Fallout Weekend General

Late-comer to the last thread, but people were asking about the various vaults and their experiments?

At least from the original design work, they had a few crazy ones in mind.

fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Bible

Also dat Fallout Bible. I remembered when we were harassing Avellone with all our questions on the Interplay forums. He was pretty bro-tier for responding to it all.

(Vaults found in Bible 0 (1-3) or 1 I believe under "Vault System).

I thought the Fallout Bible was a little questionably canon nowadays.

There was a thread on /v/ about vault experiments. Apart from the half dozen shota posts, there were three noteworthy ideas.

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it's still an interesting read.

Just replayed The Pitt.

Better than I remembered. Granted, the first I played I was pretty tired so I killed Ashur without listening what he had to say just to be done with it.

How do you guys come up with good tribal names?

Indeed on both accounts. I'm a hold out from the original two games since that's where I started, so that's my dig.

Especially when using Mical's PnP.

Chris was a writer for NV though. So there's that.

I guess I'm too old school neckbeard about "muh Fallouts." That and bugging him and the rest of Black Isle to spill the behind the scenes stuff.

The whole EPA level stuff is an interesting read and an idea for adventure seeds/a module. Really gives you a window into how Black Isle approached level design for their RPGs.

I use names of things specific to the location of wherever my game is set, and fuck with them until I get a good tribal name personally. Tribal names shouldn't be generic.

They can be simple - just an adverb and a noun - but should be somehow descriptive.

I mean, look at the tribes mentioned in New Vegas. The Twisted Hairs wore dreadlocks that had some meaning to them. The White Legs wore white bodypaint. The Vipers as they were originally conceived (but never got put in) worshiped a pit of snakes. The Great Khans acted as Mongols, the Iron Lines worshiped a train system.

It doesn't have to be so straightforward, but it's a good way to help you create an interesting tribe from little more than a name and forces you to be creative with so little, rather than trying to name an interesting idea. If you have the latter scenario, that's a good opportunity to make a name that's not quite so descriptive, like the Whachutu tribals in BoS, or the Point Lookout tribals of Fallout 3.

I don't have many problems to come up with name for actual tribes, but for members of said tribes. A couple of ideas I had were things like a normal name + something related to their ancestry or personal achievements, like Johnny Ironbreaker, who killed a Brotherhood paladin by sheer luck, or Sally Speaks-with-Bones who comes from a line of shamans.

Could someone explain how caps work to me?

I understand the basic idea that the caps are supposed to represent a certain amount of water, backed by Hub traders. But how does this work on the East Coast, or even in the Mojave? It's not as if you can easily trade in caps for water, it takes 10 caps to get you a bottle of water, not 1.

Thinking about running a Fallout hexcrawl, set around Lake Michigan, because that's where my players are. Flint might actually be less dangerous after the war, with drinkable water. The rust-belt might have some interesting domain-level conqueror play, with different cities having strategic resources, like vehicles from Detroit. Speaking of vehicles from Detroit, that gives me an excuse to do some Mad-Max style vehicular shit. Also, shenanigans like tribal raiders who ride enormous rad-moose into battle. Or FEV ascended apes in a vault for some campy planet-of-the-Apes shit. Also, the Great Lakes ports might have some rudimentary shipping and maritime trade, and pirates that take advantage of that.

Anybody have some good system agnostic sourcebooks? Anything canonical about the midwest I need to be aware of?

I plan on running this in GURPS, for what that's worth. One part irony, one part it's-a-good-system-for-this.

Most of the canon for the Midwest is pretty questionably canon, and most of it seems ignored. The only thing I know for certain is that there is (or was) an Enclave outpost in Chicago, which is a bit away from where you're looking. Detroit is mentioned, and seems to produce steel, but it's hard to know since it was only mentioned in a fictional context in Fallout 4.

That was the original idea back in 1 and 2 when you were near the hub. In new vegas the ncr currency is backed my a measure of gold. The caps likewise are backed by a measure of water not by a bottle or some other factor. That ration can vary wildly of course.

Then there's also the fact that pretty war caps are hard to replicate but aren't actually very scarce so they don't make a bad currency representation.

And then finally it's simply a more fun currency to have than just gold or cash or something. They are an item players can actively find almost anywhere and for nearly any reason so it's natural that even when it doesn't make a terrible amount of sense to use them as currency they still get used as such in other games.

>Fuck
Moria. Hatefuck her for her silly reward for her insane quest.

>Marry
Cass, rancher girls do something to my heart.

>Kill
Pretty much everyone in little lamplight.

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good taste desu

>Fuck
Veronica. Daddy (elder) issues make for fun times.

>Marry
Cass, love that crazy bitch.

>Kill
Arcade, fucking hate Arcade.

I have never heard of anyone liking Moria on a hatefuck level, that's surprising. Usually it seems to be 'I hate her' or 'wow she's so funny!'

What is the deal with Cass? I like her, but I don't see her as marriage material. She doesn't seem to want any of that, anything long-term, and doesn't seem the settle-down type.

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I am all for it, I liked the greener parts of New Vegas and Fo2. Any planty place other than the atrocious butchering of Harold.
Fo4 has the excuse of "November," and at least has fresh looking leaflitter.
Even if the biosphere never recovered DC is a swamp barely above sea level at its best.

Don't you listen to the radio? Marrying doesn't mean settling down. Just ride into the sunset together.

I really do like the Ranger patrol armor, especially on Boone, ranger elite armor doesn't fit him.

I would actually love if the people of the Fallout universe started mistaking metaphors for love to be the truths of what love was.

>I went on a date with Tom and -
>And what?
>He didn't let me kick him in the head!

Cass is pretty interested in the Courier, and their potential romance is a nice mirror for that of her parents: two wanderers falling for each other and eventually settling down, except that with all the adventures they had together and all the money they have for being kings of Vegas or national heroes of the NCR, neither of them would have the need or want to start doing it again, and they'll enjoy their retirement. Cass may be a bit old to have many children, but it's certainly not impossible for them to have a couple.

Wow, I didn't even realize Cass was 37...she still does technically have a few years yet to have kids, though I don't know if she'd want any.

Still, we all know that's not how it canonically goes, sad to say. Some developer for New Vegas really did not want romances even as an afterward.

Radio was a mistake. Good think yuo can switch it off (and kill that fucktard whats-his-name).

Caps are retarded. The were kinda justified in FO1, but then they become obsolete. Bethesda like them some muh wasteland retardness, so they bring them back, becouse FO3 is garbage.

>Fuck
Some random chiks, who cares (NV and FO2 both have many opportunities)
>Marry
No, thanx.
>Kill
Goris, Marcus, Lenny (?), all fo3 companions, cass, arcade, veronica, lilly.

The endings are vague enough to let you make up the details. The Courier could have even convinced Cass to go back to California with them, and that's what happened for me.

I told that guy I was going to tear his head off and wear it like he was wearing that dogs.

Then I did it.

Is there a Vulpes' head hat?

If you aren't already aware of them, then for GURPS, the fanmade fallout supplement and the official After the End series are both pretty good.

Eh, Fallout Tactics was pretty good, and it certainly doesn't have anything crazier than the rest of the series in it.

Do you think that having Caesar survive his surgery but turning back West after putting Vegas under a protectorate is a plausible alternate outcome for the war in the Mojave?

Back East, not West. Vegas and the other settlements would be nominally independent cities under Legion protection

Seems like a cop out. The whole point of the NCR-Legion war is that only one will survive by destroying the weakness within itself. Dialectics, as Caesar says.

For the Legion to win it will need to settle and civilize into an actual nation instead of a nomadic army.

For the NCR to win it will have to purge corruption and rekindle civic duty.

If they don't enter this struggle neither will have to fix what's broken within them, and as such they will both fall apart instead of just one. The Legion will fall apart with Caesar, and the NCR will fall apart under the weight of corruption and bureaucracy.

The thing about new Vegas is that none of the endings are clean.

>independent Vegas
Welp now yes man has control of all the securitrons and from what he says at the end he will be the one calling the shots now so that's terrifying.

>house
If he's somehow not full of shit he'd be the best answer to all this but I doubt he can deliver on it seeing as how it took him more than 100 years to retrieve the platinum chip alone.

>NCR
On the surface they seem like a good deal but any investigation shows just how poorly they've handled the region already. Unless a change of management was in the cards things wouldn't improve

>legion
Misery and tyranny. But a surprising amount of efficiency. If what some say about the Legion is true the mojave might be somewhat safer (assuming you're a man at least and a member of the legion) but the problem here still stems from ceaser. Once he dies the Legion will start to have infighting and then the areas under its control will become horrifying warzones.

>Once he dies the Legion will start to have infighting

>...from a basically nomadic army to a standing military force that protects its citizens, and the power of its dictator.
We can assume that when transitioning the Legion into an actual state as Caesar plans to do, he will name a successor.

Ideally that successor would be the courier and then you could shape the legion into whatever kind of force or nation you'd like.

I've just never liked the idea of a slave driven regime being the "correct" answer to anything.

>I've just never liked the idea of a slave driven regime being the "correct" answer to anything.
Think with your brain not your feefees.

Look at what the actual Romans accomplished as a slave driven Empire. Obviously in the modern world slavery is obsolete, but after the apocalypse the only way to integrate backwards tribals with any sort of expediency is to destroy their culture and enslave them.

I hate the fact that you aren't really wrong here.

I need to talk with ceaser and the legion again in detail about things. I forget if you were just a civilian in legion land if you could just get pressed into service or slavery out of nowhere. Or if he only did that to various tribes and troublesome settlements

So where and when is your games taking place anons?

I'm running my game in "the belt" a region in the south consisting of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama Georgia and Florida.
And it's taking place a few years after the events of 2.

I don't understand why the games removed all references to horses. It's more than likely that they survived the war, either in a agricultural/Far West themed vault, in isolated towns or in less devastated wilds.

Sawyer or someone else on the team said "More assertive" wasn't meant as a skynet threat, just that he would ONLY obey the courier and their designated representatives to prevent someone from pulling what you did to Benny with him.

And IN that hundred years even Dr. 0 managed to get the securitron missiles and grenades working.

I'm trying to build a game/fan fiction setting in the Pacific northwest, starring Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, a bit of Idaho and Montana, and maybe northern California. The overall story arc theme is deciding who deserves to live in the reborn world, and who needs to be extinguished like the wasteful, corrupt, immoral societies of the old world. The region would be a bit less civilised than California circa Fallout 2, but there would be a lot more greenery thanks to the efforts of the EPA (expanding on that cut content from FO2). Lots of tribal groups with their own unique cultures and what not.
I'm trying to decide where I want to place the players' story in the timeline.
>2250s
During the NCR-BOS war. The NCR wouldn't be too advanced for the overall feel I'm going for, and I don't really want them to be a major power in the region (yet). I don't really want to see the Brotherhood shoehorned in again, but perhaps I can find a way to make it interesting.
>2290s
It would pretty cool to do something with the Great Khans could be a faction in Idaho/Montana. However, the I don't want to decide who won the war in the Mojave or have an overbearing military force in the region, so the Republic is going to have to go into hibernation. Also too many bear jokes in a northern region.

You realize that's not usually what the Romans did, right? The Republic kept a series of allies that they slowly brought under their thumb. Most times in conquering a territory they'd let then keep practicing their religions and whatever, as long as a cut was sent to Rome. They'd slowly Romanize them, or the conquered people would desire the benefits of being Roman and Romanize themselves. Slaves were present, but Rome wasn't just the legions, and there were still Romans who traded and worked while Caesar focuses everything on military service.

Though to be fair to Caesar, he's only working off of a couple of books, and is probably trying to make it fit for his vews of the wasteland, since trying to do what Rome actually did when among tribals probably would not work.

If true that changes things a bit and makes independent vegas a best bet for the overall future of the region.

The NCR wouldn't be keen on going toe to toe with a army of beefed up securitrons. Especially when the ones in charge of them are more than willing to trade and work with the NCR (even if in a 3rd party capacity)

With ceaser gone the Legion held territories will fall to infighting or dissolve into their own sects of tribes. In the process the NCR will actually be actually be to maintain actually be proper presense in the region now that the logistical nightmare that was the Legion is on the backstep.

Whether or not the region thrives or simply maintains a status quo would be entirely up to the courier in charge

>Caesar focuses everything on military service.
The end game is to conquer Vegas and California and transition the Legion into an actual Empire. Caesar says this when you meet him at the fort.

The Legion as it stands is purely temporary. It's why Caesar doesn't have a successor yet.

I was thinking that a vault where its rules and regulations are based on mainline Protestantism or maybe a little more fundamentalist and eventually see it become either eradicated by civil war or gets wiped out by super mutants.

If I could steal that idea:

Something that stuck out to me when learning about Calvinism (specifically the Puritan version, which I'm not remembering well) was the idea that a person was judged before their birth - no matter what they did in this life it was pre-ordained whether they would go to heaven or hell.

Imagine a Vault like that - there's a computer inside of it that picks members of the population at random and whether they will go into a room with a furnace for incineration, or into a lounge with a lot of luxuries, servant robots, and was self-sufficient enough that it always had enough food and water for a small population. It was probably intended as an experiment on what would happen if the Vault population was randomized after it was sealed off. But there was an error in the computer's programming in that it only ordered the Vault dwellers to go into one of the rooms after a certain age or when they were near death. Maybe it was supposed to sort people after the Vault was closed for 50 years, and someone misprogrammed it so that people were sorted after fifty years of age, I don't know, explain it how you will.

So you have a population of people that fear an 'afterlife' where they are taken away from their loved ones and never seen again. There's a vague idea that one door is bad and one is good, but they don't know which is which. They don't know why people are picked, and can assume that they have to be good to get into the good door and work hard all their lives. But once they actually go through, they just spend a lonely existence - in the lap of luxury, with robots to take care of them, but there's only ever a small group of people in there at best, if at all, so it's not really heaven especially if you end up spending twenty more years there, or a few weeks of cancer or some disease. The bad door is obviously just a quick incineration intended to remove unlucky dwellers.

Though for some reason you can make the BoS side with the NCR that killed their family but not with Vegas so they either die or become bandits. Oh and somehow things become completely anarchic because reasons? I guess the "updated targeting parameters" intended to hold things over while Yes Man updated himself were not complex enough to use the securitrons proactively or even in retribution.

Boone mentions Caesar has a line of succession set up according to NCR intel.

>fallout.wikia.com/wiki/CraigBoone.txt
Where?

If Caesar dies Lanius takes over by default, whom Caesar is vocally distasteful of. Why would Caesar name him his heir?

As far as I can tell, the developers and lore-people seem to make it clear that they don't intend for horses to have actually survived in the Fallout universe. There were horses in the All Roads comic, but Chris Avellone said it was a mistake and that there were never intended to be horses in Fallout.

I don't really understand why horses couldn't survive, but I can respect that the people in charge don't want them to have survived. And it makes it interesting to think that the horse, like many other vehicles and types of transportation, has become a relic of a world that can't be gotten back - or maybe the world before the war had stopped breeding horses, because vehicles were common enough and there was little need for them in a heavily mechanized world, or it was harder to justify taking care of them and setting aside land for them.

The brotherhood were really shittily placed in NV. They served no real purpose. Hell I ignore them completely until a faction leader says deal with them and I just kill them all. If someone cut them completely from the game no one would notice.

That being said the Sierra Madre stuff and the old man (forgot his name) linked it and the story there was actually interesting

If I recall correctly (which I probably don't) plants exposed to light levels of radiation, or high amounts now and again, grew fine. It effected them positively. The ashes left from the surface being scorched heavily would have probably been blown about, spreading as irradiated fertilizer. Coal ash probably would be more irradiated and that doesn't even kill plant growth.
Surface growth is clearly possible. I guess it depends on how long things have been somewhat consistent, and pollination. And as you said, chemical warfare would influence things. But from what I know of the universe in-game makes me think at the very least shrubbery would be covering more and be green in most locations. Notably Fallout 4, which is pretty confusing all things considered.

After you kill Caesar together he says "It probably won't change anything." And if you ask why, he'll say it.
Ah Avellone that cynical prick.

The legion was sadly underutilized
and their machetes are ugly

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Hope Y'all didnt mind that little Legiondump

forgot one

>"Ok someone take off their vault suit"
>"No one? Fine whatever I'll do it."
>"Ok, now stretch it over the hole."
>"You three, sit on the sleeves with me"
>"Now we just wait until they drop something heavy enough to pin this here without us."

At a glance, the thumbnail looks like it just says "ONE EAR."

I'll be over here quietly shilling my idea of combining Fallout and Bioshock into a single setting.

I don't mind - I kind of like the Legion in a way. They're old in that they're Roman, but also new in a post-apoc sense and that they're not like the Enclave or the BoS or the Minutemen, trying to look back to Burgerland.

Huh, that markydaysaid guy that used to do all the skyrim porn churned out a buncha fallout shit recently. Well, like two pieces.

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So what was with those vampires in 3?

Cannibals that had learned to drink blood instead of eat flesh, right?

How good are stimpaks at healing? Where does the gameplay part end and the actual fluff effects begin?

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So good that it seems most houses used them as the bulk of their medical equipment.

You need to at least set a bone at most points for them to work on limbs. Though that leaves how hydra and weapon binding rituals work a mystery, I guess they force a body to "remember " where various bones, muscles and connective tissues are supposed to be somehow.

How exactly does Caesar plan to turn the Legion in a real state after conquering Vegas? Its economy is centered around gambling and prostitution, both profiligate activities that will hit rock bottom once he's in charge. The Mojave in general is also pretty poor and barren, even if Hoover damn can provide water and power.

>Thesis and antithesis. The Colorado River is my Rubicon. The NCR council will be eradicated, but the new synthesis will change the Legion as well from a basically nomadic army to a standing military force that protects its citizens, and the power of its dictator.

His true goal is to conquer the NCR and merge with it, creating a state with the best aspects of both the NCR and Legion. Taking Vegas is crucial in this because it will both act as a staging area for the invasion of SoCal, and denies NCR the water and power that it desperately needs.

The thing is that the NCR isn't going to roll over if they are defeated in the Mojave. I guess it fits his Hegelian worldview that they'll become more militaristic to survive, but making a Rome out of Vegas leaves the Legion in a weak spot.

What, nobody?