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So a while ago one of my buddies brought up the idea of steampunk Mordheim. This fired off a load of ideas in my head that mixed in elements of steampunk, mordheim, 40k and all my other favourite things all set in a ruined, alt. Victorian London ツ I'm actually never one to finish ideas up but one thing that I did manage to get done was prototype models for one of the warbands I "came up with". I put it in inverted commas since aesthetically they're basically just rebel grots with a touch of steampunk. They differ from the standard rebel grotz because they're a lot darker overall. In the setting I came up with goblins are widely used as slaves but they're actually a very intelligent, sentient race. Almost all the other races use them as slaves and if I'd actually gotten anywhere with the rules I'd have given players the option of including goblin slaves in most of the other warbands.
Other warbands I came up with:

Orcs: Visually very similar to GW's orcs/orks but again more intelligent. They ran the criminal underground in London and first started the goblin slave trade. They'd have had the option of including dog handlers who could have pit bulls (sorry no squigs in my setting), and probably would get to field more goblin slaves than other warbands.

The Royal Society: No steampunk setting would be complete without the powers of science. This warband would have probably had very few members per warband but with very powerful powers at their disposal to balance it out. You'd get to choose what field of science the leader came from to decide what powers your warband got.

Renegade Scientist warband: The traditional mad scientist warband with all that you'd expect: Flesh golems, hunchbacked assistants etc etc.

Asylum Escapees: Naturally when a city gets destroyed a lot of the buildings get damaged in the process. These guys would have escaped from ruined madhouses. There'd be different classes in here with different levels of lunacy. Some of your models would just wander round with mostly randomised behaviour but some would be really devious, highly psychotic characters. Maybe no proper leaders in this warband but some characters who could attempt to get the other members to behave to an extent. Some of the classes in this warband would have wild, randomised psychic powers.

Aliens (no name yet): These guys are the reason why London got destroyed. They were secretly surveying Earth from the skies but one of their ships malfunctioned and crash landed. They managed to cover up their presence to a degree, which has been helped by their psychic powers but naturally the rumours started to spread and a few people became aware of their existence. They've got really high technology but its use is limited since the power source for it all is in limited supply. So they've got some super powerful weaponry and equipment but it can't just be used willy-nilly. It's also possible for other warbands to get their hands on their equipment occasionally but the same caveat applies. The warband leaders would be powerful psychers but weak warriors. Their psychic powers would focus mainly on more passive mind control like making their aggressors just not want to hurt them.

Cultists: These guys look upon the alien race as gods. They basically spend their whole time trying to track down the aliens and collecting "artifacts" they'd be able to acquire alien technology more easily than other warbands.

The Free Mechanised Goblin Republick: These are the guys for whom I've come up with the most ideas and fluff. As already stated they were slaves for a long time but have recently established a small republick of free goblins. The destruction of London probably helped them a lot in this respect since people's focus was on other things. Aesthetically they're very much like rebel grots with steamy elements thrown in for good measure. They're able to take some steam technology like steam suits etc. One of my favourite parts of this warband is the ability of the leader to convert goblin slaves in other warbands to their cause with a rousing speech. It'd be an opposed leadership test between the leaders of the two warbands to see what happened but it would be possible for the other goblin to turncoat completely and join the goblin warband.
One of the unit choices in the goblin warband is ex slaves driven mad by their past. They'd only be able to take CCW and they'd have a hatred for whatever race they'd been owned by (orcs by default). If the goblin warband managed to convert any goblin slaves to their warband there'd be a chance they'd become one of these guys.

Police: Haven't come up with much for this warband, they're trying to restore order to London since it's become a real hive for crime, organised and otherwise. They're willing to use lethal force.

Looters: Basically like Mordheim's mercenaries but with more diversity. They'd be the more basic warband with stock rules. The idea here would be to customise the warband to suit your own tastes so you could, for example, field an orc brute amongst their numbers, field them as Chinese gangsters (triads) or airship pirates, have them led by a psycher or whatever. Basically whatever you could think of you could do with this warband.

Let me know what you think. One of the things that held me back from taking this any further was the fact that I don't really know how to write rules! I could have just used altered Mordheim rules but I wouldn't know how to keep it balanced (plus it would be nice to be a bit more individual). I'd also have liked to have mixed in a bit of the d20 rules system to make things a bit more roleplayey. Maybe even going as far as incorporating a DM.

First up, it's a cool idea.

Rules-wise, just stick with Mordheim. The best way to go about this would be to play 'counts-as' Mordheim in a campaign with other players, playtesting rules tweaks as you go, until at the end you've got a different-enough game of your own with balanced rules but the same hard core.

The best way to know how to put a game together is to play games lots, and base it on something you know works!

Good luck

You might wanna take a look at Warmachine- its very Steampunk and a very strong set of rules that are easy to pick up.

For theme, Malifaux is more towards fantacy than Warmachine. However, dependent on what system you prefer, cards vs dice, may tip your decision in either direction.

AvatarForm wrote:For theme, Malifaux is more towards fantacy than Warmachine. However, dependent on what system you prefer, cards vs dice, may tip your decision in either direction.

The upside for both of these games- theyre both more skirmish level so you can get into laying them with a smaller number of minis and a smaller level of investment that goes with that

Mistress of minis wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:For theme, Malifaux is more towards fantacy than Warmachine. However, dependent on what system you prefer, cards vs dice, may tip your decision in either direction.

The upside for both of these games- theyre both more skirmish level so you can get into laying them with a smaller number of minis and a smaller level of investment that goes with that

+1, oh and hot avatar

Sounds pretty interesting to me dude. Have you thought about maybe adding a Skaven style warband/race too as their tech is quite steampunky. Their weapons teams in particular are pretty cool and I'd like to see em running around in a skirmish level game. I know they're in mordheim but I mean a more techy version of them. Their fluff could be that they were regular rats heavily mutated by some crazy radioactive component of the Aliens engines.

I also like the idea of Goblin revolutionaries, I know it was sort of done in Gorkamorka but it think theres quite a lot you could do with them.

Oh and Mistress Of Minis, what is that Avatar. Agree with AvatarForm. Looks real familiar but can't put my finger on it.

Skaven are definitely a possibility. However I feel I might have ripped off GW enough for the moment haha! They're definitely one of my favourite races in the GW universes (I have a Clan Pestilens Mordheim warband back home).
To be honest I can't really see myself doing that much with this system but it's fun to think of every now and then