Dieselpunk 1921 takes place following The Great War, the point which marked the change from War being viewed as a heroic endeavour. The lives of those who experienced it, whether as soldiers or civilians caught in the conflict, were irreparably changed. But what about if the war carried on? What about those who were injured, and were forced to bear weaponized prosthetics and fight again?

I honestly cannot answer that question. I'm not, nor have I ever been, a soldier. Nor would I want to be. While some games, notably Call of Cthulhu, have attempted to find ways to gamify mental health through systems like "Sanity"; I don't believe this is the right direction to take, at least for me and Dieselpunk 1921. I leave the characterization of veterans to the people creating characters who are veterans. However, the physical toll of war on the human body is something that I think is necessary to explore within the setting. I made the decision to include Prosthetics for a very practical reason: People need them. Again, other games do include prosthetics, so this is not breaking any new ground, however where a game like Shadowrun has a measurement of "Essence" that can be decreased by using Prosthetics (which, in my opinion, has profoundly ableist implications), In Dieselpunk 1921 Prosthetics just... are. There are rules for characters attaching prosthetics using Medicine Checks, however there is nothing preventing professionals from starting with prosthetics as, by default, they do not provide any benefits to characteristics or skills. There will be some restricted Prosthetics in the Narrator chapter that have built in weapons and characteristic benefits that are developed for military purposes.

But the world of Dieselpunk 1921 is brutal. The shadow of the Great War lingers over every city and town, and the strain of imperialism is driving people to violence both in service to authority and against it.

Conflicts like the Coal Wars, The British Civil War, the Ukrainian Civil War, and so on, are raging. There are conflicts between gangs, unions, corporations, police, and so much more throughout the world. So Death is pretty common. Death stalks the streets like a... thing that stalks the streets. A cop. we'll go with that. But TTRPGs are meant to be fun, so there has to be some balance between the uncaring nature of the setting, and having people want to play the game. Nobody likes losing their character, you put a fair amount of work into making them.  In the case of Dieselpunk 1921, it takes about 20 minutes to make a character, not including backstory. So the balance I've found (but not yet testing, that's coming Soon™), is using Hit Points and Major Wounds. Hit points are an abstract measure of how long a character can stay in a hostile situation, like combat. The Major Wound Threshold, aka the number of hit points a professional needs to suffer in one hit to receive a wound, is equal to half of the professional's hit points. Rather than explaining the mechanics of death in vague terms, I'll copy the text from the section directly from the Dieselpunk 1921 document:

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust. The world of Dieselpunk 1921 is cruel and uncaring, but that doesn’t mean your table needs to be. Character death becomes more likely in the event that combat breaks out, and increases exponentially the longer combat goes on. Because the probability of death can be quite high, it is strongly recommended that this is communicated with your group before playing Dieselpunk 1921, and that everyone is clear on what everyone expects from play. Further advice on managing the level of danger can be found in Chapter 7: The Narrator. Further advice on communicating expectations from the player-side can be found in Chapter 6: Playing the Game.

When a Professional hits 0 Hit Points, they immediately must suffer a Major Wound, and make  a Stamina Check. On a failed Stamina check, the Professional falls unconscious. Unconscious characters can be roused with a successful First Aid Check, but cannot take actions while unconscious. Professionals who suffer damage while at 0 Hit Points must immediately suffer an additional Major Wound and repeat the Stamina Check, falling unconscious if the check is unsuccessful. Professionals may have a maximum of 4 Major Wounds. When a Professional suffers their 5th Major Wound, that Professional dies At the start of their next turn. A dying character may be stabilized before the start of their next turn with a successful Medicine Check with a -15 Modifier.

My hope is for Dieselpunk 1921 to be fairly straightforward to play and run. Having relatively simple Death mechanics is a means to this end. Having your character die sucks, but having them die in a dramatic way can be a really interesting addition to  the story, and can give the player opportunities to explore other character options.