Building Steam(punk) Characters

[Razorwing]

One novel alternative that many comics have done to one extent or another is creating Steampunk versions of well known characters... usually set in the Victorian era, though there are times when they do a version where technology took a very different path and Steampunk style technology becomes the dominant form for a world.

In some settings, some inventors have taken clockwork and similar "steampunk" style technology and elevated it to a level equivalent or far superior to what is common in the setting. The villain Nemesis from City of Heroes was able to create clockwork androids of that settings greatest heroes that were so perfect that one couldn't tell the fake from the real thing (and even used these fakes to deliberately started an interdimensional war with another species, hoping that they and the real heroes would wipe each other out so that he could rule the world).

So I am curious as to how people would go about creating Steampunk-style characters... of various sorts (though more aimed at the technological heroes... though Imbued and even Eugenic Heroes could be "mad scientist" type creations in such instances). I am guessing that Electronics as we know it wouldn't be useful... though Electrical Engineering may still be present (though much cruder than usual... even Victor Frankenstein used lightning and electricity to bring his "monster" to life). For the purpose of this thought experiment... let us assume that "steampunk" technology has been developed to be roughly equivalent to modern technology in the setting (with characters able to take it to the cutting edge level as heroes tend to do with their tech).

How do you envision such thematics?

[Stone Gargoyle]

This has been addressed in prior threads. You might try doing a search for Steampunk.

[Razorwing]

I did... and they provided little about bringing Steampunk inspired characters into a modern setting with their unique technology being on par with what is common in a standard HU game.

Most threads I found merely mentioned the words "steam" and/or "punk" by someone in the thread without actually giving any information on creating such characters... let alone in a modern setting. Most often it merely was an off hand comment on how something seemed almost "steampunk". Hardly helpful.

The few threads that actually seemed promising were more about modifying the standard setting to have a more steampunk feel to it... mostly by downgrading "modern" technology and skills to what would be expected in a Victorian era world. This means that any character in those world that found themselves in a modern setting would have technology that was more or less inferior to what we see today... and someone from the standard setting would effectively be a Mega Hero because of how superior their technology was to what was available in the 1800s. Again... hardly helpful.

What I am interested in doing is working on an alternative... where Steampunk inspired technology kept pace with the advancements that make our modern technology amazing. Where we developed microchips to make things better, faster and smaller... the steampunk-like technology developed micro-clockworks that were smaller and more efficient than what came before. Where micro-fusion generators allow robotics as we know it in the game... perhaps the steampunk inspired technology took a more organic approach... finding ways to mimic how humans consume food to power their Automatons. Rather than adapt the setting to give a more Steampunk aesthetic... I want to come up with innovations that these sorts of characters would have made in the last 200 years to keep pace with our modern technology... while keeping the unique steampunk feel of these kinds of characters.

Now... if your search for such a topic on Steampunk Characters found a thread on just such a topic as this, please share... because I searched through 20+ pages of the mention of "steampunk" without much luck in this regard. Like I said... most merely mentioned the word... and the few that discussed it was more about creating an alternative timeline or setting... not creating characters in the standard setting with a steampunk feel and comparable technology to current characters (always it was more primitive, less effective and generally inferior in every way to modern characters... but appropriate for a game in the late 1800s).

[eliakon]

I did... and they provided little about bringing Steampunk inspired characters into a modern setting with their unique technology being on par with what is common in a standard HU game.

Most threads I found merely mentioned the words "steam" and/or "punk" by someone in the thread without actually giving any information on creating such characters... let alone in a modern setting. Most often it merely was an off hand comment on how something seemed almost "steampunk". Hardly helpful.

The few threads that actually seemed promising were more about modifying the standard setting to have a more steampunk feel to it... mostly by downgrading "modern" technology and skills to what would be expected in a Victorian era world. This means that any character in those world that found themselves in a modern setting would have technology that was more or less inferior to what we see today... and someone from the standard setting would effectively be a Mega Hero because of how superior their technology was to what was available in the 1800s. Again... hardly helpful.

What I am interested in doing is working on an alternative... where Steampunk inspired technology kept pace with the advancements that make our modern technology amazing. Where we developed microchips to make things better, faster and smaller... the steampunk-like technology developed micro-clockworks that were smaller and more efficient than what came before. Where micro-fusion generators allow robotics as we know it in the game... perhaps the steampunk inspired technology took a more organic approach... finding ways to mimic how humans consume food to power their Automatons. Rather than adapt the setting to give a more Steampunk aesthetic... I want to come up with innovations that these sorts of characters would have made in the last 200 years to keep pace with our modern technology... while keeping the unique steampunk feel of these kinds of characters.

Now... if your search for such a topic on Steampunk Characters found a thread on just such a topic as this, please share... because I searched through 20+ pages of the mention of "steampunk" without much luck in this regard. Like I said... most merely mentioned the word... and the few that discussed it was more about creating an alternative timeline or setting... not creating characters in the standard setting with a steampunk feel and comparable technology to current characters (always it was more primitive, less effective and generally inferior in every way to modern characters... but appropriate for a game in the late 1800s).

Generally?
In everything I have read/watched with steampunk in it the answer is "because"
The steampunk robots can see, because robots can see duh.
The steampunk mecha work because mecha are cool
This is basically the entire trope for Steampunk frankly. Steampunk tech doesn't work, that is the whole reason that it was never developed. So to make it work you end up needing to introduce a reason why it actually does work. The usual explanations are 'magic' 'stumbled upon superscience' and 'because'

If you want to make it work in a game, the usual way that I have found is to simply decide what the weight/size modifiers I want for the devices to be and run with it.
In otherwords you build your mecha the exact same way as usual. But it will look 'steampunk' and instead of a gasoline engine it has a coal plant, or an etheric capacitor instead of a super solar engine or what ever.

I do this in reverse for super high alien tech.

Steam punk mecha are the size of Mansions.
Human mecha are the size of houses
Super Alien mecha are the size of large cars...
...but they all have the same stats.

[Daniel Stoker]

Well.. um.. crap, what Eli just said.


Daniel Stoker

[Stone Gargoyle]

To write tech for steampunk, you generally wind up with inferior parts due to the limits of steam. Like others have said, if you want tech as advanced as the standard stuff in HU2, you basically just have to say it works without explaining why or make it magical.

[The Artist Formerly]

One novel alternative that many comics have done to one extent or another is creating Steampunk versions of well known characters... usually set in the Victorian era, though there are times when they do a version where technology took a very different path and Steampunk style technology becomes the dominant form for a world.

In some settings, some inventors have taken clockwork and similar "steampunk" style technology and elevated it to a level equivalent or far superior to what is common in the setting. The villain Nemesis from City of Heroes was able to create clockwork androids of that settings greatest heroes that were so perfect that one couldn't tell the fake from the real thing (and even used these fakes to deliberately started an interdimensional war with another species, hoping that they and the real heroes would wipe each other out so that he could rule the world).

So I am curious as to how people would go about creating Steampunk-style characters... of various sorts (though more aimed at the technological heroes... though Imbued and even Eugenic Heroes could be "mad scientist" type creations in such instances). I am guessing that Electronics as we know it wouldn't be useful... though Electrical Engineering may still be present (though much cruder than usual... even Victor Frankenstein used lightning and electricity to bring his "monster" to life). For the purpose of this thought experiment... let us assume that "steampunk" technology has been developed to be roughly equivalent to modern technology in the setting (with characters able to take it to the cutting edge level as heroes tend to do with their tech).

How do you envision such thematics?

Steampunk tech needs some handwavium to power it. Some chemical discovery or magic space rock to that allows for this hardware to work. You don't need to explain it, just that it exists.

For example... Orichalcum, mythic metal of ancient Atlantis. A meteoric metal that's been sprinkled all over the earth. When exposed to X +/- Y, you gain an exponential energy return. For millennia scientists, alchemists, psuedo-magicians and lucky charlatans have been using found bits of this metal to advance their research and efforts without ever really grasping what they had. Then in the year 18xx, famed scientist "Edison/Tesla/time traveling Da Vinci or whatever figured out to use the metal to create energy. Another scientist-business person invents a way to make super steel, by running water over Orichalcum, then pouring the water on to molten steel, you get steel that weighs the same but has (#)Xs the strength. Alexander and Ghensis Khan both drove their armies forward to acquire more of it, seeking to enhance their already considerable superhuman powers with it. Ptolemy used it in the construction of his city, with a light house that could burn enemy fleets by focusing it's beam on them and centuries later the Romans would burn the Library to get their hands on Alexander's stock pile. A large chunk of it sat at the heart of the Colossus of Rhodes, powering the city's Iron Giant defender. David used such a stone to slay Goliath, the same stone that made Solomon a genius and a madman, a fragment of the larger stone that Moses stole from Ra-Moses the great when the Jewish burned there way out of Egypt. Great wars have and will be fought over the large Orichalcum finds and stockpiles left in the world.

Within the game setting you take your mythic substance and use it to drive the story, it fills in the blanks. A clock work that works as well and efficiently as the transistor would be impossible to build, but if you had a handwavium powered Edison-Electric Company shrink ray, tiny men could build them and you could gain a neat adventure arc by having to shrink down the PCs for some sort of tiny mission. Power armor, giant robots, energy weapons, and even fantastic flight are all available to this story style.

In terms of thematics Lots of brass and bronze colors, gears aplenty with unsettling machines gasping for air and belching out soot and steam from large pipes. Everyone dresses in long dark cloathing with splashes of bright colors here and there. Thick leather boots and gloves, with weird looking glasses, often with multiple lenses on arms that swing down over the wearer's face. Crazy looking antennas that allow homes and businesses to draw electricity directly from the air, transmitted from a distant power station with towers and massive hot air balloons being used to relay the power through mid-air. Everything has a thin layer of soot or oily grease smeared across it.