- In Blood Bowl, the eponymous game has replaced warfare. And this is in an Alternate History version of Warhammer. The dwarven hatred of orcs has been reduced to hooliganism. The dark elves and the high elves settle their differences kicking a rugby ball around instead of killing each other. Khorne no longer wants blood and skulls, he wants blood and touchdowns.
- In Changeling: The Lost, all changelings have trauma of some sort (from the Fae tortures that made them a changeling in the first place), so their societies place huge emphasis on anything that makes them feel happy or safe... including ordinary human hobbies. One association is a glorified cooking club
, whose members get magical perception bonuses for gathering ingredients and regularly fight monsters so they can butcher the corpses. - Exalted:
- One reason the mightiest of the gods aren't directly trying to fix the mess the world's in is due to their obsession with "The Games of Divinity", which are apparently the Platonic Ideal of Fun. (Many fans dislike that last part.)
- There's also Sigereth, The Player Of Games, who's basically the Demoness of Serious Business. She manifests as a game board, and does absolutely nothing but play games with any and all challengers... with ridiculously high stakes for winning or losing. Think memories, skills, your body and soul... to give an example of how serious it is, most spirits are allowed to take an advantage that makes them immune to mind-control that would cause them to violate one key rule of their existence. Sigereth? Cannot be compelled to lose board games.
- This game of Jenga definitely qualifies.
- Warhammer: Dwarfs take everything as Serious Business. Seriously, it's suggested that they are physically incapable of not giving their all when they strive to do something. This explains their skill as craftsmen. Dwarfs also take two things very seriously specifically: their Grudges, and their beards.
- One famous Dwarf Grudge was by the clan of Karak Azul, who lost ten thousand warriors in a landslide caused by an exploding goblin shaman at a battle in Grimspike Pass. Since the offending goblin died and the Dwarfs won in the end anyway, the Dwarfs declared the Grudge against the pass itself, vowing that they will never stop until every bit of wealth has been mined out and the mountain reduced to dust.
- Bugman's Brewery, where the legendary ale known as Bugman's XXXXX was created, was once considered the greatest of all Dwarfish brewhouses. Then the Greenskins attacked, tore down the brewery, killed most of the Bugman clan, and drank almost all of the beer. Note which part of that was emphasized.
- The Dwarfs once started a vicious war against the Elves because their arrogant Jerkass king shaved the beard of one of their emissaries as an insult. (This one, of course, may be based on reality: this exact thing by Sultan Muhammad II was part of the reason for the Mongol invasion of Khwarezmia.)
- One Grudge in the Total War video game deals with a Dwarf trading caravan killed by a crazed necromancer as they moved through Stirland. That's bad enough, but the worst part was the slain Dwarfs were reanimated through necromancy and made to recreate a play called Stoutheart Beardcomber and the Ostlander's Wife.A terrible Grudge, for it is indeed a terrible play!
- Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Fyreslayers are an entire dwarven offshoot culture dedicated to retrieving "ur-gold", a magical form of gold that they believe contains fragments of the spirit of their dead patron god, and which can be shaped into runes that grant superhuman physical abilities if embedded in a host's flesh. As ur-gold is all but indistinguishable from regular gold, they have become a culture of mercenaries who will work for anyone who meets their price. Soul-stealing sea elves? Bloodthirsty vampires? Murder-worshipping dark elves? Cannibalistic ogres? Servants of the dark gods who seek to annihilate all things? A Fyreslayer will work for any and all of these forces, provided they can meet the price of gold. About the only races they won't work for are skaven, orruks, and the Flesh-Eater Courts, and that's only because these races are, in order, too treacherous, too savage, and too insane to be able to trade with. Also, if you hire Fyreslayers and then try to cheat them out of their payment, they will kill you, and accept no explanations for why you don't have the money.
- Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 players tend to treat their game as this. The games are notoriously expensive to get into and the cost of a complete army starts well into triple-digit figures, not to mention the time and effort to assemble and paint all those models.
- In the novels, many things are treated as serious business. "One of thousands of secret conflicts conducted by rival factions in the Imperium, the Chronostrife was a bitter, ongoing internal war within the Ordo Chronos over the Imperium’s dating system."
"By the five main factional variants, Guilliman calculated the current year to be anywhere between early M41 and a millennium later, and that was leaving out the numerous lesser, more heretical interpretations."
"‘Who is not a fanatic in these benighted times?’ he said to himself. Guilliman pushed away the crumbling book, his patience tested by the author’s endless calls for the public immolation of his opponents."
