I've picked up a copy of "The Kerebos Club" for Wild Talents. I think it's great, but the problem is that it seems to focus on being progressive as opposed to going "The Empire is awesome".
If anyone's run steampunk games before, I'm curious about how you'd go about having a campaign like the Flashman novels i.e. the players are privileged dickheads and Great White Hunters tasked with wrestling the natives to their knees, for Queen and Country.
Like, I want the PCs to have a chance to fight in (say) the Boxer Rebellion with MAGIC MARTIAL ARTISTS and the Indian Mutiny with SAVAGE NO-GOOD PANDY MUTINEERS.
Kind of like RRR, but the PCs are larger-than-life pulp heroes.

I would do it by running a campaign like the Flashman novels i.e. the players are privileged dickheads and Great White Hunters tasked with wrestling the natives to their knees, for Queen and Country.
I would do it by giving the PCs to have a chance to fight in (say) the Boxer Rebellion with MAGIC MARTIAL ARTISTS and the Indian Mutiny with SAVAGE NO-GOOD PANDY MUTINEERS.
You already know what you want so just do it, stop wasting time virtue-signalling your politics on an anonymous image board and start putting together that campaign you want to run with the ideas that you already have, if you plan on actually running that campaign.

>>95961682
Not that guy, but it's actually quite an interesting idea.
I'd suggest reading 'From Hell' by Alan Moore or Zulu for a grittier take, OP.

>>95961635 (OP)
>"The Empire is awesome"
I can get behind this; you could have your PCs doing their own 55 days in Peking where they fighting against magical marital artists who stop being immune to bullets if they gaze upon a woman. Aside from just fighting, you could also have the whole "legation" part play a role, dealing w/t different factions that don't like each other but they need to get to work together lest the celestials outside turn everyone to pincushions.

>>95962814
>go to game with punk in the genre
>it's antiestablishment
>complain
Are you some kind of stupid?

>>95962822
But he said it was called "The Kerebos Club".

>>95962822
>it's antiestablishment
>not making the game about taking down a corrupt Celestial Empire that has been around for 4,000 years
>not making the game about striking back against the collusion between functionaries, corruption by local elites & officials, & tax evasion by wealthy landowners
>Not wanting your PCs to get into trading in guns & drugs while dodging the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists
>Not wanting your PCs to fuck up the Empress Dowager demanding the barbarian to be expelled

I don't know about you, Chowmein, but sounds pretty anti-establishment to me

>>95961635 (OP)
So just run that game, I doubt the mechanics prevent it. Did you want a reading list or some adventures to cannibalize or what? Be clearer for us.

>>95962822
You know from a certain angle you raise a good point, but in none of the admittedly pretty limited selection of steampunk media I've consumed or the people I've talked to about the genre did it seem like it was at all anti establishment.

>>95962822
punk is often pro establishment

>>95963008
You'd think that an era so horrendous for an average person to live in, destroying communities and traditional livelihoods and replacing them with urban sqalor and dangerous factory labor, could inspire a bit more nuance in storytelling than just "dude brass cogs and steam, lmao" with the occasional half-assed "...and imperialism bad too, I guess?"

>>95961635 (OP)
As the others say, you already have an idea of how you want to run your game, regardless of what kind of point you're trying to make, so just go run it. Pick a system of your choice, even a generic system like Genesys, find some players, and just do it.

>>95963523
There's a fine line between steampunk and cogfop.

>>95962894
They don't want to buy your opium, bro.

>>95961635 (OP)
>no pubes
Gay

>>95964876
>There's a fine line between steampunk and cogfop.
There's no line at all because neither are real genres, as there are no significant works to define them.

>>95965857
Steampunk is the catch-all name for retrofuturist science fiction specifically themed around and inspired by the period when steam power was relevant, i.e. the 19th century, as well as its aesthetic. As for defining significant works, "The Difference Engine" is commonly cited as one of the foundational works of the genre.

Cogfop is the most surface-level interpretation of the steampunk aesthetic. It's typically characterized by Victorian fashion haphazardly slathered in seemingly nonsensical cogs and gears.

>>95962814
>marital artists who stop being immune to bullets if they gaze upon a woman
not sure if boomer marriage joke or serious

>>95964923
It is war, then.

>>95966415
It was serious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxer_movement
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lanterns_(Boxer_Uprising)
>Unlike the Taiping rebels but like many Chinese folk sects such as the White Lotus Sect, Boxer ideology forbade contact with women. Boxer discipline in its strictest form did not allow sexual contact with or even looking at a woman for fear that the female's polluting yin would destroy the invulnerability ritual.

There are no good 19th century roleplaying systems. Everything is D&D slop or mudcore slop. Even GURPS fails to understand the point. But never exactly on that point in which technology isn't too old but social systems aren't too modern either. The closest I can think of was Disco Elysium. Currently I'm in the process of creating my own 19th century setting in which all the slop above "fighting le hecking rebellion" is looked down upon. Just like in real life, rebels and anarchist are terrorist with brainrot from propaganda which actions often take down innocent people instead of the "tyranny" they're fighting against.

>>95966461
>whoosh

>>95964923
What do you think the guns are for?

>>95969094
One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. You're going to have to make a convincing case when you say "in my world, the rebels are objectively wrong, and the cause they're fighting for is a complete lie."

>>95961635 (OP)
All women should look like this

>>95974467
Agreed.
Large breasts, Wide hips, Thick Thighs, Small Waist, big shapely ass.
Any female without these genes should be culled from the human race.

>>95962822
Only cyberpunk is intended to actually be punk. Steampunk as a term was coined in part to poke gentle fun at cyberpunk; it's under no obligation to be punk itself, and it usually isn't.

>>95984581
Cyberpunk isn't anti-establishment either. They're punks as in low-life scum, not a political movement.