D&D General D&D is now Steampunk (poll)

[Stormonu]

Since D&D went officially multiverse, it's anything and any time you want it to be.

It's only a matter of time before they add Metroville, a land where current technology exists.

Too late by years

 

[I'm A Banana]

This is a more cogent argument than that it’s no longer medieval fantasy because there are handlebar mustaches. That said, it’s not like the aesthetics not being the same as they were in 1975 is a sudden and unexpected turn of events. The aesthetics of D&D have never been consistent, because it’s a game of imagination - its aesthetics are and have always been whatever you imagine them to be. Moreover, there hasn’t been a single cohesive art style in the books for a long, long time. Each edition has had different art direction, and different artists creating works under that different direction. Now, that’s not to say the opinion anyone who liked all of the various styles and artworks that have appeared in D&D until now is invalid. But it shouldn’t come as a big surprise. It’s also only a matter of time before the style changes again. Change is, after all, the only constant.

I am quick to bust out the Abe Simpson quote. Change frequently surprises people, even though it's inevitable.

Every time one of my millennial parent friends gripes about Skibidi Toilet or Labubus, it's all just "We're 40 years old, of course this all seems dumb to us, embrace your cringe you old fool."

Maybe easy for me to say, I wasn't ever really "With it."

It's OK if one's preferred aesthetic for D&D is a little less guns and plate mail and a little more bohemian ear-spoon and such. But let's not fool ourselves into imagining that any one is more "authentic" in some way. I think a sort of nostalgia for a bygone era is important for the Fantasy genre, but nostalgia is famously not about the true nature of the past. It's feelings over facts, which is why it's FANTASY. Vibes trump reality. That's kind of the point.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Change frequently surprises people, even though it's inevitable.

Nothing has really changed here though. D&D was never what the OP thought.

Lets just reference another thread elsewhere on this forum: White Dwarf Reflections #27

• The Dungeon at the End of the Universe (Marcus Rowland): This rather mixed bag finishes off Marcus Rowland’s series of AD&D in space articles. He looks at melee in space, ship to ship combat, new space equipment and what spells might be useful in such a campaign.

White Dwarf, 1981. And that's not to mention the AD&D monsters based on John Carter, Star Trek and Doctor Who.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

One of the interesting things about how D&D grew was that it grew out of wargames, where historical accuracy matters quite a bit more.

One has to question just how accurate a depiction of history those 60s/70s wargames were though.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Nothing has really changed here though. D&D was never what the OP thought.

The aesthetic did change, and that's what I was talking about.

The OP might be mistaken about the historical accuracy of D&D, but that mistake doesn't invalidate the perception of change they're talking about. It's not historical accuracy, but it's not nothing, either. D&D today is OK with guns and airships and D&D in its earliest editions mentioned and evoked real world history sometimes, and that is a difference that I can understand someone feeling and observing, but not knowing exactly how to express that beyond appealing to historical accuracy.

Y'know, still valid to not like guns in your D&D, even if "historical accuracy" is probably not actually why you don't like guns in your D&D.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The aesthetic did change, and that's what I was talking about.

The aesthetic changes continually, as you would expect for something 40 years old. But my point is it was never "medieval", and the original aesthetic certainly wasn't.

 

[Zardnaar]

More than a few anachronisms.

Compared to later D&D. Also had dark ages/sword and sorcery vibes.

2E went more 17th century and 5E went 17th century Renaissance Faire.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

My problem with the question is a single word.

"Default".

The default game is not steampunk, for a variety of reasons. It's not even Victoriana, which would be (in a sense) "steampunk" with less steam and no punk.

But I do think that D&D is, shall we say, sprawling out from where it started. It's always been in this incredibly weird schizotech bubble, where plate mail (which is about 50 years newer than handheld guns, and at least a century newer than cannons) coexists alongside courtly love (a 12th century thing, meaning, about 300 years before plate armor) and the Divine Right of Kings (which did not take the form it takes in D&D-land until the late 1500s/early 1600s at the earliest) and just...all sorts of silly things.

The result of this sprawling out is that D&D is embracing both the older parts of its timeline and the younger. We are not seeing steampunk D&D, but rather what one might call "sailpunk" D&D, just...without the sails, which I know sounds silly but bear with me.

The late Renaissance and Early Modern Period blend together, and the Age of Discovery aka the Age of Sail is pretty much the period of European history (with things just about to transition to true world history, where developments around the globe start affecting one another) which correspond to the latest late part of the Renaissance and the earliest early part of the Early Modern Period. Discovering "new" lands (often to conquer them...), but still having kings in palaces and castles. The divine right of kings. Plate armor. Some, limited, attention to gunpowder. Far-flung outposts. Dredging up ancient secrets (Egypt's tombs were becoming a Big Deal, and would become an even bigger deal a century later). The very, very first flowerings of what we might call true "science", with advanced, relatively systematized mathematics. Telescopes and clocks and all sorts of things like that.

Steam power doesn't really seem to be anywhere in the picture. Warforged aren't steampunk, as much as I'd like them to be--they're golems, animated through wooden connecting tissue, not boilers and gearboxes. They can only really be called "magicpunk", because it's...the magical equivalent of the industrial revolution.

But these things are much closer to "steampunk" than default D&D has ever been.

Further, D&D is also, at least IMO, reaching even further back. Considering times when Rome was not a distant, glorious memory, but something that still seemed like it might be alive, whether as the Rhomaioi (what we call the Byzantines), or as generals hoping to retake Roma itself and re-prolcaim the Western (or even complete!) Roman Empire. Times when technology was truly much lower even than it is in D&D as it is typically played, where the most advanced machines are waterwheels and bellows.

D&D's core is finally expanding outward in both directions from its bizarre "somehow both medieval and renaissance" schizotech nook, and filling in spaces just adjacent to them. As a result, steampunk is no longer far away. Steampunk is now truly D&D-adjacent.

But it isn't "default". I don't really expect it to ever become default.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

The aesthetic changes continually, as you would expect for something 40 years old. But my point is it was never "medieval", and the original aesthetic certainly wasn't.

What I'd say is, it was part of the completely BS pop-history hodgepodge that people mistakenly think is "Medieval".

It has ladies in 12th century fashion living in 9th century castles swooning over 16th century plate-armored knights while lords practicing 17th century political philosophy fight wars using 7th century military tactics to fight over resources that wouldn't be known to be actually valuable until the 19th century (like platinum) using communications and travel ability that rivals 20th century infrastructure.

It's literally not possible to pin the entire thing down to a singular period of human history because it is actively taste-testing just about every century that came after the fall of Rome (which, whatever your beliefs about it, "Rome" as a Europe-spanning empire was gone by the 6th century.) But this hodgepodge, as ridiculous as it is, is what a lot of people think when they imagine "Medieval Europe": something that somehow combines the Wars of the Roses, plate armor, rapiers, Charlemagne, courtly love, and knights errant all into one big blob, no matter how hilariously wrong that is in terms of the actual history of Europe.

But what this means is, D&D has always been a highly selective take on what is "medieval" and what isn't. Every edition has chosen that take differently in one way or another. To claim a betrayal of that spirit only now, when the seed was planted literally before D&D was even a twinkle in Arneson-and-Gygax's eyes, is either disingenuous, or a demonstration of self-deception.

 

[Clint_L]

A lot of steampunk aesthetic has made its way to D&D, though it is often reflavoured as magic (e.g. artificers). It's not exactly steampunk but it's not exactly Renaissance, and sure as heck isn't medieval anymore, to the extent it ever was.