I've been reading the Fallout Pen and Paper rulebook over the last couple of days, and I have a simple question

I've been reading the Fallout Pen and Paper rulebook over the last couple of days, and I have a simple question

Is it any good?

You mean this one?

No. It slavishly copies every mechanic from the original game, including ones that don't work when you have to compute everything by hand, and the ones that barely worked in the original game.

This. I loved it as a kid but it was really obnoxious. Just steal the setting for a better system.

Well you are the one that read it.

I meant as in to play
I dont have any friends that like Fallout
ALl they know is that FO4 sucked and all the others are buggy as fuck and "not good enough for todays gaming standards".

There are plenty of other systems you can try instead

Most of them were posted or linked in the last Fallout thread Speaking of which, could whoever uploaded this image tell us more about their game? It was the only one mentioned but not actually posted in the thread.

> "not good enough for todays gaming standards".

You need to expunge the /v/ermin from your life.

That being said I hear yah, games can be tricky to feel out just by reading the book unless you have a lot of experience with other systems.

If you think it might be too complicated I'd say pick up Savage Worlds (it has a free starter rule thing on their website iirc) and then just applying that to the setting.

You're better off using gurps wasteland, just keep it cinematic and don't strive for realism, it's a great time

...

...

...

...

Noo, god no, no no no. It's a terrible system. Very very awful system. So much of the book is written so awkwardly, especially the Perks.

You have to know something about Fallout: the SPECIAL system was slapped together at the last minute. Fallout was titled "Fallout: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure", but shit happened and they got the special system, which is stupidly copied 1:1. You know all the many flaws of SPECIAL present in the games? They're even worse in a multiplayer RPG!

And as a role-playing game, it blows. There's no mechanics to encourage RPing. And if you ever want to have a conversation with an NPC, you'd better have Speech tagged because otherwise your only options are violence.

Fallout PnP is only barely recommendable if you *really* like Fallout 1 and 2 and *really* wish Van Buren was a thing. If you want to be creative and have fun RPing then play any other system.

These are badass

If you want to play Van Buren you should use JE Sawyer's Fallout RPG, since it's the one he and his friends used when they ran the campaign it was based on.

I meant to add, "So much of the book is designed and written so awkwardly, especially the Perks, the races, and the skills. One of the perks makes you do monthly roll-or-dies. That's how you know it's a shitty system."

The balance is especially bad. Sure it has the game's problem of INT dictating how powerful your character was, (10 INT gives you twice as many skill points per level over the average 5 INT. And 10 AGI gives you twice as many movement (action) points as 5 AGI, but the other stats don't give you nearly as much of a boon.) but other stuff like the Robot's hard armor trait or perk that makes them nigh-unkillable.
>Tight Nuts This robot was built to take the knocks. You get double the base Damage Resistance to any attack, but you gain only half the Hit Points back from repairs. Only Robots can choose this trait.
Robots get a base 40% Damage Resistance!! What the fuck is this shit? Why would you ever not take this? Our GM nerfed it after several robo-jihads.

Don't play Fallout PnP. Just dig through the PDF and you'll find tons of jank. Another example:
>Sneaking around takes a certain amount of concentration, planning, and luck. When a character wants to sneak, he or she should announce their intentions. The Gamemaster should then roll the character's sneak skill, and re-roll every minute thereafter.
Re-roll every minute? Instead of only rolling when your cover is at risk of being blown, like when you're crossing a room or trying to hide as a guard passes you? This really makes stealth unviable and unsatisfying, especially when default luck even Garrett would crit. fail 5% of the time.

Just use GURPS.

Yeah, and look how Van Buren turned out lololo. My point was that Fallout is NOT a multiplayer game and it is a million times not a role-playing game so trying to pretend it is will leave you with so much headache you'll wish Mad Max never existed. The only way the system could get any worse is if was made in Gamebyro.

>Yeah, and look how Van Buren turned out

Better than that POS Fallout 3

>Robots get a base 40% Damage Resistance!!
This is before Tight Nuts, mind you. With it you get 80%.

Oh also perks are listed in alphabetical order instead of by level, which makes them a pain in the ass to pick out. The system is beyond dumb.

My joke was that Van Buren got canceled, and good to see you didn't finish reading the rest of that paragraph.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but generally speaking, ANY fan made tabletop game which is a conversion of a video game is terrible. It's true of the Fallout games, the Pokemon games, the Elder Scrolls games, and probably many others I haven't seen or don't remember. Video games typically have a huge amount of crunch, because it is all done by the computer, so it doesn't matter how much math is behind something, it's all instantaneous. When fans port these games to tabletop, they try to emulate the actual mechanics, which are much too complex for a tabletop situation. The result is slow, tedious games which fail to capture the feel of what they are copying, because they are too busy copying the rules.

If you want to run any video game setting, my advice is to pick your favorite generic system, or whatever game is already pretty close to what you want, and just run that.

For Fallout, for example, you have Atomic Highway and Apocalypse World, both of which give you a similar setting with much stronger mechanics. Or if you want the exact same setting, you can use, from least crunch to most, Lasers and Feelings, RISUS, FATE, MiniSix, Big Eyes Small Mouth, Savage Worlds, BASH, or GURPS. Add some fluff, and any of those systems can emulate Fallout, from the ultra fast and simple to the incredible detailed and complex, and all of them will probably give you a better experience than the setting specific systems you see drift around this board on a weekly basis.

No

It just transfers all the vidya mechanics into pen and paper rules, word by word. Which means a lot of mechanics that take instant on PC, but require a lot of rolling and calculation as tabletop.

>not good enough for todays graphics standards
Here, FTFY, OP. Because the old games are perfect, gameplay-wise.

And if you want to play the setting, just grab Savage or GURPS Lite. Or GURPS: Reign of Steel for ideas and stats.

See the thing is there are so many generics that would be so much better than the system, but new RPG players, the only kind of person who could read through something like Fallout PnP and have the gall to ask if it's not completely abysmal, always have so many different unfamiliar brands of system shouted at them that they get so confused and terrified that they either quit entirely or pick the official one. Just because it says FALLOUT on the cover. So when you recommend him a dozen different systems you may think you're being helpful in dissuading him, but you're actually pushing him toward playing the worst system I have ever fucking played.

So OP, if you're still here, just go with the obvious chooooice.

>Game planned from the start to be based on GURPS
>Using any other system for it
Imagine the possibilities if Fallout was GURPS-based. The game would made it one of the most popular tabletop/

Makes you wonder how 4th edition would have turned out.

Fallout would have certainly been better, that's for sure.

I actually ran a six-month-long campaign of Fallout using Savage Worlds. It turned out pretty well. If there's interest, I can try to find my conversion notes and post them up.