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Yes I meant steampunk, not cyberpunk. Steampunk adds fantasy-based technology to a relatively accurate historical background. Like in Back to the Future III when what's his name goes back to the Wild West. The era was portrayed "relatively accurately" and his modern technology (ski jacket) and the fantasy technology spin (the delaurean) was introduced to it as a plot device. The whole point of steampunk though, is to introduce fantasy technology that *could* have been invented during that era, IF the inventor had access to modern-day information. You'd still have the log cabins, horses, organic farming, drawing water from wells, waterbarrels, outhouses. But you might also have a "secret society" of people tucking indoor plumbing into hidden rooms under their houses, horseshoes with little rollerblades attached to them to prevent their horses from tiring out so fast. And filtration systems; charcoal existed in the Wild West, it's just that it never occurred to anyone to use it for filter material.
The notion of "magic" in a historical setting would be more accurate for the era than in a typical fantasy game; the herbswoman, the midwife, the tribal shaman, the guy who discovers that a mysterious piece of rock he found causes some metal doohickie he owns to magnetically attach itself to the rock; all those things/people would be considered "magic." Of course in a historically accurate setting you'll have to include historically accurate prejudices: players creating black-skinned characters would have to accept slavery as their character's lot in life. Most characters would be required to embrace Christianity as their chosen religion, anything else would be outcast, suspect, or even considered blasphemy and destroyed.
It is certainly not something I would be interested in; I prefer my prejudice served up neatly in a pure non-historical fantasy setting. Y'know, like how all dwarves hate elves, and how everyone knows that orcs smell bad and eat children, that kind of thing.
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