Is there a setting modeled after Depression Era America but with dieselpunk and fantasy races?

Well, I guess to start I'll write what comes to mind on religion in this setting.

I like settings where there isn't just one overarching pantheon that everyone believes in, because that's just silly, but having a pantheon that's common to a few neighboring cultures or multiple pantheons that can be said to be different interpretations of the same gods is cool.

Given the low magic nature of the idea the gods should be relatively inactive compared to most high fantasy stuff, taking care of excessive divine magic.

I already had the idea for a goddess of music who appears as a flapper girl, so let's start with that. Taking inspiration from swing music and part culture of the '20s, it would make sense to also tack on hedonism and freedom as her domains. She fits easily as the patron goddess of bards, brewmasters, winemakers, bootleggers, and club/bar owners. Flappers were famous for being fashionable, young, and rebellious for the time. I mean just look at her! Cutting her hair short and smoking cigarettes? The nerve!

One thing that must be considered with all gods in this setting is whether or not they existed since the beginning of time, or if they're newly born/ascended. This is after all a setting where technology and culture actually changes over time.

Next up a god of fire, industry, and science seems appropriate. Patron of workers, industrialists, engineers, scientists, inventors, and sometimes communists.

Probably appears as a gruff factory worker, old blacksmith, or engineer. Less thoughts on this one's role, not even the gender is set but I'd say likely male because Prometheus and Hephaestus.

A random thought on aesthetics: The two competing schools of aesthetics for this setting would likely be Art Deco and Brutalism. I had thought before that the two loaned themselves well to dwarves and orcs respectively, but I think it would make more sense to not make aesthetics a race thing. Factions perhaps would make more sense. Borrow a leaf from Shadowrun and have two megacorps that use the styles perhaps? Or maybe that's too much Shadowrun.

How about having two War Gods in the setting, one of Order, and the other of Chaos.

Relatively recently, the two War Gods fought the each other for control in order to have Not! WW1. The end result was a the War God of Order being heavily crippled, but slowly recovering, while Chaos was left to be relatively active.

>One thing that must be considered with all gods in this setting is whether or not they existed since the beginning of time, or if they're newly born/ascended
They could also be reborned occasionally , or change to the point of being other beings (don't envy the gods, for they can never be themselves!)

Favour those who solve practical problems, no matter their goal. Are you building an atrocious engine of death, or the tools to feed millions? His only thought is "Does it work?"

I like this idea. Kind of an Athena/Ares dynamic.

Hell, the goddess of order, war, and justice could literally be a shining and proud woman clothed in robes and a golden crown wielding a resplendent sword.

Speaking of the Great War, this event could easily account for a warforged type race. Automatons designed to bolster the ranks of a devastated nation late in the war that were accidentally endowed with sentience. Though in this case they would more closely resemble raygun gothic robots and run on diesel or electricity.

>I solve practical problems

What system would this be for? I'm getting the feeling you guys are going for D&D mechanically

Not sure yet, but a D20 system seems like the way to go.

Bump for interest. I'd contribute if I wasn't dealing with a terrible headache, but dieselpunk is my thing.

> Depression-era America
> Fantasy races
Lynch mobs?

OP here again, I won't lie to you anons, I'm pretty stoned now so this worldbuilding might take a turn for the stupid.

So let's talk about races. Honestly I'm not too sure about incorporating the standard 6 fantasy races. It is a little overdone, but I still think having a few of them around would be a good idea.

Humans area no-brainer. Pretty much couldn't do the setting without them. Humans are the driving force for urbanization and population booms. The first to take to the cities, they can be found all over and in great numbers. The minds behind many a remarkable invention, their quick progress and expansionist tendencies quickly forced other races to adapt to their way of things or be left behind. Very clever, highly social, and practically minded, they receive bonuses to a social, intelligence, and combat skills. Still writing sort of system-agnostic at this point.

Automatons are the newest of all races, having been created a decade ago for the War. Most were built in the rough shape of a humanoid with familiar features, as they were intended to fight alongside flesh and blood foot-soldiers and use much of the same gear. Acting in the War is heavy shock troops, their bodies are designed to take a lot of punishment and dish it out in turn. Somewhere in process of creating a vacuum tube mind to analyze combat situations and respond accordingly, the automatons' makers stumbled upon true sentience. After the War, many automatons found themselves without a purpose and without a guide in the civilian life they were thrust into. There is a strong social bias against them, and many don't consider automatons to be truly sentient, others blame them for flooding the job market, and many are just scared of living among war machines. For this reason many automatons find work as hired muscle(hydraulics?) for criminal gangs. They look like raygun gothic robots with early 20th century military influences. They get bonuses to constitution, strength, and combat skills.

I'll only be happy if the punks are Futurists.

bactra.org/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html

Theye harder to use than a motorcycle, requiring better balance and more awareness for no real gain.

Violent poets and motorheads who claim there is no beauty but the speeding automobile, the struggle of battle, and the delight of war itself?

Witness.

You sir are a genius.

So hear me out on this, maybe the next race is elves.

Yeah, I know. Fucking knife-ears. But let's try and do them a little different.

In this setting, they're not too different from humans. They don't live a whole lot longer, nor does their beauty reach nigh-supernatural levels, though they are rather slim in build. Magic, however, is stronger with them than anyone else, more so with arcane than divine though. Arcane magic runs in their veins after all. While not all of them are magicians, all have an inherent ability to cast a few simple spells. To them magic is as easy as walking. However, magic has a tendency to cloud the mind, and elves have a rather fey disposition. Tend to be flighty and absentminded. An elf who can stay focused for more than a few minutes at a time is rare. Bonuses to magic, intelligence, and dexterity. Penalties to wisdom.

Oh certainly. Automatons are frequent targets.

Just remembered I had this saved and realized I have an excuse to use it for once.

Bards are definitely a class to keep for this setting, though I'm not sure they should keep the same name. Performers? Entertainers? Stagemasters? Simply musician? I don't know.

Regardless, playing music amplified over portable loudspeakers to cast spells is pretty fucking indicative of this setting's whole tone and theme. Plus, the electric guitar was invented in 1930, so I'd say primitive versions are fair game for bards here. Could also be bards who utilize singing and dance as usual, but here we can flavor that as swing dancer, jazz singers, and even some Vaudeville/burlesque stuff. Maybe even flagrantly racist impression of automatons, aka grayface.

I already made a setting a bit like this, but you can find some great inspiration for a post-apoc 1920s style setting on Goblin Punch the blog. Eldritch Americana is the name of it.

Maybe there were a few war-poet Bards in the late unpleasantness, like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

God of capitalism and business maybe? Appears as a typical 1920s era businessman with his pockets overflowing with stock tickers. Probably looks kinda disheveled if there's a Great Depression in the setting.

Interesting read. Definitely more weird fiction than I'm going for, but undoubtedly cool.

This is probably a better image now that I think about it

>communists
>God of labour

But communists hate working. It's why the vast majority of their historical number have been drawn from social elites and the upper middle class.

In my search for images to post for this I found this gem. Looks like a pretty good approximation for party comp in this setting. Minus the ayylmaos of course. Or maybe not? Raygun gothic aliens like Greys could make decent mid-tier foes, and invasions of aliens could make excellent plot hooks. They abduct a few civilians, down a few aircraft, the government is keeping it quiet, so the local mayor hires a few capable folks to investigate and find a solution to the alien menace.

Inb4 repentant CG alien ranger who dual-wields alien laserswords

Regardless some more races are needed besides elves, humans, and automatons. Given the more traditionally fey route taken with elves it might make sense to draw from North American or European folklore for another race.

Last I checked communists, at least Marxists, want to fight for the rights of the worker and put the wealth of the nation in the hands of the proletariat, but whatever. I don't really care much for communism myself.

I like it. He could have an uneasy relationship with the god of industry. Sometimes capitalism drives forward innovation and industry, other times it stands on the backs of large populations of exploited workers.

A recitation of 'Dulce et Decorum est' hardly seems like an analogue for Inspire Courage, but it is an interesting idea. Bards of death and nihilism that focus on debuffing foes?

So, let's talk about vehicles.

Naturally, most of them are gas or diesel fueled motor vehicles. Horses are all but obsolete, though cavaliers who ride motorcycles sounds pretty fucking dope to me.

We have '30s style cars to fit the roll of party transport in most situations, and indeed only a few fantastic elements are really necessary here.

Military vehicles are a thing, but trickier to get a hold of with governments constantly afraid of another Great War. New ones are rare and surplus from the previous war still rather rare due to stockpiling. Regardless, they have trucks, tanks, and primitive mechs that aren't much bigger than the tanks. Excluding a few new ones that are the secret projects of military bases.

Airplanes and zepplins out the ass. Think Talespin meets Ghibli meets Sky Captain. Ranges from airships the size of a small town to personal skycycles that zip around at low altitudes.

Maybe some basic flying cars? They'd be available to only the rich

Here's another fancy hovercar.

I'm hesitant about hovercars in pretty much any setting because when you get down to it they just don't make a lot of sense.

Not that I'm going for realism, it's just that there's not a whole lot of benefit to a car that levitates a couple feet off the ground, and cars that fly are a city planner's/public safety office's nightmare. Think about how dangerous cars are already, and how complicated it is to design streets with good traffic flow. Now multiply this by 8 because suddenly cars can go in three dimensions and streets are now actually several dozen streets stacked on top of each other, and any car on any street can switch to any other street in the stack at any time.

The death toll would be in the thousands, and that's just the logistical issues.

However that would be right up the alley of some of these anarchist futurepunks who happen to have some cash, so maybe such vehicles are the fodder of young and rich thrillseekers.

Then I suppose I should address the most batshit insane form of transportation ever conceived of by mankind. The ultimate deathwish, the ultimate for of humanity's desire for yet more speed and more freedom of movement. The single craziest, most dangerous, most pants-on-head retarded, most just-crazy-enough-to-work idea of all time.

Fucking jetpacks.

If you strap one of these to your back and start it up, you either want to die and blowing your brains out wasn't quite gruesome enough for you, or you really, really, really know what you're doing. And you also want to die.

Not much else to say here.

I guess that between the lunatic rich kid racers and suicidal jetpack pilots we can assume that commuting anywhere in this city is a nightmare. How about more conventional ground cars? I assume it would be mostly buses and shitty sedans.

The Spirit of the Century RPG might be worth looking at. It's 1920s pulp but it can easily be pulled forward to the 30s.

This might work for something. I don't know what, but it looks cool

Not nessasarily. Well, yes, but for different reasons. Ever seen that old film of Times Square in the '20s? It was a nightmare. Cars and carriages going every which way, no traffic laws, no signs, no stoplights.

By now, this setting's cars are the horses and carriages, and the hover cars are the cars. Lot less common, but they exist. Stoplights are common for the sake of some sanity though.

Another market for hover cars are older wealthy people who can hire trained pilots to chaufer them around without having to worry about the terrible traffic below. Much less accident prone, but much more expensive.

How would the god of labor feel about the rise of automated manufacturing?

On one hand, you can get a heck of a lot more done with it for less.

On the other hand, the proletariat are left out of the winnings outside of a welfare state or some other means of redistributing the wealth.