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Slaanesh

2023-06-08T15:26:40Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Fulgrim got trolled.

[[File:Slaanesh_mark.png|center]]
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{{sick|The hermaphrodite god/goddess of rape who wants to eat everyone's souls and rape them forever.}}

[[Image:Slaanesh_by_baklaher-d7dvohn.jpg|thumb|500px|right|Slaanesh... tempting you to join a [[rape|party which you will never forget...]] [[Rule 34|also now in even more NSFW!]]]]

'''''PORN FOR THE PORN GOD! SMUT FOR THE SMUT THRONE! RAPE FOR THE RAPE TRAIN! - The Motto that Slaanesh wants YOU to believe in'''''

{{Topquote|Give yourself over to absolute pleasure. Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh - erotic nightmares beyond any measure, and sensual daydreams to treasure forever. Can't you just see it? Don't dream it, be it.|Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror Picture Show}}

{{Topquote|OO! KINKY!|Austin Powers}}

==Introduction: The Slaanesh Inquisition==
[[Image:Slaanesh by genzoman-d2y8ylf.jpg|thumb|500px|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2qT7GylRxw And to think... I hesitated.] Wait, one whip is held in the hand and the other is held in the...]]
Behold '''Slaanesh''', also known as '''Shaarnor''' (to [[Cult Of Slaanesh|Elves and some humans]]), '''Shornaal''' (to [[Warriors of Chaos|humans and some Elves]]), '''Sharon''' ( to Cockneys), '''She Who Thirsts, The Dark Prince, the Lord of Excess, Leviathan, Lord of the Labyrinth, Se Nie (色孽), Big Tiddy Goth Prince, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, The Sweet Transvestite, The Lusty Argonian Maid, the Colossal Pervert, Creator of Rule 34''', '''the Ultimate Trap''', '''the Transgender Trashgirl''', '''[[If_the_Emperor_had_a_Text-to-Speech_Device|Xenololi Futanari Vore Garbage]]''', '''the Trap God''', '''Mx. Transition Goals''', '''Mega-Mommy Milkies''', '''the L.G.B.T. (the Liege of Gutter-Brain Thirst)''', '''[[Heresy|Blue Archive's True Creator]]''', '''the Maker of [[Eldar|Knife-Ear]] Fleshlights''', [[Cornholio the Cultist|'''Tiddycaca''']], '''Never Went to Rehab''', '''Slut4Evar''', '''[[Fall of the Eldar|the]]''' '''''[[Erebus|Other]]''''' '''[[War in Heaven|Other]]''' '''[[Cybernetic Revolt| Other]]''' '''[[Fall of the Eldar|Thing That Ruined Everything]]''', '''the New Guy/Girl/Whatever''', '''literally Satan but add some crab claws''' and 6969 other names.

Slaanesh is the [[Chaos God]] of [[/d/|perversion, Hentai]], [[Extra Heresy|shamelessness]], [[Furry|excess]], [[Rebecca Black|the most disgusting Pop Music in the history of ever]], sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Heretical Fa/tg/uys cannot resist the most disgusting [[heresy]] of masturbating furiously to Slaanesh and her [[daemonette]]s.

Slaanesh was 'born' during the fall of the [[Eldar]], when all their torture, [[rape]], S&M, bondage, and decadence eventually tore the fabric of reality a new one and gave birth to Slaanesh along with the [[Eye of Terror]], killing the majority of their race. Thus, the final chaos god is known as the one that was literally murderfucked into existence. As a result, Slaanesh owns almost every last Eldar soul in the entire galaxy. In the event of an Eldar dying without a spirit stone, he or she becomes Slaanesh's sex toy for all of eternity day and night forever and ever (excluding Exodites, whose soul will automatically go to their planet's world spirit; Harlequins, who are scooped up by the [[Cegorach|great clown]] himself; and the faithful of Ynnead). This is why Eldar are willing to manipulate entire worlds into [[Exterminatus|exterminating]] each other just to save one of their own. The [[Dark Eldar]] take this up to eleven; because they do not use spirit stones nor are they protected like the Harlequins, Slaanesh is constantly sanding their souls down around the edges. In order to circumvent this they resort to huffing the souls of those in agony or of those who have recently died; in essence they sacrifice others to him/her in order to live. However this isn't done ''just'' for survival; the Dark Eldar revel in sadism for its own sake too. In the end every Eldar in the galaxy, even the Drukhari and the Harlequins, are inextricably linked to Slaanesh in some way.

Of course, the descriptions above apply primarily to Slaanesh's WH40K history. In WHFB, Slaanesh has no real backstory and sort of just came out of nowhere like the other Chaos gods.

Among other things, Slaanesh is the god of sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. Slaanesh is fueled by excess and pleasure, which means gratuitous amounts of anything generally fall under its influence. This actually becomes a big problem for Khorne, the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] and the other Chaos Gods, whose worshipers have to constantly try not to enjoy themselves too much lest they end up feeding the Warp's whipping bitch. Especially when the Inquisition is all too enthusiastic about whipping heretics. It is for this reason ironically enough that she is hated by every single entity in the warp, Yes even Nurgle. More on that below.

Many horny juveniles who have just found Warhammer seem to be obsessed with Slaanesh being a God(ess) of sexual pleasure. While [[fluff]] claims this is not true, in practical terms Slaanesh is the deity of pleasure, which can be broad. Pleasure can be derived from various sources, as such this can be anything from sex, eating, companionship, and so on and so forth. However, because Chaos is Chaos, Slaanesh is mostly associated with the extremes of pleasure including lechery, gluttony, extreme masochism, extreme sadism, perverse sexual deviance, and so on. These are just some of the pleasures Slaaneshi followers partake in because Slaanesh's credo is to experience everything to the fullest. As a practitioner falls ever deeper into the embrace of their dark god, they are consumed with a need to drive these sensations first to the limit of human experience, and then beyond into madness. This basically means: why settle for one loving wife to have sex with you when you can have a hive world of insatiable concubines to fulfill your every desire? Or why eat one disgustingly expensive luxury meal when you could eat a Paradise world's supply of the stuff? Why just resort to cutting yourself to feel the pleasure of pain when you could be chopping off lumps of your flesh to heighten the sensation of pain? Numerous examples of 40k lore have made it apparent that while those who fall to Slaanesh might start off with a desire to fulfill their rather run-of-the-mill baser instincts, it always spirals into insanity. For example, in the novel ''Shadowsword'', a young nobleman makes a deal with a devilish creature so that he can possess and sleep with his lady love, who is also his first cousin. By the time all is said and done, a grand party to welcome the forces of Chaos to their world turns into a charnel scene where the guests ''imagine'' themselves to be dancing and enjoying fine food and drink, but in reality they are tearing each other apart with their bare hands and engaging in cannibalism; others believe that they are embracing when their bodies and flesh are literally melding together. These are the types of scenes that truly resonate in the Warp, and thus grant Slaanesh power.

One would think that if, as claimed, Slaanesh was the lord of all ''pleasure'' then Slaanesh would be omnipotent because, in the end, biological and psychological fact tells us that every living thing with a fucking Neuron acts in order to feel pleasure and escape pain (the "pleasure principle"). However, here is the most important thing worth emphasizing, just in case you haven't picked it up already: the point of Slaanesh is not to revel in ''any'' pain or pleasure. Rather, the point is to gain power from exposing mortals to the types of experiences that a sane person ''could not'' and ''would not'' ever be able to imagine in the first place. For all but the very strongest and most devout, this pollutes and twists their very souls to such an extent that they remain in thrall to Slaanesh forever. Such horizons of experience and sensation are far, far beyond the predictable inclinations and fetishes of your typical 4chan fa/tg/uy.

Even [[Khorne]], Slaanesh's primary rival, feels pleasure in killing, and Tzeentch feels pleasure in [[Just as Planned]]. That is why 40k lore tends to focus on Slaanesh as a God of the most disgusting pleasures ever, not as a God of all pleasure. Additionally, in the [[fluff]], it does state that most pleasures (like regular love or the desire to eat) that might be covered under the "pleasure principle" are too "weak" to sustain Slaanesh. Considering that it's damn hard for most humans to get more than a piece of stale toast and a dry handjob before collapsing from exhaustion after a grueling 80-hour week working in some hive-world factory for the Emprah, the only way to get enough sex, drugs, and partying in to impress Slaanesh is to be a ruthless, controlling, evil bastard. (''It is worth noting that GW seems to have picked up somewhat on this fact. As of the latest daemon codex it does mention that Slaanesh has a particular way of influencing the other chaos gods and that they are all wary of them given that they draw some strength from the extreme behaviours they promote in their followers and are subject to themselves.'')

Slaanesh is also associated with the arts and creativity, as creativity means pursuing one's own personal desires. Self-indulgence and personal expression are the bedrock of the arts, after all. Those attracted to Slaanesh could theoretically be more than just aristocratic ravers, but also particularly eccentric artists, writers, etc. In this, Slaanesh treads in on Tzeentch's territory as the Architect of Fate also likes to play muse. But Slaanesh is all Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll in the purest sense of the word. It is not just the depraved orgy after the concert, but the scintillatingly brilliant concert that caused the orgy to begin with. One could assume that, in order to prevent Slaanesh's influence from spreading, the Imperium of Man would censor not just content but style. A radically structured poem, a painting with hints of debased content, even a deviation from traditional chord structures would presumably bring the Inquisition to your doorstep.

If Slaanesh had a voice actor, it would be [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc80tFJpTuo Tim Curry] and/or Tilda Swinton.

==What? Warhammer?==
[[File:Slaanesh Old.jpg|thumb|right|150px|The first depiction of Slaanesh in Warhammer art.]]
In the new [[Age of Sigmar]] setting, Slaanesh has gone missing. Tyrion and Malerion worked together to capture Slaanesh, unknowningly helped along by the machinations of Tzeentch. Thus Slaanesh has been removed from the Pantheon of Chaos and replaced by the [[Horned Rat]]. Derp. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIMg2Xw4_8s While it was thought Slaanesh is being kept in a hidden warehouse while Tyrion works him/her over to make Slaanesh give back Aliathra's soul], this is revealed to be mostly true, but for elves in general as there is no sign of Aliathra yet.
[[File:AoSBeholdSlaanesh.jpg|thumb|right|300px|Slaanesh imprisoned: Unable to decide which dildo to use first, Slaanesh is effectively neutralized! Ingenious! (Also, to answer the question you never asked, Slaanesh is not circumcised. Seriously, take a close look at where those chains pierce)]]

Yet hope for Slaanesh faction lovers still remains. With Slaanesh missing, his forces have split between those trying to find and free Slaanesh (the refer to themselves as Seekers), those who are trying to claim their former master's position (they are referred to as Pretenders and consists of every Chaos Lord and Keeper of Secrets that wants to claim their former masters position as the new god of depravity) and those who have continued to be allied to [[Archaon]] in his wars against the Mortal Realms (who are referred to as Invaders). This last faction is currently the biggest and is the main Slaanesh force fighting Order; it is mostly being led by Slaanesh's greater daemons who lead Slaanesh's demonic and mortal followers but some have actually looked to venerating Archaon as their replacement deity.

The release of the first Daughter of Khaine battletome revealed that Slaanesh has been trapped in the void space between Ulgu (Realm of Shadows) and Hysh (Realm of Light) by the collective work of [[Tyrion]] and [[Teclis]] - now gods of Hysh, [[Malekith|Malerion]] - god of Ulgu, and [[Morathi]]. There the elf gods are slowly taking back the elf souls the Chaos god devoured after the End Times, reforging them to their liking, while Slaanesh is trapped in a position that will make it impossible for him to escape (in theory). That is, unless Morathi cast a spell to get more souls than it was initially planned for her to receive, a spell that would weaken the chains that are keeping Slaanesh trapped, which of course she did. Now Slaanesh is ever so slowly getting further from Hysh and closer to Ulgu, which enabled Slaanesh's followers to learn where he was. The only things standing in their way are the fact that they can't reach Slaanesh's prison, the aelf gods and their forces. Even then, Slaanesh might eventually be able to free itself.

With the announcement of Realm of Chaos: Wrath and Rapture, it appears GW is ready to bring Slaanesh back to the 40k and AoS universes, along with a (daemonic) host of new models. And this did come to pass... Though it isn't as grand as many would have hoped. It has been revealed that the 66 chains holding Slaanesh (real subtle, GW) can be broken by certain depraved or powerful acts, ie, an excess of anger from Khorne, or a Stormhost turning on the people they protect (which did happen and was engineered by Slaanesh taking a leaf from Tzeentch's book). Having broken a handful of the chains Slaanesh cast illusions to prevent the elves from discovering this, and if the majority of chains get shattered Slaanesh will be strong enough to break the rest. If Slaanesh ever did escape, he would immediately try and engulf all of Ulgu and Hysh, securing two whole realms and thereby winning the great game though Khorne would object violently, as would Archaon. However, Archaon still needed Slaanesh and was actively tracking down the trapped god. Archaon eventually succeeded at finding Slaanesh and started working to free him, though Slaanesh's sass vexed Archaon. It would've worked eventually, but Archaon had a vision of the Nighthaunt and Bonereapers taking the Shyish realmgate and attacking the Varanspire. Though Archaon was pissed, since he knew the elf gods would move Slaanesh's prison and tighten security after this, he abandoned Slaanesh and went back to the Allpoints.

But now Slaanesh is a mommy/daddy! During Morathi's ritual for godhood, Slaanesh took advantage of it and emitted a stream of saliva (more likely some ''other'' bodily fluid that begins with "S") that gained sentience. The entity followed Morathi out of Slaanesh's prison, and flew through the skies across Ulgu before crashing to the ground. The Godseekers followed it to the point of impact, and over time thousands of Hedonites gathered. There the entity, known only as The Newborn, took on a form so beautiful and terrible that many who looked upon it died and spoke to Hedonites. It eventually became two demigods called Dexcessa and Synessa, who are filling in for Slaanesh until he/she is freed from Uhl-Gysh. The twins make their first appearance when they try to take advantage of the rampage of the newly awakened god of Earthquakes [[Kragnos]] to conquer the city of Excelsis, a plan which falls flat on its ass when the twins get banished by the actions of a set of witch-hunters and the sacrifice of the local stormcast eternal leader. Be'lakor then approaches the twins in the epilogue of the book and proceeds to throw shade at them for such a lackluster first showing on their part, when they diss him back about fleeing from one Dwarf, Be'lakor points out that the Dwarf was actually a powerful god and tells them to be prepared as the storms of chaos he unleashed by blowing up realmgates are spreading throughout the mortal realms.

== Followers ==
[[File:Slaanesh Banners.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Slaaneshi banners.]]
Slaanesh attracts mortal followers from those seeking to become charismatic and popular, but instead corrupts them to become colossal perverts; alternatively, she may attract followers from those who are already [[Ultramarines|colossal perverts]], and corrupt them to become more charismatic and popular. [[Just as planned]].

Alternatively, Slaanesh sometimes finds those in the mortal realm with far more looks than brains to approach and gives them everything they could ever want because she tells them that they simply deserve it, with nothing expected in return...other than them turning into a collossal egotistical hedonist with no sense of responsibility, right and wrong, or empathy as they fuck over creation on whim or for the lulz due to the ultimate entitlement complex possible.

Slaanesh and Khorne actually compete for the same pool of followers more often than you'd think, which is part of his hatred for it. A good rule of thumb is this: if a warrior wants to be the ''best'', gets his thrills from making that perfect shot, that perfect move, [[/v/|that perfect 360 noscope,]] to [[powergamer|hone his or her skills the sharpest they can ever be]], or debasing their foes, they're Slaaneshi...even if they don’t want to be. If the thrill lies in just killing people-- the pure joy of murder-- and the skill is just a way of facilitating that, they're Khornate. Slaaneshi types also get off on the sensory overload rather than actual killing or even pain, like the Emperor's Children who get carved up by Raven Guard and won't fight back because the feeling of lightning claws dicing them up is too damn blissful. [[Troll|They also get off on the reactions they get from others]]-- for example, the loyalist who Lucius tricks into slaughtering his own men. These are things that Khorne can’t stand, because Khorne has standards. Slaanesh takes those standards, throws them out the window, follows them out the window and murderfucks them with its arms pumping wildly.

When it come to more "social" followers, Slaanesh competes with Tzeentch, as followers of both are known for being silver-tongued manipulative dicks with a huge hard-on for power. Here the difference lies in that Slaaneshi followers seek power for their own gain, usually through charismatic speeches and the like, while Tzeenchians often have more altruistic goals or are more interested in the process of gaining power than actually getting it, intentionally raising the challenge to impossible level just to feed their ambitions. Tzeentch followers are quite notable for being dicks, not evil monsters (...usually, also barring daemons). Other than being egotistical trolls they're pretty normal people. The 'huge hard-on' part is also much more [[Heresy|literal]] in Slaanesh's case. However Tzeentch has realized that since personal gain is inevitable when scheming, Slaanesh still wins, so Tzeentch hates them too.

Apart from [[AIDS|the obvious]], Slaanesh and Nurgle rarely have any interaction. There was the matter of the [[Isha|qt Eldar waifu]] Slaanesh wanted to keep for [[/d/|some]] [[rape|after-party]] [[FATAL|entertainment]], but since Nurgle is a fa/tg/uy at heart he couldn't resist claiming her for himself. <s>But they're mostly over that</s> Slaanesh is over it, Nurgle is not. Otherwise, their domains are just too different that they don't overlap all that much. Those who are ambitious and feel they deserve better choose Slaanesh, while those who give up or accept their lot fall into Nurgle's open, sweaty arms. Conflict occurs, but love of the self and love of others aren't as mutually exclusive as the desire to destroy and the desire to create, or a demand for the spotlight against careful orchestration. That being said Nurgle is still not fond of them-- mainly due to the aforementioned Eldar waifu.

[[File:Slaaneshi Forces.JPG|thumb|right|500px|Slaaneshi forces in their realm.]]

Slaanesh units are:
* '''[[Daemonettes]]''', hideous crab-clawed hermaphrodites or seductive scythe-clawed elf-girls depending on which fluff you choose to believe, fa/tg/uys love Daemonettes and spend much time eagerly awaiting the drawfags to provide them with moar heresy. Some fluff seems to suggest that they're hot elf girls until they decide it's time to rip your face off, at which point they become something more akin to the BDSM glam-rock black-eyed lobster women seen in the current models. Moreover, they're supposedly attractive to the beholder (though these are often xenophobic assholes and thus only consider themselves beautiful) - this means that it is very likely that their appearance is entirely subject to the individual desires of whomever is perceiving them. This is represented by their hermaphroditic/androgynous appearance, supposedly rendering them attractive regardless of preference or sexuality. Their monstrous nature is a juxtaposition of slender sensuality and horrible, flesh-tearing daemonic claws. Like many Daemons, their appearance is supposed to be highly varied, which is never represented in the models unless you combine all the old and new, modify heavily, and use [[Proxy|proxies]] randomly. Daemonettes are created by Slaanesh's waking thoughts, popping into existence as she contemplates trolling Khorne, destroying a civilization from within, or getting off.
* '''[[Seekers of Slaanesh]]''', Daemonettes mounted upon [[Steeds of Slaanesh]] which are the mix of an aardvark and a raptor [[dinosaur]]; fast and lots of attacks for not much points, prone to dying in a hail of arrow/bolter fire.
* '''[[Fiends of Slaanesh]]''', large creatures that look like a bizarre cross between an aardvark and a scorpion with rows of breasts, these are created when Slaanesh dreams (because apparently Chaos Gods sleep). They're basically if a Daemonette and a Seeker had a child.
* '''[[Seeker Chariots of Slaanesh]]''', hard hitting unit/squad-wipe models, this is whom you call for when you need that pesky [[tarpit]] removed. Right now. From other end of the board. Be cautious though, these things need protection like grimoire and preferrably invisibility,or at least [[Distraction Carnifex|target mitigation]] to live long enough to do their job since they are big targets with juicy 10 armor all round. Also never ever position yourself so that the enemy could have even remote chance of charging these things: even squad of retarded [[Tau|fire warriors]] or some [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Spearmen]] can take these chariots down in melee if they get the charge. These things live and die by the hammer of wrath attacks, use them accordingly. Also comes in the "Exalted Seeker Chariot" variant, which is literally just a larger Seeker Chariot crewed by higher ranked Daemonettes.
* '''[[Hellflayer Chariots of Slaanesh]]''', what happens when you combine enough Chariots to make Daemonettes literally [[/d/|dripping]] with excitement at being in battle.
* '''[[Keepers Of Secrets]]''', Slaanesh's Greater Daemons, like a Daemonette on steroids, ecstasy and Viagra. Created intentionally from Slaanesh's own darkest thoughts and desires, rather than the Daemonettes/Seekers/Fiends which are created passively, each is radically different (even though there's only been three different models, one of which is long out of production). Geniuses capable of turning entire armies to their side, or destroying civilizations. The default leaders of almost any Slaaneshi army, unless led by a...
* '''[[Daemon Prince]]''', a human (with [[Dechala|one Elf]] as the exception) so devout to Slaanesh that they managed to become a Daemon. In Fantasy this is usually, but not always, a Warriors of Chaos Champion who made the perilous journey of getting not to little or too much attention while in her service.

=== 40k ===
* '''[[Chaos Space Marines]]''', the traitor marines of the [[Emperor's Children|third legion]] worship Slaanesh exclusively, as do warbands such as the Angels of Ecstasy and the Flawless Host. They also make up a large chunk of the Black Legion, as the Children of Torment.
** '''[[Noise Marines]]''', the specialist traitors dedicated to Slaanesh, akin to Khorne's [[Khorne Berzerkers|Berzerkers]], Nurgle's [[Plague Marines]] or Tzeentch's [[Thousand Sons]]. Aural-focused traitors who specialise in using [[Sonic Weaponry]] because the cacophony is the only thing that can register on their jaded senses anymore. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berghain Can be found IRL also.]

=== Fantasy ===
* '''[[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Druchii]]''': The Warhamer Fantasy evil Elves who are the highest ranking worshipers of Slaanesh, who they call Shornaal, in the [[Cult Of Slaanesh|Cult Of Pleasure]]. In most of the games history (4 editions out of 8 total, the first two having virtually no story whatsoever), Dark Elves had their origin in their Queen [[Morathi]] being the high priestess of Slaanesh, who corrupted her [[Malekith|son]] and about half the Elf race. While most Dark Elves torture and kill in the name of [[Khaine]], Morathi lead a cult of Chaos Elves and regularly allied with other Slaaneshi factions (other than Beastmen, because Morathi kept [[Harpy#Warhammer|her own]] as pets and shits on all others like a good Chaos character should). In later editions, Chaos Elves were retconned away into worshipers of [[Atharti]], [[Hekarti]], and [[Ereth Khial]], three Elven Slaanesh-expy gods, in order to redo the Dark Elf faction as evil Elves who ally with other Elves in the interest of mutual survival instead of evil Elves who just want to watch the world burn while a slave whose skin has been torn off gives them oral. This choice split many fans, some asking why Elves should worship Slaanesh when they have Khaine instead of Khorne, others asking why they worship Khaine when Khorne is better.
* '''[[Warriors of Chaos]]''': Not-Vikings/Mongols who live in the desolate north of Warhammer Fantasy and fight against each other when not raiding the rest of the world. The closer to the [[Warp Gate]]s they are, the more they are like living Daemons while the furthest south are generally only concerned with survival and not offending gods.
* '''[[Beastmen]]''': Rapist omnivorous (in every sense of the word) animal-mutants that infest the world. Beastmen serve all of Chaos, some serve specific gods more than others but few serve one entirely. Live to literally and canonically shit on civilization and order. Ironically treated like shit by all of the rest of Chaos. Slaanesh, in keeping with the trend, allows his followers to fuck their women and drink their wine.
*'''[[Hellstriders]]''': Warriors of Chaos mounted upon Seeker mounts. Unlike most Chaos Gods, who give daemonic mounts as rewards for their best followers, Slaanesh (or Keepers of Secrets in Age of Sigmar given Slaanesh's imprisonment) gives out Seekers to the weak-willed and lazy looking for a quick path to power. Those who fall for this trap find that although they gain power, they also gain a crippling addiction to the souls of their enemies that quickly results in them losing all pleasure outside of killing. If a Hellstrider is unable to kill, they will quite literally die from withdrawal.

=== [[Age of Sigmar]] ===
* '''Lord of Pain''': BDSM-freak Chaos Lords who are obsessed with giving and receiving pain. Not only does their high pain tolerance make them almost Nurgle-level tough, but they can even reflect their pain back to their enemies.
* '''Shardspeaker of Slaanesh''': Slaaneshi sorcerers who use their magical mirrors to force their enemies to submit to their most shameful hidden desires.
* '''Myrmidesh Painbringers''': The warrior elite of the Hedonites. Myrmidesh Painbringers are unusually chosen for their ability to withstand temptation, denying all carnal pleasures for a single minded focus on perfecting combat and ensuring their enemies die in the most beautiful and painful ways possible.
* '''Symbaresh Twinsouls''': Trying to be a disciplined aescetic warrior while being surrounded by perverted freaks is hard. So it isn't suprising that some Myrmidesh find themselves unable to keep up their eternal No-Nut November and fall off the deep end, allowing their souls to be possessed by daemons. Expectedly, this fusing of daemon and mortal blood makes the Twinsouls a favored unit of [[Syll'Esske]].
* '''Blissbarb Archers''': The dregs of Hedonite warbands excluded from the rush of melee combat. They coat their arrows in the eponymous Blissbarb poison that’s one part aphrodisiac and another part paralyzing agent.
* '''Blissbarb Seekers''': When the aforementioned Archer gets their first taste of steel cutting their skin (and lives to tell about it), they’re likely to become addicted to this feeling and seek to claim a Seeker as their mount in order to chase after this exquisite sensation.
* '''Slickblade Seekers''': Elite Hellstriders with a nasty jealous streak against anyone who dares to steal the killing blow from them. They ride on the unique Exalted Seeker of Slaanesh rather than the stock variant.
* '''Slaangor Fiendbloods''': [[Slaangor]]s are back baby! The shock troopers of the Hedonite hosts, they are venerated by other Slaaneshi followers as physical avatars of the Dark Prince.

[[File:Slaanesh TWW3.png|300px|thumb|right|Slaanesh as he appears during survival battles in Total War: Warhammer 3, not taking kindly those who refuse the temptation events]]

==Total War: Warhammer 3==
In the game you must collect the souls of 4 daemon princes, one from each Chaos god, in order to fight Be'lakor and get to Ursun. Slaanesh's realm is both the easiest and the hardest; the Arch-Temptress lives up to the name and thus while going down the circle, besides fighting various AI armies you will be given scenarios that you can either ignore or play in order to fight Slaanesh's daemon prince. The positives it gives are beyond good - a beyond enormous amount of gold which lets you buy anything you want, increasing Public Order up to 200, really good replacement, and more. However, if you choose to take one of these gifts, you'll be kicked out of the realm and have to wait till it appears again, so steel your heart and march onward while slapping yourself in the face for good measure, and struggle on till you get that soul. Or use the warp portals to teleport to your rivals and use your Slaanesh buffed forces to kneecap them on the world map. Not like they can mount a decent defense when their best army is tooling around in the chaos realms.

==Potential semi-retcon of Slaanesh in 40k==
With the release of "Rise of the Ynnari: Wild Rider" we now have daemons of Slaanesh making an appearance during the [[War in Heaven]]? Now this could be just a case of [[Doctor Who|timey wimey]] Warp shenanigans but it could also be an indication of something else! What if Slaanesh's "birth" was actually more akin to a rebirth of something far older; the original sin if you were.

It is known that even before the Fall agents of Slaanesh were already at large in the galaxy and actively seeking to bring it into being. If Slaanesh did indeed have a presence all the way back in the War in Heaven then perhaps it has always been there, seeking a way to return, as opposed to beginning to gestate within the Empyrean during the conflict itself.

Slaanesh isn't all about sex, [[Drug|drugs]] and more sex, but actually fits all of the seven deadly sins rather well: [[/d/|Lust]], [[RAGE|Wrath]], [[Blood Ravens|Greed]], [[Perturabo|Envy]], [[Giles|Gluttony]], [[Lazy Marines|Sloth]] and [[Cato Sicarius|Pride]] all fall under Slaanesh's domain; each of which play key roles in the other God's spheres of influence also. Of course these are taken to their extremes, as is Slaanesh's trade mark, but even the other Chaos Gods are extremes in their own way, and though they are all placed above the Dark Prince in terms of power they all may "fear" the influence that Slaanesh has the potential to hold over them and are very wary that the Dark Prince may eventually eclipse them all in power.

The War in Heaven is essentially the event(s) that created "Hell" in 40k as many races with a presence in the warp fought and died in the conflict, so it makes sense that there must have been an "original Satan"-like figure as well. Of course, this could be looking too much into this and talking out of our collective arse, but what with Slaanesh in [[Age of Sigmar]] no longer being counted amongst the Four, it opens up a lot of possibilities for when the Dark Prince does eventually return.

==The Wandering Knight in the Palace of Slaanesh==

(AKA [[Kaldor Draigo]] becomes a sleeper agent. Probably. Other things are possible, but this would slap down the Mary Sue, so really, why argue?)

While the other Chaos Gods rarely welcome intruders to their lands within the immaterium, Slaanesh loves to tempt visitors to his unnatural domain, and those that dare enter the Lord of Pleasure's territory risk becoming trapped in its warped delights for eternity.

Slaanesh's realm is divided into six domains, arranged in concentric rings about the Palace of Pleasure. Each of these is a celebration of Slaanesh's desires, and while they might be mistaken for paradises, nothing in the lands of the Dark Prince is as it seems. An intruder can only reach the Palace of Pleasure, in the very heart of Slaanesh's territory, by passing through all six of the circles-- an act of will beyond most souls, both mortal and demonic. One amongst the mortal visitors to his realm still looms large in the memory of Slaanesh, however-- a wandering knight of the Adeptus Astartes whose resolve was as strong as silvered adamantium.

The first circle the knight pushed through was richly appointed beyond the dreams of kings. Mountains of stacked gold reached towards rainbow mosaics of gemstones in the marble vaults high above; glittering ingots and diamonds beyond count littered the ground. The knight marched past many a starving wretch attempting to count the innumerable gold coins, their sallow faces twisted with mounting greed until their piles toppled, and, weeping, they had to start over again. At every corner of the crossroads stood gilded statues, some of beautiful Slaanesh, others of Daemons and mortals trapped in blissful ecstasy. The trails in the diamond dust underfoot betrayed the fact that the statues were once flesh and blood. The knight had left notions of material wealth long behind, and he strode on without touching a single coin.

Crunching his way across a beach of golden teeth, the knight came to the shores of a vast lake of dark wine. The lake was dotted with pallid islands formed from the backs of giants, each linked by crisscrossing bridges. The backward hands of each giant held up a table that groaned under the weight of a lavish feast. There, he saw mortal men gorging themselves on the banquet, wide-eyed and desperate in their hunger; others frantically tried to gulp down the lake itself. The bloated and the obese moaned in pain as they crammed ever more food into their wine-stained mouths. The knight pressed on, distaste twisting his features as he passed the grisly remains of those who had consumed so much that they had physically burst apart.

The wanderer made his way through fields of golden light and soft hay, where lissome maidens and beautiful youths frolicked near-naked in the hallucinogenic musk of the lithe beasts that cavorted with them. The faces and fertile forms of the dancers were impossibly sensual, moulded to the perfect desire of the heart. The knight held his breath and closed his eyes, for though mortal pleasures were forbidden to his order, part of him was still a man. The crooning nymphs gathered around the knight, stroking his silvered armour and whispering of the sweet carnal pleasures they would give him, but he yielded not. The severed limbs and heads that lay underfoot spoke of the truth behind the honeyed lies. Eyes shut, he cut down the daemonette seductresses around him one after another, letting revulsion guide his shining blade.

After fighting his way through the feminine contours of the foothills ahead, the knight emerged onto a balcony where he was greeted by roars of adulation and approval. An army of Space Marines vast beyond counting awaited him on an endless plain, listening in fevered anticipation of his commands for conquest. Planetary governors nodded in obsequious anticipation, and the High Lords of Terra smiled up at him from smaller balconies of their own, motioning him to speak. The knight recognised one of the rulers from his own mortal life; he stood before him, looking deep into the Philosopher-King's eyes. Behind the mask of power and self-assurance, he saw eternal, nagging paranoia, gnawing suspicion and hidden doubts that were acid to the soul. The knight shook his head sadly and walked away.

Wearied by his ordeals, the wanderer strode on through a mesmerising woodland paradise, its maze of pathways thick with flowers and heavy with thorns. The gentle, fragrant breeze whispered to the knight of past glories, reminding him of the executions he had performed in the Emperor's name. Mirrored pools reflected the knight as a shining saint, his face serene but his sword bloodied as he artfully carved apart rank after rank of red-skinned Daemons. The warrior turned away, troubled. In the distance, he could make out tortured figures staring intently into mirror pools of their own, each held immobile by the undergrowth as whispering thorns insinuated themselves into their flesh. The wanderer turned his mind to the humility of the cell he once called home. As he did so, the path through the maze writhed and straightened out before him. So the knight trudged on.

An endless beach stretched away from the knight, and heavenly choirs sung soothing lullabies as the perfumed sea lapped at the fortress walls of his mind. The wanderer's bones cried out for rest, even if only for a moment. The warmth of the golden sun above calmed his soul, and the tide began to erode his will. His tired eyes could barely stay open, but his vision was still clear enough to see the horrible truth: the bone-white sand was made from the remains of those who had rested here and fallen into a coma of blissful indolence. His resolve hardened, the knight strode on toward the shimmering palace in the distance.

It was there, beneath the elegant spires, that the wanderer came before almighty Slaanesh. Statuesque and divinely glamorous, the deity visited him in the form of a youth possessed of an androgynous beauty, clean-limbed and fresh with vigour. The knight unsheathed his rune-etched sword and made to strike him down. To his horror, he found that he could not, for the god-prince was disarming in his innocence and utterly beguiling in his manner.

Even the purest flame can be extinguished by the tide. In that single moment of doubt, the wanderer was lost. He knelt, bowing his head at last, and a single touch of the being's glowing sceptre on each shoulder sealed his fate for eternity.

== The Philosophy of Slaanesh ==
Obviously, a god created from the excess of a society that used to look like [[Dark Eldar|this]] isn't exactly going to be benevolent. It doesn't help that its followers are encouraged to act much more selfishly than the other chaos gods, usually performing horrible deeds for their own self-satisfaction, rather than in the name of a [[Nurgle|community]], [[Khorne|patron]], or [[Tzeentch|greater cause.]] The Dark Prince very much acts as a sort of posthumous reflection of the mindset that prevailed in the age of the Ancient Eldar empire.
However, the few virtuous values it has are the bait for corruption but can be seen more clearly if they are compared to the black magic colour in MTG. Like the other gods, Slaanesh corrupts and distorts it in an extreme and destructive manner, but at its core, Slaanesh values the care and improvement of one's self to the point that you eventually do a 180 and arrogantly assert already being perfect while in reality being a mutated abomination. Part of the reason why the lord of excess is often the weakest Chaos deity is the sheer lack of individuality the average person gets in the 40th-42nd millennium. After all, most being born into the galaxy will find themselves in one of the following:

• [[Imperium|A massive bureaucratic machine that expects you to give your life for a small contribution to its cause without recognition or appraisal]], [[Tau|all the while aggressively discouraging independent thought and expression.]]

• [[Craftworld|The remnants of a dying race that live dry, ascetic lifestyles that'll either end off with a trip to smut hell or purgatory in an unfeeling machine.]]

• [[Tyranid|Or a race genetically incapable of harbouring true independent thought]], [[Ork|save for a few individuals who]] [[Necron|even then have a limited amount of free will.]]

A life spent exclusively in the name of others is a life where you can never hold a passion for a job you love, a hobby you enjoy, or a friendship/relationship you can cherish. It is a life where you can never express yourself through music, art, cuisine or overpriced plastic miniatures, where you’ll never truly discover the type of person you are, as there’ll be simply nothing there to find. Although these sorts of things are the least important things in Maslow's hierarchy of needs, on top of the fact that not everyone needs to create the next Mona Lisa or 5th Symphony, if an individual wants to truly feel content with themselves, they will require some sort of self-actualization at some point in their lives if they wish to truly be happy.

[[Heresy|Or at least, so a Slaaneshite would claim.]]

Slaanesh is the demon of addiction its temptations are more subtle than its foul brethren in a sense it will bait you with your base desires into selfish hedonistic behavior slowly chipping away at your personality untill you end up as a distorted parody of your former self. Fulgrim felt shame for murdering his brother and admired the human form [[fail|now he boasts of his murder and is an aesthetically unpleasing snake thing]].

== Facts ==
[[File:Nope.jpg|200px|right|thumb|Alright, who's next for "Purifying"?]]
* Though Khorne stans and /tg/ will deny it, Slaanesh is secretly the strongest chaos god.
* [[Ynnead]] is secretly Slaanesh
*[[Sanguinius]] is jealous of Slaanesh because they are the only one more fabulous than hi-{{BLAM}}
* Slaanesh wants to fuck the Emperor, but every time they try, the Big E psychically bitch-slaps them, destroys all their sex toys and sex slaves and breaks their hands so they can't fap for a while.
* Slaanesh knows that you can't spell happiness without penis.
** Slaanesh is dyslexic.
*** Slaanesh also knows that you can't spell dyslexic without sex.
* The title of Slaanesh's greatest mortal champion is owned by Shädman''(ayyyyy)''
* Slaanesh is bitching over the fact how their only representation in the DoW series was the [[Emperor's Children]] paint scheme. And they aren't even Slaaneshi like, they're just a generic chaos army. Although, they did grant favor to Eliphas for smashing a ton of soulstones. (And their colours aren't even correct.)
**However, concerning stated above, the developers have added noise marines for Dawn of war 2: Retribution. This has made Slaanesh quite happy. However, he/she/it is still <s>pissed off of not getting enough representation</s> OFFENDED BY THIS SILENCE, considering Nurgle gets Plague Champion hero, the Plague Marine Tier 2 unit, and the Epic Great Unclean One daemon, Khorne then gets the Khornate Chaos Lord, Bloodletters and Bloodcrushers, while Tzeentch gets the Sorcerer hero, has the most effective upgrade for the basic CSM squad (Warpfire bolts make everything in front of them shit brix and was flat out broken in earlier versions of its introduction), and all of the Anti-armor upgrades, while they only get a single unit that frankly eclipsed by either Plague Marines or generic Havocs with an autocannon.
* Charlie Sheen is their first true Daemon Prince (though he was recently diagnosed with HIV which resulted from his sexcapades, so looks like he could swing towards [[Nurgle]]. But just like [[Fulgrim]] his body probably needs to be destroyed first before he can ascend). It was nearly Malcolm Mcdowell, on account of McDowell's filmography including two of Slaanesh's favorite films (see below) and McDowell's hedonistic younger years; before Charlie had even reached puberty, McDowell was already far into sex and drugs both in his films and real-life. But as he got older, McDowell turned away from hedonism and cleaned himself up. Other contenders include Gene Simmons and Tila Tequila.
* Slaanesh gets beaten up/off by all of the other Chaos Gods on a fairly regular basis, and gets off on it.
* If it exists, [[PROMOTIONS|Slaanesh faps/shlicks/shlaps to it]].
* Tzeentch likes to trick Slaanesh into fighting Khorne to get his daily dose of lulz. Slaanesh always loses these fights pretty badly; and each time, Slaanesh takes it pretty hard. [[C.S.Goto|And this pleases them.]]
* Slaanesh is secretly depressed that have no friends. Khorne is a dick, and Tzeentch is the biggest dick there is. Nurgle is nice, but Slaanesh can't get over the fact that he cucked them. ("Can't get over it" in both a [[PROMOTIONS|positive]] and [[RAGE|negative]] sense.)
** Also, Nurgle has ''all'' the STDs, which would make him Slaanesh's natural enemy out in the wild. Isha's immunity to all diseases is better than any protection, which is a pretty substantial reason why Slaanesh liked her.
* Slaanesh gets bullied by all the other Chaos Gods constantly because none of them like him/her/it. This does not upset the balance, though, because Slaanesh likes BDSM where they being bullied and tortured by the other Chaos Gods. He/she lets them do it, and could probably beat them if they tried.
* Slaanesh is Tzeentch's second favorite victim for his hijinks, because it's oh so easy to string them along with offers of porn, whores, BDSM and/or drugs.
* Khorne [[Rip and Tear|regularly tears off Slaanesh's arms]] and beats them over the head with them (Again, this inadvertently makes Slaanesh orgasm, which is why she/he ''lets'' Khorne does it).
* Slaanesh was doping when they killed the Eldar Gods, they couldn't really beat them all without using performance enhancing drugs. (at least that what Khaine, a god of war and destruction, keeps insisting when ever someone asks him why he got both figuratively and possibly literally raped by a god(ess) of sex drugs and rock'n'roll)
** Slaanesh is always on drugs (Except psychiatric medication, they kill sex drive down to the very biology)
* Slaanesh attempted to fight the Nightbringer in a desperate attempt to win back some street cred, they got their left boob cut off for their trouble. It hurt so bad/good that it retroactively cut off the left boobs of all of Slaanesh's greater daemons and that's why they all only have one boob (or six). Given the new backstory and their time of birth, this means that Slaanesh lost against a Necron Pokémon.
* Slaanesh is a great patron of the arts. Their favourite films include:
** ''Hellraiser'': Slaanesh's number one film. In fact, they took a lot of inspiration on many of the movie's aspects... <strike>That is, of course, a lie. They actually ripped off Hellraiser.</strike> Hellraiser ripped them off. Slaanesh had a cameo appearance in the sequel dressed as a lozenge.
** ''A Serbian Film'': Slaanesh's second favorite movie. They already started putting NEWBORN PORN into her/his daily schedule.
** ''Pink Flamingos'': Slaanesh's third favourite movie, which is actually a film adaptation of Slaanesh's journal. Slaanesh especially enjoyed the depictions of their hobbies (including bestiality, scat fetishes and vore), that the movie quotes them directly (see Divine's quote above).
** ''A Clockwork Orange'': One of Slaanesh's favorite movies; not so much the book it was adapted from as it was less about sex and more a commentary on the nature of morality. (Although Slaanesh faps/shlicks to commentaries on morality too.) They like to jerk-off at many of the movie's aspects, but more notably Malcolm McDowell's sexy face. They also find the death of one of the characters totally hilarious, due to the fact that said character was killed by a giant rocking ceramic phallus straight to the face. '''BLOWJOB OF DEATH !!! LULZ !!!''' Unbelievable and improbable? Well here's evidence to prove it: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbRSag-L-GQ Giant rocking ceramic phallus attack !!!].
** ''The Rocky Horror Picture Show'': Mostly because of Tim Curry (who is actually Slaanesh).
** ''Legend'': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3J91bPrW9A Also because of Tim Curry, who practically plays a daemon prince of Slaanesh].
** ''Caligula'': The movie written by Gore Vidal for copious amounts of sex, incest and Malcolm McDowell as the title character. Slaanesh's favorite scenes are when Caligula engages in an incestuous threesome with his sister and his fiance, and the giant orgies on stage (don't watch the latter if you have a weak stomach - there's a real snake in one scene and [[FATAL|you don't want to know what the woman does with it]]).
** ''Eyes Wide Shut'': Slaanesh has heard the film described as "Just Artsy Porn", but doesn't get the criticism. It's Art and it's Porn. What's not to love?
** ''Event Horizon'': A documentary of how he/she/it is directly responsible for fucking up humanity's first venture into the Warp.
** ''High Rise'': Some say it holds the essence of the one time Slaaneshi and Khaine got jiggy with it.
** ''Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom'': Slaanesh liked it better when they thought it was real and not just special effects.
** ''The Stuff'': A movie about the time some railroad workers found lakes of Slaanesh's jizz at a quarry and marketed it as dessert food due to its properties, leading to numerous shenanigans and giving Slaanesh much lulz that they never learned where it came from.
* Slaanesh enjoys the Song of Ice and Fire books due to the copious amounts of incest and midget sex and the TV adaption Game of Thrones because they added sex scenes and casting several porn stars on top of this.
* Slaanesh's favorite band is GWAR, because everything with them is sex, drugs, and rock and roll in excess, even covering their audience in jizz, blood, random chemicals, and mixtures of all three, and inciting massive blood orgies constantly.
* Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams is also suspected to be one of the early influences of Slaanesh in human music culture, the singer suspected to be one of his/her/its avatars.
* Slaanesh gets ALL the pussy, as well as all the dick, [[Tzeentch|cloaca]], [[Tyranids|ovipositor]], [[Isha|stamen, pistil]], and [[Nurgle|pilus]].
* Slaanesh tried to seduce all of the remaining C'tan at once. Slaanesh ended up getting the pleasure sensors in its brain lobotomized. S/he got off on this.
* Slaanesh found Captain Flashheart so magnificent in Blackadder that they created a daemon prince in his image. Woof woof!
* Despite psychic powers supposedly being Tzeentch's specialty, Slaanesh's tend to be the really [[cheese|cheesy]] ones. 3rd edition had a minor power called Siren, which forbids the caster from being shot at in the opponent's shooting phase (it's just as broken as it sounds). 4th edition has Lash of Submission, which the Chaos Marine tactics cover the usage of (in a nutshell, GW admitted they didn't realize how good it turned out to be and it was the most used on daemon princes even though the +1I from the required MoS wasn't very useful). And what about 6th edition? While Tzeentchian sorcerers focus on pwning the shit our of enemy with (mediocre) mind bullets and warp-beams, Slaaneshi ones pack a whole lot of cheesy buffs and debuffs, which makes them so much better. Similar deal in Fantasy, where Slaanesh, some of the time, offers a better selection of magic than Tzeentch.
* Slaanesh is the only entity in existence who listens to the My Dad Wrote A Porno podcast purely for erotic purposes. He/she/it cannot understand for the life of him/her/it why no one else finds cervix-grabbing sexy. Still, they fap/shlick/???-PROFIT at this.
* Mentioning the names of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn gives Slaanesh a massive boner/lady-boner. Though Slaanesh didn't have a hand in inventing the internet, three guesses why Slaanesh loves the internet, and the first two don't count. Mentioning Hugh Hefner also has a similar effect.
* As a patron of the arts, Slaanesh has many favorite authors, so can't pick one. Having said that, Marquis de Sade is a strong contender.
* Considering that Slaanesh is about excess, there might be several other types of Marines besides Noise Marines we don't know about:
** Smell Marines, who use gasses to do whatever they wish through peoples noses, whether it be death, insanity, paralysis, suggestibility, 'seeing colors', and so on, always permanent brain damage. This is a way to get Nurgle followers to convert.
** Sight Marines, whose weapons create wondrously intricate bloom and color effects of equally detailed and aesthetically (only to a branch of masochists masochists can't stand) pleasing. This is a way to get Khorne followers to convert.
** Touch Marines, who know the nervous system better than a Bene Gesserit, able to bring the mightiest warriors down with the right jab in the right spot, consumed with uncontrollable orgasms.
** Taste Marines, think about the spiciest thing you've ever eaten, now imagine that a million times stronger, we are talking Exterminatus level of scovilles here, literally melt your god damn tongue off heat. It's like that only worse. They would use super pepper spray that can literally eat through armor.
* Also, a former Tzeentch follower gone Slaaneshi would be incredibly dangerous: Tzeentch followers understand indeterminism (from a very distorted, cynical perspective) and also see knowledge as power per circumstance to win where force, charisma and economics cannot. A devout Slaaneshi seeks to experience everything. Thus a former Tzeentchian, already well read on enough to convince themselves they experienced it, or well read enough to steal peoples experiences, who became a hedonist addict as well would be left with one desire: to be omnipotent and thus be able to go beyond the limits of mortal imaginings in pursuit of understanding and experience for the sake of understanding and experience. So basically a really cerebral ''Hellraiser'' Cenobite.
* Slaanesh tried to get in Khorne's head by seeking to understand the appeal of skulls. Instead Slaanesh got bored and invented the idea of skullfucking. '''{{Blam|DAMN IT SLAANESH WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO MY SKULL THRONE THIS IS DISGUSTING!! IT'S EVERYWHERE!! IT'S OOZING OUT OF EVERY EYE SOCKET!!! I'M NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO SIT ON THAT AGAIN AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!}}'''
** Khorne secretly loves it when Slaanesh does this, because now he has even more of an excuse to go out and collect enough skulls to replace it.
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|Slaanesh Patrols will skull fuck your family.]]
* [[If the Emperor had a Text-to-Speech Device|If you masturbate with barbed wire, a daemon of slaanesh will be summoned, and you will be exterminatus-ed]]
* Slaanesh secretly wants Khorne. S/he's upset that the 'Special K' hates her/him/it.
** However, if Slaanesh ever did create a copy of him/her/their/itself, then the two would immediately try to murderfuck each other, in a kinky simulacrum of Highlander. This would apply to all of the main ruinous powers, apart from <s>including</s> Nurgle, who would simply hug his <s>whose</s> female double and then get to work with said double on a particularly virulent strain of super aids/crotch rot. <s>would get jealous of Isha and conspire with Slaanesh to get rid of that home-wrecking skank.</s>
* Slaanesh is the patron <s>god</s> <s>goddess</s> deity of bonobos (look them up).
* Slaanesh's ''only'' criticism of the Cats movie is that there are no visible genitals.
* Slaanesh #fuckedPalpatine.
* Slaanesh's deepest, darkest, most perverted and debased desire is to hold hands with someone and have loving [[Heterosexual Sex in the Missionary Position]] with lots of cuddling before, during and after - because when you are the embodiment of excess itself, the only truly outrageous thing left is wholesome normalcy.

== Gallery ==
{{heresy}}
{{promotions}}
{{/d/}}
<gallery>
Klaher-baklaher-slanesh.jpg
Image:Slaaneshfaggot.jpeg|A real-life worshipper of Slaanesh.
Image:Slaaneshi.JPG|Slaanesh followers DO COCAINE!!!!!!!!
Image:Daemonette commisssar.JPG|That's a real [[commissar]], just look at the [[hat]].
Image:Daemonette02.JPG|DDaemonette
Image:Daemonette01.JPG|It's not furry, you can totally fap to it.

Image:Daemonette.JPG
Image:Slaaneshi2.JPG|Why it's good to be Slaanesh follower.
Image:Daemonxmas copy.jpg|Slaanesh can be festive as well.
Image:Lurvemudkipz.JPG|Evidence that it is possible that some [[pokémon]] are susceptible to Chaotic influence.

Image:Slaaneshi mudkips.JPG|Oh god. ;_;
Image:Slaanesh trainer.jpg|There is no excuse or explanation for this.
Image:Slaaneshijack copy.jpg|This image can be used to improve a bad thread.
Image:Irresistible.jpg|Simply Irresistible

Image:Dranon5.jpg|Mr Culexus' interpretation of Slaanesh. Notice the massive bulge in the crotch that's bigger than its boobs.
Image:Not_too_abysmal_by_Mr_Culexus.jpg|Love can bloom in the galaxy of Transylvania
Image:1271157389405.jpg|What a Slaaneshi raptor would look like by non-GW canon.
Image:daemonette_minerva.png|Who else did you think furries worshiped?

Image:Slaanesh_LAWL.jpg|LAWL
Image:Trapmarine.jpg|Slaanesh Chaos Marines come with a little "extra"...
Image:Trapmarine_BW.jpg|... which may not be so "little".
Image:Daemonette_with_seeker_mount.jpg|She "rides" it... if you know what I mean... no seriously, zoom in if you don't believe me. Although for your sake you really should take my word for it.

Image:643214 - Daemonette Eldar Warhammer 40k howling banshee warhammer yuliapw.jpg|The more common and usual fate of Eldar.
Image:Slaanesh cosplay 1 by zk87-d2zo47q.jpg|Now 262.71% more real!
Image:Slaanesh Time.jpg|You might be mixing up love and lust.
Image:Slaanesh_miniature_closeup.jpg|Gimme some sugar

Image:Slaanesh+hr giger.jpg|H. R. Giger is pleased
Image:Slaanesh by zk87-d2z4bpv.jpg|Lashes of Torment!
Image:Slaanesh-153102-SweetAngel.jpg|She Who Thirsts indeed
Image:Khorne-and-Slaanesh.jpg|Khorne is sooo tsundere...
Image:Slaanesh by genzoman-d2y8ylf.jpg|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2qT7GylRxw And to think... I hesitated]

Image:She_Who_Thirsts.jpg|<s>Still lusting after her now?</s> Who Am I kidding, of course we are.

Image:Dark_Prince_of_Pleasure_Slaanesh_wfrp.jpg|From the old [[WFRP]] days
Image:MoeSlaanesh.png|How can anyone not want to serve something so utterly <s>adorable</s> heretical?
Image:1419021850273.jpg|Yes, that is a Santa outfit.
Image:Anons_fall_to_Chaos.png|Anon heralds the Age of Strife.
Image:Champion of Slaanesh RL.png| We have the makings of a daemon prince here!
Image:HereticalUseOfChainswords.gif| When you say "Go Fuck Yourself with a Chainsword," Slaanesh will take it literally.
Image:Cultist-chan24.jpg|Slaanesh has improved cultist chan
Image:Wildslaanesh.png|Slaanesh Demon corrupts children.
Image:Slaanesh-sorcerer.jpeg|Slaanesh makes the Cenobites from Hellraiser look good.
Image:SlaaneshWH3.png|Slaanesh, as depicted in Total War: Warhammer 3 once the skybox filter is removed.
</gallery>

Give yourself over to absolute pleasure
Swim the warm waters of sins of the flesh
Erotic nightmares beyond any measure
And sensual daydreams to treasure forever
Can't you just see it. Whoa ho ho!
Don't dream it, be it...
Don't dream it, be it...

==See Also==
*[[/d/]]
*[[Azazel]] - The oldest existing [[Daemon Prince]] of Slaanesh in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]].
*[[Shalaxi Helbane]] Slaanesh main [[Keeper of Secrets]] in [[Warhammer 40,000]] and [[Age Of Sigmar]].
*[[Dechala]] - The oldest existing Chaos Champion special character of Slaanesh in [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]].
*[[The Masque]] - Slaanesh's former fav fab Daemonette stripper, and current PR rep.
*[[Sigvald]], Slaanesh's favorite not-Caligula/not-Joffrey.
*The [[Emperor's Children]] legion - The largest contingent of sick fucks on this side of the warp. And on that side of the warp.
*[[Fulgrim]] - Primarch of the largest contingent of sick fucks ever.
*[[Fabius Bile|Fabulous Bile]] - What you get by combining a self-obsessed homosexual and Dr. Frankenstein, only this one is played by geriatric [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_%28wrestler%29 Glenn Jacobs] instead of young Tim Curry.
*[[Lucius]] - Considered by some as the Sickest of Fucks amongst the living.
*[[Doomrider]] - He does COCAINE!
*[[Miriael Sabathiel]] - The most infamous [[Sisters of Battle|Sister of Battle]] to fall to Slaanesh. Commonly mistaken as the ''only'' Chaos Sister of Battle by people who haven't read [[Ephrael Stern|Daemonifuge]]. Last seen hunting Eldar to give them [[Rape|hugs]].
*[[Codex - Fallen Sororitas]] - An entire homebrew army of Slaaneshi Sisters of Battle.
*[[Daemonette]] - Daemons of Slaanesh. Viewing said content is heretical, in 20 seconds or less after clicking the link, expect a squad of inquisitorial storm troopers to barge-in and blam you to hell.
*[[Reasonable Daemonette]] - Slaanesh's perversion knows no bounds. Hers does, and she respects yours.
*[[Loli D]] - The [[loli]] variant of the Slaaneshi Daemonette. Viewing said content is [[Extra Heresy|extra heretical]]. E-Commissars can and will [[Exterminatus|blam you from your monitor with the utmost prejudice]] if you click on this link.
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRPIsrxUc_E Rick and Morty's visit to the Realm of Slaanesh]
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-gHgcmFB6Q Slaanesh's visit to the Realm of Rick and Morty]
{{Template:ChaosGods}}
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:Hedonites of Slaanesh]]

Ameritrash

2023-06-08T15:12:26Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Undo revision 896304 by Saarlacfunkel (talk)

{{awesome}}
{{American}}
{{Fail}}
{{topquote|Only in the land of pure Capitalism can corporations constantly shovel shit games out for a quick buck.|Anonymous}}
'''Ameritrash:''' One of the common classifications of board game stereotypes, usually as a distinction from "[[Eurogames]]" and "[[Wargames]]".

To quote Boardgamegeek:

<blockquote>Ameritrash is "a catchphrase for 'American style boardgames.' In general, this means games that emphasize a highly developed theme, characters, heroes, or factions with individually defined abilities, player to player conflict, and usually feature a moderate to high level of luck."

There is a great deal of dispute over what Ameritrash means, even when it is accepted as a meaningful term. Many gamers would never call the "old" Avalon Hill a producer of Ameritrash. Ameritrash means something to most hobby gamers, but what it means still varies somewhat across communities.

In sum, the concrete definition of "Ameritrash" is considered by some to be hazy.</blockquote>

== What Makes a Game "Ameritrash" ==

Ameritrash, as you can probably guess, is a derogatory term. Games are called Ameritrash based primarily on their common flaws, and thus the term can be thought of as both an accusatory insult and a working genre title. That being said, there are good games that are frequently classed as "Ameritrash"; for example, [[Talisman]] is usually held in high regard. The '-trash' part of the moniker comes from the fact that the vast majority of Ameritrash games are either shit, lack any real depth, or both.

The 'Ameri-' part of the term comes from directly from the huge number of these games made or popularized by companies like Milton Bradley and Parker Brothers, now both under [[Hasbro]]'s thumb, during the course of the 20th Century. See below for a non-comprehensive list of Ameritrash games, and take note of how many were popularized by American toymakers between 1918 and 1999.

For those looking for a more specific guideline, the more mechanical problems a game shares with how [[Monopoly]] as usually played, and the more style is emphasized over substance, the more likely a game is to be called "Ameritrash". These common problems include heavily luck-based mechanics, overly-long total play-time, nothing (or very little) to do or think about when it's not your turn, very little direct player interaction, and significant problems with Kingmaker scenarios. (In particular, [[Roll and Move]] is a very common mechanic used to destroy any semblance of skill-based play.)

"Ameritrash" is only a name, derived from the general tendencies of the two continents. It does not actually ''mean'' "a game from America". European games have been classed as "Ameritrash", and American-designed games have been classed as "Eurogames" (and the [[Snakes and Ladders|oldest known example]] of Ameritrash comes from ''India''). [[Talisman]], for example, is usually classed as Ameritrash, despite originating in England. It doesn't necessarily refer to all games created in America, rather of a certain style that these games seem to share that make them easy to classify.

Do note that these games are often meant for young children. Such as Candyland.

== List of Ameritrash Games ==
* [[Monopoly]]
* [[Snakes and Ladders]] (The oldest known Ameritrash, dates back to at least the 2nd century. Should properly be called "Indiatrash" from its country of origin as America as we think of it wasn't really around)
* [[Talisman]]
* [[Sorry!]]
* [[Candyland]]
* [[The Game Of Life]]
* [[Yahtzee!]]
* [[Cluedo]] or Clue
* [[Hi Ho! Cherry Ho!]]
* [[Mousetrap]]
* [[Trivial Pursuit]]
* [[Mario|Mario Party]]

== Not Ameritrash ==

* Scrabble - Setting aside the games of antiquity (chess, go, etc) and ignoring all the theme variants of Monopoly that just collect dust on shelves, Scrabble is the highest selling board game ever with 150 million copies sold in 29 languages. Exceedingly popular with old people. Literally '''half of all''' households in the United Kingdom have a Scrabble board, there are tournaments for real cashmoney, and at least one person has gone to jail for stabbing an opponent with a tile rack.

== Positive "Ameritrash" Definition ==

Given the polarized reaction to [[Eurogames]], and the lack of a fourth class of widely agreed upon board game archetypes (the third being Wargames), the word "Ameritrash" gets used in a more positive manner by some board game aficionados. This is the more abstract, less negative definition of Ameritrash. For the purposes of this wiki, we stick to the negative definition of "Ameritrash"<ref>Except in the Board Games Template, where we go by "Sufficiently over-dramatic, and originating after 1860"</ref>, mainly because the positive definition is so vague.

Some games that get called "Ameritrash" in the positive definition but not the negative one include [[Twilight Imperium]] and, for that matter, just about everything made by [[Fantasy Flight Games]] that isn't a card or miniatures game.

{{Board Games}}
[[Category:Board Games]]

Taal

2023-06-08T15:11:52Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1:

{{Whfb-stub}}
[[File:Taal woodcut.jpg|right|300px]]
An ancient god of nature, life and strength, though much like his wife [[Rhya]] (the two are worshiped by the same cult), he doesn't get much of the spotlight in the wargame. So basically, he's a god of self-reliant manliness and the sanctity of nature. The wild woods are his domain, which naturally means a good amount of his more forthright worshipers have to expect to handle themselves against [[Beastmen]] at times. The most noteworthy Taal worshiper is probably Markus Kruber from [[Vermintide]], who no doubt picked up his devotion to Taal and Rhya while on his family farm, though Kruber is a bit mild for a Taal worshiper since the most serious ones utterly disdain [[Gunpowder (Warhammer Fantasy)|gunpowder]] while even Kruber's Huntsman class in [[Vermintide 2]] is perfectly allowed to use as many gun types as the rest of his classes. Taal apparently survived the [[End Times]] and is worshipped in [[Age of Sigmar]] as part of [[Sigmar]]'s pantheon of order.

==Priests==

==Knightly Orders==

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Taal 1e.jpg
Taal and Rhya symbol.png|Symbol of the Cult of Taal and Rhya.
Taal shrine.jpg|A shrine to Taal.
</gallery>

{{Empire-Gods}}

World of Darkness

2023-06-08T05:47:39Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Call of cthulhu but you are the elder evil and your cultists mostly serve as idiots who attract heroes who wanna kill you.

{{Grimdark}}
{{Game Infobox
|name = World of Darkness
|type = [[RPG]]
|picture = [[Image:WoD logo.png|200px]]
|publisher = [[White Wolf]] / Onyx Path
|system = [[World of Darkness#The System|Storyteller System / Storytelling System]]
|year = 1991 / 2004
}}
The '''''World of Darkness''''' is two different lines of [[RPG]]s published by [[White Wolf]] and later [[White Wolf|Onyx Path]] (and later still by both of them at once, it's complicated) that focus on deep role-playing and, depending on the specific sub-game, the horror genre. The setting can only be described as the modern world, but [[Grimdark|worse in every aspect]]: every creeping suspicion you have is probably true, and the world is as dirty and corrupt as it often seems to be. In the old ''World of Darkness'', each game was meant to be played separately; as a result the games often had conflicting metaplots, and despite using the same basic "Storyteller System" the games were incompatible when it came to various supernatural powers. The release of a new ''World of Darkness'' (with an updated ruleset, the "Storytelling System") features a core book that contains the basic rules for all the games, and focuses on normal human beings in horrific situations that may or may not be supernatural in nature. The new games interact in a modular fashion and also have little established fluff, making it more malleable for Storytellers (the in-game term for [[GM]]; abbreviated as "ST"). The new line has also been trying to avoid the old Gothic feel for which its predecessor was known (specifically with ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]''), in favor of a slightly more traditional form of horror.

As of December 2015 the new line has been renamed '''''Chronicles of Darkness''''' to allow its setting to exist separately from the now-relaunched original setting (rebranded as '''''Classic World of Darkness''''').

== The System ==
The basic system in both the new and old World of Darkness revolves around a dicepool of '''d10'''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s. Your [[dice pool]] consists of a number of dice equal to your relevant ability score plus your skill and other relevant modifiers.

In oWoD/cWoD, the [[GM|Storyteller]] sets the difficulty for each roll depending on the circumstances, with the default being a difficulty of 7. A '''success''' is a roll of that difficulty or higher (7 or above, on most rolls). A roll of 1 is called a '''botch'''. If any number of 1's are rolled, they cancel out a single success. No more than one success can be cancelled out in this way, so critical failures (A botch with zero successes) are relatively rare. The net number of successes determines how well you succeed, with one success meaning that you are barely able and a greater number indicating better achievement. When you get zero net successes (if you get no successes or if your 1s cancel out your successes, or if you get at least one success and more ones than successes), you fail the roll. When you get zero successes and at least one 1, you botch-- a critical and spectacular failure. If you have a '''specialty''' in either your attribute or ability that is relevant on the roll, you may reroll all 10s to gain extra successes, and rolls of 1 on these rerolls do not count.

In nWoD/CoD, a success is an 8, 9, or 10, and 10s [[exploding die|explode]]. A critical success is made when you get five or more successes. Instead of altering the target number of the roll, difficulty and circumstances increase or reduce the number of dice in the pool. When your dice pool is reduced to zero or less, you get a chance die. You roll the die normally, but only succeed on a ten (which still explodes) and if you get a one you get a critical failure. All other rolls are called simple failures, although any simple failure can be turned into a critical failure by the player in return for bonus Beats (basically XP).

==== Short Summary of Old Game Lines ====
* Vampire: You're the bad guy. Your friends are also villains.
* Werewolf: You're fighting a war, and you're losing.
* Mage: You're fighting a war you already lost.
* Wraith: You lost, you died, and now you're trying to avoid a fate worse than death.
* Changeling: You're fighting a war you already lost and nobody is taking you seriously.
* Hunter: You're [[Imperial Guard|fighting a war where everyone's bigger than you and trying to kill you.]]
* Mummy: You're immortal. That's it.
* Demon: You're fighting a cold war with mixed results. Also [[Stupid_Evil|everyone hates you and your cultists are retarded]].
* Orpheus: You're mortal and dying temporarily is part of your job.
* Gypsies: You're Romani, and you're angry that White Wolf thought this book was a good idea.

==== Short Summary of New Game Lines ====
* Vampire: You're still the bad guy, but there are even worse guys out there.
* Werewolf: You're the bastard kids of the mad goddess of the moon, acting as border patrol on the shores of animistic hell to atone for your ancestors' divine patricide. Your distant cousins skipped out and now try to kill you, and the spirits aren't a big fan of your work either.
* Mage: You lost the first war, but are planning to win the second.
* Promethean: You're Frankenstein's monster on a journey to become Pinocchio. The world itself hates you, so you have to keep moving to avoid the mobs that spring up around you.
* Changeling: You got kidnapped, but escaped, only to find someone stole your life and your god-like kidnapper wants you back.
* Hunter: You try to kill a few monsters, then you die. Your light gets snuffed out, only to light two more.
* Geist: You died and a ghost brought you back, and that ghost now shares your body.
* Mummy: You keep coming back from the dead and are forced by your bosses to find their stuff.
* Demon: You escaped from the Matrix and are now in a cold war with God, who is the Matrix.
* Beast: You're a colossal asshole who feeds the nightmare monster that replaced your soul by scaring people into psychological trauma.
* Deviant: Your soul has been broken and your body is turning into something monstrous. The only way you can be sure to stay sane and human is to get back at the bastards who did this to you.

== Old World of Darkness ==
Shortened as "'''oWoD'''", also known as '''Classic World of Darkness''' (itself shortened to "'''cWoD'''").

=== The Big Three ===
[[Image:WOD_old_1e_cover.jpeg|thumb|oWoD 1st edition cover]]
* '''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]:''' The original World of Darkness game. Covers playing vampire characters in the modern day World of Darkness. It gains its title from "The Masquerade", an in-game set of rules and guidelines dictated by the Camarilla sect in an attempt to keep the mortal populace unaware of vampires and their influence on society. This is also basically the only thing you can get more than one sect of vampires to agree on, and a lot of the game revolves around the resulting political intrigue. It is heavily influenced by gothic imagery and by a variety of different vampire mythos, including the romanticized version of the vampire popularized by Anne Rice.
* '''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]:''' Second game to be released set in the World of Darkness. The game covers playing werewolf characters known as Garou. It gains its title from one of the major antagonistic themes in the game where supernatural forces of corruption are attempting to bring about the Apocalypse. The game tends to degenerate into hack-and-slash, mainly since it was originally written like an author tract whose authors had conflicting messages.
* '''[[Mage: The Ascension]]:''' Player characters in this game come from a variety of backgrounds, both mortal and immortal and are unified by the fact that they all practice magic of one form or another. Magic is defined by the game as a force that can shape reality with the willpower, belief or special magical techniques of the user. Had a pretty sweet metaplot/setting, but was hamstrung by the extreme clumsiness of its mechanical system.

=== The Could Have Beens ===
* '''[[Wraith: The Oblivion]]:''' You died, and now you're a ghost. You can stay around the underworld and make spooky noises for eternity, destroy everything, get turned into someone's sweater while remaining conscious forever, fall into hell and cease to exist, or try and solve the issues keeping you as a ghost so you can move on to the afterlife. Oh - and that last one's illegal. Lots of ideas that sound good on paper but tear apart groups and ruin friendships in execution, like making each player ''also'' roleplay another player's manifested personal demons in one of the most depressive settings imaginable.

* '''[[Changeling: The Dreaming]]:''' The characters are fairy souls 'trapped' in human bodies to survive in the cold banal world. The game's theme centered heavily on the concept of Chimera, where things weren't magical or mundane, but both at once. So the real world would see an old butterknife, and it would be - but in the realm of faerie, it would also be a mystical longsword. The concept of Banality is unfortunately somewhat awkwardly implemented and requires some work by the Storyteller to appropriately function. The series was cut short and a number of expansions that were announced were never released, like the supplement for the Middle-East in the Year of the Scarab. This game was and is massively popular with otherkin since its premise is their delusion, and any people who play it likely believe themselves to be elves.

=== Apocalyptica ===
* '''[[Kindred of the East]]:''' You're essentially an Asian [[Revenant]]; you denied some part of your soul in life, and it found its way back to your body after you died. Now you've got to become Enlightened in order to deal with your shitty karma so you can escape the cycle of reincarnation or get into Heaven. The game was built more as an extension to Vampire: The Masquerade rather than its own game and was meant to be played specifically in the Far East, in the same way that Mummy: The Resurrection was made to specifically be played in the Middle East and Northern Africa.
* '''[[Hunter: The Reckoning]]:''' Mortals are imbued with weird powers by mysterious forces in a last-ditch effort to keep the world from circling the drain. Played according to the writing, it's [[Call of Cthulhu]] in the World of Darkness: a bunch of scared people who are going to die very horribly unless they're very cautious and paranoid. Played according to the art, it's the licensed video games.
* '''[[Mummy: The Resurrection]]:''' You play as a Mummy. Who has been Resurrected. And has access to a third-level power (out of five) that levels the town you're in. Mummies are people with unusual qualities who died too soon but were given a second chance at life. This compelled them to travel to the Middle East where they underwent a ritual that combined their spirit with that of an ancient Egyptian. Now they are the servants of Ma'at, the concept of divine justice and seek to destroy those who challenge Ma'at. Yes, this makes Mummies a lot like the Garou from Werewolf, but they don't walk around with bandages (unless they run out of Sekhem, the fuel for their powers, and want to slow the ensuing degradation of their bodies). Mummies are the closest thing to good guys in the World of Darkness, and have a very strict Morality track called Balance that can see a Mummy destroyed by the Judges of Ma'at if they violate it at a low level. There are only two books in the Mummy line: the core book and the Players Guide which adds new powers, as well as options for Mummies from middle and south America and China. Infamous for its vague goals and antagonists, to the point where even we don't have much on it.
* '''[[Demon: The Fallen]]:''' You're a former angel who sided with Lucifer in a [[Horus Heresy|well-intentioned but very misguided rebellion against God]], only to lose and get kicked into Hell. Now you've found a way out, and have to deal with a vastly changed world in which God and His angels are AWOL with the majority of [[Vampire:_The_Masquerade|every]] [[Hunter:_The_Reckoning|other]] [[Mage:_The_Ascension|faction]] in the world of darkness purging infernalists on sight while your old allies (having gone mad and pulled a total chaotic evil heel turn over the millennia) try to fuck everything up. Frequently derided for meddling heavily with the metaplots of other game lines like Vampire, Werewolf and Wraith, as well as its prominent Abrahamic trappings in a franchise where most of the gamelines are heavily influenced by non-Abrahamic faiths.
* '''[[Orpheus]]:''' It's like Flatliners meets Ghostbusters; focusing on teams that use cryogenics and astral projection to become semi-ghosts, all funded by a corporation called the Orpheus Group. And if you thought the Underworld from Wraith couldn't get more grimdark... well, think again.

=== Fan Games ===
* '''[http://www.scribd.com/doc/96117271/Gargoyles-the-Vigil Gargoyles: The Vigil]:''' A crossover with the cartoon ''Gargoyles'', there's work underway to convert it to GMC nWoD rules [http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/main-forum/the-new-world-of-darkness/383957-converting-gargoyles-the-vigil here.]
* '''[[Greys: The Abduction]]:''' A short fan-expansion from 1997, has three different types of aliens.
* '''[[Highlander: The Gathering]] ([http://vampirerpg.free.fr/Rules/Highlander/ Link], [http://www.highlander.org/roleplaying/ alt]):''' Holy shit this is a fan-made supplement where life doesn't suck! You're immortal and extremely powerful, but still human. It's kill or be killed, though. So once The Gathering comes around you have to kill most of the friends you've made through the ages. Also has a neat custom sword fight system. If you've seen Highlander, you'll love it. If not, see Highlander 2 and The Source. There's also a LARP version called [http://www.greyhawkes.com/larp/highlarp.htm Highlander: The Quickening] made by different authors exists.
* '''[[Senshi: The Merchandising]]:''' A fan-game from the 90's that is a parody of ''Sailor Moon'' and the old WoD. Remember how Mages can bend reality to their whim? Well, now imagine a bunch of 90s anime nerds Ascending... ''"The Technocracy is STILL trying to cover up the 'Tokyo-3' disaster."''
* '''[http://techinfantry.stasheff.com/ Tech Infantry]:''' oWoD meets ''Starship Troopers'', has some parallels in the ''Mirrors: Infinite Macabre'' supplement for the nWoD.
* '''[[Zombie: The Coil]] ([http://gamingnerdsrus.co/forum/index.php?topic=91.0 Link]):''' A Fan-made expansion from 2001. Brai-i-ins and grimderp ensue.
* '''[[Atlantean: The Longing]]:''' Long lost descendants from the city of Atlantis try to survive in modern day by fighting ocean pollution. While fighting on the surface, they continuously have to resist the urge to go back into the ocean.
* '''[[Exalted Versus World of Darkness]]:''' ex-[[White Wolf]] writer Gordon Shearer gives a possible answer to what would happen if the World of Darkness was ''actually'' [[Exalted]]'s Creation, and now at the End of Days, the Exalted come back. Will they save the day? Or will just push things over the brink?

== New World of Darkness ==
Shortened as "'''nWoD'''", also known as '''Chronicles of Darkness''' (itself shortened to "'''CoD'''").

=== Core Rulebooks ===
[[Image:WODcover.jpg|thumb|nWoD cover]]
* '''The Storytelling System Rulebook'''
:The core rulebook unifies the rule systems of the other game lines, as well as provides a basic system with which to play as mortal humans, and some barebones ghosts rules that are added onto in nearly every publication where ghosts are relevant. [http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/114078 The second edition update] is available as a free pdf online and it replaces the old "Victorian" morality system with one that's more modern, and also includes most of the improvements from the ''God Machine Chronicle'' (see below).
:* '''God Machine Chronicle:''' Essentially the second edition of the core rulebook. Brings in a new morality system, "Integrity", with breaking points instead of the hierarchy of sins. Along with systems of conditions and "beats". If you don't mind the notion of God being a celestial laptop or the increased micro-management of the system, it's worth looking at as it's a big update over the old version. For better or worse depends on how you look at it.

Expanding on the core rules, White Wolf decided to release a bunch of books expanding on the core rules to make the basic NWoD/CoD system a viable game in its own right. These books are, in order of release:

* '''Antagonists:''' A whole slew of antagonists for the core game, but could also theoretically be used in the main games (especially Hunter). Includes a whole bunch of zombies including the regular kind, the primitive Prometheans called the Imbued (no relation to Hunter: The Reckoning) and those ghosts who have reentered their bodies and became Revenants in order to enact revenge. Others include a basic version of Hunters (best used as antagonists), cults of all kind and a variety of other monsters.
* '''Armory:''' Guns, a whole lot of them. Also armor, vehicles and of course swords and such. A good book to have when playing any NWoD game that relies heavily on equipment. The book takes a very responsible and mature look at weaponry without disrespecting the player's intelligence.
* '''Second Sight:''' Psychic powers, Low Magic and magical monsters for those games where using Mage: The Awakening is too high power.
* '''Skinchangers:''' Yep, skinwalkers. Not all as evil as you'd think, just... don't piss them off.
* '''Book of Spirits:''' Geist of those of you who don't want to use Geist. A good book for those who fall victim to the realm of spirits as well as those who try to conquer it.
* '''Asylum:''' Horror stories set in insane asylums are very common, so it's logical that the World of Darkness jumps that bandwagon. Also includes an in-depth look at an example asylum: Bishopgate.
* '''Reliquary:''' Everybody knows that magical items are the Good Shit, even if they're cursed. There's a ton of premade items here as well as easy rules to make your own.
* '''Changing Breeds:''' You know how Forsaken removed all the bad things from Apocalypse? Now imagine if you take all those bad things, slap them together, double, triple and quadruple down on them and have "Satyros" [[Phil Brucato]] write it. One of the worst core WoD books.
* '''Innocents:''' An add-on for the core book, you're just a kid who has to deal with the realities of the world revealing themselves to you. If you survive you'll most likely either be institutionalized, a Hunter, or a serial killer. Or more than one. Or a monster, that works too. The book you'll want if you want to play a Stranger Things game.
* '''Dogs of War:''' The stories of black ops military units dealing with the supernatural. Perfect for those times you want to go all Delta Green, including how normal soldiers deal with the supernatural, how armies work as well as the more... irregular units.
* '''Inferno:''' Rules for old-fashioned demons (or angels) almost completely different from the fallen angels of both God himself and the God Machine. As it was one of the earlier supplements, it is horribly incompatible with the GMC rules update, being focused on one half of the old morality system. Contains rules for both demons themselves and the Possessed, those unfortunates possessed by a demon and now have to deal with the perverse being living inside their head.
* '''Slasher:''' Despite being a Hunter book in all but name, Slasher can still be used on its own to create a whole bunch of serial killers to use as antagonists in a core WoD game. Also contains rules for their use in Hunter games, including a gentleman's club for serial killers and those who hunt them: the FBI's Vanguard Serial Crimes Unit (VASCU) and its psychic operatives.
* '''Armory Reloaded:''' How do you stop a grisly tentacled horror from tearing you apart? [[Team Fortress 2|Use a gun. And if that don't work? Use more gun.]] Contains rules for fighting styles, high-tech weapons, blessed and cursed weapons and alternate rules for combat. Infamous for allowing the creation of some of the most powerful mortals the World of Darkness has ever seen.
* '''Immortals:''' A supplement that was released for immortal characters that follow different ideas of immortality. Except out of the 3 Immortals in the book, the first jumps off the karma meter so fast its unplayable, primarily because its Immortality is powered by bathing in a '''LOT''' of blood, preferably virgin but any human will do. The second, the Body Thief, is almost playable but again the karma meter gets in the way of anything involving the whole body swapping thing, resulting in the character becoming unplayable again. The third Immortal lives off some sort of mystic Chi/Kai stuff and is basically powered by Feng Shui. It's the only one that could be considered playable, and the authors must have realized this because its much better worked then the others which seem to have been intended as pure NPCs initially and then left as they are now.
* '''Book of the Dead:''' Think the Book of Spirits mixed with Geist and the result is poured into a sourcebook. Good for Geist games (and also its ONLY sourcebook), but if you want to use this for a core WoD game you might as well play Geist instead.
* The '''Mirrors''' supplements and '''Translation Guides:''' Modifications for the Storytelling System itself as well as hints on adapting it for different genres (the former) while the latter guides allowed mix-and-match rules from the three main game-lines of ''oWoD'' and ''nWoD''. It's notable that the Guides not only go through the crunch but also have chapters with suggestions of how you might fluffwise justify having one nWoD Mage order here or an cWoD tribe of Werewolves there for both New and Classic World of Darkness games. So if you for example really miss Clan [[Tzimisce]] in Vampire: The Requiem or think Requiem did the [[Nosferatu]] better but you still wanna run Vampire: The Masquerade, have a look in the Vampire Translation Guide and you'll get separate chapters covering both the fluff and the crunch for porting them over from Masquerade into Requiem or vice versa.
* '''''Dudes of Legend: How To Be Fucking Awesome:''''' A joke supplement released on April 1st 2010, Dudes of Legend relentlessly pokes fun at both itself, White Wolf and the conventions of the RPG genre as a whole. Expect lesbian stripper ninjas, katanas and trenchcoats, magical gays, a more traditional XP system and loot drops from everyone you kill. It's a good laugh and might make for the ideal supplement if you're into that sort of game. Unfortunately White Wolf started to take itself way too seriously since and we'll never see a supplement like this one again.

Since the advent of Chronicles of Darkness only a few core books have been released specifically for that ruleset:

* '''Dark Eras:''' A 600 page behemoth of a tome detailing a variety of historical settings in which you can play Chronicles of Darkness. From the advent of the world where you play werewolves babysitting humanity so that it won't get eaten by the monsters of the wild, all the way up to to werewolves in the New York of the 70s. Contains settings for every gameline out there, but they are rather fixed: so if you want to play a Hunter during the Great War or a Mage during the fall of Constantinople you're out of luck. Also infamous for being very expensive: the standard hardcover book is $65 while the deluxe hardcover clocks in at $100, which many people feel is way too fucking expensive for a single book that you won't even use all the content of.
:* '''Dark Eras Companion:''' The same as Dark Eras but more. A Kickstarter goal turned into a 300 page book ($40 regular hardcover $60 premium hardcore) that does the same but more and for a higher price.
:* '''Dark Eras 2''': The same as Dark Eras but EVEN MORE. Just as big and expensive as the first. Has settings ranging from wandering around The Seven Wonders of the Hellenistic era to Arabian Nights-inspired Persia to the French Revolution to The Wild West to WWI trench warfare to 1950's MAD SCIENCE!!! Has more blurbs for splats outside the main ones an Era focuses on.
* '''Hurt Locker:''' A book on pain and violence, as well as a half-dozen templates to make normal mortals a bit more attuned to violence. It takes a rather mature take on violence and injury... until you reach the Plain template; normal people who deal with violence by using radical pacifism. Yes, that's right: you can defuse a violent situation by getting punched in the face and not fighting back.
* '''The Contagion Chronicle:''' Formerly referred to as The Crossover Chronicle, this series will add a new set of chronicle hooks, potential settings, and cross-template factions geared specifically around allowing parties composed of multiple types of supernatural beings to cooperate without killing each other. The metaplot concerns The Contagion, a metaphysical sickness in The God-Machine that causes reality to break down even more than the G-M makes it do already. Supernatural creatures (and Hunters, for some unexplained reason) are the only ones who can tell when The Contagion has struck an area -- normal humans ignore a Contagion outbreak, which means you get things like nobody thinking it's weird people don't die anymore or just accepting people can walk up walls or randomly explode or whatever fucked-up thing is happening now. There are 5 Sworn splats (generally where the PCs will wind up, mostly concerned about watching, containing, or curing a Contagion Outbreak) and 3 False factions (who are either Blow It All Up zealots, using The Contagion to fuel their own schemes, or flatout working to spread it so they can rule over the ashes when everything else collapses). As with most of the CoD, there's no set canon reason of what's causing the Contagion, just a bunch of things it ''could'' be...up to and including The God-Machine being ''dead'' but not realizing it yet.

=== Principal Games ===
* '''[[Vampire: The Requiem]]:''' 13 Clans with fleshed out, restricting histories become 5 clans with vague, open-ended histories and multiple Bloodlines (sub-clans). The Camarilla becomes 5 Covenants with mutually exclusive goals. The Sabbat becomes VII, the Infernalists become the more sporadic, less-organized Belial's Brood. Arguably the biggest difference is that you can't just make someone a Vampire by draining them and feeding them your blood, now you have to permanently spend a dot of Humanity to do it. An alternate setting in ancient Rome also exists, which contains a history of the Carmarilla (and how it collapsed with the rest of the Roman Empire). Additionally, a new set of antagonists in the form of the Strix, which are demonic owl-like creatures bent on purging every last trace of Humanity from vampire society (to the point where even a Humanity 0 vampire is ''too human'' for them) and can possess corpses and vampires to lash out at mortals and undead alike.
* '''[[Werewolf: The Forsaken]]:''' A slightly more "balanced" version of Werewolf. You can't run around in 8-foot tall invincible war-form all the time, and you see humans as a flock of idiotic sheep that you have to protect from malicious spirits due to a vow sworn by your ancient ancestors as punishment for divine patricide. The "adjustments" resulted, possibly intentionally, in the average werewolf no longer being a match for the average vampire, a criticism invariably met with statements regarding the relative level of coordination between werewolf packs and vampire coteries. An example of a well run Werewolf: the Forsaken game is [http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?446663-Werewolf-The-Forsaken-quot-Detroit-Rock-City-quot Detroit Rock City]. It is written in novel format for ease of reading, played over Skype.
* '''[[Mage: The Awakening]]:''' Mechanically simplified and involving more magic usage than [[Mage: The Ascension|M:tAsc]], M:tA's biggest criticism is that it doesn't have as compelling a plot — specifically, the revised political landscape is the most frequent target of attack. Its second edition fixed most of that though, and it bears repeating that its rules for magic allow for a lot more freedom than what Ascension let you do.

=== Limited Release Games ===
* '''[[Promethean: The Created]]:''' Frankenstein: The RPG. You're a scorned mockery of humanity, most likely abandoned by your creator, left to fend for yourself in a world that wants you dead. You're perpetually dazed and confused, always trying to pick up the ways of humans, but you can never make real friends and have to live as a nomad because the very thing that keeps you alive also makes people hate you and poisons the land around you. Only five books, but it pretty much covers all the bases. Surprisingly, it's actually rather optimistic since in theory you can make like Pinocchio and become a true human under the right circumstances.
* '''[[Changeling: The Lost]]:''' No longer are the Changelings faeries, but humans kidnapped by the True Fae and twisted into something not quite mortal. Managed to do the exact opposite of its predecessor and sell enough copies that they extended the series instead of cutting it short. It completed its run with nine books and a long-awaited web enhancement.
* '''[[Hunter: The Vigil]]:''' Hunter, without the ridiculously overpowered gifts. You're just an average Joe with more information than other people, and on occasion ties to people with some special toys that let you use powers that can border on the supernatural themselves. For instance, you might channel the power of your demonic heritage to smite people with hellfire, you might have bullets that are extra-effective against vampires, or you might have access to religious rites that bless your weapons with the power to hurt ghosts. That, and you can break every conceivable human moral code without going insane, provided you can justify it in light of your "Vigil." Though, of course, this slowly makes you inhuman. Well-known for its antagonists - Slashers - who are the World of Darkness take on serial killers. Once again had "lite" versions of all the other supernaturals, which tended to be more singularly powerful than the real thing, but not as versatile (or player-character-friendly). See what happens when Hunter: The Vigil meets Harry Potter [[M-COM|here]].
* '''[[Geist: The Sin-Eaters]]:''' People who die and have ghosts decide to resurrect them, getting stuck with said ghost riding shotgun to said person's body and giving them all manner of powers depending on the way the first party died, all to accomplish the ghost's goals. Instead of humanity, you have "synergy" which is how in sync you are with your spirit. When you die, someone else is forced to die in your place and you lose 1/5 of your maximum possible synergy, stunting your abilities permanently and ultimately making you a slave to your spirit "partner", who often has some rather unusual ideas about what to do with its new body. The Underworld is finally fleshed out, but somehow far more foreboding than expected.
* '''[[Mummy: The Curse]]:''' You're a slave of Irem of the Pillars (Yes, the one in the Rub-Al Khali). But the city is dead and gone, and the Sorcerers who made you into what you are now live in the lands of the dead and tell you what to do. A reversal of normal "You're young and weak, they're old and powerful", Mummies wake up with a power trait of *10*...and lose it quickly, because it drops over time as the magic animating your undying body begins to fade. Most Arisen remain active for about four months, at best. And then they have to come back to life and do it all over again.
* '''[[Demon: The Descent]]:''' Remember the God Machine? From the ''God Machine Chronicle'', and the start of the core book? Yeah, turns out it has robo-angels. Sometimes, one of them decides it doesn't particularly enjoy its function. Or it fails to perform. Or ends up getting saddled with an order it can't actually carry out. Instead of returning they go on the lam, becoming 'demons'. The God Machine sends its angels looking. You don't want to go back, so you become a robot secret agent, pretending as hard as you can to be human while ruining the occult plans of the Divine Calculator; luckily, you retain the ability to hack reality thanks to your former connection to the God Machine. The angels are still Cthulhu-robots in service to the...thing that is in total control of the World of Darkness, and they would really like you to come back so they can strip you for parts. Fortunately Demons are very good at hiding their true identities- so good that even supernatural beings (and other demons, at that matter) can't see through their disguises if they don't want to reveal themselves. If anyone finds out however they will instinctually want you dead either for [[Void_Engineers|being an insult to reality]] or more commonly the [[rage| collective hatred]] all living and unliving beings have against the crimes your [[cultist-chan|moronic cultists]] the infernalists have committed every single one is blamed on you and the accusations are most probably true [[grimdark|you are at fault you are evil incarnate]].
* '''[[Beast: The Primordial]]:''' Another game with absolutely no tie to the Old World of Darkness. You play as a Beast, a living embodiment of primal fear running around in a meat-suit, and driven by the need to feed on fear, either passively by hanging out with your "kinfolk" (most every other monster in the WoD) or actively by going out and terrorizing folks. Pretty strongly panned, many consider it the absolute worst gameline in the New World of Darkness because it combines CtD's otherkin "appeal" with some rather hazy moral trappings that reek of schoolyard revenge fantasies. The discovery that its author was a sex offender did '''not''' help matters, especially due to how this cast a much different light on some of the attempts to justify the Beasts' actions.
* '''[[Deviant: The Renegades]]:''' The next announced gameline, which uses a "body horror" theme. You play as a Deviant, some poor soul caught by a mad scientist, a black ops bio-corp, a fucked up cult or some other kind of conspiracy and twisted into something not entirely human. Your soul is broken and your body will inevitably collapse under the strain of your continued changes, but sheer stubbornness allows you to cling to what's left of your humanity long enough to get revenge on each and every one of the sonsof***es who did this to you. You can decide how strong you want your starting powers to be but stronger powers come with stronger drawbacks and cause the Conspiracy that made you to become more aggressive in trying to recapture you.

=== Fan Games ===
Due to the lack of a Metaplot in NWOD, and the bigger focus on keeping things vague in-universe, Fan Games are FAR more common for NWOD than for it's older counterpart.

* '''[[Dragon: The Embers]]:''' A long, long time ago, the Dragons ruled. And then humans fought back. Now, you are one of the last of your kind, what do you do?
* '''[[Genius: The Transgression]]:''' A fan-built WoD set, Genius allows players to gorge themselves on Venture Brothers level superscience while drinking deep from the cup of mundane failure. While Inspiration allows a mad scientist to channel Mania into impossible inventions, their Obligation to humanity gradually gives way to that alien brilliance. If a scientist falls too far off the straight and narrow, they become Unmada, unable or unwilling to accept that they are crazy, that their ideas are true regardless of Mania. Without help or restraint, they become Illuminated. Think Hannibal Lecter in a lab coat and a fascination with altering the DNA of pregnant women. (Also don't even think of trying to get rich off your mad science; your inventions basically break the laws of physics through sheer force of will on your part and tend to malfunction explosively if the mundanes get their grubby hands on them.)
* '''[[Giant: The Perfidious]]:''' Another fan-made WoD gameline, in which you are a Giant.
* '''[[Hunchback: The Lurching]]:''' Even Quasimodo gets a game based on his poor ass. You're a Hunchback, and your goal in life is to find a nice master, pick up a hot chick, and die happily(?) from your horrible disfigurement. (So basically a WoD version of [[wikipedia:My_Life_with_Master|My Life with Master]]?)
* '''[[Leviathan: The Tempest]]:''' OOOOOCEAN MAN. In which you play as the WOD version of a Deep One/the Creature from the Black Lagoon. You're a descendent of an unknowable and powerful monster from the beginning of the planet, now you're turning into an undersea monster with your own personal cult. Yay!
* '''[[Mutant: The Aberration]]:''' A [[mutant]] is you.
* '''[[Princess: The Hopeful]]:''' Sailor Moon? ha ha no, try Sailor Nothing, or late-season Madoka Magica. Pretty dresses won't help you fight despair, but sometimes that's all you got. Began as a joke, but turned out to work surprisingly well played straight. Has two versions (Dream and Vocation) thanks to creative differences between the writers about tone and mechanics.
* '''[[Sovereign: The Autonomy]]:''' An AI is you. Do you try to go full [[Reign of Steel]], manipulate humans into making you a physical body, or just fuck with people on the Internet?
* '''[[Wraith: The Arising]]:''' Was the NWOD version of Wraith before Geist happened and filled that spot. You're dead, and unlife is not much better, can you make it in the politics of the afterlife?
* '''[[Alien: The Stranded]]:''' You're marooned on earth with your fellow aliens, with one of two long term goals - getting off this primitive rock full of savages you can barely call sapient, or saying "fuck it" and trying to go native. But right now, your business is simply surviving the various horrors of this world and figuring out just who you can trust.
* '''[[Janus: The Persona]]:''' Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde: WOD Edition. Not only do you have to deal with the usual supernatural shenanigans, but you also have to consider your Id that somehow became sentient and eggs you on to do terrible life choices. But hey, you get a few nifty powers in return, so it can't be *that* bad, right?
* '''[[Siren: The Drowning]]:''' [[Mermaids]]. You're a person who reached a point in your life where it seemed like you were about to give into despair, only to come out the other side and gain a Diluvian form--and knowledge that an apocalyptic disaster known as the Deluge is coming, and that only you can stop it.
* '''[[Psychic: The Gifted]]:''' Psychics, obviously. You're a person who received "the Gift" and now has to figure out whether it's really a gift, or a curse.

== Notable Differences Between the Two Lines ==
Even without getting into the specifics of each game's interpretation of one archetype (say, Masquerade vs. Requiem for vampires), the two games are very different.

World of Darkness takes place in a "Gothic Earth". Which basically amounts to an 80s-style (at least in 1e) [[grimdark]] interpretation of the world; monstrous conspiracies are involved in most major events (except World War 2, for some reason), the "Neo-Gothic" art style is popular so there's lots of [[gargoyle]]s and stuff everywhere, all forms of crimes are up, and the world is just generally a very shitty sort of place to live. Humans are generally unimportant; sheep to be fed on by vampires, slaughtered by werewolves, pushed around by mages... generally, if you don't have powers, you're pretty much everybody's bitch. [[Deadlands|Even Hunters are only viable as a threat because they have some supernatural patron giving them all kinds of nifty powers specifically to fight monsters.]]

Lore is generally very detailed and fleshed out, but not exactly crossover compatible, at least on the meta level; one of the more prominent examples is that, in Masquerade, vampires owe their origins explicitly to a Judaeo-Christian metaphysicality (being spiritual children of [[Caine]], whose biblical curse of immortality was reimagined as him becoming the first vampire), whilst in Apocalypse, the world is controlled by (totally not [[Mythology#Hindu_Mythology|Hindu Trimurti]]) Paganistic/Animistic spirit-gods, with the most powerful being the [[Wyld|Wyld (Creation)]], [[Weaver|Weaver (Order)]] and [[Wyrm|Wyrm (Destruction)]] and werewolves have every reason to believe that the Abrahamic "God" is just some bullshit that humanity came up with and has swallowed. Or probably was a powerful Celestine with influence around Middle-East.

This doesn't mean that this setting, old World of Darkness, shortened as "oWoD", didn't have its merits. The struggle between Technocracy and Traditions had amazing locations, technologies and ways to make a game session fun, vampires themselves had a long and rich history and full scale war between sects, and bloodlines themselves granted an exotic and diverse [[Fluff]].

However, said separate games, like Vampire and Mage, overlap each other's territories so badly it's illogical not to clash with each other. We have Technocracy on one hand, that has a mission to root out "Reality Deviants", and have technologies that border (and cross to) supernatural, yet Technocracy protected the world from the vampires' depredations [[Week of Nightmares|ONCE, yes, just ONCE around the 90's]] (and even then, it was only when a vampire powerful enough to serve as a plot device woke up and went on the rampage). We have wars of Tzimisce and Tremere across the streets of Medieval Europe like its the Lord of the Rings on crack cocaine with a cast of freaks, yet mages and their ilk, plus mortal rulers SOMEHOW ignore the supernatural conflict, which is even funnier in modern era with insane levels of Sabbat atrocities across the world ignored by virtually every non-vampire organization which number in the millions and have missions that concern the welfare of the people.

For example, with the power Technocracy is wielding (and that's not even saying Traditions by themselves are weak), how can Sabbat conduct horrid festivals in EVERY major city named La Palle Grande, kidnapping hundreds of girls and conducting snuff festivals on open techno parties with elaborate torture theatre without alerting the Technocrats, Mages, Werewolves, one of the millions of Hunter organisations, Celestines, some random Spirit, a sympathetic fairy, and just about any other vaguely-supernatural schmuck? How can the Camarilla apply mass blackouts and buyouts of presidents without the NWO coming down on a bunch of bloodsuckers? Every year? Short of the universe running on [[grimderp]] writing principles, it doesn't really make logical sense even with the usual suspension of disbelief.

And that's just about the consistent Fluff, not the conflicting ones. Here is an example concerning Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king:

*In Vampire: The Masquerade, Gilgamesh is a fourth generation Gangrel Vampire, fighting against the Toreador Methuselah, Ishtar. The epic is shaped into supporting this claim.

*However, According to Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Gilgamesh was offered unlife by vampires, but was talked out of it by a Child of Gaia named Siduri Sabitu. It is said that Gilgamesh was the first human to organize resistance against vampiric rule and the Garou tell that the inborn suspicion against the undead stems from his early influence.

*Just in case this wasn't tangled enough, Mage: The Ascension claims that the Celestial Chorus Tradition know Gilgamesh as one of the First Singers, Exarchs (Masters) of great power that existed during the First Age and represent an inspiration for their Tradition. Using the original myth as a basis, it is said that Gilgamesh was a man who performed many wondrous acts and sought out immortality in a quest. He was flawed like any other man, but nevertheless he is considered a hero. It is also said that the First Singers ultimately passed away or were corrupted, so both previous interpretations can be valid too. Other eminent experts in supernatural ancient history, like the Hermetic Winston Brown, believe that Gilgamesh was a mortal man who was later deified by the population of Uruk, who ruled before the Babylonian Infernalists spread.

See it now?

And that's without even mentioning the End Times chronicles, which are impossible to play out without fucking the lore in the ass concerning a neighboring setting. Mage's End Times Scenario Hell on Earth simply ignores every other gadzillions of lore and creatures with one Nephandus (Nephandi are Mages who are edginess incarnate) destroying everything. That's it. No Antediluvian or hordes of vampires and werewolves even have an ounce of effect on the strange, omnipotent monstrosity that shifts in and out of reality and turns the Earth into Mordor. Same goes for Crucible of God, where Antediluvians turn the Earth into a post-apocalyptic fiefdom where humans are their slaves. Technocracy with Aurora bomber aircraft and space stations in other solar systems, Werewolves built to destroy Vampires, GOD-DAMN Kuei-jin (who are massive armies of Asian Chi-vampires) who could wipe out the get of Caine are not even mentioned once, presumably rolling over and dying when Caine rips a fart. Then there are the three stories of Demon, which can be summed up as a world-wide war against the Greater Demons, a world-wide war against the Earthbound and a world-wide war against the Earthbound but Lucifer's there.

(The Technocracy's absence in the CoG scenario makes particularly little sense - the [[Week of Nightmares]], which directly or indirectly caused the apocalyptic events of literally all the oWoD gamelines, finishes with the Technocrats permakilling a fucking Antediluvian Vampire with a barrage of spirit-nukes and a series of solar-ray killsats then easily covering the whole mess up. Despite this, there is absolutely no mention of them doing ''anything'' in the scenario, even as the world they're established as almost entirely controlling is carved up between uber-powerful vampires whose kind they've killed once before.)

Only two End Times stories have a passable niche in other settings, the first being "Fair is Foul" where Lilith tries to kill Caine without even breaking the Masquerade or influencing other mortals, with one city of Storyteller's choosing has Kaballah runes etched under it to shift some alleys, but that's it. Second is Wormwood where the Red Star is actually the Harbinger of a second, harmless-to-nonvampires Flood to wipe out vampires only, because humanity showed resolve and used its divine spirit to stop Ravnos, impressing God to get off his ass and do something. 40 days later, the world is clear of all vampires, with the other settings untouched.

To put it short, crossovers were all but impossible unless you utterly butchered the fluff of one line or another.

Chronicles of Darkness, meanwhile take place in "Earth, but with deeper shadows". So the world is basically like it is when you look out your window or look at the news, just a little creepier and more mysterious. Humanity is special, both on a crunch level (mortals are a lot beefier than in WoD) and on a metaphysical level; [[Hunter: The Vigil]] is often held up as literally [[Humanity Fuck Yeah]] the RPG, where you can face down and, if you're doing it right, curbstomp any and every monster out there. Alright, except maybe mages if you don't one-shot them, but that's just because it's a little hard to take on some asshole who can dick around with the laws of reality. Lore is more vague and nebulous, but also drastically more crossover friendly and provides more wiggle room for Storytellers to get creative without having to worry about canon. There is no immediate end of the world around the corner so much as a vague sense of dread, the supernaturals of different game lines typically have at least a uncertain idea of the existence of other supernatural beings and ''usually'' don't meddle too much in each other's affairs unless it furthers their own ends since no player side is a monstrous killer, the Paths of Edgelightenment were consigned to dustbins, and so on.

Really the biggest issue with the setting is essentially watering down the vampires and losing that sense of conflicting ideas, that for example Gilgamesh COULD have been either one of those three individuals because each race interprets the world different. Odds are he was just some regular guy, but since vampires, mages and werewolves are the centre of attention in each respected circle they believe themselves connected to iconic figures and legends. Just because you're a horrible monster doesn't mean you can't believe the world is flat or aliens built the pyramids, and in doing so it ironically give the setting a lot more humanity then you normally see. Take this and the old vampire lore and you get the best of both worlds.

== The Appeal of World of Darkness ==

== Video Games ==
There were a number of [[video games]] made (and cancelled) for the oWoD:
*Hunter: The Reckoning series
:A linear series on ''three different consoles''. If you were interested in the plot, you had to own a GameCube, PS2, and Xbox in that order. But they were also all multiplayer hack-&-slash beat-em-ups so the plot probably wasn't what their target audience was looking for.
*Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption
:Third-person RPG from Nihilistic Software with a action-focused single-player campaign that has nothing to do with conventional tabletop (vampiric discipline scroll anyone?) and oddly customizable multiplayer.
*Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines
:First-person RPG from Troika Games that used an early version of Valve's Source engine, it requires the fan-patches; but is otherwise an entertaining single-player game.
*World of Darkness: Preludes
:Two "interactive experience" non-games released by Paradox Interactive in February of 2017. Let's just let the press release speak for itself.
:*Vampire The Masquerade: We Eat Blood
::''In'' Vampire: The Masquerade - We Eat Blood ''you’re a young artist who wakes up at night to find you’re no longer human…but exactly what are you and why are you so ravenously hungry for blood?!? Told entirely through an innovate mobile messaging perspective,'' We Eat Blood ''is a sharp, mature, and terrifying story about your first nights as unwilling predator and prey. Will you join ancient vampire conspiracies, or will you turn the tables on oppressive authority and seek your own future? The temptation is real. The game is written and illustrated by Zak Sabbath and Sarah Horrocks.''
:*Mage The Ascension: Refuge
::''In'' Mage: The Ascension - Refuge ''you play a volunteer at a European camp for Syrian refugees, and suddenly you discover that magic is real, you can use it, and you’re in the middle of a secret magical war for the fate of the world. The game lets you experience today’s social and political upheavals while learning that you can shape reality itself through sheer force of belief. Your actions and choices will have profound consequences on the world and people around you. Safety or sacrifice? Let them in or build the wall? The choice is yours. The game is written by noted Swedish author Karin Tidbeck.''
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Coteries of New York
:A visual novel about a conflict between the Camarilla and the Anarchs. Also based on 5th Edition. General consensus (based on what's written in the Vampire: The Masquerade page) seems to be that its shortcomings (short length, abrupt ending, lack of meaningful choices) keep it from being great.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood
:A stealth/action RPG made by Cyanide Studio. You play as a Fianna fighting against Pentex, either sneaking around as a human, then when the stealth inevitably fucks up you become a werewolf and kill all the guards. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7MRD5nTTbk Here's the most recent trailer.]

====Cancelled====
*Vampire the Masquerade [[MMORPG]]
:Used to be in the works of CCP, the studio that made [[EVE Online]], but it was canceled in 2014. This is probably for the best as it was going to be based on CCP's engine for EVE's "walking in stations" feature which had a habit of melting GPUs.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse
:A brawler for the Sega Saturn made by Capcom. Got canceled around the same time White Wolf stopped printing their [[Street Fighter]] RPG books. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogyeHh0htKM All that remains is this prototype.]
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of Gaia
:Another canceled oWoD game, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYmiwbO5icc 27 minutes of it have been salvaged.]

====Upcoming====
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2
:Fifteen years after the last game, the cult classic is getting a sequel. Mostly based on VtM 5th Edition, little is known about the gameplay and story at this point. What ''is'' known is that the game will take place in Seattle, where a bunch of vampires descend on Pioneer Square and Embrace a whole bunch of people, turning them into Thin-Bloods (one of whom being the player-character). This means you won't have any disciplines at first and be restricted to the handful of powers Thin-Bloods got in V5 (as opposed to prior editions where they got crap-all), though the devs have said that you will eventually pick your Clan and gain the relevant disciplines and whatnot. Exactly ''how'' you gain a clan within the narrative has been the source of much speculation, but the current favorite theory is some form of diablerie. As of early 2021, Paradox Interactive canned the dev, canceled future preorders, and put the game on indefinite hold. Don't hold your breath on a release anytime soon.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodhunt
:Standard third person multiplayer last man standing battle royale game set in Prague. Has an excuse plot involving a war between anarchs + Camarilla with a human vampire hunter organization shrinking the playable area with some kind of anti-vampire gas. In early access as of Sep 2021.
*Vampire: The Masquerade — Night Road
:A text adventure of all things. You're a courier delivering messages and supplies between other vampires in the American Southwest.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Out For Blood
:Another text adventure, though rather than playing as a vampire, this time you're a vampire hunter.
*Vampire: The Masquerade — Parliament of Knives
:One more text adventure. The Prince of Ottawa is missing and your sire sends you to find him.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Shadows of New York
:An upcoming stand-alone expansion to Coteries of New York. You play as a Lasombra investigating the death of the Anarch leader.
*Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong
:Yet another newly announced Vampire game. It's going to be a 'social' RPG where you control three different vampires working for the Camarilla investigating a massacre at a Kindred gathering in Boston. From the devs of 'The Council '.
*Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest
:A, you guessed it, text adventure centering on a girl trekking through the forests of Poland to research her ancestry. Spoilers: they're Werewolves. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOVT5romi-I Here's the announcement trailer.]
*Wraith: The Oblivion - Afterlife
:A VR game where you get to play as a new wraith, a photographer killed during a seance in a VERY haunted Hollywood mansion. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjzK8WZRzYI Here's the announcement trailer.]

== See Also ==
* [http://www.worldofdarkness.com/ World of Darkness website]
* [https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page World of Darkness wiki]
* [http://www.unmodchat.com/ Unmoderated WoD Chat]
* [https://darkcitygame.com/ Dark City World of Darkness game]
* [http://mrgone.rocksolidshells.com/ Mister Gone's Character Sheets]
* [[NWoD/Character Sheet | Template for a nWoD Character Sheet on 1d4chan]]
* [https://youtu.be/0h1U-_JFAS8 An intro from Ogre Poppenang's SpeakerD, Writer of] ''[[Hunter: The Parenting]]''

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[[File:Modern_city_dubai.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The future is [almost] now!]]
{{topquote|In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.|Alan Moore's Watchmen}}

{{topquote|IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.|Death, [[Discworld|Thief of Time]]}}

You are here.

After the end of most communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had [[Skub|finally ended, taken a new form or gone underground depending on who you ask]].

==The New Cold War==
{{topquote|History repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.|Karl Marx}}

After the collapse of the USSR in the 90s, the general feeling in the West and the rest was one of semi-cautious optimism. At long last liberal democracy and capitalism had won the day, the ˝evil empire˝ was gone, and we have reached the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama, things were on the up swing it seemed as the USA was left as the only true superpower in the world.

However, this merry period was not to last long, after the 90s which are now ironically seen as somewhat of the last hurrah before the increasing shitstorm of the following century the USA got a series of rude surprises. First was the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks which saw the first significant attack on American soil by foreign combatants in a century, and a grimly spectacular one at that with close to 3,000 people killed, 25,000 wounded, to say nothing of the damage to infrastructure and collective American psyche. This directly led to America embroiling itself in a series of wars in the Middle East that soon turned into quagmires with no clear winner, with many parallels being drawn to Vietnam. Seven years later the Great Recession of 2008/9 rolled around to further mess up the first decade of M3.

While this was going on and with America's attention arguably focused elsewhere, Russia and China were slowly growing in power and prominence. China was gradually thundering on ever since the late 90s, slowly surpassing Japan after the latter crashed and burned in 1991. By becoming the next ˝workshop of the world˝ China managed to accrue immense global economic influence and achieve economic growth that was nothing short of meteoric. Russia meanwhile was going through their own Age of Strife as the former USSR splintered into a dozen independent republics with all the economic and social turmoil that entails (exacerbated even worse by the rise of a new class of oligarchs hell-bent on plundering it for all it was worth), the ˝˝Russian 90s˝ still evoke fear and horror as young Russians were desperate to get into the universities of all things in order to avoid the poverty of everyday life or the military where one could get gang-raped among other things, all while the total lack of support from the West reminded a lot of Russians about why exactly they had opposed the US in the first place. Russia's GDP fell by more than 3/5ths between 1991 and 1998 and it would take until 2004 for it to recover to soviet levels. This all changed with Vladimir Putin, who managed to pull the country out of the gutter and started to build up its power again. All the while even though Communism had fallen in Russia Authoritarianism persisted under the new banner.

Arguably, the first signs that something was not quite right came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the still ongoing war in Ukraine, something that was considered impossible in the prior decade ([[Lulz|and ended 207-year-old Swiss neutrality]]). Additionally, while the Arab Spring saw the fall of many dictators from Libya to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria the Assad dynasty managed to not only hold its own but push back the "moderate Islamists"(mainly Sunni Arabs who want to kill/rob/rape Shi'ites), ISIS/ISIL (Salafists trying to bring back the Islamic caliphates of old), and people who just don't want to be ruled by a despot, with no small amount of help from Russia (though this holding out is probably going the way of the dodo courtesy of Turkey due to dramatic developments in 2022). China meanwhile was acting far more subtly in exerting its geopolitical influence, making huge loans to other countries and its corporations branching out into all sorts of sectors in Africa, Australia and Asia all the while partnering up with Russia in a general though not overtly belligerent counter-western stance.

The sum of all of this is that as of the third decade of M3 the world is no longer unipolar with USA having to contend with resurgent Russia</ and China, whose imperial ambitions are seemingly once again stirring. While the three powers are not directly inimical to one another, they each are trying to exert their geopolitical interests and being less and less obliged to ask the USA for an opinion.

Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo was likely locked in as of February 2022 with the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict into a full scale war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While we won't elaborate on details due to contemporary news being the most [[Skub]]by part of history, the responses afterwards seem to have drawn a line. One thing we have to note however, is the abysmal Russian performance (especially in logistics) with stories ranging from leadership incompetence in the field, difficulty coordinating waves of untrained recruits and even more humiliating logistical mistakes such as entire armored companies grinding to a halt outside invasion points because they ran out of fuel. Completely overturning wargaming with regards to post-Soviet competence (verdict: quite lackluster for a former superpower) and also demonstrating the horrific effectiveness of guided missiles used on both sides and especially drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone. Not to mention the fucktons of NATO equipment being poured into Ukraine giving the country a true fighting chance against its bigger neighbor through a far superior military supply line. Based on available information current Russian victories are appear to be achieved through a combination of overwhelming force on key cities and targets with coordinated artillery/air-strikes with armored tank assaults' along with good old fashioned overwhelming numbers, <s>Nevermind that most of these troops are minorities from poor and rural regions.</s> While moderately effective it is a highly inefficient strategy especially with the Ukrainians far more effective use of strategic missile strikes and less wasteful offensive tactics being bolstered by tremendous material support from Europe, accomplishing in days what took the Russians months to do. This has led to reports of poor morale from Russian conscripts and even field commanders. For the moment, this has made any future hot war essentially suicidal without overwhelming numbers if enemy smart weapons aren't disabled first while reminding everyone just how important supply lines and morale are in any warfare (along with actually having a legitimate long-term plan to begin with). [[Conan the Barbarian|After all, what is steel compared to the hand that wields it?]]

On another note more than a few political and Military scientists have opinioned that this conflict may yet give insight on how major powers will have to counter modern tactics and capabilities. As open conflict with relatively first world nations has been quite rare in recent decades. Advances in the disabling of drone and guided missile technology will likely be a major point of interest for global powers, along with satellite recon and signal jamming. And has opened the door to new leaders in the field arms supply in the future (Germany in particular has stepped up its game on military expenditure not seen in generations in response to renewed Russian aggression). Along with the emboldening of other powers such as China. The lines in a future cold war may well start to draw themselves in the near future.

It should be noted that people have been yelling about Cold War II for the past 20+ years, and the term itself is controversial among political scientists and government officials. The former because they don't think we're there yet, the latter because it would inflame tensions with other countries. Leaving aside the significant differing details.

== Other Regions ==

=== Asia ===
While China's rise has been commented on, it was not the only East Asian country to see a considerable change in fortune at the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have all emerged as prominent players on the world economy, with a rapid rise in standards of living and economic influence (though increasing political interference from China has negatively affected Taiwan). This has led to a rising China that until fairly recently was seen as a reliable trade partner with the United States. This started due widespread distrust of China over its handling of [[Nurgle|Covid-19]] - exacerbated by China being the origin point of the virus. Accusations on China's cultural genocide on the Uyghurs akin to the lost generations on the Australian Aborigines also soured perceptions from the West leading calls for 'decoupling'. The results of this has been....a mixed-bag. Whilst news of Apple trying to relocate to India has been making rounds. The reality on the ground is that trade deficits has only ''increased'' after the Pandemic and FDI have recovered somewhat, suggesting that the old principle of "Money Walks Bullshit Talks" is ''very much still in play here''. Nevertheless, the opposite ironically, rings true, as Beijing has been accelerating domestic chip and microprocessor production and increasing bilateral relations with ASEAN making Beijing less dependent on Western imports in the long term. Another interesting thing was that Xi removed the term limits for the Presidency. Whether this means he is trying to pull a Putin is unknown. Although given that he still needs to play fancy with the Party Elders and put the other cliques in line suggests that his power is overrated.

Speaking of ASEAN, Southeast Asia is stuck in a increasingly awkward relationship between China and the US. The age-old challenge of balancing US security relationship with Chinese economic relationship has reared its ugly head. Whilst for now, ASEAN Centrality is providing some measure of stability, the rise of Chinese naval power in contrast to declining US capability means that in the long term, Washington's ability to commit its forces on both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia is becoming suspect given the reality of imperial overstretch. This constant long term worry alongside neglect from the Trump administration had already has an effect to some members. Brunei, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are already in the 'China camp'. Even 'neutrals' such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia has been warming up towards Beijing despite ongoing disputes in the South China Sea. With Jakarta, US admonishment on the 2019 West Papua riots, the AUKUS announcement, the increasing toxicity of US domestic politics and increasing hostile rhetoric on the Taiwan Strait has made Indonesian authorities to trust China more than the US. Beijing in turn, is willing to capitalise on this given Indonesia's geostrategic position and large population. Even traditional US-friendly members such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been pretty careful in playing both sides. China has also recently warmed up the ideas and principles of ASEAN, so a positive is that the region is unlikely to see a repeat of Ukraine and Russia at the very least.

Notably, India has emerged as a major player on the world scene, particularly with food exports and the service sector (particular in the wake of growing issues with China). Not to mention they are an excellent rest stop for ships taking goods to and from the EU to China, and vice versa. However, the looming effects of climate change impacting South Asia (disruption of weathering, water loss crisis, environmental refugees, heavy chemical processing pollution fucking up the Ganges etc. in a subcontinent that is roughly 70% agricultural) as well as geopolitical threats (Pakistan and China) mean that India's future situation is likely to worsen as time goes by. New Delhi is also trying to eat into China's manufacturing market, although how successful India would be is up in the air, given that competition now is ''intense'' and that India's infrastructure is either simply lacking or is a mother of clusterfucks that makes it uncompetitive. If India had successfully tapped in its manufacturing potential during the 1970s where only China was the rival, New Delhi may have a chance. Now? India has to contend with the rise of East Africa, China, South Korea, ASEAN, Bangladesh and Automation, so it will be a tough mountain to climb to stand out given all the nodes of competition.

Afghanistan on the other hand, had finally gotten rid of the United States as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Whilst the US retreat has been an absolute shitshow, this does not mean that the ruling Taliban is celebrating as decades of fighting has made these fighters [[derp|completely inexperience in handling civilian bureaucracy and governing]]. Afghanistan is now in a even more dire straits given the financial sanctions emplaced by Washington. For the Taliban who has turned from terrorist insurgents into the governors themselves, this is an existential threat. So they are trying to find anyone willing to relieve them economically. So far they only got the Chinese and Russians willing to talk to them. Although the Taliban's greatest goal is in international recognition of their rule.

Meanwhile, central Asia is...central Asia. After the US's withdrawal from the country following a 17-year occupation, Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban, leading to a diaspora of refugees from the country and a curtailing of all the liberal policies put in place there by the previous puppet government. In short, it went to shit just as you'd expect. Generally, most of the central Asian countries aren't doing much at the moment, although they are falling into the orbit of China given how unreliable Russia has been recently. There was a whole squabble between Azerbaijan and Armenia over dumbass reasons that would never be a thing to begin with if the Imperial Russian and Soviet regimes weren't literal cunts by stoking ethnic tension. Short version: Azerbaijan has oil, so the EU and America are unlikely to do shit given the whole Putin doing the funny in Ukraine.

Something alarming that some commentators have noticed is that for all Russia does wrong, their military strength and status preserved a type of "Pax Russica" in Central Asia. But since their military has dropped the ball pretty heavily, many central Asian nations might be tempted to revive dumbass ethnic tension and starting to get ideas about purging minorities and killing each other. This destabilization will provide an opportunity for China to further influence central Asia, eroding Russia's power and increasing Beijing's economic and political influence.

=== Europe ===
The biggest trend of Post Cold War Europe has been a push towards greater integration. The process had begun in the 1950s after WWII in which A: hard-line militarized nationalism was not popular [[nazis|for some fairly obvious reasons]] and B: economic cooperation was seen as a better way to achieve and maintain peace and prosperity. Eastern Europe was added to the mix after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The eventual result of which was the European Union. In 1995 the EU introduced the Euro as a Common Currency, which was widely adopted by 1999. Basically the EU exists to make business easier between member states via the 4 freedoms (freedom of movement for people, capital, goods and services), has frameworks for easier cooperation between members and some joint programs like the European Space Agency, some environmental projects and big research initiatives like CERN. Lastly the EU also provides funding for various projects via the Cohesion Fund and the like, enabling smart member states to improve the standard of living along with other benefits for their citizens.

Things however went rough for the EU following the GFC in 2008 as the EU went into the infamous decade-long Eurozone crisis with big EU players like Germany forcing austerity on smaller members, creating a rise in Euroskepticism, with opposition to the EU and pushback by various localist movements. Most notably Brexit which saw a member state leave for the first time ever, with largely negative results for the British Economy and feelings both domestically and abroad...then Russia decided to stick its dick in a blender on February 2022 by creating the largest war in Europe since WW2 by waging a war of conquest on Ukraine. Europe now faces its biggest existential crisis in decades. With the current shitshow going on in the east of the continent several countries have started rearming themselves. This includes Poland, which had a similar history of conflict with Russia and some describe as the next European heavyweight on par with France and Germany, the latter of which also started rearming for the first time in years and allocated a whopping 100 billion euros for the endeavor.

Whilst NATO was revitalized, Europe now faces a daunting prospect of de-industrialization (or at least a shift away from fossil fuels) as Moscow stopped all natural gas and oil flows to the continent whether intentional or unintentional; forcing Brussels to try and keep as much of its industry as possible as European brands started to high-tail it to either the US or China. Nevertheless, despite the humbug with the US over their united front against Russia, increasing American protectionist policy alongside various responses to the Trump administration has made the EU increasingly wary over its reliance and dependence on Washington. Some like Macron have ambitions to make the EU a third 'superpower' pole and it ''may'' be possible....if Brussels manages to hold on, get its shit together and craft its own policies balancing Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Another point of worry is the rise of right wing populist movements which Brussels fears could lead to pseudo-authoritarian countries like Hungary proliferating, that the aforementioned country has been giving Russia interested looks does not help matters either.

Outside of the EU. Possibly the ''weirdest'' event to have occurred is the growing military and economic relations between China and France. Whilst relatively new, France has been engaging with the Chinese the most out of all the Great Powers in Europe. Analyst suspect that this budding relationship might have to do with the disastrous handling of AUKUS which plunged French trust to the Anglosphere to an all-time low. Since 2022 at least, Macron and Xi has been in lock-steps with one another and Beijing has been increasingly warming to the ideas of treating France as ''its'' special strategic partner in Europe. Of course, results are too early to tell and how far that relationship will go is unknown, but the effects are already there with Paris being the major influencer in driving the EU's approach to be more balanced with Beijing.

=== Oceania ===

The 2010s had been a political clusterfuck in the Land Down Under. Over a decade of [[Game of Thrones]]-style political backstabbings has led Australia to transition to ''[[EPIC FAIL|six Prime Ministers]]''. This levels of dysfunctionality has led the degrading of Australia's stature in the Oceania region and the rise of New Zealand being the only adult in the room. To make matters worse for Australia, rampant political lobbying has turned Australia's potential as a leader in renewable energy into a circus filled with coal and fossil fuel executives. Likewise, neglect and outright political corruption from the Australian liberal coalition had led to the worse bushfires in Australia since 2009, leading to over ''1 billion'' Australian animals to perish in the fires. This neglect was not only restricted to the environment, as it also translates to Australia's diplomacy [[fail]]s towards the Pacific Island Nations, as climate change is very much an existential threat for them. But Canberra's [[That Guy|dismissive attitude]] towards them had cost Australia plenty of goodwill in the region. Suffice to say, the new labour administration has a lot of baggage to unfuck Australia's position, and it will take a ''long time'' to rebuild the lost trust with its island neighbours.

=== Africa ===
Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War.
The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, the slave trade, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.

This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men. Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide. This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort. Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies. Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.

That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads. Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).

=== The Americas ===

The initial years of the post-cold war have been swimming for North America/USA as the country was left as the only superpower on the planet (so much so that until about 2010s they could even have been considered a hyperpower - a polity that dominates all other states in every major metric). This period extended from about 1989 until 2001, when USA was hit hard by both the 9/11 terrorist attacks (to say nothing of the blowback from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which collectively became the new Vietnam in terms of both length and unpopularity) and in 2008 the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, the country still remains ridiculously wealthy and powerful and has a military good enough to easily squash any other rising superpowers and probably wage war against two while defending the mainland from a third one at the same time. Still, the country has some serious issues - most notably the increasing wealth-gap and the ideological polarization of society not seen since the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest. Many of these wedge issues are in fact unresolved conflicts and dilemmas from the 1960s such as the incomplete work of the Civil Rights Movement to address the poorer living conditions of the African-American population, and the debate over the role of the United States on the world's stage and whether America needs to be the 'World's Policeman' has reached boiling point. There's also global events like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic (and controversial lockdowns to quarantine people during the pandemic causing serious economic issues). Whilst, the USA seems to be in the best position to weather whatever geopolitical upheavals are coming ''in theory'', concerns still abate on the growing political rifts and quite frankly, ''[[fail|idiocy]]'' on domestic political and economic brinkmanship and what this means to the wider international community. Already, the US Dollar's usage has dramatically declined from a high of 75+% to below 50% for the first time in history. The combination of the GOP putting a gun over the US debt ceiling and the DNC's advocacy for constant increases in US spending was one part of the reasons for the decline. What really kicked off the acceleration was the widespread financial sanctions on Russia over Ukraine which, whilst while strategically justified, spooked the shit out of everyone else as from their point-of-view, the Dollar has suddenly been weaponised and is no longer a neutral arbitrator of financing. Although the Dollar isn't going away anytime soon and is still the most trusted currency in the world, its long term prospect is starting to look dire unless Washington does something to regain the world's confidence in its handling of its currency.

South America meanwhile has been a mixed bag. Aside from not really getting much attention or upheaval except for a few countries, it has enjoyed a relative upswing as industrializing Asian countries developed a need for the raw material exports coming out of S. America. Many nations also begun developing and truly industrializing like Chile or North Mexico though many more remain impoverished and forgotten. Of note venezuela's economy collapsed in part due to their dependency on petrol, embargoes and the far left ideologically minded administration of Maduro.

==Technology==
{{topquote|We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!|Smiling Jack, ''[[Vampire:_The_Masquerade#VtM:_Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines]]''}}


Storytelling, especially settings placed in a contemporary or "modern" era hit a major hurdle in the 90s and especially early 00s as this newfangled thing called "Internet" arose out of a USA government/military project to link computer systems the states and world-over in order to maintain communication after a hypothetical nuclear war. Thing is, once this was released to the general public the network expanded rapidly until it became a new paradigm of human existence, influencing everything from society, politics, economics, the arts, religion - you name it. Story-wise this made any masquerade or hidden "other world" that much more difficult to maintain as now a schmuck who saw that they shouldn't could blurp it out to thousands of other people. Irl-wise the internet revolutionised /tg/ as a community by... enabling /tg/ to exist in the first place by bringing all the isolated groups of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls together weather on 4chan, 1d4chan (shameless plug, suck it) or dozens of other dedicated forums AND enabling them access to mountains of materials for their chosen hobbies.

The mass popularity of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to write a plot that cuts characters off from the outside world. This has forced such plots to be moved further and further from civilization (which fights an uphill battle with ever increasing coverage), into massive disasters where cell phone coverage is disrupted and help won’t be coming anyways, or just straight up adding in supernatural disruption of communications.

The rise of mass CCTV and cellphone cameras of increasingly high quality and the ability to post the works taken with them on social media has made it increasingly implausible to keep a [[Masquerade]] going. The original [[World of Darkness]] just [[Gehenna|ends dramatically in 2004]], the year before YouTube launched. The MCB of [[Monster Hunter International]] has all the resources of most of the worlds governments working together to censor the supernatural, but even then those in charge consider exposure an inevitability. Pretty much any conspiracy will be an open-secret, although it might still be popularly viewed as a conspiracy theory depending on how believable it seems. Paradoxically, in an era of limitless access to knowledge, what knowledge the individual chooses to subscribe to has itself become factionalized, and that can be a tool to uphold a Masquerade in itself. The rise of the "Fake News" paradigm means that a person can be looking at a vampire gouging a throat out of some poor bastard and going "meh" as it must be either CGI or some such, and woe betide any intrepid journalist if they don't have at least a good quality video as anything less will get the "photoshopped!" treatment.

Aside from the media and communications , other technological branches are seeing tentative emergence or applications beyond the lab. As of the New 10s (2010-2019) remotely controlled and autonomous UAVs and RPVs popularized as 'drones' have entered commercial usage alongside with multi-pedal robots able to walk, run and perform simple manual tasks while the militaries around the world are actively using aerial combat drones with land and sea variants in development. On another front virtual reality has become a viable entertainment and educational medium due to miniaturization of screens and processors though it still has ways to go in terms of improvement. Artificial intelligence (or rather a set of very adaptive and heuristic algorithms) are also making splashes with the most visible examples being AI capable of emulating speech to varying degrees and art AI capable of creating truly gorgeous and unique pieces of art, likely eventually giving rise to "Expert-Systems" predicted by many sci-fi works.

After the Information Revolution of the late 90s and early 00s biotech is set to become the next big thing. With the Human Genome project completed in 2003 the rate of tech advancement has lowered the costs of individual genomic sequencing from ~100 million USD in 2001 to around 1000 USD making individual genetic screening viable with a popular commercial application being the identification of one's genetic heritage and disease risk. Later during the 2010s a method for targeted genetic editing in-vivo called CRISPR caused a stir among the scientific community as now scientist could genetically modify organisms at any stage of development, not just before birth.

There also has been an increased awareness of [[Frostpunk|humanity's impact on the climate.]] Co2 emissions, resource depletion and destruction of wilderness are increasingly pressing concerns. With them has come a push - especially from younger generations - towards sustainable development, decarbonization and other efforts to reduce humanity's collective footprint. Solar Panels and Wind Farms have become a lot more common, electric cars have come onto the scene along with a pushback against car dependent development, there is renewed interest in nuclear power (both in terms of small-scale fission reactors and promising developments into nuclear fusion) and coal power has been on the decline, among other things. Of course those who profit from said industries have also been fighting against the response, and there's a real chance that a full shift away from fossil fuels might not happen before the effects of said environmental destruction become irreversible. It might not be enough to end human existence outright, but the projections of how climate change will affect the world suggest that it'll screw over a LOT of people in very nasty ways. In the worst case scenario, we'll be unceremoniously driven back into the Stone Age- and since we used up nearly all the easily acquired ores and other natural resources on Earth the first time around we won't be advancing out of it again if that happens.

Related to the above, the development of alternative energy sources (to fossil fuels) has been advancing at a steady pace and picked up some speed in the 21st century with big gains in solar power which is now seeing full returns on investments in 5-10 years as of the 2020s, making installation for the average Joe more and more viable. Wind and sea power however has entered somewhat of a snag since these energy sources tend to be even more situational than power from the Sun. Aside from green energy, nuclear and hydrogen power have seen some expansion and development with new fission plants being built by a number of nations despite Fukushima and a few nations like Japan, China and EU making headways in developing hydrogen systems. Finally, after over 70 years of research and being "only 30 years away" [[Fallout|we finally achieved nuclear fusion breakthrough at the end of 2022 with a lab based in California]] managing to produce more energy than was required to start the fusion reaction.

If the War in Ukraine is an indicator, things start to devolve a bit, at least on the symmetrical side of modern warfare. Artillery, combined with precision-guided ammo and reconnaissance via drones, again becomes the supreme weapon on the ground, as satellite intelligence and effective communications showcase how important it is for battalions to remain cohesive in the fog of war; that and Missiles and Shells fired with pinpoint accuracy nullify drawbacks of previous incarnations of artillery (such as an incredible volume of firepower required to destroy any given target, the logistical hassle of supplying a gun battery with enough ammo, in itself an art form, and the requirement to have a rough idea where the target you want to hit from 20 km away is without any visual contact on the ground or a live feed of information like drones provide) making them much safer and more cost-efficient than airstrikes or ground assaults as a result. Electronic Warfare will probably become central to any given military operation, as blocking surveillance, radar systems and guidance systems have become ever more important. At it's core, Ukraine and the reignited Karabakh War shows that anyone facing smart weapons with Cold War shit is going to get butchered like sheep. Unmanned systems are the defining 21st century paradigm shift in military science, while battles will mostly be resolved between smaller reconnaissance-in-force detachments seeking out concealed defenders in vague contested zones.

Lastly on the Space front - commercial space endeavors are picking up steam as private companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are seeing wealthy tourists and corpo brass sent to space. Government initiatives are also getting in on the action with Artemis Accords updating the UN Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Program succeeding the Apollo Program with ultimate aim of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and the first test flight managing to get a capsule with dummies around the Moon and back to Earth safely.
China has begun the construction and assembly of it's Tiangong space station which will be their equivalent of the Russian Mir and finally the James Webb telescope launched early in 2021 eclipsed Hubble in both size and capability. Improved launch vehicles mean that the cost of launching payloads into orbit per kilogram has significantly gone down.
Humanity also managed to redirect an asteroid for the first time in history as well, giving the Earth a first workable and proven defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids.
It is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a full fledged Second Space Age and the fulfillment of many of the promises of the last one.

==Society==
{{topquote|The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.|Ralph Peters}}
[[File:WaaghStreet1.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The internet brought alien communities into contact with each other...]]
While technology has generally advanced in fits and bursts along the lines predicted by most sci-fi works (major exceptions being AI, mass genetic engineering, widespread cybernetics and space colonisation), society has become somewhat of a mix between prior trends and predictions made by said sci-fi.

The predictions that the world will become more united and liberal in addition to the waning of nations in favor of corporations or some other modes of society were only partially realized. Globalization has indeed made the planet more interconnected but the onus of international relations still rests on the state. Corporate entities have become more powerful and wealthy but they still cooperate with governments (if not slowly merging with them due to intertwining of corporate and political interests) while in places like China and Russia the corpos are merely another arm of the government altogether.

The trend towards social liberalism has held partially true with the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance and diminishment of racism in some places. Political liberalization has however entered something of a slump with the traditional left in EU and USA being relatively dormant though grassroots left is seeing something of a revival in the 2020s. On the other hand Russia and China have moved more towards autocracy and their increasing strength has presented an uncomfortable alternative to the supposedly singularly viable liberal-democratic order, especially with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe has also seen a resurgence of populist, if not hard-right political parties like the french Front Nationale or German Alternative Fur Deutschland with some countries like Hungary and Poland taking on an increasingly right-y colors. In short - politics be skub as usual.

Politically, it seemed that while the triumphant capitalist-liberal-democratic order was considered the ˝end of history˝, it left many people unfulfilled. Worse, it started showing flaws that were overlooked during the ideological fight against the USSR (hence the Russian joke how 'almost everything we were told about communism was a lie, and almost everything we were told about capitalism was true'). To not get too deep into the [[Skub|political theory]] of the whole thing, suffice it to say that the guy who predicted the triumph of this system (Francis Fukuyama) also noted that the people may get so bored of it that they may intentionally choose to 'restart the wheel of history'.
[[File:WaaghStreet2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|... And the results were hilarious.]]

Speaking of matters of the soul, religion - in an ironic twist, given it's ''the'' institute based around matters of the soul - was put in the crosshairs with a sharp spike in Western secularism and anti-theistic/anti-religious sentiment. Though this hostility had been brewing in niches of academia and media long before, now was when it was thrust onto the mainstream. This was mainly due to acts of religious extremism (most often Islamic ones such as the 9/11), failures of various religious leaders and ideological campaigns magnifying empiricism and subjectivism. A new wave of religious apologetics emerged in response to this with some arguments from both sides better received than others ([[religion|more on the issue here]]). This shift in societal attitude towards religion either coincided with or influenced various other socio-political issues listed above and below.

On a more interpersonal scale, the rise of Internet in general and social media in particular has transformed society to a great degree. The ability to connect with people world over and find hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests has lead to formation of digital communities that can be not only as powerful as the ones irl but sometimes even supersede them to a great degree, for good and ill. This has also made how one behaves online as important if not more so than offline - if you take a dump on a city street at most a few dozen people will see it and forget it in a year without a reminder, if you take a proverbial dump online it has potential to be seen by tens of thousands of people and potentially stay there forever, <s>just look at Chris-chan for example.</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|This heresy shall not be tolerated here!}}

On a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in the late 2019 also had an unintentional effect of forcing vast segments of society to adopt online business and communication models. What this means is that instead of working in a typical cubicle-monkey office one could work from anywhere there was internet - a beach, cafe or a public toilet. While things seem to have calmed down in the latter half of 2022, the ˝work-from-home˝ model is now all but standard for many service jobs, a leap that redefines how a job is perceived before and after the New 10s.

==Conclusion & Mineability==

The Post-Cold war era is a strange one since it directly succeeds a period of history defined by a clear if at times clandestine fight between two superpowers who were politically and ideologically opposed with plenty of history and cultural distinction for each to have it's own strong flavor. A two-pole world collapsed into a unipolar one which is evolving into a multipolar with no clear ideological struggle to really differentiate the sides.

However, this also provides plenty of opportunities to introduce plots and conflicts that are unburdened by vast preset ideologies and factions. Political intrigues between modern state, corporate or even NGO actors, dissolution of countries or formation of new ones upon the collapse of the old order, global terrorism and radicalism, technological, sociological, environmental or neo-ideological struggles and positioning in order to build 'your' faction's or even personal vision of the future!

Admittedly the more exotic genres that lend themselves best to the age are Urban Fantasy, post-apocalyptic scenarios and '20 minutes into the future' science fiction. You can also go down the route of [[Shadowrun|Shadowrun]] and have some sort of event return magic to the world though depending on the intensity, it may radically change the setting into something no longer resembling modern world. There is also a somewhat neglected genre of New Weird/Weirdpunk which allows for a variety of historical settings, including modern ones, while having a potential for being truly unique (for example see such works as the comic Shutter, Dysco Elysium, Persona 4/5, Psychonauts...).

===Impact on /tg/===
/tg/ is, traditionally, a very low tech hobby. Despite this, it still has managed to incorporate some of the new technologies of the era.

One big thing is the rise of e-books. Rather than have a big stack of massive heavy books, you can keep all your books on a small, handy, e-reader. One particular advantage of an electronic book is that the contents can be searched through to quickly get answers to rule questions. The low cost of electronic publishing also means many small groups can easily publish a book and sell it, but this comes at the cost of electronic storefronts being flooded with low effort, poorly written garbage. Electronics also, in theory, lower the need for wasted paper and dice. In practice however, many groups find including any electronics at the table a major distraction and disruptive of play, while many players refuse to trust electronic RNG. Acceptance of computer RNG is actually worse among players into [[Vidya gaems|video games]] due to that medium's documented history of RNG cheating via uneven RNG, poorly randomized number generation, and being easily manipulated. Another issue with electronic books is that [[Wizards of the Coast|some companies]] are Luddites, and refuse to release PDF versions of their books, while others are hamstrung by the IP holder's retarded [[Star Wars|prior licensing agreements]] [[EA|made with the devil]] and legally can’t, or just plain old don't exist anymore and can't do a PDF re-release, but [[Pirate|we have a solution to all those problems]].

Another nifty creation has been 3D printers that can create a variety of objects desired from scratch for cheap. Currently 3d printers are only able to print small, inanimate, plastic things (unless you have a very expensive and large one that can do weak metal) and are a far cry from [[Star Trek|Replicator]] technology everyone panicking about "ghost guns" thinks they are. Fortunately the hobby has substantial use for [[Miniature|small, inanimate, plastic things]]. Eventually there will be a reckoning for the entire minifigure gaming industry over the full implications of 3d printing, but for now the technology still remains a wee bit too bothersome if not expensive for the average user to churn out a thousand point army. However if you have the means and patience to experiment, your imagination is the only limit on what you can do for figure customization.


==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
Do you want something which you could imagine yourself in? Not as some surrogate who was born in a castle or a Victorian slum or in a colony on Alpha Centauri IV or whatever, but '''''You''''' as an individual. Maybe some larger than life events roll through your door to spur you into action from your normal day-by-day routine and possibly you are idealized, but the person who's now running for their life and forced to deal with whatever outlandish thing has come your way is You.

Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on. Their chief foe is a new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS and its branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram). Their goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country to establishing a global caliphate. The current increasingly polarizing culture war can also be used as inspiration for stories regarding insurgents and radicals of any ideological flavor, albeit something where "handle with care" very much applies for risk of coming across as preachy or [[Skub|adding fuel to the fire]].

Other potential foes can be found in the world of technology, serving as fertile ground for near future sci-fi stories. This era is (currently) as close as we can get to cyberpunk, which lends itself well to the genre. The concept of A.I. as threats or the fear of society undergoing a technological collapse can also find inspiration from here, given the Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium. Big-tech companies getting trigger-happy with censorship from the 2010's onwards also lends itself well to references and themes in cyberpunk stories.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting [[Team Yankee|the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers]] against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting. Similarly, the COVID-19 Pandemic can also be used as inspiration for various types of stories regarding pandemics, especially if one wants to up the stakes with things such as a zombie virus.

[[Urban Fantasy]] and [[Supers|Superheroes]] are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different. Specifically in regards to superheroes, note how every two decades or so a gigantic cosmic retcon storm hits and resets the universe by pushing a catalyst point (Superman's arrival and Captain America being pulled out of the ice, simultaneously pushing the births of/major influencing events on characters or reemergence of old powers to the modern world equally long) forward by some years, allowing contemporary stories to be explored without retconning old stories completely, through saying that they happened but no longer matter as big gigantic cosmic event reset the universe, and not indirectly locking new audiences out of continuity by constantly having to read older stuff, allowing anyone to pickup new series issue 1 and read older stuff at leisure.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Blood Knight

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2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Added some fluff will improve page later

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[[File:Blood Knight.jpg|thumb]]

== What is a blood knight? ==

Amongst the variety of [[Slayer|hardened]], [[Swordmasters of Hoeth|skilled]], [[Chaos Champion|powerful]], and [[Stormvermin|vicious]] warriors of the Old World and beyond, few reach the heights of martial prowess and stone-cold determination that is a '''Blood Knight'''. Vampiric knightly warriors, these monstrous cavaliers are paragons of both the depths of strength and evil in the pursuit of more.
[[Abhorash]], [[Walach Harkon]] and his brother, [[Luthor Harkon]] (actually a blood pirate but sometimes he [[pretend|pretends]] to be a knight) are amongst the most famous.

Every blood knight is a vampire not every vampire is a blood knight every blood dragon is a blood knight not every blood knight is a blood dragon. Confused? [[Luthor_Harkon|You should be!]].

After 7e removed the previous Bloodline traits the difference between your average [[Mannfred_von_Carstein|aristocratic do nothing loser]] and a [[Abhorash|blood knight]] became even more hazy as you can kit out Vampire Lords and Vampires with Vampire upgrades that reflect the unique aspects of the bloodlines.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
GW SBGravelordsBloodKnightsmoddles.jpeg
</gallery>

{{Vampire Count Troops}}

Post-Cold War

2023-06-08T04:36:20Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: :^)

{{editwar}}
{{flamewar}}
[[File:Modern_city_dubai.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The future is [almost] now!]]
{{topquote|In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.|Alan Moore's Watchmen}}

{{topquote|IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.|Death, [[Discworld|Thief of Time]]}}

You are here.

After the end of most communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had [[Skub|finally ended, taken a new form or gone underground depending on who you ask]].

==The New Cold War==
{{topquote|History repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.|Karl Marx}}

After the collapse of the USSR in the 90s, the general feeling in the West and the rest was one of semi-cautious optimism. At long last liberal democracy and capitalism had won the day, the ˝evil empire˝ was gone, and we have reached the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama, things were on the up swing it seemed as the USA was left as the only true superpower in the world.

However, this merry period was not to last long, after the 90s which are now ironically seen as somewhat of the last hurrah before the increasing shitstorm of the following century the USA got a series of rude surprises. First was the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks which saw the first significant attack on American soil by foreign combatants in a century, and a grimly spectacular one at that with close to 3,000 people killed, 25,000 wounded, to say nothing of the damage to infrastructure and collective American psyche. This directly led to America embroiling itself in a series of wars in the Middle East that soon turned into quagmires with no clear winner, with many parallels being drawn to Vietnam. Seven years later the Great Recession of 2008/9 rolled around to further mess up the first decade of M3.

While this was going on and with America's attention arguably focused elsewhere, Russia and China were slowly growing in power and prominence. China was gradually thundering on ever since the late 90s, slowly surpassing Japan after the latter crashed and burned in 1991. By becoming the next ˝workshop of the world˝ China managed to accrue immense global economic influence and achieve economic growth that was nothing short of meteoric. Russia meanwhile was going through their own Age of Strife as the former USSR splintered into a dozen independent republics with all the economic and social turmoil that entails (exacerbated even worse by the rise of a new class of oligarchs hell-bent on plundering it for all it was worth), the ˝˝Russian 90s˝ still evoke fear and horror as young Russians were desperate to get into the universities of all things in order to avoid the poverty of everyday life or the military where one could get gang-raped among other things, all while the total lack of support from the West reminded a lot of Russians about why exactly they had opposed the US in the first place. Russia's GDP fell by more than 3/5ths between 1991 and 1998 and it would take until 2004 for it to recover to soviet levels. This all changed with Vladimir Putin, who managed to pull the country out of the gutter and started to build up its power again. All the while even though Communism had fallen in Russia Authoritarianism persisted under the new banner.

Arguably, the first signs that something was not quite right came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the still ongoing war in Ukraine, something that was considered impossible in the prior decade ([[Lulz|and ended 207-year-old Swiss neutrality]]). Additionally, while the Arab Spring saw the fall of many dictators from Libya to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria the Assad dynasty managed to not only hold its own but push back the "moderate Islamists"(mainly Sunni Arabs who want to kill/rob/rape Shi'ites), ISIS/ISIL (Salafists trying to bring back the Islamic caliphates of old), and people who just don't want to be ruled by a despot, with no small amount of help from Russia (though this holding out is probably going the way of the dodo courtesy of Turkey due to dramatic developments in 2022). China meanwhile was acting far more subtly in exerting its geopolitical influence, making huge loans to other countries and its corporations branching out into all sorts of sectors in Africa, Australia and Asia all the while partnering up with Russia in a general though not overtly belligerent counter-western stance.

The sum of all of this is that as of the third decade of M3 the world is no longer unipolar with USA having to contend with resurgent Russia</ and China, whose imperial ambitions are seemingly once again stirring. While the three powers are not directly inimical to one another, they each are trying to exert their geopolitical interests and being less and less obliged to ask the USA for an opinion.

Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo was likely locked in as of February 2022 with the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict into a full scale war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While we won't elaborate on details due to contemporary news being the most [[Skub]]by part of history, the responses afterwards seem to have drawn a line. One thing we have to note however, is the abysmal Russian performance (especially in logistics) with stories ranging from leadership incompetence in the field, difficulty coordinating waves of untrained recruits and even more humiliating logistical mistakes such as entire armored companies grinding to a halt outside invasion points because they ran out of fuel. Completely overturning wargaming with regards to post-Soviet competence (verdict: quite lackluster for a former superpower) and also demonstrating the horrific effectiveness of guided missiles used on both sides and especially drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone. Not to mention the fucktons of NATO equipment being poured into Ukraine giving the country a true fighting chance against its bigger neighbor through a far superior military supply line. Based on available information current Russian victories are appear to be achieved through a combination of overwhelming force on key cities and targets with coordinated artillery/air-strikes with armored tank assaults' along with good old fashioned overwhelming numbers, <s>Nevermind that most of these troops are minorities from poor and rural regions.</s> While moderately effective it is a highly inefficient strategy especially with the Ukrainians far more effective use of strategic missile strikes and less wasteful offensive tactics being bolstered by tremendous material support from Europe, accomplishing in days what took the Russians months to do. This has led to reports of poor morale from Russian conscripts and even field commanders. For the moment, this has made any future hot war essentially suicidal without overwhelming numbers if enemy smart weapons aren't disabled first while reminding everyone just how important supply lines and morale are in any warfare (along with actually having a legitimate long-term plan to begin with). [[Conan the Barbarian|After all, what is steel compared to the hand that wields it?]]

On another note more than a few political and Military scientists have opinioned that this conflict may yet give insight on how major powers will have to counter modern tactics and capabilities. As open conflict with relatively first world nations has been quite rare in recent decades. Advances in the disabling of drone and guided missile technology will likely be a major point of interest for global powers, along with satellite recon and signal jamming. And has opened the door to new leaders in the field arms supply in the future (Germany in particular has stepped up its game on military expenditure not seen in generations in response to renewed Russian aggression). Along with the emboldening of other powers such as China. The lines in a future cold war may well start to draw themselves in the near future.

It should be noted that people have been yelling about Cold War II for the past 20+ years, and the term itself is controversial among political scientists and government officials. The former because they don't think we're there yet, the latter because it would inflame tensions with other countries. Leaving aside the significant differing details.

== Other Regions ==

=== Asia ===
While China's rise has been commented on, it was not the only East Asian country to see a considerable change in fortune at the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have all emerged as prominent players on the world economy, with a rapid rise in standards of living and economic influence (though increasing political interference from China has negatively affected Taiwan). This has led to a rising China that until fairly recently was seen as a reliable trade partner with the United States. This started due widespread distrust of China over its handling of [[Nurgle|Covid-19]] - exacerbated by China being the origin point of the virus. Accusations on China's cultural genocide on the Uyghurs akin to the lost generations on the Australian Aborigines also soured perceptions from the West leading calls for 'decoupling'. The results of this has been....a mixed-bag. Whilst news of Apple trying to relocate to India has been making rounds. The reality on the ground is that trade deficits has only ''increased'' after the Pandemic and FDI have recovered somewhat, suggesting that the old principle of "Money Walks Bullshit Talks" is ''very much still in play here''. Nevertheless, the opposite ironically, rings true, as Beijing has been accelerating domestic chip and microprocessor production and increasing bilateral relations with ASEAN making Beijing less dependent on Western imports in the long term. Another interesting thing was that Xi removed the term limits for the Presidency. Whether this means he is trying to pull a Putin is unknown. Although given that he still needs to play fancy with the Party Elders and put the other cliques in line suggests that his power is overrated.

Speaking of ASEAN, Southeast Asia is stuck in a increasingly awkward relationship between China and the US. The age-old challenge of balancing US security relationship with Chinese economic relationship has reared its ugly head. Whilst for now, ASEAN Centrality is providing some measure of stability, the rise of Chinese naval power in contrast to declining US capability means that in the long term, Washington's ability to commit its forces on both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia is becoming suspect given the reality of imperial overstretch. This constant long term worry alongside neglect from the Trump administration had already has an effect to some members. Brunei, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are already in the 'China camp'. Even 'neutrals' such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia has been warming up towards Beijing despite ongoing disputes in the South China Sea. With Jakarta, US admonishment on the 2019 West Papua riots, the AUKUS announcement, the increasing toxicity of US domestic politics and increasing hostile rhetoric on the Taiwan Strait has made Indonesian authorities to trust China more than the US. Beijing in turn, is willing to capitalise on this given Indonesia's geostrategic position and large population. Even traditional US-friendly members such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been pretty careful in playing both sides. China has also recently warmed up the ideas and principles of ASEAN, so a positive is that the region is unlikely to see a repeat of Ukraine and Russia at the very least.

Notably, India has emerged as a major player on the world scene, particularly with food exports and the service sector (particular in the wake of growing issues with China). Not to mention they are an excellent rest stop for ships taking goods to and from the EU to China, and vice versa. However, the looming effects of climate change impacting South Asia (disruption of weathering, water loss crisis, environmental refugees, heavy chemical processing pollution fucking up the Ganges etc. in a subcontinent that is roughly 70% agricultural) as well as geopolitical threats (Pakistan and China) mean that India's future situation is likely to worsen as time goes by. New Delhi is also trying to eat into China's manufacturing market, although how successful India would be is up in the air, given that competition now is ''intense'' and that India's infrastructure is either simply lacking or is a mother of clusterfucks that makes it uncompetitive. If India had successfully tapped in its manufacturing potential during the 1970s where only China was the rival, New Delhi may have a chance. Now? India has to contend with the rise of East Africa, China, South Korea, ASEAN, Bangladesh and Automation, so it will be a tough mountain to climb to stand out given all the nodes of competition.

Afghanistan on the other hand, had finally gotten rid of the United States as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Whilst the US retreat has been an absolute shitshow, this does not mean that the ruling Taliban is celebrating as decades of fighting has made these fighters [[derp|completely inexperience in handling civilian bureaucracy and governing]]. Afghanistan is now in a even more dire straits given the financial sanctions emplaced by Washington. For the Taliban who has turned from terrorist insurgents into the governors themselves, this is an existential threat. So they are trying to find anyone willing to relieve them economically. So far they only got the Chinese and Russians willing to talk to them. Although the Taliban's greatest goal is in international recognition of their rule.

Meanwhile, central Asia is...central Asia. After the US's withdrawal from the country following a 17-year occupation, Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban, leading to a diaspora of refugees from the country and a curtailing of all the liberal policies put in place there by the previous puppet government. In short, it went to shit just as you'd expect. Generally, most of the central Asian countries aren't doing much at the moment, although they are falling into the orbit of China given how unreliable Russia has been recently. There was a whole squabble between Azerbaijan and Armenia over dumbass reasons that would never be a thing to begin with if the Imperial Russian and Soviet regimes weren't literal cunts by stoking ethnic tension. Short version: Azerbaijan has oil, so the EU and America are unlikely to do shit given the whole Putin doing the funny in Ukraine.

Something alarming that some commentators have noticed is that for all Russia does wrong, their military strength and status preserved a type of "Pax Russica" in Central Asia. But since their military has dropped the ball pretty heavily, many central Asian nations might be tempted to revive dumbass ethnic tension and starting to get ideas about purging minorities and killing each other. This destabilization will provide an opportunity for China to further influence central Asia, eroding Russia's power and increasing Beijing's economic and political influence.

=== Europe ===
The biggest trend of Post Cold War Europe has been a push towards greater integration. The process had begun in the 1950s after WWII in which A: hard-line militarized nationalism was not popular [[nazis|for some fairly obvious reasons]] and B: economic cooperation was seen as a better way to achieve and maintain peace and prosperity. Eastern Europe was added to the mix after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The eventual result of which was the European Union. In 1995 the EU introduced the Euro as a Common Currency, which was widely adopted by 1999. Basically the EU exists to make business easier between member states via the 4 freedoms (freedom of movement for people, capital, goods and services), has frameworks for easier cooperation between members and some joint programs like the European Space Agency, some environmental projects and big research initiatives like CERN. Lastly the EU also provides funding for various projects via the Cohesion Fund and the like, enabling smart member states to improve the standard of living along with other benefits for their citizens.

Things however went rough for the EU following the GFC in 2008 as the EU went into the infamous decade-long Eurozone crisis with big EU players like Germany forcing austerity on smaller members, creating a rise in Euroskepticism, with opposition to the EU and pushback by various localist movements. Most notably Brexit which saw a member state leave for the first time ever, with mixed results and feelings both domestically and abroad...then Russia decided to stick its dick in a blender on February 2022 by creating the largest war in Europe since WW2 by waging a war of conquest on Ukraine. Europe now faces its biggest existential crisis in decades. With the current shitshow going on in the east of the continent several countries have started rearming themselves. This includes Poland, which had a similar history of conflict with Russia and some describe as the next European heavyweight on par with France and Germany, the latter of which also started rearming for the first time in years and allocated a whopping 100 billion euros for the endeavor.

Whilst NATO was revitalized, Europe now faces a daunting prospect of de-industrialization (or at least a shift away from fossil fuels) as Moscow stopped all natural gas and oil flows to the continent whether intentional or unintentional; forcing Brussels to try and keep as much of its industry as possible as European brands started to high-tail it to either the US or China. Nevertheless, despite the humbug with the US over their united front against Russia, increasing American protectionist policy alongside various responses to the Trump administration has made the EU increasingly wary over its reliance and dependence on Washington. Some like Macron have ambitions to make the EU a third 'superpower' pole and it ''may'' be possible....if Brussels manages to hold on, get its shit together and craft its own policies balancing Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Another point of worry is the rise of populist movements which Brussels fears could lead to pseudo-authoritarian countries like Hungary proliferating, that the aforementioned country has been giving Russia interested looks does not help matters either.

With the enforcement of article 13 restrictions of freedom of speech in europe have become widely embraced by government authorities with the excuse of copyright defense and counter terrorism.

Outside of the EU. Possibly the ''weirdest'' event to have occurred is the growing military and economic relations between China and France. Whilst relatively new, France has been engaging with the Chinese the most out of all the Great Powers in Europe. Analyst suspect that this budding relationship might have to do with the disastrous handling of AUKUS which plunged French trust to the Anglosphere to an all-time low. Since 2022 at least, Macron and Xi has been in lock-steps with one another and Beijing has been increasingly warming to the ideas of treating France as ''its'' special strategic partner in Europe. Of course, results are too early to tell and how far that relationship will go is unknown, but the effects are already there with Paris being the major influencer in driving the EU's approach to be more balanced with Beijing.

=== Oceania ===

The 2010s had been a political clusterfuck in the Land Down Under. Over a decade of [[Game of Thrones]]-style political backstabbings has led Australia to transition to ''[[EPIC FAIL|six Prime Ministers]]''. This levels of dysfunctionality has led the degrading of Australia's stature in the Oceania region and the rise of New Zealand being the only adult in the room. To make matters worse for Australia, rampant political lobbying has turned Australia's potential as a leader in renewable energy into a circus filled with coal and fossil fuel executives. Likewise, neglect and outright political corruption from the Australian liberal coalition had led to the worse bushfires in Australia since 2009, leading to over ''1 billion'' Australian animals to perish in the fires. This neglect was not only restricted to the environment, as it also translates to Australia's diplomacy [[fail]]s towards the Pacific Island Nations, as climate change is very much an existential threat for them. But Canberra's [[That Guy|dismissive attitude]] towards them had cost Australia plenty of goodwill in the region. Suffice to say, the new labour administration has a lot of baggage to unfuck Australia's position, and it will take a ''long time'' to rebuild the lost trust with its island neighbours.

=== Africa ===
Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War.
The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.

This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men. Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide. This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort. Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies. Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.

That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads. Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).

=== The Americas ===

The initial years of the post-cold war have been swimming for North America/USA as the country was left as the only superpower on the planet (so much so that until about 2010s they could even have been considered a hyperpower - a polity that dominates all other states in every major metric). This period extended from about 1989 until 2001, when USA was hit hard by both the 9/11 terrorist attacks (to say nothing of the blowback from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which collectively became the new Vietnam in terms of both length and unpopularity) and in 2008 the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, the country still remains ridiculously wealthy and powerful and has a military good enough to easily squash any other rising superpowers and probably wage war against two while defending the mainland from a third one at the same time. Still, the country has some serious issues - most notably the increasing wealth-gap and the ideological polarization of society not seen since the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest. Many of these wedge issues are in fact unresolved conflicts and dilemmas from the 1960s such as the incomplete work of the Civil Rights Movement to address the poorer living conditions of the African-American population, and the debate over the role of the United States on the world's stage and whether America needs to be the 'World's Policeman' has reached boiling point. There's also global events like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic (and controversial lockdowns to quarantine people during the pandemic causing serious economic issues). Whilst, the USA seems to be in the best position to weather whatever geopolitical upheavals are coming ''in theory'', concerns still abate on the growing political rifts and quite frankly, ''[[fail|idiocy]]'' on domestic political and economic brinkmanship and what this means to the wider international community. Already, the US Dollar's usage has dramatically declined from a high of 75+% to below 50% for the first time in history. The combination of the GOP putting a gun over the US debt ceiling and the DNC's advocacy for constant increases in US spending was one part of the reasons for the decline. What really kicked off the acceleration was the widespread financial sanctions on Russia over Ukraine which, whilst while strategically justified, spooked the shit out of everyone else as from their point-of-view, the Dollar has suddenly been weaponised and is no longer a neutral arbitrator of financing. Although the Dollar isn't going away anytime soon and is still the most trusted currency in the world, its long term prospect is starting to look dire unless Washington does something to regain the world's confidence in its handling of its currency.

South America meanwhile has been a mixed bag. Aside from not really getting much attention or upheaval except for a few countries, it has enjoyed a relative upswing as industrializing Asian countries developed a need for the raw material exports coming out of S. America. Many nations also begun developing and truly industrializing like Chile or North Mexico though many more remain impoverished and forgotten. Of note venezuela's economy collapsed in part due to their dependency on petrol, embargoes and the far left ideologically minded administration of Maduro.

==Technology==
{{topquote|We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!|Smiling Jack, ''[[Vampire:_The_Masquerade#VtM:_Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines]]''}}


Storytelling, especially settings placed in a contemporary or "modern" era hit a major hurdle in the 90s and especially early 00s as this newfangled thing called "Internet" arose out of a USA government/military project to link computer systems the states and world-over in order to maintain communication after a hypothetical nuclear war. Thing is, once this was released to the general public the network expanded rapidly until it became a new paradigm of human existence, influencing everything from society, politics, economics, the arts, religion - you name it. Story-wise this made any masquerade or hidden "other world" that much more difficult to maintain as now a schmuck who saw that they shouldn't could blurp it out to thousands of other people. Irl-wise the internet revolutionised /tg/ as a community by... enabling /tg/ to exist in the first place by bringing all the isolated groups of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls together weather on 4chan, 1d4chan (shameless plug, suck it) or dozens of other dedicated forums AND enabling them access to mountains of materials for their chosen hobbies.

The mass popularity of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to write a plot that cuts characters off from the outside world. This has forced such plots to be moved further and further from civilization (which fights an uphill battle with ever increasing coverage), into massive disasters where cell phone coverage is disrupted and help won’t be coming anyways, or just straight up adding in supernatural disruption of communications.

The rise of mass CCTV and cellphone cameras of increasingly high quality and the ability to post the works taken with them on social media has made it increasingly implausible to keep a [[Masquerade]] going. The original [[World of Darkness]] just [[Gehenna|ends dramatically in 2004]], the year before YouTube launched. The MCB of [[Monster Hunter International]] has all the resources of most of the worlds governments working together to censor the supernatural, but even then those in charge consider exposure an inevitability. Pretty much any conspiracy will be an open-secret, although it might still be popularly viewed as a conspiracy theory depending on how believable it seems. Paradoxically, in an era of limitless access to knowledge, what knowledge the individual chooses to subscribe to has itself become factionalized, and that can be a tool to uphold a Masquerade in itself. The rise of the "Fake News" paradigm means that a person can be looking at a vampire gouging a throat out of some poor bastard and going "meh" as it must be either CGI or some such, and woe betide any intrepid journalist if they don't have at least a good quality video as anything less will get the "photoshopped!" treatment.

Aside from the media and communications , other technological branches are seeing tentative emergence or applications beyond the lab. As of the New 10s (2010-2019) remotely controlled and autonomous UAVs and RPVs popularized as 'drones' have entered commercial usage alongside with multi-pedal robots able to walk, run and perform simple manual tasks while the militaries around the world are actively using aerial combat drones with land and sea variants in development. On another front virtual reality has become a viable entertainment and educational medium due to miniaturization of screens and processors though it still has ways to go in terms of improvement. Artificial intelligence (or rather a set of very adaptive and heuristic algorithms) are also making splashes with the most visible examples being AI capable of emulating speech to varying degrees and art AI capable of creating truly gorgeous and unique pieces of art, likely eventually giving rise to "Expert-Systems" predicted by many sci-fi works.

After the Information Revolution of the late 90s and early 00s biotech is set to become the next big thing. With the Human Genome project completed in 2003 the rate of tech advancement has lowered the costs of individual genomic sequencing from ~100 million USD in 2001 to around 1000 USD making individual genetic screening viable with a popular commercial application being the identification of one's genetic heritage and disease risk. Later during the 2010s a method for targeted genetic editing in-vivo called CRISPR caused a stir among the scientific community as now scientist could genetically modify organisms at any stage of development, not just before birth.

There also has been an increased awareness of [[Frostpunk|humanity's impact on the climate.]] Co2 emissions, resource depletion and destruction of wilderness are increasingly pressing concerns. With them has come a push - especially from younger generations - towards sustainable development, decarbonization and other efforts to reduce humanity's collective footprint. Solar Panels and Wind Farms have become a lot more common, electric cars have come onto the scene along with a pushback against car dependent development, there is renewed interest in nuclear power (both in terms of small-scale fission reactors and promising developments into nuclear fusion) and coal power has been on the decline, among other things. Of course those who profit from said industries have also been fighting against the response, and there's a real chance that a full shift away from fossil fuels might not happen before the effects of said environmental destruction become irreversible. It might not be enough to end human existence outright, but the projections of how climate change will affect the world suggest that it'll screw over a LOT of people in very nasty ways. In the worst case scenario, we'll be unceremoniously driven back into the Stone Age- and since we used up nearly all the easily acquired ores and other natural resources on Earth the first time around we won't be advancing out of it again if that happens.

Related to the above, the development of alternative energy sources (to fossil fuels) has been advancing at a steady pace and picked up some speed in the 21st century with big gains in solar power which is now seeing full returns on investments in 5-10 years as of the 2020s, making installation for the average Joe more and more viable. Wind and sea power however has entered somewhat of a snag since these energy sources tend to be even more situational than power from the Sun. Aside from green energy, nuclear and hydrogen power have seen some expansion and development with new fission plants being built by a number of nations despite Fukushima and a few nations like Japan, China and EU making headways in developing hydrogen systems. Finally, after over 70 years of research and being "only 30 years away" [[Fallout|we finally achieved nuclear fusion breakthrough at the end of 2022 with a lab based in California]] managing to produce more energy than was required to start the fusion reaction.

If the War in Ukraine is an indicator, things start to devolve a bit, at least on the symmetrical side of modern warfare. Artillery, combined with precision-guided ammo and reconnaissance via drones, again becomes the supreme weapon on the ground, as satellite intelligence and effective communications showcase how important it is for battalions to remain cohesive in the fog of war; that and Missiles and Shells fired with pinpoint accuracy nullify drawbacks of previous incarnations of artillery (such as an incredible volume of firepower required to destroy any given target, the logistical hassle of supplying a gun battery with enough ammo, in itself an art form, and the requirement to have a rough idea where the target you want to hit from 20 km away is without any visual contact on the ground or a live feed of information like drones provide) making them much safer and more cost-efficient than airstrikes or ground assaults as a result. Electronic Warfare will probably become central to any given military operation, as blocking surveillance, radar systems and guidance systems have become ever more important. At it's core, Ukraine and the reignited Karabakh War shows that anyone facing smart weapons with Cold War shit is going to get butchered like sheep. Unmanned systems are the defining 21st century paradigm shift in military science, while battles will mostly be resolved between smaller reconnaissance-in-force detachments seeking out concealed defenders in vague contested zones.

Lastly on the Space front - commercial space endeavors are picking up steam as private companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are seeing wealthy tourists and corpo brass sent to space. Government initiatives are also getting in on the action with Artemis Accords updating the UN Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Program succeeding the Apollo Program with ultimate aim of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and the first test flight managing to get a capsule with dummies around the Moon and back to Earth safely.
China has begun the construction and assembly of it's Tiangong space station which will be their equivalent of the Russian Mir and finally the James Webb telescope launched early in 2021 eclipsed Hubble in both size and capability. Improved launch vehicles mean that the cost of launching payloads into orbit per kilogram has significantly gone down.
Humanity also managed to redirect an asteroid for the first time in history as well, giving the Earth a first workable and proven defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids.
It is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a full fledged Second Space Age and the fulfillment of many of the promises of the last one.

==Society==
{{topquote|The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.|Ralph Peters}}
[[File:WaaghStreet1.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The internet brought alien communities into contact with each other...]]
While technology has generally advanced in fits and bursts along the lines predicted by most sci-fi works (major exceptions being AI, mass genetic engineering, widespread cybernetics and space colonisation), society has become somewhat of a mix between prior trends and predictions made by said sci-fi.

The predictions that the world will become more united and liberal in addition to the waning of nations in favor of corporations or some other modes of society were only partially realized. Globalization has indeed made the planet more interconnected but the onus of international relations still rests on the state. Corporate entities have become more powerful and wealthy but they still cooperate with governments (if not slowly merging with them due to intertwining of corporate and political interests) while in places like China and Russia the corpos are merely another arm of the government altogether.

The trend towards social liberalism has held partially true with the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance and diminishment of racism in some places. Political liberalization has however entered something of a slump with the traditional left in EU and USA being relatively dormant though grassroots left is seeing something of a revival in the 2020s. On the other hand Russia and China have moved more towards autocracy and their increasing strength has presented an uncomfortable alternative to the supposedly singularly viable liberal-democratic order, especially with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe has also seen a resurgence of populist, if not hard-right political parties like the french Front Nationale or German Alternative Fur Deutschland with some countries like Hungary and Poland taking on an increasingly right-y colors. In short - politics be skub as usual.

Politically, it seemed that while the triumphant capitalist-liberal-democratic order was considered the ˝end of history˝, it left many people unfulfilled. Worse, it started showing flaws that were overlooked during the ideological fight against the USSR (hence the Russian joke how 'almost everything we were told about communism was a lie, and almost everything we were told about capitalism was true'). To not get too deep into the [[Skub|political theory]] of the whole thing, suffice it to say that the guy who predicted the triumph of this system (Francis Fukuyama) also noted that the people may get so bored of it that they may intentionally choose to 'restart the wheel of history'.
[[File:WaaghStreet2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|... And the results were hilarious.]]

Speaking of matters of the soul, religion - in an ironic twist, given it's ''the'' institute based around matters of the soul - was put in the crosshairs with a sharp spike in Western secularism and anti-theistic/anti-religious sentiment. Though this hostility had been brewing in niches of academia and media long before, now was when it was thrust onto the mainstream. This was mainly due to acts of religious extremism (most often Islamic ones such as the 9/11), failures of various religious leaders and ideological campaigns magnifying empiricism and subjectivism. A new wave of religious apologetics emerged in response to this with some arguments from both sides better received than others ([[religion|more on the issue here]]). This shift in societal attitude towards religion either coincided with or influenced various other socio-political issues listed above and below.

On a more interpersonal scale, the rise of Internet in general and social media in particular has transformed society to a great degree. The ability to connect with people world over and find hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests has lead to formation of digital communities that can be not only as powerful as the ones irl but sometimes even supersede them to a great degree, for good and ill. This has also made how one behaves online as important if not more so than offline - if you take a dump on a city street at most a few dozen people will see it and forget it in a year without a reminder, if you take a proverbial dump online it has potential to be seen by tens of thousands of people and potentially stay there forever, <s>just look at Chris-chan for example.</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|This heresy shall not be tolerated here!}}

On a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in the late 2019 also had an unintentional effect of forcing vast segments of society to adopt online business and communication models. What this means is that instead of working in a typical cubicle-monkey office one could work from anywhere there was internet - a beach, cafe or a public toilet. While things seem to have calmed down in the latter half of 2022, the ˝work-from-home˝ model is now all but standard for many service jobs, a leap that redefines how a job is perceived before and after the New 10s.

==Conclusion & Mineability==

The Post-Cold war era is a strange one since it directly succeeds a period of history defined by a clear if at times clandestine fight between two superpowers who were politically and ideologically opposed with plenty of history and cultural distinction for each to have it's own strong flavor. A two-pole world collapsed into a unipolar one which is evolving into a multipolar with no clear ideological struggle to really differentiate the sides.

However, this also provides plenty of opportunities to introduce plots and conflicts that are unburdened by vast preset ideologies and factions. Political intrigues between modern state, corporate or even NGO actors, dissolution of countries or formation of new ones upon the collapse of the old order, global terrorism and radicalism, technological, sociological, environmental or neo-ideological struggles and positioning in order to build 'your' faction's or even personal vision of the future!

Admittedly the more exotic genres that lend themselves best to the age are Urban Fantasy, post-apocalyptic scenarios and '20 minutes into the future' science fiction. You can also go down the route of [[Shadowrun|Shadowrun]] and have some sort of event return magic to the world though depending on the intensity, it may radically change the setting into something no longer resembling modern world. There is also a somewhat neglected genre of New Weird/Weirdpunk which allows for a variety of historical settings, including modern ones, while having a potential for being truly unique (for example see such works as the comic Shutter, Dysco Elysium, Persona 4/5, Psychonauts...).

===Impact on /tg/===
/tg/ is, traditionally, a very low tech hobby. Despite this, it still has managed to incorporate some of the new technologies of the era.

One big thing is the rise of e-books. Rather than have a big stack of massive heavy books, you can keep all your books on a small, handy, e-reader. One particular advantage of an electronic book is that the contents can be searched through to quickly get answers to rule questions. The low cost of electronic publishing also means many small groups can easily publish a book and sell it, but this comes at the cost of electronic storefronts being flooded with low effort, poorly written garbage. Electronics also, in theory, lower the need for wasted paper and dice. In practice however, many groups find including any electronics at the table a major distraction and disruptive of play, while many players refuse to trust electronic RNG. Acceptance of computer RNG is actually worse among players into [[Vidya gaems|video games]] due to that medium's documented history of RNG cheating via uneven RNG, poorly randomized number generation, and being easily manipulated. Another issue with electronic books is that [[Wizards of the Coast|some companies]] are Luddites, and refuse to release PDF versions of their books, while others are hamstrung by the IP holder's retarded [[Star Wars|prior licensing agreements]] [[EA|made with the devil]] and legally can’t, or just plain old don't exist anymore and can't do a PDF re-release, but [[Pirate|we have a solution to all those problems]].

Another nifty creation has been 3D printers that can create a variety of objects desired from scratch for cheap. Currently 3d printers are only able to print small, inanimate, plastic things (unless you have a very expensive and large one that can do weak metal) and are a far cry from [[Star Trek|Replicator]] technology everyone panicking about "ghost guns" thinks they are. Fortunately the hobby has substantial use for [[Miniature|small, inanimate, plastic things]]. Eventually there will be a reckoning for the entire minifigure gaming industry over the full implications of 3d printing, but for now the technology still remains a wee bit too bothersome if not expensive for the average user to churn out a thousand point army. However if you have the means and patience to experiment, your imagination is the only limit on what you can do for figure customization.


==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
Do you want something which you could imagine yourself in? Not as some surrogate who was born in a castle or a Victorian slum or in a colony on Alpha Centauri IV or whatever, but '''''You''''' as an individual. Maybe some larger than life events roll through your door to spur you into action from your normal day-by-day routine and possibly you are idealized, but the person who's now running for their life and forced to deal with whatever outlandish thing has come your way is You.

Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on. Their chief foe is a new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS and its branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram). Their goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country to establishing a global caliphate. The current increasingly polarizing culture war can also be used as inspiration for stories regarding insurgents and radicals of any ideological flavor, albeit something where "handle with care" very much applies for risk of coming across as preachy or [[Skub|adding fuel to the fire]].

Other potential foes can be found in the world of technology, serving as fertile ground for near future sci-fi stories. This era is (currently) as close as we can get to cyberpunk, which lends itself well to the genre. The concept of A.I. as threats or the fear of society undergoing a technological collapse can also find inspiration from here, given the Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium. Big-tech companies getting trigger-happy with censorship from the 2010's onwards also lends itself well to references and themes in cyberpunk stories.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting [[Team Yankee|the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers]] against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting. Similarly, the COVID-19 Pandemic can also be used as inspiration for various types of stories regarding pandemics, especially if one wants to up the stakes with things such as a zombie virus.

[[Urban Fantasy]] and [[Supers|Superheroes]] are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different. Specifically in regards to superheroes, note how every two decades or so a gigantic cosmic retcon storm hits and resets the universe by pushing a catalyst point (Superman's arrival and Captain America being pulled out of the ice, simultaneously pushing the births of/major influencing events on characters or reemergence of old powers to the modern world equally long) forward by some years, allowing contemporary stories to be explored without retconning old stories completely, through saying that they happened but no longer matter as big gigantic cosmic event reset the universe, and not indirectly locking new audiences out of continuity by constantly having to read older stuff, allowing anyone to pickup new series issue 1 and read older stuff at leisure.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]

Knight

2023-06-08T04:35:06Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Link to page with atleast a little text on blood knights

[[Image:NormansKnight.jpg|right|thumb|Medieval Europe's equivelent of Hell's Angels]]
''Not to be confused with the [[Imperial Knight|miniature Imperial Titan.]].''

{{topquote|The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost maidenlike, guest in a hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth. The man who combines both characters – the knight – is not a work of nature but of art; of that art which has human beings, instead of canvas or marble, for its medium.|[[C. S. Lewis]]}}

{{topquote|I tell you there is not so much savor in eating or drinking or sleeping, as when I hear them scream, “There they are! Let’s get them!” on both sides, and I hear riderless horses in the shadows, neighing, and I hear them scream, “Help! Help!” and I see them fall among the ditches, little men and great men on the grass, and I see fixed in the flanks of the corpses stumps of lances with silken streamers.|[[Bretonnia|Bertran de Born]], Occitan knight and troubadour}}
''

The '''"knight"''' [[Monty Python|(pronounced 'Kuh-niggit' for you Frenchies with outrageous accents)]] is a title given to a loyal servant of a [[monarchy]] in olden Europe. To start your knightly lineage, you must be valuable enough to your lord that he eventually bestows knighthood upon you. Once that is done, you are officially part of your kingdom's [[noble|nobility]] (albeit at the near bottom of the ladder, but you're leagues better off than the common folk) and any children you bear will also be knights, who will then continue your proud lineage throughout the ages.

The etymology comes from ''Cniht'' / ''Knecht'' among Saxons in England and Saxony - a house servant. But if you were serving a lord, he might lend you a horse thus making you a ''rādcniht''. Meanwhile in the post-Latin parts of the post-[[Roman Empire|Rome]], the [[cavalier]] was still riding around the estates of post-Gaul. As with the Equestrian class in the Roman Republic, they had to own the land and resources to ''keep'' a horse - and in Dark Age Western Europe, that meant signing on to some feudal lord. So the Venn between "knight" and "cavalier" was a slightly blurry single circle.

The knight started becoming the chivalrous, romantic daredevils we all know and love by the 12th, due to the influence of Christianity and Islam throughout Europe, and to a lot of romantic bullshit from the Languedoc troubadours. They are usually rich-enough blokes that knight families typically owned at least one estate that they may develop as they see fit.

These guys were the greatest thing in Europe's arsenal for nearly a thousand years before being weakened by Swiss pike formations, [[firearm|another Chinese import]], and the idea of a professional and standardized standing army which gradually put an end to the age of knights. Then, in the 19th century and after the French revolution, Romanticists who wanted to defend the old order of things against upstart ideas about "democracy" and suchlike began looking to the past with rose-coloured glasses and forgot about the shitty quality of that period and instead saw dashing knights in shining armor (a phrase that originally meant "the new guy who has never been through battle").

==Misconceptions==
In modern parlance, Knight is the catch-all term for some posh bloke who fought on horseback with decent armour and weapons. It was the case for some time, but the term 'Knight' has started to refer to the ''social rank'' of the man, not the way he fought, around the XIIth century. 'Chivalry' does refer to horsemanship, however.

Most armored guys on the battlefield of High and Late Medieval period (usually carrying shield, non rusted armor and a decent weapon) were [[Men at Arms]] -- a better equipped class of soldier. Through patronage of a wealthy lord, large groups of these blokes were kitted out with decent weaponry and armour (to varying degrees). They sometimes had a horse if there weren't enough cavalry; otherwise they were just a better equipped form of infantry. They were usually of better social standing than their comrades serving in a Lord's (or Knight's) armies as meat shields and arrow fodder (conscripted peasant), although that itself would vary: from men who their overlord might socialise with to a degree, to a better-off commoner like a merchant who simply bought better armor than the smelly peasants, or just some smelly oik with an aptitude for combat who was kitted out at his Lordship's expense.

Since most Knights were fairly wealthy, they nearly always fought as Men at Arms (being that they could afford decent plate armor, an arsenal of weapons, and a war horse, on their own), though not all Men at Arms were Knights. It is also worth noting that Men at Arms usually were poorer equipped than Knights, and often received little to no training which usually lasted between a fortnight and a month. Knights, however, were trained from the age of six and this training lasted until their mentor deemed them ready to be a full knight (that age varied, but generally was around 17-18 years; Edward the Black Prince, for example, was granted full knighthood in 16 years). They also had the option and means of having their own armor and weapons specially made/procured for them. Additionally, any non-noble who was able to attain knighthood though exemplary military service would have been a warrior few could equal.

Knight's tournaments were NOTHING like how we picture them through Hollywood; they were not leisurely affairs of organised jousting with the King's retinue and nobles looking on. Jousting itself was regarded as a sideshow compared to the main attraction of a tourney - the ''melee'', which was in many respects a mock battle, designed to keep knights practiced in combat (hopefully) without actually killing anyone and an attractive prospect for many young knights to rise in stature through winning the tourneys. Two sides of knights would meet in the tourney ground (usually a massive area encompassing the length between ''two towns'') and clash in brutal hand-to-hand combat with the aim of securing opposing knights for ransom (that were subject to the regular rules of war).

It is also worth noting that some Knights did not fight at all, being too sickly, too old when war broke out, or simply too scared. Due to this, some knights engaged in civilian leadership roles, rather than military ones.

==The Modern Take==
In our current times the misconceptions mentioned above have created a stereotype in the general public's mind of what it means to be a knight: an owner of land and a castle, wearing that ridiculous heavy armour on top of a mighty horse and being the upmost example of honour, valour and nobility. As stated in the opening paragraphs. This is because during the Victorian and Enlightenment eras, commoners started revolting against them. Around 18th and 19th centuries. The upper classes in Europe began romanticizing the dark ages, knights in particular, in poems and stories until what it originally is now buried under a mound of half-truths and plot twisting. In order to justify ruling over their former peasants and to make themselves feel better. TLDR look up the French Revolution.

Consider that tricky part of the tale of King Arthur: his dad Uther Pendragon wants to have it off with the lady Igraine, who is married to his enemy Gorlois. So, using circumstances and Merlin's magics, Uther takes on the identity of her husband, has his way with her, and then nine months down the line Arthur is born, an illegitimate child. This is left out of many tales except those seriously referencing the old poems as it is not the heroic source of the once and future king that many would expect (in later legend there is emphasis that Gorlois conveniently dies in battle before the conception occurs, therefore changing the fluff of the legend in Uther's favor. A predecessor to Matt Ward, it looks like).

Many still use knights as a standard for human warriors of chivalry going out and slaying various beasts and saving various maidens (most fantasy settings, RPGs and MMORPGs use knights as a class type, some renaming to <s>make them sound more original</s> rip off D&D like 'Paladin' or 'Crusader').

===Why Knights deserved (and still do deserve) the hate===
*Most Knights were a medieval version of [[That Guy]].
*Knights were legally not allowed to be killed in battle. While ransomed by the enemy they would be entitled to food, women and booze.
*They asked the Pope to ban crossbows (and other "missile projectiles") because they were pussies and didn't want to accept the fact that a lucky peasant can royally murder them before they got close. This failed because it was impossible to enforce and unlike today one nation couldn't punish another for doing something they don't like without large military formations. Branding the enemy heretics means shit if they have better weapons than your own.
*They could kill peasants/serfs and get away with it (at least their own serfs; killing the servants of another knight without their permission is frowned upon).
*These assholes only had to work three months per year.
*They could even literally dodge military service by bribing the king instead. So yes, we have a thug that is legally not entitled to be killed, could abuse people with no repercussions and taxed the peasants extra because he could send THEM to battle, a.k.a the Landlord. By 21st century we now know that conscription makes for inferior recruits.
*The general incompetence in the way the Crusades were carried out-- general infighting between various warbands with national rivalries broke out, then murdering and raping Slavs, Poles and Byzantines while they were getting their asses kicked by Muslims and the [[Mongols]] from the East.
**The Mongols did their jobs of driving out the Muslims for them. The Crusading Knights who ran away stole all the credit.
**Instead of going home and letting the Eastern Roman Empire(aka Byzantine Empire) administrate the territory they actually did retake (due to the Byzantine army being crippled by the Turks at Manzikert due to inter-dynasty infighting), these assholes set up their own principalities between the Empire and Jerusalem. During the 4th Crusade, Knights (already ticked off at how the Byzantine populace revolted and massacred Italian merchants in the capital city <s>they were arrogant and were rich due to controlling all the banking like the Jewish people back in Western Europe</s>) led the campaign under orders from Pope Innocent III that ransacked Constantinople once they backed a coup but learned the Emperor didn't have any money to pay for their services. Set up their own empire to get their asses kicked by the "Greeks" a half century later who restored it for a short time. These wars made the eastern empire permanently crippled and easily taken over by the Ottomans. The Crusades also gave Muslims the inroads to take control of Spain for centuries.
*Knights were expensive. Lords could arm several archers and infantrymen for half the price. Knights however, were theoretically the smartest bunches he could summon, as they were trained since birth to be elite soldiers. However without real standardization (unlike modern army recruits), it's hit-or-miss if the training was actually worth a damn or if it even worked in their theater of battle.
*Training wasn't really that practical in the first place. The reason why training of modern soldiers is standardized is so that when brought together they can all function as one unit regardless of origins. Giving each knights' house carte blanche on military training means your army's effectiveness is the equivalent of playing darts blindfolded. While there were Knight Orders that could work together in unison, those groups were rare.
*Only rich kids could become Knights and you had to be part of the nobility in the first place.
*Chivalry only applied when they wanted it to or was only required among [[Templar|specific (usually religious) groups]].
*[[/pol/|Some idiots want to bring them back]], despite the fact that horses are harder to get, guns exist and will get them shot in the face by anyone with a 9mm handgun. Unlike modern wargear medieval armor is not rated against and will perform poorly against bullets, shrapnel and crossbows, etc. Even if it was brought up to spec using modern materials, modern body armor made of polymer, ceramic plates, and synthetic fibers can stop just about everything medieval armor can and more, at a fraction of the cost and weight and minus the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spall glaring downsides].

===Why being a Knight sucked===
*Jousting was pay to win (going back to Knights being [[That Guy]]). Ever play a video game and a new item update releases with cool new weapons and armor? It might have took you days or a week just to get one of them. Then comes this guy with all that new gear stomping you with little skill on their part. Jousting was like that. If a Knight was rich enough he could buy a specialized set of jousting armor that made it impossible to unhorse him. Poorer Knights had to make do with their battle armor, which was designed for movement rather than not falling off a walking glue container.
*Knights had to buy their own equipment, as unlike modern military forces the feudal cheapskates in charge wouldn't foot the bill. If they didn't have a high enough status or weren't buddies with the armorer, there would be a chance of their weapons and armor being of questionable quality and forged by an apprentice instead. This meant that lower ranked Knights may have went into battle with the dark age equivalent of a school science project, regardless of how professional it might look on the surface.
*Your lord can ban you from using a better gear, in the case of poleaxes these were at times seen as a status symbol and were forbidden to use for the men at arms or noble in name only unlanded knights. Basically if your boss was [[That_Guy| that guy]]. He could purposefully underequip you due to a dumb fashion trend.
*Becoming a Knight meant that you had to be hit in the face with a gauntlet. Made out of metal. So you could end up talking like a European Little Nicky if the guy knighting you was a big enough jerk. For obvious reasons, this was eventually replaced with the more traditional tapping of your shoulders with a sword.
*As a [[Squire]] you had a high chance of being [[rape|raped]] by the man training you, more so if you weren't a noble of high rank. Alongside that there was also the risk of being beaten constantly for failing to live up to his overly high standards.
*Because of how the nobility works, there's a decent chance you're inbred and your to-be wife chosen by arranged marriage will be closely related to you by blood (genetic diversity tends to suffer under eugenics). What's that? You don't want to marry and fuck your sister(?)? Too bad, we need an heir, do it or be disgraced.
*Crossbows, Firearms and (better trained) mercenary pikemen ruined your day. Some guys who took a vacation in the Far East came back with pretty cool stuff that kills you in an instant regardless of all that fancy gear you got. Luckily for you their weapon takes forever to reload, making a well timed charge or a sneak attack on him seem like a really good idea. Unfortunately that other guy also has a pistol, maybe even two. Worse, he is likely a German mercenary with a Flamberge, whose sword breaks your own in half. ''Then'' he shoots you with one of his handguns.
**Granted a good enough Knight could become a decent rifleman/gunslinger in his own right, but by that time the utility of your original station was pretty much over.
*The Feudalist system was pretty much the mafia of the Middle Ages. You piss off the wrong person above your rank or if they want what you have (land, wife, daughter, livestock, even just your peasants), you and your family could be stripped of your land and titles, either by other Knights, from a siege via cannons, or condemnation as a heretic and burning at the stake, with your assets divided up and even your family given to other nobility or The Church up to the Vatican itself. The fact that the Mafia arose in Sicily a short time before the Renaissance is more than enough evidence of how bad Feudalism was.
**[[Templar|STILL successful? Still powerful? Pope loves you? Act according to conscience instead of urges? Oh wait, you are now tortured to confess to bullshit charges of worshipping wooden Mohammad heads (Baphomet lul) and burned at the stake for your monies.]]
*Some angry peasant spits on you, or another noble sneezes in your direction. You are now dying of the bubonic plague.
**Or you could get Tuberculosis instead. Or both. Hell, you could just die because of the abysmal hygiene and sanitation standards of the time.
***[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Crh26yTqdqk The doctors of the era knew shit all about these things].

==Fantasy Knights in a Nutshell==
If you are a chivalrous knight in a modern fantasy setting, your usual duties will include:

* Quest Taking: from killing a dragon to driving the moles out of the fields of farmers, anything that troubles the people you must take care of. It doesn't have to be you directly, though. If the task is too unworthy for your stature, but still needs fixing, sending your apprentice or hiring other people to do it in your stead also works.
* Monster killing: a category of its own (although often a Quest as well). There are various nasty critters around and in ye olde times you would serve as a pest exterminator for hire. The bigger and badder the monster you slay, the more famous you are with the kingdom.
* Damsel rescuing: even if she is married (or you are), you could get a kiss, a handkerchief, and hopefully [[Profit|a hefty reward]] for giving her a hand.
* Helping out your king: at times you'll be called on to help your king or lord and hook up with a bunch of your knightly mates to rout some naughty foreigners giving the kingdom trouble.
* Wench pulling: you keep an entire industry of busty women in business with the profits from your questing.
* Looking impressive: your armor and weapons aren't just your tools but also your icons. It gives the peasants something nice to gawk at are and often symbols of your deeds and character. Many knights are recognized simply by their gear (i.e: Excalibur for King Arthur).
* Example setting: along with looking good, you have to practice being good to and showing everyone how to be a goody-two-shoes. From escorting ladies to putting your cloak out across a puddle, from saying hello to Ted the stable boy to upholding your kingdom's faith and smiting any heretic who dares besmirch your god, being a choir boy is a 24/7 job. This is also the reason why Knights are typically [[Paladin]] equivalents in fantasy.
** If you should fall short in your chivalry, it usually suffices to take on a particularly challenging and meaningful quest to restore your honor. If there's one thing peasants like better than tales of upstanding knights, it's tales of knights who stumble and get back up again (or die trying).
** The flip side of upholding the code of chivalry is enforcing the code against oath-breakers. Knights who completely ''forsake'' their vows are especially harmful to your profession's reputation, so be vigilant for rumors of 'black knights' and the like.
* Training a [[squire]]: Building up a knight household is a ton of work, and if you died without a legitimate heir to your name, all your hard work over the decades would have been for naught. So, you had to train a successor who will carry your knight household throughout the ages. Train them well and don't just treat them as a glorified servant, as that little buttmuncher will be the one who'll be representing your legacy once you're gone, and you don't want your house to be remembered for that dastard who became the unbearable shame throughout the land.
*Impractical Chivalry: In [[Isekai|some fantasy settings]] there are examples of knights who will refuse to fight enemies with lesser quality equipment, never use deceitful tactics in combat, stop in the middle of a fight to have a conversation with their enemy, and [[lolwut|some even refuse to kill at all]].
*Unusual Armor: In fantasy settings there are authors and designers who sometimes [[Fantasy_Armor|pick aesthetics over function]] some armors are not armor at all leaving various open areas to stab at, others go to the complete opposite direction and make the knight carry [[pauldrons|anvil sized pauldrons]] on his shoulders.

Many fantasy settings are less sexist than the actual middle ages and female knights are far more common than they were in the middle ages.

==Real Knights in a Nutshell==
* Bureaucrat: in most areas of Europe, barons were the main land holding class and baronies roughly analogous to large townships (the modern word county coming from the slightly higher rank of count). Knights owed allegiance to barons and generally served as their officers of government, from constable to tax collector. A knight's fee (the quantity of land to sustain a knight) was roughly a couple thousand acres, and the typical barony consisting of roughly a dozen fees. Since a family could reasonably tend a few dozen acres (acre being an amount of land one man with one ox could reasonably plow in a day), this basically means a knight was responsible for a few hundred homes.
* Officer: you owe service to your lord. If they call on you to fight, you have to. In this regard knights were analogous to lieutenants or sergeants. Being men at arms, knights were expected to know how to fight, how to lead and teach others to fight. If they were particularly good fighters they might be used more like champions and vanguards, while the less martially able would still be expected to be capable of organizing and leading some men. In medieval Europe, the basic formation was the "lance", roughly equivalent to a squad, consisting of a knight and his retinue (perhaps a dozen men). Lances were organized into companies, captained by a noble (typically a baron or count). Lances wouldn't necessary take the field intact; for field warfare, knights would assemble as cavalry and their retainers would form the body of infantry. As the medieval wars dragged on, the concept of lances broke down and it became more normal for nobles to outfit and lead companies of their area's local men with consistent equipment and some once-a-month training (bowmen of Dumbhollow, Shitcreek company of pike, etc), which would be the norm until wars started waging so far away that kings and governments needed armies that were liable for service anywhere, not just in their area.
* Politician: you're part of the elite which means you have to spend an infuriating amount of time jockeying for influence or just protecting your current position. If you don't play ball by engaging with the rest of the aristocracy and maintaining your status, you'll find yourself in disfavor. If you're not seen as pious enough, the church will start hectoring you with the same effect.
* Mercenary: You fight for neighboring kingdoms in search for gold to pay for your needs but most importantly land to eventually claim as your own even after you claim a county or barony your descendants are not fully guaranteed to inherit the land. One example in history with many mercenaries is the taifa state period of the reconquista. Knights turned mercenary were common as the christian realms were not truly unified yet and the caliphate had collapsed into rump states meaning mercenaries would fight for various lords in attempts to become landed nobles.

== Old-School D&D ==
Both 1st edition [[Dungeons & Dragons]] and [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]] 2e featured the knightly archetype in their options. For 1e, [[Gary Gygax]] himself created the [[Cavalier]] in an issue of [[Dragon Magazine]] as a variant [[Paladin]]. It... didn't work out so well. For 2e, the knightly motif was conveyed by certain [[Kits]], predominantly for the Warrior class-group, with the most obvious version being, again, the Cavalier.

The Cavalier is not held up very highly by most [[Grognard]]s, for reasons explained on its page.

==D&D 3.5==
Third Edition's version of the Knight was introduced in ''Player's Handbook II'' and [http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20060501a&page=2 released for free as part of the book's preview]. They have a high base attack bonus and roll D12s for HP. Their abilities are purely related to taking hits and forcing a single target to hit them, similar in concept to a 4E tank class, but with significantly less versatility in terms of providing damage output, boosting allies or disrupting the flow of the fight to suit his party. Probably one of the weaker classes as too much of its abilities are focused on being a punching bag of HP instead of an actual tank that is hard to hurt and lacks the ability to fuck things over, if you're familiar with how Marking a target works in 4E, its based off this guy, but at least in 4E you have penalties other than the -2 to hit to control your opponent. Like paladins this class has a code of conduct. Unlike paladins, the consequences of breaking this code of conduct last a day tops (directly anyways, who knows what larger setbacks it might result in). The code of conduct consists of what they consider a "fair play". Part of the code of conduct is not dealing lethal damage to helpless foes. By the way, some creatures are immune to non-lethal damage.

Knight is [[Tier System|tier 5]]. Their one task, tanking, is theoretically useful but they aren't that good at it and simply unable to try against most threats. Outside that they aren't very useful.

'''TL;DR''' A bunch of Hit Points that prototyped the tank class mechanics of 4E that lacks any choice beyond taking it in the gut. Avoid and just refluff a paladin as an atheist.

{{D&D3-Classes}}
{{D&D3e-Variant Classes}}

==D&D 4e==
The knight was introduced in "Heroes of the Fallen Lands", the first of the two Essentials splatbooks for [[Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition]]. Flavorwise, knights are protection-focused warriors, champions who lead village militias, caravan guards and adventuring parties, favoring the use of heavy armor, hand weapon and shield to endure attacks as hold foes in place as the rest of their party closes in for the kill. Many knights belong to benevolent military orders, and whilst they are not [[paladin]]s proper, they are still respected for their dedication to good (or at least martial perfection).

Mechanically, the knight is a "simplified" take on the 4e [[Fighter]], this Martial Defender (with some Leader aspects) abandoned the [[AEDU System]] to something closer to an old-school fighter. Instead of the traditional front-loaded approach to class-features, the 4e knight gains different features at different levels. Instead of using the martial exploits system, it uses a combination of heroic-tier Utility powers and at-will stances, which modify the effects of its basic attacks. This formula would be reused for the [[Slayer]], introduced in the same book.

A knight's core power is Defender Aura, an at-will utility used to mark foes, which goes in tandem with its Battle Guardian at-will attack to punish marked foes that try to slip past it. Its other level 1 features are Weapon Talent (+1 to your attack rolls with weapons), Shield Finesse as a bonus feat, access to two of the knight stances, and its only Encounter attack, Power Strike. It gains Improved Power Strike (use Power Strike 2/encounter) at level 3, Combat Readiness (+2 Initiative) at level 4, and Weapon Mastery (+1 damage with weapon attacks) at level 5. At level 7 it gains both an extra knight stance and one of the two Weapon Specializations, which adds a rider to its Power Strike attack; Bladed Step for heavy blades and Staggering Hammer for hammers. At level 8, it gains the utility power Shield Block, and at level 9 its Improved Combat Readiness feature boosts its initiative bonus to +4.

At level 11, it gains Stalwart Assault (Add Con bonus to Speed and melee weapon damage rolls in the first turn in an encounter), Stalwart Action (when you spend an action point, gain Resist 10 to all damage until the end of your next turn), and another Improved Power Strike (Power Strike 3/encounter). At level 12, it gains Greater Weapon Specialization, which gives it either the Shielding Blade or Bludgeoning Counterstrike utilities, ''another'' Improved Power Strike (4/encounter) at level 13, Paragon Weapon Mastery (+2 to all weapon attack rolls) at level 15, Armor of Conviction (gain Resist 5 to all damage while bloodied) and the Bolstering Strike utility at level 16, another new knight stance at level 17, Devoted Knight (using your second wind or total defense creates an aura 1 until the end of your next turn that grants your allies +2 to all defenses) at level 19, and Tactical Focus (you can slide a target you hit with Power Strike by +1 square) at level 20.

In the epic tier, it gains the Knight's Valor utility power at level 22, the Relentless Knight feature (can spend +1 healing surge when you use second wind) at level 23, Epic Weapon Mastery (+3 to all weapon attack rolls) at level 25, and finally Spirit of War (you can make a save to end an ongoing effect at both the start and end of your turns) at level 29.

It gains a chosen Utility Power at levels 2, 6 and 10.

General opinion is that it's a pretty badly handled class. It's strong at the Heroic Tier, but quickly falls behind the [[AEDU System]] classes from epic tier onwards, as its stance-modified basic attacks just don't cut it anymore.

{{D&D4-Classes}}

==[[Pathfinder]] - The Cavalier==
Paizo has added traditional knights/men-at-arms to the Pathfinder roleplaying game, as the [[Cavalier]] class. They're a lot like Paladins without the magic. They differentiate themselves from the ''other'' melee classes in two major important ways: mounts and orders.

==D&D 5e==
Since knightly orders are a big thing in [[Forgotten Realms]], the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide for [[Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition]] features two class variants with a knightly theme.

The Banneret (or Purple Dragon Knight, in-universe) is a [[Fighter]] martial archetype revolving around the concept of an elite and noble warrior whose skill allows them to inspire others to greatness in battle. It gets a bunch of class features reminiscent of 4e's [[Warlord]], like healing allies when the fighter uses their Second Wind, triggering an ally to attack when you use Action Surge, and the ability to extend Indomitable to your allies.

The Oath of the Crown for [[Paladin]]s, meanwhile, specifically represents the blur between knight and paladin, with a focus on lawfulness, order, and the sanctity of civilization in contrast to the paladin's general focus on doing good. It has features that let it serve as a mighty champion, and spells that tap into its spiritual authority, mostly enchantments like Command and Geas.

That not enough for you? Not only did we get a [[Cavalier]] subclass for the Fighter in the Kits of Old unearthed arcana, November 2016 gave us a full-fledged Knight subclass, which is essentially an even tankier version of the Cavalier. It can mount and dismount for only 5 feet of movement cost, has advantage on saves against falling off, always lands on its feet if it does fall off (providing it's no higher up than 10 feet and isn't incapacitated), has what is essentially the Fighter's Marking ability from 4e, a bonus skill with a "knightly" theme, the ability to make an attack as a reaction to an enemy moving within 5 feet that stops them moving if it hits, the ability to trade combat advantage for a bonus attack, gains a free opportunity attack each round, and gains +1 AC when wearing Heavy Armor.

{{D&D5-Classes}}

==Warhammer==

'''Warhammer Fantasy'''

On average most nations in the old world have arrived into the early renaissance and have an understanding of the uses of gunpowder even so [[Knightly_Orders_of_the_Empire|knights still exist]] the knightly orders of [[Tilea]], [[Estalia]], & [[Empire|The Empire]] have adjusted to this change through combined arms strategies as represented in their use of [[Dogs_of_War|mercenaries]] and [[Men_at_Arms|infantrymen]] to supplement their ranks. The knightly traditions of the empire along with their mercenary allies take much inspiration from the written word of human military leaders like [[Myrmidia]] and [[Sigmar]] along with advice from the [[Dwarfs_(Warhammer_Fantasy)|dwarf ancestors.]]

[[Brettonia|Brettonian knights]] however along with their darker counterparts the [[Blood_Knight|Blood knights]] are still wholly focused on medieval style cavalry charges seeing the methods of warfare used by other nations as dishonorable. The knightly traditions of the brettonians are inspired by their own heroic legends along with the discovery of [[High_Elves_(Warhammer_Fantasy)| the depictions of elven knights found in the ruins they settled]].

==See also==
*[[Bretonnia]]: A nation in [[Warhammer Fantasy]] based around these fuckers.
*[[Samurai]]: The Eastern version.

[[category:history]][[category:Pathfinder]]

Monopoly

2023-06-08T04:28:50Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Great way to make your friends hate you.

{{American}}
{{Fail}}
[[Image:Monotonylogo.gif|center]]

{{Topquote|"Another case of Monopoly related violence, chief." "How do those Parker brothers sleep at night?" |The Springfield police, commenting on the [[rage|typical results of a regular Monopoly session]]}}

'''It fucking sucks.''' While it may suck a bag of dog shit, it is (after [[Chess]] and [[Go]]) the most popular tabletop game ever made. Go figure.

'''Monopoly''' was originally an adaptation of an obscure game known as "The Landlord's Game," which was intended by its designer, Elizabeth Magie, to be an educational tool to illustrate the negative aspects of concentrating land in private monopolies, and explain the benefits of the single tax theory of Henry George. However, since "The Landlord's Game" was made by a woman who was also a Quaker, nobody gave a shit, which was why Charles Darrow was able to modify the original game and sell it off as [[Original character, do not steal|his own original creation]]. Also, he chopped out half of the game, namely, the [[#The Lost Rules|second half]] where everyone loses all their money and an Important Lesson is learned about capitalism. Which is why it sucks. Imagine if ''40k'' didn't have a turn limit, and you just played until the opponent was tabled, and both of you got two free units every turn. (Isn't that just [[Apocalypse]] though?)

As an historical aside, Mr. Monopoly is an amalgam of William Randolph Hearst (the newspaper billionaire who owned most of Congress and started a war) and Samuel Insull (the fellow who monetized electricity).

==How to play Monopoly==
# Go around for 3 hours
# Land on Boardwalk with someone else's hotel on it
# Flip the board
# ????
# [[Profit]]!

=== No, really? ===
[[Meme|Yah rly.]] The winning condition is "when everyone is broke except for one player." Aside from how "last man standing" boardgames suck, it's possible to play a game that never ends. Try this: get one of the Monopoly computer games, tell it to play with 4 computer players and 0 human players. Put it on 'fast', and come back in a few hours. All four players will have hundreds of thousands of dollars each, with no signs of anyone "losing."

The only way to win is to convince one of your fellow players to do something stupid, like sell you a property you need to complete a set.

This game takes forever. No, I am not kidding you. You, the person who wanted to play the game, will be the only one left after 5 hours of straight gameplay who still wants to play. Everyone else will have [[Khorne|lost patience]], [[Tzeentch|fallen asleep]], [[Slaanesh|run out of snacks]], [[Nurgle|died of old age]], or some [[Derp|unholy combination]] of [[What|any or all of the previous four]]. I seriously played one game of Monopoly for THREE MONTHS with my grandmother. My grandfather left after the first three weeks. I have no idea who won. In that time, I probably could have made a pretty awesome character in ANY RPG SYSTEM (yes, even [[Rolemaster]]), and have had four or more truly memorable moments in a campaign.

Most modern iterations of the rules focus on either the game ending when the *first* player becomes bankrupt, or for an arbitrary value of cash and property to be reached. These, along with [[#The Rules Nobody Use|oft-unused house rules]], can actually speed up the game and make it suck '''''infinitely''''' less.

== Monopoly license everything... ==

It is no small joke that Monopoly have made a version of itself to cover just about everything under the sun. You're into normal vanilla monopoly? Get lost, there is way too many weird and wacky flavors to take, although you may get sick after having them.

Here is a concise list of some of the different kinds of monopoly available:
* Batman and Robin;
* Beatles;
* Big Bang Theory;
* Bob's Burgers;
* Cthulhu;
* Deadpool;
* Despicable Me;
* Disney Princesses;
* Disney Theme Parks;
* Doctor Who;
* Dot-Com (where the properties are all Internet companies like Google);
* Dragonball Z;
* Sailor Moon;
* Dublin (the actual city);
* Edinburgh (the fucking city as well);
* Actually, name any fucking city. There's a Monopoly of it;
* Fallout;
* Fortnite (suprisingly good for it's source material);
* F.R.I.E.N.D.S.;
* Game of Thrones;
* Gay ([https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11862/gay-monopoly not even fucking lying]);
* Ghostbusters;
* the Golden Girls;
* Guardians of the Galaxy;
* Halo;
* Harry Potter;
* Lego;
* Lord of the Rings;
* National Parks (like Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and shit);
* The Nightmare before Christmas;
* Nintendo (which is not to be confused with the individual Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon versions of Monopoly);
* Northampton (the city, seriously);
* Pirates of the Caribbean;
* Pokemon;
* Powerpuff Girls;
* Royal Family;
* Simpsons;
* Spongebob Squarepants;
* Star Wars and a fuckload of variants:
** Star Wars Limited Collector's 20th Anniversary Edition;
** Star Wars Episode 1 Edition;
** Star Wars ''Classic'' Trilogy Edition;
** Star Wars ''Original'' Trilogy Edition (apparently there is a difference between the "classic" trilogy and the "original" trilogy);
** Star Wars the Clone Wars;
** Star Wars 40th Anniversary Special Edition;
** Star Wars with a goddamn Rubik's Cube because that makes a fuckton of sense;
* Stranger Things;
* Street Fighter;
* Super Mario Bros;
* Supernatural;
* Toy Story;
* The Walking Dead;
* Transformers (both G1 and Movie versions);
* 2010 Fifa World Cup South African edition;
* CHEATERS EDITION;
* Guildford (the town in Surrey);
* Yu-Gi-Oh;
* Zelda.
* Warhammer 40,000
* Women (aka Cheater's Edition 2.0)
* team fortress 2

And Twilight. GOOOOODDAAAAAMMMMNNNNNN.

You think the above list is a joke? Then my dear friends you will truly weep, when you discover each one is very, very real... even Gay Monopoly, though it wasn't actually made by Parker Brothers, who sued its creators out of existence back in the '80s for intellectual property infringement.

P.S. Just in case you weren't depressed enough; every single version of Monopoly is literally exactly the same from a rules perspective. Every property and card gets renamed, but the functional rules of the game don't change at all. (Not true with Lord of the Rings Monopoly, Pokemon, Fortnite, and at least a few of the fifty or sixty Star Wars editions)

===Monopoly for Millennials===

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DA4nUDb3uo4 "Forget Real Estate - You can't afford it anyway."]

Instead you win with the most Experience Tokens, which conveniently look like social media upvotes (and downvotes).

The only thing funnier than the game is the meltdown it caused on the internet. Between the condescending tagline and blatant “how do you do fellow kids” theme, this makes the perfect gag gift for that one friend who takes himself too seriously. <s>The only way to make it even better is if the game really did have participation awards for all the losers.</s> Bet and the losers get paid in monopoly bucks winner takes the usable money.

==/tg/-Approved House Rules ==

Not to be set back by the monotony of Monopoly, /tg/ has, after a period of discussion, decided that the following rules can potentially make a game of Monopoly strategic and more fun.

# Landing on an unowned property incurs an Auction, not a sale. (See [[#The Rules Nobody Use|below]].)
## Bidding can start either at $1 or the value of the property, with the former allowing cheap purchases and the latter ensuring that all properties will sell at or above their face value.
# A completed color group is not required to purchase improvements on a property, with the exception of Hotels.
## Properties don't collect rent until there is a house on it. Not only does this remove the insanity of paying rent for an empty lot, it makes the utility actual useful, at least in the early game, as those will always be able to collect money.

All of these modifications actually bring the game slightly closer to the way it used to be when it was "The Landlord's Game," before Darrow got his hands on it.

==The Rules Nobody Use==
'''BREAKING NEWS''': This speeds up the game, and makes it possible to complete sets without some player doing something self-destructively stupid, and it's ''already in the rules'' but nobody uses it!

<blockquote>''If you do not wish to buy the property, the Banker sells it at auction to the highest bidder. The buyer pays the Bank the amount of the bid in cash and receives the Title Deed card for that property. Any player, including the one who declined the option to buy it at the printed price, may bid. Bidding may start at any price.''</blockquote>

It's right there in black and white, per the [http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/monins.pdf Hasbro Official Rules].

The board gets sold off fast and everybody gets a weird portfolio of random properties, both of which make Metanopoly (see below) more fun and brutal. Note that there are plenty of other often-missed rules (no extra houses, no P2P loans, no Free Parking jackpots) that speed the game up, too.

==The Lost Rules==
(AKA "The Entire Second Half Of The Game")

The original "Landlord's Game" instructions contain additional rules - conspicuously missing from all subsequent clones of the game sold under the name "Monopoly" - to enable players to salvage the session after the [[Capitalism|whole experience inevitably turns to shit.]] Those which may still be readily applied to the modern game (the board's been ''heavily'' simplified since 1906) are excerpted and briefly summarised below.

At any time during the game, a "flat land tax" may be implemented by a vote of two or more players. After this vote, [[Communism|title deeds lose their value and land (squares) may no longer be privately owned,]] but otherwise players retain their buildings and other holdings and the game continues under the new rules:
* All land rent is paid into a public treasury to be used for public improvements.
* All railroad fares and utility rates are paid to the individual owners as before until the public takes control of them, at which point they become free.
* Land becomes public; buildings remain private. The land rent for landing on any square is always paid to the public treasury. If a square has a building on it, additional rent is paid to the owner of the building. Players may build on any undeveloped square they wish on their turn if they can afford it, provided no other player bids against him. The bid money is paid into the public treasury.
* Once sufficient money has accumulated in the public treasury to do so, the utilities are purchased by the government and become free. The railroads then follow, one by one, as the treasury can afford them.
* After all utilities have been nationalised, once money accumulated in the public treasury reaches a set threshold, it is used to build a free public college on one of the corner squares, and then a second on the opposite corner squares.
* After all utilities have been nationalised and two free colleges built, additional money accumulated in the public treasury is used, each time it reaches a set threshold, to increase everyone's salary upon completing a circuit of the board.
* If a player goes to college he takes a blue card marked "education" and when he gets four of these cards he exchanges them for a card marked "professor." At the game's end, this is counted amongst the other achievements of each player during the game to determine who won, "winning" in the original game being more akin to "achieving the most meaningful things with one's money" than "ruthlessly driving everyone else into financial ruination."

The full set of 1906 rules and original game board may be found [https://landlordsgame.info/games/lg-1906/lg-1906_egc-rules.html here.]

==Special Rules to Make It Fun==
=== Illuminopoly ===

{{Main|Illuminopoly}}

Fixes Monopoly by replacing it with a different property-management game built around the shell-company mechanic from [[Illuminati]]. You're acquiring property... so you can modulate the house wiring and put fluoride in the water and control people's MINDS. (fnord)

=== Solarquest ===
This improves the game by replacing it entirely with a different roll-and-move real estate game.
* [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1836/ Solarquest at BoardGameGeek]

=== Fortune Street ===
A vidya version of Monopoly that manages to be a much better game, in the same vein as Solarquest, by replacing it with a better roll-and-move real estate game with more choices and more finance.
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Street Fortune Street at Wikipedia]

=== Monopoly: Deal ===
For the fa/tg/uy who's got no moral qualms about giving money to Hasbro and/or you have a bunch of Normie friends who still want to play this drek, here's your next best bet. It's a card-based version that focuses on trading in order to create complete property sets. Unlike its parent game it's fast-paced, requires some strategy and can actually be fun.

=== #OccupyBoardwalk ===

{{Main|Monopoly/OccupyBoardwalk}}

For the anti-American commies who are protesting on Wall Street, you can play the game as the 1%.

=== Powers for each of the pieces ===
*Wheelbarrow: Move an additional amount of spaces equal to your lowest die; gain an additional 25 dollars when passing Go.
*Battleship: You may fire at any piece directly opposite the Battleship, sending them back to Go. They do not gain money from passing Go.
*Money Bag: Gain $300 when passing Go.
*Horseman: Move an additional spaces equal to your lowest die; when the Horseman lands on an occupied space, the Horseman can choose to send all other pieces back five squares or to the Horseman's nearest property, whichever is closer; when sending a piece back to his property, the Horseman must accompany them.
*Thimble: While everyone else is arguing over who gets the more popular pieces, take an extra $500 from the bank at the start.
*Automobile: Move twice the number of spaces shown on the die.
*Locomotive: All railroads cost half as much; when rolling a double and not in jail, the Locomotive can move to any owned railroads instead.
*Loom: Pay half as much when renting; mortgages pay 20% more.
*Shoe: Same as Horseman.
*Dog: The Dog may take the roll of the previous player instead of rolling their own die.
*Iron: Oops, got removed. Congrats on being retro, I guess. Or you just didn't care enough to buy a new set. Probably that. Anyway, use the same power as Thimble.
*[[Hat]]: Same as Money Bag; [[Hats]] are classy.
*Cat: Ignore the first time you have to pay rent after passing Go because half the neighbourhood feeds you.
*Bike: Same as Automobile
*Hashtag: Start a smear campaign! Same rules as Battleship
*Emoji: You start with a Get Out Of Jail card.
*Penguin: Can move straight to Free Parking if you begin the turn just visiting in jail.
*Tyrannosaurus: Roll a six on the Go to Jail Square and you don't need to go.

=== Metanopoly ===
AKA how many ways can you get your opponents to [[derp]]. Use underhanded meta-game tactics to win, and none of it is "technically" illegal. Haggle, brown-nose, backstab, and generally [[Diplomacy |play pre-WW1 European politics]]. Barter for everything, trick people with word games, do whatever you can to be the nastiest [[Team Fortress 2|SPAH]] in [[/v/|a game full of SPAHS]]. Works well with 7+ players, and is great fun against [[Tzeentch|that one crafty uncle who shows up at family reunions]]. You know, for a game of Monopoly. Goes shorter than most games because everyone either gets curb-stomped by one guy, calls everyone else a cheater, or gets so [[rage|enraged]] that the game turns into a bar fight and you must use your [[The Book of Weeaboo Fightan Magic|Weeaboo Fightan Magic]] to escape unscathed. Which is how a normal game of Monopoly ends as well, but with less waiting for it to happen.

=== Waropoly 40,000 ===
{{heresy}}
''In the grim darkness of the future, there is only passing Go...'' 
[[Image:Monopoly_RogueTrader.jpg|756px]] 
In other news, GW has just announced an official Warhammer 40k Monopoly game. <s>Until that comes out, just use the above board. It'll be basically the same thing.</s> And it's out. It looks pretty good except for the classic jail and free parking. But there is {{BLAM|HERESY!}} with you being allowed to own the Planet of Sorcerers, The Plague Planet, Titan, and Holy Terra.

===Touhopoly===
[[Image:Touhou_Monopoly.jpg|756px]]
 
In the grim future of Gensokyo, the Pentex corporation controls 98% of the habitable land.

=== Settleropoly and Talismanopoly ===

[[Commissar|Shoot the guy who suggested playing Monopoly]] and go play [[Settlers of Catan]] instead.

Or, if you must play [[Ameritrash]], go play [[Talisman]], which is at least interminable in a way that can still provide somewhat interesting decisions for all players 30 turns in.

{{Board Games}}
[[Category:Board Games]]
[[Category:Pure Evil]]

Post-Cold War

2023-06-08T04:21:33Z

2600:387:15:1513:0:0:0:1: Skub mode activated

{{editwar}}
{{flamewar}}
[[File:Modern_city_dubai.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The future is [almost] now!]]
{{topquote|In an era of stress and anxiety, when the present seems unstable and the future unlikely, the natural response is to retreat and withdraw from reality, taking recourse either in fantasies of the future or in modified visions of a half-imagined past.|Alan Moore's Watchmen}}

{{topquote|IN MY EXPERIENCE, SUSAN, WITHIN THEIR HEADS TOO MANY HUMANS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN THE MIDDLE OF WARS THAT HAPPENED CENTURIES AGO.|Death, [[Discworld|Thief of Time]]}}

You are here.

After the end of most communist regimes and the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended almost half a century of [[The Cold War|Cold War]]. The ideological, political and economical clashes between different ideologies that had had its apex during World War II had [[Skub|finally ended, taken a new form or gone underground depending on who you ask]].

==The New Cold War==
{{topquote|History repeats, first as a tragedy, then as a farce.|Karl Marx}}

After the collapse of the USSR in the 90s, the general feeling in the West and the rest was one of semi-cautious optimism. At long last liberal democracy and capitalism had won the day, the ˝evil empire˝ was gone, and we have reached the end of history according to Francis Fukuyama, things were on the up swing it seemed as the USA was left as the only true superpower in the world.

However, this merry period was not to last long, after the 90s which are now ironically seen as somewhat of the last hurrah before the increasing shitstorm of the following century the USA got a series of rude surprises. First was the infamous 9/11 Islamic terrorist attacks which saw the first significant attack on American soil by foreign combatants in a century, and a grimly spectacular one at that with close to 3,000 people killed, 25,000 wounded, to say nothing of the damage to infrastructure and collective American psyche. This directly led to America embroiling itself in a series of wars in the Middle East that soon turned into quagmires with no clear winner, with many parallels being drawn to Vietnam. Seven years later the Great Recession of 2008/9 rolled around to further mess up the first decade of M3.

While this was going on and with America's attention arguably focused elsewhere, Russia and China were slowly growing in power and prominence. China was gradually thundering on ever since the late 90s, slowly surpassing Japan after the latter crashed and burned in 1991. By becoming the next ˝workshop of the world˝ China managed to accrue immense global economic influence and achieve economic growth that was nothing short of meteoric. Russia meanwhile was going through their own Age of Strife as the former USSR splintered into a dozen independent republics with all the economic and social turmoil that entails (exacerbated even worse by the rise of a new class of oligarchs hell-bent on plundering it for all it was worth), the ˝˝Russian 90s˝ still evoke fear and horror as young Russians were desperate to get into the universities of all things in order to avoid the poverty of everyday life or the military where one could get gang-raped among other things, all while the total lack of support from the West reminded a lot of Russians about why exactly they had opposed the US in the first place. Russia's GDP fell by more than 3/5ths between 1991 and 1998 and it would take until 2004 for it to recover to soviet levels. This all changed with Vladimir Putin, who managed to pull the country out of the gutter and started to build up its power again. All the while even though Communism had fallen in Russia Authoritarianism persisted under the new banner.

Arguably, the first signs that something was not quite right came in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the still ongoing war in Ukraine, something that was considered impossible in the prior decade ([[Lulz|and ended 207-year-old Swiss neutrality]]). Additionally, while the Arab Spring saw the fall of many dictators from Libya to Egypt and Tunisia, in Syria the Assad dynasty managed to not only hold its own but push back the "moderate Islamists"(mainly Sunni Arabs who want to kill/rob/rape Shi'ites), ISIS/ISIL (Salafists trying to bring back the Islamic caliphates of old), and people who just don't want to be ruled by a despot, with no small amount of help from Russia (though this holding out is probably going the way of the dodo courtesy of Turkey due to dramatic developments in 2022). China meanwhile was acting far more subtly in exerting its geopolitical influence, making huge loans to other countries and its corporations branching out into all sorts of sectors in Africa, Australia and Asia all the while partnering up with Russia in a general though not overtly belligerent counter-western stance.

The sum of all of this is that as of the third decade of M3 the world is no longer unipolar with USA having to contend with resurgent Russia</ and China, whose imperial ambitions are seemingly once again stirring. While the three powers are not directly inimical to one another, they each are trying to exert their geopolitical interests and being less and less obliged to ask the USA for an opinion.

Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo was likely locked in as of February 2022 with the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian Conflict into a full scale war with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While we won't elaborate on details due to contemporary news being the most [[Skub]]by part of history, the responses afterwards seem to have drawn a line. One thing we have to note however, is the abysmal Russian performance (especially in logistics) with stories ranging from leadership incompetence in the field, difficulty coordinating waves of untrained recruits and even more humiliating logistical mistakes such as entire armored companies grinding to a halt outside invasion points because they ran out of fuel. Completely overturning wargaming with regards to post-Soviet competence (verdict: quite lackluster for a former superpower) and also demonstrating the horrific effectiveness of guided missiles used on both sides and especially drones like the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drone. Not to mention the fucktons of NATO equipment being poured into Ukraine giving the country a true fighting chance against its bigger neighbor through a far superior military supply line. Based on available information current Russian victories are appear to be achieved through a combination of overwhelming force on key cities and targets with coordinated artillery/air-strikes with armored tank assaults' along with good old fashioned overwhelming numbers, <s>Nevermind that most of these troops are minorities from poor and rural regions.</s> While moderately effective it is a highly inefficient strategy especially with the Ukrainians far more effective use of strategic missile strikes and less wasteful offensive tactics being bolstered by tremendous material support from Europe, accomplishing in days what took the Russians months to do. This has led to reports of poor morale from Russian conscripts and even field commanders. For the moment, this has made any future hot war essentially suicidal without overwhelming numbers if enemy smart weapons aren't disabled first while reminding everyone just how important supply lines and morale are in any warfare (along with actually having a legitimate long-term plan to begin with). [[Conan the Barbarian|After all, what is steel compared to the hand that wields it?]]

On another note more than a few political and Military scientists have opinioned that this conflict may yet give insight on how major powers will have to counter modern tactics and capabilities. As open conflict with relatively first world nations has been quite rare in recent decades. Advances in the disabling of drone and guided missile technology will likely be a major point of interest for global powers, along with satellite recon and signal jamming. And has opened the door to new leaders in the field arms supply in the future (Germany in particular has stepped up its game on military expenditure not seen in generations in response to renewed Russian aggression). Along with the emboldening of other powers such as China. The lines in a future cold war may well start to draw themselves in the near future.

It should be noted that people have been yelling about Cold War II for the past 20+ years, and the term itself is controversial among political scientists and government officials. The former because they don't think we're there yet, the latter because it would inflame tensions with other countries. Leaving aside the significant differing details.

== Other Regions ==

=== Asia ===
While China's rise has been commented on, it was not the only East Asian country to see a considerable change in fortune at the tail end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand have all emerged as prominent players on the world economy, with a rapid rise in standards of living and economic influence (though increasing political interference from China has negatively affected Taiwan). This has led to a rising China that until fairly recently was seen as a reliable trade partner with the United States. This started due widespread distrust of China over its handling of [[Nurgle|Covid-19]] - exacerbated by China being the origin point of the virus. Accusations on China's cultural genocide on the Uyghurs akin to the lost generations on the Australian Aborigines also soured perceptions from the West leading calls for 'decoupling'. The results of this has been....a mixed-bag. Whilst news of Apple trying to relocate to India has been making rounds. The reality on the ground is that trade deficits has only ''increased'' after the Pandemic and FDI have recovered somewhat, suggesting that the old principle of "Money Walks Bullshit Talks" is ''very much still in play here''. Nevertheless, the opposite ironically, rings true, as Beijing has been accelerating domestic chip and microprocessor production and increasing bilateral relations with ASEAN making Beijing less dependent on Western imports in the long term. Another interesting thing was that Xi removed the term limits for the Presidency. Whether this means he is trying to pull a Putin is unknown. Although given that he still needs to play fancy with the Party Elders and put the other cliques in line suggests that his power is overrated.

Speaking of ASEAN, Southeast Asia is stuck in a increasingly awkward relationship between China and the US. The age-old challenge of balancing US security relationship with Chinese economic relationship has reared its ugly head. Whilst for now, ASEAN Centrality is providing some measure of stability, the rise of Chinese naval power in contrast to declining US capability means that in the long term, Washington's ability to commit its forces on both Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia is becoming suspect given the reality of imperial overstretch. This constant long term worry alongside neglect from the Trump administration had already has an effect to some members. Brunei, Myanmar, Laos and Cambodia are already in the 'China camp'. Even 'neutrals' such as Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia has been warming up towards Beijing despite ongoing disputes in the South China Sea. With Jakarta, US admonishment on the 2019 West Papua riots, the AUKUS announcement, the increasing toxicity of US domestic politics and increasing hostile rhetoric on the Taiwan Strait has made Indonesian authorities to trust China more than the US. Beijing in turn, is willing to capitalise on this given Indonesia's geostrategic position and large population. Even traditional US-friendly members such as Vietnam and the Philippines have been pretty careful in playing both sides. China has also recently warmed up the ideas and principles of ASEAN, so a positive is that the region is unlikely to see a repeat of Ukraine and Russia at the very least.

Notably, India has emerged as a major player on the world scene, particularly with food exports and the service sector (particular in the wake of growing issues with China). Not to mention they are an excellent rest stop for ships taking goods to and from the EU to China, and vice versa. However, the looming effects of climate change impacting South Asia (disruption of weathering, water loss crisis, environmental refugees, heavy chemical processing pollution fucking up the Ganges etc. in a subcontinent that is roughly 70% agricultural) as well as geopolitical threats (Pakistan and China) mean that India's future situation is likely to worsen as time goes by. New Delhi is also trying to eat into China's manufacturing market, although how successful India would be is up in the air, given that competition now is ''intense'' and that India's infrastructure is either simply lacking or is a mother of clusterfucks that makes it uncompetitive. If India had successfully tapped in its manufacturing potential during the 1970s where only China was the rival, New Delhi may have a chance. Now? India has to contend with the rise of East Africa, China, South Korea, ASEAN, Bangladesh and Automation, so it will be a tough mountain to climb to stand out given all the nodes of competition.

Afghanistan on the other hand, had finally gotten rid of the United States as Kabul fell to the Taliban. Whilst the US retreat has been an absolute shitshow, this does not mean that the ruling Taliban is celebrating as decades of fighting has made these fighters [[derp|completely inexperience in handling civilian bureaucracy and governing]]. Afghanistan is now in a even more dire straits given the financial sanctions emplaced by Washington. For the Taliban who has turned from terrorist insurgents into the governors themselves, this is an existential threat. So they are trying to find anyone willing to relieve them economically. So far they only got the Chinese and Russians willing to talk to them. Although the Taliban's greatest goal is in international recognition of their rule.

Meanwhile, central Asia is...central Asia. After the US's withdrawal from the country following a 17-year occupation, Afghanistan fell back to the Taliban, leading to a diaspora of refugees from the country and a curtailing of all the liberal policies put in place there by the previous puppet government. In short, it went to shit just as you'd expect. Generally, most of the central Asian countries aren't doing much at the moment, although they are falling into the orbit of China given how unreliable Russia has been recently. There was a whole squabble between Azerbaijan and Armenia over dumbass reasons that would never be a thing to begin with if the Imperial Russian and Soviet regimes weren't literal cunts by stoking ethnic tension. Short version: Azerbaijan has oil, so the EU and America are unlikely to do shit given the whole Putin doing the funny in Ukraine.

Something alarming that some commentators have noticed is that for all Russia does wrong, their military strength and status preserved a type of "Pax Russica" in Central Asia. But since their military has dropped the ball pretty heavily, many central Asian nations might be tempted to revive dumbass ethnic tension and starting to get ideas about purging minorities and killing each other. This destabilization will provide an opportunity for China to further influence central Asia, eroding Russia's power and increasing Beijing's economic and political influence.

=== Europe ===
The biggest trend of Post Cold War Europe has been a push towards greater integration. The process had begun in the 1950s after WWII in which A: hard-line militarized nationalism was not popular [[nazis|for some fairly obvious reasons]] and B: economic cooperation was seen as a better way to achieve and maintain peace and prosperity. Eastern Europe was added to the mix after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. The eventual result of which was the European Union. In 1995 the EU introduced the Euro as a Common Currency, which was widely adopted by 1999. Basically the EU exists to make business easier between member states via the 4 freedoms (freedom of movement for people, capital, goods and services), has frameworks for easier cooperation between members and some joint programs like the European Space Agency, some environmental projects and big research initiatives like CERN. Lastly the EU also provides funding for various projects via the Cohesion Fund and the like, enabling smart member states to improve the standard of living along with other benefits for their citizens.

Things however went rough for the EU following the GFC in 2008 as the EU went into the infamous decade-long Eurozone crisis with big EU players like Germany forcing austerity on smaller members, creating a rise in Euroskepticism, with opposition to the EU and pushback by various localist movements. Most notably Brexit which saw a member state leave for the first time ever, with mixed results and feelings both domestically and abroad...then Russia decided to stick its dick in a blender on February 2022 by creating the largest war in Europe since WW2 by waging a war of conquest on Ukraine. Europe now faces its biggest existential crisis in decades. With the current shitshow going on in the east of the continent several countries have started rearming themselves. This includes Poland, which had a similar history of conflict with Russia and some describe as the next European heavyweight on par with France and Germany, the latter of which also started rearming for the first time in years and allocated a whopping 100 billion euros for the endeavor.

Whilst NATO was revitalized, Europe now faces a daunting prospect of de-industrialization (or at least a shift away from fossil fuels) as Moscow stopped all natural gas and oil flows to the continent whether intentional or unintentional; forcing Brussels to try and keep as much of its industry as possible as European brands started to high-tail it to either the US or China. Nevertheless, despite the humbug with the US over their united front against Russia, increasing American protectionist policy alongside various responses to the Trump administration has made the EU increasingly wary over its reliance and dependence on Washington. Some like Macron have ambitions to make the EU a third 'superpower' pole and it ''may'' be possible....if Brussels manages to hold on, get its shit together and craft its own policies balancing Washington, Beijing and Moscow. Another point of worry is the rise of populist movements which Brussels fears could lead to pseudo-authoritarian countries like Hungary proliferating, that the aforementioned country has been giving Russia interested looks does not help matters either.

With the enforcement of article 13 restrictions of freedom of speech in europe have become widely embraced by government authorities with the excuse of copyright defense and counter terrorism.

Outside of the EU. Possibly the ''weirdest'' event to have occurred is the growing military and economic relations between China and France. Whilst relatively new, France has been engaging with the Chinese the most out of all the Great Powers in Europe. Analyst suspect that this budding relationship might have to do with the disastrous handling of AUKUS which plunged French trust to the Anglosphere to an all-time low. Since 2022 at least, Macron and Xi has been in lock-steps with one another and Beijing has been increasingly warming to the ideas of treating France as ''its'' special strategic partner in Europe. Of course, results are too early to tell and how far that relationship will go is unknown, but the effects are already there with Paris being the major influencer in driving the EU's approach to be more balanced with Beijing.

=== Oceania ===

The 2010s had been a political clusterfuck in the Land Down Under. Over a decade of [[Game of Thrones]]-style political backstabbings has led Australia to transition to ''[[EPIC FAIL|six Prime Ministers]]''. This levels of dysfunctionality has led the degrading of Australia's stature in the Oceania region and the rise of New Zealand being the only adult in the room. To make matters worse for Australia, rampant political lobbying has turned Australia's potential as a leader in renewable energy into a circus filled with coal and fossil fuel executives. Likewise, neglect and outright political corruption from the Australian liberal coalition had led to the worse bushfires in Australia since 2009, leading to over ''1 billion'' Australian animals to perish in the fires. This neglect was not only restricted to the environment, as it also translates to Australia's diplomacy [[fail]]s towards the Pacific Island Nations, as climate change is very much an existential threat for them. But Canberra's [[That Guy|dismissive attitude]] towards them had cost Australia plenty of goodwill in the region. Suffice to say, the new labour administration has a lot of baggage to unfuck Australia's position, and it will take a ''long time'' to rebuild the lost trust with its island neighbours.

=== Africa ===
Within the past few centuries there have been widespread problems across the continent of Africa lingering even after the Cold War.
The causes are numerous and include generational tribalistic conflicts, wars over resources and direct interference from European governments until the end of the Colonial Era during the Cold War. The most prominent example is the Scramble for Africa, which involved building plantations, mines and railways to support plantations and mines with white guys doing as much of the technical work as possible (and with the native inhabitants being deliberately kept uneducated and untrained lest they learn to use the infrastructure by themselves or make more). At the same time, it was a common practice to exacerbate existing tribal conflicts (and sometimes even create new ones!) in order to keep the locals too busy squabbling with each other to join forces against their overlords.

This dependence on a colonial regime running everything combined with the elimination of pre-colonial social structures led to power vacuums when the various foreigners left, which were often filled by authoritarian strong-men. Various nations also used countries of Africa as a dumping ground for obsolete weapons after the Cold War, which were eagerly seized by governments and warlords seeking to establish control over their newly seized domains. Unsurprisingly, this has led to a series of conflicts and civil wars, notably the Rwandan Genocide. This also discouraged governments of those countries from developing their own technologies when they could claim the cast-offs of Western or Eastern nations for much less effort. Despite that, there has been a gradual rise in standards of living in many countries of Africa, including fair and free elections, health care and stable economies. Algeria, Tunisia, and Rwanda to name a few have made significant improvements with their GDP and literacy rates. Several nations of Africa are also the world's leading exporters of various goods - for example, Nigeria has seen considerable GDP growth and industrial development over the last three decades. Even so, it has been a long and difficult climb and not without internal corruption in some places.

That being said, in many cases Western countries retain disproportionate influence over much of Africa via economic and cultural means (e.g., multinational corporations exploiting cheap labor while reducing countries' access to their own natural resources) while Middle-Eastern and Asian countries are making disturbingly similar in-roads. Some observers have dubbed this phenomenon "neocolonialism"; gaining/retaining control of a region without open use of military force. In this view, the aforementioned exporting is less of a sign of economic progress and more of an indication of their continuing role in extracting resources on the behalf of their former colonizers (this phenomenon is not uniquely inflicted on African countries or solely perpetrated by European nations).

=== The Americas ===

The initial years of the post-cold war have been swimming for North America/USA as the country was left as the only superpower on the planet (so much so that until about 2010s they could even have been considered a hyperpower - a polity that dominates all other states in every major metric). This period extended from about 1989 until 2001, when USA was hit hard by both the 9/11 terrorist attacks (to say nothing of the blowback from the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, which collectively became the new Vietnam in terms of both length and unpopularity) and in 2008 the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. However, the country still remains ridiculously wealthy and powerful and has a military good enough to easily squash any other rising superpowers and probably wage war against two while defending the mainland from a third one at the same time. Still, the country has some serious issues - most notably the increasing wealth-gap and the ideological polarization of society not seen since the Vietnam War and the resulting civil unrest. Many of these wedge issues are in fact unresolved conflicts and dilemmas from the 1960s such as the incomplete work of the Civil Rights Movement to address the poorer living conditions of the African-American population, and the debate over the role of the United States on the world's stage and whether America needs to be the 'World's Policeman' has reached boiling point. There's also global events like climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic (and controversial lockdowns to quarantine people during the pandemic causing serious economic issues). Whilst, the USA seems to be in the best position to weather whatever geopolitical upheavals are coming ''in theory'', concerns still abate on the growing political rifts and quite frankly, ''[[fail|idiocy]]'' on domestic political and economic brinkmanship and what this means to the wider international community. Already, the US Dollar's usage has dramatically declined from a high of 75+% to below 50% for the first time in history. The combination of the GOP putting a gun over the US debt ceiling and the DNC's advocacy for constant increases in US spending was one part of the reasons for the decline. What really kicked off the acceleration was the widespread financial sanctions on Russia over Ukraine which, whilst while strategically justified, spooked the shit out of everyone else as from their point-of-view, the Dollar has suddenly been weaponised and is no longer a neutral arbitrator of financing. Although the Dollar isn't going away anytime soon and is still the most trusted currency in the world, its long term prospect is starting to look dire unless Washington does something to regain the world's confidence in its handling of its currency.

South America meanwhile has been a mixed bag. Aside from not really getting much attention or upheaval except for a few countries, it has enjoyed a relative upswing as industrializing Asian countries developed a need for the raw material exports coming out of S. America. Many nations also begun developing and truly industrializing like Chile or North Mexico though many more remain impoverished and forgotten. Of note venezuela's economy collapsed in part due to their dependency on petrol, embargoes and the far left ideologically minded administration of Maduro.

==Technology==
{{topquote|We're living in the age of cellphone cameras. Fuckups ain't tolerated!|Smiling Jack, ''[[Vampire:_The_Masquerade#VtM:_Bloodlines|Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines]]''}}


Storytelling, especially settings placed in a contemporary or "modern" era hit a major hurdle in the 90s and especially early 00s as this newfangled thing called "Internet" arose out of a USA government/military project to link computer systems the states and world-over in order to maintain communication after a hypothetical nuclear war. Thing is, once this was released to the general public the network expanded rapidly until it became a new paradigm of human existence, influencing everything from society, politics, economics, the arts, religion - you name it. Story-wise this made any masquerade or hidden "other world" that much more difficult to maintain as now a schmuck who saw that they shouldn't could blurp it out to thousands of other people. Irl-wise the internet revolutionised /tg/ as a community by... enabling /tg/ to exist in the first place by bringing all the isolated groups of fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls together weather on 4chan, 1d4chan (shameless plug, suck it) or dozens of other dedicated forums AND enabling them access to mountains of materials for their chosen hobbies.

The mass popularity of smartphones has made it increasingly difficult to write a plot that cuts characters off from the outside world. This has forced such plots to be moved further and further from civilization (which fights an uphill battle with ever increasing coverage), into massive disasters where cell phone coverage is disrupted and help won’t be coming anyways, or just straight up adding in supernatural disruption of communications.

The rise of mass CCTV and cellphone cameras of increasingly high quality and the ability to post the works taken with them on social media has made it increasingly implausible to keep a [[Masquerade]] going. The original [[World of Darkness]] just [[Gehenna|ends dramatically in 2004]], the year before YouTube launched. The MCB of [[Monster Hunter International]] has all the resources of most of the worlds governments working together to censor the supernatural, but even then those in charge consider exposure an inevitability. Pretty much any conspiracy will be an open-secret, although it might still be popularly viewed as a conspiracy theory depending on how believable it seems. Paradoxically, in an era of limitless access to knowledge, what knowledge the individual chooses to subscribe to has itself become factionalized, and that can be a tool to uphold a Masquerade in itself. The rise of the "Fake News" paradigm means that a person can be looking at a vampire gouging a throat out of some poor bastard and going "meh" as it must be either CGI or some such, and woe betide any intrepid journalist if they don't have at least a good quality video as anything less will get the "photoshopped!" treatment.

Aside from the media and communications , other technological branches are seeing tentative emergence or applications beyond the lab. As of the New 10s (2010-2019) remotely controlled and autonomous UAVs and RPVs popularized as 'drones' have entered commercial usage alongside with multi-pedal robots able to walk, run and perform simple manual tasks while the militaries around the world are actively using aerial combat drones with land and sea variants in development. On another front virtual reality has become a viable entertainment and educational medium due to miniaturization of screens and processors though it still has ways to go in terms of improvement. Artificial intelligence (or rather a set of very adaptive and heuristic algorithms) are also making splashes with the most visible examples being AI capable of emulating speech to varying degrees and art AI capable of creating truly gorgeous and unique pieces of art, likely eventually giving rise to "Expert-Systems" predicted by many sci-fi works.

After the Information Revolution of the late 90s and early 00s biotech is set to become the next big thing. With the Human Genome project completed in 2003 the rate of tech advancement has lowered the costs of individual genomic sequencing from ~100 million USD in 2001 to around 1000 USD making individual genetic screening viable with a popular commercial application being the identification of one's genetic heritage and disease risk. Later during the 2010s a method for targeted genetic editing in-vivo called CRISPR caused a stir among the scientific community as now scientist could genetically modify organisms at any stage of development, not just before birth.

There also has been an increased awareness of [[Frostpunk|humanity's impact on the climate.]] Co2 emissions, resource depletion and destruction of wilderness are increasingly pressing concerns. With them has come a push - especially from younger generations - towards sustainable development, decarbonization and other efforts to reduce humanity's collective footprint. Solar Panels and Wind Farms have become a lot more common, electric cars have come onto the scene along with a pushback against car dependent development, there is renewed interest in nuclear power (both in terms of small-scale fission reactors and promising developments into nuclear fusion) and coal power has been on the decline, among other things. Of course those who profit from said industries have also been fighting against the response, and there's a real chance that a full shift away from fossil fuels might not happen before the effects of said environmental destruction become irreversible. It might not be enough to end human existence outright, but the projections of how climate change will affect the world suggest that it'll screw over a LOT of people in very nasty ways. In the worst case scenario, we'll be unceremoniously driven back into the Stone Age- and since we used up nearly all the easily acquired ores and other natural resources on Earth the first time around we won't be advancing out of it again if that happens.

Related to the above, the development of alternative energy sources (to fossil fuels) has been advancing at a steady pace and picked up some speed in the 21st century with big gains in solar power which is now seeing full returns on investments in 5-10 years as of the 2020s, making installation for the average Joe more and more viable. Wind and sea power however has entered somewhat of a snag since these energy sources tend to be even more situational than power from the Sun. Aside from green energy, nuclear and hydrogen power have seen some expansion and development with new fission plants being built by a number of nations despite Fukushima and a few nations like Japan, China and EU making headways in developing hydrogen systems. Finally, after over 70 years of research and being "only 30 years away" [[Fallout|we finally achieved nuclear fusion breakthrough at the end of 2022 with a lab based in California]] managing to produce more energy than was required to start the fusion reaction.

If the War in Ukraine is an indicator, things start to devolve a bit, at least on the symmetrical side of modern warfare. Artillery, combined with precision-guided ammo and reconnaissance via drones, again becomes the supreme weapon on the ground, as satellite intelligence and effective communications showcase how important it is for battalions to remain cohesive in the fog of war; that and Missiles and Shells fired with pinpoint accuracy nullify drawbacks of previous incarnations of artillery (such as an incredible volume of firepower required to destroy any given target, the logistical hassle of supplying a gun battery with enough ammo, in itself an art form, and the requirement to have a rough idea where the target you want to hit from 20 km away is without any visual contact on the ground or a live feed of information like drones provide) making them much safer and more cost-efficient than airstrikes or ground assaults as a result. Electronic Warfare will probably become central to any given military operation, as blocking surveillance, radar systems and guidance systems have become ever more important. At it's core, Ukraine and the reignited Karabakh War shows that anyone facing smart weapons with Cold War shit is going to get butchered like sheep. Unmanned systems are the defining 21st century paradigm shift in military science, while battles will mostly be resolved between smaller reconnaissance-in-force detachments seeking out concealed defenders in vague contested zones.

Lastly on the Space front - commercial space endeavors are picking up steam as private companies like Space-X, Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are seeing wealthy tourists and corpo brass sent to space. Government initiatives are also getting in on the action with Artemis Accords updating the UN Outer Space Treaty, the Artemis Program succeeding the Apollo Program with ultimate aim of returning humans to the Moon by 2024 and the first test flight managing to get a capsule with dummies around the Moon and back to Earth safely.
China has begun the construction and assembly of it's Tiangong space station which will be their equivalent of the Russian Mir and finally the James Webb telescope launched early in 2021 eclipsed Hubble in both size and capability. Improved launch vehicles mean that the cost of launching payloads into orbit per kilogram has significantly gone down.
Humanity also managed to redirect an asteroid for the first time in history as well, giving the Earth a first workable and proven defense system against potentially dangerous asteroids.
It is possible that we are seeing the beginning of a full fledged Second Space Age and the fulfillment of many of the promises of the last one.

==Society==
{{topquote|The great paradox of the 21st century is that, in this age of powerful technology, the biggest problems we face internationally are problems of the human soul.|Ralph Peters}}
[[File:WaaghStreet1.jpg|thumb|right|200px|The internet brought alien communities into contact with each other...]]
While technology has generally advanced in fits and bursts along the lines predicted by most sci-fi works (major exceptions being AI, mass genetic engineering, widespread cybernetics and space colonisation), society has become somewhat of a mix between prior trends and predictions made by said sci-fi.

The predictions that the world will become more united and liberal in addition to the waning of nations in favor of corporations or some other modes of society were only partially realized. Globalization has indeed made the planet more interconnected but the onus of international relations still rests on the state. Corporate entities have become more powerful and wealthy but they still cooperate with governments (if not slowly merging with them due to intertwining of corporate and political interests) while in places like China and Russia the corpos are merely another arm of the government altogether.

The trend towards social liberalism has held partially true with the increase in LGBTQ+ acceptance and diminishment of racism in some places. Political liberalization has however entered something of a slump with the traditional left in EU and USA being relatively dormant though grassroots left is seeing something of a revival in the 2020s. On the other hand Russia and China have moved more towards autocracy and their increasing strength has presented an uncomfortable alternative to the supposedly singularly viable liberal-democratic order, especially with Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Europe has also seen a resurgence of populist, if not hard-right political parties like the french Front Nationale or German Alternative Fur Deutschland with some countries like Hungary and Poland taking on an increasingly right-y colors. In short - politics be skub as usual.

Politically, it seemed that while the triumphant capitalist-liberal-democratic order was considered the ˝end of history˝, it left many people unfulfilled. Worse, it started showing flaws that were overlooked during the ideological fight against the USSR (hence the Russian joke how 'almost everything we were told about communism was a lie, and almost everything we were told about capitalism was true'). To not get too deep into the [[Skub|political theory]] of the whole thing, suffice it to say that the guy who predicted the triumph of this system (Francis Fukuyama) also noted that the people may get so bored of it that they may intentionally choose to 'restart the wheel of history'.
[[File:WaaghStreet2.jpg|thumb|right|200px|... And the results were hilarious.]]

Speaking of matters of the soul, religion - in an ironic twist, given it's ''the'' institute based around matters of the soul - was put in the crosshairs with a sharp spike in Western secularism and anti-theistic/anti-religious sentiment. Though this hostility had been brewing in niches of academia and media long before, now was when it was thrust onto the mainstream. This was mainly due to acts of religious extremism (most often Islamic ones such as the 9/11), failures of various religious leaders and ideological campaigns magnifying empiricism and subjectivism. A new wave of religious apologetics emerged in response to this with some arguments from both sides better received than others ([[religion|more on the issue here]]). This shift in societal attitude towards religion either coincided with or influenced various other socio-political issues listed above and below.

On a more interpersonal scale, the rise of Internet in general and social media in particular has transformed society to a great degree. The ability to connect with people world over and find hundreds or thousands of people with similar interests has lead to formation of digital communities that can be not only as powerful as the ones irl but sometimes even supersede them to a great degree, for good and ill. This has also made how one behaves online as important if not more so than offline - if you take a dump on a city street at most a few dozen people will see it and forget it in a year without a reminder, if you take a proverbial dump online it has potential to be seen by tens of thousands of people and potentially stay there forever, <s>just look at Chris-chan for example.</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|This heresy shall not be tolerated here!}}

On a final note, the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in the late 2019 also had an unintentional effect of forcing vast segments of society to adopt online business and communication models. What this means is that instead of working in a typical cubicle-monkey office one could work from anywhere there was internet - a beach, cafe or a public toilet. While things seem to have calmed down in the latter half of 2022, the ˝work-from-home˝ model is now all but standard for many service jobs, a leap that redefines how a job is perceived before and after the New 10s.

==Conclusion & Mineability==

The Post-Cold war era is a strange one since it directly succeeds a period of history defined by a clear if at times clandestine fight between two superpowers who were politically and ideologically opposed with plenty of history and cultural distinction for each to have it's own strong flavor. A two-pole world collapsed into a unipolar one which is evolving into a multipolar with no clear ideological struggle to really differentiate the sides.

However, this also provides plenty of opportunities to introduce plots and conflicts that are unburdened by vast preset ideologies and factions. Political intrigues between modern state, corporate or even NGO actors, dissolution of countries or formation of new ones upon the collapse of the old order, global terrorism and radicalism, technological, sociological, environmental or neo-ideological struggles and positioning in order to build 'your' faction's or even personal vision of the future!

Admittedly the more exotic genres that lend themselves best to the age are Urban Fantasy, post-apocalyptic scenarios and '20 minutes into the future' science fiction. You can also go down the route of [[Shadowrun|Shadowrun]] and have some sort of event return magic to the world though depending on the intensity, it may radically change the setting into something no longer resembling modern world. There is also a somewhat neglected genre of New Weird/Weirdpunk which allows for a variety of historical settings, including modern ones, while having a potential for being truly unique (for example see such works as the comic Shutter, Dysco Elysium, Persona 4/5, Psychonauts...).

===Impact on /tg/===
/tg/ is, traditionally, a very low tech hobby. Despite this, it still has managed to incorporate some of the new technologies of the era.

One big thing is the rise of e-books. Rather than have a big stack of massive heavy books, you can keep all your books on a small, handy, e-reader. One particular advantage of an electronic book is that the contents can be searched through to quickly get answers to rule questions. The low cost of electronic publishing also means many small groups can easily publish a book and sell it, but this comes at the cost of electronic storefronts being flooded with low effort, poorly written garbage. Electronics also, in theory, lower the need for wasted paper and dice. In practice however, many groups find including any electronics at the table a major distraction and disruptive of play, while many players refuse to trust electronic RNG. Acceptance of computer RNG is actually worse among players into [[Vidya gaems|video games]] due to that medium's documented history of RNG cheating via uneven RNG, poorly randomized number generation, and being easily manipulated. Another issue with electronic books is that [[Wizards of the Coast|some companies]] are Luddites, and refuse to release PDF versions of their books, while others are hamstrung by the IP holder's retarded [[Star Wars|prior licensing agreements]] [[EA|made with the devil]] and legally can’t, or just plain old don't exist anymore and can't do a PDF re-release, but [[Pirate|we have a solution to all those problems]].

Another nifty creation has been 3D printers that can create a variety of objects desired from scratch for cheap. Currently 3d printers are only able to print small, inanimate, plastic things (unless you have a very expensive and large one that can do weak metal) and are a far cry from [[Star Trek|Replicator]] technology everyone panicking about "ghost guns" thinks they are. Fortunately the hobby has substantial use for [[Miniature|small, inanimate, plastic things]]. Eventually there will be a reckoning for the entire minifigure gaming industry over the full implications of 3d printing, but for now the technology still remains a wee bit too bothersome if not expensive for the average user to churn out a thousand point army. However if you have the means and patience to experiment, your imagination is the only limit on what you can do for figure customization.


==The appeal of Post-Cold War world==
Do you want something which you could imagine yourself in? Not as some surrogate who was born in a castle or a Victorian slum or in a colony on Alpha Centauri IV or whatever, but '''''You''''' as an individual. Maybe some larger than life events roll through your door to spur you into action from your normal day-by-day routine and possibly you are idealized, but the person who's now running for their life and forced to deal with whatever outlandish thing has come your way is You.

Do you like stories of special force operators going on incredibly risky missions to take down terrorists, insurgents, and radicals of any ideological or religious flavor? Then this setting might be right for you, due to the prevalence of the Global War on Terror and the almost-extensive use of special forces such as the Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Spetznaz, SAS, and so on. Their chief foe is a new enemy that has largely replaced the Soviet Union in the minds of many in the West - the radical Islamic "jihadist" organizations such as Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or ISIS and its branches (such as the West African branch, Boko Haram). Their goals range from either kicking all foreign influence out of their country to establishing a global caliphate. The current increasingly polarizing culture war can also be used as inspiration for stories regarding insurgents and radicals of any ideological flavor, albeit something where "handle with care" very much applies for risk of coming across as preachy or [[Skub|adding fuel to the fire]].

Other potential foes can be found in the world of technology, serving as fertile ground for near future sci-fi stories. This era is (currently) as close as we can get to cyberpunk, which lends itself well to the genre. The concept of A.I. as threats or the fear of society undergoing a technological collapse can also find inspiration from here, given the Y2K problem at the turn of the millennium. Big-tech companies getting trigger-happy with censorship from the 2010's onwards also lends itself well to references and themes in cyberpunk stories.

Wargame wise, there is some appeal in recreating the various, drawn-out conflicts such as in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan (to date the longest war in American history at over 17 years if one doesn't count the Korean War, which the US never officially declared war during and has spent most of its existence cold.), pitting [[Team Yankee|the well-equipped, organized, and disciplined forces of the Western powers]] against the zealotry, tenaciousness, and cunning of the various insurgent and terrorist groups that plague the region. Due to the rather asymmetric nature of these wars, as well as the murkiness that comes with it, it's not as popular as the more conventionally focused, more-or-less Black-And-White morality of World War 2 setting. Similarly, the COVID-19 Pandemic can also be used as inspiration for various types of stories regarding pandemics, especially if one wants to up the stakes with things such as a zombie virus.

[[Urban Fantasy]] and [[Supers|Superheroes]] are often set in the current Post-Cold War era. By making fictional, fantastical threats one avoids the question of what the hell is there left to fight. It also benefits from being a world that's largely prebuilt and known to players, allowing writers to focus exclusively on what's different. Specifically in regards to superheroes, note how every two decades or so a gigantic cosmic retcon storm hits and resets the universe by pushing a catalyst point (Superman's arrival and Captain America being pulled out of the ice, simultaneously pushing the births of/major influencing events on characters or reemergence of old powers to the modern world equally long) forward by some years, allowing contemporary stories to be explored without retconning old stories completely, through saying that they happened but no longer matter as big gigantic cosmic event reset the universe, and not indirectly locking new audiences out of continuity by constantly having to read older stuff, allowing anyone to pickup new series issue 1 and read older stuff at leisure.

{{Time Periods}}
[[Category: History]]