What game do you think captures best the overall feel and style inherent to steampunk?
I know that “feel and style” can be a bit subjective, and I am open to most interpretations, but I mostly mean the generic/cliché feel of airships, giant steam engines powering giant clockwork automatons and bizarre inventions. They don’t need to be strictly tied to a “realistic” setting, and so some more gaslight fantasy games could fall in this category.
Some Steampunk games I know would be:
- Space 1889 (more toned down steampunk, alternate history, but ticks most of the boxes. Also the one I have the most experience with)
- Airship Pirates (Read it, but never played it)
- Castle Falkenstein (Read it, does have magic and Steampunk, unusual card mechanics, never played it)
- Tephra (fantasy and steampunk, I don’t know much about it) - Victoriana (steam fantasy, like above: don’t know much)
- Thyria (quite old and only in German, again steam fantasy, played it once and it was fun)
- Victoriana (steam fantasy)
Those are the ones I run/played/found that would fit the bill. Honorable mentions could be Deadlands or Cthulhu by gaslight, which may count if you are willing to stretch the term steampunk a bit (in case of Cthulhu you would need to stretch it big bit, but nevertheless)
Alright. Now that I have rambled on for way too long: What do you think is the best one, included in my list or not, steampunk game? Not just by setting, but also by rules and how flawless they match with their specific flavor of steampunk.
Preferably games that aren’t too hard on the DM work-wise, but that’s just a bonus.
I’m curious, do you have any specific examples of rules that specifically work well in a steampunk setting? I always struggle to figure out what people are talking about when they say stuff like that.
I, of course not speaking for everyone who ever used that phrase, mean mostly that the rules facilitate with their mechanics the kind of things you typically would want to do in that kind of setting. So a good airship combat system or flexible Rules to build machines are important to have if you want to make this specific activity rewarding for the players to engage with (This is the advantage of more focused rpgs, as generics tend to have less rulings for very specific things or just many, many rulings and get a bit bloated). So basically has at the right amount of (good and fun) rules, that a game you play more or less naturally evolves into the story of said genre.
A bit of flavouring also helps, just to get the mechanics out of the abstract into the actual game played (for example calling the Savage World Bennies something fitting to the setting).
I am rambling again, so here is a quick example of what I mean (for Deadlands for Savage Worlds, not directly steampunk, but I like the idea and it is fresh on my mind): To cast a stronger Spell than usual, a player (character) can “Dealing with the devil”. It is resolved not by a simple dice roll, but by playing a short game of cards, to determine the success. This is a mechanic that to me feels very fantasy/horror-western in mechanics and flavour. (Of course those extreme mechanics should be handled carefully, too many different ones would be confusing )
I hope I am making sense. If not, feel free to ask for clarification.