Quote from: Opaopajr;505870So wait, there's a necessary tongue and cheek nature to grim dark, yes? Like, the black knight can't just have jet black armor, he must have HUGE SPIKEY jet black armor, with bits of his enemies hanging off like Trophies and Fetishes! The "good guys" aren't questionably grey in their tactics, they must be RUTHLESS and RELENTLESS zealots holding the last bastion of Crushing Order in a world gone mad.

Like that, right? In essence, grimdark is like the newest marketing size/flavor "Xtreme!" but dressed in counterculture evil/misery cool...

I think grimdark could be redeemable as humor, if it wasn't that the majority of its fans don't actually get the joke, and nowadays the majority of its designers don't seem to understand that certain things started as joke/mockery either, and mistake it for a serious position.

And of course, by grimdark I basically mean 40K.

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Quote from: Simlasa;505931Yeah, I realize that newer 40K and WFB and WFRP are taking themselves much more seriously and the joke is mostly on them... but since they all started off with tongues in cheek where do you think the 'grimdark' comes in... is it after they lose their sense of humor? Or have they been 'grimdark' all along.
To my mind they always had it... but I'm thinking of the term in a non-pejorative sense.

Grimdark came from pushing mini-sales, pure and simple.  Make shit bigger, badder, darker, and METAL!  Who cares that the fluff is gauze thin and changes with the wind when your gun is the size of a VW Bus?

Considering how many sales GW continues to make year in and year out, I suspect most gamers do not agree with all the foo-fooers here.

Quote from: RPGPundit;506091I think grimdark could be redeemable as humor, if it wasn't that the majority of its fans don't actually get the joke, and nowadays the majority of its designers don't seem to understand that certain things started as joke/mockery either, and mistake it for a serious position.

And of course, by grimdark I basically mean 40K.

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I'm with you there: 40k is getting duller and way more starchy but it seems there are a lot of people who think that is a good thing.

They tend to be the same people who think a miniature covered in unpaintable nobbly bits and flash is better quality than a clean easy to paint figure.

Quote from: Simlasa;505563Yeah, I think that... coming to it with Traveller/Star Wars on the brain  it took some of us a while to realize that the Rogue Traders weren't so much Han Solo/Millenium Falcon as they were James Lancaster/East India Company... despite that being clearly on display in the writeup.

I was playing a lot of Traveller when the first edition of Rogue Trader, and I remember very distinctly my first reaction: "Holy shit, I'm small fucking potatoes!"

It was about that time that my merchant character bought a big freighter and hired a patrol cruiser and a platoon of mercenaries as an escort.

Quote from: danbuter;506221Considering how many sales GW continues to make year in and year out, I suspect most gamers do not agree with all the foo-fooers here.

Sadly, that's likely true. There are a lot of mindless metal fans, pseudo-militaristic morons, and would-be fascists wanking over the emperor and endless war out there...

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Quote from: RPGPundit;506554Sadly, that's likely true. There are a lot of mindless metal fans, pseudo-militaristic morons, and would-be fascists wanking over the emperor and endless war out there...

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That's what you get when your target demographic is 12 year old boys.

Quote from: RPGPundit;506091. . . [N]owadays the majority of its designers don't seem to understand that certain things started as joke/mockery either, and mistake it for a serious position.

Yeah, the GW crew back in the Eighties approached their games with tongues firmly in cheek, which is what made their products, for me, so much fun.

Quote from: RPGPundit;506554Sadly, that's likely true. There are a lot of mindless metal fans, pseudo-militaristic morons, and would-be fascists wanking over the emperor and endless war out there...

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It just adds to the emersion for me. I like to claim my character is from "Foundation" and that all of the machine spirit emperor worshippers are following the religion we made up for them.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;506557Yeah, the GW crew back in the Eighties approached their games with tongues firmly in cheek, which is what made their products, for me, so much fun.

I really miss that version of GW as well. The current crew and thinking at GW would never come up with something like Blood Bowl.

Quote from: RPGPundit;506091I think grimdark could be redeemable as humor, if it wasn't that the majority of its fans don't actually get the joke, and nowadays the majority of its designers don't seem to understand that certain things started as joke/mockery either, and mistake it for a serious position.

And of course, by grimdark I basically mean 40K.

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This thread is comically clueless.

Dude, the very word is meant as a joke.

I know of almost no one over the age of fucking 12 that doesn't get the inherent absurdities of the setting, and revel in them. It's part of what makes it fun.

And besides, the joy of hopelessness is you've nothing left to lose.

So I'm seeing my perspective shift here... with 'grimdark' taking on the more pejorative sense Rincewind1 and others suggest... that it's more precisely a term to mock the self-serious tone of later versions of the GW IP... and its fans.

Quote from: J Arcane;506583I know of almost no one over the age of fucking 12 that doesn't get the inherent absurdities of the setting, and revel in them.

Sadly that hasn't been my experience... most all of the hardcore 40K players I've been around of late take that shit with a straight face (except maybe for the guys playing Space Orks). They spout the trivia with the same demeanor as the hard-core Star Wars/Star Trek fans. If GW were to do a U-Turn and put the party hat back on those guys would be kinda pissed. They're the same ones who complain about John Blanche's artwork... because it's 'silly'.
Then again, nowadays most of their jabber is about the game stats. When the game became focused on 'tournaments' is when it started to lose its sense of humor and the players did the same.

Quote from: RPGPundit;506554. . . a lot of mindless metal fans, pseudo-militaristic morons, and would-be fascists wanking over the emperor . . .

So that's how the Golden Throne keeps going :jaw-dropping:

Blood Bowl was awesome.

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http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/03/20