What's like the seminal work of steampunk? What's the Neuromancer, Mad Max, or Star Trek of the genre?

Jules Verne n' shit.

Yes it was, you pedantic pissant.

Rise of Legends.

Not a book, but a video game.

And it was Steampunk done to perfection.

youtube.com/watch?v=rvXF3oGy-iE

My man...

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That's not Arcanum...

>Arcanum

Eeeeh, it sort of is.

>Gormenghast
My niggah...

I really want to play that game.

first post best post

willy wonka

Jules Verne isn't steampunk, it's science fiction written with contemporary knowledge.

Now that's THE Steampunk game.
>that feeling of old ways being forgotten in favor of something practical but soulless that is ultimately just a tool for corporations to grow on the shoulders of an enslaved humanity now completely detached from the natural world
It had such a good "nostalgic" feeling to it, too bad we will never see a sequel.

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>Wild Wild West.
The fact that this is a movie, and not actually a great movie, just a decent one, seems like a big part of the problem with steampunk, or maybe a symptom of it.

>Gibson's "The Difference Engine".
And the problem here is that hardly anyone writing or making steampunk has read it or takes much from it at all.

>The fact that this is a movie
If you think that Wild Wild West is a movie first and foremost, then you're kinda retarded famalam.

These. However, 90% of people who are pushing the steampunk aesthetic have neither watched the TV series or read the book.

Not knowing a relatively obscure TV show from the 60's isn't exactly a damning indictment of one's intellect.

>one of the first instances of steampunk in existence, lasting for four whole seasons which got rebooted as aforementioned movie
>a reply that was scorning most steampunk creators for not having read a relatively obscure novel from cyberpunk writers

My point is more that that's what's had the bigger influence. My bigger point is that none of these are Star Trek or Neuromancer or Lord of the Rings, and that that's sort of the problem with Steampunk as a genre. It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is a problem. Or maybe it's a symptom of something else.

>These. However, 90% of people who are pushing the steampunk aesthetic have neither watched the TV series or read the book.

I'm pretty sure 90% of people who say they "love Cyberpunk" have never actually read Neuromancer. They just watched Ghost in the Shell or Blade Runner or played some Shadowrun.

I mean, it isn't like Neuromancer is something the casual Shadowrun player has actually read. The Difference Engine is definitely something fewer people are familiar with than Neuromancer, but that can probably also be measured by the depth of the appreciation that the people that consider themselves fans of the genres go. Cyberpunk fans care more about the genre for the sake of vidya and tabletops, or shit like Netrunner. But the average "steampunk" fan just wants to wear welding goggles and glue gears onto everything they own.

I honestly can't even really think of a single steampunk vidya aside from something like... Guns of Icarus and Arcanum, I guess? And neither of those have any real mainstream success compared to shit like Deus Ex.

Yes, but that's some actual interaction with the genre. Watching GiTS would be the relatively equivalent of watching a season of Wild Wild West. It feels disgusting to make the equivalence, but Blade Runner would be the equivalence of the Wild Wild Smiff movie.

Most of the people saying they love Steampunk have no interaction with the genre. It's become as much a fashion style and a weird autistic subculture, that really has little real care about the ideas behind the genre's creation.

This. The rampant homo-eroticism likewise explains the unprecedented levels of faggotry in the steampunk fanbase.
>youtube.com/watch?v=aiysKaxVYEs

What can I say, some of us have more interest in William Gibson than 70s television. It doesn't seem that unreasonable, especially around here.

>I honestly can't even really think of a single steampunk vidya aside from something like... Guns of Icarus and Arcanum, I guess?

Does Myst count? Or is that kinda just its own thing?

That one guy's keyboard that he made

What even are the ideas between the genre's creation? I don't think steampunk ever really had a coherent set of themes in the same way cyberpunk did. If you go far enough back, its really just an offshoot of late 1800s sci-fi, where the technology wasn't even anachronistic.

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Came here to post this

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Victorian poverty and class warfare in the that era, colonialism and the very earliest twinges of globalism in the face of a global empire, and of course the interaction between man and machines in an era of ever-increasing technological progress and advancement.

So instead of a bunch of anarchist punks fighting against megacorps as technology invades and invalidates your humanity as political boundaries are erased under globalism, you have poor grease-monkeys fighting against decadent nobility and voracious nouveau riche as technology invades and invalidates your humanity as political boundaries are erased under imperialism.

But that's just a description of the 1800's. How is that in any substantial way different from a simple period piece, besides being more fun? You take the technology out of cyberpunk, it ceases to exist, you take the technology out of steampunk, you just get history. So what's the point?

I think you're way underestimating the number of people who have read Neuromancer. Not saying every Shadowrun player has, but more than you think. And when you consider Snow Crash that's even more people, and weirdly not everyone has read both or neither.

Difference Engine is many tiers down from either of them in terms of cultural exposure. I'd say as many people have read Difference Engine as Virtual Light or other lower-tier Gibson, which you'd hardly consider necessary for understanding cyberpunk.

I totally agree with you that a lot of steampunk fans are more interested in goggles and tophats with gears glued to them for no reason, but I kind of think that's something about the genre itself, not just the fandom.

I can't really articulate it, but it's like another user was saying, there aren't really any important themes to steampunk, just visual tropes. And that's kind of sad. People talk about things like colonialism, but that doesn't really make much sense and for the most part seems to be something people try to shoehorn in retroactively not something about the genre.

And the thing is, Victorian London and similar societies are great for the rich stomping on the face of the poor and you really can reasonably fight back against the system, but those aren't things anyone is interested in. Everyone wants to be the guy in the tophat, not the guy mugging the guy in the tophat. But not everyone wants to be the guy in the fancy nano-mesh suit rather than the guy in the fake leather jacket.

It wouldn't have to be "punk" like this I guess, there are other interesting directions steam-and-clockwork fantasy could go, but so much of it is thematically empty or pointless instead. Partly because people don't want to go the other way and embrace the morals of the guys wearing the tophats, but they also don't want to fight against them.

I would love to see more works in this vein.

>but those aren't things anyone is interested in

Hey, see

No, if you take the technology out of cyberpunk, you just have a nightmarish dystopia of a corporate world that people suspecting we might have been moving into during the 80's. A world where corporations had more rights than human beings, and where national borders mattered less than corporate allegiance. Where mass surveillance was just part of daily life, and where nothing was really free yet everything had a price. Welcome to the modern world, user. Where corporations have the same rights as citizens, where Geeksquad acts as informants for the FBI, and where Google knows what you mean before you finish typing. Both are just versions of history with the craziness cranked up to a thousand due to the addition of super tech.

Yeah, it's a real pity.

Actually, you can track this shift even in cyberpunk where people have stopped wanted to be the anarchist fighting the power and throwing molotovs cocktails at business meetings while jammin' to punk rock and started to want to be the Company Man in a black trenchcoat hunting down whistleblowers. Cyberpunk has shifted impressively over the years to now more often than not focus on the corporate killers that were once just considered antagonists.

I always felt that Arcanum only really gives lip service to its themes; they're not really used much outside of specific quests and the game mechanics not only fail to reflect them, but largely go in the opposite direction. Old timey knights will slaughter firearms users without breaking a sweat, magic is easy, cheap and reliable, technology is complicated, expensive and grueling for little payoff, and the strongest builds combine tech and magic despite the two being mutually exclusive in fluff. That, and jumping between moods and concepts every ten minutes. You survive a blimp crash, the tutorial village is an old Wild West town, then you go to London with gnomes where you join with a dwarf Worf to sword some puny necromancers, then you go to Moria to genocide 10,000 smurfs, wolves and bankruptcy elementals, then you have to deal with an unliving Disneyland pirate to get his ship so you can sail to magic Australia, etc.

Also the big enlightened elf wizard you're supposed to be the reincarnation of is named after an Ottoman folk character.

I don't know how familiar people in this thread will be with Graham Walmsley (designer of Cthulhu Dark and Doctor Who/Cthulhu game book writer) but I was reading a thing he wrote about playtesting a Cthulhu scenario set in Victorian London that is relevant to all this.

Apparently it's hard to get writers to give you scenarios where the PCs are low class and the horror comes from the gentleman's clubs but not the other way around, even when you explicitly ask for it. There was a scenario he wrote that had originally been upper class investigators looking into a problem in the slums where he later flipped it to have the investigators be prostitutes and whatnot investigating rich fucks preying on them. While it actually ran better flipped around that way, people were initially put off by the idea and wanted it the other way around.

We have a bias that those in power somehow deserve to be there, and I think we're fighting back against that impulse a lot less now than we were in the 90s, even though if you talk to people about how much they like their government officials they won't have much good to say about them.

I think that overlooks that much of what makes today's dystopic corporate hellhole world possible is technology central to cyberpunk. To take the technology out of cyberpunk would be like taking the internet out of the modern world.
But in a more general sense, the technology of cyberpunk underscores what is happening in the setting while steampunk really doesn't. For one thing, steampunk doesn't really have any really defining technology in the way cyberpunk has the net or human augmentation. Airships I guess, but what is the thematic significance there?

That’s the issue with Steampunk. It’s missing it’s genre defining book/IP. It’s sad because back in 2007 we thought Steampunk was going to get that book or piece of work that would define the genre but instead a bunch of fanfic tier level writers latched on to the genre and drove it straight into the ground. Now most of, if not all of, Veeky Forums despises it. At best it serves as a sub genre to fantasy.

What the fuck dude I came here to make that joke

I honestly don't understand why people don't just pick one for themselves.
For instance, I pick hammerfight and nausicaa valley of the winds. That's steampunk for me, and every time I use it people are all surprised and interested by the strange bug-world.

writersanontaunton.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/5-elements-of-steampunk/

This is everything wrong that we're talking about in this thread. It's like if the 5 things that make something cyberpunk were:
1. Set in the future
2. The Internet
3. Computers
4. Leather
5. Coolness

Sure it's a shit article, but this is one of the higher results searching for steampunk. Cyberpunk might have all this stuff, but it's got a lot more going on collectively as a genre for people to write shitty blogs about.

First, because sure pick something for yourself, but that doesn't make it any kind of unifying force on the genre. And second Nausica isn't steampunk in any way that leaves steampunk meaning anything.

Also Nausica is way cooler than most actual steampunk.

Are you kidding? like 70% of nausicaa's setting revolves around steam!

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I don't know, post-apocalyptic and steampunk seem pretty mutually exclusive to me, even if they both rely on more primitive technology.

while I disagree with you, and am willing to slap "steampunk" on anything using the technology, I was just making a joke about all the mists bugs live in in nausicaa.
You FUCK.

>Wild Wild West.
Homie, the tv show was badass af

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This was my favorite RTS from that '06-'08 era before the genre receded. The story and voice acting were horrible, but the gameplay and aesthetics were fucking awesome. I have no idea why it didn't sell well, I wanted to get it as soon as I saw some of the promo art with the clockwork men.

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How is Star Trek steampunk in any way?

>without technology
you do realize that technology includes things like, Agriculture, the Wheel, the inclined plane, market exchange, currency, literacy, alphabets, words, not to mention metallurgy, every form of science and medicine, and using shaped sticks to perform specified tasks. Right?
I think you mean futuristic, nanotech, cybertech, etc

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>and not actually a great movie, just a decent one
But it had a giant mechanical spider and Will Smith in his prime. How is that not a great movie?

>Actually, you can track this shift even in cyberpunk where people have stopped wanted to be the anarchist fighting the power and throwing molotovs cocktails at business meetings while jammin' to punk rock and started to want to be the Company Man in a black trenchcoat hunting down whistleblowers. Cyberpunk has shifted impressively over the years to now more often than not focus on the corporate killers that were once just considered antagonists.
So, the genre sold out?

He was referencing other seminal works.

It had Will Smith

Perdido Street Station.
It actually has the 'punk' in steampunk.

Isn't even the seminal Thief game.

>Difference Engine is many tiers down from either of them in terms of cultural exposure.

While the book is unknown, or at least unread, by the average hipster doofus who glues gears to a top hat and wear googles, it was THE seminal influence for all the comic book artists, game designers, and other creative types whose work brought the concept of steampunk to the attention of that hipster doofus.

But in his prime, the man was comedy gold.
> But hes black
Go back.

More like it started to interface with whole new fears and social concerns as the 80s ended and the 90s/00s began
Once the War on Terror became a thing people got a less excited about bomb throwing anarchists and became a lot more interested in tacticool anti terrorist operators

The Beautiful series.

Liar-soft is one of the few creators who understands steampunk as both a theme AND an aesthetic. If you're not afraid of visual novels, they'll do you good.

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The Chaos Engine by The Bitmap Brothers.

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Heh, if steampunk could mean voyages extraordinaires-like sci-fi instead of pseudo-victorian kitchen sink with cogs, I wouldn't complain.

Most of Nausicaa engines use internal combustion, electricity or fusion power. I don't think we see a single furnace in it (maybe the worm masters, but that's all).

The issue isn't that he's black, it's that he has one single actor setting, labelled "will smith". Every actor gets tics as they age, but in Will Smith there's nothing left but tics.
Daryl Ward, 2007 Robert Neville and Agent J are exactly the same character.

>the strongest builds combine tech and magic despite the two being mutually exclusive in fluff. T
what? strongest build ive used would be heavy firearms + maxed dex/str along with drochs warbringer, machined plate, and some other tech armor. using therapeutics/chemistry you can easily kill anything, almost always before it even reaches melee range, and even if you do, you can easily max out dodge and will have insane absorption/af

Michael Moorcock's "Oswald Bastable" books apply.

...Is that the same Oswald Bastable from Nesbit's Treasure Seekers series of children's books?

Yep. Moorcock reused him.

Oh, I guess not.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Bastable

Well, "inspired by".

>but in Will Smith there's nothing left but tics.
Yes, but in his prime, he was hilarious. May have been the same character, but back then it was funny and fairly fresh.
I just have a weakness for cheesy hollywood nonsense blockbusters, and can appreciate films without getting hipster about it.
For example, Pacific Rim was awesome. Really hot summer, cold cinema, cold bucket of coke, and the seats and floor shaking with the pounding of giant robot feet and fists.

thief 2

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Combine tech and magical gear that gives dexterity or AP buffs with haste and congeal time.

A surprising number of nutjobs prefers the Dark Project over the Metal Age.

>Arcanum
came here to post this

you gain critical failure aptitude and it requires you to dump a fair few points in willpower / magick, additionally, tech gear will be far less effective. dex can easily be maxed out with two electric rings and the vivifier or whatever that gives a bonus to all stats. you can use a chapeau of magnetic inversion + machined plate to achieve a disgusting amount of damage reduction and armor, max out strength to minimize speed penalties.

you can still use potions of haste using this, but i found them to be redundant seeing as practically everything was dying before it reached me anyway, and what little did reach me, did negligible damage

I explicitly specify I'm referring to specific technologies common to cyberpunk. Don't be an ass.

Would actually make a great setting if expanded upon a bit. Party full of insane murderhobos? Check.

>writersanontaunton.wordpress.com/2014/01/27/5-elements-of-steampunk/

what really annoys me about that article is it links 'the anubis gates' as a steampunk novel despite it missing just about every single aspect of steampunk mentioned in the article, its set in the real victorian london with the actual technology and society of london of the time, involves a visitor from the future and magic and no fucking steampunk

>for the sake of vidya and tabletops, or shit like Netrunner.
>the average "steampunk" fan just wants to wear welding goggles and glue gears onto everything they own.
So you're saying the majority of fans of both are in it for the aesthetic rather than any thematic reason?

>le random gears that serve no purpose
>plasma rifles and steam powered muskets
>everyone has goggles

Fuck I hate steampunk so much. It’s reddit cancer.

Pic related. It’s the steampunk fan base.

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That bodice is accomplishing so much...