>colonial ambitions such as the Scramble for Africa, the creation of the British Raj, the Opium Wars and Commodore Perry's expedition were a huge part of the 19th century
>Steampunk as a genre is centered heavily on the 19th century
>there is basically no colonial focused Steampunk and it instead only really seems to occur in the British Isles, some parts of Europe, or Civil War/Wild West derivative settings in America
Why is this?
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I think it’s because of colonialist sensibilities that the people they were conquering had no civilization. Since a lot of steampunk is the tech, I think it’d be pretty boring to have steam-powered robots fighting native cavalry.
You could advance the tech of the natives, but I think that invalidates the idea.
Perhaps a good compromise are skirmishes between colonial powers in the far off land? Or set it in a steampunk colonial city, with their being internal conflicts between the natives, rather than outright conquest?
Or lastly Indiana Jones it, and have expedition to lost magical ruins.
Steampunk practitioners like to have all the aesthetic trappings of the colonial period but don't like to deal with the icky awfulness of actual colonialism.
Part of why I hate steampunk so much, it just reeks of racist bullshit
Just have it as a struggle between technology and magic like maybe Arcanum or something.
You can get around that I’m sure. Most people don’t bother of course.
I prefer the idea that to keep their colonial subjects from constantly revolting, the powers reorganize to be a union of various nations, with themselves at the top, ala the British Commonwealth, with varying degrees of truth to it.
>Or set it in a steampunk colonial city, with their being internal conflicts between the natives, rather than outright conquest?
That what I would imagine it to be, most of the important part of colonial politics is between the colonizing nations after the more primitive nations have been subjugated, and the interaction between the conquerors and the conquests.
Also you can have the plight of the common man in a colonial environment, the Australians making their way across this untamed continent of strange fauna and harsh environments, or the Boer colonists in South Africa dealing with their mother country abandoning them and being subjugated by their new British overlords.
Because steamfags just want to play nobility and sit in the dirigible's 18th ballroom talking with Lord Wetheringhall the 12th of Scarborough-on-Neasway while wearing their their corsets on the outside like some sort of prostitute. And those are mainly the sort of idiots who'll buy it. No downtrodden Zeppelin boilermen conspiring with the natives to damage the colonial government for you.
You think you'd at least see nobility hanging out in the zeppelin, using a deck as a diving platform into Lake Victoria, as they enjoy their colonial holdings
I think a steampunk Texan oil baron would be a gas.
give the natives magic is the obvious solution
Perhaps. It’d need to be done very carefully, I have a lot of little gripes about that kind of stuff.
I’d rp in a steampunk Wild West
Isn't that just African Deadlands?
You could also have the natives press ganged harvest the resources you need for all of the bullshit tech. Just because there's high tech in typical steampunk setting doesn't mean there isn't grunt labor behind the scenes keeping things moving.
>Because steamfags just want to play nobility and sit in the dirigible's 18th ballroom talking with Lord Wetheringhall the 12th of Scarborough-on-Neasway while wearing their their corsets on the outside like some sort of prostitute.
I honestly don't see why this is excessively looked down upon compared to playing fantasy murderhobos decked out in silly fantasy armor or space marines decked out in skulls and purity seals which gets significantly less shit on.
Steam Punk India would be pretty cool. Just have the faux-Brits working to introduce their tech to their colonial possessions. Hell, make it a stand in for the British railways that finally connected India into a single super-state. And I think having the faux-Brits use their advanced tech to subjugate the 'savages' is a good way to keep that colonial sensibility alive. Steam-mechs wrecking Singh cavalry, Indian resistance fighters eventually developing their own not-quite-as-effective steam mechs as a counter, industrial sabotage and all the good stuff. It would be great in a massively bleak way.
I want to play the last gasp of explorers before the world wars shit all over it.
What if I want a noble-bright industrial setting?
One theme I like is that once all the lands have been colonized and conquered, the colonial powers then turn on each other.
A good story needs some sort of progression throughout, usually in the form of overcoming obstacles or conflict. Thus goes doubly so for a game. If that zeppelin game has some heavy social conflict, it could be fine. But, if it's just people sitting around gabbing in cute outfits, that's just a shallow diversion.
Murderhoboing is shit too, but that doesn't lower the bar of shittiness.
>Brits drill deep in India and accidentally break the seal that kept their gods sleeping.
>Now that they're awake they're back to doing their crazy god bullshit and begin wrecking everything with collateral damage.
>Brits and some Indians team up to use steam-mechs enhanced with scavenged divine relics to put the Indian gods back to sleep while dealing with sabotage from more faithful Indians and British converts.
Then you make it a setting where the Raj eventually became independent, with England granting it autonomy after the East India company fell apart in exchange for favorable trade relations and access to it's ports. So you have this massive Indian Empire with modern technology that's free of the Mughal Muzzies and also Perfidious Albion. AKA it's that one setting in Magic: The Gathering
Hmm, I think i’ll mix that with the more equal Commonwealth idea.
Or you make the colonists kinder. You know the whole excuse about bringing civilization and order to the continent? What if that was actually the primary objective?
>aesthetic trappings but DON'T like to deal with the icky awfulness
>reeks of racist bullshit
How!? If it's not addressed/included then how can IT be racist?
Pretending it didn't happen
the neoliberal position is that benefitting from the system, i.e. having all the peace, prosperity and technology of the post-Enlightenment without referencing the requisite slavery, even if your fantasy history didn't use slavery, is like intentionally deleting spooks/gooks from history.
People always say Steampunk lost touch with or ignores its quintessential themes but I'm having a hard time thinking of any definitive work of Steampunk. I know people usually reference the Difference Engine and while I haven't read it from what I understand it really doesn't have anything to do colonialism or labor riots or whatever.
I always saw Steampunk as an aesthetic, not a genre. This perspective that it has pre-established thematics confuses me. It's like bitching about how "Art Deco Games" don't talk enough about the Great Depression.
the MAGATOW position is slants/curry didn't invent anything, only GREAT MEN are protagonists and only through individual labour & moral education does anything matter.
thus forgetting the little people has no narrative or identarian impact on a story/history.
Because colonial adventures are pulp, not steampunk.
Steampunk is focused on the introduction of a foreign technological element in an already known setting, like most SF. Pulp is all about adventures and exploration.
Besides, tech tends to be limited/unreliable/expensive in steampunk, which means you usually don't want to risk it in extreme conditions and unknown lands. Remember the Frankin expedition that died of botulism because of non-mastered beef can tech? Or Scott (with his tractors) and Nobile (with his zeppelin) dying on the pole.
If you want colonial mechas, you'll be better off with turn of the century or interwar """dieselpunk""". That way the tech as advanced sufficiently that you can have a party of adventurers without it becomign a logistical nightmare.
en.wikipedia.org
>There were forty entrants in the race, but only five teams ended up going ahead with shipping the cars to Peking. The race was held despite the race committee cancelling the race.
That is awesome.
Yeah, the first half of the 20th century is full of crazy adventurers.
en.wikipedia.org
>I will prove that it's possible to reach polynesia from peru in an antique raft, and by the way I don't know how to sail or to swim, and I'm afraid of water.
en.wikipedia.org
>I will prove that it's possible to go across the atlantic ocean without any provision, the ocean shall provide me with food and water. My boat is an experimental model, my teammate is abandoning me and the radio isn't working? No problem.
I've had the idea for a steampunk setting based on the British Raj in the back of my head for a while now. Playing members of various rebel groups or politicians trying to deal with foreign rule.
pic is from the citroen croisieres, btw
>To draw attention to his half-track vehicles launched in 1922, André Citroën organised a trans-Saharan expedition – Touggourt-Timbuctoo-Touggourt – from 17 December 1922 to 7 March 1923.
>This success was followed by the Croisière Noire expedition, which crossed the African continent from north to south, travelling from Colomb-Béchar to Cape Town, between 28 October 1924 and 26 June 1925.
>The Croisière Jaune expedition crossed Asia, from Beirut to Beijing, between 4 April 1931 and 12 February 1932. Citroën subsequently supplied Admiral Byrd with three half-track vehicles for his Antartic expedition (25 September 1933 – 2 February 1935). It also supplied five vehicles for the Croisière Blanche expedition organised from 4 July to 24 October 1934 in the Rocky Mountains of Canada.
The expeditions were accompagned by a team of scientists, to record the discoveries made en route.
The croisiere jaune crossed conflict zones, resulting in fights and hostage takings.
This shit is straight out of a Jules Verne novel. I love it.
Thats what I did in my Steampunk campaign. The group was mainly a bunch of subjugated peoples striving to rediscover their culture's magical ways to drive off the colonisers.
It's mostly because Steampunk rarely goes into the civil war era, usually it's very late Victorian and early Edwardian (usually 1890s to at most 1910).
A big part for me is how even with all this shit, you never have the Balkan wars, or any let's put the Old Man out if his misery.
>steampunk crimean war
I'm reasonably erect by now
>it just reeks of racist bullshit
Depends on what criteria you operate under, some people would argue that adding colonial themes would be racist via glorification.
Apparently you are too young or/and too stupid to know the answer.
Also, steampunk is shit-tier setting that is all aesthetics, no substance, how how the fuck you expect from such concept use colonialism or just even generic imperialism as a backdrop, it it's all just cogfop bullshit?
I would love a Steampunk Crimean War (or Second Crimean War) that devolves into not just Crimea, but also Armenia and the Balkans. Hell place it in the 1880s and add in some Tesla.
>I would like a setting from the 50s, happening in 80s, but playing up stuff from the 10s
What is this? Back to the future?!
Or just another reason why steampunk is shitty "looks over content"?
19th century colonial ambitions were grounded entirely in (mostly percieved, rather than actual) situation of the world and ways of controlling it.
Which is utterly untranslatable in fictional setting (unless it being Not!RL 2nd half of 19th century), because you would first have to create a complex and coherent setting for it and then play politics around it. Eseentially something that no GM is going to do just for players to have steam-powered rifles to hunt megafauna in that newly discovered plateu in Peru.
Reason I said a second one. One of the huge concepts of Steampunk is supposed to be post difference engine.
I despise the overload of "-punk" settings as much as the next guy, but you're a nincompoop. Being agressive doesn't make you appear smarter, you know.
Call it retro-future or victorian sci-fi, if it's so unbearable for your eyes, stop whining, and answer the question (or hide and ignore, whatever).
>it's all just cogfop bullshit
In 1986, the french magazine J&S published Mega II, the second edition of their universal rpg system. The scenarios included a team of secret agents looking for a scientist that had accidentaly jumped to a parralel dimensions, where flying zulus had invaded great britain with the support of the irish and the rest of the european powers. It features the fragmentation of the british autorities, with the king having to support local warlords to hold the zulus back, mass civilian exodus to scotland, the apparitions of new technology and their morally dubious uses.
tl; dr: when you're that ignorant about a subject, just shut up.
Ya fooking cunt.
It's a little gem of a module, by the way.
Why does steampunk have so much gearfuckery when it should be more about valves, centrifugues, pistons and connecting rods?
As far as I know steam technology mostly only uses internal gear like system and flywheels look nothing like your typical gear yet in stempunk art they are fucking everywhere, wasnt that supposed to be called "clockpunk"?, when did people stop giving a fuck and made it into an amalgam of "old timey" looking technology?
gears are an essential part of mechanical computing.
and almost every industrial machine uses some kind of gear reduction.
>flywheels look nothing like your typical gear
?
>One of the huge concepts of Steampunk is supposed to be post difference engine
... said who?
Because surely, you must be aware that Gibson's book is nowdays not just irrevelant, but utterly fucking forgotten.
>Putting steampunk and retrofuturism in single line and using them interchangably
yes, and?
>neoliberal
Maybe you should check what that term actually means before you make a fool out of your self misusing it like that.
>What's wrong with trying to put a square peg into a round hole?
Nothing, user. Nothing.
>"I knew I shouldn't have come to those uncivilized lands full of flesh-eating savages"
mind making actual arguments or you gonna continue to beat around the bush?
Pretty much. They don't want to deal with the conditions of the factory workers as well tough, it's not really a problem of racism but most steampunk seems to go with the "let's be awesome higher class and all that" thing.
But let's be honest, steampunk communism would be at very least that much cool.
Interestingly enough Blades in the Dark has a whole metric fuckton of labor unions doing labor union-y things (up to terrorism), to the point that I find the high class as evil sociopathic fuckups a little too extreme. But it is a game about lowborn scoundrels.
>I always saw Steampunk as an aesthetic, not a genre.
That's why people don't like it, because it is just aesthetic, because it does ignore the historical reality of the period that the aesthetic represents.
Let's be real. People don't like steampunk because of the kind of people that like steampunk. It's that simple.
Darwinia, La Lune seule le sait, Vynález zkázy, Howl's moving castle... There are a ton of works that use 19th century social structures and events.
>>there is basically no colonial focused Steampunk
No colonial based Steampunk? Are fucking retarded or something?
The FIRST steampunk RPGs were almost entirely colonial focused. Games like Space:1889 and Forgotten Futures focused on colonial efforts ranging from Africa to Mars and Venus.
It was only after designers decided to "sanitize" the history the games were based on in the hopes of not "offended" the various "people of color" who never even the RPGs that steampunk RPGs Lords & Ladies faggotry you only knwo about.
No such thing, Stu. No such thing.
Sounds pretty great - a steampunk Raj (or a later interwar era one where the Imperial Airship Scheme worked) would be cool, got a great blend of tradition and change, familiar and strange all coming together.
>Untouchable stokers keep the gilded steam-powered Juggernauts of the Princes moving as they tour the land. Soldiers swelter in their armoured vehicles as they stand guard, cooking in the midday heat. The smells of oil and spice intermingle as steam-man rickshaws chug through the markets
These are also pretty amazing
Murderhobo Fantasy and Space Fascism have less of a hipster faggot stigma associated with it.
>labor riots
You just had to ask, user (subtitles available) :
youtube.com
>the icky awfulness of actual colonialism.
>implying colonialism was actually bad
Website full of old sci-fi books and pics (scroll till the end of the page)
merveilleuxscientifique.fr
that's not a debate for Veeky Forums (or Veeky Forums, for that matter). We both know nothing constructive would come out of it.
Not bad - really there should be more frence steampunk stuff considering how big an impact Verne is on the genre - obviously for him it was sci-fi but that's not the point
Also this series of French illustrations: La Guerre Infernale is great inspiration
merveilleuxscientifique.fr
France of course had an empire nearly as extensive as Britain, and had an obsession with flight (the first use of "air power" in war was the reconnaissance balloons of the French Aerostatic Corps (aka the Company of Aeronauts) founded in 1794.
And not hard to accomplish, since Karl
Marx was around during the time.
I feel it’s okay to steal elements from the 18th and 20th century when looking for plot, themes and inspiration. I think you just need a base of imperial monarchies to start off with.
Steampunk is exclusively done by white people, who don’t like being reminded that they were racist pricks for most of history. They like to pretend they’ve moved beyond it, and like colonialism never happened
>this thread
>feel it’s okay to steal elements from the 18th and 20th century when looking for plot, themes and inspiration.
Yeah, 100% - especially if you want to incorporate elements of rebellion which aren't "and then everyone got blasted by grapeshot/cut down by gatling guns when the artillery arrived, and retribution was visited on their community".
I mean, you can have that too - a steampunk Sepoy Rebellion might be neat, for example - but the idea of taking elements and inspiration from before and after and fitting it into the setting is fine, and used all the time in media.
To take TV example, M*A*S*H was set in the Korean war, but a lot of what it was talking about was the Vietnam war (related to the post above yours actually, the Vietnam war(s) started when it was "French Indochina", so you could use a whole load of Vietnam war elements in a steampunk game set there)
They have quite a lot of it, but in general french genre production tends to be different enough from the main anglo trends that they don't get translated in english.
In comics I would recommend the Cycle of Ostruce, staging a proletarian revolution against the tsarist dragon and the counter-revolution of the whites, with cossack amazons, ghoul cities, anarchist ogres and sapient airships.
The art isn't very regular, but otherwise it's very solid.
That's very specific hivemind we got there, user. Are you me?
>Are you me?
... I might be.
I take it you also have a decent collection of French pre-dreadnought pics?
I got that link from Veeky Forums though, so it might just have been the last time you shared
So you mean after it had ceased being a genre that had it's roots in Verne and Wells, as well as alternate history, and not an aesthetic by late teen and 20-something hipsters?
Exactly. Themes I like include fascist takeover (because they are fantastic bad guys, take all the ills of steampunk to its logical conclusion, and the aesthetics blend together fantastically), building up to a final endwar (WW1), and Democratic Revolution (American/French Revolution).
Exactly.
Colonialism was unironically a good thing, probably why not much is shown of it being bad.
Yep. I mean it can just be sticking cool things together and seeing what works, but honestly that's fine. That's how a lot of good shit happens
Speaking of taking themes/events from elsewhere, I've seen people on Veeky Forums complain that there's not enough "punk" in steampunk so I made the following premise for a game:
>The scene is Cottonopolis, one of the biggest, wealthiest and busiest cities in the Empire
>A city powered by steam, filled with mills, warehouses and factories, choked by smoke and soot
>A city of industry, innovation, and booming business
>A city of exploitation, depravation, and incredible desperation
>Inequality is rampant, the poor wasting away from starvation and addiction while the rich build themselves palaces and temples of wealth
>[The group] are attending a radical speech at the city’s lesser free trade hall one hot summer’s eve
>No-one knows it yet, but this speech will shake the Empire, change the world
>It’s not like the hall is full – it’s at less than a third of capacity, there are about 40 people there, including [the group]
>But almost all of them will go on to make the history books – as firebrand journalists, the men who will launch the doomed “people’s factory”, the future leaders of the militant new order
>The speaker isn’t very eloquent, or nuanced, or even very clear on what their policies are really, but they’re full of passion and anger
>They rant and rail against the system, rights, the rich, and the state of the nation, waving a gun about and crudely gesturing about how everything is fucked (with the help of a whore) and calling for change and revolution
>Despite their lack of skill, their raw anger inspires the crowd – some in support, some in opposition, many with their own ideas
>On this day the fires of revolutions are kindled
>[The group] is perfectly placed to be near the centre of things to come
It's literally based on a notable punk concert
>How!?
Probably the same way being a wehraboo.
Revolutions are pretty cool, and adding steampunk mechs/robots to that is great too - hell, the Russian Revolution (accidentally) had robots in one textbook, but making that the reality could be pretty rad
Chinese and indians could have less advanced steamtech maybe
Pre-dreads always look so funky
What, have steam tech as a kind of gunpowder analogue?
>You could advance the tech of the natives, but I think that invalidates the idea.
Do the Warmahordes thing and give natives giant monsters to fight the steam powered robots.
>I think it’d be pretty boring to have steam-powered robots fighting native cavalry.
I don't know, I think if you add realistic flaws, weaknesses and limitations to the , and don't make the tech super-amazing it could be interesting.
For example, Her Majesty's Mechanical Hussars are highly effective - when there's plenty of fuel, oil and spare parts. In the European theatre this isn't a problem, but on the plains of Africa those are hard to come by.
The tech is superior, but the more you have, the greater the logistical strain is and the greater the potential for arrogance-induced mishaps.
>You could advance the tech of the natives, but I think that invalidates the idea.
A lot of weapons used against colonists were bought from other colonists, so it would make sense on a limited scale.
Less so for bigger or more complex steam-tech stuff, but against things like armoured cars (or more realistic walker) an anti-tank rifle will do, and that's mostly just a big gun - not too complex for your Khyber Pass types, and big guns would be in Africa anyway (there's a reason AT rifles were nicknamed Elephant Guns).
The trope of "multi-million dollar fighting machine getting knocked out by a goat farmer with an RPG" isn't new, after all - hell, there's even a Kipling poem about that type of thing (I mean, it's a "noble" officer, but it still fits), Arithmetic on the Frontier
I think most people are saying that that stuff is actually bad, which is why steampunk is bad.
Might as well post it.
>Arithmetic on the Frontier
A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe -
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre".
And after?- Ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station-
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow.
Strike hard who cares - shoot straight who can
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem.
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
>Steampunk crimean war
>IRL first major use of telegraphs, naval shells, armoured warships, tactical use of railways
>Infamous for both heroics and military stupidity
>Spy shenanigans in Constantinople
>Oriental aesthetic and historical factors meets european steampunk empire in one country
>Crimean War
>Oriental
Do you even know where Crimea is? Or that most of the war was fought there and in fucking Baltic?
>Oriental
That was referring to the ottoman empire - with the British dumbass usage of "oriental" in it's very very broadest expanse i.e.: "anything east of the Med", which thinking about it is actually really inaccurate, but I can't go back and un-fuck the post so there you go
>European Colonialism was bad m'kay?
>not realizing that every culture that accepted European colonialism is better off because of it
in terms of standard of living, Europe > Cooperative Colonies > uncooperative colonies = never colonized
the portions of India that benefited from british colonization are much better off than portions of Africa that decided to dispossess and in many cases murder their European lords.
see links below; Britain in particular invested extraordinary sums into developing the economies and infrastructures of their colonies and most frequently either did not tax colonies at all, or taxed them far less than their own citizens. Britain in particular viewed colonies as an economic investment. Create a market and an economic infrastructure which, once well established, feeds back into British well being. It's why the British were able to afford their massive navy and standing army in the first place.
foreignpolicy.com
ggdc.net
Mostly because it has "punk" in its name, is ostensibly a spin on the ideas of cyberpunk, while also betraying everything punk about it.
The super serum breastmilk mangaka's latest work isn't steampunk, but I think it will scratch your itch.
>super serum breastmilk mangaka
Probably going to regret asking, but what?
...
I think it'd be interesting to explore the liberal motivations behind colonialism. It was much, much more than just expansionist dudes wanting to plunder the natural riches of lesser civilizations.
And when I say liberal I do mean the proper liberal ideology of the 19th century, not the modern american definition.
Flywheels even don't look like gears. Yet you see gears doing what would be the job of a flywheel.
Because steampunk is a bunch of larper shit. Make Campaign for North Africa steampunk
like said and you can be sure I'll be doing it.
Honestly, I'd really want to include that as a component - through characters who genuinely believe in improving the lives of the people they're colonising.
I'd have them alongside those who just see resources, and those who have motives related to influencing and counter-influencing the region, but I see no reason not to have people who believe in spreading liberal values (and other values).
Though I do wonder if cynicism might get in the way.
>Campaign for North Africa
You'd probably have better luck convincing a group to actually adventure in Africa than you would playing that
Author made a manga about his magical realm and finished it. His newest manga is about a fantasy world that's advanced into the 1910s. Unfortunately it's also a fanservice-laden isekai story, so it's complete trash. If you've ever seen the posted pages of a tall brown curvy girl being called a dwarf, that's from the manga.
I have not, but that summation doesn't interest me at all, so I'll let it be.
It's not the one with the centaur with an anti-tank rifle is it?
Their parade uniforms owe quite a bit to british household cavalry
I was referring to this one actually. British centaur is Mikoyan, and AFAIK he hasn't released any officially published manga yet.