Fallout

Holy shit, we actually hit the bump limit so let's make a third thread
Does anyone mind going through the effort to making a good OP to copy & paste if we make it to 4th?

Other urls found in this thread:

dropbox.com/s/piljepe7l3wcd4c/Fallout The Big Apple Wasteland.pdf?dl=0
mediafire.com/file/779ocuy1quxa7qb/Fallout PnP Complete Kit.zip
mediafire.com/?jpk043dwnhsf60i
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A
youtu.be/ZhhQrFfzFM4
google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1puuQVpbfh4ofYflJxJPB6iul6JQ&hl=en_US&ll=35.400385207200934,-100.01805342817931&z=4
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

Resource links scraped from the last thread
dropbox.com/s/piljepe7l3wcd4c/Fallout The Big Apple Wasteland.pdf?dl=0
mediafire.com/file/779ocuy1quxa7qb/Fallout PnP Complete Kit.zip
mediafire.com/?jpk043dwnhsf60i

Maybe we should get a mega folder going?

Yeeeeee question still stands though for custom Raider factions or nations.

I'd be down for megas and generals. I have been running a campaign in the setting since around 2013 on and off using Rogue Trader rules. I find that the rules suit the brutality of the setting.

I cribbed a lot from the original fallout 3 (Van Buren) for the intro, the players were prisoners in a high-tech robot ran facility that the AI running it had kept it at max capacity for 200 years, sending out robots to kidnap more inmates whenever someone died. The players of course had to get their explosive collars off and escape, their next task was to dig the implanted pip-boys out of their forearms and get the robots chasing them to stop. It has been three years. None of them have attempted this yet, and there are robots still chasing them.

The what now?

Can't blame them for not wanting to give up Pip-Boys.

They're not full pip-boys, they are basically a display that gives you a basic health read-out and contains a transponder. I believe I gave them a slight bonus to health rolls whilst having it, but really I think the cons far, far outweigh the pros.

I posted last thread about a plan to run in Arizona after the fall of Caesar's legion. Does anyone have any ideas for other factions or quests in the area? The party currently involves a Mormon doctor, a sleazy/charismatic caravan runner, an intelligent but sheltered girl with a cyborg dog, and a super-mutant sheriff.

>there's a fallout: equestria game on roll20

I want to die.

Hrm. Field Scribes seem to be amazing utility characters, especially in a BoS campaign. They seem to be generalists at hacking, lockpicking, healing, repairing, and just general scientific/mechanical knowledge. Of course, this leaves them without much in the ways of combat abilities.
I want to play one.

Ill share with you my write up once its done. Itll be a while though.

Do you have any docs you can share on the Detroit Wasteland?

>I'm not sure how up to date the file is, as we've put it on hold
Any plans on getting back to it?

You know considering the super science crap from the cold war that Fallout has I'm wondering why they had a resource crisis when IRL we experimented with shit like these:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Nuclear_Power_Program
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MH-1A

MM-1: ~2.5 MW electric, Conceptualized but never built. Conceived as the "Military Compact Reactor". A truck mounted liquid metal cooled reactor, with shorter start up and shut down times. Requiring no shielding of Earth or exclusion zones to protect the operators from radiation. With its reactor core containing the energy equivalent of over 8 million pounds of gasoline. Envisioned to have higher power density; its power output meant for the first time the powerplant would weigh less than a diesel generator of comparable output. While initially meant to power bases and field operations, the program was shifted to the Army's "Energy Depot Concept" to investigate the production of synthetic fuels. The reactor and associated trailers would produce liquid fuels for tanks, trucks, armored personnel carriers, and aircraft and drastically reduce the vulnerable petroleum logistical supply chain. The associated trailers would use chemical conversion processes to convert the reactor's waste heat energy into useful fuels using elements universally found in air and water (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and carbon), potentially producing methanol, liquid hydrogen and/or ammonia.

I mean this shit seems right up the alley when it comes to Fallout.

Guy who started Fallout 1 - I'm not trying to knock on the game, it's just harder than I expected, especially in getting used to the controls and combat and all. Found a quick start guide online, there's a lot of stuff I didn't even think about trying.

Little worried there won't be enough interest for a regular thread, but let's see how this goes.

Holy shit. Rogue Trader Fallout is actually a great idea.

I'm basically only able to guess, but I imagine that Fallout did have those on some level. They just couldn't - or wouldn't - make enough of them to alleviate a serious energy crisis. There was probably more demand than could be provided for. Rising military threat, and a bit of corporate corruption, probably kept most of the nuclear development towards weapons, with anything meant for the civilian market probably being handled either by large corporations and companies, or being placed in Vaults to help keep them powered. Maybe they never managed to develop synthetic fuel, or could only do so in small amounts.

/x/ fag here

Do anyone else wish that Fallout was more spoopy than just being sort of based off of a kitsch 50's aesthetic and sci Fi setting?

A common theory of the creation of ghosts and demons comes from the release of excess energy and emotional trauma. I feel like a nuclear apocalypse would make things much more haunted in that sense and it would make an interesting additional theme to fallout if we were placed in an area more affected by radiation. Video game wise it would add a whole new element to reinvent some of the fallout universe. It would be a good mix of horror and ultra violence (with power armor and super mutants)

youtu.be/ZhhQrFfzFM4

This desu

>Be me
>The legionfag from last thread

I can just make some b8 real quick about how degenerates need to be assimilated or executed to purge the wasteland from raiders, chems, and muties.

I can go on about why the Enclave is objectively the best choice in fallout 2 and 3

What would Fallout look like if it took place in 1950s-esque Soviet Union?

You mean if the Soviet Union kept it's 1950's aesthetic into 2077? Because that's the only way for fallout to happen there.

Who knows, the FEV was an American invention so they probably have their own version of raging mutants. They already have bores the size of medium bears, so it probably would just be frozen version of a fallout in the US with 100% more trees considering most of Siberia wouldn't be nuked.

old thread

I agree with this guy. I ran a short-lived game of Fallout based on Baltimore, it ruled. I've got some docs from that if people want them. They're pretty scant though.

One thing to be careful of in Fallout 1 and 2 is if enemies are hidden behind something as that can make trying to click on them a pixel hunt.

The only answer to that is Dead Money, and there's a reason why it's the best DLCs in the series.

Yeah Dead Money was pretty spoopy, but it wasn't that paranormal. The most paranormal stuff you get in fallout are the Dunwich building in Fallout 3 , then the other Lovecraft nod in fallout 4, then there is dead money and the alien references. I meant something along the lines where the sheer amount of energy released from the apocalypse leads to massive paranormal surges involving demons, ghosts, crytpids, trans dimensional beings, etc.

I mean, I think it's about as paranormal as Fallout will get. The ghosts and the cloud were both pretty unexplained, if I remember correctly, and of course there's the whispers in Goodsprings, but I doubt that really counts.

Whispers in goodsprings?

>whispers in Goodsprings

What whispers are these? I don't remember this at all.

>Whispers in good springs

Do go on

>It's about as paranormal as it gets
I mean other than the Dunwich building and hints towards Cthulu existing in game.

>Ghosts are unexplained

Actually the ghosts we're explained as being proto-ghouls affected by the gas that surrounds the Casino , so like how ghouls are healed by radiation ghosts are healed by the Cloud in a way where they are virtually immortal.

Ya but thats Bethesda.

And they also did Kid in a Fridge and allowed Moria to transform into a ghoul for reasons

They also did Cabot house xd

What i mean is you choose your own canon for the region you GM in and you don't necessarily need to copy the lore of Bethesda Obsidian or Interplay

Honestly, I really don't. I get that sort of stuff from other series like Stalker and Metro, where the spookiness and supernatural elements add to what the series are trying to go for in a lack of stability, despair, and confusion.

Ignoring for a moment my very personal desire to get away from settings like Warhammer and most fantasy settings where the supernatural is everywhere, I think it would be bad for Fallout as a setting to include those elements beyond a few scary varieties of mutants. Fallout as a whole focuses not on destabilization, but the rebuilding of a society after an apocalypse, the strength of individuals, and the folly of human failings as well as the power of human achievement. It's like...you know how almost no-one likes the aliens, since among many other things they're implied to have started the Great War? Supernatural spooky stuff would have the same effect, even if it was only used to be more spoopy. How am I supposed to focus on themes of what it means to be human and what hope or failure comes of forgetting the past and building the new, if the game is trying to make me scared of what's in every shadow?

I feel like I'm not making sense, but it's late so fuck it.

On that note, I've been toying with ideas for a fallout centered in my area of the Midwest, and it's actually pathetic how little I really know about my own state, let alone those surrounding mine. But I still think it has merit just because it's so important to me and would have more effort put in than if I'd tried to write something around Idaho or Kentucky.

And I should also note that yes, supernatural elements have been present in Fallout - that Super Mutant that could do magic, the oracle kid, the old lady that could 'feel your pain.' The last one is particularly annoying to me, but they're small enough or tongue-in-cheek enough that they aren't affecting the fabric of the setting as a whole.

It's not a quest or really much of anything, it's just an easter egg. However, if you stand in the Goodspring's Graveyard at night you can hear the sounds of whispering.

>Investigate the voice: A child will be calling from a refrigerator near a ruined house south of University Point, east of Jamaica Plain. Upon shooting the handle off the refrigerator a child ghoul by the name of Billy will step out.
>Talk to Billy: He will inform the Sole Survivor that he had fled to the fridge when the Great War started and that he had been trapped in the fridge for two hundred years. He tells them that he wants to find his family and return to his home in Quincy.

What the actual fuck

Yeah you already have stalker but I kind of want a post apocalyptic game with supernatural elements in it that have more of a hardcore survivalist nature to it. Fallout was originally a hyper violent and brutal game conceptually even when it was just a turn based RPG.

What I'm kind of hoping for is a Fallout that is mostly irradiated desert land and ruins that is unusually paranormal and violent. Imagine the Glow but as a whole map.

I don't mind the aliens because they're 50s-as-fuck. I mind the stupid implication about them starting the Great War but ignoring that I enjoy them as a send-up to the chrome future of the time.

Similarly, I wouldn't mind the occasional send-up to classic horror movies, but it'd have to play on the goofy with a subtle undertone of depressing. Like a serial killer who found Bella Lugosi movies and acts like exaggerated Dracula, and if you have Wild Wasteland, you get a little musical cue when he appears and if you come back a week later the dude's still alive.

Sidenote: every game should always have Wild Wasteland and it's a fucking crime 3 and 4 don't.

That's not Fallout tho. That's "generic spoopy post-apocalyptic shithole."

Fallout is a satirical over-glorification of Americana combined with the horror of apocalyptic obliteration and a mixture of humor and depressing. It's big and colorful and shiny Atomic Future Gone Wrong. It isn't just "post-apocalyptica," which is why it always drives me fucking crazy when people talk about Fallout set in other nations. If you want that, it's not Fallout, because Fallout is inherently Americana. You can still DO that kind of thing - Mad Max is basically Fallout Australia - but it's not really Fallout because if you try and jam Fallout concepts into it, they break down.

Similarly if you try and jam too much paranormal bullshit into it the paranormal bullshit takes over and it stops being Fallout.

Also, Paranormal shit steals player agency like nobody's business, and Fallout is at its best when it's about your actions, not the world.

>More 50's kitsch themes

See that's the issue I have, I likes the original themes of fallout being a somber grimdark mixed in with light satire that emulated the 50's aesthetic in less nostalgic but more critical tone. The Easter egg stuff is fine, but I kind of want to see just what the worst the greater wasteland has to offer and have the game feel more serious again. Maybe return to the timed events again.

I mean my happy spot is New Vegas, where you can have the 50s kitsch and shit like Fisto along the incredibly dark and depressing shit like selling Arcade Gannon to Caesar or having Benny crucified.

There's room for both and when done competently (i.e., not by Bethesda) they work really well together to underline just how fucked-up the Wasteland really is.

Well again that's the issue I have , the original fallout left so much to the imagination whenever you were , for the first time, discovering what death claws were. The legend around certain creatures has become to established and it feels like the series is living too much in the shadow of its original glory.

There is still a lot more to the fallout universe that has been left unexplored and with all the paranormal stuff that has already been incorporated into the game , having some sort of nut scientist toying with the paranormal would make sense.

>it's become too established
>therefore we should contradict the series on every level except for these throw-away elements and completely toss out the tone for a generic supernatural horror thing
>that's logical

How, exactly?

I'm not even trying to make fun of you - I want to understand how you think a complete turn-around is a logical extension of your prior point. Please explain this to me.

Yea.
And then you follow billy and theres a bunch of raiders (no idea how they sustain themselves or who they are they're just targets for the FPS protagonist) and you eventually get to his family and the quest ends

Or you can enslave Billy

Neither decision has any consequences whatsoever and the only thing the quest does is throw you out of the game

Theres a bunch of other stuff like this such as the cabbot house or some of the dialogue in the game

>dark and depressing shit like selling Arcade Gannon to Caesar or having Benny crucified.

See I guess that to me wasn't dark enough, because I thought new Vegas was light on that front. Some of that is probably due to censorship I'm sure, but still I felt it wasn't enough. New Vegas was amazing because of all the political thought that went into it, which put a new spin on the fallout game type.

I want to see the bad ending of fallout 1 where you get to watch the people in your vault get slaughtered by super mutants and where the Master has psychic powers.

>for a generic supernatural horror thing

Fallout already has grotesque and horror elements in it everywhere though, especially in fallout 1. This isn't a diverge from anything it would be a return to it's roots if anything.

Then again most fans would probably think the same as you, and wouldn't get it. Maybe the wasteland is more than just super mutants and death claws and a new breed of creatures are out there in the wastes.

You know you can nuke the entire Mojave, right? If you want senselessly, brutally dark you can pretty much just let that happen. Or nuke the side you don't like.

There's also Old World Blues, which is slathered in sadness and depression and is just a giant send-up to Venture Brothers' theme of "failure." Everybody seems to miss how fucked-up and sad it is in the wacky goofy lel scientists.

And then there's Honest Hearts.

I mean, the dark didn't go anywhere. New Vegas hides it only a little, in implication, but it's still there. Cook-Cook raped somebody, for God's sakes. You'd never see that in a Bethesda game proper. You can sell the Fiends chems - Chems they are most assuredly using to kill a shitload of people in Westside. You can agree with Vulpes Inculta that the Legion's "let's salt the fucking earth because these people were nice to us" line of bullshit is beautiful. You can sell out Goodsprings to the Powder Gangers pretty much because you feel like it.

You can tear a small abused slave child's teddy bear in half in front of her to make her cry.

Seriously, the game is fucked up. Just because you didn't go looking for it doesn't mean it's not there.

Wait not everyone kills the Vulpes when they first meet him?

I usually do but I've done a Legion playthrough once or twice. Telling Vulpes Inculta that the Legion's justice is beautiful nets you a reputation boost that helps you get access to Legion stuff.

If I'm not intentionally doing a Legion run I cap the fucker hard though.

There were like a dozen legionnaires with him, and I'm a cowardly talky guy.

...

Post some fuckin maps lads

Its not just goodsprings, you can hear it at most graves at night and around camp forloron hope.

You guys what did the lone wanderer do after Fo3 if you
>nuked everything
>poisoned the wasteland
>potentially fucked up everything in the pitt and point lookout (although idk what to fuck up in lookout)

Would he just travel north and fuck up shit there?

Maybe he'd clash with Nate for who'd be the bigger most randomly evil person, maybe they'd team up and fuck up shit way down south

Why is Fallout a more boring setting than Elder Scrolls?
Why is it I find Skyrim more fun than Fallout 4 even if I'm in the mood for "I literally want to play Skyrim with guns"

Probably because you haven't played the good Fallout games desu. Either play the classics or New Vegas, it's a pretty damn good setting.

When did they try and imply aliens started the great war?

A ZAX pretty much straight out tells you it was probably a bored AI because there would be no reason for China to fire their nukes.

How far away from their territory could west coast factions realistically establish an outpost from?

I need some bull n bear up in my east coast scenario but i think it might be a bit too hamfisted

google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1puuQVpbfh4ofYflJxJPB6iul6JQ&hl=en_US&ll=35.400385207200934,-100.01805342817931&z=4

not sure how accurate this is, but it always tickles my autism when people do this shit. When I run my Fallout campaign, definitely going to be using Google Maps.

>53923675
Considering how few fucks Bethesda shows by adding things like Ancient aliens you'll probably get ghosts and things like that in some spooky FO5 mission.

Looks really nice but you can't edit your own stuff in right?

oops

Designing open worlds:
Do i
>write down places + what should generally happen there and let the plot develop depending on what my players do
>have a plot with 3+ options that onfold depending on what the players do with mostly improvised locations

The original Fallout games already had alien easter eggs, and iirc there was a whole quest about ghosts in Fallout 2.

The ghosts were actually people that was in Modoc right? And the Aliens were more like fun Easter eggs.

Don't misunderstand me I dont really care when there added in for fun like the crashed ship easter eggs and the mothership zeta DLC was still fun even if I thought it didn't fit with Fallout but adding things to the main plot like aliens created Humans and adding overt paranormal elements doesn't fit in with any of the tones or themes of Fallout at all.

With the new Tabletop Fallout coming out I am svraping my WIP 4k Fallout.
Anyone interested in seeing the failed mindscape of a fa/tg/uy?

I agree, I was just saying they didn't add aliens, and you're right about the ghosts.

Been using This is Not a Test, myself.
But then again I assume most people would be.

Tried to post this in the old thread this morning but it'd reached the limit.

I might be beating a red smear that used to be a horse, but I feel like the Institute was really bland. I've only played a BoS playthrough in F4 so far, but I feel like the Coursers should've been built up as more of a "G-Man" type of thing and the synths should have had more interactions. Maybe a Railroad playthrough would show more of this (but fuck the Railroad) but they just felt very underutilized.

Imagine if instead of an underground Apple HQ, the Institute was more like a "rebuilt 50's America" underground with Synths walking around in poodle skirts and...50's clothes. Anyone read Warren Ellis's Supergods? Kinda like the American cyborg's "heaven".

Would've made them more tempting to join for my PC's playthrough.

Oh yeah they didn't add aliens, but they were the ones saying they made Human civilization, sorry should have been clearer about that.

Sure

You've never seen A Boy And His Dog, have you? You should. Lots of Fallout came from it.

If you don't like the overt paranormal stuff, how would you feel about psykers being more prominent?

I liked how clinical the Institute was. In my opinion they had the right concept and aesthetic, even if it was too much. It looked like the old sci-fi idea of futuristic. All white and chrome and colors and such. If anything I felt like they should have doubled down on that. I remember getting down there for the first time and being annoyed that even deep underground in a place you have to fucking teleport into, some shit was still grimy and dirty. Ultimately the problem is with the execution, not the concept.

They should be pretty rare and more like the Forecaster and less like mama Murphy. I mean, since they're a byproduct of FEV Mutation they fit in with Fallout's themes so its not all bad.

One of the reasons Chris Avellone thought they shouldn't be too prominent is because they would have a lot of power;

"For Fallout fan-fiction purposes, you are welcome to make use of the psykers and their potential from Fallout, but I'd be careful - the psykers in Fallout show some pretty over-the-top mutations that could take the world to Childhood's End faster than you can say "uh, his eyes are glowing?"

>Childhood's End
I never understood what he meant by this.

Book where children start being born as psychics and eventually take over. They turn out to be seeded by ET's as an "uplift" for humanity. Nomies go extinct.

No I havent. Googling now.

Looks like the tits. Is it on Hulu/Netflix/other-Prolefeed? Susan Benton was hot apparently.

I think it's on YouTube for like $2

Ah, I see. I wouldn't want to do something like that anyway. If I were to include psykers they would have mild abilities at best, maybe barring exceptions for big bads. Things like compulsion, danger sense, being able to tune into surface thoughts, etc. Nothing terribly overt or outward, and I think having the powers incur migraines or temporarily reduced INT, PER, and CHA is a good way to make sure players who go that route aren't always abusing their powers.

In Bethesda's infinite wisdom on Mothership Zeta they included an alien archive that has them attempting to extract nuclear launch codes from an American soldier.

>A ZAX pretty much straight out tells you it was probably a bored AI because there would be no reason for China to fire their nukes.
This sounds just as bad. And didn't China fire their nukes because the US whupped their fucking asses with the deployment of power armor?

There were two cases, one cut wholesale with Sulik's tribal village, that had you talking to legit paranormal apparitions to help them move on to the afterlife. F2 was also a kitchen sink of pop culture references and one off wacky encounters but atleast they kept it contained. Bethesda's just taking the piss now.

>atleast they kept it contained
The entirety of New Reno says otherwise.

I would love a spookier post-apocalyptic game, but I'm glad it's not Fallout. I don't think having overt supernatural elements would make Fallout better - things like the Dunwich building and borers work a lot better.

I took Terrifying Presence just so I could make him piss himself before he died.

New Reno distilled the best parts of F2 into a single hive of scum and villany.

To the guy who did Fallout 2.0 - Wastelands

I fucking love you. Gonna try to play this with my friends after printing it out

Bestiary being incomplete because i can probably convert a lot of the NV values

Pretty sure Point Lookout was FEV + nuclear fallout on inbred trailer trash.

How would a fallout game set in ronto be?

Ya what i meant what the LW would fuck up in Point Lookout

He could kill the daughter and let Tobar live i guess but other than that theres not much

Probably similar to the pitt in how industrialized it is.

Maybe it has a slave population, maybe theres a bunch of slave workers and free workers and a free workers union.

Some conflict between slaves and slavemasters is always a good hook imho

Disappear into legend like every Fallout protagonist ever. Probably by taking Mothership Zeta to go burn and pillage the cosmos.

I've been playing with the restoration patch so long that I don't remember if it was cut content or not but there's also Anna's ghost in the Den.

On the topic of supernatural Fallout I think the themes would be similar but you'd have to change all the kitschy sci-fi shit for kitschy fantasy shit. Things like "the old golem who remembers before the bombs dropped" or "the sword in the stone" work really well for the concept of looking forward while being scared of whats behind you. It'd inherently change the setting if you make it super-natural though and the only way to keep the setting themes would be to go more DnD Fantasy than Spoopy Ghosts and Shit

That'd be one way to give the setting some new shit to explore, make a sequel that's a spacecrawler rather than a mapcrawler.

>Things like "the old golem who remembers before the bombs dropped"

Were sentient humanlike robots a thing before the great war?

Cuz that would be a great plot hook

I think you could spin a lot of more traditionally fantasy angles from the sci-fi and "radiation is magic" aspects of the setting. You wouldn't even be deviating all that much, because as it's already been pointed out, Fallout already has high fantasy analogues. Brotherhood of Steel are a order of paladins, ghouls are undead, super mutants are orcs, etc. If you wanted to double down on this you could have psykers or energy weapon specialists be mages, have more unique strains of mutants to cover different races, all that stuff. For example, if you wanted vampires you could take The Family from Fallout 3 and make them into actual vampires. Humans that mutated to survive on blood and have mild psychic powers from the FEV to give them vampiric powers, like hypnosis or illusions. They spread the mutation through a bite, and since they originally mutated underground they lost their defenses from the sun, being unnaturally pale and easily burned.

A more DnD fantasy-esque Fallout homebrew would be cool and definitely doable, but I would understand if not everybody liked this angle.

Please note that Fallout 1 + 2 and New Vegas are the only reasonable (mainline) games and that you should not extract anything other than curios from the lore of 3 and 4.

For instance, one of the most egregious violations of both lore and common sense is that in Fallout 4 people have decided to create 'junk' weapons. There are over 300 million firearms in the United States today, even more than that in the alternate history timeline of Fallout, which saw widespread domestic deployment of the US military. There are over 6 billions rounds of ammunition in the US today, again, more in this alternate timeline. Firearms can be left without maintenance, exposed to the elements, for centuries, with no adverse effects. Post-nuclear America has a few million people living in it. There should be more than enough pre-War guns and bullets for everyone, by a huge margin. Furthermore, creating standardized, machined firearms is not only possible given the abundance of technical manuals that survived the apocalypse, it's actually /easier/, since gunsmithing and reloading tools are designed for that purpose. Creating a firearm out of 'junk' is incredibly difficult and unrewarding in comparison to making a proper firearm, or just picking up one of the several dozen in close proximity to you at any given time. This same kind of 'junk logic' pervades both of Bethesda's sorry entries to the series, and is unrepresentative of both the Fallout universe and even the barest conceptions of realistic post-apocalyptic civilization.