Editing Warhammer Fantasy Battle (section)

==The appeal of Warhammer Fantasy==
Some works of fiction are serious and many serious works are calm, subdued and dignified; giving events the gravity of all their implications. Some works of fiction are over the top and have a tendency towards being absurd, farcical and easy going where things often might not make sense, but you roll with it for a laugh. Warhammer manages to be both largely Serious and Over the Top at the same time. It can pull off outright farce, over the top heavy metal action, subtle academic humor and dark fantasy melodrama without missing a beat, and that's not even the truly impressive part! WFB combines all of these facets constantly without diminishing any of the individual themes. You see a [[Lizardmen|fat Aztec frogman]] blast a [[Lord of Change|blue, flaming hellchicken with a staff]] while fast asleep, and there's nothing wrong with it! But imagine something like that in [[The Lord of the Rings|LotR]]; that shit just wouldn't fly. 

It does in Fantasy because the Serious is Over the Top and silly, while the Over the Top stuff is taken seriously. Unlike 40k, Fantasy isn't overtly a pastiche of tropes and a parody of so many things - it is a coherent world where things matter. Small enough that individuals can make a mark on the world and their heroics can change the course of history, but large enough that it can be filled with all sorts of beings and cultures.

In addition, Warhammer was made by History Nerds for History Nerds. It appeals to the sort of person who, when asked "''what do you think about the middle ages''?" would reply "''where and what century''?". The world is old, and the history is actually pretty detailed for the factions for whom history matters, like the [[High Elves]], the [[Dwarfs]] and [[The Empire]]. The development of the factions in the world matters quite a lot and the ramification of wars in the past affect the world in the present. The culture of the factions in play wasn't just invented because it's cool; they developed over time, and for most of it, in a way that makes sense.

In contrast to 40,000, Fantasy is less grimdark and more nobledark. Not because of the villains (who are about as bad; which is to say, very fucking bad) but because the heroic side is a bit more genuinely heroic. Even though they may be assholes, they still face great and terrible threats for the good of [[Karl Franz|the nation]], [[Teclis|the world at large]] and their [[Gotrek & Felix|friends]]. They're not all Catholic Space Nazis indoctrinated to do what they are needed to do; they're people, real humane people with human desires - and that includes pretty much all the mortal creatures in the setting. The good guys are usually pretty good, the bad guys have a much harder time of being bad (40k Chaos can conquer planets, Fantasy Chaos can barely leave the Arctic), and the lives of the average person are mundane and with very little grimness, the problems they face being more in line with the actual historic Medieval-Renaissace world.

Take [[Volkmar|Volkmar the Grim]]. This is a dark character, entirely dedicated to his faith to a fanatical level. He burns heretics, bashes cultists and doesn't afraid of anything - but his faith is genuinely good in nature. He protects the Empire because he loves it and the people in it, and while he may disagree with the followers of Ulric, he recognizes them as allies in the fight [[Chaos|against the true evil.]] He almost died sacrificing himself to fight the big bad with a tiny army of the faithful, got captured and tortured by daemons, and what did he do? Fall into despair? Mutate? Kill himself? By Sigmar, no; he ''broke the chains holding him'' and ''beat all his daemonic guards to death'' before going back to his day job. Shit, he has a hunk of ''concentrated fucking evil on his chest'' at all times, and it doesn't affect him at all - as in, no mention that he may be getting crazier with age or that he makes deals with entities no one knows about. Nope, he's just that fucking dedicated to his faith and genuinely believes in it with the full, naked force of the human soul and heart. ''That's'' a proper Warhammer Fantasy character - skilled beyond belief and likely pretty darn grim or extreme, but with an edge of humanity and personality. They aren't just a [[Mephiston|vessel for a cool trope]] or [[Creed|an exemplar of the faction they represent]], but a fully-fledged character with needs and wants, tempered with a heroic choice to sacrifice personal safety to change the world.