The game is set in an Alternate Earth.  Everything the players see at the outset of January 1932 APPEAR to be the same as the history we know today.  However, things are not the same and may diverge dramatically as the story advances.

Narrative
 This game would be an episodic serial.  Where each adventure is a episode.  The characters would travel around the world taking on different adventures.

  There would be pre-determined character arch-types, that players could customize some to their own taste, and perhaps original characters submitted by players.  The Episodes would explore the international events and characters that led to WWII.


 The characters will start at the 1932 Winter Olympics, Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt is in attendance and just cranking up his 1st Presidential Election run.  Prohibition is still the law of the land and Speak Easies abound.  The main transcontinental travel is still by ships and private flight is just coming on.  The National Socialist German Workers' Party(NAZIs) are posed to make take their first steps to power in the July 1932 German Elections.  Imperial Japan has invaded Manchuria and is on the verge of getting the Republic of China to turnover Manchuria to Japan.  Mussolini is advancing Italy's Colonial Empire in Africa.  The El Mirador Pyramid is discovered in Guatemala in 1930.  The bulk of the world still travels by foot, horseback or by train.

 This is the world the characters will enter and adventure through.  Though the world is starts in 1932 Earth, it is not the 1932 Earth of history per se, it is an Alternate Timeline Earth.  The characters won't know what precipitated the Alternate Timeline or When it happened, but some will be the same and some will be different.  Adolf Hitler could be a savior of Western Europe against the despotic murderous tyrant Winston Churchill.  The characters will have to decide for themselves.  No written history can be taken at face value.

Generic 30's Background Information here
http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/intro.html
This message was last edited by the GM at 10:29, Sat 20 Feb 2021.

The Great Depression
The Depression affected everyone, it changed life for everyone, and the characters will feel the impact from the beginning.

The Depression started with Black Thursday, October 24th, 1929 and then followed up by Black Tuesday October 29th, 1929 with the collapse of the stock market. This collapse shattered the entire global economy. The New York Stock Exchange lost 3/4ths of its value by 1932.  Many investors, having lost everything, ended it all by suicide.
In the first year of the Great Depression over 750 banks failed, taking with them the savings of over a million people and businesses.

By 1934 over 9,000 banks closed their doors, and one out of every four workers was unemployed. To get some of those workers working again, Government work programs were established with projects including many dams & roads.

Between 1929 and 1933, the U.S. GNP dropped by nearly 33 percent. Meaning that one third of the goods and services produced before the Depression were no longer produced just a few years later.
In 1932, unemployment reached 25 percent. One out of every four people looking for work couldn't find a job – and that is counting only those who were still looking. The unemployment rate did not count the many people who gave up trying to find a job.  All told the real unemployment rate was near 50%.
There was no social assistance to help people in economic trouble. Some financial help was doled out by county commissioners, but benefits varied widely. In some counties, getting help depended on whether or not you knew a commissioner, an important person, an important bootlegger or a Union Boss.

Most Americans have trouble heating their homes in winter.  In the Midwest they burn corn or wheat, as it is cheaper than coal.  In other parts of the country people forage for wood for cooking and heat, from daily trips gathering sticks from the forest to stealing from millboards and fences.

Elsewhere around the world
UK -- Great Depression
•Over 20% of the workforce are unemployed and in area's reliant on heavy industry up to 30% are unemployed unemployment reaches nearly 3 million
•Millions are forced to use soup kitchens as a way of life.
•Due to lack of benefits many are forced to search old coal slag heaps hoping to find coal to use for heating
•Import tariffs are introduced at a rate of 10% on all imports except those from the countries of the British Empire **
•Public sector wages and unemployment cut by 10%, and income tax was raised from 22.5% to 25%. **
•The largest National Hunger March during the great depression marches to London in September / October and are met by 70,000 Police including mounted police using force to disperse the demonstrators.
•The worst effects of the great depression happen in the north including Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, Tyneside, Sheffield, Lancashire and Glasgow
•200,000 unemployed men are sent to the work camps, which continued in operation until 1939
** Enacted Late 1931

Australia
•Due to it's reliance on dependence on exports and import tariffs being imposed around the world it is one of heaviest hit countries
•Unemployment reached a record high of 29%
•Civil unrest occurs in Sidney

Canada
•In addition to the Great Depression Canada was also affected by the Dust Bowls caused by sever drought
• Unemployment reached 27%
•Canada like many other countries employed a highly restrictive immigration policy

Germany
•Due to the devastation and loss in World War I Germany was one of the worst effected countries due to other countries including the United States ending aid for rebuilding the country
• Unemployment rate reached nearly 30%
•.It literally takes a wheel barrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread.  Money is so worthless it is burned for heat.
This message was last edited by the GM at 04:46, Tue 10 Apr 2018.

Transportation
Rapid advancements in Automobiles, Aircraft, Ships and Trains steal the headlines, but still for 80% of the people on the planet, the major mode of transportation is on foot or by horse.

Automobiles are pushed faster and better every year. In 1927 the Model A premiered with a 4 cylinder, 40 hp engine.  A short 5 years later the Dodge Phaeton would boast an 8 cylinder 75 hp engine.

In flight, the air speed record changed hands 6 times between 1927 and 1932.  The fastest aircraft went from white pine wooden clothe covered aircraft to aluminum framed and skinned aircraft boasting 2300 hp.  Equaling the excitement of planes in the air is Air Ships, Drigibles, Zepellins.  Air Ships have captured the imagination of people world wide, they will be the future of intercontinental passenger traffic.  Air Ships of the future will have all the style and grandeur of the luxury liners of the day, including the SS Rex, SS Normandy and SS Bremen.

Even with these great advancements, due to economic impacts, most people in the world still travel by foot by horse, though almost every country has access to rail transportation.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:31, Mon 13 Nov 2017.

What are you wearing

Post Great War workers almost universally wore heavy duty cotton overalls and pants that would stand up to hard and often dangerous work.  Whether working next to the grinding gears in factories, the sweat drenched mills, or packing ice up 30 flights of stairs all day.  In shops and offices men wore a suit of some kind, with a tie.  The more formal the job meant a matching tailored suit jacket as well.
This message was last edited by the GM at 03:53, Wed 08 Nov 2017.

Communication

Communication is the bottleneck for many.  Telephones are limited to the copper wires already laid across the developed world and it often can be difficult to complete a call, and relatively expensive.

Wire Telegraphs and Wireless Telegraph are reliable but responses can be slow. The Telegraph is the affordable way to send an important message.  Letters are the most common form of communication and can take a week within the US, or months in overseas mail.

Wireless radio is starting to become more common and in some areas radio clubs are popping up, with lots of home made radios.

In Mass Communication the Newspaper is still king.  At 2 cents a copy it's cheap.  But Wireless radio is really starting to become the new medium of mass communication of the future.
This message was last edited by the GM at 07:13, Wed 15 Nov 2017.

Food

In times of famine, war, and extreme hardship people have been known to eat things they might not consider during "normal" times.  For most of the US that was not the reality during the Great Depression, but for some it certainly was the case.

There was an ample, inexpensive food supply. People struggling to make put food on the table had the option of purchasing lesser grades of meat hamburger for 10 cents a pound instead of sirloin beef for 29 cents, yet cheaper cuts of animal (heart, brains, feet) were commonly used for half the cost of hamburger. Manufactured substitutes such as Crisco instead of butter, sugar beet to sweeten instead of sugar cane.

the Depression brought bread lines, soup kitchens, hoboes begging for food at middle-class doors, and thousands of hungry families in devastated parts of rural America, starvation was unheard-of in the US, but in other countries it was well known. Persistent hunger was more common, but it was localized, affecting mainly marginalized populations who played a small role in politics or the marketplace.

Typical meals were a combination dinner, the main dish of which may be anything from a one-pot recipe to an oven or grill collection including meat, green and starch vegetables and dessert all cooked at the same time, over the one heat unit, and served as a unit, too.  Simple, cheap and with little effort.  Soups, pot pies and casseroles ruled the day.

An average working class meal would cost 50 cents, but for the average working wage of 2 dollars a day that meal was typically out of reach.
This message was last edited by the GM at 08:13, Wed 15 Nov 2017.

The question of real-life 1930s attitudes, prejudices and customs may be unsettling.

In terms of the prejudice issue I don't intend to pretend it didn't exist but neither is it something I'm going to focus on - the goal of this game is to tell a great tale and enjoy the adventure together and not to analyze the unsavory side of our history.

In the game there are national, political and racial rivalries.  Certain nations just dislike each other, the French and Germans, the Japanese and Chinese, Greeks and Turks.  Fascists and Communists are both Collectivists, but hate each other more than Libertyists or Monarchists.
Further, there are even regional conflicts that may pop up in nations.  Californians don't like Okies for example.  In cities ethnic quarters are standard, as are ethnic gangs.

If this bothers you.  This game likely is not for you.
This message was last edited by the GM at 06:21, Sun 21 Feb 2021.