How Much Do You Care About Novelty?

[Crimson Longinus]

With respect. Wells was commenting on his present, using allegory set in the future.

For steampunk, it's nigh-dtstopian aspects are similarly commentary on the present.

What Wells and Verne were doing was just scifi. It may seem "steampunkish" to us, as it is set to era usually featured in steampunk. Steampunk is specifically a form of retrofuturism, and you cannot be "retro" to the era you're actually living in!

 

[Umbran]

Steampunk is specifically a form of retrofuturism.

No. "Retrofuturism" is "what the past thought the future would be".

Steampunk would be more appropriately classified as alt-history, except for how it rarely cares about the historical aspect except for the aesthetics and Jack the Ripper.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you're a fan of symphonic metal and adjacent subgenres, its easy to find out just how quick a lot of metalheads are to man the bulwarks to repel borders.

There is a lot of gatekeeping about genre purity, yes, but also a lot of welcoming of new fans in general.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

With respect. Wells was commenting on his present, using allegory set in the future.

Which is very common in science fiction, generally.

For steampunk, its nigh-dtstopian aspects are similarly commentary on the present.

While there is certainly dystopian steampunk fiction, I don’t thinks dystopian tropes are a defining characteristic of the genre.

 

[Umbran]

While there is certainly dystopian steampunk fiction, I don’t thinks dystopian tropes are a defining characteristic of the genre.

They are very common - after all, the Victorian era from which the fiction takes inspiration... wasn't great for most people, now was it? It is the era of early industrialization - it is an era of coal-smoke fogs, black lung, and high levels of economic disparity. It is the era of fake patent medicines and dying of consumption or syphilis. It is the era of the Civil War and Jack the Ripper. Not what most would call great times, you know?

Edit to add: The "-punk" suffix is most appropriate when non-conformity and anti-establishment themes are present, which are usually framed as the establishment being pretty crappy for people. For many of the esthetics, but without the rebellious themes, folks have started to use the term "gaslamp fantasy/adventure (it used to be "gaslight romance", but gaslighitng has an even more popular meaning that conflicts).

I am not well versed in the genre because I am not a huge fan of the aesthetic, but I thought The Difference Engine was consider an important early Steampunk work.

The problem with calling The Difference Engine an "early" steampunk work is that the term, and the books for which the term was originally coined, predate The Difference Engine by several years.

TDE cemented the genre in the sci-fi community, because 1) it was awesome, and 2) it was written by two of the hottest names in scifi at the time. But they were following the trend, rather than leading it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

They are very common - after all, the Victorian era from which the fiction takes inspiration... wasn't great for most people, now was it? It is the era of early industrialization - it is an era of coal-smoke fogs, black lung, and high levels of economic disparity. It is the era of fake patent medicines and dying of consumption or syphilis. It is the era of the Civil War and Jack the Ripper. Not what most would call great times, you know?

Edit to add: The "-punk" suffix is most appropriate when non-conformity and anti-establishment themes are present, which are usually framed as the establishment being pretty crappy for people. For many of the esthetics, but without the rebellious themes, folks have started to use the term "gaslamp fantasy/adventure (it used to be "gaslight romance", but gaslighitng has an even more popular meaning that conflicts).

In order to tell a good story or run an engaging campaign- especially ones involving action- you do need some kind of negativity for the protagonists to rail against. And while the Victorian era certainly had its share of misery to go around, categorizing it as dystopian may stretch the definition of a tad. After all, one could (and many have) categorized the past 20+ years in the modern Western world as dystopian as well. (And they do have a point while doing so.) Look hard enough, and any era of human history will be dystopian to someone.

IMHO, dystopian fiction carries along with it a certain exaggerated element of hopelessness. It’s difficult for the protagonists to see a clear pathway to achieve their positive goals, though this doesn’t necessarily dissuade them from making attempts. Just because something is set in an alt-history of difficult times, it doesn’t require that the protagonists are engaged in actually addressing the negative elements of those societies at all. There’s nothing inherent in a Victorian setting that requires the hero to struggle against the worst excesses of the era.

In my own HERO: 1900 campaign, the superheroes fought against what would be considered period-correct versions of standard supervillains. The main antagonists the Heroes were fighting were an arch villain duo (and super minions) who were trying to overthrow the Terran empires and their extraplanetary colonies…in order to be tyrannical rulers of all the worlds themselves. Most of the worst RW excesses of the European & American empires were glossed over, in part because the attempted change would clearly be for the worse.

 

[Umbran]

In order to tell a good story or run an engaging campaign- especially ones involving action- you do need some kind of negativity for the protagonists to rail against.
And while the Victorian era certainly had its share of misery to go around, categorizing it as dystopian may stretch the definition of a tad.

Um. I didn't say it was dystopian. I referred to "its nigh-dystopian aspects" (emphasis mine).

Which, to me, explicitly notes stopping short of actual dystopian fiction.

I find there's some value in noting a difference between "X-punk" stories and "X-adventure" stories.

 

[Campbell]

I care that the final product delivers a unique and cohesive experience. I don't require the components to be particularly innovative. Some of my favorite games include Into The Odd, Apocalypse Keys and Legend of the Five Rings Fifth Edition. None of these games have mechanics or play procedures they have invented, but they arrange them differently in a way that provides a cohesive play experience that is earnest.

Execution matters more to me than innovation, but a game needs to justify itself as something I could not experience otherwise.
A very good example of this in the video game space is Clair Obscur. It arranges familiar mechanics from different sorts of games but does not grab them at random - there's a vision behind it and presents a unique tone and perspective that meshes well with its systems.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Ah- yeah, I agree with that.

I still think it’s a stretch to consider Verne & Wells to be truly steampunk. Even granting numerous similar elements, what they wrote was speculative of possible futures; modern steampunk creators are imagining a past that never was. Those are very different mindsets.

Lumping the two authors together is a bit misleading, two different people writing in different places at different times (Wells was born 38 years later than Verne). They do have have elements in common - both have strong anti-colonial and pro-pacifist themes for example. We can assume Verne was a big influence on Wells. However, Verne was a lot more interested in real world science and technology. Wells is quite happy to use technobabble and magic when he wants to get his protagonists through time or to the Moon.

Verne does not set any of his stories "in the future". He introduces extrapolated current technological developments (or scientific theories in the case of Journey to the Centre of the Earth) to the present and uses them to spin a yarn.

Wells does set a couple of his stories in the future, in SF warning mode. About the rise of fascism in The Shape of Things To Come, and deepening class divisions in The Time Machine.

The proto-steampunk element doesn't appear until people start turning the stories into movies, 60+ years later. I would call it "people in the present imagining what people in the past thought the future would look like". Whilst steampunk might touch on themes explored by Wells, Verne or Shelley, that isn't genre defining, nor things like dystopianism or alt-history. It's the style that matters!

 

[VelvetViolet]

I think seeking novelty is largely pointless. If you can think of it, then there’s a good chance it’s already been done before in some form. All storytelling is iterative and done in the context of past stories known to the storyteller.

I think the ttrpg landscape is gray and lifeless compared to where it was 20 or more years ago. All the cool ideas have been taken and nobody wants to touch them anymore, assuming they know those ideas exist. In particular, niche genres have suffered the worst. There used to be cool games with lots of cool settings I can’t find anywhere else like Unisystem, Alternity, d20 Modern, Fuzion… nothing on itch.io comes close.

Ironically, all those forgotten games are novel now. They’re not oversaturated like medieval fantasy is. I can’t find anything else suitably close made in the last couple decades.

I love novelty. So I’m disappointed all these cool novelties from past decades have been discarded. It kills my interest in ttrpgs.