From what I've seen, just about anything and everything has been labeled steampunk. So, all it means is, "stuff people that claim they like steampunk might enjoy."

Hey, that movie had a train in it. Steampunk!

That fantasy novel? The setting had guns. Steampunk!

Was it set in the 19th century? The 16th, 17th, 18th or even 20th? Steampunk!

I have no idea what that just was but I liked it. Steampunk!

Behold the steampunk singularity:
 

To clarify my comparison to Cheeseburger, Hamburger once meant (and in Germany still means) someone or something from a place called Hamburg.  There is no town of Cheeseburg, and Cheeseburger therefore does not mean what its etymology suggests it should mean.  Words grow beyond their etymologies, sometimes in ten years or less.  

Steampunk is not now and never was by itself a sufficient description of anything, but it can be used as part of a description of Space:1889, or Metropolis, or Howl's Moving Castle, in a way that quickly helps people unfamiliar with the thing being descrbed  (e.g. ask for a Steampunk Singularity, get a Difference Engine).  That's enough to make it a useful word.

Quote from: RPGPundit;466287"SteamChap".

Now that sounds like a genre.

Quote from: Ladybird;466404Now that sounds like a genre.

Damn right.. And you could put "chap" into any number of settings: Fantasychap, cyberchap, dungeonchap, etc.

The point is you wouldn't just say "well, traveller is basically spacechap", because it ISN'T, not unless the -chap part is made to mean something.

Shadowrun is not just a sci-fi setting with cybernetics; its cyberPUNK, because of the various social elements of the setting's default genre.  You don't get to say "Forgotten Realm is fantasypunk".  You could, perhaps, suggest that WFRP is "fantasypunk" on account of the grimy gritty ultraviolent social aspect of that setting.

So I take serious issue with the idea that any victorian setting, or even any victorian setting with some fancy victorian tech, is automatically steamPUNK. Space:1889 is "steam", but its default genre conventions aren't even a little bit "punk".

RPGPundit

I submit that that WFRP can be called Fantasy Punk simply on the basis of Trollslayer fashion.  Is that shallow?  Sure.  Are there enough people to bend the English language into something with more words for fashion styles than social systems and genre conventions combined?  All signs point to yes.

Quote from: Esgaldil;466443I submit that that WFRP can be called Fantasy Punk simply on the basis of Trollslayer fashion.  Is that shallow?  Sure.  Are there enough people to bend the English language into something with more words for fashion styles than social systems and genre conventions combined?  All signs point to yes.

There are more and better reasons why you could call WFRP Fantasypunk; but sure, cover art works.

You won't find that, even in the art, in Space:1889, however.

RPGPundit

May it please the court:

http://www.steampunktribune.com/2007/07/steampunk-culture-space-1889.html

http://mateengreenway.com/steampunk/Space1889timeline.htm

http://space1889.blogspot.com/2011/03/welcome.html

http://sfgoth.tribe.net/thread/9122f3c1-2bfd-4ff0-82a0-9a5ee3676334

http://www.somethingawful.com/d/dungeons-and-dragons/space-steampunk-mars.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Steampunk_games

Even if all of these sources are wrong, if everyone is making the same mistake the same way, the mistake becomes the new correct.  In this case, I submit that Space: 1889 is part of the cultural consensus defining steampunk.

As to what it might look like, I might see it looking a bit like this:

Montgomery, the Engrammic Engine is built far beneath an old manor house near New Brunswick, Canada (Canada's big enough, and has access to the rest of the area I'll need later).It soon takes over its own construction. At first it's used to analyze chemical data in order to find hotter burning fuels. Eventually it makes an intutive leap and discovers fusion. Next it begins building successive prototypes of fusion engines, until it designs and builds one small enough to fit on a vehicle the size of a locomotive. The fusion will drive the steam engines and automatons that will soon take over the world.

It then begins spreading out, having "children" which quickly surpass its own creativity and intellect, and we cross the event horizon.

Every one of those sources is wrong, and hipsters use the suffix -punk wrongly.

RPGPundit