[isf]

This past weekend, my group just started making characters for a Steampunk Mars game set in 1889. I'm basing it on Stirling's "The Court of the Crimson Kings" as much as "A Princess of Mars".

I have the Martian tech mostly be TL 4 with remnants of Biotech and Psitech. Most of the biotech is food, medical, and construction related with poisons and drugs (delivered via dart guns) being the primary weaponized biotech. Living gasbags make the ever-popular AH zeppelins possible. The psitech is rare and is mostly odd energy weapons and some communication devices.

Have you decided upon the political structure(s) on Mars? Stirling has the major city on Mars based around the Tharsis area (which gets some cloud formation in real life) with the Grand Canal around it. The Martian ruling Dynasty is tens of thousands of years old. I liked the idea that the Martians are old and refined in ways that have no direct earthly counterpart but in decline along with their planet (I'd actually model them on ancient Egypt in many ways; like the idea of Ma'at).

I haven't came up with reasons for the Martians to have never developed (or developed and lost) space travel given that Earth has discovered various ways of using ether-based space travel. I may use the same as Stirling and have them be very retarded in physics.

I would definitely limits any advanced manufacturing except for biotech (plants, animals, chemicals). Why do the immortal engineers no longer have access to an industrial base? I'm thinking about using a war between Mars and the former planet that is now an asteroid belt to account for a great decline (it made a marginal situation tip over into being unsustainable with resources and psychic ability both being nearly used up). What is stopping them from gradually rebuilding an industrial base, even if a small one?