Steampunk Board Game - Why So Serious?

This was one aspect of my final Steampunk project that I was looking forward to the most - and it ended up being the one that surprised me the most and would in turn give me the most to write about. So let me tell you what I've learned, first by setting the scene for you.

My Steampunk presentation was on the 23rd of March, and on Saturday the 28th a friend and I decided to take a little road trip into Toronto in order to try out a Steampunk-themed board game. For the past year or so I've embraced playing and collecting tabletop games as a hobby, and it's a hobby that has grown in popularity over the past few years. Online web series such as Wil Wheaton's Tabletop have helped to popularize board games, and with the growing trend businesses surrounding the enjoyment of board games have popped up all over the place. The venue my friend and I chose was Snakes and Lattes.

I'd done a quick internet search a few days before we were due to head into Toronto, I saw that Snakes and Lattes had 2 different Steampunk games in their collection (or at least had two games with "steam" in the title). One of them that we decided to attempt playing was titled Planet Steam, and it was the only one available to play when we happened to get there. The game was delivered to us by one of the Game Masters from the upstairs archives, in a pretty massive game box. We began pulling out the game which was made up of a folded game board and so many little pieces that they were all kept in a plastic container provided by SAL staff. A German-made game, the English instructional booklet had been lost somewhere over the years, but an English printout had been added to the box.

It was complicated. It was incomprehensible. It involved so many small parts that had to actually be glued together - the amount of time and energy it would have taken to play this game was pretty ridiculous, and obviously this made me pretty sad. This game wasn't accessible to somebody that might want to walk in from right off the street, pick it up and try a taste of what the Steampunk world, and the Steampunk fandom,

So we played Takenoko instead!

What's the moral of this story? Well, one thing I learned is that any board game with a panda bear on the game box is going to be a game that is easy to play. But aside from that, this experience actually taught me something valuable about Steampunk as a fandom. Parts of it really and truly are inaccessible for somebody on the ground floor, such as myself. An outsider might think they need to know how to sew or weld or at least need to have a whole whack of money to be able to drop on a costume in order to be considered a member of the Steampunk fandom

From the outside, the Steampunk fandom can be pretty intimidating. That is why I have chosen an approachable direction with which to examine Steampunk as a fandom in the first place. And there really are fun and easy ways to enjoy Steampunk, and you shouldn't be trying to scare yourself with worrying too much about being accepted. I've been leading up to discussing what is and what isn't Steampunk in my last couple of posts, but I will delve into some of the rules I have recognized in my next post.

I will wrap up this post by telling you that there are some fun and totally easy and accessible Steampunk-themed games that exist out there, including Steam Park pictured above, which contains an Easy list of rules for beginner players and an Advanced list of rules for players looking for more of a challenge. I definitely want to try playing this game as soon as I get the chance.