Is it BB or not BB?

[Gobdomino]

I have a simple question that I can't seem to find an official answer for (and there may not be one). Is the Blood Bowl Universe it's own entity or is it the Warhammer Fantasy world several thousand years later? I've heard sides for both and I'm sure you can make it what you want it to be but I was just curious as to what the, if any, official stance is.

[lunchmoney]

At one point they shared fluff, then WHFB went all serious, BB didnt, so it became a mirror of WHFB. They certainly arent "several thousand years later".

[GalakStarscraper]

BB is its own universe

[JT-Y]

Best thought of as a satire of the Warhammer world where Nuffles Amorican Football has replaced war.

[Gobdomino]

Like an alternate universe then? I thought in the books they mentioned that it was hundreds or thousands of years in the future of WHFB and they replaced war with the games. There needs to be some better books on this stuff out there. Even good fan fiction would be nice.

[lunchmoney]

You can make a start on your background reading by reading the rule book. The complete rulebook that is, not the cutdown CRP on the GW site.
Should be able to get here http://d01.megashares.com/dl/BWKzaJf/LRB6_Handbook.pdf amongst other places.

[Gaixo]

Like an alternate universe then? I thought in the books they mentioned that it was hundreds or thousands of years in the future of WHFB and they replaced war with the games. There needs to be some better books on this stuff out there. Even good fan fiction would be nice.

In the old days, one concept of the Warhammer world was that it was our own Earth following some sort of cataclysmic event in the distant past (our own near future). This carried over into Blood Bowl, and the part you're talking about involves a couple of warring armies discovering a shrine to Nuffle, which is presumably the Pro Football Hall of Fame and its adjacent field. The armies figure out how to play Blood Bowl and decide to settle their differences through sport instead of war. The concept catches on around the world, and warfare is largely abandoned in favor of Blood Bowl. If you like the alternate universe angle, this would be the point at which the BB universe diverges from the Warhammer universe.

[JT-Y]

I thought in the books they mentioned that it was hundreds or thousands of years in the future of WHFB and they replaced war with the games.

Not that I recall, although my memory isn't what it once was for all this stuff, and it changed all the time. And still does.

My understanding was that in the BB world the great war against chaos and the fall of the old ones was replaced by the rediscovery of the full rules for Amorican footballand the 'religion' of Nuffle, the god who replaces, in many ways, Sigmar, and holds the chaos gods at bay. And that the golden age of the elves and dwarfs was replaced by the golden age of the NAF, and the end times as the Warhammer world is currently in in the 'real' world is replaced by the wandering leagues and corporate sponsorship, advertising, and economics in a capitalist society rather than a feudal/post renaissance one.
All the magic and scientific development has been poured into the game rather than war and territorial warfare between races is replaced with football hooliganism.
So the time frame is the same as in the 'real' Warhammer world, but with a calendar based on the fall of the NAF rather than the birth of Sigmar.

So we have a world where orcs, humans, elves, chaos cultists, dwarfs and undead live (?) in harmony side by side and settle their grievances on the pitch and in the terraces.
To me, that's a big part of the BB fluff, it always allowed Jervis and certain others in the studio in the 1990's to have some really silly fun with the concept and really mock our world. The sports TV, the advertising, the politics, and the celebrities of the day, all of which was fair game to intellectuals who'd remind you of The Young Ones but with jobs.

One of the reasons for the drop off in BB support is that it's hard to justify to the shareholders taking the piss out of your own IP for your own amusement when that's the product you wish to protect from others doing likewise to.

But it's still fun and offers a nice counterpoint to the grim darkness and despair of its big brother.

[JT-Y]

I asked Andy Hall for any input he has, I wouldn't ask Jervis whilst he's still employed in the studio, but Andy left a good while ago and was heavily involved in BB development when with Fanatic and still is through the PC game:

If Jerv was ever asked he'd simply say 'They're not the same world, Blood Bowl's got Television in it.'
In the basest sense they are totally separate. The world of Blood Bowl is a parody - a parody of Warhammer, certainly, but also of other high/low fantasy concepts, of celebrities, of the media and corporate influence of the media and/or sports. And from that, over the years it's developed a style and atmosphere of its own.

I also asked Rick what he remembered, and he had this to say of the games early days:

I think BB was always a gag - although Bryan Ansell once talked about making it part of the Warhammer background as a series of similar sports - I don't believe it was ever taken seriously. It's just a gag version of fantasy with some Warhammer elements carried over - a lot of the colourful narrative was written by Marc Gascoigne I think - it was never something I was involved in.

So yeah, there we have it.
I think we the community have done more for the background ourselves. Certainly back in the days when Galak and the like were involved via Fanatic and the game got the treatment and love it deserves.

[garion]

I think we the community have done more for the background ourselves. Certainly back in the days when Galak and the like were involved via Fanatic and the game got the treatment and love it deserves.

I wouldn't really agree with that tbh. The background was pretty fleshed out even by the end of 1st edition. What with the articles appearing in White Dwarf, and the fluff appearing in 1st ed and 1st ed deathzone. 2nd ed took it even further and by the end of 2nd edition when star player and companion were released you had a wealth of fluff that placed the game firmly in a parrallel universe to WFB. Though still maintaining all the same character traits of races and place names etc.. eg. there are teams mentioned in 2nd edition from Praag (Kislev) to Nippon, from Tilea and so on.

3rd edition watered the fluff down a little on release, but again with constant expansions and additional fluff supplied mainly by JJ and Andy iirc through the BB magazines the world had a wealth of fluff. Teams for all the dwarf clans (experimental rules), amazons, norse, ogres, khemri, vampires and necromantic were added. Even Daemon and Bretonnian teams were added breifly to official rules and had supporting fluff and star players.

While Galak did a good job of collecting all the existing fluff and putting snippets of it in CRP to make the rule book more interesting - the fluff and world was incredibly detailed just going from GWs own articles. Also fanatic went down hill big time after issue 10 anyway, most of it was pretty poor after that. FYI Issue 10 was the first issue Galak was invovled with, the snotling team article, though doubleskulls had a tactica section in one of the earlier issues, 3 or 4 iirc?

[lawquoter]

The online community has Ithilkir and others that helped him to thank for putting all that nice fluff in an accessible website. I still go to Lore of Nuffle somewhat regularly whenever I have a fluff question.

[garion]

The online community has Ithilkir and others that helped him to thank for putting all that nice fluff in an accessible website. I still go to Lore of Nuffle somewhat regularly whenever I have a fluff question.

indeed, lore of nuffle is pretty cool. But its a shame there is so much info missing tbh. If I ever get time I will see if I can finish off the great work he started. Though thats a pretty huge undertaking as it pretty much only goes up to 2nd edition with the fluff etc... and even then there is still a fair bit missing. So it would take a long time

[Darkson]

I thought Ith (and other contributors) had pretty much covered all the official fluff there, including 3rd ed?

[Kilowog2814]

What we need is a BB wiki. Allow users to update it, then it will get done as a collective instead of trying to have a few people do all the work.

[GalakStarscraper]

While Galak did a good job of collecting all the existing fluff and putting snippets of it in CRP to make the rule book more interesting

I agree with you that a lot of great fluff basis was done in the first 3 Editions and Blood Bowl Magazines. However ... very large sections of the fluff for the Icepelt rulebook (aka what CRP was supposed to be) was written from scratch by both myself and Stephen Hutton. If you read the background, you'll find a lot of material that has never appeared before including also several new DYK boxes.