bosssmiley wrote:Dwarves = Scots has been pretty much gamer orthodoxy since John Rhys Davis did Gimli with a wandering Celtic accent, but the idea took root long before. Thrifty types who hold a grudge for centuries and live in dour rocky places full of sheep and hairy cattle. Yep, sounds pretty Scottish to me.
Koumei wrote:Who would the Skaven be? My housemate posits that they are the government of the UK, and I could see David Cameron as a Grey Seer or Verminlord.
Skaven are chavs; the non-working underclass loathed by the middle classes and by the Little Englander press for the working class (the Daily Mail, the Express, the Sun, etc.) The stereotype of chavs in the UK is that they breed like rats, steal whatever they need to live, and lurk in the ruins of old industrial towns erupting forth only to loot and riot.
Orcs are actually based on East London football hooligans, rather than on Scousers.
I am not sure I really care which caricatures are defentively assigned to each group. We could argue around in circles about the socioeconomic class from which most of the east enders are drawn and if this means "soccur hooligans" is itself a form of class warfare or not.
However thats besides the point:
The point is that warhammer/Games Workshop gets away with a level of classism/racism/regionalism that is both disgusting and astounding.
I really don't understand how thye get away with it.
If I made a wargame in the U.S. that had the following factions:
1: A group of scientient gorillas who are super strong and fast but always depicted as both dumb and lazy. When not fighting they rely on stolen technology to meet all their needs. They also rap all their lines.
2: A group of short wide eyed aliens who reproduce at a massive rate, have near savant level skills with computers and mathematics, but are un able to innovate for themselves and merely produce high-quality-copies of devices made by other groups.
3: A faction of overweight bearmen who are depcited as near constantly drunk, jugmental and stpuid (but never quite so stupid as the gorrilas) and who are extremely devoted to a religion that they are shown to not understand. Their accents range from "congenially southern" to "incomprehensible canjun"
4: A group of anorexic albinoes who ride around on "combat hover disks" and have lots of spikes and leather where the men all speak like billy-joe-armstrong and their "hive queens" use valley-girl-speak
5: A group of brains in mechanical bodies who even without real limbs don't actually like to get their hands dirty with anything and use their massive power of know-better-than-youness who even though they communicate by telekinesis still seem to both look down their nose at other races AND have a nasal intonnation.
6: A group of aliens who communicate through nothing except traded insults and references to each others mothers. They also assume that their position as the most overcrowed planet in the galaxy means everybody knows everything about them and wants to be them.
People would be outside pickiting my company within hours of it hitting the shelves.
Its really most amazing that they can get away with what they do.
