I’ve been thinking about maybe working up a dieselpunk RPG, subject to finding a suitable system. It got me thinking, though, that dieselpunk, far more than its cousin steampunk, seems tied to the interwar period. It needs some fascist baddies, who are at the very least Nazi expies, especially. Steampunk, on the other hand, feels a bit more flexible. Is it just because the political situation in the prewar period wasn’t quite as rigidly defined by having these totalitarian regimes sitting about?
I’d heard dieselpunk applied to the Cold War era, mocking big ugly Soviet-style industrial facilities. The tone is massive, ugly, absurdly functional.
No reason it can’t apply to the 'tween wars era – but I prefer that time to be celebrated with a different myth, a la Disney’s Tailspin. It can be a daydream of innocence and peace, with only a few able to see the looming horrors.
(Just as the Victorian joy of steampunk has the edge of the impending monstrosity of WWI.)
Pretty obviously, you can do it any way you want. Take a look at the Corto Maltese graphic novel, “Fable of Venice,” by Hugo Pratt. He sets it in Venice, between the wars, and sets it against the rise of Italian fascism. But…he mixes in so much else, the story is not overwhelmed.
So, yes, you clearly could have some early Nazis or proto-Nazis, and some Italian proto-fascists, and they would certainly tend to focus the story. But if you toss in lots of other elements too, they wouldn’t have to take over the story. You could toss in “Cabaret” and Brecht, and Leon Trotsky, and Mao’s Long March, and whole bunches of fascinating things.
I would beg of you to put in lots of detail on the League of Nations, perhaps even with an “alternate history” possibility of making the L.O.N. succeed in preventing WWII! The could even be the “victory condition” for one set of game adventures!
Depends - are we doing Piecraftian or Ottensian dieselpunk here?
The villains don’t need to be Nazi expies. They could be any one of the other villains common to the era, not all of them totalitarian - Yellow Peril was a big one, but often couched in the Fu Manchu evil genius way, which doesn’t seem totalitarian to me. Anarchists and Socialists were common villains too. You could go the Crimson Skies route and postulate a chopped-up USA with various competing polities. Metropolis has Capitalists and a Mad Scientist as the villains, but not (IMO) fascist ones.
I wonder if every age is going to eventually acquire its own “punk”. How about “Bronzepunk”? Is that a thing?
Googling - why yes, yes it is. 
Stonepunk? Or would that be Punkrock? 
Now, that’s really getting back to the roots.
One potential reason could be that steampunk arguably covers a longer period of time.
Dieselpunk really requires a world that isn’t quite that of today, but that has gas-guzzling cars, rail networks, airliners, and the military-industrial complex. That’s a pretty small window of time.
Steampunk, however, could take place right before WW1, but it could also be set in, say, the US Civil War, Westward Expansion days, the (19th century) unification of Germany, the settlement of Australia, famously backwards Imperial Russia where it manages to steal some newfangled British military hardware and much cultural conflict ensues, and a dozen more obvious settings.
Dieselpunk, as I understand the term, predates the Cold war by many years. It is post WWI, pre WWII Sci Fi. Sprawling Art Deco cities, giant clunky robots. Lots of propellers on the planes (or none at all if it’s a flying wing). The old Fleischer Superman cartoons are a good example.
Perhaps what I was thinking of could be called “Atom-punk.”
Anyway, agreement with MrDibble: the era is just rich with interests, cabals, schemers, filibusters, and adventurers.
You might treat it like a GURPS supplement: offer several campaign suggestions. One of them would be the “anti-Nazi crusade.” Another might be the “expand the glorious revolution of the Soviet workers’ rights” game. Yet another might simply be “Map the unmapped places that are still left in the world.” 1939, if memory serves, saw a major Mongolian exploration in search of dinosaur bones. Indiana Jones, step aside!
What -punk is a story set after the Great War when zeppelins rule the skies? I’m thinking specifically of The Flying Cloud, which has had proto-fascists as villains, but they’re not yet in control of any countries. They’ve also had as villains power-scheming nobles with no particular ties to any political ideologies, American gangsters, Russians, and at least one mysterious faction that doesn’t seem to be toed to any of them.
I totally thought you just made those up, and then decided to Google it just in case. Interesting–I’ll need to read some more about this. FWIW, I never would’ve dreamed of atomic dieselpunk–it’s very much 1919-1944 or so for me. (The inspirational time period definitely extends into WW2, but I’m not sure exactly how far.) Once you’ve unleashed the power of the atom, we’re wandering off into something else that I forget the name for–basically the aesthetic of Fallout, but not necessarily post-apocalyptic.
Anyway, interesting points all. I had thought about the Yellow Peril, but it would have to be handled quite delicately–if there are racist elements in this game, I’d rather them be the baddies, not the structure of the damn setting itself. That said, I’m picturing something that isn’t set in this world anyway, and could involve some fantastic elements, there’s probably a way to finesse it and introduce a parallel that’s not racist. Maybe I can get George Lucas to give me some ideas. 
Fair point, robert_columbia. Arguably steampunk pretty well covers from the industrial revolution up through to shortly before WWI.
That is quintessential dieselpunk. Think The Rocketeer, Tailspin and Crimson Skies…
I’d assumed you’d know as those are basically the guys who defined the genre - not wrote the first works, just defined what distinguishes dieselpunk from steampunk.
Understood - but it’s possible to make that whole side of things
a) part of character backstory options
b) different in some way - so maybe “Scandinavian Peril” - we’re so used to thinking of the modern Scandinavians as Nobel-giving, sauna-loving Good Guys, but they used to be Vikings, damn it! So what about an (initially underground) cult that combines a technophile bent with Nordic world conquest - maybe they feel left out of the Great Game, and being largely uninvolved in WWI as combatants, they feel the post-Armstice global environment is the best time to strike - think fleets of longship-inspired airships doing lightning raids on all that fat colonial shipping and only leaving trace clues for PCs to find…
My own X-punk setting (more aetherpunk than dieselpunk - but the setting is alternate-1911, anyway) has as primary villains the Edison-Ford Corporation, which largely owns America. Granted, they’re also the public front for a hidden sinister eugenics/Aztec death cult - but that’s how these things go.
Sky Captain!
…
Except in this world, trains are no big deal, and are still mostly pulled by steam, and heavier than air flyers are regarded as a curiosity of no particular significance. I’m not sure there’s even any diesel anywhere, which makes it a bit hard to justify a “dieselpunk” label.
Is this set after our Great War? Because there was certainly diesel around then and planes had already made their mark. Or is it an alternative history thing? In which case, more likely steampunk. Are there lots of people in frock coats?
I trust that this is something of a joke. But it gets to the problem I see in so much of such discussions, that it’s all about trappings, rather than outlook and essence. Why should anyone care whether a particular story has zeppelins or not? More important is whether it is dystopian, claustrophobic, oppressive; or, optimistic, expansive, adventurous.
The note of joy is important. That, and everything that it implies and goes with, is what really distinguished “steam” from cyberpunk (which, unlike its stylistic namesakes, actually was punk, grotty and nihilistic).
There needn’t be the “edge,” though. This is fiction. There doesn’t have to be any impending monstrosity.
More or less. The divergence point was some time during the war, before the US entered, when Wilson was able to successfully negotiate a “peace without victory” treaty that ended it much earlier than in our timeline. I’m sure that diesel exists in the world (and come to think of it, I think that seagoing ships do mostly run on diesel), but it’s far from prominent.
Can we stop with the whole damn “…punk” ending. Yes, Cyberpunk was a great idea, except for the “…punk” park.
It’s not “steampunk” for gawdssakes.