'Wierd War II/X' settings

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Mon May 28, 2018 11:02 am

What games, stories out there have settings about supernatural or super science elements in WWII?

Hellboy comes to mind but how about things that focus more on technology than demons? I'm particularly interested in thoughtfully designed "what if WW2 lasted longer?" vehicles, practical or super science.

Doesn't actually have to be WW2 but just have that sort of aesthetic and general tech level, like Crimson Skies has zany piston engine fighters and war blimps.

phlapjackage · Post by **phlapjackage** » Mon May 28, 2018 11:27 am

For video games, how about the Wolfenstein series?

For stories, maybe something like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or more recently, Penny Dreadful or The Man In The High Castle. Or even, the first Captain America movie?

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Mon May 28, 2018 1:33 pm

Über is a comic book series about manufacturable superhumans showing up in the latter days of the war and extending the conflict horribly.

mlangsdorf · Post by **mlangsdorf** » Mon May 28, 2018 2:51 pm

Stuart Slade has a book series, starting with The Big One, that starts with the premise that Halifax managed to legally replace Churchill in 1940 and then negotiated a peace treaty with Germany from there. The US gets pulled into the war a little earlier, and the war lasts a little longer since the US can't use England as a staging ground. I'm not 100% sold on all his alternate history, but it's very readable.

As far as role-playing games:
* Savage Worlds has a Weird War 2 setting, I think - Weird War II: Blood on the Rhine.

* Godlike is a One-Roll Engine game about super powers in WW2.

* Mutants and Masterminds had a Golden Age of comics book, which covered WW2.

* Gear Krieg is a role-playing and war game about small mecha in WW2, based on the Silhouette engine. The mecha plausibly evolve from armored cars, which is neat, but the editing is atrocious (I say this as a fan of the series).

* GURPS has an entire line of well-researched WW2 books, with lots of break-out boxes about how things could have been different. There is a Weird War II book, which covers a wide variety of alternate WW2 scenarios: from the plausible (a better executed Mediterranean strategy that cuts British supply lines while securing oil fields for Germany) to the implausible (secret societies turn America fascist in 1934) to the impossible (magic and kaiju). It's GURPS, so mechanically you may not like the books, but they are well researched and try to present the history to be accessible for gaming.
It also has a 2 page bibliography with about 120 sources, if you want to dig deeper. And it's available in PDF for $10.

erik · Post by **erik** » Mon May 28, 2018 3:01 pm

Webcomic of WWII where each side starts fielding supers. Only a handful on each side tho.
http://thespecialistscomic.com/comic/

Harry Turtledove's World War series where WWII is interrupted by an alien colonization invasion. Warning, he's a hack writer and you'll notice repetitive garbage as you read on.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Mon May 28, 2018 9:37 pm

Ian Tregillis's Milkweed Triptych trilogy (Bitter Seeds/The Coldest War/Necessary Evil) is about an alternate WW2 where Germany engineers psionic supersoldiers to help them win the war so England counters with Elder God-summoning warlocks, all with one precog manipulating both sides towards her own goals.

Pariah Dog · Post by **Pariah Dog** » Mon May 28, 2018 9:53 pm

erik wrote:Webcomic of WWII where each side starts fielding supers. Only a handful on each side tho.
http://thespecialistscomic.com/comic/

Harry Turtledove's World War series where WWII is interrupted by an alien colonization invasion. Warning, he's a hack writer and you'll notice repetitive garbage as you read on.

Holy crap I remember reading that web comic, it was just coming out at such a lethargic pace that I eventually forgot about it.

Another video game that got did something like this was Freedom Force vs the 3rd Reich. 1960's golden age comic book super heroes going back in time to unfuck history after someone changes it so the Axis win WWII.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue May 29, 2018 4:57 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godlike_( ... ying_game)

OgreBattle · Post by **OgreBattle** » Wed May 30, 2018 9:27 am

Turns out there's comics called "Wierd War Tales" that do a lot of fun stuff

SeekritLurker · Post by **SeekritLurker** » Wed May 30, 2018 5:06 pm

Brave New World is a (silly) supers game from the turn of the century, about a fascist America where Kennedy never stopped being president. It has a similarly silly setting book called Glory Days, set in WWII, with all the various sides having their own supers. (If I were feeling ambitious, I'd OSSR Brave New World.)

The system is so bad that the author once put in a foreword/afterword somewhere that you should just take the setting and play use Champions instead. And it's a very silly game that takes itself very seriously.

Delta Green and its sourcebook Countdown have bits about secret Cthulhu bits going on as background during the war, but it tops out at around The Dirty Dozen in terms of the size of the conflicts. It's more about doing spy stuff, though. And, of course, it is woefully light on scenarios you can do with that - it's all little bits of throwaway backstory.

The Devil's Rock is a fairly-decently-done, tiny cast horror movie about a commando raid on an island where a demon-summoning or something went wrong. You can find it on Netflix.

Whiysper · Post by **Whiysper** » Thu May 31, 2018 9:14 am

SeekritLurker wrote:If I were feeling ambitious, I'd OSSR Brave New World.

The system is so bad that the author once put in a foreword/afterword somewhere that you should just take the setting and play use Champions instead. And it's a very silly game that takes itself very seriously.

Do eeeeettt.... you know you want to...

.