This is an absolutely wonderful idea posted by David J Prokopetz for a diverse, yet still historically accurate adventuring party. You may not have realized that these periods overlap, but the absolutely do. So you could have characters from Victorian England, the Old West, Meiji era Japan, and French privateering and it would still make sense. Anyway people liked this idea so much that there’s even character art and backstories for it! Here’s the thread:
Source: David J Prokopetz
There’s an anime series called Aparre Ranma(?) About a samurai protecting a smart kid who goes to America to participate in a car race. he meets European royalty, local grease monkeys, gun slingers – the works. Very similar to the above idea…
“Pointy Hat” the YouTuber actual did a ‘with a twist’ video where he made the “Cowboy” sub-class for the Ranger – Would make playing out this concept even easier!
Early gold rush san fransico was insane. There was money and wealth poring in from the miners but everything of value had to come down the oregon trail (the whole – you have died of dsyentary game). You had a prostitute with diamond teeth grillz and people spending half a million dollars in a mad nights of debauchery after striking it rich. Everyone in the world wanted in on the action, and adventurers from every corner of the globe came looking to score.
On top of that, you had mad animal fights where exotic animals from around the globe where pitted against each other in a batshit mental live-action pokemon duel! Lions and tigers were made to fight bears??!
Some 90,000 people came in 1849 looking for gold with half being from overseas. Just about anyone from any nation had a reason to be there, in a city with almost no laws and fortunes to be made. You want a Zulu/shoalin/gunslinger/german aristocrate/rajistan party help protect a village of Wintu indians from a death squad of miners, then this is the place.
As a side note, as most of the miners rushing in were men, this led to a whole gay/drag subculture springing up
Presumably this also means that an aging former samurai could have fought in WWI.