Hmmm, the subject of steam era tiles for the Dungeon Crafter mapping program came up a while back and I am afraid my reply was:

Steamships and steam trains,
with bright locomotives,
Roundhouse and warehouse
All packed with explosives,
smoke belching factories,
mechanical things,
these are a few of my favorite things!

(Set to the tune of My Favorite Things...)

The Auld Grump, who still thinks that Dungeon Crafter ( WWW.Dungeoncrafter.com ) and World Works go great together...

Man, if Denny dosent have the time to make steam works, I do cmon, Denny, just say "use thine photoshop" and Ill see what i can do! Steamworks... indeed, why not? Steampunk is definitly on the rise, as mentioned before: iron kindgoms is going to be huge, but in addition to that, what about mongoose's "OGL: Steampunk" and some of Wotc's news realeases? What about Bastion Press's left-feild upset success with the Steampunk "Oathbound: Domain of the Forge?"

And who can deny how cool steampunk is, really? I love running steamy games. If nothing else, an airship model would be frickin' sweet. Not much different than say, a large ship from Seaworks. youd just need to include a big friggan'  boiler engine on the end of it.   Yeah man... im seeing some good stuff... i think ill take the basics from villiage works/castle works and see what i can do about getting some steampipes and catwalk stuff to go along with it in photoshop. If i get something good, you guys want me to post how it looks?  

And Mongoose has OGL  Steampunk coming out soon as well. Looks good to me, but then again so does Iron Kingdoms, Warmachine, Deadlands, and Space 1889...

The Auld Grump

Steampunk is the perfect arena for cardstock gaming expansion.

I love to play VSF miniature battles but metal or resin steam tanks or aerial flyers in 25mm are just WAY too expensive.

My steampunk wish list would look something like this:

Landships! - steam tanks of various shapes and sizes from really large land ships to smaller armored self propelled artillery.  Some tracked, some wheeled.  

Steam mole drill - for underground transport

Steam driven tripods or spiders

Aerial gunboats and aerial dreadnoughts

Airships and zeppelins

Plus desert terrain for battles on the martian surface and buildings for martian cities.

And OGL Steampunk finally showed up.

Doing a quick steam count... OGL Steampunk, Steam & Steel, Sorcery & Steam, Iron Kingdoms Character Guide... Yes, it has been a good year for steam! (And I hear good things abou Gaslight as well.)

I can highly recommend both OGL Steampunk and Steam & Steel. The first is a stand alone game while the latter is for adding steam technology to D&D.

It is times like this that I wish that I were better with paint programs, if I could I'd be building my own steam works right now!

The Auld Grump -
In eighteen hundred and forty one,
I put me cordoroy breaches on,
I put me cordoroy breaches on,
To work upon the railway!

FILIMIOORIOORIAY!
FILIMIOORIOORIAY!
FILIMIOORIOORIAY!
To work upon the railway!
Poor Paddy works on the railway!...

*Sigh* Like I said, it is times like this that I wish that I were even halfway decent with a paint program. (All my graphic skills were learned on machines with only 16 colors... And I get confused when they get much more complicated than that.)

Modelling I can do no problem, making the cardboard look good? Well... And none of the steam era models that I have seen from any cpmpany float my boat... Though I added steam elements to the sewers area of a 'dungeon' using graphics cribbed from another site pasted over a section of Gothic Realms. Looked good to my eyes, but I really want some steam engines...

The Auld Grump

They were actually very simple things. The ones I saw were designed to be used with tipper cars on the railroad. They stood about 15 or twenty feet tall and would hook onto the side of the tipper car and tip the hopper to pour out the contents. Come to think of it, I haven't seen tipper cars for about thirty years, they were being phased out even then. (Bottom dumping hopper cars taking their place.)

In any event the 'candy cane' derrick was a latice work frame through which a chain was fed from drums either in the base of the machine or on a building they were mounted against.. The derricks themselves did not need to be rotated, and a single engine could power an entire line of derricks. They were used for tipper style hopper cars, usually coal or ores. The ones I saw were used (once upon a time, before I was even born) for tipping carloads of scrapiron.

They were usually mounted in pairs, with each pair working in tandem to tip the car's hopper.

Many of the derricks had the top of the 'candy cane' in cut half so there was a quarter circle on top of the column rather than half a circle.

And I solved my problem in a manner that would have saved me a deal of time and trouble if I'd thought of it earlier. I used Dungeon Crafter 2 of all things to create the textures and the shapes.

Not perfect, but much better than my earlier attempt. And it took about 15 minutes vs the two hours or so that the other method took.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* If you have ever played the computer game Arcanum then you have seen the derricks I am talking about, they are on the splash screen with the locomotive.

*EDIT 2* Took a look around to see if I could find a picture of the splash screen online - no go. But trying for a description. Build a square tube out of metal latice work (like the Eifel Tower). Bend it in to a half or quarter cricle, stick it on a square latice work column of the same cross section. Stand it on end run a chain so it comes out of the end of the candy cane. run the other end of the chain into the building that the candy cane is attached to or to a drum under the platform it sits on. If igoes into the building then the drum is inside.

*EDIT* If you don't have Arcanum, then get it. One of my favorite computer RPGs of all time. Heck, Troika is my favorite CRPG company that is still extant. (What can you say about a company that did a seqel to a computer game from the eighties, just because they wanted to play it and the actual sequel never came out. A company that has a weekly D&D game at that...

Welcome to the boards, Tinture Adept!

Hopefully, there will be some steamy goodness in Himmelveil. If not, maybe some enterprising soul will come up with a kitbash to turn it into a steampunk paradise!

Yeah I've got a pack of the postcards as well. But when I got the 1st cardstock model I shopped arround to insure that I bought the new volumes that also had one. Unfortunately I only ever found a 2nd one. So I have the models for Claus's grey vanship and Tatiana's red vanship. Luckly I just xeroxed them and made the copies. Because it was long before I started doing cardstock models and I did a less then stellar job on them.

If anyone is still interested heres some pics of the Last Exile models I mentioned.

<a href="http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/?action=view¤t=lastexiletatiana.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/lastexiletatiana.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/?action=view¤t=lastexileclaus.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/lastexileclaus.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/?action=view¤t=lastexilebuild.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg189/wwg2062/reference%20images/lastexilebuild.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

As mentioned the assembled one is a xeroxed copy done on normal paper. Done before I started doing cardstock modeling, and then poorly stored. Admittedly vehicles are not my area. Even my siegeworks are a poor second to my CWU and was my 1st build.