# Mana Punk Game Guide:  Medieval Shadowrun with a Steam Punk Twist?



## Clyde Lee Graham (May 14, 2014)

Sorry, no. '-punk' has lost all of its effective charm... it's overused so much that the term is damn near meaningless.


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## Umbran (May 14, 2014)

I have to agree a great deal.  The suffix "-punk" got its start with punk rock.  As such, it is largely about dystopia.  This was carried into the first literary genre I know of to bear the name - cyberpunk.  If you look back at your William Gibson, the fact that the world is a trash heap is pretty apparent.  Bleak, fairly _film noir_ worldviews are pretty critical to being "punk".

Meanwhile, most things that can use "daring do" in part of their description are missing that fairly crucial point.  A great deal of so called "steampunk" is actually better described as "gaslight romance/adventure".


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## SteamCraft (May 28, 2014)

How did you decide you wanted to review Mana Punk?  Just curious.  I run into them at cons occasionally.  I have looked at their book and already knew it was done in MS Word and lacked art.  From hearing him talk, he was open that it used the original Shadowrun system, although he called it d6.  D6 to me was the WEG system.  So what you wrote was no surprise to me.  I just assume that anyone that know about MP had already encountered them and new of the issues you raised.


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## SteamCraft (May 28, 2014)

Umbran said:


> Meanwhile, most things that can use "daring do" in part of their description are missing that fairly crucial point.  A great deal of so called "steampunk" is actually better described as "gaslight romance/adventure".




As I see it, steampunk is an aesthetic in search of a genre.  The term is applied to either a certain look or a certain quasi-historical time period.  The best way to to make things useful is to have steampunk as an overall category like sci-fi or fantasy.  Under that would be genres such as Victorian, Weird West, Pulp, etc.  

Now, for my own shameless plug.  You can look at my RPG - SteamCraft.  I actually try to capture the dystopian nature of society and convey the 'punk' that is missing from some many games.  I take CP2020 and Shadowrun as models instead of what other games do.


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