@Sunny I'll be honest man the reason 4TMU was the tech that it was and the style was the discovery of a crashed UFO that contained a hyper advanced Diesel Engine and people just based all their tech around that and didn't really know how to improve upon it significantly enough to really make a suitable replacement because it was just SO efficient on the fuel to power ratios.
Add in the story I was running with CHECKMATE and their conspiracy to destroy the global climate in a way that would allow for the takeover of their alien overlords, and the Society For A Brighter Tomorrow effectively strong arming the culture to conform to THEIR ideal of tomorrow through assassination and mental domination through subtle propaganda campaigns and blackmail, and you had the world the way it was.
I have thought about a lot of this stuff and I do have it in the wings I just haven't really gotten the chance I need to share a lot of that stuff with people.
I was actually inspired in that regard with fallout. If you follow the lore you actually find out that the reason that the society regressed back to the 50's style was actually government intervention and a series of intentional reforms and actions by the united states government to attempt to push back the Chinese communist influence.
Wholesomeness regulations were implemented forcing what kinds of media could be made and they effectively through forced control, assassination, and government regulation FORCED culture to stagnate because anything BUT cultural stagnation was met with extreme force because it was scene as communist influence. McCarthyism cranked up to 100.
Further in fallout the Microchip was NOT invented resulting in technology relying further on Microswitches and vacuum tubes which again I basically took wholesale for the 4tmu idea.
Nuclear energy was big, but it was the discovery of alien technology that ultra propelled american technology into the absolute forefront and made them confident enough that they could put the decency laws into effect. With china stealing some of that technology and reverse engineering it. Eventually the culmination of these technologies would be the microfusion core which would have ended energy scarcity entirely. One core able to last approximately 250 years before needing to be recharged.
Uh sorry for the slight ramble, but the point is I HAVE thought all this through in a fair few regards. I've also done my research into how other people have thought this through which is nice and honestly how I get most of my information. An old slogan comes to mind: Plagerize from so many different sources that it becomes a new idea, because there is no such thing as a new idea.
Now all that said and out of the way I legitimately just want to make a game that can as I said get to that magic threshhold and keep it there. The bright side is that I'm disabled I got plenty of free time to do it. The downside is I've got terrible health so sometimes I vanish to deal with hospitalization.
I've pretty much repeated myself on everything else really, but yeah this is for spitballing figuring out some ideas that would work.
I know some folks are saying that, in DMs as well as on here that their issue in particular was not feeling there was a progressing story to join in on. I would say the issue I was told more often of as I was actually running it was people who were well to put it blunt unwilling to learn the setting and leaving as a result dropping our playercount.
My other staff can attest to this. It was a constant issue we had to deal with. People joining in and just going "uhhh I don't what how?" and no mater how much I put up explaining it the thing never clicked.
Now of course this could very much be me being a really wordy bastard. I know I use way too much text to say way too little, however if I'm using something that fits for the most part more in line with a more familiar world for people? It might work better.
Honestly another one of those things I've always wanted to do is Earth-2 where it's set at the late phase of the golden age. So 1960's or so, but you've got the Earth-2 continuity and characters and that feel, but over and over I get told the same thing.
We don't want historical settings we didn't LIVE in historical settings we don't want to learn. And that really breaks my heart. There aren't enough people who ARE willing to learn a custom setting like that which is more interesting. At least in the cape biz as I've seen so far.
What it really seems people want is: Modern day. Multiverse.
Nothing else 'sells' DC only games even with an active Dev team don't sell. Marvel only doesn't sell. The market has shown over and over that people don't REALLY want anything new.