I want to build a setting with each of these societies covering their own corner of the world and at the center the...

BUT!!!
This is Veeky Forums.
We pride ourselves on the image of fixing things.
So, let's imagine four different societies, with the aesthetics shown above, all featuring a form of oppressive authority, and some level of rebellion/disobedience/counter-culture/people falling 'between the cracks', etc.
Yes, I'm replying to myself. I'm also this moron, , who couldn't remember the name of the guy from the Clash. And I generally believe in rescuing stray people who've pasted too many gears to their goggles, so I want to believe this can be rescued.

>Honestly, even the first one's not necessarily 'punk'; implication of the setting being at least some level of dystopic is needed, which isn't always present in futuristic settings that get the 'cyberpunk' label slapped on them these days.

This is true, but I feel that's a byproduct of people in general not understanding how "punk" got applied in the first place.

Aliens. The different visual styles are a different alien race.

>raypunk
>not raygun gothic

>raygun gothic
esplain.

>raypunk
you mean retro futurism?
stop being a fag

'Dieselpunk' is a terrible term. The 20's -30's era is far more defined by its culture, architecture and styling than the technology itself. The example i'd use for this is The Big O. Its one of the best examples of the alternate Jazz Age style that would fall under 'dieselpunk' but there's barely anyhting diesel about it.

>raygun gothic
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raygun_Gothic

Art Deco punk is what i'd call it.

Another great example was the DarkDeco from Batman TAS.

Oh, thank Christ there's an actual term for this instead of just 'raypunk'.
I mean, don't get me wrong, the idea of putting in some rockabilly teen delinquints into a Buck Rogers-esque world could be fun, but I'd rather there be better terms than just prefix-ing it.
So, for purposes of OP's setting, is it better to try and add some actual 'punk' flavor to the various aesthetics, or better to just use more precise definitions for the different aesthetics?
So...
>Cyberpunk
>Dark Deco
>Retro-Victorianism
>Raygon Gothic
The fact that it implies four very different tech levels might cause some issues with putting them all together, but, what do we get from this?

>Dark Deco
>Retro-Victorianism
>Raygon Gothic
Dark Deco leaves out the military machine fetishism that dieselpunk often has, but the rest of the names are pretty cool. Helluva lot better than adding punk to everything.

>Dark Deco leaves out the military machine fetishism that dieselpunk often has
Good point. And just calling it 'Art Deco' (which I was tempted to do) leaves it with the same problem. Not sure how to get the machinist/militarist side into it as well; 'futurism' is a term that's about as misused as 'punk', and just calling it 'fascist' (or even worse, 'glam Nazi') is clearly just being inflammatory for no real gain.

I like the sound of Dark Deco, but it just sounds like Noire to me. Can Diesel Deco not get the point across for that and militaristic futurism?

"Dark" might be said to cover the military side pretty well - probably depends on your view of the military really.

Also I like that "dieselpunk" works, despite being inaccurate in the sense of both lacking punks, and most things not running on diesel - you know what's meant despite this.

That said, would you call pic related diesel, or just v. late steam?

Your pic related is more-so beginning of diesel"punk" than late steam if that makes any sense.

Dieselpunk is catch-all term for fantastical fiction set in or inspired by the first half of the 20th century. Voodoo sorcerer bootleggers and atomic powered spaceships are both dieselpunk.

I don't know about Dark Deco, BTAS is basically the late 80s with a 40s aesthetics. Weird War is the usual term bandied about for pulp militaria, but as a genre it's far more expansive.

Yeah, it makes sense, though it'd be "diesel""punk" - nothing there runs on diesel.

It also makes sense there's an overlap, IRL you had things like pic related, a steam tank, and most of the sleek deco trains are steam

I don't really think it matters. It's just language. To deny that appending punk to something reliably means that you are now taking about an aesthetic is just a way of egotistically showing off that you know what it originally meant. It doesn't matter, let people use language the way it evolves or not, there's no confusion amongst these groups.

>being inaccurate in the sense of both lacking punks
Not quite. The "punk" in dieselpunk depends on the tone and type of the story. There is often a strong theme of the working and underclass in dieselpunk and most of the upper class heroes are iconoclastic or set apart from society and structure. If the stereotypical steampunk protagonist is some rich dandy having adventures in uncharted wilderness on his airship the stereotypical dieselpunk protagonist is a blue-collar pilot-for-hire running cargo for whoever will pay, no questions asked, at the fringes of society.

>Dandy and Blue
Will unashamedly use these as foil characters

It should also be noted that people arguing for that definition of cyberpunk are restricting themselves to a description given by a single writer to his own works and who also wrote cyberpunk material that didn't match that description. Hell, the actual story that coined "cyberpunk" is about a bunch of middle class kids being shitheads.

>it originally meant
And outside of cyberpunk, it didn't. But language is something that people can get very worked up about

However a combination of the distaste for "aristocrats in airships" and similar aspects of more visible steampunk stuff and usual pedantry has produced a call for steampunks that are punk in a similar manner to cyberpunk's punks.

It's a weird thing, but if you look at how genres of literally anything develop, it's not surprising.
Except for the name confusion thing.

You might be right there, though there's not that much dieselpunk to choose from, and most of the stories told in it fit fine into pulp

You should watch Tailspin.

>though there's not that much dieselpunk to choose from, and most of the stories told in it fit fine into pulp
Pretty much. Dieselpunk is more of an aesthetic than an actual genre, consisting of either having 1940s stuff advance to super tech (e.g. walking land battleships) or futuristic tech having aesthetics from the early 20th century (e.g. flying car that looks like it's from the 1940s)

Other than Dystopian wars (and maybe Scythe?), is there any other setting that looks even semi-seriously at steam- or dieselpunk armies?

Agreed, this is a sin.
OP, do research on what punk culture actually is. It'll help you do justice to the cyberpunk genre at least, because its really the only one of these that actually had cool punk elements from the beginning. Unlike steampunk. Fuck steampunk.

Reminder that the Sprawl trilogy's protagonists were corporate freelancers while the Difference Engine's protagonist was a revolutionary.

Dieselpunk is largely synonymous with pulp, but also includes extensive non-pulp material while pulp includes things that aren't traditionally dieselpunk.

OP here.

Thanks for the discussion and the criticism for the use of punk, but honestly it can go either way. I always had plan to use the common lifestyles of Cyberpunk, Dark Deco, Retro Victorianism and Raygun Gothic we're used to seeing as the world's norm. Albeit with the lacking sciences as equal competitors with the more effective tech.

But later on, I wanted some influx of true punks and neerdowells emerging from the seams of each of the socities either changing or breaking down what the world was just to show how it was cabaple of being "Punk'ed" in a way. One nation may be going through war, another going though social reform and worker strikes.

What sort of non-pulp stuff?

And yes, the Sprawl's guys were corporate, but they were all in the shit, which is what really matters I think - both for PCs, and for Punk Protags, "good times" should be few, far between and fleeting

WHAT ARE SOME GOOD DIESELPUNK BOOKS.

>OP, do research on what punk culture actually is
Oh god, you're worse than OP. Cyberpunk is tied to 80s/90s punk culture. The rest never were, just a nod to cyberpunk. Pretending there was some magical era where steampunk was actually about Victorian class disparity makes you more ignorant than the cogfop retards, and acting elitist over something you clearly know nothing about makes you the cancer killing Veeky Forums

Superheroes most notably. On the flip side dieselpunk rarely includes straight up fantasy while pulp did.

>I think - both for PCs, and for Punk Protags, "good times" should be few, far between and fleeting

That's more an issue of tone than setting or genre. Also what "in the shit" means can vary greatly.

I wouldn't worry about the criticism too much. A free-spirited and free-thinking inventor is as much a punk in a staid, conservative society as is a gutter criminal.

Leviathan series was about a World War One where it's biotech Entente versus mechanical Central Powers. Though they're adventure books, not war stories, so if you're looking for the hell of trench warfare with mammoth-sized bears fighting giant robots, you'll be disappointed.

The Leviathan series is probably the most notable even though it's author classifies them as steampunk due to his personal interpretation as post-WWI being the start of dieselpunk. You'll find more dieselpunk material in comic books than prose.

Requesting Raygun Gothic art. I need some more inspiration on their efforts on land rather than space. There's enough of that already.

Well, it's impossible to keep one from falling behind. For example, the only way steampunk survives at all is luck and assuming nobody else ever has the resources to wipe them out lest someone else takes advantage and invades them while their forces are away. Steampunk just doesn't have the tech to compete.

So, I guess the only way is to make everyone else retarded to not gang up on steampunk and split their land up, or have it be a deadlock where if any side DID want to invade and tried to do it, another faction would take advantage of the one using their forces against the steampunk one.

But in the end they'd all kinda become the same. Because whatever was most powerful would be the shit everyone strives for; no empire would intentionally hinder themselves for the sake of an aesthetic and let themselves get steamrolled by the faction that isn't retarded and adapts.

Sure

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Either the other three nations are don't even bother with the Steampunk nation, or the Steampunk nation is getting ahead by other means. Maybe they have a use of resources that are unimportant enough for the other nations to care for but valuable enough that the public will have a high demand for it.

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The obvious assumption is that they're all based on different branches of fictional tech, user. Don't overthink it based on youir knowledge, assume they're all on an even footing. Maybe steampunk can't do tiny engines the way diesel can, but they can make giant floating fortresses or some shit like that. Hindenburgs that won't go down. Cyberpunk is informatics and nervefiber more than it is orbital ballistics, anyways, so you're calling it way too early.

Damn that looks comfy

It would probably stay nice and cool in all the rooms because you're underground, but you'd still get sunlight

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I didn't say cyberpunk would win. The other 3 have things going for them. Steampunk doesn't. They'd be dead the second any of the other 3 decided to destroy them. Hence the need for a deadlock to make it impossible. You can have an airship all you want, but when everyone else has missiles and actual tech to blow away your airships or burn them, you really aren't gonna last long.

I'm not saying it makes steampunk bad as a genre on its own. But the idea OP has takes 3 futuristic factions and has them at odds with a faction that isn't. This is like taking 40k, Star Trek, and Star Wars and placing them on the same planet to compete against cavemen. One faction clearly isn't gonna last long the second anyone decides to fuck their shit up.

>fire breaks out
>have to run up twenty flights of stairs being chased by flames
This is why these where never built

I thought about that, but there wouldn't be much that could catch on fire, just some furniture, clothes and stuff. Nothing that couldn't be put out with some overhead sprinklers.

That would be dank, moist, flood like crazy and have one hell of a mold problem.

The serene Japanese salaryman face is nice, but I'm not sure how I feel about the tentacle penis nipples.

>biopunk is against the natural order
>cyberpunk and dieselpunk are totally natural and orderly

That depends if we're talking about a coal and analytical engine steampunk faction or a Tesla bullshit steampunk faction.

Better than this

Is Metropolis diselpunk?

Sounds like shit

Imagine them owning a solar system each, and make it all a big giant Space Opera. Also as said, add Biopunk. And if you don't mind silliness in your setting why not Cavepunk (AKA Flintstones Tech) as well?

>First steampunk story was written by Michael Moorcock, and featured bizarre steamtech version of Victorian England with major class disparity - Warlord of the Air, 1971
>Next major story is the William Gibson/Bruce Stirling collaboration 'The Difference Engine', in which multiple people in a higher-tech alternate history version of Victorian England are drawn into the plot to find what will eventually result in AI. Along the way, we deal with Communist revolutionaries, government plots, souped-up roadsters, and sex. 1990
>Then, there's a comic called 'Steampunk', about a mad scientist who rules the continent of Europe like a despot, and the miserable outcasts trying to fight him. 2001, as the term is just barely picking up steam as an excuse to put goggles on top hats
I'm sorry, were you saying something?
And let's face it, we're *all* the cancer that's killing Veeky Forums

I like that you skip to the "next major story" while completely ignoring the origins of the term itself, coined when a trio of writers wanted a catchy grouping/genre for the term... but yes, we are *all* the cancer that's killing Veeky Forums, this must be acknowledged.

Also Imma post this, because I'm never not post this in threads with dieselpunk

Unless the construction company decides to use non-fireproof siding for the outward faces walls in the tube.

>Pretending there was some magical era where steampunk

Don't be retarded. The guy was clearly saying that steampunk shouldn't be called steampunk because there's nothing punk about it.