Reverse Steampunk?

...Shadowrun.

Also, again I have to point out, that in this paticular universe/world, the magic is in so few individuals, and makes them SO powerful, that it wouldn't inhibit tech advancment over-much, if at all in most cases..

Well, this is all very nice indeed, but the standard Elemental game will not have any Steampunk influences in it. Good idea for a mod, though.....

If I decide to put some real time into it I might not make a MOD per say but setup a bunch of HIGH-level techs/magic..but im lazy so we'll see.

Mmm magic after tech. It will probably start out a a novelty, or form of entrertainment. Until someone finds a way to power tech more effeciently with magic than, say, batteries. You would probably end up with some kind of mixture, where devices, spells or rituals use the most efficient components of both tech and magic. (magic batteries, glowing runes instead of lights, voice sythnesizer for ritual chanting, etc)

Looks like you aren't in the Arcanum universe (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanum:_Of_Steamworks_and_Magick_Obscura ) where magic and technology are exclusive

Making magic and technology exclusive doesn't make any sense to me. Unless magic causes some weird anti-technology field (or as Harry Dresden puts it, murphyonic field), there's no reason a magical perpetuum mobile couldn't power a dynamo or a car/plane/whatever. (or a continual light spell power a photovoltaic panel). 

Nah, Eberron i more my cup of soup. Though the tech level is relatively low (because tech is replaced by magic, to the point they have a magical industrial society), at least they have the right idea with elemental vessels or combining levitation magic and architecture to build a ridiculously vertical city (Sharn).

When I was reading this actually the first thing that popped into my head was Warhammer 40k.  After the fall of the emperor and they start employing tech priests and psykers to imbue their technology with extra power.  Granted, for them it was more of a ritual and didn't really appease the warrior spirit of the weapons, but for someone like the Eldar, there really is something of that mix of magic and technology.

I know it isn't exactly magic, it's psychic energy, but in the way it's used it's pretty much the same thing.

just to bring up the bases for most magic is that it is strongest at the start of time and weakens. . .soooo

well they could use machines to harnace the last pieces of magic. . . . . . but why try to make machines that shoot fire when you could take the Star Wars path with lasers. . .. . oh wait that has magic

EDIT:

and by most i mean the last like 24 fiction books i have read (7 of them were in the same series te he he he)

steampunk != magical technology.   Its just "magic meets machine" is a common theme.  Its a style, which Elemental certainly doesn't carry at this point.  Nothing about steampunk in anyway suggests magic is present.

"Reverse Steampunk" would be a very shiny, smooth, clean theme with very little apparent technological dependance.  If there is technology, it wouldn't run on a steam engine, or even a combustion engine.   Just like a mysterious force that calls for no intrusive pipes, gears, pistons, wires or other steampunk or cyberpunk style things.

IMO Cyberpunk IS reverse steampunk, and shadowrun is cyberpunk with magic.  *shrug*

I would have to disagree that Cyberpunk is reverse steampunk.  Its more like its sister genre.   Often Cyberpunk looks like Steampunk.  Really the biggest difference is level of technology, where steampunk  is closer to industrial revolution with steam powered everything, Cyberpunk is closer or past modern technology with straight-up electricity.  They are always shown in a gritty technology/industry based setting.  Take the movie "Metropolis" for example (the anime more than the  old  film).  Its fairly straight down the middle between Cyberpunk and Steampunk.

I try to ignore genre quibbling most of the time, but 'roots cyberpunk' is near and dear to my heart so I have to speak up on a couple of points.

First, the "punk" part was every bit as important as the "cyber" part back in the day--the core of the genre is dystopian novels. Second, this steampunk stuff is a moochy little parasite of a genre, not a "sister genre." I've enjoyed a few Babbage engine stories, but there is little to no dystopian perspective in steampunk and to me that means it really shouldn't be claiming "punk" in its name. Except maybe for the folks whose only understanding of punk is based in clothing, hairstyles, body art, and maybe some PIL tracks.

Steampunk - weird tech in past

Cyberpunk - weird tech in future

Steampunk - Weird clothes

Cyberpunk - Leather

Steampunk - Ok I've never really read any, are there steampunk books?

Cyberpunk -Willy Gibson, Nealy Stephasorous, Richard 'Magnum' Morgan, etc.

Uh..I'm tired.

This post definately reminds me of a series of books by John Ringo (I forget the series name). Where civilization on Earth had progressed to a point that practically anyone could do practically anything (Like transforming themseveles into mer-people or dragons) using omnipresent nanites.  It's paradise until it all goes horribly wrong and only a few people are left with the power to control the nanites (The wizards if you will.) whilst the rest of humanity finds itself back in the dark ages. It's an interesting series although I guess not really steampunk since explosions above a certain level of violence cannot occur in this world (ie no guns).

20,000 leagues under the sea is considered to be a "steampunk" book.   I can't think of any others off the top of my head.  Glancing at wikipedia, it claims books like "The Time Machine" also helped define the genre.

I would argue that steampunk is usually very dystopian. but when I think about it, most of the common ones you might find in pop culture, they aren't.

When I think "steam punk" I think of very dark grizzled settings, locked in some sort of conflict where guys march around in steam-powered suits like what inspired Big Daddies in Bioshock, shooting WW2 style mustard gas cans and flame throwers.  All the while the people struggling to survive in this doomed setting scramble to hide in the broken down shelters as the inspired mechanics make trinkets out of abandoned tanks.  

An alternate setting is something perhaps a little brighter with magic present, where goblins make mechinized suits in smelting plants from troll mined ore.  And mad magicians replace broken limbs with magicially enhanced mechanical limbs.   This is a bit closer to the more 'pop culture" version of steampunk.

I think people when they hear "steampunk" think of things like the Steamboy, Lock's Quest, Gatheryn, or certain parts of Warcraft.  Which I would agree, do represent something akin to what I'd expect from "Victorian Steam Age" influence, but I wouldn't call "steampunk" exactly.  (well, I would call steamboy steampunk based on the themes of the story, but not the other examples)

If you don't think BioShock, Thief: The Metal Age, Metropolis, or the Last Exile represent dystopian settings, I'm... I'd likely respect your opinion, but I think they do.    Back in the day, I always called settings like this "victorian steam age" settings, but in the last few years I have adopted "steampunk" to be the name of the genre and with it include any technology based, pre-modern, settings with dark and gritty overtones. 

As suggested by SmallTrippin's post about authors, Cyberpunk certainly has a lot more literature to draw its style when compared to Steampunk.  And I think that Cyberpunk has many more examples of extremely dark and dystopian settings.  However, I feel this is an injustice to Steampunk as a genre that we should not hold against it.   I would possibly list the movie "Wizards" as "Steampunk" if I was pushed, even though it has no steam engines in it to what I'm aware.  It certainly isn't "Cyber" and I feel "Dieselpunk" or "Combustionpunk" seperating from Steampunk is splitting hairs.    I might even go as far as to include "Vampire Hunter D" as at least partial steampunk, though its got enough "Cyberpunk" stuff like biomechanical horses in it that it could go either way.  I imagine its labs to be filled with things like what a mad scientist of the 1800s-1900s would have, which is why I think that.  Depends on how you invision it I suppose.

Like I was saying about reverse steampunk.  It would have to be not-steam (which means removal of anything that would look in place in steamage industrial settings) and not-punk (which means removal of all things "punk" by any definition relating to genre). 

The wiki called those 'proto-steampunk,' and one of the first 'graphs on the page seems to argue that the main difference between steam- and cyberpunk is that the former "settings usually tend to be less obviously dystopian than cyberpunk, or lack dystopian elements entirely."

But the main thing skimming that page did for me was remind me that 1991 was the last year that almost all my reading was SF. Through '96 I read barely any fiction on account of finally being a full-time student, and by the time I escaped grad school I didn't have the income to pick up my bookstore habit where I'd left off. Then when I finally got a decent salaried job and learned that "salary" means "paid for forty, expected to do lots more for free," I was too busy to catch up with interesting-looking things like a fad for "gonzo-historical" fiction. Man, that is a much more fun term than steampunk, but apparently it was 'too literate' to work as a marketing tag.

OK, that page did two main things for me: in addition to reminding me how starved for fluffy fiction I've kept myself for nearly two decades, it nicely illustrates the general futility of this genre-gabble. I shouldn'a stuck me toe in the thread after all, what with my 'arch-conservative' take on cyberpunk and its misnamed foster-sibling steampunk.