Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Vapourware Josh Sawyer wants to make a historical RPG

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
Josh Sawyer, hater of steampunk:

yjPSESi.png
As if I needed more reasons to dislike him. Arcanum upon his soul.
 

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
Martian Dreams is pretty good too.
Otherwise steampunk is usually lazy bullshit with top hats on.
99 times out of 100, everything that is a thing is shit. If that's the yardstick we're using, you can never do anything in a genre. If you want to do steampunk well, with all the victorian aesthetics and shit all over the asswits that take top-hats and glue some cogs onto them, you should, absolutely. If you don't want to, that's fine too, just don't use the other fucknuts as some kind of excuse or alibi.

"Oh, I don't want to be associated with all those people and their plebian ideas and aesthetics", well guess what, Twilight is Fantasy and it sure as shit didn't stop him from making Pillars of Eternity as a modernist fantasy setting of the most generic pedigree.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,660
Josh is just angry that people who are into steampunk don't care about history as much as he does.



stone age - ancient tymes - medieval - steampunk - modern - future : apparently, i'm wrong and these are earth's real historical eras
stone age - ancient tymes - medieval - steampunk - modern - future : apparently, i'm wrong and these are earth's real historical eras
 
Last edited:

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
He's not wrong in that recently steampunk has turned into a stupid fad, but for example dismissing Verne (because what's Verne if not steampunk) as just some silly aesthetic bullshit is insanity.

That said, if he wants to make a historical game and people go ZOMG WHY NO MUH STEAMPUNK, then obviously it's the people that are fucking dumb.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
Jules Verne is not steampunk. Steampunk is a retro aesthetic which combines cyberpunk with Victorian technology. Jules Verne lived the era. Verne is (sometimes) sci-fi, one of the first major ones in fact.

Steampunk does draw on Verne, of course, along with the rest of the period, but Verne himself doesn't exhibit what became steampunk tropes particularly strongly.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,406
Location
Djibouti
semantics tbh, I'd say retroactively classifying Verne as steampunk is almost perfectly fair

but like I said, semantics
 

Prime Junta

Guest
:shrug:

I guess that makes Julius Caesar a swords-and-sandals author

Edit: more to the point, the topic under discussion is Josh Sawyer's dislike for Steampunk and love for the real 19th century, whereas you are categorising a real 19th century figure (Verne) as steampunk. That's not semantics, it's :retarded:
 

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,087
Location
Bulgaria
Well it will be nice to see some really historical rpg.I hope that is more ancient time than medieval.We have too many medieval games anyway.Also Pagan times will give nice religious options.Also there is only one steampunk rpg and that is Arcanum,the rest is garbage.If you don't have a bunch of political,industrial and moral dilemmas in a steampunk game then you are making it wrong.It is fucking time of clash of ideas after all.
 

Glop_dweller

Prophet
Joined
Sep 29, 2007
Messages
1,164
Darklands—2

*Or perhaps an Inquisition clone based on the Oliver Twist setting?

____

Whatever it is, rest assured that the 'rusty kitchen knife' you find in the first room, will be just as viable in the end game as the officer's saber you find half-way through; and the cap & ball pistol you find in the last act.
 
Last edited:

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
Patron
Joined
Nov 23, 2014
Messages
16,156
Location
At large
PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
I'm an optimist about any game Josh Sawyer produces that is his vision of "what I'd like to do better than Darklands". If anyone ever was the perfect guy to direct a game, it's him for a historical RPG a la Darklands.

BTW, have M&B's similarities to Darklands been discussed? As I play Darklands, they keep piling up.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
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.
 

undecaf

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,517
Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2
If he ever ends up making it and it’s a sword&board time period game, I’ll probably give it a pass. I find myself bored even with the better of those these days, turnbased or not.
 

vonAchdorf

Arcane
Joined
Sep 20, 2014
Messages
13,465
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.

Steampunk often has the underlying conflicts from industrialization - rich vs. poor, workers vs. factory owners, if that's what you mean by classic 19th century horrors. It mostly doesn't have the religious stuff which interests Sawyer though.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,660
It's supposed to be "cyberpunk, but with alternate-past advanced technology" but a lot of chumps just ignore that.
 

Luckmann

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
3,759
Location
Scandinavia
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.
Ironically, it shows someone that favours aesthetics over substance: If someone was interested in the substance, the storytelling, the actual plot and drive and meat of a setting or a scenario, the aesthetic doesn't necessarily matter at all. 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.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom