Someone want to tell these two that ratling guns have been a thing in Games Workshop’s Warhammer Fantasy Battles (and now Age of Sigmar) since the 1980s? Can’t believe neither of them has ever heard the word before. Skaven aren’t exactly an obscure thing in gaming circles.
The old 1990s Shock Force minis game had figs called gun rats too, but they’ve been out of business for a very long time now.
No, but I haven’t been a big fan of WH, especially the Fantasy/AoS, so I was not aware that they were actually called “ratling guns” until fairly recently, so I can understand the ignorance.
Different folks know about different games. I mean, few people are going to know much about Empire of the Petal Throne or Judge’s Guild, but in some circles they are a huge deal.
They show up in the various RPGs too. Until you’ve had your poor mule skinner riddled with bullets carved out of raw warpstone you don’t know what you’re missing. Probably better than getting roasted by a warpfire thrower or run over by a doom wheel, though.
Regardless, GW has a death grip on “ratling gun” even if C&A wanted to use the term, and their legal department plays rough. Even the various casters who’ve done obvious knock-off minis over the years have had to call them something else - ratman gun teams, for ex. The Shock Force guys were so leery about it their old child-sized mini-ratmen were called “broodlings” instead of “ratlings” - but of course they were already on GW’s radar and treading carefully.
Of course, Plague Rat is just an unusually well-dressed rat ogre, and they aren’t exactly new either.
After Barker was posthumously (and very belatedly) outed as a neo-Nazi author and editor a few years back EPT became better known than it had been for decades - and for all the wrong reasons. Still a Tekumel community out there (as there has been since the 1970s) but they’ve distanced themselves from their clay-footed idol and focused on the setting rather than the games he wrote using it. Been a rough patch for old fans, and personally I just can’t bring myself to touch it any more.
As for Judges’ Guild, the D&D crowd (especially the folks on the OSR end of that Olympic-sized pool) is well aware of them, especially with Goodman Games doing reprints of Caverns of Thracia as a memorial to Jennell Jaquays’ untimely death. Goodman’s done a lot to boost interest in TSR-era D&D over the years, and they’ve certainly been one of many boats lifted by the 5e tide - maybe even more so as WotC keeps making PR blunders like the OGL debacle and that idiocy with the Pinkertons and folks look for alternatives to giving Hasbro/WotC money.
But you’re right, I suppose. There are lots of people out there that have never heard of the Sentinel Comics IP and couldn’t tell you anything about them, so why expect C&A to know much about GW products?
That reminds me. So… a few months back I had a bit of a “six degrees of Kevin Bacon” moment with regards to SotM and some other stuff. My kid occasionally decides that the random thing from my playlist is now his favorite and asks for it. A while back he would ask for “Go-Go!”
Now, a bit of background. As I’ve probably said elsewhere, Final Fantasy 6 was a milestone in my development, as a gamer, a fantasy fan, and author. One of the first projects I ever backed on KickStarter was OC Remix’s FF6 project “Balance and Ruin.” One of the songs was called “Go-Go Gadget Gonkulator,” and was a reinterpretation of the leitmotif for the mimic, Gogo.
The composer of that track? Went by the name XPRTNovice. Y’all would know him better as the voice of Guise himself, Joe Zieja.
Yeeeeeeah. Or C&A should at least stop answering them.
At best, they just don’t know enough about philosophy and math to give actual informed responses versus kind of meandering flailing it’s painful to listen to.
At worst they’ve sometimes given cringe or accidentally potentially problematic answers.
Like it’s not that I don’t enjoy discussing philosophy; I have an actual literal philosophy professor I watch who also plays games on Twitch that often discusses his day job for a hour before the actual game stuff.
But, well, that’s because he actually knows his stuff. C&A are just geeks with layperson opinions like the rest of us, and while I have no problems with “politics in my comic books”, politics outside the comic books is not what I come to this specific podcast for.
Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest, as it’s kind of been building up every time we have these philosophy questions in the podcast.
As for the wider Editor’s Note itself, I’m so excite for a Wipeout episode you don’t even know, especially since we might get art of her. Funnily enough I didn’t suggest it (I had thought it wouldn’t gain voting traction, goes to show what I know), which tells me there’s another Wipeout fan out there who I salute.
Yup. The Baron Blade and the Trolley Problem stuff was funny, and gave some insight into the character. But the Lets Make a Deal conundrum back and forth was… yeah, one of the few things I skip on my re-listen.
Love it when my fandoms cross over. I’m listening to/judging an OCReMix submission as I type this.
I have mixed feelings about C&A’s ethics discussions. Christopher is passionate, well-educated, well-informed, and thoughtful. He has very strong, unyielding positions, but they come from a solid foundation. Adam also has passionate opinions, but they tend to be problematic because they’re very surface-level, and Christopher immediately (if politely) picks them apart and shows Adam where his faulty logic lies. Although he really didn’t go far enough with that this time.
I’d say it works better on the Play Greater podcast, except that Paul tends to agree with Christopher 100% on philosophical issues, so there’s no discussion to be had.
Maybe I should just bite the bullet and admit that I have also noticed this exact pattern, and what really turned me off from wanting any more of these discussions was the one time Christopher failed to pick apart such an opinion.
Namely, the one where Adam tried adding to Christopher’s originally very good points about policing issues by saying that “locally elected sheriffs would fix policing issues”, and I was frantically hissing “Joe Arpaio, though?” out loud.
Join the Patreon so you don’t miss out! ;D
And Adam’s impression.
