A misunderstood moment in the world

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/...ty-boots-steampunks/

Steampunkers turned out from a mall.

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My comment on facebook:

Having worked in the security industry for several years: a) malls are private property. stores can refuse customers. b) if you read the article they reported quite a few prior whacko groups. c) most guards won't know about steampunk values. d) guards won't risk their jobs over not carrying out a policy. Everything appears to have been handled peacefully. The SCA folks sometimes do "shock the mundanes" showing up in costume, sometimes with knives or longer showing. It wouldn't be too much a surprise if some store did turn us away though it is extremely rare. Still... knowing steampunk I do consider it unfortunate. Will be crossposting to a steampunk discussion group I co-host.
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:12, Wed 12 Feb 2014.

I understand where the mall staff is coming from, but by not engaging in discussion, they come off as apples.  A simple, "I'm sorry for the misunderstanding.  If in the future you would contact (insert drone here), we can coordinate and plan accordingly to accommodate your group.  Thank you, (Overpaid boss here)"

I think that would have done well.

Once it escalated to the police low-wage guard is going to be way over their head.

The mall management set the policy. The guards are carrying it out.

Hopefully the mall will read it and rethink. Some groups are buying groups.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:16, Thu 13 Feb 2014.

Even if they don't buy retail merch, what group of nerds will pass on Cinnabon, Sabaros, and the rest of the food court?  There was money to be spent.  There always is with our crowds.

Like I said, I understand the guards, police, and even entry level managers.

https://www.facebook.com/group...33/10152260267064334

If I've done the link right that is a steampunk facebook group you may wish to join.

Reminder to all we work on a question and answer format.

So without questions we aren't likely to say much. :-P

So... what about Victorian and Steampunk catches your mind?

The sense of exploration and the unknown that still existed at the time, the confidence and even arrogance that can add a great twist to playing characters and the fact that society is on the cusp of the great changes that will bring about the modern world.

As far as steam punk the ornate and even mad science of the technology is just cool.  It allows you to do 'fantasy' without going to 'magic'.

True. and its not like Star Trek where there is so much tech it may as well be magic

Star Trek magic:
- people appearing out of thin air, transporter
- goods appearing out of thin air, replicators
- illusion magic, holodecks and surgery disguises to make human sneak around XXX race

Steampunk also protrays at least some "clunky" as a downside. Yes limbs can be replaced and might even be faster. But they look obvious, clothing may have to be cut to show them.

One thing I liked about the era was the exploration and colonization. Countries, well world powers, were competing in far off places. The locals were debating, involved, warrring, assisting one or the other powers. Often the world power had only a tiny bit of its resources here. A gunboat up the Congo for instance is nothing compared to the Home Fleet. In these stories the individual actions of PCs make a huge difference to the local conditions in which they live.

You can certainly do an Africa Queen or Sand Pebbles game quite easily in Steampunk.

Hey.

One of the things I like about the genre/era is that science of the times was often only a step away from reality. Take Babbage's analytical engine... the only reason it didn't get built is some stuffed-shirts decided not to fund it. In a Steampunk game, that funding actually happened.


I'm currently working on a world atlas for my Space: 1889 campaign. While the Mars aspect of the game is interesting, the extent they went on about it just never grabbed my imagination. What kind of annoyed me was that there was so much of the Earth to explore and adventure in, but all they managed to do was Conklin's Atlas of Mars.

There were too many real world places that existed that have mostly been forgotten.


Anyway, I started out by thinking of Steampunk as being set in Victoriana, because that was the Age of Steam. I later discovered that it could just as easily be applied to a fantasy setting. When you have elves and dwarves and trolls and magic, though, the steam aspect just seems like overkill.

As a friend pointed out, too, the 'punk' part sort of implied a bit of a dystopian society. Since I never had any interest in the punk society, I never actually thought of Steampunk that way. So, can there be Steampunk without the 'punk'? Has anyone come up with a suitable name for that kind of game?

Kaja Foglio refers to the Girl Genius stories as 'gaslamp fantasy'.

My own game I run here on RPoL I titled 'Gas Lamps and Steam' so I'm not too far off. It doesn't quite seem to evoke the Age of Steam or the science fiction aspects.

On my part, I prefer the science fiction version, rather than the fantasy version. Even though I read all the fantasy books of the late Sixties and early Seventies, I still prefer my steam without magic.

A friend and I are currently working on 'psionics' for Space: 1889 in the form of mysticism. Afterall, it is also the age of the charlatans, mediums, fakirs and mystics of the 'East'.

I don't rule out 'magic' entirely, since it was commonplace, particularly in Europe and the Balkans especially, to find vampire-hunting kits for sale at even reputable stores. Wizards and spells and elves just don't seem to fit right for me, but witches, witchdoctors, shamans and voodoo are still in the running.

Most steampunk doesn't have a punk element. It's just a take on the cyberpunk label. I'd argue that you could easily have 'punk' elements, given the social upheavals caused by the industrial revolution (Luddites, Anarchists, International Workers of the World, Propaganda of the Deed), and class struggle is at the core of what 'punk' is.

Good point. While that's typical of the Victorian era, I tend to downplay that aspect. Yet that was major motivation for the actions of the British Empire and all those fame-and-glory seeking adventurers.

I've played in a very long running fantasy game that had a strong steampunk feel.  We had magic and fantasy along with steam engines and airships.  It was a very neat meld and worked very nicely.  It helped having a phenomenal GM.

I don't see the class warfare as too much of a big deal in Steampunk.  It just doesn't suit the genre although it would be very easy to add in.

Yea, Gaslamp fantasy is a good way to characterize the Girl Genius stuff.  The 'punk' really doesn't belong.

I don't see how you could emulate the Victorian era without massive wealth disparity and rampant colonialism, though it was a very "upper class" sort of thing to pretend that children working in coal mines and exploiting indigenous peoples was a perfectly fine thing to do.

Glad to see you've all kept busy :)

Certainly those issues are very real in the real Victorian era and would be rampant in a steampunk setting as well.  My comment was that most games or gaming systems I've seen tend to gloss over or even ignore things like that.  Certainly one could play anarchists or proto-Marxists in a struggle against the disparities of wealth or a particularly liberal and open minded type opposing exploitative colonialism.  There would be room for such and it would make for a grittier game.

There is a tendency in any story or game to use current values as "superior" to those of the time. It does allow a mechanism for self-examination of culture.

At the time the world wasn't connected by the internet, cell phones or TV news networks. Most tended to think far more locally than joe-average of today.

The days of Empire for those involved was at the time bringing perceived improvement to others. In trade those bartering thought they were getting something good.

We of the modern age in Western cultures dont have the same background in the class struggles. Being Canadian Ive seen it commented on a few documentaries for WW1 that CDN forces were more communal then the more class society UK.

The other Empire countries Germany, France, Russia and Japan were doing likewise. Japan at this time was an "interesting time" as it went through a huge technological shift trying to balance the social upheavals.

Generally as far as I know the places for expansion were China (through trade control) and Africa (empire vs empire land control). Space 1889 gives Mars as a place where the history isnt written so unfolds by the game play.

This is one of the factors that lead directly into WWI; Germany had arrived late to the empire building game, and Africa had been almost entirely carved up (Mostly by France and England). If they wanted to expand, they would have to take it from the other great powers.

China I just did a lot of research on for my next book, Ghosts of Shaolin. In the 19th century the ruling dynasty was the Qing, Manchu invaders ruling over the native Han Chinese, and at the end of the century the true power was the Empress Dowager Cixi, who had full control over her son.

So for a time (until Victoria's death), the ruler of the British empire and the ruler of China were powerful women.

China's problem was that the Qing dynasty was ever looking backwards at the past, trying to relive past glories, and trying to ignore Europe. They were not expansionist; nothing outside China mattered. This left them unprepared. And for their part, the Europeans refused to follow Chinese customs, were frustrated by the many layers and traditions of the Chinese bureaucracy, and were generally unwilling to play nice.

And China had its internal problems to deal with. The secret societies that existed to overthrow the Qing dynasty and bring back the Ming. Many of the secret society members had studied in European universities, and desperately wanted to modernize China, which Cixi generally opposed.

All this lead to the Boxer rebellion, when members of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists lay siege to Beijing and murdered a bunch of Christians, forcing Cixi and the emperor to flee the city. The English chased them out, though, because kung fu will not actually save you from guns.

In 1912 a secret society warehouse containing guns exploded, and a bunch of secret society cells in the military decided to activate before the Qing investigation revealed them. This set off a massive revolution, leading to the overthrow of the Empire and the establishment of a Chinese Republic. Not the People's Republic of China, this was a democracy. Only lasted a few years, until the President, an old general who had defected to the rebellion because the Qing had snubbed him, tried to declare himself a new Emperor. China collapsed into a collection of warring warlord-states.

And the secret societies? Without the Qing as an enemy, they lost their focus. They already had ties to the criminal world, and eventually turned into what the Hong Kong police had labelled the Triads.

In reply to Brygun (msg # 32):

I think you would find that most PC's would tend to think they would be bringing culture and progress to the benighted natives along with a flavor among many to get rich via trade.  One would have to be very careful to not transpose current values and perspective on steampunk era characters.

I'm reading 'The Fortunes of Africa; a 5,000 history of wealth, greed and endeavor'.  It (to me) does a good job of providing an overview of the interactions of Africans with themselves and outsiders, especially the colonial scramble in the 1880's.  It is amazing to think of just how unknown much of Africa was to Europeans until very recently.

Oh, there were social crusaders disgusted by the state of things in the 19th century. Quite a few, really.

There was the temperance movement, the suffragettes, the anti-slavery movements and then plenty of social and charitable organizations as well as certainly a few anti-colonial groups.  I'm not the strongest on Victorian political and social organizations...

Social outrage at slavery/exploitative politics isn't new, just more publicizedand globally communicated in the modern era. Were this not the case, I doubt we'd have moved beyond that phase even a little.  Mind that we're only la couple of decades into global communication via the internet and only  about a century and a half since the patent of the telephone and less than that since the proper international proliferation of the technology.  Even if you stretch to include the telegraph, rapid distance communication is comparatively new to humanity and the 1880s were a half-decade after the initial parent by Graham-Bell.

Telecomm changes stuff, but it also reveals things by uniting people with a common purpose.

A few new members so a reminder we work on a saved question and answer format. Ask questions, get answers, and they are saved here for all Steampunk & Victorian fans to search through.

Suggested websites, info dumps, links and so on are welcome too.