Editing Warhammer: Age of Sigmar (section)

=The Appeal of Age of Sigmar=
So, what makes a person want to play in the Age of Sigmar, as opposed to sticking to [[Warhammer Fantasy]] (or even jumping over to [[Warhammer 40,000]])? Well, that's a very personal question, so as always, take anything written here with a grain of salt.

One possible attractor is that AoS has a very solid, singular "feel" to it. [[Warhammer Fantasy]] is this odd mixture of [[High Fantasy]] and [[Low Fantasy]] elements; on the one hand, you have the Empire, which could practically fit into a historical warband game as a rather unusual 1600s Germany offshoot army, whilst on the other hand, you have the forces of [[Chaos]]. Lore vacillates between "life is dirty, mundane and rooted in historical accuracy" to crazy magical antics, creating a world which just can't to seem to figure out what kind of tone it's going for. Admittedly, this is partially a problem between the disconnect between [[Warhammer Fantasy]] (which tends to be more open minded about the high magic stuff) and [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]], which has always doubled down on the [[Low Fantasy]] elements. Age of Sigmar, in comparison, knows exactly what it's going for: balls-to-the-wall crazy high magical fantasy bullshit. There is no attempt to juxtapose knock-off historical wargaming factions alongside old-school D&D miniatures here; Age of Sigmar is a world built on a bedrock of fantasy, and that's actually less common than you'd think - there's a reason we have the [[Standard Fantasy Setting]], after all.

Another possible attractor is just how crazy-unique Age of Sigmar's worldbuilding is. [[Warhammer Fantasy]] is a solid setting, but you can see its roots in [[Old School Roleplaying]]; neo-historical factions in the Empire and [[Bretonnia]], [[Dungeons & Dragons]] rip-offs in the [[dwarves]], [[elves]] and [[Orcs & Goblins]], [[Chaos]] factions ripped in no small part from the worlds of [[Michael Moorcock]]. There are definitely unique elements and trappings in the Old World, but you can tell it was largely playing in the same sandbox as [[TSR]]. Age of Sigmar, by comparison, is gleefully batshit nuts. [[Steampunk]] Sky-[[Pirate]] dwarves! Badass soul-harvesting [[Aquatic Elf|sea elves]]! Firebreathing, dragon-riding [[dwarf]] [[berserker]]s powered up by golden runes hammered into their skin! You don't ''get'' things like that in more conventional, down-to-earth fantasy games.

On top of this is the scale that AoS currently occupies with its world. The Realms are both massive and mysterious, with quite a few blank spots amidst the handful of mapped out regions currently shown. It sits almost at a sweet spot between 40k and WHFB in terms of scale and player impact. Fantasy was small, well detailed and thoroughly mapped out, but that often meant that it made it very hard for players or even GW for that matter to make any real changes in the world without it having an [[End Times|extremely catastrophic impact to the rest of the setting]]. 40k, in contrast, was expansive enough to allow players to imagine their own little conflicts in far flung corners of the galaxy, but such size often meant that even [[Vraks|the loss of a supposedly important planet]] or [[Sabbat Worlds Crusade|system]] felt like just a drop in the galactic bucket, with hundreds of other worlds very similar scattered around. The Dawnbringer Crusades are an ideal example of this setup in AoS. Hundreds if not thousands of Crusades are launched to resettle the uncharted expanses of the Realms in Sigmar's name, with many failing catastrophically. However, unlike in 40k's equivalent of colonizing planets, Dawnbringers actually have a more significant prospect of having a major impact and a great reward if they succeed in establishing new territories for Order, mainly land rights and potentially even higher status in their new home, something most 40k serfs or WHFB Imperial peasants could never hope to achieve.

Yet another attractor may be, ironically, the relatively hopeful tone Age of Sigmar takes. Whilst still a [[Dark Fantasy]] setting, there's a lot more emphasis on hope and the possibility that things can genuinely change for the better.

[[Age of Sigmar Roleplay]] honestly helps a lot, because whereas [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] focuses on the grim, gritty, largely pointless and borderline [[mudcore]] elements of [[Warhammer Fantasy]], Soulbound continues the same themes of high magic and hope-in-darkness as the core game. Your Soulbound are doomed to die a death that will see them delivered to eternal oblivion... but, at the same time, what you can achieve before you die genuinely matters. The ability for Soulbound to come from so many races hints that Order - or at least Harmony - can win out over Chaos, with the promise that even creatures as disparate as ogors and orruks and gretchin can find some kind of common ground with humans, aelves and duradin. All in all, it gives characters a bit of the [[Noblebright]] Carrot while still hammering them with the [[Grimdark]] Stick; ie [[Hopepunk]].

Also, despite the over the top High Fantasy aesthetic that greet players when they initially explore AoS, there is a surprising amount of existential, spiritual and philosophical ideas attached to the world and factions therein. Little things that draw people in who may have been skeptical or outright dismissive of the setting. The Idoneth being abandoned by their creator and left to fend for themselves as incomplete beings. The ironic and cruel torment of the Nighthaunt. The ruthless arithmetic of the Ossiarchs. The Fyreslayers compromising their honor if it means one day seeing their dead God brought back. The Stormcast being the paragons of humanity, all while having their humanity worn away into oblivion. Since the timeline of Age of Sigmar is heavily defined by the passage of Ages, everyone is affected differently by the major groundbreaking events of said Ages. The world building and factions are not stagnant and are constantly shifting with new changes, in often drastic and unexpected ways. For all the over the top fantasy cheese Age of Sigmar is often portrayed as and all the flaws it had in its creation, there are genuinely profound moments and ideas hidden away that often reveal themselves unexpectedly.