I feel like people really cry a lot about this when "evil can't be defeated, only held at bay by constant vigilance" is one of the cornerstone themes of fantasy.

>>97080623
You have to do it a certain way though, there's a very fine line between
>evil can't be defeated, only held at bay by constant vigilance
and
>nihilism

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>>97080894
This
It's all in the emphasis of the heroes and what they protect
Too much reiterating that the setting's evil is eternal and ludicrously powerful gives the impression that the entire world is hardwired to devolve into a hellscape as soon as one violent wackjob gets lucky while all the good guys just sorta get trampled underfoot despite constant effort

>>97080623
Considering that evil comes in way too many varieties, the four Chaos Gods being the victors compared to the other active choices just feels kind of dull. Like, I get it, nobody really expects Grimgor or the Beastmen to come out on top, but with how much more active that say Nagash and the Skaven were, it just kind of feels like a letdown by comparison. Especially since Chaos's main representative was Archaon, who outright failed his push to end the world so badly that Gee Dubs had to retcon his failure out entirely just to force Age of Sigmar into existence.

>>97080894
>>97080950
Feels like a matter of perspective because the actual events and their effects were still an unknown.
Case in point, it actually did eventually all go down and by "win" they meant "reset" and everyone found themselves just at new starting lines again. The end of the world happened and it wasn't all that bad, really.

>>97080950
>the four Chaos Gods
One of the worst directions the fluff ever took was dumbing down the cosmology as much as it did, especially the Chaos Gods. They rewrote them to embody all mortal emotion and thought but for whatever reason the entire spectrum of physical existence specifically distills into
>evil god of birds
>evil god of shitting
>evil god of killing
>evil god of penises
One of many instances where marketability, in this case having to have four specific model set flavors to sell and represent the entirety of the Chaos Demon line, really hamstrung the Warhammer setting(s).

>>97080975
>The end of the world happened and it wasn't all that bad, really.
The entire world and many many many people died anon.

>>97080975
>The end of the world happened and it wasn't all that bad, really.
It got replaced by Age of Sigmar
Yes, it was that bad

>>97080894
bro this setting isnt that fucking deep man

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>>97081029
>It got replaced by Age of Sigmar

>>97081038
Sorry you have shit taste, anon

>>97081053
It’s warhammer, it all boils down to slop.

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>>97081032
Warhammer is one of those settings with a weird illusion of depth. It fits the wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle analogy.

>>97081023
Sure, but it wasn't "chaos just wins and then tortures everyone forever". Turned out to be more complex then that.

>>97081114
>chaos just wins and then tortures everyone forever
Not him but they turned around and said that's gonna happen again and order/destruction/death will lose to chaos so it begs the question of what the fuck the point is.

>>97080451
More like;
>"um ackshully, all your carefully collected, assembled and painted armies you spent your life on are unusable now, because we just say so, ok?. Now buy these new ones instead!"
Constantly releasing new editions to boost sales no longer brought in the amounts of money the new corporate overlords desired, so they upped their game.

>>97081259
All of them had rules in the new system though. You can even find a fucking Tomb King rules for 1e AoS.
They only started killing things after seeing what sells and what doesn't after the reboot

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>>97081092
Nobody ever said "Fallout 4 was better" or "Outer Worlds was better" unironically ever.

>>97080950
>>97080451
This. There’s so many evil factions in Warhammer it feels reductive to just label one as the winner and main bad guy. It’s my problem with both fantasy/AoS and 40k, GW made so many factions that are interesting but only one group actually matters so the rest are just side characters

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My boy was robbed, ROBBED!

>>97080451
How did your last wsrhammer match go?

>>97081781
what was the narrative story of your last "warhammer match" sonny jim? surely you don't just play WAACfag consooman the table top game?

>>97081835
The story is just a toy commertial retard.

>>97081908
Some people cried when Optimus Prime(tm) died

>>97081908
plastic army men is not a competitive sport

>>97081908
What if the commercial sucks?

>>97080623
Obviously the tone of some stories are meant to be more grim and dark. I think people just, on average, prefer that the eternal fight against evil be more ambiguous or hopeful, rather than "it is actually all doomed in the end" being clearly spelled out.

>>97080623
Fucking retard. That cornerstone is what is discarded in the End Times/Smegmar setting.

>>97083431
I think any kind of predetermined outcome is bad for a fictional setting as far as it existing for you and your dudes to play around it, whether good or evil wins in the end.

I don't like Lord of the Rings' predetermined ending where Morgoth and Sauron lose no matter what any more than I like Warhammer's predetermined "Chaos wins" narrative. Both share the same problem of hamstringing the setting's tension. Who cares what new desperate plan Sigmar or the Emperor or Sauron or Sauronman comes up with when you know they're gonna lose no matter what happens anyway?

The individual struggles of good and evil in a story or setting don't really mean as much if you know that good/evil is predestined to win no matter what.

>>97083431
It's the thrill of the chase, not the conclusion, that makes it worthwhile. Death Note would be boring if we knew from the start Kira was going to win/lose against L. Rocky would be boring if we knew from the start he would win/lose against Apollo Creed. Dinobot's death in Beast Wars wouldn't have the impact it did if viewers knew ahead of time whether he would succeed or not in taking back the golden disk by himself or not.

I think people can accept the idea that the forces of Order are generally too small, too scattered, and outmatched to win against the cruelty and stupidity of the universe forever (even if Total War goes against all of that). But the thought that they could if they got lucky is what makes the victories more striking and the inevitable losses that much crueler. The narrative telling you that Chaos is going to win just spoils the fun of denying you the chance to go "But what if".

>>97083465
>I don't like Lord of the Rings' predetermined ending where Morgoth and Sauron lose
lord of the rings isnt a consumerist setting its a fucking story meant to be on par with myths you fucking dickhead. Dont you dare fucking compare it with warhammer again or you'll see horrors beyond thy comprehension, fool.

Fucking shit I just typed that shit out and after reading it in full im even more pissed off, fuck, I fucking hate warhammer pigs they really are the fucking swine among the herd.

>>97083515
That is literally what he said, you fycking mongoloid.
>bad for a fictional setting as far as it existing for you and your dudes to play around it
What part of this made you think "mmm yeah this means he thinks this applies to le heckin tolkien"? The point *was* that LotR is a story, Warhammer is a setting. Utter retard. Kill yourself.

>>97080451
Where mortuary factory

>>97081750
he is cooler in AoS than he ever was in WHFB

>>97080623
The long defeat of good and civilisation(as two different things) has been a concept in fantasy since Howard and Tolkien

>>97080451
I'll never forgive GW for raping Moorcock's books.
They have dumbed down the conflict between Law and Chaos even worse than D&D...

>>97080924
It didn't help that they rewrote all the "good" factions to be as grimderp as possible in 6th edition. For a good example compare the 5th and 6th edition Bretonnia army books. 5th edition presents the army as a Chivalric ideal while the 6th edition makes everything grimderp (a pig as a reward for inventing a siege engine?).

>>97085233
It's funny that they took something as dumbed down as Moorcock and managed to dumb it down even further. It's even funnier that despite the GW crew kissing the ground Moorcock walked on he ended up hating them, threatening to sue them, almost sueing them, and later regretting he never went through with it. When as big a shithead as Moorcock thinks you're a dishonest and immoral company, you know you fucked up.

>>97085316
Anthony Reynolds is a literal basedboy cuck and he should be forever ashamed that he not only loreraped Bretonnia but bragged about how mad people got.

>>97083495
The sort of interesting idea to me, that kind of exists WHFRP 2e, is that chaos are usually bumbling useless idiots. Cultists are inherently losers who cannot hack it. The problem isn't chaos, and when the people of the old world have their shit together, they can handle chaos pretty easily. But, the instant that an outside threat goes away, the power players immediately go back to petty squabbling, and the way their society functions keeps building these failsons and people with legitimate grievances that can be seduced by chaos.

Like, in 40k the tone is "this society is horrible and these people are psychopaths, but it has to be that way because the universe is so grim and dark!"

But with fantasy it always felt much more "these people ruling us are fucking psychopaths, and we either need to get rid of them or reduce their ability to harm so we can actually fix things."

>>97085429
It's like how the writers did and continue to go back and forth between
>chaos only exists because people make it exist! it's just a reflection of living things!
and
>chaos has always existed! everything came from and is controlled by the chaos gods!

>>97081114
>unprecedented death and suffering
>oh its not that bad because nuance
>the nuance is just that it didn't totally end the universe 100%
okay anon

>>97083465
In LoTR it is the irony that the marring of arda that creates entropy leads to destruction of those who did the marring. The nihilism of evil defeats evil is a Tolkien theme

>>97085439
I feel like there were definitely writers who were more interested in chaos above all other parts of the setting, and it seems like they ended up with more of a say than was good.

>>97083465
>I don't like Lord of the Rings' predetermined ending where Morgoth and Sauron lose no matter what
It's not predetermined.
Erú Illuvatar and the Valar mostly make small interventions (Gandalf and a slight push in the back to Gollum) and leave the rest to the efforts and free willpower of the inhabitants of Arda.

If Frodo hadn't physically hauled the ring to Mordor, Sauron would have won.
If the people of Rohan and Minas Tirith hadn't defended their cities, all inhabitants would have been slaughtered even IF the Ring was successfully destroyed. Also nothing would have drawn Sauron's attention away from Mordor.
If the Fellowship had fucked up even further at Amon Hen and Saruman was actually able to control the Ring, he would have potentially won too. (Although Saruman's win conditions are a lot less likely to be fulfilled than Sauron's)

So definitely not a forgone conclusion.

>>97086278
Bryan Ansell, who practically made both the faction and Warhammer itself, was a massive fanboy for them and insisted he have absolute creative control over the design and lore of Chaos. He was in love with his own creation basically and I think that's what made Chaos the focus of the game from the outset. It was quite literally his donut steel OC.

>>97080950
Grimgor iz da best tho

>>97086394
It's too bad, tomb kings and vampires and the the remnants of the slann star empire are a lot more interesting as antagonists than chaos.

>>97080451
Of course KAOS wins. K. Rool wears that crown for a reason, baby.

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>>97080451
>One day they will succeed
BUT THIS IS NOT THIS DAY. THIS DAY WE FIGHT!

>>97086433
He is, but if he won he'd also get bored quick once he found nobody else willing to stand up to him, and probably start making plans to invade Khorne's domain to find proppa spikey gitz tah smack instead of all the weaklings left around

>>97083465
Evil is far worse of the two, though. Saying that evil will ultimately win undercuts any and all heroic success, it minimizes their victories. Saying evil will eventually lose does nothing to stop the horrors they could unleash in the meantime, at no point is that salve for the right here and now, the people who are suffering and need a hero to help them. That hero's success is still fully meaningful instead of some bittersweet resolution that all the innocents he saved will still suffer in misery once he's gone.

>>97080451
Yes, retard. Thats the foundation of the setting. You are fighting against the end of the world, not to stop it but to delay it. Your victory is not dying, not finishing the fight.

>>97083431
>I think people just, on average, prefer that the eternal fight against evil be more ambiguous or hopeful
That undermines the entire premise of the long fight. If the universe tends towards a good outcome, no action is needed. You dont need heroes to valiantly give their all against the forces of darkness, you can just sit back and let the universe take its course.

This is why no story or setting worth a shit has it work this way.

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>>97093656
>That undermines the entire premise of the long fight. If the universe tends towards a good outcome, no action is needed. You dont need heroes to valiantly give their all against the forces of darkness, you can just sit back and let the universe take its course.
That's like saying you don't need to attend to a fever because you'll eventually get better on your own overtime. Aka that's retarded. There's still a point for good guys to be acting cause even if the bad guy will inevitably destroy themselves by pursuing their own goals, they're still going to cause issues and do a lot of damage that could be prevented if someone acts NOW instead of later.

>>97093702
>That's like saying you don't need to attend to a fever because you'll eventually get better on your own overtime
But thats literally the case, if you know youre just going to get better anyways there's no worry, you probably arent even going to bother going to the doctor.
Why water the lawn if its going to rain tomorrow?

If the villains are doomed from the outset theres no risk, it doesent matter if the heroes win or lose because the outcome is the same whether or not they step in.

>>97093734
>But thats literally the case, if you know youre just going to get better anyways there's no worry, you probably arent even going to bother going to the doctor.
Because you get better faster if you fix the issue NOW

>Why water the lawn if its going to rain tomorrow?
Cause the plants are thirsty NOW

>
If the villains are doomed from the outset theres no risk, it doesent matter if the heroes win or lose because the outcome is the same whether or not they step in.
Because the difference between ten million people dead and one person dead is one hero intervening from stopping a retarded villain testing his prototype doomsday device and taking the continent with him

Again, "it'll all work itself out so no hero ever has to do anything" is a retarded take. Police still try to stop mass shooters because even if they inevitably blow their brains out, the bigger issue is how many innocents they'll gun down if left unattended before they reach that point.

>>97093807
anon hes genuinely retarded I think its best to just let it be.

>>97080623
>>97080894
I tend to see Chaos being inevitable as a side effect of entropy, of lower vibrational thinking and behaviour returning the biomass of the universe to a devolved, primitive state and made liquid before the creative cycle of higher consciousness animating that material resurfacing

>>97093807
>Because you get better faster
Who cares if you remain inconvenienced for a bit longer? Youll be fine.
Theres a reason people dont go to the doctors every time they get a sniffle, if things will fix themselves on their own there is very little reason to put in effort to fix them.

>Cause the plants are thirsty NOW
Theyll be fine, its going to rain tomorrow.

>Police still try to stop mass shooters because
They dont inevitably kill themselves. If criminals just comitted suicide every time the police wouldn't bother trying to catch them, it would be a self correcting problem.

Can you retards stop falling for the baiting-through-retardation of >>97093888 ? Seriously.

>>97093898
>namefag retard cant argue against a point so just tries to dismiss it as bait
lmao

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>>97093934

>>97093656
>If the universe tends towards a good outcome, no action is needed
If the universe is railroaded towards a bad outcome, there's no point to any action. That's why a setting of good vs. evil shouldn't have a fixed outcome. You either make action unnecessary (good wins no matter what) or meaningless (evil wins no matter what).

>>97094146
>If the universe is railroaded towards a bad outcome, there's no point to any action
Of course there is, its the exact situation where any action is warranted. Because you want a different outcome than what the universe tends to and must therefore act if you want to have a chance at that outcome.

>>97080451
wasn't there some official tournament where GW would make the results canon but they screwed over players so chaos always wins

>>97080451
Guess what? The sun will eventually explode and the universe will succumb to entropy, and you can't stop it, chud.

>>97094482
No.

GW did do several global campaigns where player results were supposed to change the outcome (most significantly - for the era being discussed - Eye of Terror for 40k (the original 13th black crusade story) and Storm of Chaos for warhammer fantasy). Both campaigns were technically what they promised, but both had GW keep their finger on the scales (eye of terror more than SoC).

SoC was about the fantasy abbadon equivalent trying to conquer some major city in the empire, and if he managed it he would Bad Things (TM) would happen and it would basically be the modern 40k fiasco but in fantasy land. The campaign was supposed to culminate in the siege of Middenheim, but early chaos results were very poor and GW may have fudged some things to make sure the final battle happened as it was intended to (and as the campaign premise was about). Chaos then lost the final battle (including the greenskins getting thrown a bone despite doing terribly overall due to some very strong performance in the final parts of the campaign) and chaos retreated.
Some people (at least on /wfg/) are mad about the campaign, namely in how it resolved (chaos retreated, rather than something more decisive) and how they felt it was railroaded into the big battle at middenheim despite the initial results being very one sided (which is essentially undeniable, that did happen).

Then you have the 40k one, where GWs meddling was even worse. EoT was a big campaign about abbadon trying to take cadia and then ???? profit his way to terra. And Chaos won the campaign handily in terms of 40k results, an outcome GW clearly did not want. To avoid having the imperium lose GW gave primacy to the results from battlefleet gothic (where the imperium did better), and essentially rendered the campaign moot (and then quickly memoryholed the whole thing).

>>97093994
Autist meme

>>97094812
Autist responder

>>97094728
On the one hand, I will never understand why they do these contests if they're going to slant them so hard once their stories go off the rails. On the other, I remember how fast Legend of the Five Rings got ultra messy in the later years of the TCG due to tourney results, so I can understand why Gee Dubs fudged things anyways.

>>97094934
Because it drives sailes. Because it generates hype. Because corporations are often driven by multiple parties with multiple different ideas and the second order consequences of everything cant be predicted and accounted for.

GW wanted to do a cool player involved thing, but it also wanted to keep the narrative "good" and in the shape they wanted the narrative to be. This ended with them doing things that pissed off the players and didnt leave a narrative they liked either, so they retconned both events.

They did come back to this sort of global campaign though, just with far smaller stakes now. "do the space marines protect world bumfuck III from the tyranids or not" instead of "does terra get conquered by all the orks ever combined"

>>97094728
On the one hand, chaos was railroaded to success on the other, chaos was railroaded to failure. The end conclusion I'm getting is GW should squat chaos so the actually interesting factions can get more focus

"Chaos wins no matter what." is a lot more fun as a concept if you take it to be what the people who worship Chaos believe. Of course Drakamir the Plague-touched, lord of Nurgle, leader of a warband of a thousand blighted madmen would say "Chaos wins". Jean-Guy de la Baise, a proud and noble knight of Bretonnia, would hear that and call bullshit, and so too would Jahotep the Unconquerable, Gustav von Fechnerbraum, Bin'gbon'go Ig'uan, Sjörni Hammerbrow, Melanath the Bright, Aranath the Dark, Treeanath of the Comfortable Shade, and I can't be bothered to come up with more names for army generals belonging to different factions. You get my point. Take it as in-setting religious dogma/propaganda, paint some models, roll some dice, and come up with your own stories based on the games you play.

>>97094836
But enough about you

>>97094995
Sort of. Although they only outright subverted the final result in EoT.

The end conclusion is that GW shouldnt do big global campaigns if it isnt willing to accept either outcome. And thats more or less the lesson theyve learned, and future global campaigns have been meaningless shit with stakes like "which models do we reveal first"

>>97095079
Yeah, enough about you

>>97094728
>Some people (at least on /wfg/) are mad about the campaign, namely in how it resolved
Part of the problem was how spiteful the fluff around it seemed, and as others have said apparently the writers were genuinely upset that chaos didn't win. Not because of factionwank, but because the company was talking about ending WFB as far back as 2003. It's hard to believe now with all the games but just 20 years ago WFB was basically unknown and had stopped selling so I get their point, but still.

In the fluff Archaon gets the shit smacked out of him by Luthor Huss and Grimgor and then just vanishes from the story. Somehow he got away despite being completely surrounded. Grimgor also just literally fucked off with his orc horde as soon as he headbutted Archaon, no fight and no explanation.

They then wrote another battle that happened where Archaon somehow retreated to some small town and then beat the Empire-Helves-Dwarves, because I guess the big order alliance could handle his entire horde but couldn't handle a token army in a bumfuck village, somehow, only for Vampires to show up for no apparent reason and kill the rest of his army, then Volkmar shows up and the Vampires run away, and once again despite being surrounded and defeated Archaon gets away with zero explanation or mention. He just disappears.

It was very annoying, because at that point I think people were sick of the Shadow the Hedgehog-like buildup Archaon had gotten and wanted his shit pushed in, even Chaos players since he was much less interesting narratively than other Chaos characters, but because he was basically the donut steel OC of the writing crew he just walked off each time he was faced with certain death and his mortal enemies were cool with it.

The writing was just lazy fucking dogshit even by Warhammer standards.

>>97095030
That's how it should've been, but sadly the creator of the whole franchise got high off his own farts and wanted chaos pushed into every possible facet of the game.

>>97095482
>Somehow he got away despite being completely surrounded. Grimgor also just literally fucked off with his orc horde as soon as he headbutted Archaon, no fight and no explanation.
Thats because grimgor was basically teleported in as last minute fanservice because of orcs doing surprisingly at the last moment.

The same shit goes for Mannfred at Sokh. Its an attempt to give each faction their respective "big badass moment", and it ends up with the ending feeling really weird and stilted. They clearly tried to do a big fanservice ending that wouldnt upset anyone "look! you orc players get to have your iconic grimgor moment after his embarrassing showing earlier in the campaign", "look the undead get to be relevant" "look volkmar is so cool that mannfred pissed his pants and ran away!"

But because of that the ending feels unfocussed and artificial, theres no nautral flow to it because none of those endings happened naturally.

>>97095949
Yeah, it feels like some ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny-type shit. It's a bunch of disconnected "and then this happened"s that don't amount to anything for any faction involved. What a shitshow SoC was.

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>>97080451
If Chaos won, how come Sigmars armies are larger and stronger than ever?

>>97095981
>invents immortal fantasy space marines
>losing harder than ever
AoS is a silly setting.

>>97096039
Even worse was how redditors were pogfacing over it.
>aos1e: sigmar and the stormcasts are tough
>reddit: WTF THIS IS DUMB
>aos2e: sigmar and the stormcasts are actually pathetic and losin
>reddit: BROS THEY BROUGHT THE GRIMDARK BACK!!! EPIC WIN!!!
Because grimdark is when protagonists eat shit I guess.

>>97095981
even in its darkest hour, sigmars realm is still larger and more powerfull than the empire at any point in its history

>>97096061
1e started with sigmar getting beaten up and having his hammer stolen

>>97096061
>Because grimdark is when protagonists eat shit I guess.
Yes?

>>97096216
Which really makes you wonder why people were bitching about it to begin with. It's a really silly setting that despite the name basically castrates Sigmar and everyone else from WFB, besides Archaon.

It seems like the game only exists so GW can make new bizarro overpriced Chinese minis to sell, while the setting only exists to feature Chaos beating the fuck out of everyone while some gay black transsexual Stormcasts talk about their feelings.

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>>97080451
>In the end

Manichean interpretations of the cosmology shouldn't have an eschatology. That's retarded. If you believe that the history of the world is the conflict of two immutable but eternally bellicose forces which cannot reconcile with each other, why would you ever assume that that conflict would end?

If Chaos and Order are actual discrete and non-immulsifying forces, then there cannot be an end. Entropic decay does not have a place in a war of primal forces. You never hear Buddhists or Hindus talking about "in the end" because there is no end. In fact, even Christians don't really think like that, because the "end" is actually a new beginning in and of itself. Time is perceived of as moving in kalpas in just about every metaphysical framework.

Only certain very bleak worldviews truly conceive of an "end" of history. And it is kind of ridiculous on its face, oh there was no beginning of the universe but there is an ending? How the fuck does that make any sense?

>>97096039
>>97096121
>>97096216
>>97096279
It makes sense if you consider the rl political climate when AoS got going.

Sigmar is a blundering idiot because he's unironically a Trump stand-in complete with an early plot line about him trying to build walls to keep immigrants out of his cities.

Meanwhile AoS Archaon is a freedom fighter who talks about how much he hates oppression and how evil religion is and how gods should die, so obviously he's meant to be the one the target audience (Redditors and then-Twitter, now-Bluesky) is supposed to root for.

>>97096279
>Which really makes you wonder why people were bitching about it to begin with
Because it had really bad presentation and because stormcast are kinda fucked regardless of how theyre done.

Even if they get their shit pushed in, theyre immortal magical demigod supersoldiers, things that "narratively" make chaos warriors look like the plucky and heroic underdogs. This makes them both unsatisfying heroes and also really pathetic when they manage to lose.
When the magical demigod beats up some skaven its not heroic, it's expected. When the magical demigod DIES to skaven? Its a farce.

It also makes any drama involving stormcast feel forced and gay. Theyre inhuman and invincible (in concept) in a way that makes even space marines and chaos warriors (their closest fantasy equivalents) seem grounded and relatable.

This comes from the stormcast clearly being designed and intended as the supreme shitkickers, the unstoppable overpowered new kids on the block here to bring sigmars justice down in a power fantasy so puerile it makes space marine larpers look tame. But then the actual writing was fairly standard for Warhammer (tonally) so you have your typical forlorn hopes and crumbling empires and slowly ascendant evil.

>>97096350
This is good bait.

>>97096377
If stormcast were just "cities of sigmar, but in shinier armor"? A lot of these issues would imo be fixed. Not magical demigods, just the plucky underdog survivors of past apocalypses saved by sigmar and now turned into badass resistance warriors against chaos. Scions to the regular humans guard.

But then you cant market them as the new and coolest kids on the block. The goal was to have fantasy space marines, and they had to be even more fantasy space marines than the current fantasy space marines (chaos warriors). Fantasy custodes if you will. (custodes are also pretty lame, as are grey knights, with both being "saved" by being very niche, theyre never pushed that hard and can therefore have a niche as the special forces dudes)

>>97096377
>bait
It's not bait if it's true. The AoS crew have been very upfront about their politics.

>>97096377
>
This comes from the stormcast clearly being designed and intended as the supreme shitkickers, the unstoppable overpowered new kids on the block here to bring sigmars justice down in a power fantasy so puerile it makes space marine larpers look tame. But then the actual writing was fairly standard for Warhammer (tonally) so you have your typical forlorn hopes and crumbling empires and slowly ascendant evil.
The people who wanted a good power fantasy got mad that it turned out to be an evil power fantasy and the people who wanted an evil power fantasy got mad when it initially seemed like a good power fantasy.

In the end it's whiny faggots wanting a power fantasy either way, either smashing the school bullies or being the school bullies.

>>97096428
What does that make the seraphon/lizardmen?

>>97096428
You dont seem to understand, its not "theyre strong", its the presentation of them.

Chaos Warriors are not the protagonists, theyre the thing protagonists act against. Its Not a chaos warrior invading a town against a horde of dudes, its a dude defending his town against the invading chaos warriors. This changes the point of emphasis.
Chaos warriors aren't posterboys, they're not the marketing focus. Its never "about them", its about how everyone else reacts to them. Which is where Stormcast (and marines over in 40k) are different.

A story with a dragon burning down the place isnt "a dragons power fantasy" because its not about how cool the dragon is - even if theyre the strongest thing around. Its about how someone tries to bring the dragon down.
A story about how some dude is so big and strong he wrestles dragons out of the sky all day IS a power fantasy, because its about that dude, his being big and strong is now the focus.

>>97096466
As ever, irrelevant.

>>97096428
>got mad that it turned out to be an evil power fantasy
Which it isnt, because the chaos warriors are not the driving actors of the story. AoS is still a story and setting about fantasy space marines, theyre just weirdly ineffectual despite all their intuitive advantages.

If you keep the overall dynamics the same, but AoS is reframed as a story about crafty and badass chaos warriors tearing down all of sigmars golden toy soldiers? THEN it could be argued to be a chaos power fantasy, because the narrative focus moves to "man, isnt being a chaos warrior cool?". But thats not likely to happen, because the eternal fate of GW antagonists is to sit as perpetual controlled opposition; they only exist to counterbalance good narratively.

>>97096478
>>97096509
AoS is definitely an evil power fantasy by way of Archaon. They think the target audience will double over and jerk it to how "epic", "cool", and "badass" AoS Archaon is, while redditors farm karma with posts about how his militant atheism is "so true bro, so true".

I think it's supposed to be cathartic that he roflstomps Sigmar who represents the patriarchy or some such stupid shit in their minds.

That the AoS RPG sheets have a pronoun section front and center tells you all you need to know about who AoS was made for.

>>97096542
>AoS is definitely an evil power fantasy by way of Archaon
>background character with very little agency in the story
Do you just assume "power fantasy" is the same as "being powerful"?

>>97096662
You don't have to have story agency to be a self-insert, or something intended to be a self-insert or wish fulfillment. See Tom Bombadil. Doomguy doesn't have any real story relevance and the games don't have any real story at all, but it's still a power fantasy. AoS very evidently wants to cater to people who want a "smash the patriarchy and kill the gods" power fantasy.

I guess the black lesbian trooncasts got added because they realized no one had any motivation to play anything else. Nagash and Destruction only exist as member berries and memes.

>>97096748
>You don't have to have story agency to be a self-insert
Technically true, but also technically irrelevant.

>See Tom Bombadil
A character who isnt a self insert? We know exactly who tolkiens self insert is in his works, its the guy banging his wife-insert. He was not subtle about this shit.

>Doomguy doesn't have any real story relevance
Doomguy is the protagonist of every game and the guy making everything happen. What are you on about. Hes the chief dude making literally everything - from killing god to killing satan - happen.

He is also, once again, the protagonist, the lens through which the world is observed.

>AoS very evidently wants to cater to people who want a "smash the patriarchy and kill the gods" power fantasy.
Why doesent it make them the protagonists then. For something "intended to be about chaos" they sure do seem to have every story be about some stormcast hero.

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>>97096748
>Doomguy doesn't have any real story relevance
>story
>doom

>>97096770
It's a cuck fantasy. You're not the participant. The target audience is one that wants to sit there and watch heckin' Chudmar and co flop around helplessly while Archie and co rail them into the ground, all while a token black stormcast sits in the corner monologuing about how awful life is.

>>97096905
>It's a cuck fantasy
That would be the opposite of a power fantasy then, the whole point there is the impotence and weakness.

You really need to decide what you think AoS is supposed to be.

>>97096921
That's why I said it's a cuck fantasy. The point is to root for the demise of Sigmar/Order.

>>97096927
>That's why I said it's a cuck fantasy.
After saying it was supposed to be an evil power fantasy. So which is it.

>>97096929
If you play Order the fantasy is impotence and weakness, you want to watch it get cucked.

If you play Chaos you're the bull, your fantasy is to totally overpower the situation and win.

If you play Death your fantasy is living in an alternate reality believing that GW will ever add any meaningful content to your faction, which they won't.

If you play Destruction you don't exist since literally no one plays Destruction.

>>97096946
>If you play Chaos you're the bull,
Except you arent, because you have no story agency, you arent the protagonist (thats the stormcas/Order in generalt).

>>97097009
You think the dude cucking the other guy has any agency or relevance in the situation either? He's literally a piece of meat.

>>97097067
The bull in a cuck fantasy is not himself a fantasy for anyone, that's the point. Theres other porn for that (most normal porn in fact, since thats just about some guy banging some hot girl who wants his dick)

Every element of cuck fantasy exists to service the cuck, ironically.

>>97095030
>Melanath the Bright, Aranath the Dark, Treeanath of the Comfortable Shade
I laft

>>97097101
The bull is living a fantasy for himself.

>>97097009
the bull in an NTR doujin isn't the protagonist either, but he's definitely doing what he wants and having a great time.

>>97097101
>The bull in a cuck fantasy is not himself a fantasy for anyone
Ehhh, it can be for consensual cuckqueen, but that's basically a FFM threesome thus an entirely different genre.

>>97097661
>the bull in an NTR doujin isn't the protagonist either, but he's definitely doing what he wants and having a great time.
Maybe, but the doujins where the "bull"/ugly bastard is the protagonist (and therefore the doujin is catered to that power fantasy) are different to those where he isnt.
Narrative focus is important.

>>97097704
I don't think you got the original point. The setting is a power fantasy for when you PLAY as chaos, and a disempowerment fantasy when you don't. Look at shit like r/sigmarxism and you'll find people who love playing chaos to "own the right" and who love playing order to self-flagellate.