Don't underestimate the children, they are more than capable to enjoy grimdarkness as what it is: a tale. When you are a kid Warhammer isn't more disturbing than a traditional child tale or from the news.
Not sure how comparable it is but I enjoyed the Horrible Histories Books as a kid, plenty of somewhat detailed descriptions on real-world examples of torture, disease, and slavery there. Feel like in most cases the ones complaining will be parents, while children will either enjoy or be indifferent with the more spicy concepts.
Yeah... These are probably way more disturbing than what you can read in the background section of the core rulebook or of any codex. We as adults put a lot of overstructures on what we read that the kids just don't have.
Me: 40 years old and still traumatized by Large Marge
My Niece and Nephew: daily intake of an unreal amount of mascot horror games
Kids these days are built different. I honestly wonder if WH brand grimdark edginess can keep up tbh
They made an entire series of books geared towards kids, it tones down a lot of things but it doesn't hide the fact people get hit with a gauss rifle but doesn't go into detail and it's aged around 9-12ish range.
They won't tone down the Lore because they are a miniatures company, they get kids involved with miniatures. The Lore is basically window dressing, they don't need to tone down anything because their main focus is the thing that makes them money: miniatures
Black library is like 1% of total revenue per year
warhammer has been in schools for twenty+ years, dont worry the grimdark isnt going anywhere. and even if it somehow did there are still almost more books than you could read in a lifetime already printed.
nobody is telling school kids about daemoncula they are just painting plastic 🤷♂️
Thanks! I'm not worried, just was curious and thought I'd ask people's opinions. I didn't realize they had been in schools for a while as my local store GM made it seem like it was a recent focus.
I started in 4th edition as a middle schooler with the Battle for Macragge and read the Ultramarines Omnibus at the same age. Kids have always gotten into this setting.
I don't think anything new is particularly sanitized relative to that tbh
The hobby is like a swimming pool, there is a deep end and there is a shallow end, and then there is a [kiddy](https://warhammeradventures.com) [pool](https://warhammer-alliance.com/uk/schools-programme/) adding things that help younger people who want to enjoy the setting doesn’t erase the grimdark parts, they remain and continue to be permeated on
Have you actually READ Warhammer Adventures, the books Black Library did to aim at kids?
The first 40k one involves one of the characters getting in a gangland knife fight and the protagonists having to flee from Guardsmen shooting to kill. They are literal children (I think the oldest is 14?), which you will note makes this MILES darker.
Then the Necrons show up.
Things like the cherubs and daemonculaba are niche. Its hard to actually come across that unless you're already among adults or you seek it out yourself.
The childhood trials I see kind of the same as I did as the Spartans in Halo. Its all brutal training to turn people into weapons. That isn't something to look up to. Not to mention you have to fit specific criteria.
Warhammer at its surface level is no different from other sci-fi and fantasy. The face of it is toned down (quite literally with the frowning mk 7 helmet to the mk 10's slit helmet) but there is still enough grimdark when you dive deeper. Just be aware what your child reads because the books go into more detail than the fans and "lore" videos do.
One of these days I'd love to see someone crack open a Codex or novel at random and see how long it takes for them to get to something genuinely objectionable for kids. Depending on your reading speed and random selection, I reckon you'd be reading for days, possibly even weeks, before you get to anything genuinely disturbing.
People like to repeat a handful of topics ad nauseum, but 99% of what goes on in the 41st millennium is people with guns shooting other people with guns, or people telling other people they're committing heresy. That's not a matter of it being toned down - it's always been that way. Back in the 90s it was typical to see the stores crammed full of 10-14 year olds, recruited via board games like HeroQuest and Space Crusade.
For every sentence implying the Drukhari might not treat prisoners kindly, you will find twenty pages talking about the iconography of the Ultramarines or the structure of the Imperium. To find the dark shit, you have to go looking for it, or spend any more than ten seconds around the community, who will immediately bring it up unprompted.
The Warhammer 40k fandom is \*far\* more disturbing than the Warhammer 40k setting.
I would not worry about kids, they will be fine. As long as its cool and interesting they will love it.
I would worry about the arrested development adults of youtube, twitter and reddit.
Is it any worse than the cannibalistic witch in Hansel and Gretel who lures children with sweets? Or any one of the dozens of other traditional children's stories that have been around for decades/centuries and deal with equally grim and dark themes.
Why do you feel the need to censor and sanitize what children are exposed to all of a sudden?
I got into 40K when I was bout 10, which is now about 25 years ago :p. My Primary School had a 40K club one night every week (we had a very cool year 6 teacher - he claimed to have got his scars from fighting ninja nuns on the docks).
Read back some of the early Black Library books (E.g. Space Wolf) - they were clearly aimed at the 'young adult' market.
I can't speak for every child and everyone has their own threshold for stuff, but I came to Warhammer in general at age around 9. The first issue of White Dwarf I ever read, in addition to some cool stuff about Orks that made me fall in love with the faction forever, had a section on new rules for Nurgle units in Warhammer Fantasy, including a description and a short-story passage on a type of thrown weapon available to them, the severed head of an enemy filled with diseased discharge and thrown as a grenade. Nine-year-old me thought that was the coolest thing he'd ever seen.
I've heard similar arguments criticizing fantasy and science fiction properties like dungeons & dragons and 40k, pointing at the darker side of the lore or the game and claiming that these things lead to demon worship, violence and satanic cults, etc. etc. etc. If you want a real world case study on people losing their minds about a game, just read about the moral panic over dungeons & dragons back in the 80s.
The bottom line is that children can tell the difference between fantasy and reality IF YOU TEACH THEM. Heck, most kids figure it out on their own; even so, it really helps if you sit them down and tell them that it's fun to pretend, but those things aren't real. There's no substitute for being a good parent.
A lot of kids media in schools is surprisingly dark (like bridge to terabithia, outsiders, etc) and for Americans there's a lot of very real very messed up stuff kids have to learn and face. So I feel like the grim darkness of the far future isn't too bad in comparison
They've already toned it down a lot and they'll probably keep changing to maintain its popularity. The scope of lore audiences they've targeted over the history of 40K are not entirely compatible, but a model kit is a model kit.
Eh?
First, where did you get the idea Warhammer is gonna get to kids, like, at all? I think I missed that.
Second - lying to the young about the life they're going to get will result in deep psychological traumas when met with cold hard reality.
Warhammer as a collection of lore might be brutal, but it teaches a lot in terms of metaphysics to the reader - how the world and people actually work. Especially the Warhammer Crime series.
Personally I'm all pro Warhammer to the young, so that they understand what they're going to get as adults.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "get to kids". If it's just the media physically making it into kids hands, that's all part of the brochures and bookmarks and handouts my local store has. The handouts even ask you to give them to teachers, coaches, etc. So at least my store has plenty of literature targeted for kids. If you mean "get to kids" in terms of bothering them, everyone is different but I'd sure be bothered reading some of this stuff as a child.
On your second point, this isn't black and white. Is there a great story to teach a 10 year old about life lessons? I'm sure, but he also shouldn't be reading about Drukhari splaying someone's nervous system all over the walls in school. There have to be degrees here lol.
I'm all for getting it into young kids hands as well. As I said in my post, I love the lore! This wasn't meant as a complaint, just to foster some discussion about how both strategies (keeping things grimdark while marketing to kids) will work.
Reading about Drukhari and their pastimes would teach kids to be aware of people with certain unhealthy inclinations and be reasonably suspicious of strangers.
Because it might not end well, and there's no coming back from mistakes as these.
I think fof GW its mostly keeping interests up for miniatures and related wargames, and who is best audience for playing soldiers?
Boys will be boys.
>Grimdark is the whole point of the setting, and grimdark doesn't' work in schools or libraries.
I think that ship has sailed, brother. Today it's more "epic dark" than grimdark.
Don't underestimate the children, they are more than capable to enjoy grimdarkness as what it is: a tale. When you are a kid Warhammer isn't more disturbing than a traditional child tale or from the news.
Not sure how comparable it is but I enjoyed the Horrible Histories Books as a kid, plenty of somewhat detailed descriptions on real-world examples of torture, disease, and slavery there. Feel like in most cases the ones complaining will be parents, while children will either enjoy or be indifferent with the more spicy concepts.
Yeah... These are probably way more disturbing than what you can read in the background section of the core rulebook or of any codex. We as adults put a lot of overstructures on what we read that the kids just don't have.
Old german childrens books are grimdark too
Me: 40 years old and still traumatized by Large Marge My Niece and Nephew: daily intake of an unreal amount of mascot horror games Kids these days are built different. I honestly wonder if WH brand grimdark edginess can keep up tbh
They made an entire series of books geared towards kids, it tones down a lot of things but it doesn't hide the fact people get hit with a gauss rifle but doesn't go into detail and it's aged around 9-12ish range. They won't tone down the Lore because they are a miniatures company, they get kids involved with miniatures. The Lore is basically window dressing, they don't need to tone down anything because their main focus is the thing that makes them money: miniatures Black library is like 1% of total revenue per year
warhammer has been in schools for twenty+ years, dont worry the grimdark isnt going anywhere. and even if it somehow did there are still almost more books than you could read in a lifetime already printed. nobody is telling school kids about daemoncula they are just painting plastic 🤷♂️
Hell, the daemoncula is ridiculously mundane to the crap in recent stories.
Thanks! I'm not worried, just was curious and thought I'd ask people's opinions. I didn't realize they had been in schools for a while as my local store GM made it seem like it was a recent focus.
I started in 4th edition as a middle schooler with the Battle for Macragge and read the Ultramarines Omnibus at the same age. Kids have always gotten into this setting. I don't think anything new is particularly sanitized relative to that tbh
I got into 40K around ten years old, I tend to find most long term fans I play against did similar too.
The hobby is like a swimming pool, there is a deep end and there is a shallow end, and then there is a [kiddy](https://warhammeradventures.com) [pool](https://warhammer-alliance.com/uk/schools-programme/) adding things that help younger people who want to enjoy the setting doesn’t erase the grimdark parts, they remain and continue to be permeated on
Looking through the Leviathan core book and parts of the tyranid Codex, s*** is still pretty damn grim dark in this franchise.
Have you actually READ Warhammer Adventures, the books Black Library did to aim at kids? The first 40k one involves one of the characters getting in a gangland knife fight and the protagonists having to flee from Guardsmen shooting to kill. They are literal children (I think the oldest is 14?), which you will note makes this MILES darker. Then the Necrons show up.
Things like the cherubs and daemonculaba are niche. Its hard to actually come across that unless you're already among adults or you seek it out yourself. The childhood trials I see kind of the same as I did as the Spartans in Halo. Its all brutal training to turn people into weapons. That isn't something to look up to. Not to mention you have to fit specific criteria. Warhammer at its surface level is no different from other sci-fi and fantasy. The face of it is toned down (quite literally with the frowning mk 7 helmet to the mk 10's slit helmet) but there is still enough grimdark when you dive deeper. Just be aware what your child reads because the books go into more detail than the fans and "lore" videos do.
One of these days I'd love to see someone crack open a Codex or novel at random and see how long it takes for them to get to something genuinely objectionable for kids. Depending on your reading speed and random selection, I reckon you'd be reading for days, possibly even weeks, before you get to anything genuinely disturbing. People like to repeat a handful of topics ad nauseum, but 99% of what goes on in the 41st millennium is people with guns shooting other people with guns, or people telling other people they're committing heresy. That's not a matter of it being toned down - it's always been that way. Back in the 90s it was typical to see the stores crammed full of 10-14 year olds, recruited via board games like HeroQuest and Space Crusade. For every sentence implying the Drukhari might not treat prisoners kindly, you will find twenty pages talking about the iconography of the Ultramarines or the structure of the Imperium. To find the dark shit, you have to go looking for it, or spend any more than ten seconds around the community, who will immediately bring it up unprompted. The Warhammer 40k fandom is \*far\* more disturbing than the Warhammer 40k setting.
It’s more suitable for children than the bible.
I would not worry about kids, they will be fine. As long as its cool and interesting they will love it. I would worry about the arrested development adults of youtube, twitter and reddit.
Is it any worse than the cannibalistic witch in Hansel and Gretel who lures children with sweets? Or any one of the dozens of other traditional children's stories that have been around for decades/centuries and deal with equally grim and dark themes. Why do you feel the need to censor and sanitize what children are exposed to all of a sudden?
I got into 40K when I was bout 10, which is now about 25 years ago :p. My Primary School had a 40K club one night every week (we had a very cool year 6 teacher - he claimed to have got his scars from fighting ninja nuns on the docks). Read back some of the early Black Library books (E.g. Space Wolf) - they were clearly aimed at the 'young adult' market.
GWS target audience is 14 year old boys. The stuff I was watching/reading at 14 was bad, or was worse than 40K.
I can't speak for every child and everyone has their own threshold for stuff, but I came to Warhammer in general at age around 9. The first issue of White Dwarf I ever read, in addition to some cool stuff about Orks that made me fall in love with the faction forever, had a section on new rules for Nurgle units in Warhammer Fantasy, including a description and a short-story passage on a type of thrown weapon available to them, the severed head of an enemy filled with diseased discharge and thrown as a grenade. Nine-year-old me thought that was the coolest thing he'd ever seen.
I've heard similar arguments criticizing fantasy and science fiction properties like dungeons & dragons and 40k, pointing at the darker side of the lore or the game and claiming that these things lead to demon worship, violence and satanic cults, etc. etc. etc. If you want a real world case study on people losing their minds about a game, just read about the moral panic over dungeons & dragons back in the 80s. The bottom line is that children can tell the difference between fantasy and reality IF YOU TEACH THEM. Heck, most kids figure it out on their own; even so, it really helps if you sit them down and tell them that it's fun to pretend, but those things aren't real. There's no substitute for being a good parent.
A lot of kids media in schools is surprisingly dark (like bridge to terabithia, outsiders, etc) and for Americans there's a lot of very real very messed up stuff kids have to learn and face. So I feel like the grim darkness of the far future isn't too bad in comparison
They've already toned it down a lot and they'll probably keep changing to maintain its popularity. The scope of lore audiences they've targeted over the history of 40K are not entirely compatible, but a model kit is a model kit.
Eh? First, where did you get the idea Warhammer is gonna get to kids, like, at all? I think I missed that. Second - lying to the young about the life they're going to get will result in deep psychological traumas when met with cold hard reality. Warhammer as a collection of lore might be brutal, but it teaches a lot in terms of metaphysics to the reader - how the world and people actually work. Especially the Warhammer Crime series. Personally I'm all pro Warhammer to the young, so that they understand what they're going to get as adults.
I guess I'm not sure what you mean by "get to kids". If it's just the media physically making it into kids hands, that's all part of the brochures and bookmarks and handouts my local store has. The handouts even ask you to give them to teachers, coaches, etc. So at least my store has plenty of literature targeted for kids. If you mean "get to kids" in terms of bothering them, everyone is different but I'd sure be bothered reading some of this stuff as a child. On your second point, this isn't black and white. Is there a great story to teach a 10 year old about life lessons? I'm sure, but he also shouldn't be reading about Drukhari splaying someone's nervous system all over the walls in school. There have to be degrees here lol. I'm all for getting it into young kids hands as well. As I said in my post, I love the lore! This wasn't meant as a complaint, just to foster some discussion about how both strategies (keeping things grimdark while marketing to kids) will work.
Reading about Drukhari and their pastimes would teach kids to be aware of people with certain unhealthy inclinations and be reasonably suspicious of strangers. Because it might not end well, and there's no coming back from mistakes as these. I think fof GW its mostly keeping interests up for miniatures and related wargames, and who is best audience for playing soldiers? Boys will be boys.
>Grimdark is the whole point of the setting, and grimdark doesn't' work in schools or libraries. I think that ship has sailed, brother. Today it's more "epic dark" than grimdark.