GunlockerGlock said:
Therumancer said:
People will talk about "Steampunk" but really it's just a buzzword for "retro future" stuff. To truely be "Steampunk" you need to give it a 1980s Punk/New Wave vibe.
Time out. '1980's Punk/New Wave'?
I always thought (and have seen and heard and read) it was set in the 1800's, or 'Victorian' Era settings. Before the Industrial Revolution, back when Sea Travel was still a big deal and people were just starting to get used to the idea of the Renascence. (And yes, I'm probobly horribly mangeling the timelines, but it's late at night where I am, so meh to you...)
It almost always went along the lines of someone rediscovering steam and it's probable uses and delved into that, hitting on a cultural and technological revolution that lead to the creation of fantastical (not a word but go with it...) devices and the sparking of great empires... and greater wars.
That's just retro future. The idea of the future and possible evolutions of technology as people in the past might have envisioned them. Variations on Jules Verne type stuff.
Steampunk is not a very common thing, what makes it steam PUNK is that it involves those retro futuristic devices but involves the cultural elements and attitudes of the punk movement (hence the name).
Steampunk comes in two basic flavors neither of which are especially common.
The first is basically retro-future, but all of the heroes/protaganists/main characters are against that kind of proper "victorian" or Elizabethan type society by adopting punk. So you've got the Jules Verne based wierd science, but all the protaganists are based on punk archetypes and sporting big hair, and other "look at me" type fashions. Even the "bad guys" themselves (in true cyberpunk fashion) tend to be pretty "stylish" and would likely have their frock coats and such done up in tiger print or whatever.
The other is basically the idea of the world reaching the 1980s and things remaining largely the same culturally, but things simply having advanced based on old science. Thus you'd have computers the size of houses working on "Babbage Engines" with the punch cards and such, steam powered lamborginis, and similar things.... it's basically Cyberpunk, but exploring the hypothetical advancement of old technologies, rather than the idea of what tomorrow's technology might be like.
The problem with Steampunk is that it basically never was. That is to say that the entire idea is based around a bunch of very obscure short stories and comic strips and such from many years ago. The thing is that these works inspired certain modern writers and artists who mentioned it while working with retro-future concepts as "Steampunk" and caused it to become a buzzword, and then due to the common usage they started to use it themselves simply for the ease of recognition.
To put things into perspective, sometime think about what it means for something to be "retro future". Then think about the term "Steampunk" and ask yourself why the word "Punk" is even remotely involved in something people would label "Steampunk" like "Arcanum" or Phil Foglio's "Girl Genius". Great works of fiction they may be, but is there anything even remotely punk about them? In many cases the concepts would have been right at home with the writings of someone like Jules Verne. You can't even say that "punk" merely referances attitude, because to be blunt most of these works don't really have an attitude. Even with wierd devices galore, and maybe some non Vernian-elements like magic, the idea of a couple of gentlemen in tailed coats doffing their top hats and duelling or whatever (no matter how dressed up) is totally anti-punk by any definition (which is not to say that it's not cool, just that it's not punk in any sense).
Get where I'm coming from?
Steampunk as it is now, is a soul-less buzzword used to make retro future concepts seem cooler. Chances are if "20,000 Leagues Under The Sea" was written for the first time tomorrow someone would try and attach the "Steampunk" buzzword to it for marketing purposes.
Arguably, it can also be argued that true Steampunk never was, I mean it's pretty much impossible to point at anything verifyable and say "That is Steampunk", which is part of the problem. It's really been that obscure.
That said, the tenets are easy to understand, which is why if someone was to make an actual Steampunk game, it would be pretty much unique. Other than the inclusion of magic it's hard to really differentiate the vibe of say "Arcanum" (Computer Game) from "Space 1889" (computer game and PnP RPG) or "Castle Falkenstein" (Paper and Pencil RPG) on a lot of levels. However if you replaced all of the gentlemen and "proper" citizens with a 1980s counter cultural vibe, and then replaced a lot of the more "victorian" stylings with brass fittings and rivets with stuff resembling old school blowtorch art and such... well... you'd have something unlike anything else on the game market.
