Games Workshop announced a slate of new videogames yesterday--you can see them on Steam and GOG--to help push the new Necromunda: Hired Gun release. With this release, and the freebies given away--one each on Steam and GOG--I am confident in saying that Games Workshop is committing to transitioning Warhammer from being just a tabletop game to a major entertainment brand, and that means that the creative directions of recent adaptations start making sense.
In short, now is the time to start being hypervigilant about the poz because Games Workshop is moving Warhammer above the fold and therefore into the sphere of Death Cult awareness. The already present pressure to converge into the Death Cult will increase, and the signs will be turning Warhammer into a full-on Pop Cult of its own and eliminating its tongue-in-cheek self-awareness of its own absurdity that serves to keep both the audience and the makers tied to the real world.
Well, outside of anything featuring Orks in the lead. They're the designated comedy outlet.
The other tell will be the sudden backstab turns by established figures in the fan scene. The term emerging out of certain discussion forums for dealing with the poz calls them "Leonards", after the character from The Big Bang Theory, and being a long-time TRPG guy I know too well the damage these fifth columnists and opportunists can do when they turn their coats and align with the Death Cult.
You want to look out for Leonard. He'll be the guy that throws open the gates and lets them in after throwing the gatekeepers into disarray. Sure, he stands a good chance of getting eaten by his own allies--good little Genestealer cultist style of consequence there--but by then the damage is done and now the enemy in inside the walls. Now is the time to watch for the metaphorical zombie bites, and to that end knowing the Social Sexual Hierarchy is a good tool: find the Gamma Males, shit-test them, and expel all that fail in a very public and humiliating fashion. Leonards are usually Gammas.
This is a dangerous time for Warhammer. Now that it's gazed into the proverbial palantir, our Sauron figure knows it exists and will make it serve or destroy it if it cannot turn it, and there is no Aragorn coming to save it from itself and its own fool-of-a-Took stupidity.
I saw a Warhammer 40K figure at a local Target today. It may be too late.
ReplyDelete(There's a Strahd von Zarovich Funko Pop coming out later this year. It's definitely too late for D&D and Ravenloft.)
We can replace Warhammer as well if it goes the way of all other converged stories.
ReplyDelete