Vapourware Josh Sawyer wants to make a historical RPG

[Iznaliu]

Steampunk is what you make of it, and rejecting it simply because some use it in a shallow fashion hints at a very simple mind. Steampunk is merely a vehicle, and it could be either Arcanum or the Edison Bar with cogs glued to your forehead; it's entirely up to the creator

Most video-game designers don't have the time and creative energy to produce the next LoTR.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A remake of Darklands, with some gameplay and UI improvements, would be good enough for me.

 

[Luckmann]

Steampunk is what you make of it, and rejecting it simply because some use it in a shallow fashion hints at a very simple mind. Steampunk is merely a vehicle, and it could be either Arcanum or the Edison Bar with cogs glued to your forehead; it's entirely up to the creator

Most video-game designers don't have the time and creative energy to produce the next LoTR.

It doesn't need to be LotR, and LotR is a really shitty analogy since it already pulls primarily upon greatness in an era shock-full of great shit. Really, an average GM of an average PnP RPG can tell an awesome story and create an awesome scenario in any setting. You don't have to be fucking Tolkien to do something cool.

Tell a court drama in a steampunk setting. Have all the flying machines and all the gears and cogs and flying ships outside the window, and set the entire thing inside, above and below the Forbidden City-sized royal court of not!-Victorian Britan. Don't let the player take a single step outside, in the dirty streets of not!-London, merely allude to it, make references.

Create the scenario of a not!-German colonial soldier fighting the not!-Vietnam War in an era of post-Bismarckian not!-Wilhelminism, with the themes of colonialist supremacy and war is hell mixed in with pathological tea-drinking and an upper class of completely detached officers. Drop napalm from dirigibles.

Have a fantasy steampunk setting in which fantasy and magic is not in strict opposition, and set it in a frontier not!-America with elements of weird west; investigate a murder, become a sheriff, turn to banditry and become an outlaw, uncover a plot of cannibal indians preying on a cult of incestuous pilgrims. Kill them all.

"Steampunk" is simply a vehicle for the imagination and the narrative, and an excuse to create scenarios and situations that may not otherwise arise, and to obsess over the aesthetics - or worse, obsess over the aesthetics because others are obsessing solely over the aesthetics - is retarded. It's OK to say "I don't like the aesthetics of steampunk, and therefore I will not use it" or "I don't feel I need the narrative vehicles of steampunk for the story I want to tell or the setting I want to create, and attaching it would merely be aesthetics and therefore largely meaningless", but to say that Steampunk is only aesthetics and therefore stupid and all these other people that care all about the aesthetics and nothing else are stupid and badwrongfun means you're nothing short of a faggot.

It is what you make of it. You don't want gas-lit cities with steam cars and tesla-fueled gauss rifles and flying ships? That's fine. You can go for something else. You don't have to like the same things. But if you say that steampunk sucks because there's faggots that think of it as and use it merely as an aesthetic, gluing cogs to chimney hats and calling it steampunk, you're just another person that would glue cogs to chimney hats and calling it steampunk, if only you liked steampunk. So instead, you glue <insert preference> to <insert other preference> and call it <whatever is appropriate as determined by preferences>.

 

[TT1]

Steampunk is what you make of it, and rejecting it simply because some use it in a shallow fashion hints at a very simple mind. Steampunk is merely a vehicle, and it could be either Arcanum or the Edison Bar with cogs glued to your forehead; it's entirely up to the creator

Most video-game designers don't have the time and creative energy to produce the next LoTR.

It doesn't need to be LotR, and LotR is a really shitty analogy since it already pulls primarily upon greatness in an era shock-full of great shit. Really, an average GM of an average PnP RPG can tell an awesome story and create an awesome scenario in any setting. You don't have to be fucking Tolkien to do something cool.

Tell a court drama in a steampunk setting. Have all the flying machines and all the gears and cogs and flying ships outside the window, and set the entire thing inside, above and below the Forbidden City-sized royal court of not!-Victorian Britan. Don't let the player take a single step outside, in the dirty streets of not!-London, merely allude to it, make references.

Create the scenario of a not!-German colonial soldier fighting the not!-Vietnam War in an era of post-Bismarckian not!-Wilhelminism, with the themes of colonialist supremacy and war is hell mixed in with pathological tea-drinking and an upper class of completely detached officers. Drop napalm from dirigibles.

Have a fantasy steampunk setting in which fantasy and magic is not in strict opposition, and set it in a frontier not!-America with elements of weird west; investigate a murder, become a sheriff, turn to banditry and become an outlaw, uncover a plot of cannibal indians preying on a cult of incestuous pilgrims. Kill them all.

"Steampunk" is simply a vehicle for the imagination and the narrative, and an excuse to create scenarios and situations that may not otherwise arise, and to obsess over the aesthetics - or worse, obsess over the aesthetics because others are obsessing solely over the aesthetics - is retarded. It's OK to say "I don't like the aesthetics of steampunk, and therefore I will not use it" or "I don't feel I need the narrative vehicles of steampunk for the story I want to tell or the setting I want to create, and attaching it would merely be aesthetics and therefore largely meaningless", but to say that Steampunk is only aesthetics and therefore stupid and all these other people that care all about the aesthetics and nothing else are stupid and badwrongfun means you're nothing short of a faggot.

It is what you make of it. You don't want gas-lit cities with steam cars and tesla-fueled gauss rifles and flying ships? That's fine. You can go for something else. You don't have to like the same things. But if you say that steampunk sucks because there's faggots that think of it as and use it merely as an aesthetic, gluing cogs to chimney hats and calling it steampunk, you're just another person that would glue cogs to chimney hats and calling it steampunk, if only you liked steampunk. So instead, you glue <insert preference> to <insert other preference> and call it <whatever is appropriate as determined by preferences>.

Post of the year

 

[Iznaliu]

Post of the year

The posts of the year are over in the ELEX thread.

 

[fantadomat]

Post of the year

The posts of the year are over in the ELEX thread.

Post of eternity are in the ELEX!

 

[TT1]

ELEX? Oh, ok! Let me check this out.

 

[Delterius]

Steampunk is the worst genre of science fiction.

But Arcanum was pretty sweet and I miss it.

 

[Jaesun]

Steampunk is the worst genre of science fiction.

But Arcanum was pretty sweet and I miss it.

I somewhat agree. Steampunk could be presented very well in a video game. The setting is not the problem, it's the implementation of it that is. Of which Arcanum did a very good job of it.

 

[fantadomat]

Steampunk is the worst genre of science fiction.

But Arcanum was pretty sweet and I miss it.

I somewhat agree. Steampunk could be presented very well in a video game. The setting is not the problem, it's the implementation of it that is. Of which Arcanum did a very good job of it.

Only good steampunk games that i can come up with,are Arcanum and Bioshock.

 

[Prime Junta]

Only good steampunk games that i can come up with,are Arcanum and Bioshock.

Bioshock is dieselpunk (1930s aesthetic). No airplanes airliners in steampunk.

edit: corrected careless use of a term, early airplanes can be steampunk

 

[Delterius]

So Arcanum isn't Steamworks and something obscure?

Edit: how dare you edit you monster

 

[fantadomat]

Only good steampunk games that i can come up with,are Arcanum and Bioshock.

Bioshock is dieselpunk (1930s aesthetic). No airplanes airliners in steampunk.

edit: corrected careless use of a term, early airplanes can be steampunk

 

[Nano]

Steampunk is the worst genre of science fiction.

But Arcanum was pretty sweet and I miss it.

I somewhat agree. Steampunk could be presented very well in a video game. The setting is not the problem, it's the implementation of it that is. Of which Arcanum did a very good job of it.

Only good steampunk games that i can come up with,are Arcanum and Bioshock.

*avatar quote*

 

[FreeKaner]

I can see why Josh wouldn't like steampunk. It's a top heavy setting centered almost entirely around aesthetics. It doesn't have any underlying themes or conflicts or what have you. It's just people wearing monocles and cool hats. Not very interesting setting to work on if you're as autistic as he is.

Steampunk that mixes themes from classic XIX-century horrors though, that's genuinely cool.

What gave you the idea Josh doesn't like aesthetic for aesthetics sake? Josh's problem with steampunk I imagine is because it's basically absurdly reductionist, so much so that it is a parody of itself and in direct thematic conflict, perhaps ironically, with an era he is interested in namely the early industrial period.

I am fairly certain he is diametrically opposed the term steampunk itself and all the baggage it follows, and the fact it eclipsed 19th century world history and not 19th century aesthetics, nor alternative technology level industrial period aesthetics with zeppelins and what have you. That's what I deduce from his twitter messages at least.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Whenever people say they want to make an "historical" setting, or worst yet, a "realistic" historical setting, what they are really taking about is a representation of a particular era filtered through modern lenses and "reinterpreted" according to modern beliefs and ideals. It doesn't seem anyone is actually interested in representing those particular eras as people living in those times experienced them. And because of this, what you get most of the times is essentially modern society with an "historical" theme slapped on top of it. Can you really call that "history"?

 

[Roguey]

Whenever people say they want to make an "historical" setting, or worst yet, a "realistic" historical setting, what they are really taking about is a representation of a particular era filtered through modern lenses and "reinterpreted" according to modern beliefs and ideals. It doesn't seem anyone is actually interested in representing those particular eras as people living in those times experienced them. And because of this, what you get most of the times is essentially modern society with an "historical" theme slapped on top of it. Can you really call that "history"?

Josh discussed this in that huge interview.

 

[vonAchdorf]

That's something Sawyer is aware of and I think he has always shown interest in trying to understand the times and people and not just use them as an aesthetic backdrop. It's a given, that some things are incomprehensible to a modern point of view.

 

[FreeKaner]

Whenever people say they want to make an "historical" setting, or worst yet, a "realistic" historical setting, what they are really taking about is a representation of a particular era filtered through modern lenses and "reinterpreted" according to modern beliefs and ideals. It doesn't seem anyone is actually interested in representing those particular eras as people living in those times experienced them. And because of this, what you get most of the times is essentially modern society with an "historical" theme slapped on top of it. Can you really call that "history"?

Josh discussed this in that huge interview.

Can I have a link for that?

 

[Nutria]

It doesn't seem anyone is actually interested in representing those particular eras as people living in those times experienced them.

Darklands did a great job of that. It wasn't even set in the 1400s. It was set in what people in the 1400s thought their world was like.

 

[Roguey]

Can I have a link for that?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=10493

 

[Iznaliu]

Darklands did a great job of that. It wasn't even set in the 1400s. It was set in what people in the 1400s thought their world was like.

Most historical games don't take that sort of approach now, for better or worse.

 

[Grubba]

He wants to make something set in the 19th century? Do a goddamn Western RPG! So much potential there and yet it's been totally ignored (i think?). Why is that? Too boring and passé? Your grandfather's ideal RPG setting? Would be a refreshing change from medieval sword & sorcery or post-apoc

 

[sser]

Westerns will make a return. Be the tip of the long knife!

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I think a Westworld style RPG would be cool. SCI-FI in creation of historical. The plot could have you visit both and there would be lots of room for improvisation.