What do you think of steampunk?

Less British idiots cruising around in airships and shooting the people below them and more ray gun wild west please

It can be done well, but almost always isn't.

I hear murmurs of concern and almost alarm from you, and I understand why. Orc labor is the backbone of many industries. Without their cheap and plentiful work, our way of like would be threatened.

This, then, is the Orcish Question: what are we to do? Orcs, because of their violent nature, will not fit into existing society, and yet we require their labor. We have two options, do we not? Change society to fit the orcs, or change the orcs to fit society.

As I have stated, the societal changes that have been proposed to date do not address the root cause of the problem. Improving their lot will not satisfy them as it would any other race. We either meet their need for barbarity by turning our factories into killing grounds, or we look to the other option: changing the orcs.

We must bring orcs up to our current standard or civilization. I will be engaging in many debates and discussions over the next few months in order to determine the best way to proceed, and will address this august body again once a working proposal has been identified. Thank you for your time.

It's bougie garbage.

a t t e n t i o n w h o r e s a n d f a t t i e s

A letter to Mr. M'Oran, April 1884
Mr dear Mr. M'Oran,

Your points and concerns are well taken. In response to your musings I must simply submit that it is our duty, as enlightened and right-thinking members of out progressive society, to bring civilization to all species. This does not stem from mere altruism and a deep desire to improve the situation of the less fortunate – indeed, but spreading our mores and values to the world at large we shall be enhancing the peace and prosperity of all races, ours included.

It is our duty, I say. With great power (and certainly the technological marcels of the modern age, the abundant wealth created thereby, and the flowering of rational thought, all equate to power) comes great responsibility. It is our responsibility as the most culturally and scientifically advanced people of Arcanum to ensure our own future and the future of others by elevating the whole.

Now, as to the Orcish Question in particular. I agree that you are correct and that this species may be completely intractable and unable to advance into modern society in their present state. I suggest that these differences are purely physiological. I put forth that our remarkable scientific achievements may point to the means of a solution. I propose that we begin immediate experimentation upon members of the orcish race to ascertain the cause of their violent inclinations, in the hope of finding a medical remedy. A simple operation (the removal of a malignant gland, perhaps) may be all that is needed to bring individual members of this race into an enlightened and more pacified state. A structured breeding program might even reveal that such beneficial modifications and hereditary.

Regards, Hamilton Demry, Esq.

It's no better or worse than generic fantasy.

I find for some reason the smaller scale the steam tech is the more obnoxious it gets. Giant contraptions like are cool while wearable shit like is crap.

A letter to Mr. Radcliffe, May 1884
My dear Mr. Radcliffe,

You speak of the 'realm of the gods' and of 'natural selection.' Both of these terms help us to explain and comprehend our helpless past. But what, I ask you, of the boundless future?

The gods made the world and us, but we are remaking this world. Why not remake ourselves as well? The era of rational and scientific thought is upon us! Let us not go backwards to our dark, superstitious past! Let us move boldly into the future!

Natural selection, in theory, helps us to explain why dwarves are short and well-suited to mining, and why orcs are strong, vicious warriors, and why elves are well adapted to natural surroundings. It need not be a rallying point for those who are too timid to see the future! Let it explain the past, but let it not hold us in stupefied awe of nature when we have the means, the knowledge, and the wherewithal to define for ourselves what tomorrow shall bring!

I foresee the day when we shall engineer magnificent edifices that reach to the very heavens! When we shall launch fleets of unsinkable ships! When we shall live free of disease! When the vast network of out rail lines brings peace and prosperity to every corner of Arcanum!

Everyday ingenuity and necessity meet to create new and greater technological wonders. Advancements in medicine and engineering and, indeed, every branch of knowledge bring prosperity to all.

f orcs do not fit into this brace new world because of the bad hand natural selection has dealt them, then why not seek a medical or anatomical solution? Why wait for natural selection to provide us with an orc that better fits out enlightened society? For their benefit and ours, we should act now! For all we know, the course of your precious natural selection would be to wipe orcs from all existence! I ask you to explain how natural genocide could be more humane than my proposed solution!

Now as never before we not only understand our world but are capable of making great changes thereto. We have the power, the right, and the obligation to use this capability to bring peace and prosperity to Arcanum. Let us see if we can do better by the orcs than nature has! Let us solve the Orcish Question, and then move on to bigger and better things!

A new era dawns. We are no longer subject to the whims of nature and of the gods. Let us take our future into our own hands, and see what we can make of it! Let up step boldly into this brace new world!

Regards,
Hamilton Demry, Esq.

We Have This Thread Every Day

ran a pretty good campaign of it in Savage Worlds for a couple years. Was more gunpowder fantasy than real steampunk. One of the players played a dinosaur druid/psionics guy who eventually started summoning spinosaurs and even transforming into them. I did have the standard "anarchist wants to free the working class" arc when one of the PCs (the loose cannon) wanted to buy an airship even though he had barely any money, and the guy said he'd do it if they'd help him assassinate the city council before his uprising took place. So they did, and they won. Then the anarchist turned out to be an even worse leader than the city council (surprise surprise). So they killed him, took his airships, and flew off. Later, they went full-retard on a crime spree and stole one of the empire's 400-foot-long airships, when it was docked, bringing spinosaurs aboard to slaughter the crew. That's pic related's battle. It was fun. Steampunk is fun. The tophats and gears stuff is retarded, and it's also stupid if your entire point is "steampunk." It's certainly no worse than heroic fantasy.

Has potential to be good, but usually it's just weird brassgoths

It's shit without meaning aside from very low-key aesthetics, mostly.

I guess there are execption tough (amusingly enough like Princess Principal), but I can't see a kernel of meaning in it. I don't really like Cyberpunk, at least they way it's put out in 2020, but it's everything but senseless.

More than any other fantasy or sci fi genre it suffers heavily from overdesign.

Goths who discovered the color brown.

I don't get why it's called -punk when the punk genre is anti-authoritarian/establishment and those themes are rarely found in steampunk

It's just an aesthetic now, there's no themes, tropes, or stories to steampunk. Goths took it over.

Majority of Veeky Forums
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Minority of Veeky Forums
>REEEEEEEEEEE-You have been permanently banned from all boards for the following reason: Underage

Only good use of it I've seen is Arcanum, everything else is just pointlessly gluing gears to shit.

If anything it's reversed with weird Randian concepts.

Gonna be honest: i love it.

It's not strictly speaking steampunk but I quite like Clockwork and Chivalry for the clockwork plus magic thing, if you play as a high zeal character it's also 'please don't let me sperg out today: the game'.

It's like the junk food of fantasy genres. It's pretty bad most of the time and should only be consumed in small amounts. It also happens to look like ass, so it's not even good junk food.

>bland average mediocrity
Is this the world's most nothing descriptor?

Steampunk isn't supposed to be an aesthetic, it's a literary genre. The transformation of steampunk into an aesthetic is what killed steampunk.

Depends on what you're doing with it. If you're trying to see how access to computation might have influenced history or how the Jules Verne future might have worked, or whatever, it's quite interesting.

If it's just a load of shiny brass and brocade wank, well, some of it looks cool and I can admire the craft involved, but it's ultimately dull because it's cargo cult aesthetics. Steam engines looked the way they did for very practical reasons.

youtube.com/watch?v=JTZikEUzwLo

Also, the big ones can kill you about a half dozen ways:

youtube.com/watch?v=TkEukI6H9cA

So sir cogfop's getup is just silly because he clearly doesn't get that sticking a steam piston onto your arm is a good way to get either a cooked bicep or a broken arm.

yes let's talk about all those super important details meanwhile 40k is a thing people are okay with existing in principal

Too much steam not enough punk

I like the aesthetics but can't really get into the idea itself, since it's suposed to be about the adventure, exploring and marvel, something that Fantasy and Sci-fi already do. So, basically, it adds nothing in terms of story or concepts, but steam engines are cool and that's enough for me.

>checked.

That's a fair enough point. And I can see why what I posted would seem nit-picky.

Personally, I tend to be more forgiving of things the further away they get from baseline reality. I wouldn't apply the same critiques I made to steampunk to 40K or LOTR for example, because those are both totally removed from the real world. Steam engines are a real thing though. You can buy one on Amazon right now. The same is not true of a lasgun or mithril.

As I said, if you don't have that perspective, and it's all fantasy of one sort or another, yes, I'm being that guy.

same

Steampunk as a general aesthetic isn't that neat to me. Now, if they combined it more often with body horror and monsters...

if someone is larping steampunk it is only cool if it is functional looking and not just cogs glued onto shit.

a master of using many words to say nothing at all

I like the history of it, I guess, but its gotten real awful to be honest

Dieselpunk > Atompunk >>>>>>>>> Steampunk

This.

Always interpreted it as early industrial revolution, the rich have their lives greatly simplified by steam technologies and early electricity and the poor salvage what they can from the scraps to make their lives easier and some use gadgets and trinkets to fuck with the rich and the government.

Also a hell of a lot dirtier. Shit's too clean in what most steampunk utilizes.

Beautifully anachronistic.

I kinda prefer dieselpunk desu

Forgot image

The joke was subtle but I loved it. Well done, user.

>Steam engines are a real thing though. You can buy one on Amazon right now
>You can buy one on Amazon right now

Brb, visiting amazon

>DUDE GEARS LMAO
Fuck off

>for some reason the smaller scale the steam tech is the more obnoxious it gets
Because people don't fucking put diesel engines on their clothes, so why the fuck would they put steam engines and cogs all over them?

Works in theory, but made cancer-tier due to clueless gits who think they can slap on gears and mechanical clock parts on top hats modern firearms and still consider it as ''an aesthetic''

I have seen it done well rarely, and done poorly often. The idea of a steam-powered revolution leading man to new technology that achieves the same end as technology from the early to mid 1900's, all while society remains in the Victorian era is instantly appealing. The image of steam powered tanks and airships in the Franco-Prussian war, or Papal Zouaves making a naval landing in Sardinia while massive ironclads lob shells the size of carriages at the city defenses instantly sets the imagination off.

People wearing a bunch of cogs makes me want to roll over and die though.

It needs to change its fucking name

It's because the weird, extreme steam tech makes sense on a giant tank or mech suit. Not on your top hat.

It would be like a Star Wars character with a suit of armor made out of lightsabers. Take anything cool, overuse it, and now it's boring and stupid.

>It would be like a Star Wars character with a suit of armor made out of lightsabers

Imagine being this much of a fucking madman though. Who would attack you?

I mean yeah people probably won't fuck with that guy but I doubt he wears it to Applebee's.

Already been done, Metal Gear Rising style. And the answer to who would even challenge such a madman would be, as always, "Fucking Luke" .

It's difficult to take off when they are literally bolted into your elbows. Besides, he prefers takeout anyway.

I think a game needs more than an aesthetic.

>starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Irek_Ismaren

> was a Human male from the planet Alderaan, the son of Sarcev Quest and Roganda Ismaren, one of Emperor Palpatine's concubines
>When Irek was five, Magrody installed a subelectronic converter into his brain, allowing him to control droids and computers through the Force
>Irek was subjected to growth hormones and cybernetic enhancements, greatly increasing his strength and causing him to grow to three meters in height

Can we have steammetal instead?

The thing is, Steampunk wasn't suposed to be a serious name, but an ironic one.

...

>tfw have a setting full of mad inventors
>tfw said inventors think everything is art and go to great lengths to add tons of unnecessary and overdesigned details to their inventions, like gold filigree
>tfw I don't want to make it steampunk or use a steampunk aesthetic, but I can't think of another aesthetic style which would fit better yet

I have yet to do anything with that setting because of this problem.

IT would be fun if there was any punk in IT, without that it's just dnd but instead od 12th centery england we just have victorian england as the based of the setting

Perfected by Treasure planet.

Utterly fucked up by DeviantArt and Tumblr.

Cancer. Can't stand it but gothic with steampunk elements like say Bloodborne I'm all for.

>Steampunk
>Bloodborne

You were half way there, Bloodborne is literally all Gothic influence.

How about deco or art nouveau?

There's definitely stuff you could consider steampunk in Boodborne, like that electric mace.

Or go full Louis XV and have rococo robots.

borrow ideas from Archimedus. Use some freaky siege engines, repeater crossbows, exoskeleton armor etc

No, not a point.40k factions are stupid, in universe. The Imperium has lost all their tech three times over and their entire civilization hinges on Catholic Cyborgs having enough reality in their superstition to keep shit running and exploiting gene-spliced mutants from cataclysms earlier. Orks are Orks. Eldar don't do retarded shit for the most part and if they do, people notice. They and Abaddon are the most made-fun-of-factions for a reason, because they are portrayed as competent when they aren't.

Meanwhile, Steampunk portrays its characters as technical geniuses and savants, that create fantastic pieces of technology... which would rip your arm off if you used them. It's dumb people writing smart people. Therefore it only appeals to retards.

People try too hard with aesthetics. sums up my opinions nicely.

I also want to say that it's at a nice tech-level where guns exist but aren't advanced enough to completely invalidate other means of weaponry like sabers and whatever shit you can asspull, though I think that a steampunk story should be mostly about intirgue and investigation anyhow.

These are all great ideas. Thanks, Veeky Forums.

>brassgoths
Cogfops is the usual name for not actual steampunk shitters but brassgoths is probably more accurate and should be used more!

Whenever I need a good laugh I open up wookiepedia and read a random article. Star Wars lord is hilariously stupid.

This.

Though they aren't really comparable, since they serve different purposes.

That's because it now makes sense both in and out of context. We've all seen the pictures of the huge railroad mounted guns from WWI and WWII so it something that we know is something that can and will be made.

The biggest problem with steampunk is honestly its fanbase. It has possibility, it really does. Everyone always forgets about the fact that the -punk suffix is supposed to make a huge fucking dent into the themes and thus the setting as a whole, that society is supposed to be deeply flawed and some aspect will crush the individual. But the fucking redditors want to be "the most chivalrous gentlemen" so they push all the focus onto the most privileged portion of the entire fucking setting where all punk theming goes out the fucking window because they want to be cool and fancy with cogs in their fedoras to justify their wearing it. If the focus was on the underclasses being in near slavery to keep the motors running or the destruction of the environment to smog and mining for fuel or on the absolute fucking destruction in foreign lands to imperialism and warfare. It has possibility but the fanbase focuses on their shitty OCs as opposed to the themes that make a punk setting punk.

As a Dragonmech DM, I love steampunk.

But my steampunk is a lot less 'polished brass and tophats' and more 'gunmetal grey warmachines'.

Trips of satan

same

desu supposing an RPG, I'd rather play one of those aristocrats than a factory worker. Much more opportunities to do stuff. Not that the rest of the setting should disappear completely as it so often does.

>Not that the rest of the setting should disappear completely as it so often does.
This is the primary point I'm making. Of course for an RPG the protagonist(s) should be of some importance to justify the shit they do and the places they go but the problem is that most steampunk is so fucking sterile and clean. Steampunk is supposed to be taking place in the era where the skies of London were so black with smog that the moths evolved black coloration for camo. The absolute bloodiest era of warfare where the manufacture of weapons far outpaced the advancement of medicine. The focus should be on the massive difference between classes, the fight between 'natural' peoples with nature on their side against the 'civilised' peoples, and the absolute horror of war as massive warmachines spewing poison fog kill the poor saps in droves as the best a doctor can do is give them pain killer and last rites. Like, the entire point of a -punk setting is that terrible shit is so overbearing that its a fight just to carve out a little nook of true comfort.

Meh. Those are good and fitting themes for a story, but steampunk has never been as focused on social issues as cyberpunk. Most people use the term to describe the prevalence of a certain type of technology, as well as a certain suspension of disbelief. Dieselpunk gets similiar treatment, and everyone here seems okay with treating it as pulpy fun.

And sure, the era steampunk is based on had a myriad horrors, but that's not all it was. It was a time of exploration and experimentation, as communication and transportation became easier. Culture exploded as new ingredients, materials and ideas were made available. Boundaries were shattered as we traveled to the planet's poles and flew around the world. And for all the transgressions of colonialism, this was also the time when (some) people started to make an actual effort of studying other cultures and anthropology became a thing.

Steampunk should be open to exploring both of these extremes, not be anchored to just one of them. There's nothing more dull than people insisting that a genre has to be bleak and hopeless all the time, no exceptions.

Steampunk should not be something to dress up as, because it always looks like arse.

Steampunk is at its best when it's WWI in the pre-dreadnought era. Pic related, thank fuck Spartan is dead and the game has a chance now.

It's okay conceptually but rarely seems to be done well. Too often it's just bland scifi with cogs glued on and bad British accents