Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

cartographia40k.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 61 posts

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#31

Post by ajross »

throaway198521 wrote: post #21
ajross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to say, the original authors didn't care and were just writing latinesque gibberish that sounded cool. One of the critically important things to remember about 40k lore is that the game was originally a joke . Their "real" game was Warhammer (the game to be later called "Warhammer Fantasy"). Originally it was just "Let's put space opera tropes onto a game board and have them fight D&D monsters". Then they sh…

It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society. The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops. That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial…

> It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society.

Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment.

[1] Which again, didn't actually include a lot of the later lore. Like, the emperor in the 1e rules was entombed but strongly implied to be actively leading the empire. Likewise the original conception seems a lot closer to dystopian sci fi than "1980's society" to me.

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#32

Post by MichaelDickens »

vermilingua wrote: post #11
nope1000 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those words are supposed to be "high gothic" ( https://warhammer40k.fandom.com/wiki/High_Gothic ) which is definitly inspired by latin but not the same.

Fandom (40k's fandom seems less-terrible than most tbf) needs to die a faster death. Lexicanum is a much better resource. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic

What's wrong with Fandom?

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#33

Post by throaway198521 »

ajross wrote: post #31
throaway198521 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society. The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops. That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial…

> It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society. Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment. [1] Which agai…

It's dystopian sci-fi based on England though. The later lore is irrelevant, that's when it started turning into crap, especially around the later 2000s.

Here's the original from 1987's Rogue Trader:

""It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the vast Imperium of Man for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die."

Definitely a Jesus figure. And a pretty subtly done one.

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#35

Post by co_ent »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #32
vermilingua wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fandom (40k's fandom seems less-terrible than most tbf) needs to die a faster death. Lexicanum is a much better resource. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/High_Gothic

What's wrong with Fandom?

They have the SEO juice to push out and replace dedicated wikis as the top result, even when there are long-standing dedicated wikis for the game/universe. Fandom wikis then typically have maybe half of the information from the dedicated wiki PLUS a bunch of intrusive ads. There's no instance that I know of where a Fandom wiki popping up for a community was a positive unless they simply didn't have one to start with.

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#36

Post by eli_gottlieb »

throaway198521 wrote: post #21
ajross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to say, the original authors didn't care and were just writing latinesque gibberish that sounded cool. One of the critically important things to remember about 40k lore is that the game was originally a joke . Their "real" game was Warhammer (the game to be later called "Warhammer Fantasy"). Originally it was just "Let's put space opera tropes onto a game board and have them fight D&D monsters". Then they sh…

It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society. The "Imperium," which is led by the possibly-dead body of a entombed demi-god, sustains its control over the galaxy with a mix of intense faith, authoritarianism, and a massive space navy with marine shock troops. That's England! The Imperium is the British Empire. The dead-God Emperor is Jesus and the Imperial Cult is the COE. The Imperial…

> One of the old slurs against Christians was that they followed a "corpse-god." They say the same thing in 40K.

Seriously? Wow. Maybe it's because I'm American, but I can't imagine actually saying that to someone. I'd sorta expect them to throw hands if I talked like that about Jesus.

And I'm an entirely secular, non-Christian atheist living among many other such people!

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#38

Post by ajross »

throaway198521 wrote: post #33
ajross wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was more than just a joke. It was a satire on England and 1980's society. Well... while I buy that to some extent, I think the point is oversold. While there are absolutely satirical aspects to the early game[1], they're mostly limited to puns. What (original) 40k is absolutely not is subtle highbrow comedy. It's a bunch of drunk nerds guffawing about whatever they thought was funny in the moment. [1] Which agai…

It's dystopian sci-fi based on England though. The later lore is irrelevant, that's when it started turning into crap, especially around the later 2000s. Here's the original from 1987's Rogue Trader: ""It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might…

Yeah, oversold to me, sorry. Just to start with: "definitely" and "subtly done" are at odds with each other. You can't be both. Klaatu is "definitely" a Jesus analog. The Emperor... meh. It's strained, precisely because GW never really went there: fine, he's Jesus, but then what represents the Gospels? The Old Testamanet? The Emperor is only "Jesus" insofar as that's how "Jesus" looks to a 20th century disaffected nerdy atheist. Well... OK I guess?

Also... the 19th century British Empire is... kinda not at all viewed as a theocratic totalitarian autocracy consumed by cult-like worship of a dead god. Like, at all? It was a bourgeois, wealth-focused and extremely secular colonizer power driven by very worldly desires and a vaguely racist idea of How Things Should Be. And there's a lot of valuable source material for fiction there![1] And... GW didn't really do any of it, and almost none of that until much later.

[1] c.f. like 80% of Cyberpunk

Re: Interactive Warhammer 40k Galaxy Map

#39

Post by wellthisisgreat »

jmarchello wrote: post #19
wsowens wrote: post #17

I've always been intrigued by Warhammer 40k but never really knew how to get into it. What's the best way?

The barrier of entry is admittedly high for playing the game, but it's tons of fun. You have to pick an army, start collecting models (which aren't cheap), then you have to build them and at least sort of paint them. Honestly the best way is just go on to a local store on they 40k open play night (most have one weekly) and ask around. Folks are extremely kind and generous and will often loan you some models to play a…

> start collecting models

I don’t know anything about it, but I imagine there’s an STL file about any W40K figurine out there by now. And, probably, even more fan-made variations.

With hi-res resin 3D printers costing about as much as a W40K starter set, how can Wizards’ biz model hold?

Once you paint the figurine there’s no way to tell if it came from a store or from an at-home 3D printer.

I imagine Wizards may ban such things from official events and tournaments (if those are even a thing).

But do W40K hobbyists frown upon 3D printed figurines?

Really curious how the socio-economic dynamics of this are playing out. Figurine-based games seem to the the one area where consumer 3D printers can produce a 1-1 replacement.

Post reply on HN