I've always had a complicated relationship with Tabletop Roleplaying games. I like them, don't get me wrong, and I always have. but I've always had the desire to tell different stories than a lot of my friends want to. I find myself finding the narratives of go out on an adventure to find the treasure to be somewhat uninteresting.  More recently, however, I've begun to reanalyze the implications of those types of stories.

Approaching Dieselpunk 1921 has been very different than the way I've approached any other writing project; I'm by no means a fiction writer, and the vast majority of my writing that is available online is sociological in nature. As such, I've more or less approached Dieselpunk 1921 in the same way. Which also means that the theoretical foundations that influence my sociological writing also influence my game design. I hinted at some of this in my original blog post Dieselpunk 1921 - An Introduction, but there's more to Dieselpunk 1921 than just the mention of anarchist politics. The sociological imagination is a concept codified by sociologist, IWW member, and anarchist, C Wright Mills in his text The Sociological Imagination. It is a concept which requires the understanding of intimate social experiences with larger overarching social structures, and more importantly recognizing subjects within a political system face personal strife that is at least in part caused by the overarching social system. Jeff Shantz and Dana Williams expand on Mill's work in their text Anarchy and Society: Reflections on an Anarchist Society, noting that one could use their sociological imagination to recognized the intersections of competing identities, with the specific example used being a working class (a materially disadvantaged position) white (a socially and materially privileged position) woman (a socially disadvantaged position) recognizing these intricate positions, and then use these positions as a jumping off point to "find individual and collective avenues for resisting these forms of hierarchy and manifesting new egalitarian, horizontal, and cooperative social forms in their place" (page 10). This is a necessary component for conceptualizing the world of Dieselpunk 1921: subjects, that is to say characters, within the world of Dieselpunk 1921 find themselves subject to the structures of hierarchy in competing ways. One may be an Austrian aristocrat with a comfortable position within the power structure of central Europe, but choose to use that position of privilege to navigate the halls of power and leak information and materiel to liberation movements. Or perhaps they are more complex in their identity, having deserted from the Austrian Army during The Great War and now use the image of nobility to run elaborate cons as a way to scrape together a living (as is the case of Wessel, for more information check out Dieselpunk 1921 - Meet the Characters). By conceptualizing characters using the sociological imagination, I can create characters that feel like they live in the world they inhabit, and, I hope, create a game with the possibility to tell dramatic stories of complex political intrigue by default.

The world of Dieselpunk 1921 is one dominated by structures of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism (wow, I wonder what that's like). The threats that characters face are not world ending or existential, they're manifestations of greed and the forces that uphold the structures. But what does that mean in a pragmatic sense? Narratives of colonialism are pervasive in ttrpg stories, and I says this as someone currently running Pendragon, which in many ways draws heavily upon the archetypal adventure I mentioned at the beginning of the post. But how is that narrative a colonial one? Let's break down that story without using specific examples (this is largely for practical purposes - my adventure books are not easily accessible at the moment). In its broadest sense, the narrative of venture forth and seek out ancient treasures in long abandoned tombs presents the notion that exploring the world to extract treasures from some far away land is somehow virtuous. It is, in many ways, a representation of forms of colonial archaeology. The British Museum is a real life testament to this; teams (or perhaps adventuring parties) of archaeologists (sometimes calling themselves adventurers) ventured forth to the edges of their empire to bring glory to themselves and their empire by looting the riches of the past (or present), often directly through violence on the indigenous populations of those areas. These treasures are then stored in a heavily guarded "museum", which in many ways could serve as inspiration for a fantasy dungeon. This is reflected in many D&D (to name one example) through the standard "clear dungeon, get loot" gameplay loop that was introduced in first edition dungeons and dragons. For the purposes of this post, I'm not going to delve too much into Gary Gygax's self-professed belief in Biological Essentialism, but it is worth at least mentioning that an explicitly racist ideology had some influence upon the earliest writings of arguably the most popular ttrpg today. But why is this relevant? Because the structures that informed these colonial forms of storytelling are structures that are meant to be opposed, not lived, by the Player Characters in Dieselpunk 1921. The ideology that informs the act of looting treasures from far away lands is the ideology that informs the antagonists, not the protagonists, of Dieselpunk 1921. Answers to troubles that characters face within Dieselpunk 1921 are not found by searching the ruins of ancient civilization, they're constructed through collective action against violent oppressive forces. The personal is very much political, both in reality and in Dieselpunk 1921, and that means that characters exist within intricate systems that can be changed. I hope that this game gives players the opportunity to participate in that change.

The systems that permeate throughout Dieselpunk 1921 are both macro and micro. One may deal with struggles against a card shark kidnapping the person the player characters were meant to be protecting, or perhaps the players are seeking to destabilize an empire by assassinating a major figure within the imperial system. Regardless, the understanding of systems of domination that I have come to accept draws heavily upon the writing of anarchist sociologists, anthropologists, and political philosophers. The work of Shantz and Williams comes up again, with their understanding of relationships of domination. While I won't detail their arguments at length, they do so quite eloquently in the text Anarchy and Society: Reflections on an Anarchist Sociology chapter six, I will briefly make note of the diagram found on page 119. In broad terms, they note that Structures of Hierarchy manufacture Relationships of Domination, which result in Patters of Inequality.  One of the examples given, which is most relevant to Dieselpunk 1921, is that the structure of Capitalism manufacture profit seeking relationships (capitalistic relationships) which in turn manufacture Class Inequality. Because this is a blog post and not one of my essays, I won't dwell too much more on this point, and instead recommend that you read the chapter. So I have recognized that capitalism, the state, imperialism, and colonialism are all structures of hierarchy that construct relationships of domination, creating patterns of inequality. How does that effect my approach to Dieselpunk 1921? Take the concept of the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy) from your ttrpg campaign. Why are they evil? what machinations are they undertaking? What is their plan? is it allegiance to some power that seeks to end the world? That's hard to conceptualize. Do they want to take over the kingdom? why? for power? well, the player characters often seek to enforce power over other kingdoms, are they evil?
My approach to the World of Dieselpunk 1921 has been to recognize the very real structures of hierarchy in our world (both historical and contemporary), and use those to influence what an antagonist might do, and how that influences the world at large. Take, for example, The Institute for Peace and Serenity in North Italy. They are described as "a coalition of powerful businessmen meddling in the peace negotiations between Austria-Hungary and Italy, seeking to split the prosperous north from the south of Italy, of course with them in charge." This seems like a cartoon level of villainy, it's blunt and not very nuanced. It's a bludgeon to say that wealthy men in positions of power are often driven to do anything in their power to amass greater wealth and power. It's also a concept I based off of the Business Plot, an attempted overthrow of the US Government that was undertaken by wealthy, fascist businessmen in 1933 with the aim of installing Smedley Butler as a Dictator. The Structure of Capitalism led to an attempt to create a fascist relationship between government and governed. The existence of The Institute in Dieselpunk 1921 is an application both in the history of Euro-American capitalism, and the model of domination provided by Shantz and Williams. I do not feel the need to explain why structures of colonialism, imperialism, and fascism are antagonistic structures in Dieselpunk 1921, because those structures are the most evil ideologies that have existed and are responsible for the worst crimes ever committed.  These are ideologies that can only exist and be put into place by structures like the state, like capitalism, which is why these structures too are presented as antagonistic within Dieselpunk 1921.

In a forthcoming playtest, I'll be exploring how to present the Republic of Ireland in this setting, particularly through a courtroom scenario in which characters confront the difficulties of fledgling justice systems, specifically by exploring the trial of Arthur James Balfour, former chief secretary of Ireland for the United Kingdom. There's a lot to say about Arthur "Bloody" Balfour, but, again, this may not be the best place for that. The theme of justice and structure of law will be central to this playtest, exploring what it means to transition from a rebellion to a state and how that may lead to the compromise of morals and sense of justice of the player characters and nonplayer characters.

The next updated version of Dieselpunk 1921 will be released in mid-late October (I hope), so I look forward to seeing what people think of that! There is a bunch more items, and setting information within those items, and some new formatting changes coming with that!