Vapourware Josh Sawyer wants to make a historical RPG

[Luckmann]

Josh Sawyer, hater of steampunk:

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3807509&pagenumber=269#post476889443

View attachment 8443

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

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Martian Dreams is pretty good too.
Otherwise steampunk is usually lazy bullshit with top hats on.

 

[Luckmann]

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]

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

 

[Fry]

He's not wrong. Steampunk is proto-hipster bullshit.

 

[Darth Roxor]

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.

 

[Darth Roxor]

please be into explainings of your ratings Prime Junta because alas my hieroglyphicalese is a bit rusty

 

[Prime Junta]

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]

semantics tbh, I'd say retroactively classifying Verne as steampunk is almost perfectly fair

but like I said, semantics

 

[Prime Junta]

: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

 

[fantadomat]

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]

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.

 

[AwesomeButton]

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.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

I would love to see Josh's sinister, haunted, Antebellum South make it into a game. One the more unique setting pitches I've seen for a game.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

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.

 

[Iznaliu]

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

I think people will complain that it isn't "real steampunk" or whatever.

 

[santino27]

Caesar is a world-renowned expert on grain and its nutritional values already

He also makes a fairly mediocre pizza.

 

[undecaf]

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]

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]

It's supposed to be "cyberpunk, but with alternate-past advanced technology" but a lot of chumps just ignore that.

 

[vonAchdorf]

It's supposed to be "cyberpunk, but with alternate-past advanced technology" but a lot of chumps just ignore that.

Like in Numanuma?

 

[Roguey]

It's supposed to be "cyberpunk, but with alternate-past advanced technology" but a lot of chumps just ignore that.

Like in Numanuma?

Nu-Men Era's past is our future.

 

[Falksi]

I want to see them make a Steampunk porno called Teamspunk

 

[Iznaliu]

It mostly doesn't have the religious stuff which interests Sawyer though.

There's no reason why Sawyer can't upset the applecart.

 

[Luckmann]

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.