into SciFi rules, but it has no measurement and no turns, and requires that you use proper fire and movement tactics, so may not be an easy sell to someone brought up on 40K.

[Elbows]

Yep, and I think outside of stuff like 40K...there is no equivalent in historical gaming, despite all the ex-GW guys trying to make Warlord Games the Games Workshop of historicals.  While Black Powder, Hail Caesar, and Bolt Action are "quite" popular for historical games, no historical game dominates any historical market the way GW dominates its chosen markets.

I have read a lot of rules, and have encountered numerous "oh this is just 40K" clones - even when they're aiming for different genres, etc.  You can tell the designer only played Warhammer 40K or Fantasy before setting up their own game.  There's an Old West game, even (not the LOTOW) that is very obviously 90% Warhammer rules, etc.

What I do enjoy about historical games is the inability of anyone to dominate.  I think it's actually healthy - something GW suffers from tremendously is trying to appease numerous different niches with a single game.  40K communities and groups are exceptionally vitriolic because you have huge communities of different minded people all trying to manipulate the game in their favour.  The storygamers, the tournament try-hards, the lore-fiends, etc.  In a historical setting such as WW2...you'd simply play different games which appeal.

I know your average Bolt Action player may not enjoy Chain of Command, and vice-versa...and that's great.  I enjoy Battlegroup, but can't stand Flames of War - and there are likely tons of tournament guys who would hate playing Battlegroup, etc.  This is healthy.  There is a product to appease almost any taste.  Napoleonics is a superb example.  You have classic games which literally measure unit frontage down to the inch, as well as the pace of certain nations soldiers based on their drill formations, etc.  Then you have Black Powder...which is at the opposite end of historical depth.  Add to that off-shoots like Silver Bayonet for people who struggle to be enthused by simple historical games, etc.

I wrote Shoot N' Skedaddle - my first published game - about 10-12 years ago because I played 5-6 Old West games and none of them "hit the spot" for me.  Since then, something like 5-6 other major Old West games have come out.  The market is flooded with Old West games ranging from big convention games, to crunchy role-playing games, to weird-West games, to Hollywood..to historical, etc.  Best part is, you buy your minis/town...and you can play all of them.  There is genuinely a game for everyone.

So like a lot of things today; are you going to make a focused, quality product to realize a vision...or a gigantic, mass-appeal, lazy product to grab as many consumers as possible?