[OSSR]Warhammer Dwarfs (vs Dwarfs vs Dwarfs)

[Ancient History]

I think Warhammer Fantasy Battles is on something like 8th or 9th edition; I lost count. But I was going through boxes looking for something and ran across three Warhammer Dwarf books - I think for 4/5th, 6th, and 7th editions. The oldest of them was copyright 1993, the most recent 2005 - so they're all game for an OSSR. So why not do a side-by-side comparison?





Let's start with 1993, because in many ways that's the important one. Fourth edition was when Warhammer Fantasy basically became the game that set fire to miniatures gaming, it was when the setting really congealed, the backstory and mythology was padded out, the artistic style and representation was firmly entrenched, and the basic mechanics, layout, and business model of Games Workshop books were set. It might not be the edition that every gamer remembers, but it was in many ways the defining edition of the game.

...I don't want to talk about it.

My ghost it's pretty.

You can't tell from the cover, but Warhammer Armies: Dwarfs is a beautiful book. It's 112 pages, many of them color, and of a heavier paperweight than your standard game product of the time. Frank and I have gone on about how crap gaming books could be back in the early '90s, because frankly the publishing standards weren't there...but Games Workshop was working a cut above the rest even from the beginning.

Now, when I say that 4th edition was the critical edition, I mean a lot of things. Obviously Dwarfs as a playable army were around for the first few editions, and the 4th edition dwarfs were recognizably descended from the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd edition dwarfs - but 4th edition defined the dwarfs in the game identity in a way that the later editions just didn't, and while some units and mechanics might be added, subtracted, or fiddled with, the basic backstory and character of the army was basically set. Things might get less camp and more grimdark, but the 4th edition Dwarfs can easily be said to be the canonical take on Dwarfs in Warhammer, no matter what came next.


Yes, that's Gotrex & Felix in the front rank.

The other two Dwarf books here are basically identical - a little darker and more detailed art, some shifts in mechanics and adding or subtracting units, but the essential structure of all three books is almost identical. Indeed, the other two books are pared down: the 2000 (6th edition) and 2005 (7th edition) are both only 80 pages long.

(I don't own the most recent Dwarf book, because I stopped having people to play with and couldn't work up the will to pour money into ForgeWorld Chaos Dwarf models, but the new book is hardback.)


Shiny.

Dwarfs (1993) is written by Rick Priestley and Nigel Stillman, two honored ancestors of Warhammer, with fiction by Bill King (of Gotrek & Felix fame), and three artists: John Blanche, Wayne England, and Mark Gibbons). Presumably there were editors and layout people attached to the product, but none of them are mentioned and good fucking riddance, all it says is "Produced by Games Workshop" and that is enough.

Okay, so that's a 4-point print "Game design consultant Bryan Ansell", but that amounts to proofreading and playtesting.

Unfortunately, GW's legal team was even then front and center.

Games Workshop and the Games Workshop logo, the Citadel castle, Realm of Chaos, Slottabase, White Dwarf and Warhammer are all registered trademarks of Games Workshop Ltd. Citadel and the Old World are both trademarks of Games Workshop Ltd.

'Scatter' dice are UK registered design no. 2017484

All artwork in all Games Workshop products and the images contained therein have been produced either in-house or as work for hire. The exclusive copyright on the artwork and the images it depicts is the property of Games Workshop Ltd.

(c) Copyright Games Workshop Ltd, 1993. All rights reserved.

Believe it or not, this is the short version, and apparently GW's lawyers didn't think this covered enough. Part of the 2005 version reads:

(c) Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2005. The Double-Head/Imperial Eagle device, the Games Workshop logo, Games Workshop, Warhammer, Anvil Guard, Anvil of Doom, Daemon Slayer, Dragon Slayer, Flame Cannon, Gate Keeper, Giant Slayer, Grudge Thrower, Gyrocopter, Hammerer, High King Thorgrim Grudgebearer, Ironbeard, Ironbreaker, Josef Bugman, Organ un, Quarreller, Runelord, Runsemith, Thane, Theorek Ironbrow, Throne of Power, Thunderer, Troll Slayer, and all associated marks, logos, places, names, creatures, races and race insignia/devices/logos/symbols, vehicles, locations, weapons, units, characters, products, illustrations and images from the Warhammer world and Warhammer 40,000 universe are either (R), TM and/or (c) Games Workshop Ltd 2000-2005, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All Rights Reserved.

Svengi the Law Dwarf says: ABANDON HOPE, ALL WHO ENTER HERE

Anyway, Games Workshop's noted anal retentiveness with regards to product identity is why you still occasionally hear people bitch about take-down notices being applied to fansites or people that dare to put out a fucking space marine novel even though they don't own the concept.

That being said, GW is generally good about keep a rather small core creative team. Warhammer Dwarfs 2000 for example was written by Gav "Dwarfs are Awesome" Thorpe and Alessio "I Designed this Edition" Cavatore; with some extra input from Priestley and some other dudes; John Blanche is still the definitive Dwarf artist, but shares responsibilities with some other artists. Hell, even the miniature sculptors and painters are acknowledged by name, which probably required a general strike, and Alan Merrett was acknowledged by "Invaluable Grudgeness."


Steve: "Put the hammer down."
Tony: "Um, yeah, no! Bad call! He loves his hammer!..."

2005 was written by Pete Haines with "additional material" by Rick Priestley; I'm pretty sure that's just acknowledging Rick as the default Dwarf dude who wrote 90% of their background, but you never know. There's a few more artists and graphic designers involved, but still no named editors or line managers or crap like that, and pretty much everybody that's worked on any of the prior two dwarf books gets a "Special Thanks." It's kinda nice.


You may laugh at my striped pants, but I've killed goblins with my codpiece alone.

This is gonna take me a couple days to get through, but like the other multiple-product comparisons, I'm going to take an apples-to-apples approach when possible. So next post: The Dwarfs


Mush!

[OgreBattle]

GW does my favorite take on dwarf/fantasy anythings. Because they started off with miniatures so early on and the artists were such a core part of their identity they put a lot more focus on visual consistency than most others.

It's been 30+ years of miniatures making. The most comparable thing I can think of to them is Gundam and their model kits.

[Doom]

WFB was the only miniatures system I took seriously (at least until WizKid's Battletech game). I never bought the minis, though, just wrote it all out on slips of paper, to move around the floor.

[Meikle641]

Wait wait wait. Does GW seriously think they can copyright common nouns like gyrocopter? I can see character names (and the character itself) and being doable, but seriously.

... Then again, even if they can't, they still will sue, like you pointed out with the space marine thing. Fuck GW.

[Stahlseele]

@Meikle641
Did you miss the mess about SPOTS THE SPACE MARINE? O.o
Yes they do and they work hard at making other people think similarly.

@AH:
I only know WH40K, but Dorfs are my favourite Fantasy Race, i will be waiting to read this!

[name_here]

Wait wait wait. Does GW seriously think they can copyright common nouns like gyrocopter? I can see character names (and the character itself) and being doable, but seriously.

... Then again, even if they can't, they still will sue, like you pointed out with the space marine thing. Fuck GW.

Actually, I think they sued Blizzard over it for Warcraft 3. Reign Of Chaos had dwarven steam tanks and gnomish gyrocopters, and Frozen Throne renamed them to siege engines and flying machines. Similarly with owlbears to wildkin. I'm not sure if GW and Wizards actually sued, but I assume they at least threatened to.

Any attempt at going after them for orcs and dwarves as a general concept probably terminated when the Tolkien estate coughed meaningfully at them.

[Username17]

But... Gyrocopters are real things that were invented in 1923. They exist and have existed before anyone who ever worked for Games Workshop in any capacity was even born. The term "Gyrocopter" was a trademark of Bensen Aircraft, which closed its doors in 1987, two years before Games Workshop created their Gyrocopter model.

-Username17

[Meikle641]

Notice that Dragon Slayer, Giant Slayer, and Troll Slayer are also terms they claim belong to them. Madness.

[erik]

Finally a thread just for Koumei! This has been a long time in coming.

[Ancient History]

The Dwarfs
For the longest time, the default image that popped into most people's heads when you said "dwarf" was this:



Tolkien did his part, D&D did its part. No arguing that. But in the popular imagination, that's your default dwarf. Miners, yes, but they're silly little dudes in Phrygian caps. My point being, we've come a long way, and Warhammer is in part to thank for that.


Fairly long way, anyway.

Dwarfs in Tolkien have a culture, but we rarely see much of it; Dwarfs in D&D have culture, but it's always been kind of vaguely medieval like the rest of the setting. We get the basic idea of living in mountains and underground, skilled miners and smiths, vaguely magical people with strong familial relationships and gold-lust and that's it. Then came the Warhammer Dwarfs.


'sup, bitches?

The thing to understand is that like pretty much all Warhammer races, these guys are a caricature. They are literally more dwarf than any dwarf before them. The definition of dwarfiness, exacerbated for hilarity and awesome. They're part Tolkien and part Scottish and part Viking and all badassness and ancient traditions with ricockulously huge axes and hammers and beards and grudges and hangovers. In a very real way, Warhammer dwarfs helped define fantasy dwarfs simply by taking their characteristic qualities to the max, even if that made them ridiculous. You can see this in the Warhammer fiction particularly - anything dwarf-made is better than anything human made, even dwarf beer has amazing qualities that makes human beer taste like moose urine.



It's kinda like what Tolkien did with elves, but Warhammer did with dwarfs - and they weren't against taking the piss out of themselves along the way.

Which is a long introduction to say that the first chapter in Warhammer Armies Dwarfs (1993) is "The Dwarfs" and is about that race, its gods, its history, where it lives and what it's like. This was all first fully fleshed out in this book by Priestley - a lot of the basic concepts had been conveyed in Warhammer editions 1, 2, & 3, but this really was the defining document for Dwarf lore until...well...they came out with a book called Grudgelore, and even that was mostly based on stuff in this book.



So, long story short: The Dwarfs have a 7,000 year history of badassery and tragedy. They are a proud warrior people of smiths, miners, brewers, etc. descended from their ancestor gods (the canonical ones are Grungi, Grimnir, and Valaya), who live in great Dwarf Holds set mostly in mountains. They migrated following the veins of metal and minerals and spread throughout the Old World; they were friends with the Elves until a great betrayal sparked a massive war (which the Dwarfs won), and now they are bitter enemies. They helped found the Empire (Sigmar saved a Dwarf king and was rewarded with a magic hammer and gunpowder), and remain its closest allies and trading partners. But, over the millenia many Dwarf Holds have fallen - to earthquakes, to Skaven, to Chaos, to Greenskins (Orcs & Goblins). A portion of Dwarfs even went east and were corrupted into the Chaos Dwarfs, whom they don't like to talk about but they fight them too. So over the centuries the mighty Dwarf empire has shrunken, holds have been besieged, and heroes died. The Dwarfs are presented in the fiction as being very much a doomed people.



AND THEY WILL FIGHT YOU TO THEIR LAST BREATHS.

It's really the great conceit of the Dwarfs, and one of the reasons they're so fun to play as a side: they guys are badasses, but they're the perennial underdogs. They're shorter than everything except goblins and halflings and they slay giants and dragons and ogres and trolls with nothing but axes and hammers and fucking rifles, cannons, gyrocopters, flamethrowers, and anything else they can fucking get their hands on. They're the Plucky Scottish Engineers of the setting, except they're all angry drunk Viking/Glaswegians as well.

It's all in good fun, but it's also been an amazingly effective characterization for the race, and the basic outline of their culture and history has been unchanged for 20 years; it might get a bit more grimdark, but there are few retcons and many, many elaborations. Even now, Games Workshop's Black Library is milking the setting for interminable novels based on the history, and the Dwarf books are still some of their best sellers.


Not a Space Marine, but we try harder.

So, to recap: the Dwarfs have a reason to fight pretty much everybody. They have an epic history of grudgekeeping and grudge-settling. They're situated throughout the Old World - hell, the map of the Old World is 90% a map of their dwarf holds...

Anvil? Dwarf hold. Broken anvil? Lost Dwarf hold. Take a drink.

...and this is all communicated very quickly. Seriously, in the 1993 book this takes up all of 21 pages, and that includes a 2-page timeline. This was a starting point for the Dwarf depiction, but it resonated. It had legs. And this can best be seen by comparing it with the other two books. The 2000 book crams all of the Dwarf legendry and stuff in the back of the book, but that still makes it the longest single section in the book. The 2005 book moves it back to the front, and it's still something like 24 pages.

Hell, the 1993 and 2000 book have a couple pages each dedicated to Khazalid, the Dwarf Language (remember when fantasy languages were a big thing with the fanbase?)

Geeky aside: early Dwarf place-names in Warhammer 1-3 appear to have been based loosely on equal parts Tolkien and Welsh, with stuff like "Carag" or "Carak" based on the word caer for fortified city. Starting in 4th edition, the Dwarf language was defined and Carag/Carak became "Karak," with personal names taken equally from Tolkien and Nordic sagas. Which is funny, because there's actually a subset of "Norse Dwarfs" and another subset that speaks with an almost unintelligible Scots accent. They have the best engineers.


I'd poor a sip to his memory, but I'm pretty sure Doonan would come back from the grave and chastise me for wasting good whisky.

Having your own fantasy language like that, even a relatively simply and silly version like Khazalid, actually goes a long way toward establishing the verisimilitude of the setting. It's really telling that while twenty years on L5R still can't decide how much of its shit is fake-Chinese and how much is fake-Japanese, the Warhammer Fantasy guys are still using Khazalid to name pretty much everything Dwarfish.


This was a thing that happened for 40K. The race was called the Squats, and they were quite literally Space Dwarfs with mining-holds on a bunch of high-gravity planets and were friendly with the Imperium of Man; if they lived long enough they gained psychic powers and became Living Ancestors. Then they were written out of the canon. And the Tyrannids ate them. And if you bring them up, people at Games Workshop get mad at you.

[Shatner]

Lovin' this thread. Keep it comin'

[Rawbeard]

Is there a good reason for Space Dwarf being retconned to non existance/tyranid fodder? Or where they for some reason embarrased and just wanted to pretend this never happened?

[Stahlseele]

No reason was ever given . .
But the 6th Edition Rulebook explicitly names the Squat as allies to the Empire of Mankind.
And with the Demiurg there is a very similar race being introduced into the universe. But they are outsiders with 2 of their subfactions allies to the Tau Empire. Communist Space Dorfs!

[Ancient History]

There was a hard time justifying the Squats. It has to be remembered that early Rogue Trader/Warhammer 40K really was just Warhammer Fantasy...in Spaaaaace. You had Elves (Eldar), Dark Elves (Dark Eldar), Humans (ditto), Orcs (Orks), Ogres (Ogryns), Halflings (Ratlings), Chaos (ditto)...hell, they tried to work in Zoats for both games at one point. But eventually 40K went a bit more grimdark, and the Squats not only were a painful reminder of the space-fantasy days but they didn't really fill a good niche for play (sales were also probably shite). In Warhammer Fantasy, as we'll see, Dwarfs have their specific role to play on the battlefield; Squats were seldom more than a support force. It's kind of like how Kislev in Warhammer Fantasy was reduced down to an Allied Contingent and then quietly swept under the rug; GW tries new things, and some stick (Tyrannids) and some do not (Fimir).

[Mord]

Here's what Jervis Johnson, one of the game designers, had to say about Squats back in 2004:

I know I shouldn't get drawn on this... but... can't... resist

Seriously, a couple of points just so you can have an informed debate based on the real reasons that Squats are no longer available. Be warned, it is going to be hard reading for people that like the Squat background.

First of all, Squats were *not* dropped because they were not selling well. There were then, and are now, plenty of other figure ranges that sell in the sort of % quantaties that the Squats pulled down, especially when you look across all of the ranges produced by GW rather than just those for 40K.

No, the reason that the Squats were dropped was because the creatives in the Studio (people like me, Rick, Andy C, Gav etc) felt that we had failed to do the Dwarf 'archetype' justice in its 40K incarnation. From the name of the race (Squats - what *were* we thinking?!?!) through to the short bikers motif, we had managed to turn what was a proud and noble race in Warhammer and the other literary forms where the archetype exists, into a joke race in 40K. We only fully realised what we had done when we were working on the 2nd edition of 40K. Try as we might, we just couldn't work up much enthusiasm for the Squats. The mistake we made then (deeply regreted since) was to leave them in the background and the 'get you by' army list book that appeared. With hindsight, we should have dropped the Squats back then, and saved ourselves a lot of grief later on.

Anyway, the Squats made it into 2nd edition, and since we were doing army books for each of the races, we started to try and figure out what to do with them. Unfortunately we just couldn't figure out a way to update them and get them to work that we felt was good enough. The 'art' of working on an army as a designer is to find the thing that you think is cool and exciting about an army, and work it up into a strong theme. This 'muse' didn't strike any of us, and so, rather than bring out a second-rate product simply re-hashing the old background, we kept doing other army books instead, with stuff we did feel inspired by.

Now, while this was all going on for 40K, we were actually doing some rather good stuff for the Squats in Epic. On this scale there was a natural tendancy to focus on the big 'hand-made' war machines the Squat artisans produced, and this created an army with a feel that was very different to the biker hordes in 40K. However, this tended to reinforce the problems we saw in the Squat background rather than alleviate them, underlining what we *should* have done with the Squats in 40K.

In the end (and it took years to really get to the roots of the problem) this led to a realisation that we were going to have to drop the Squats in their 'Squat' form from the 40K background. There was little point having a major race that we weren't willing to make an army book for, and their inclusion in the background meant that people kept asking us when we'd do a Squat Codex. Instead we decided that we'd write the Squats out of the background by saying that their Homworlds had been devoured by a Tyranid Hivefleet. This would give us the option in the future to return to making a race based ont he Squat archetype for 40K. This race was given the name of Demiurg, and a certain amount of preliminary work was done to get a 'feel' for what the race would be like. At present the only hint of the Demiurg in 40K is the Demiurg spaceship for BFG. However, we do have this race 'in our back pocket' as a possible new race for 40K, or an interesting character model in Inquisitor, or whatever. So far the Demiurg have lost out to other projects, and it may be that their time never actually comes, as they will have to win through on their merits, not simply because we once made some Squat models in the past. At present, I have to say that it is more lilely that they *don't* make the cut than do, as there is a certain predudice these days to simply taking races from Warhammer and cross them over to 40K like we did in the early days, so it may be that the Squats/Demiurg end up remaining a footnote in the history of the 40K galaxy. Only time will tell...

The second point I'd like to make is about 'old moulds'. In the past, Mail Order in the UK and US used to be the place that we kept all of the retired moulds for Citadel Miniatures, and we used to offer a service where you could order any Citadel Mniature ever made from MO. However, there are now so many of these 'back catalogue' miniatures that it is simply impossible to keep all of the old moulds in Mail Order and offer this service. Instead, we pick and choose which back catalogue miniatures are kept available. At present we're still struggling to produce special catalogues for these ranges (in the US there is the 'Phone Book' catalogue with everything in it, while the UK has special 'collectors guides' that are themed round a race). Once we've ironed out the kinks in the way we deal with the range of collectors models we want to keep permenantly available, the plan is to offer up other parts of the back catalogue for limited periods of time. In effect this will divide the back catalogue into three parts: a range of classic models that are permenantly available, a range of classic models we dip into and bring out for a limited release, and a range of retired models that will no longer be sold either because we've decided that they are embarrassingly bad, or because we are no longer allowed to sell them due to licencing agreement changes. So far we're still slowly working on deciding which classic models we want to keep permenantly available, and its going to take several years to work through just those. The old Squat range is most likely to end up as retired models, I have to say, though there is a good chance that the Squat war engines they could simply into the limited release classic range. Once again, only time will tell...

I'll finish off by saying that whatever we decide to do 'officially', there is nothing stopping players with Squat armies from using them, either in Epic or 40k for that matter. There is no GW 'rule' against using old Citadel Miniatures, as long as you use them with exisiting army lists and in a way that won't cause confusion for other players. I recommend taking a positive stand by saying "Have you seen these cool old models? They're called the Squats and GW used to make them back in the late eighties/early nineties. I love 'em, so I count them as Imperial Guard and use them with the current rules..." Put like this I can't imagine that anyone would stop you from using your army.

Best regards,

Jervis Johnson
Head Fanatic

sauce

[Laertes]

Squats existed on paper in 2nd edition 40k (aka "the one that made them famous", aka "the one that everyone of my generation remembers") but never actually had any models made, and correspondingly never made any money.

Therefore, when the transition came to 3rd edition (aka "the one that made them rich", aka "the one where they realised that kids were a better market than greybearded wargamers") squats were dropped from the fluff.

They also have the difficulty that their specialities (heavy infantry, big guns and light vehicles) are those of the Space Marines, and competing with the Space Marines is like competing with Steam or Amazon: you're not going to get market share.

[Stahlseele]

err, laertes, did you actually bother to read that quote above your post?
that states pretty clearly that they were not dropped due to not making money but because the writers/rulespeople did not like what they had done to them. They were not dwarfy enough.

[Laertes]

I was typing my post at the time that one was posted, sadly. It's a case of simultaneity.

I'd also point out that while I personally like Jervis Johnson, I'm not a hundred percent sold on his "no really guys! We did make money off them! It's just that nobody played them!" line. Yes, people used Squats in Epic. I was playing fairly actively as a kid during 2nd edition, and I never saw a 40k Squat army.

[name_here]

Given how people have been bitching about them forever-like, clearly some people played them. Not, like, in space marine numbers, but probably enough to turn a profit.

[Stahlseele]

@Laertes
Oh, yeah, did not look at the posting times, sorry.

@name_here
well, to be fair, with the prices GW is asking for stuff that probably ain't too hard either . .

[Laertes]

Remember that Johnson is GW's "cling to obsolete ideas that are too niche to be profitable in a mass-market way" guy. That's his job within the company. He does it very well. He isn't the guy who's going to come out and say "yeah, it wasn't popular so we stopped."

Being British myself, I suspect a lot of the bitching about Squats is done just to wind GW up. It's the culture over here.

[codeGlaze]

Oh man, WH's Dwarfs and Greenskins have to be my favorite.
I'm doubly glad that the Squars hot talked about.

Four thumbs up!

[Ancient History]

As a geeky admission here, I was...I am a Chaos Dwarf fanboy, and my initial interest in the Squats was, well, Chaos Squats.

[codeGlaze]

As a geeky admission here, I was...I am a Chaos Dwarf fanboy, and my initial interest in the Squats was, well, Chaos Squats.

Yea the Chaos Dwarves seemed like a really concept. But WH's love/hate support for them seems like it has left them out in the cold.

[Ancient History]

Having been a red-headed stepchild myself, I'm sympathetic.