What is the inherently lamest setting and why is it steampunk? Has anything cool been done with it ever?

You're a true gent, user, thank you.

The Cinder Spire

A steampunk setting taking place in towers high above the earth because the ground is inhabited by fucking monsters. Flying ships, magic, quick fight scenes, talking cats (that are all uppity shits who think humans are slow, stupid creatures), military and political intrique, and piracy.

All in the first fucking book.

GEARS

COGS

This user has a point.

The aesthetic is pretty neat. But it's too often used in a lazy way, with little to no reasonning behind why the world looks like this. Dishonored actually made a lot of sense. And it looked baller.

If you just want to see her nude and what not, do a search for her on porn video sites, she is a literal whore.

FUCKING COGFOPS
GET OFF OF MY AESTHETIC
Anyway, OP, the reason it comes off as lame is that a lot of the people who indulge in it are cosplayers who misunderstand what it is. That isn't to say ALL cosplayers misunderstand it, but as seen in your picture there's a fair amount who use it as a reason to dress up in leather, wear top hats and goggles, put gears on shit, and spray-paint Nerf revolvers in bronze.
>Steampunk is what happens when goths discover the color brown
Steampunk is a good concept when it sticks to the themes present in the name- steam and punk. That is, the lower class rebelling against the upper class using their greater knowledge of fantastic new technologies, similar to cyberpunk.
Unfortunately, people who don't understand it think of it as nobles flying around in zeppelins, which is something entirely different and not necessarily bad, either.

That one was done pretty well.

I think it was because the aesthetic felt like it was natural. Steampunky things were used, but he wasn't shy of using practical things where appropriate.

This user gets it.

>nobles flying around in zeppelins

We need a new name for this version of it.

I want grease covered mechanics, not scientists in corsets

The entire "___punk" genre is pretty lame, at least in my opinion. It's the "punk" aspect that makes it lame, as it inherently prearranges for a setting a very narrow story, inevitably about some kind of oppressive totalitarian corporate or aristocratic power structure within society and the underground counter culture or resistance movement fighting against them. It's just always so weak to me

Just did. She has pierced nipples, sadly, and they're not my thing. But cheers anyway.

Someone on Veeky Forums uses cogfops, which I think is perfect. As opposed to punks using steam power, it's dressed-up nobles with gears on everything that do little if nothing.
Yes, that's part of the appeal to intellectuals and outcasts, using your mind to make something that makes up for your social position and giving it physical form.

Started reading Twig recently. It's not really SteamPunk, but more like what SteamPunk should be. More CorpsePunk, or MadSciencePunk.

Cogfop works.

Nobles flying around in zeppelins are the flipside of the factory workers toiling away below them. Gotta have both.

But Dishonored was utterly retarded user.

You're probably thinking of Thief.

>tfw steampunk gets slapped onto anything with a Victorian aesthetic even when it doesn't have punk themes or motifs
Why. You don't call movies like Interstellar or 2001: A Space Odyssey cyberpunk just because they feature futuristic aesthetics, so why in the fuck is everything with a Victorian retro-futuristic aesthetic called "steampunk"? If there isn't any themes of the working class being oppressed or rebelling against the establishment, than it's not fucking punk.

Well, that is a good point, but it's the focus on the underclass and rebels that makes it steampunk. The two aesthetics could exist in the same setting, but if that's the case then it's the proper categorization that's important.
Is Dishonored's tech level at the 'so advanced it's essentially magic' level?

But if the working class isn't being oppressed how is it Victorian

So, if civilizations in a setting have the ability to power machinery with geothermal energy, but lack the resources to fuel vehicles like trains and airships, would you still call that steampunk?

Are whimsical fucking airships required for steampunk?

I love steampunk. Ran a gunpowder fantasy campaign where the characters fought gnolls on airships, one character flew onto the other ships deck to beat up the crew. Then got mortally wounded and staggered down into the lower deck and set the ships powder magazine on fire. Sacrificed himself to win the battle. Also recently the characters took over a 500 foot long airship with spinosairus. Can't beat a battle between dinosaurs and Gatling guns.

I love steampunk, just not Victorian steampunk.

Dumb motherfuckers like to focus on noble life when they make "steampunk" shit, like drawing dorky rich people with fancy petticoats and geared top hats.

It's such a waste. Victorian Europe was a hotbed for revolutionary thought, and these lazy fuckers ignore that interesting stuff for cheesy "HELLO GOOD GENTLESIR, LET US FLY ON HER MAJESTY'S STEAM DIRIGIBLE!" shit that fedora-wearing dipshits lap up.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a "steampunk" work of fiction which was entirely about the rich and wealthy going around in airships being "gentlemen" and sipping champagne. They're usually the target of dashing skypirates or something.

Not really, Dishonored was pretty consistent in that every thing is powered by this hyper efficient whale oil they extract from living whales for months at a time
There is some actual magic, that seems to have some connection to the whales, but that's just magic, not tech
No, but they do help. Steampunk is more defined by the steam engine being the main driving force in the world, in a similar vein to cyberpunk being defined by cyberspace (or just computers) and cybernetics being a driving force.
Yeah, this pretty much. Cogfops sipping brandy on a dirigible is just one aspect of a steampunk world, and completely misses the point of it.

>Has anything cool been done with it ever?
Sure, tons of times. It just always gets relabeled as something else (watching people try to explain why "gaslight fantasy" isn't steampunk never gets old) so people don't have to admit to liking steampunk

The problem with steampunk is that for whatever reason it attracts a huge number of cosplayers who only see it for the aesthetic. That and the fucking awful nerd trend of mash up art or whatever it's called (steampunk Star Wars, steampunk Doctor Who, steampunk Serenity ect.) has made steampunk the definition of style over substance. Steampunk is less a genre at this point and more a template.

Veeky Forums has invented this bizarre narrative where
>A. Steampunk is only ever about rich people and airships and
>B. The "punk" in steampunk ever meant something and wasn't just aped from cyberpunk
Granted, I don't care enough about the genre to seriously research this stuff, but I know Verne and Wells stuff wasn't like that at all (even when it did contain social commentary), and looking through the plot summaries of what Wikipedia considers the modern founders of the genre it seems like they weren't much different.

Gaslight is often awesome.
And Victorian-era magitech must count too because the difference between magic and steam is irrelevant when technology at the time is making magic personal zeppelins that somehow don't blow up.

In reality, Kato's car and all the props from League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are gorgeous. The problem with Steampunk is the "punk", it's not for punks, it's for mad inventors with too much money to spend on aesthetics.

Lamest setting is Zelda.

All revolutions ever do is take money from the dumb nobles and give it to the greedy hoarders who may of may not be nobles.
I don't want to help magical jews fuck over the future generations, so I'd rather play cogfops in safaris and overworked policemen in the midst of a supernatural crisis over fucking brain dead "revolutionaries" who can't tell they're being manipulated because they haven't eaten in a week.

I'm soon to be running a Victorian sci-fi game; Stargate 1888

It will likely end up steampunky after awhile. It is not being advertised as such

Fable 2 and 3.

...

So you want to play Victoriana 2nd Edition? You're describing that exactly, only it also had some magic shit and stuff like royal wyvern riders

It's true though. There hasn't been a single "people's revolution" in human history that wasn't ultimately orchestrated and manipulated by the very same forces the people sought to rebel against. All these revolutions amount to is a shifting of power behind the scenes

Wild West Exodus?

Is that even Steam punk

>Tipping intensifies

I felt like Dishonored was the closest and most recent thing we've gotten to an excellent modern steampunk setting. Maybe everything runs on Whale tits, but too many gears and dystopia for me to think otherwise.

His argument is pretty facile and conspiracy-y, but he's not THAT wrong. The problem with violent revolutions (especially outside of independence movements) is that they're based on the assumption that "they" are the source of all our problems and the only thing we need to fix everything wrong with our society is to get rid of "them," completely ignoring all the underlying causes of these problems. Ultimately, we're all products of the society we're born into. Your average turn of the century Russian serf didn't view power all that differently from the nobility (or anyone in between)- take as much as you can for yourself and treat everyone beneath you like dogshit because you can. Changing who's in charge doesn't magically make those perceptions go away, and so the Soviet Union was born. And that's not even getting into issues of economics, infrastructure, education...

Granted, still pretty simplistic, but this is a post on a Viennese waltz forum, not a dissertation

>*INTENSIFIES*

I wish there was more hyper-industrialization growing out of control, I want towers of brass and steel blocking out the last of the blue sky, acres-wide factories belching smoke, overgrown, overpopulated gaslit cities, I want a Victorian-era Kowloon Walled City of brass and stone, the lightless bowels of London teeming with barely human urchins crawling up from forgotten crevices with forgotten pipelines, opium dens located at the bottom of deep shafts and broken pipes leaking poison fumes through cracks in the city. The wealthy live isolated in rotting manors in the wild countryside and channel power from the cities and factories through miles of underground and surface networks guarded by private militias of generational soldiers.

I'm sick of clean gentleman utopia, give me the stank and grit.

>Implying that it's a conspiracy that the American Revolution wasn't orchestrated by a fringe sect of the elite circle of British power in an attempted to seize autonomy of their own

There is no such thing as "the people", there is only those who appoint themselves to speak for the people and align the perception they have of their own interests with his own.

Sooooooooo run your game that way?

It's peasants seeing the figureheads and ignoring the puppeteers.
Just like right now, people know Hillary is bad because emails and shit and Trump is bad because racism and shit. Whatever, nobody takes a second to think Hillary may be bad because the people behind her got an actor who can't stop insulting people in public television to be her contender. Or that Trump may be bad because he wants to build and control a wall between the two countries that generate 30% of the world's net wealth.

Nope, kill the king, ignore the vizier, nothing bad will happen when that fucker becomes the right hand man of the illiterate urchin who becomes the new king.

Not that user but it's kind of difficult finding a group that would go along with that once they hear it's a steampunk game. The majority of people familiar with steampunk are either cogfop retards or people who have written steampunk off entirely because of cogfop retards.

I'd like to do a "punk" focused steampunk game too but all of my friends are staunchly anti-steampunk and I tend to avoid playing with randoms.

dude, just never use the word steampunk
like

I want more aspects of the setting to be realized.

so DO that then, jeez

I'm throwing out ideas to be discussed, what's your problem?

Steampunk is fine outside of tabletop rpgs.
It's mainly aesthetic thing, so it's main draw doesn't really work in conversational medium and basically all steampunk stories can be set in some other genre easily.

It's not like cyberpunk that also has thematic definitions for itself alongside the visual stuff.

I personally like the Clockwork Century Books. Well, all of them but Fiddlehead which was kinda wonky and didn't wrap things up that well in my opinion and Jacaranda which really didn't fit the setting at all.

But the Steampunk really works for the setting and doesn't really feel forced, and the Alternate History stuff works for the most part as well. And the entire thing goes more diesel punk at the end anyways.

The problem with steampunk is that it attracts too many artists and not enough writers.

I think the reason it doesn't attract writers is that from a writing standpoint, it doesn't do anything that cyberpunk doesn't do with more suspension of disbelief.

The only serious Steampunk book I read was The Aeronaut's Windlass, which, despite being by Dresden Files guy, didn't grab or hold my attention very well because the characters were mostly flat and the countries were just reskinned versions of Manticore and Haven from the Honor Harrington series.

The issue with steampunk is that people look at the Victorian Era and they're all: Man, let's be lords and ladies of steam!

You know what also existed during the victorian era?

The kids in this picture. They existed too, but does anyone wanna play grimy steam rats living in the gutter? Nope, they want to be Lord Foppington, off to go safari on the plains of the red planet!

Never mind the fact that people that like Steampunk are typically SJWs that then go and romanticize ACTUAL RACISTS.

I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get it.

It's why I like Warmachine. Or Runepunk. They do Cog Fop, but they also do Steam Rat, too!

/thread

Your post was okay until you mentioned MUH SJWS and Warmachine.

youtube.com/watch?v=QD0BjoHvywo

steampunk aint lame, its cool, thats the point of steampunk

>/threading your own post

Worst episodes of an otherwise very cute show. The anime references one was awful, too.

So, Space 1889. Late Victorian era with altered physics. The lumeniferous ether exists, and Edison's ether propeller can actually convey airships through it. Solar powered steam engines work fine roughly out to the Belt, and all planets have breathable atmospheres and indigenous life. Yep, it's basically good old planetary romance high on opium. Still a nice concept, extending the colonial powers to the planets. Experience daring raids of noble Martians against stinking Teutonic ironclad zeppelins. Bloody krauts had it comin'.

Where do you think you are?

We've known who the puppet masters have been the whole time, people just ignore it. The emails just confirm it. Hillary is guided in both her domestic and geopolitical activities by the Rothschild family.

From: H To: Lynn Forester de Rothschild

Lynn, I was trying to reach you to tell you and Teddy that I asked Tony Blair to go to Israel as part of our full court press on keeping the Middle East negotiations going. He told me that he had a commitment in Aspen w you two and the conference, but after we talked, he decided to go and asked me to tell you. He is very sorry, obviously, but I'm grateful that he accepted my request. I hope you all understand and give him a raincheck. If you were interested, he might be able to satellite in if you have the technology available. He should land around Sam Aspen time. Let me know what penance I owe you. And pls explain to Teddy. As ever, H

>Let me know what penance I owe you

Tell me, what kind of figure is it in a persons life that they owe "penance" to for their wrong doings?

wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/29633

Jim Butcher is big on doing practical things.

Hell, in the Dresden Files books Harry is a pretty powerful wizard (at this point he is scary powerful) and he keeps a loaded revolver on him at all times because 'Dead is dead and guns are effective. Plus, most magical creatures forget about them and think you will just be slinging spells or using ancient artifacts of great power. A .38 through the skull will still drop most of them and the look of surprise on their face is something special in its own right.'

TAKE IT TO /POL/, ASSHOLE.

if your setting doesnt have a steamsword, then you are doing it wrong

Verne and Wells aren't really Steampunk, they're science fiction.

That said, Steampunk was always just aping the word punk from Cyberpunk, and has never actually been about the 'punk'.

The first Mistborn book was solid. Fantasy with strong steampunk elements.

Clockwork shit is pretty cool, thats steampunk right?

Ever heard of "The Difference Engine" by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling? If your head isn't just a fancy hatstand, go and read it.

As far as steampunk goes, my biggest problem isn't the aesthetic, but rather the wasted potential. There were so many things that could have been explored in the genera such as the industrial revolution, the massive divide between the working and upper classes, corruption, child labor, workers rights, unions, as well as the impact of fantasical machines like airships and whatnot.

What is the inherently lamest setting and why is it ?

tl;dr Steampunk, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

Nobody cares about poor people.
It's like making a 80's setting and whining because people want to be glam rockers and action movie starts instead of ghetto niggers.

The poor didn't matter then, and they sure as hell don't matter now.

>braindead /pol/ returdation

Tell me, how many countries have a central back that is not owned by the Rothschilds?

>Not wanting to be lower-class gangmember
>Or an impoverished mechanic who earns his meager wages working on still-turning turbines of a power plant
>Or an underground doctor who doesn't ask questions about bullet holes or do rectal exams
>Or a cutthroat courtesan who seduces targets before gouging their eyes out with her hairpin

>Whiners whine there's not enough punk in steampunk
>Give them a real life example of a corporation that bleeds both kings and urchins
>GO BACK TO /pol/ REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Fuck you faggot. If it's ok to villify Nazis forever and ever as the bad guys of national socialism, then it's ok to villify America as the bad guys of corporate colonialism, it's ok to vilify UK as the bad guys of actual collonialism, it's ok to villify the USSR as the bad guys of communism and it sure as fuck is ok to villify the Rotschild, Kennedys and Buffet as the bad guys of corporate tyranny, socioeconomic manipulation and usury.

Fuck your leftard feelings, nobody is sacred and protected from being the BBEG, specially not when they act like a BBEG IRL.

>B. The "punk" in steampunk ever meant something and wasn't just aped from cyberpunk
Still, steampunk kind of owes its entire existence to the industrial revolution and if you're gonna use steampunk as anything besides a visual aesthetic (say in a novel or game) to make no mention of class struggle is missing a fundamental element of what the aesthetic evolved from. Seeing as steampunk was aped from cyberpunk, a genre which actually does often focus on class struggle, you'd think it would come up more.

Like said, wasted potential.

Yeah just like how when people play cyberpunk games they always play wealthy CEOs because they're really cool and have lots of money, right?

No, it's not okay to post your conspiracy theories and literal /pol/ retardation on a traditional games board.

Fuck off back to /pol/

Space: 1889 is pretty great
Other than that no

As seen in this thread, that may have been left out on purpose because blaming Queen Victoria for literally everything is ridiculous but as soon as you imply that african warlords are selling their own as slaves, that muslim governments trade their male children for spices and marry their girls for a camel, that jews are literally addicted to money and will do anything for a few sheckels more, that mestizos in the americas are happy to fight each other for whatever reason, that the UK didn't invent opium, or in short; that the British expansion era couldn't have been a thing if everyone else wasn't governed by self-destructive dog-eats-dog assholes, you're worse than Hitler.

SJWs prevent the exploration of everything wrong with the world during the 19th century that wasn't directly a white man's fault. Writers know not to waste their time with these people, so all that's left is the cogfop aesthetic. Root of the problem has been found, what will you do about it?

Holy shit, the leftist in this post stinks to high heaven

Just do Veeky Forums a favor and keep reporting the fucktard until he gets his deserved ban.

It's fine to post a real life example of corporate interest corrupting politics and oppressing the lower class when we're talking about a setting that heavily features corporate interest corrupting politics and oppressing the lower class.

You don't come into Delta Green threads and bitch when people start talking about the FBI.

Yeah, yeah, I get it, the Rothschilds did everything. Now piss off.

This f'ing comic mane

You sound uncomfortable and offended.

A bloody neutron star isn't as dense as you.

And another thread ruined by a lonely rightard troll. Fap, little guy, you've earned it.

You tell me motherfucker

It takes two to tango m8