Steampunk is the worst setting

>He unironically liked Wild Wild West.

Dude, I was eleven and even I could tell that movie was terrible.

Steampunk is not a setting.

Could be done well, but usually isn't due to either lack of a good high concept setting or due to just laziness.

I have played in one Steam/Dieselpunk setting using WoD rules that was actually entertaining, and it was a hell of a lot of fun.

Basically the world was covered in a Stephen King-style mist that brought with it all manner of horrid monsters and Humanity retreated to into cities on large pedestals/platforms hundreds of metres above the mist. We played as a aircraft crew, flying something akin to a PBY-5 Catalina with a hell of a lot of modifications and our job was to fly down into the mist and recover artifacts, items, peoples, etc. It was pretty fun, but the only steampunk-y setting I've ever liked.

>you will never unite a steampunk world in friendship and labor.
Why even live, bros?

Exactly. 19th century was an age of massive political upheaval and action, of colonialism and revolutions and the laying of the modern world's foundations. It also had real life corporations that could put cyberpunk to shame in terms of exploitation and cartoonish villainy, and a number of violent revolts that attempted to resist them.

And in many cases succeeded, although the results were sometimes worse.

I like Sunless Sea, but it's steampunk-ish at best.

Exactly. Just throw in a bunch of monarchs, exploration, and fancy mustaches, and you’ll be set.

Or another way to do it- just do a medieval fantasy, but with better tech, bigger scale, and indoor plumbing.

It has potential but as other anons have said there isn’t a cohesive vision so nothing ever got settled on. But really if you want to get creative with tech there’s no reason to go back in time when you can go into the future with scifi

What you posted isn't steampunk. It's cogfop, which is sometimes mistaken for steampunk.

That's what I did in my campaign. Party all come from some variety of downtrodden people (poor, ethnic minority, etc) and do things like attacking railroad crews or liberating chain gangs.

Dystopian wars is my favorite steampunk setting.

Essentially Arctic explorers dicover a hidden cache of (implied to be alien) technology that starts the industrial revolution a century early. (The first tanks are seen at Waterloo for example).

The game takes place during essentially the settings version of WW1 in 1870.

That is astonishingly close to the setting I have written. Except mine is more focused around corporate power rising, social strife, and exploration/exploitation.

it's like 75% done cause no one wants to play it to test with me because of the genre.

>It's just pompous assholes pretending to be the shithead aristocracy that anyone in a *punk setting should probably be rebelling against.
Beyond cosplay, what is the actual evidence for this position?

fpbp
Seriously though, "steampunk" isn't a setting, any more than "fantasy" or "sci-fi" is a setting. It's a genre.

I only like steampunk if it has some scientific magic or eldrich horror elements. Otherwise it's just a weird fashion trend for LARPers.

>steampunk
>the punk part is never addressed

steampunk has potential. it's a technological singularity hitting at probably the worst possible moment re: society being prepared to handle a singularity without destroying the world

an actual steampunk setting would be a hellscape of black smog, people selling their kids to mad chirurgeons, nuking africa.

dishonored at least took it in the right direction

How do you define Punk.

Best setting to finger blast though

this

there are very good steampunk works out there.
Most steam"punk" however, especially any fashion like and anything related to it, is objectively shit.

Dystopian wars is the shit

Unhallowed metropolis, if you like your steampunk grim as all hell. Sits somewhere between 40k and Nightlands on the "Everything is ruined completely" scale, leaning a bit towards the latter. The dead are rising, hideous twisting maladies wrack the population, supernatural horrors stalk the night, and all of these are heavily hinted to be mere symptoms of something much much *worse*. The world seems to have fundamentally gone off in some unidentifiable but inescapable way, and it can't be put back right

Wild! Wild! Wild, wild WEST!

See that sounds interesting. The vast majority of SP world I've seen or been shown goes as far as "lol flying machines and cogs on hats lol".

I really enjoyed my time in the WoD setting my friend created, it was a shame we never played much more of it. I played a tiny old mole-woman lady who was the pilot. She spoke next to no English and lots of Italian, and cooked lasagnas in the plane's galley (It was sort of Porco Rosso/Cromson Skies inspired). The added pinch of Eldritch horror made it really engaging.

>flying into the mist, between close call canyons and stuff
>attacked by Mynok-esqe winged horrors, latching onto the hull to try and claw their way into the fuselage
>gunner PC on the side turrets swapping sides and tearing off mynok things left and right
>suddenly, a bug weight starts pulling the plane out of the air
>look out the cockpit to see a huge mynok thing on the tail of the aircraft, so I perform maneuvers and smash it into a cliff face on my turn
and another time in the same game
>landed on airstrip, dense fog all around and can barely see the edge of the tall pine forest all around
>airstrip is a refueling base next to a small scientific research bunker
>imagine late evening deep grey fog, the soft green of trees in the distance, and the rich red of flashing runway lights in the fog as a group of five PCs nervously do repairs and refueling on a half-shredded twin engine cargo/bomber plane, while also getting research equipment into the hold of the plane.
>monsters attack from the treeline and PCs light them up with tommy guns, shotguns, and winchesters.
It was a fucking great fun setting, mostly because the GM was fantastic at describing settings.

Thanks, I'll check out Unhallowed metropolis.
Initial impressions are that it's a bit cheesy, how is the crunch?

Come join my LARP group OP.

Then we'll watch some animes after and talk about which nerf guns I'm going to stick gears onto

The problem isn’t the setting, or the aesthetic, the problem is (as is usually the case) the themes. So much of steampunk is focussed on the elites and the wealthy bourgeois, while the potential for storytelling is in the lower classes.

Just starting with the basics, you’ve got thieves’ cant and workhouses, Torso Murders and Jack the Ripper. A family being thrown into the street because their youngest daughter lost her hand to an industrial spinning Jenny. You’ve got Gangs of New York alongside 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea. A minuscule number of soldiers defending an even smaller number of foreign occupiers, fending off literal millions through a combination of corrupt politicking and force. Railroads being driven through not just family farms but even through the sacred Commons. It’s the dawn of Industrialised Warfare, and an era of terrible, crushing poverty. You’ve got weird occupations (knockers-up, meat lenders) who drink gin through a hose until they drink themselves to death. Opium addicts, an influx of immigrants, Tammany Hall and grave robbers mixing with the upper classes, selling a body or two to get rich. Springheeled Jack. Poisoned water and milk. New, weirdo religions springing up. Seances and professional flatulists entertaining the fabulously wealthy by farting.

The Victorian era is loaded with stories, and “steampunk” is just a bastardisation of those stories by adding technology from 20-50 years later. There’s so much you can do.

fpbp

Crunch is pretty decent, but yeah it is kind of cheesy. You sort of have to be willing to run with the ultragothdark-ness of it all, despite it laying it on really goddamn thick. If you can buy into that or at least get past it then you too can have a blast as a zombie fighting, dual kukri wielding professional mourner or a decadent scientist Jekyll/Hyde berserker. Or a cowboy

And most people who complain about steampunk base their opinion on fashion and cosplay or really shitty novels, instead of actual settings like Nausicaa or earlier works like those of Jules Verne.

It was incredibly bizarre, but I don't think that makes it terrible.
It didn't take itself very seriously so it certainly can't have points taken off for the lack of engaging story or shallow characters.

I like steampunk a lot in theory but rarely in practice

Uh this sounds pretty f*ckin epic!

yeah, but you have to bring your own girl, these ones are already spoken for. If you're a girl though, don't bring any more dudes. Jedi Goggles smells bad enough on his own.

I really hope this is ironic.
Ill be honest, that seems kind of fun.

What killed steam punk for me was watching WWE and seeing this wrestling girl come out everyday in Steam Punk cosplay.

failure was that you watched wwe

They all wear top hats and goggles made out of sprockets.

Not that I don’t want to champion the downtrodden man, but I don’t think playing as elites is necessarilly bad. Just so long as those elites are relevant. Why not play as a steampunk prince or princess on a diplomatic venture? Or an old military general? Etc. etc.

Steampunk aficionados are to ignorant and poorly read to even be aware of all that potential.

I’ll fish a fatty out of the local coffee shop to bring along

I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with making the story about the well-to-do, but don't call it X-punk.

>Steampunk
>setting

Dumbass.

Nothing wrong with it, at all. The problem is the heavy focus on it, at the expense of everything else that was going on during the period.

True. And the interplay between the two could be really fun.

I’m imagining a shrinking violet noblewoman hitting it off with a lower class prostitute who doubles as an assassin.

Dig a few centuries further back and you’ve got Nell Gwyn, an actress (and probable whore) who was the King’s mistress, and would have known plenty of nobles. Add a weird Walter Raleigh or similar Age of Exploration types and you’re halfway there.

That can make all the difference. I think that the genre itself is perfectly fine and can be very enjoyable if you play to its strengths. The Regency-Victorian period is so full of conflict and growth and societal change it's hard to not be interested in it.

I guess I'll ask, but would anyone be interested in a game set in a fantasy pseudo-19th Century European setting with focuses on politics and exploration? I'm and I'd be looking for some playtesters or at least people to read over the book.

Both cyberpunk and steampunk have shitty marxist "fight the man" themes. No one cares about that shit. It's gay and childish and cringey. Steampunk is fun for fantasy crossovers and having cool airship battles. You fags take it so fucking seriously it's just sad.

Yeah! Fuck the poor!

If you haven't read it, The Difference Engine is a good time if you like William Gibson. Pretty much invented steampunk to boot.

You're not welcome here, Ajit. Don't you have some CEOs to suck off?

>it has marxist themes
>you guys take it too seriously
Projector.jpg

Steampunk isn’t a genre

It’s a fashion statement by fedoras

Steampunk faggots are unbearable

Steampunk as a setting is always boring because it's just a bit of descriptive flavor. It's hard to take it seriously because of the way everything looks too. I can accept a steampunk looking automaton especially if it is made by a tinkerer-type of character but I can't accept an entire steampunk society.

I donno if that guy on the left has enough belts.

Why not? What’s the issue with a fabtasy world industrializing with some fancy tech?

Sunless Sea is enjoyable, bit the fact it's steampunk-ish is background at best.

>can't even bring himself to say "fags" while quoting someone and changes it to guys
That really is a new level of pathetic

We'll get this thread every day until we like it, won't we?

It annoys me as an engineer.

Just the fancy tech itself? Because I’m sure you can still accomplish an industrialized fantasy setting without stretching the tech too far.

Yeah but the Steampunk I'm familiar with always goes too far.

>can't even say fag
The absolute state of you redditfugees

I like things like victorian science fiction and alternative history a lot more.

>I was only pretending to be retarded - The Movie

Perhaps. Buts it’s why we should strive to popularize better steampunk tropes. Me I want to popularize comfybright steampunk.

user

You should know this

People will accept the impossible

They WILL NOT accept the improbable

I legit don’t get it. I find the idea of a fantasy setting advancing past the feudal era fascinating. Sure there’s been fantasy cyberpunk, and stuff like that, but the only series I can think of that ran with the concept was Fable, and I loved Fable 2 where it was most prevelant.

>cartoonish villainy
Not really cartoony if it's happening in real life.

Thief The Dark Project, Thief 2 The Metal Age, and Thief 3 Deadly Shadows all have steampunk elements with them being most pronounced in The Metal Age.

What's the game, mechanics-wise?

I'd play in a campaign of what you just described.

Like many things, it waxes and wanes

Do you prefer this or "Anons discuss their musclegirl fetish in eight different threads"?

See the whole thing of Steampunk is basically supposed to be H.G. Wells and Jules Verne but more. Much like Cyberpunk was originally a reaction against Utopian Sci-fi. Unfortunately both have really come down to aesthetic more than anything, Cyberpunk due to its themes of technology isn't going to be some unifying force not really working without having an understanding that it's literally a reaction to technology will save the world and unite everyone in some kind of philosopher-king state.

Dwemer ruins

Daily reminder, Will Smith turend down the role of Neo in the Matrix to play in Wild Wild West

>No question now what has happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Its more a critique of corporatism... very exaggerated corporatism. As well as their power to strip rights due to influence/control over markets

I only ever see Steampunk in cosplay, never in anything else. Maybe in Bioshock: Infinite if that counts and Guns of Icarus? Those games weren't the best, but they didn't fall flat because of their setting. In fact I would say they failed in spite of it.

>meat lender
I've not heard this one

>want to write a steambook novel
>it will never be a success and make steampunk as respected as cyberpunk
>steampunk will forever be gears and knobs on top hats and ill-fitting tuxedos

Close to WoD. Pools of d10's and a squad-based combat system for ground fighting.

William Gibson is also the guy who invented Cyberpunk with Nueromancer, so if you want to talk about the X-punk genre Gibson's your guy.

I've never played WoD, but if it's a custom game then I guess I'd be starting the same as pretty much everyone else so that's cool

Send me an email at [email protected]

>punk setting should probably be rebelling against

Daily reminder that the Steampunk is a joke name and it doesn't have any connection to the "punk" themes, nor does it need those connections for that's not what it is about.

Maybe you can revolutionize the genre user, just avoid using the word as its got its own baggage and focus on early capitalism, new money, industrialization and shit like that.

>Steampunk has shitty marxist "fight the man" themes
>Which is why 103% of steampunk cosplay dresses like the bourgeois or nobility of the time