One of the things that sold me so on Sandy Pug's Americana game was this section in the introduction:
"The 1950s in the United States are often remembered as a golden age - for one very specific
group of people. In truth, if you were anything besides white, male and middle class, the 1950s
were a less than stellar time to be around. Racism, sexism, ableism and anti-LGBTQ hate and
violence was incredibly strong and supported by a variety of systems that enforced brutal
oppressions against all manner of marginalized peoples.
Americana, as a setting, does not have these issues. Historically in this world, these
oppressions were never able to gain a systemic place in society. While individuals may harbour
hate or oppressive ideals, there is no system in place to enforce these things on swaths of the
population at large. In this idyllic version of the 1950s, there are people who are racist, but no
racial profiling policies, there are people who are anti-LGBTQ, but no push to make those
identities a medical problem to be cured. You will find little to no justification for how society got
this way, it just is. Consider it a bubble universe where, somehow, the world just turned out this
way.
When designing this world, it seemed we had three choices. We could ignore the elephant in
the room - that the 1950s was a rough time for a great number of people, we could make an
overt gesture of rewriting the time period and history to create a world free of these oppressions
while still somehow leading to the 1950s aesthetic so central to the game, or the third approach,
the one we went with, was to simply declare that this world is what it is, and move on. The first
option was right out, the second opened up the risk that we would be merely paying lip service
to inclusivity, and the third appeared like the kind of reclamation we desired from the game.
This is a game for those who are unable to bask in the aesthetic of this time period, who have
been told it’s not “for” them. Americana is for you."