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[Salmeuk]

oh yeah? maybe I'll pick up the pdf sometime. I do love that era, 80s - 90s ttrpgs like Traveler. it was a sort of weird heydey for super complex nerddom put into gigantic manuals, before the internet arrived and provided alternate space for the sorts of maddened creativity it takes to write those things.

[brewer bob]

The core rules don't go into much detail with the lore (I think it wasn't so clear for the writers at that point what the world would eventually be like), but the original Enemy Within Campaign sourcebooks have a ton of good stuff (though the initial conclusion of the campaign was a bit meh; they've tried to address it's failures in the 4th edition, finally after, what, 40 years or so?). It's still ranked as one of the best ttrpg campaigns ever, I believe.

I could ramble about this for pages and pages, but I guess I should stop derailing the thread into a Warhammer Fantasy discussion...

[HMD Majesty]

(The edginess came around the 2nd edition of WFRP, though it seemed to be a horrible trend in ttrpgs during that period in general.)

What Time Period was this?  Comics in the Nineties became decidedly grim, gritty, and dark so We wonder if there is any Overlap.

[brewer bob]

(The edginess came around the 2nd edition of WFRP, though it seemed to be a horrible trend in ttrpgs during that period in general.)

What Time Period was this?  Comics in the Nineties became decidedly grim, gritty, and dark so We wonder if there is any Overlap.

Mid-nineties to early 2000s, or somewhere around? Anyways a long time ago, and I don't have such a clear memory of it. But now that you mentioned it, it wasn't just ttrpgs suffering from edginess.

(Edit. 2004 looks to be the year when WFRP 2nd edition was published.)

[HMD Majesty]

Ah.  Thank you.

[Stromko]

I like goblins, not as much as dwarves but I like them, and in defense of goblins: I think they should be war-like, brutish, short-lived and numerous. These elements are key to their appeal and make them enjoyable and valuable to their settings. You take away too many of these elements and you're just left with small people, you have diminished their identity and uniqueness. Make them immortal and now you have small elves with a slightly different set of grievances, which is almost what we have now.

It's perfectly noble to say people shouldn't be categorized and put in a box, recognizing that everyone deserves agency and freedom is critical in the real world, but fictional settings are only going to have a handful of fleshed-out characters. If it is unremarkable for characters to exist that go against the grain then that setting doesn't have a grain, then it's unremarkable and pointless. The setting and those characters start to lack an identity, there is no longer a 'norm' to rebel from or stand out from.

You can still have compelling stories without leaning on stereotypes and tropes, but when we're talking about a procedurally generated fantasy world, leaning into that a little helps a lot in providing recognizable touchstones. If I were a new player and I'm raring to play a dwarven fortress, and after a few hours of play realize my taverns are full of goblin bards and my civilization is led by some random elf.. well, there might be a period of confusion, but eventually with enough hours in I'd just accept the setting has a lot of random noise in it that doesn't change anything, signify anything, or really mean anything.

On the other hand if a goblin bard shows up and causes some sort of commotion among the commoners due to how unexpected that is, or if an elven queen takes charge and now the diplomats from a local elven enclave think they can push you around even more on the wood situation because they think they have an inroad with your monarch, now it becomes somewhat impactful, the world actually reacts to events going against the usual grain of the setting. When everybody's just people who can interchangeably fill any role in the setting and it's unremarked upon, we might as well just be Crusader Kings without mods.

I don't expect any of this to actually matter as far as the development of the game goes, clearly this would demand a reactivity that is a bit further along than the game will have for a long time, and there aren't any changes needed that are really high priority. I just had to say something, because I feel like there's been some misguided virtue signalling calling for a setting that is milquetoast, bland, and flat. It seems like a common sentiment around fantasy settings lately, and I find it really quite anthrocentric. Saying goblins want to be like people is implying they want to be people -like us-, and is no virtue at all when you pick it apart.

As an aside, and sorry to feed into the off-topic discussion even more, but  if people don't realize Warhammer is supposed to be edgy to the point of self parody... and to be fair, many Warhammer fans DON'T realize that... well I just hope they realize that. To be fair some of the writers who've made content for those settings probably don't realize it either.

[brewer bob]

(Sorry, couldn't resist continuing the off-topic discussion..)

but  if people don't realize Warhammer is supposed to be edgy to the point of self parody... and to be fair, many Warhammer fans DON'T realize that... well I just hope they realize that. To be fair some of the writers who've made content for those settings probably don't realize it either.

Yeah, this is pretty much the case. Oldhammer/40k stuff was pretty obviously satire and full of black humor. Then at some point there were changes in GW management (or something) and the new people didn't get it (according to Rick Priestley):

“To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic,” he said.

“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.

“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”

[HMD Majesty]

(Sorry, couldn't resist continuing the off-topic discussion..)

but  if people don't realize Warhammer is supposed to be edgy to the point of self parody... and to be fair, many Warhammer fans DON'T realize that... well I just hope they realize that. To be fair some of the writers who've made content for those settings probably don't realize it either.

Yeah, this is pretty much the case. Oldhammer/40k stuff was pretty obviously satire and full of black humor. Then at some point there were changes in GW management (or something) and the new people didn't get it (according to Rick Priestley):

“To me the background to 40K was always intended to be ironic,” he said.

“The fact that the Space Marines were lauded as heroes within Games Workshop always amused me, because they’re brutal, but they’re also completely self-deceiving. The whole idea of the Emperor is that you don’t know whether he’s alive or dead. The whole Imperium might be running on superstition. There’s no guarantee that the Emperor is anything other than a corpse with a residual mental ability to direct spacecraft.

“It’s got some parallels with religious beliefs and principles, and I think a lot of that got missed and overwritten.”

We would not be surprised if the shift in Perception started when People began creating Fiction set in the World, as opposed to writing Fluff.  While it is not impossible to write edgy, self-parodying Stories, they are generally profoundly bad.  It is much easier to write acceptable Tales of doomed Heroism, which naturally require a Hero.

Changing back the actual Subject:

I just had to say something, because I feel like there's been some misguided virtue signalling calling for a setting that is milquetoast, bland, and flat. It seems like a common sentiment around fantasy settings lately, and I find it really quite anthrocentric. Saying goblins want to be like people is implying they want to be people -like us-, and is no virtue at all when you pick it apart.

May We ask what, exactly, you meant by this?

[Stromko]

May We ask what, exactly, you meant by this?

Perhaps I read too much into the pushback on changing goblins to adhere to being more traditionally goblin-y, maybe people just want them to remain Dwarf Fortressy goblin-y, although what exactly that means is certainly up to discussion.

I've seen too many 'discussions' on bringing real world issues into fantasy worlds and I think it's scarred my brain. There's really no winning except not to play, but I forget myself sometimes.

[HMD Majesty]

All We've seen is Folks arguing for or against Goblins staying immortal, with a proposed Aging Mechanic. 

We Ourselves aren't a big Fan of the proposed Mechanic since with it in Place We'd probably end up watching Sieges devour themselves, which while funny every once in a While could get awfully boring, but it's hardly a move towards traditional fantasy Goblins.

[Cathar]

I do think you are indeed reading too much on the "thanks but no thanks" answer you have been getting, most of them having been adequatly substantiated.
As for myself, all I'm saying is, DF's goblins are not your warhammer goblins, they are ugly evil dark elves. If you want tolkien/warhammer/D&D goblins you can, of course, mod them in. Also killing goblins don't make you a bad person jesus christ lol

Edit : With that said, wanting your DF goblins to conform to a generic med-fan setting, erasing what makes them stand out in the process is fine, until you accuse your critic of wanting milquetost-bland-generic fantasy, then it becomes a bit hypocritical doesn't it.

...

Spoiler:  Not as off-topic as it seems (click to show/hide)

Warhammer high elves are kind of a issue for me. They make no sense in their worldbuilding. I bought the 6th edition army book, I read the lore, I went to YT lore videos, I asked people on /tg/, and I never had the lore-accurate reason why high elves are not pushed by the weight of their own demographics and the rules set in the worlds to just conquer the world.
Sure, there are some limited events peppered here and there, but we're talking about immortal peoples in a finite world. Unless they have something permanently preventing them from squaring their numbers every twenty years, that is what they should do... and they do not have any such a thing. Historical events cannot pull you out of that worldbuilding loophole, you would need a permanent, intrinsic counterbalance to the demographic expension weight to keep the elven population from booming out of control.

But I guess, okay, if Warhammer Fantasy is parody, the WB doesnt need to make much sense, but until that discussion I was not under the impression I was dealing with satire at all, quite the contrary - the universe was presenting itself as dark and mature.

[A_Curious_Cat]

If your not careful, God will kill a catgirl.

[Cathar]

Put some spoiler tags to avoid dies irae

[Maloy]

sniped off topic

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I think I agree. The only thing that keeps high elves from reproducing and keeping up with the dark elves in warhammer is that they choose...not to.
Their a perpetually dying race while their cousins are actually prospering despite being so evil it's a wonder they haven't magically nuked themselves into extinction.
I think it's funny how in most Total War Warhammer games the High Elves end up conquering the world. That and when dwarves stomp the world and empty their book of grudges

I think it was my third dwarf fortress world I had goblins who had been alive for 800+ years! I thought it was wild and some of them made good foes for pillaging and conquering!
Most though didn't really develop unique skills

I did think it was interesting lore wise, and I've never had too much trouble killing off the super old ones.
If they have high leadership and are ruling settlements I'd just send a squad to repeatedly pillage a weaker one until they were strong enough in leadership and sent them off! Throw in a few war elephants or whatever and we are good to go!

[Salmeuk]

agree with all the responses re: warhammer's edginess, as well as the interesting perspectives on "the goblin's" place within fantasy. I think it's a worthy discussion as we approach a new DF version, which will no doubt result in a boom of modding and thus a boom in further re-definitions of fantasy races.

We will likely encounter the hard limits of DF's modding, restricting the community according to the design of the software, and this will also result in further reflection of what it means to define an interesting species / race / civilization.

A lot of interesting back and forth has been done in recent years regarding bioessentialism in games, particularly in DnD. Much of the argument revolves around a supposedly self-evident point: that these things are pure fantasy, and as such they should not be affected by the so-called "real world". aka dont bring your politics into my creations.

I kind of agree, in that I think you should never censor anything, ever. but this fantasy is always derived from the experiences of real people . . . even if your entire ecosystem of inspiration was the novels of Tolkien and the various resulting realities, you must admit Tolkien was reacting to his own experience with the fantasies previous to him. and so on and so on.

it would be somewhat irrational to suggest a humanoid race with a generic intelligence and form would be absolutely evil. DF does this, with the various raw tags that determine a civilization's predisposition towards torture, cannibalism, etc. But this system allows for variance, and the raws themselves allow for user input, which are things that OP seems to want to redefine according to preconceived notions of goblin-ness.

trust me, yeah, im not saying goblins shouldn't be inherently evil.. thats your choice ultimately. but give the individual goblin agency for gods sake! DF lets this happen and I have always had a fondness for the fact you can have goblins join other civilizations, and vice versa with dwarves turning coat to work for the dark pits.

so ultimately I don't want to shut down OP. any view of fantasy is valid, but you cannot deny that certain views reflect your own preconceived notions. sometimes, you can pin a writer down simply by the way they describe a scene... so much is revealed by the words as written... this is how writing works. I like to pick and poke at other's fantasy if only to improve their own understanding of the world they define. and I'm not afraid to judge someone for their inability to write genuine agency into their stories.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

similarly, I judge you for your DF playstyle   

I think it was my third dwarf fortress world I had goblins who had been alive for 800+ years! I thought it was wild and some of them made good foes for pillaging and conquering!
Most though didn't really develop unique skills

The World of Bones has a goblin queen who took over one of the dwarven civs, some 500 years previous, in a rather surprising coup. This is a profound notion to me: imagine if -insert despised political leader here- was immortal and never let go of power. Damn.