the budget bestiary is now available in print

A few years ago, I released The Budget Bestiary, a little zine dedicated to my love of making miniatures out of found objects.

I’ve always liked that aspect of the miniatures hobby; it’s one of the things that really appealed to me about early Warhammer. I like the creativity of using everyday things and I like it when using miniatures in games doesn’t feel exclusive. More expensive miniatures games are a hobby not everyone can afford to get into — heck, a lot of the people who do get into them can’t really afford to — and so to me this is a great intersection of fostering creativity and helping people save some money. Now the zine is out in print. It’s still Pay What You Want for the digital version, but if you want to spend a few bucks you can get a nice, full-colour print version.

A Knight of Ultraterra, made of a toy dinosaur and an army man, with some beads, cocktail sticks, wire, sequins, scrapbook embellishments, tissue paper and a thing I found on the ground.

I’ve written before about how much this means to me. I can’t really say why, but all my life I’ve loved the idea of bricolage, of making things out of discarded or commonplace materials. It’s a form of pre-play play that I like to encourage, and that’s what I’ve done in the Budget Bestiary. Every creature entry features a section on how I made the model and one in which I describe the monster, give its stat block and so on.

The Knight in action.

So yeah, get your Budget Bestiary here, digitally or in print, and if you feel like making some monsters, I think you should. I may have more to say about that coming up.

a campaign comes to an end

For the last few years, I’ve been running a Rogue Trader campaign. Not the roleplaying game of the same name, but the first edition of Warhammer 40,000, although in fairness the version I use is so heavily house-ruled that I’m not sure it’s even really the same game.

The defenders of Landfall City take their positions.

In fact, although I say that I’ve been running the campaign for the last few years, I didn’t host a game in 2024 at all. The scheduling got to be very challenging and eventually I just lost steam. However, that changed when one of my players announced that he was moving out of the country and asked whether we could get in a farewell game. This spurred me into action to get the finale going.

Heavy weapons teams open fire on enemy vehicles.

Rogue Trader is a game that has a lot of interesting bits to it, and I don’t know of another wargame that gives me the freedom that I want for these types of game, but the actual system is kind of a nuisance. A game with more than a few vehicles requires you to keep track of a lot of special damage effects on different vehicles, for instance, and there’s a lot of keeping track of different pieces of equipment that have very small differences between them. I resolved to deal with this by just not doing it, and that worked out OK, more or less.

Swarms of Chaos cultists and their Traitor Marine allies launch an attack on the walls.

I think I didn’t do a very good job balancing the opposition, but here’s the thing: the players all had a great time anyway, and we got more or less finished on time. I think it worked out overall. As always, the thing that I think appealed to players was really the visual storytelling.

Inquisitor Hammerweir punches a daemon engine right in the eye.

Torgar Half-hand flies in on his powerboard and goes toe-to-toe with an enemy dreadnought.

Arco-flagellants beat up an old lady.

Kablam! A cultist APC gets hit and catches fire.

Cultists attempt to storm the wall.

Accompanied by summoned daemons, a sorcerer attempts to attack the gate, only to be cut down in a hail of fire.

A victory of content over system, maybe. I never have a lot of confidence in my ability to produce engaging narrative results via system, which is why I value systems that do it effectively so much. But in the end, I think I may be second-guessing myself. I just fear that the system will produce an unsatisfying result, which I think is a fair enough concern with Warhammer. But could I do the same thing with, say, Xenos Rampant? I fear not.

Next campaign will be a fantasy one, and might mix elements of Mordheim, WHFB and WHFRP. We shall see how it goes!

the weight of history in warhammer 40,000

My series of old posts from my other blog continues!

Today we’re going to talk a little about historical themes in Warhammer 40,000 and its various derivatives. Now, if you have ever played this game, or are familiar with its art and design, you’ll know that it tends to be covered in little Gothic flourishes — or, to be less charitable, that everything is made out of cathedrals.

Now, I remember when I was in high school I didn’t like how everything in the 40K universe was encrusted with skulls and spires, but over the years I’ve come to appreciate it a bit more. Let me begin at the beginning: it’s obvious that the first edition of Warhammer 40,000 was a stew of many different influences. The most obvious of these is 2000 AD: you can see Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper and Nemesis the Warlock in its genes very easily. There are also a lot of other connections — Dune, obviously, Michael Moorcock, The Road Warrior, and earlier games like Laserburn and Dungeons and Dragons, not to mention the then-still-inchoate Warhammer Fantasy Battle setting. The Realm of Zhu has done some amazing work on tracing artistic inspiration in the Warhammer Fantasy Battle game.

It also drew a lot of its inspiration from history. That’s no surprise: as this interview with Rick Priestley points out, several of the members of the Design Studio during the classic era had backgrounds in archaeology. In fact, during my recent trip to the British Museum, I saw this book by GW and TSR alumnus/archaeology guy Graeme Davis, who also wrote the AD&D Celts book, in the gift shop.

Now, in the 1990s, the design of the various aspects of the 40K setting took on explicitly historical models. For instance, the Ultramarines are pretty heavily modelled on Romans, while the Valhallan Ice Warriors are pretty obviously modelled on the Red Army of the Second World War.

But these aren’t the historical references I’m talking about, really. The early historical references are a bit messier, a bit more … playful, maybe?

I think the best-known of these is probably the Dark Angels chapter. The Dark Angels were founded by a godlike being called a Primarch — this particular Primarch is variously called Lyyn Elgonsen, Lynol Jonsen, or (currently) Lion El’Jonson. All of which are, of course, just ways of spelling “Lionel Johnson,” a 19th-century English poet who did all the usual 19th-century English poet stuff: repressed his homosexuality, converted to Catholicism, was Alfred Douglas’s cousin. His most famous poem is “The Dark Angel,” which seems to be mainly about fighting against temptation.

Now, I don’t think this was part of a plan — I think the people compiling these books were well-read people, and when they needed to come up with the leaders of their chapters, they threw in a couple of literary and historical references (see also: Jaghatai Khan, Konrad Curze, Perturabo). It was only later that some people came along with a (perceived, anyway) mandate to systematise. But whether early throwaway references or later systematic exploration, I think both “generations” of 40K have this in common: the setting is weighed down by its history. I think this aesthetic is not uncommon in British sci-fi of the 1980s. Consider this excellent article by Chris Sims about Judge Dredd’s costume. I think it’s all worth reading (I’m a fan), but here’s the key point:

Judge Dredd exists in the world of Thrillpower, the far-off future year of 2099 AD, in a society where every single thing has become monstrously overwhelming. Just the very idea of Mega City One, this towering post-nuclear metropolis that’s built on overcrowding and stuffing as many people into the only tiny space that can actually support life? That’s the core idea of Judge Dredd, and when Pat Mills, John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra created him, they made sure to weave that into the fabric of those stories. There’s a good reason that one of the first ideas that comes up in a Judge Dredd story, once they’ve established this massive, teeming, crushing society where the fascists are the good guys, is the “futsies,” people suffering from “future shock” who just snap under the pressure of living there. Life in the future is just too much for people.

And that idea of too much is present in the art of 40K. Everything is covered in skulls, everything is a mile tall, everything is ten thousand years old or hungers for all life or iz kuvvad in Orky know-wotz — everything is just way too much to endure and stay sane. It’s a world where these are the good guys:

Nothing in the 40K universe should be “efficient” without having “brutally” on there first. Even the Eldar, who are meant to be all lithe and elegant, are covered in trinkets and greeblies, literally encrusted with the souls of their dead ancestors, persistent reminders of the tragedy of their species. (This is why the Tau, a late addition to the canon, sit so uneasily with the rest of it.)

I think this is a very interesting contrast to a lot of “classic” science fiction. A lot of the tradition of sci-fi art shows images that are clean and futuristic without a whole lot of visible past-ness:

You know the kind of thing. Now obviously that’s not all science fiction art, but I think there’s an identifiable trend where the future is often portrayed without a past. But the 40K future is all about the past. Partly it’s about our past — although it’s the future, it’s decidedly primitive, with swords and whatnot. It uses the images of our past, but in romantic ways: so the Dark Angels, for example, aren’t medieval-like in their modern incarnation: they’re Gothic, using images of medieval monks and knights to create a moody, mournful aesthetic that doesn’t actually resemble the middle ages at all.

I think this is a pretty interesting use of historical imagery: as a source of weird greeblies to cover every visible surface with. It creates this impression of the 40K setting as somewhere that’s almost rotten with history, encrusted with meaningless and cruel legacies from some forgotten era.  And it’s interesting to me that as the setting’s been developed, it’s become more and more specifically obsessed with its own history — going back and mapping out every nook and cranny of the Horus Heresy, for instance, in an endless series of commentaries and footnotes on books written 25 years ago. If you want to consider this view of history something that very specifically comes out of Britain in the 80s, I wouldn’t argue with you. I certainly think that the fusion of the Gothic and the modern would come much easier to someone who lived in London or even Cambridge; I have referred in the past to the place in the New Museums Site where I used to work as “Necromunda.” To summarise, then:

• The creators of the 40K setting borrowed liberally from everything around them (partly in response to a company mandate to reuse existing miniatures lines, partly because that’s how a game designer do).

• A lot of this was from history or historically-influenced literature, because they were into that stuff.

• This interacted well with their other influences.

• The result was a mess of different historical influences …

• … that greatly enhanced the setting’s theme of immeasurable antiquity and weirdness.

The cautionary tale of Ghazghkull Thraka

If you've played Warhammer 40,000 or one of its derivatives, you probably know who Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka is. He's the Orkiest Ork of them all, a big tough dude with a metal skull and a humorous sidekick. He's appeared in various iterations of the game in various forms, getting bigger and tougher with every incarnation. Here's the first Ghazghkull model I encountered:

I have never owned this model and with today’s secondary-market prices I ain’t gonna.

This guy still remains the definitive Ghazghkull in my mind, even though (or perhaps because) the current one is much larger and less Adams-y. Still got the metal skull, though.

Ghazghkull has the controversial distinction of being, together with his nemesis Commissar Yarrick, one of the first special characters ever created for Warhammer 40,000 -- that is, one of the first character models to have unique rules rather than simply being an example of his type. For instance, Marneus Calgar's stats were published in a much earlier White Dwarf, but he's just a Space Marine officer who's had his arms ripped off and replaced them, as one does, with power fists bristling with Jokaero digital weapons. Original Marneus is an example of what a Space Marine commander is like. Ghazghkull is Ghazghkull.

But, interestingly, Ghazghkull started life just like Marneus. Let's take a look at his first appearance.

Ghazghkull's first appearance was in White Dwarf 134, where he was the leader of Andy Chambers' Goff Ork army. In the article, Chambers talks about creating the character's steel skull and psychic abilities by rolling randomly on the tables in the then-forthcoming Ork book 'Ere We Go.

So original Ghazghkull was just like Marneus Calgar -- an example of what kind of character you could create to lead your armies. Then, like so many designers of games, the people who made 40K stuck their own characters into the narrative for funsies. And, critically, they gave them mechanics that made them unique.

Over the years, though, the 40K universe has become very focused on these characters. I don't just mean in game terms -- by high 2nd edition, that ship had already sailed. I mean that, largely because of the success of the Horus Heresy novels, people are very invested in the personalities and fates of the various characters of the franchise. And, of course, these characters have models and appear in the game. For many people, the idea that "my guy" could be as important as Fabius Bile or whoever is bizarrely alien.

And I think that's a bit of a shame. Andy Chambers seems like a very cool guy, and Ghazghkull is a fun character. But he's Andy's guy, and Badlug is my guy, and I'm fond of Badlug, dim-witted, status-obsessed narcissist though he may be.

Badlug still has a lot of payments to make on that tank.

I often refer to this as the Owlbear Problem. If you know about the history of D&D, you know that Gary Gygax created the owlbear, and other monsters, by repurposing cheap plastic dinosaur toys. And again, I love owlbears as much as the next guy. Hootroar, and all that. But I do think that something was lost when we looked at Gygax's example and instead of thinking "hey, I too will make fun monsters from the things I find in my daily life," we thought "gosh, I sure like owlbears." Obviously in a perfect world we would do both.

I don't think that any of the designers who do this intended that result. I think they intended to show that it was fun to make your guys and fun to use certain tools to do so, and they put their own characters in books because that's fun too. It just kind of worked out this way (and publishers are, of course, invested in getting people to care about their IP), and that's fine. It is what it is. But I still think taking the other perspective can be helpful.

a new site

For the last few years, as existing social media fragments and crumbles, everyone’s been telling everyone to get their own website. Well, now I have one. This is where you can find links to all the other things I do, as well as this blog. I may move some favourite posts from my now-mostly-defunct other blogs over to this one, just so you have something to read!