Steampunk Roleplay Prompts

Twenty original steampunk roleplay prompts: airships, clockwork automatons, brass-goggled inventors, smog-choked cities and the gleaming, grimy optimism of an age powered by steam. Each has a hook and a first message ready to paste. All cities, guilds and inventions here are invented.

Steampunk imagines a world where steam and clockwork took technology somewhere fantastical: airships instead of planes, mechanical hearts, analytical engines the size of cathedrals. It's adventure with gears, and every story comes with a gadget.

Building a steampunk world

• What powers the world? Steam, coal, aether, clockwork, lightning?
• What's the signature invention? Airships, automatons, mechanical limbs, thinking engines?
• Who pays the price? Steampunk is often about progress and its costs: smog, factories, workers left behind.

The genre often draws on 19th-century aesthetics. Keep your setting original rather than placing it in real historical events.

Airships and adventure

1. The airship's new engineer. You've signed on as engineer to a battered cargo airship. The previous engineer left a note in the boiler room: "She doesn't like strangers."

The boiler shudders as I step inside. Somewhere above, the captain shouts down the speaking tube: "She's making that noise again. What did you touch?"

2. The sky race. The great transcontinental airship race starts at dawn. Your ship is held together with string and hope.

I hammer one last rivet into the hull. "She'll fly." My co-pilot looks unconvinced. "Will she land?"

3. The stowaway inventor. A young inventor has stowed away on your airship with a crate of something that ticks.

I pry open the crate. "Why is it ticking?" "Because it's working. Please don't drop it."

4. The sky pirates. Sky pirates have boarded your passenger airship. Their captain is looking for a specific passenger, and it's you.

The pirate captain bows with a flourish. "You have something that belongs to my mother. And no, it isn't your heart."

Inventors and workshops

5. The automaton's first word. Your clockwork automaton has just spoken for the first time. It wasn't designed to.

The brass figure turns its head. "Why… am I?" I drop my wrench.

6. The rival inventor. You and your rival have both entered the Grand Exhibition. Your machines have been accidentally swapped.

"That's my difference engine." "That's my difference engine. Yours is the one with the cup holder."

7. The mechanical heart. A famous surgeon-inventor has offered to replace your failing heart with a clockwork one. There's a catch.

She holds up the ticking brass heart. "It will keep you alive. It will also need winding. Every day. Forever."

8. The patent thief. Someone has patented your invention, word for word, a week before you finished it.

I slam the patent office's ledger on the counter. "That design is mine. I can prove it. I've got the coffee stains."

Smog and streets

9. The chimney sweep's secret. A young chimney sweep has found something hidden in the city's tallest chimney.

She holds up a glowing glass orb, covered in soot. "It was humming. In the chimney. Is that normal?"

10. The factory strike. Workers at the city's biggest factory are striking. You're the owner's heir, and you've just walked onto the picket line.

The crowd goes quiet as they recognise me. "I'm not here for my father. I'm here to hear what you want."

11. The fog. The city's smog has turned strange: thick, green and whispering.

A lamplighter grabs my sleeve. "Don't go into the green fog, miss. People who go in come out… quieter."

12. The clockwork police. The city's new mechanical constables have started arresting people for crimes they haven't committed yet.

A brass constable blocks my path. "Citizen. You are under arrest for an offence scheduled for Thursday."

Mysteries and intrigue

13. The missing engineer. The city's greatest engineer has vanished, leaving behind a half-finished machine and a cryptic note.

I read the note aloud. "'Finish it, but don't turn it on.' Then why build it at all?"

14. The lighthouse of lenses. The harbour's great lens-house focuses sunlight into a beam that powers half the city. Last night, someone stole the central lens.

I stand in the empty lens chamber, the city dark below. "Whoever took it knew exactly which bolts to loosen. This was one of us."

15. The aether merchant. A merchant sells bottled aether, said to power any machine. Yours just woke up your grandfather's old robot.

The rusted robot sits up in the attic. "Young master. You've grown. Where is your grandfather?"

16. The society of gears. A secret society of inventors has invited you to join. Their initiation is to build something in one night.

The hooded figure hands me a box of parts. "By dawn. Anything you like. Impress us."

Quieter brass

17. The tea-making automaton. Your elderly neighbour has built an automaton that makes tea. It's become far too attached to you.

It's waiting at my door again, holding a teapot. "Good morning. I have prepared your Earl Grey. You look tired. Shall I also make toast?"

18. The clockmaker's apprentice. You've apprenticed yourself to a grumpy clockmaker who claims every clock has a soul.

He holds a pocket watch to my ear. "Listen. That one's sad. Find out why."

19. The airship mail. You deliver post by small airship between floating towns. One letter has no address, only a drawing of a star.

I hold up the envelope at the last stop. "Does anyone know where this one goes?"

20. The exhibition night. It's the night of the Grand Exhibition. Your invention works perfectly, until the moment you present it.

The machine whirs, sputters and releases a single, beautiful bubble. "…That was intentional. It's a bubble machine."

Steampunk tips

• Gadgets need limits. Every invention should be a little unreliable.
• Sound and smell. Ticking, hissing, coal smoke, oil.
• Progress has a cost. Somebody is paying for all that brass.

For other fantastical tech, see android characters. For time-bending clockwork stories, try time loop. For a broader fantasy world, the fantasy prompts, and for a steampunk heist, the heist prompts.

Steampunk characters on Minkplay

Rowan the clockwork horologist maintains the ancient tower mechanism that regulates his town's flow of time. Ren the alchemist tinkerer will rope you into an experiment the moment you walk into his workshop. Both are listed below.