How much technologywould you allow in a non-steampunk setting?

[drothgery]

I'm running a PBP here with late-1800s tech in my Victorian Eberron game (see my signature for link), and I'd say the rebuilt post-Cataclysm Khorvaire I've constructed is rather less 'steampunk' than standard Eberron, despite widespread firearms, actual railroads, and a telegraph line from Flamekeep to Sharn.

 

[Anti-Sean]

I banned all but the most simple machines from my last campaign, but it felt like I was just reinventing the wheel.

 

[drothgery]

I banned all but the most simple machines from my last campaign, but it felt like I was just reinventing the wheel.

Groan.

 

[Felix]

I'd put in the printing press and large-scale machinery.

As a low-tech printing press needs only moveable type and ink, I think it would be fairly easy to include one. An innovation and oddity in a campaign of mine, its use wouldn't be widespread since most folks are illiterate.

Since I love me some trebuchets, Roman aqueducts, and the idea of Archimedes' ship-grabbing-and-throwing weapons, I'm ok with huge feats of engineering.

Unless by "fantasy" you mean tired Tolkienesque tropes that were the way they were for narrative and ideological reasons in the Lord of the Rings and have been unblinkingly aped by unimaginative fantasists since.

Contempt much?