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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Carnifex" data-source="post: 1406473" data-attributes="member: 227">Von Ether - I think you're getting slightly confused between steam tech and steampunk. The two are different, though of course usualyl heavily connected to one another.Steampunk is not just about steam tech. For example - the Iron Kingdoms is *not* steampunk, and if you disagree with me on that, talk to the people who are making it. They have said several times before that the steampunk tag is not really applicable to the IK, hence why they like to call it 'Full Metal Fantasy'.Steampunk usually relies on one important facet of steam tech - the process of industrialisation - as its central foundation. Like cyberpunk, steampunk is in part defined by the technology level of the setting (steam or cyber, respectively) but it is also, importantly, about society and the changes affected on it by technology. Social pressure, class struggle, oppression, smog-ridden cities full of downtrodden workers wasting their lives away labouring amidst mighty industrial structures for the profit of others - these are as much what makes steampunk steampunk as the steam technology itself. A blimp or demolitions team in a setting doesn't make it steampunk, though enough of such things and it might well be worth classifying as a steamtech setting (a direction Warcraft seems to be increasingly heading in).Now extremely advanced steam tech also plays a role in many steampunk settings and texts, and also a steampunk setting can provide quite different styles of campaign out of dystopian cities and suchlike, in the manner of pulp novels with wild adventure as the boundaries of civilisation are pushed back by the development of technology. But don't mistake just steam tech as being the same as steampunk.</blockquote>

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