Tephra RPG

Has anyone played this?

>>Steampunk

That is all I needed to know to know that it is trash.

I havent had a chance yet to play, but I own the book.

I like the system. It seems simple enough and has a good crafting subsystem, which is ideal for a steampunk rpg.

The stock setting is absolutely cringeworthy though, so if I ran it I would run my own homebrew setting.

Why is it cringeworthy? And why is Steampunk trash?

I sadly know some of the guys involved in it.

Some oif the shittiest, uninspired kitchen-sink cogfop fluff I have ever been exposed to. The worst part is that several of the playtesters were 19thC History and fiction enthusiasts, who were asked for advice and input...

...And duly told to fuck off by the authors when they picked everything apart.

Pseudo-Victorian steampunk is an over saturated sponge of bad ideas and poor design, and a poor grasp of the social aspects that drove culture of the period.

Folks here don't take too kindly to steampunk lately. And not for no reason. There are plenty of examples of surface level steampunk trash with no substance, sort of 'stick gears on it and call it steampunk' ignoring all the other unique aspects that make the genre interesting without exploring them and going straight for corsets and goggles because they 'look cool'

The Tephra setting is cringeworthy because it's just extremely weeaboo.

So it's more anime than anything?

The tephra setting is, but steampunk isnt.

Again, i like steampunk, but the tephra setting in the rulebook is dumb.

When most people talk steampunk, they typically mean science fiction psuedo-Victorian/Edwardian, when in reality, the genera is both widely populated and nebulous with lots of crossover. For the sake of this conversation, we'll keep it narrowed to the psuedo-Victorian/Edwardian mishmash that defines the public image.

This cultural and technological timeframe is heavily involved in the name itself. STEAM refers to the rapid advancement of technology to the point of insanity, with industrialization and change for their own sake, and with little regard to risk involved or research. Unrestrained science and industry, both fantastic and horrifying. Mass produced sulfa antibiotics, at the same time a heroine based baby soothing tonic. etc.

PUNK refers to the social climate. It is the last death throes of classicism as the rule, but not without being taken to extremes. The unrestrained development of technology and war can make and lose fortunes in a night. Upward mobility and falling from grace is not the rarity it was before. For newcommers to reach the levels of the uppercrust, and for the nobles to stay noble, the now industrially supercharged beast of society my be fed through colonial expansion for resources, and increased oppression of those below you to stay on top. The lines of class were both blurring and being cut deeper, and this causes upheaval and revolt. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.

That all sounds really cool, yeah?

99% of "Steampunk" has NONE OF THAT. Its just sepia tones, vintage store bowlers, and hot gluing your grandpa's antique watch from the Great war onto a cheap pair of spraypainted welding goggles.

So can I play a working class coal shoveller in this game?

I've heard you can play a chimney sweep if you wanted to.

Stop pretending you're not a shill.

Actually I'm mostly into Shadowrun and Star Wars: Edge of the Empire. I've just been researching steampunk and steampunk rpgs. I like Sci-FI.

Don't worry. No matter how many blogs they make to call them "best steampunk rpg/larp" on their wikipedia article, its still a failed game.

So is there a good steampunk rpg? All I can find are board games. I asked a friend and he said to use the DND Eberron setting. Is this good enough or is it too magitech?

There's nothing steampunk about Eberron, I don't know why people keep calling it that other than they're fucking idiots and don't know what steampunk is at all. Everything is magictech. I don't think there's anything at all steam powered in Eberron, honestly, even the trains run on magic.

That said Eberron is like a collection of ideas that are individually great, but somehow combined in the most boring and uninteresting way possible. The only thing the setting is useful for is ripping ideas from.

Have you looked at Castle Falkenstein?

It's basically Wolsung that cut out the edgy stuff.

But it's still shit-tier cog-wank steampunk, so why would you want to even use it for anything else than cheap and disposable jokes about god-awful settings?

I know, I know, meme answer and what not...
... try steampunk worlds from GURPS: Infinite Worlds or just make one yourself based on them. Some of them are pure cringe, other are pretty decent, depending on what you want to get out of steampunk.

Well, it's still better than the absolute bottom of steampunk-themed RPG, Wolsung, which is all what went wrong with Tephra combined with unplayable crunch and massive dose of "edgy" remarks all over the fluff to make the setting appear more in-depth.

>There are plenty of examples of surface level steampunk trash with no substance, sort of 'stick gears on it and call it steampunk' ignoring all the other unique aspects that make the genre interesting without exploring them and going straight for corsets and goggles because they 'look cool'

I'm still confused why steampunk is the only genre we shit on because bad cosplayers wear it poorly.

It's not about bad cosplayers.

It's basically Surface Level Setting: The Setting. Gibson created steampunk entirely as "empty shell" just to check if you can write cyberpunk in other aesthetics than cybernetics. Turns out you can't, because the final result is just overflowing with cringe

>It's basically Surface Level Setting: The Setting.

So like most fantasy and sci-fi?

Either you are baiting, or completely missing the point.

Steampunk literally exists as a wrapping paper. It has no substance on its own. There is NOTHING defining it as a genre or as setting aside of aesthetics. There are no story elements, there are no requirements... just make it look Victorian and weird and that's all.
So it's just an empty shell, a cardboard cut-out of a "setting" that brings in only looks, but no content.

We are not saying steampunk is inherently bad, just that most people treat it poorly. It's been treated so poorly for so long in fact that we are a lot less forgiving when analyzing someones steampunk game than we are a standard scifi or fantasy.

GURPS has a couple steampunk splats. 3e has a genre book simply entitled Steampunk that has advice on running anything from 110% cogfoppery games to gritty brutal punk-emphasizing campaigns (pic related). 4e also has Britannica-6, a steampunk AU that while eccentric and less serious at points isn't too light on the punk.

Honestly, though, the most punk steampunk book the system has is GURPS: Goblins, also for 3e. Goblins is... weird to say the least. It's a very silly setting and the writing style is very irreverent, but it has most of the punk trappings there: a focus on how shitty life is for the average "person," themes of urban blight and awful city life, no heroes (hell, no one's even half-decent), values dissonance, rampant crime and vice, etc. etc. etc. It's an interesting setting and may be worth a shot if black-comedy-steampunk sounds up your alley.

Gropey, you are a scholar and a gentleman. Posts like these make you my favorite namefag.

He knows what's what
On the other hand, I've happily run steam punk game or two for my groups. Used GURPS.
One was Stargate:1888 and ran a lot like "what would the SGC do if it was run by racist, classist bigots, who then meet The Gou'auld(who are racist, classist, bigoted zealots)

It was fun. Lots of nitro glycerine and Macgeyver fighting.

He is fucking clown, though.

But he gropes!
The best kind of clown!