Fallout thread

For me there was just so much real Massachusetts stuff that COULD have been extrapolated into some cool Fallout stuff that Bioware just didn't use. Our Nazi-looking state troopers are a big one I wanted to work with, upping them to a Mad Max level super cop organization patrolling the freeways under the thumb of the Institute.

I always wanted to run a Fallout game but I only play online, all my players would be Americans, I'm not. I worry over getting too much basic shit wrong.

Bethesda got enough basic shit wrong. And the older games didn't use too much real world stuff because of how far after the apocalypse it took place. Just use Wikipedia to look up the region you want the game to take place in. I'm pretty sure that's all you'd need.

I mean if you've played 1 or 2 of the videogames you should be good to go

Fallout is about having fun not about memorizing nukapedia articles

Yeah I meant about 'murcan culture in general, not specifically the Fallout universe.

Why do you need to know stuff about murican culture?

In my experience Wikipedia alone is not enough. Tourism sites are a great way to get information about locations and maps with legends. National park and ranger websites are a great place to visit to find flora and fauna for you to hideously mutate. Even the official state government or city council sites are a valuable resource when campaign building. Of course with this being the Fallout universe one has to take into account how the effects of the lack of micro-transistors would change the development of the area.

Reading the Fallout Bible is definitely a step to preparing too, irregardles of whether you have played the first two games in the series. I'll see if I can find a link to where you can download the PDFs.

nma-fallout.com/resources/the-fallout-bible-complete-by-chris-avellone.16/

That's what I meant, though. It's at least a century after a war wiped out America. An alternate history America no less. All you need is a cursory glance at the American region you want to place the game and take broad stereotypes of it.

A different Fallout DM Here:
My group (way too big: 9 players) is playing in the northern TX City of Amarillo. There are some really nice fallout-relevant features here, like the assembly plant for V22 Ospreys (the real world Vertibird), An old Cold-war era SAC base, and most important, PanTex Nuclear Weapon Assembly Plant.

Plot is the old classic: Players leave vault looking for water filter.

The downside is that the most moral and reliable of the players might get as good as Neutral on his best day: the rest are pure Chaotic Evil. They blew off getting the water filter on the first day. At this point, they are out for their own glorification, and have basically become a raider band.

I put together a fairly thorough random encounter system, and a couple of streets before they entered the largest settlement in the Plains Wasteland, they got the "Cosmic Horror" Encounter, with otherworldly tentacles coming up through the street. Their reaction? Attack with nuke grenade.

Fast forward an hour and they come sauntering into the largest city, one of the heavies carrying this HORRIFYING OTHERWORLDLY RADIOACTIVE TENTACLE around his neck like a feather boa. Every player who touched it with his bare hands was forced to roll a random mutation from a table of not very nice things (mostly taken from stone soup dungeon crawl)

They make a charisma roll to sell the tentacle to the shopkeeper.
To replace his missing arm.
Nat. 20.

So now they have created their own worst enemy, and destroyed the entire town, with all NPCs that didnt' escape turned into horrifying mutant monsters or subsumed into the terrifying mutant mass of the monstrosity. The players have aready moved on to decimate other settlements: burdened only with a slight unease that some of their past actions might someday come home to haunt them.

Your group would make for good antagonists

>Fallout Hawaii
>Rail is still unfinished

Could you share your table?

Second

Ummmm... it's a 25 page word document. The Gist is a D100 roll table with about 20 generic encounters with fallout forces of varying strengths and an additional 5-10 specialized ones including cosmic horror, alien attack, war holdover, and "Slice of Life", each of the special ones with modifiers.

An example would be: A roll of 5 for encounter would be Ghouls, level 2, meaning 2 ghouls per party member, varying levels. These encounters can take a minute, as for this party that means 18 ghouls, usually levels 1-5 as the party is average level 8, with some as low as 5 and some as high as 12. (it is easy to level up in fallout). A roll of 7 on the other hand is the "Hoard" encounter for ghouls, basically "A bunch of Ghouls until further notice." They are all level 1, but continuously spawn until a contextual circumstance is met, like covering over a subway tunnel or the players get far enough away.

Another example would be the level 1 brotherhood encounter, where some unarmored squires come through looking for gear to scavenge, or the level 4 brotherhood encounter, with a 6-man Paladin kill team going through the neighborhood shooting everyone they find. (run or hide are the best options)

The party, in session yesterday, fought a giant mutated duck, nesting on the roof of a hospital(it was the area boss). I made the mistake of mentioning to one of them that it seemed to have taken extra damage from a shotgun (because of course ducks are weak against shotguns) so about half the damage was caused by rapid shotgun fire by berserk charging DPS roles.

My advice would be to make your own table, including what encounters you think are regionally appropriate as well as within the story. My story is assuming a fairly high combat ability on behalf of the players, because fallout is balanced for single player combat, not groups.

The system I am using is rather homebrew and pushes the players toward "hero-game" combat roles. Right now, we have a group of 2 tanks, 1 off-tank, 2 stealth, 2 support, and 2 DPS, with an occasional 10th player as extra DPS. To facilitate this, a lot of the encounters, especially the ones not based around a simple type of enemy, are other, Hero-team style combat. Even the level 2-4 ghoul fights specify a roll to include glowing ones as combat support and potential "armored" ghouls that are tougher, or "exploding" poisonous ghouls.

The raiders particularly have 6 potential encounters, ranging from a single guy trying to sneak up on a straggler in the group to a named boss at party average level in power armor with 1/2 of party numbers in lieutenants as well as party number of level 1 grunts.

These types of encounters usually have extra rolls associated with them, for aspects like snipers, heavy weaponeers, and willingness to fight. It really did freak out the players when they found, early on, a team of 8 fully armed and armored millitia men (think gunners) who were simply on a mission of their own and didn't care about the party at all. Willingness to fight 2/20.

Another fun encounter my group had was inside a school, where I rolled for them to encounter a sentry bot. At level 3. As DM, sometimes the best thing is to force yourself to stick to a roll, but change some aspect of the encounter so that it is still fun. In this case, the sentry bot was programmed to think it was the lunch lady, and dispensing breakfast. Every player who could pass a bluff check to convince the robot that they were a child was permitted to take ONE box of sugar bombs for their breakfast. All the rest were directed to the faculty break room, where there "WERE DOUGHNUTS WAITING" I pride myself that the only player deaths so far (there have been three) were PVP Griefing. *sigh*.

You're in good company, user, since Fallout ruined the canon game world too.

Fallout's pretty steeped in Americana, to be honest. A lot of its present culture, and almost certainly its post-apocalyptic culture, is/would be informed by its frontier history, individualism versus collectivism, and stance towards guns and violence.

Post-apocalyptic fiction, when done right, is an examination of current culture through a cracked lens. Fallout outside of America would probably be so different it would barely even be recognizable as Fallout.

The Art of Fallout 4 (2015) (Digital) (danke)

userscloud.com/jnzmjl1ukxjs/1
mega.nz/#!xo11wQ7T!aCq7lom0JEbc6o4r3fD_IVJv3ZXyhm7f7-DgAIl0GuY

user makes a good point, there is actually very little even in the lore regarding any country other than the US. In fact one of the more interesting lore points is that nobody, even those who witnessed the breakout, know who shot first.

I might add though, that I believe through some snippets on the wiki and some small part speculation that the USSR was beginning to become more americanised. Look at China today as well, it would have been impossible to survive for as long as it did as an entirely communist state, and I imagine that it would begin to operate more like the US on the interior while maintaining it's facade outwardly. So I suppose one could run a Fallout campaign in one of these countries using a hybridised culture, thus retaining at least a vague Fallout atmosphere. One idea I had for a campaign based on this concept would be an expedition by the residents of San Fransisco and the Tankers post Fallout 2 to investigate whether any other countries survived the war and if so to attempt to establish contact with them.

What are some villain ideas that you guys have come up with. Alternatively, let’s just make one that can measure up to the standards of the Master, Enclave, and the Calculator.

It seems that recent Fallout happenings have focused on faction conflicts but my group and I tend to enjoy more personal affairs with a focused antagonist.

There's also a creeping jungle as nature is slowly reclaiming Florida with the help of the out of control geck. Seems nice at first then a few weeks in the foliage starts getting hostile and things start emerging from it...

A handful of super mutants from the masters army along with leagues of retards pouring in from the DC area, have set up along the border of Florida attempting as best they can to keep people out and the monsters in.

Their efforts are of course futile but they try

In the United states there is thousands of miles of railroad tracks. Alot of it would be damaged cause war and whatnot but I thought why not use it?

So I decided there was a special train being made before war tensions really rose. It was gping to be a special military or law enforcement project but never saw it's conclusion, all that came from it was a heavy duty, militarized train, complete with heavy armor, cannons and machine guns. Even had facilities for maintenance, repair and vehicle storage. All designed to ride the rails in fusion powered glory.

Now what if the group that would become the Enclave found out about and took over this little project shortly before the war went south? Now we have a massively armed and very mobile enclave force rolling around the US for some purpose.

If this all seems pretty vague it's because I never explored it in any real depth. I cooked up the idea but I doubt I'll ever get around to using it.

>And have basically become a raider band.

Fallout game I'm GMing in GURPS is built explicitly on that premise.

Mine is set around the Great Midwest Commonwealth, specifically right in close proximity to the Toledo Strip. The party consists of a former mercenary boss, a juvenile (because a grown one would have been unbalanced as fuck) talking deathclaw, and a child-sized ghoul who works on their equipment.

It's been interesting.

So far, they have
>knocked over a caravan
>used that caravan to infiltrate a nearby town
>kidnapped a civilian and "convinced" him to convince the town to pay tribute to them
But, the town is occupied by the Buckeyes, who recently recaptured The Strip and its Great Port. So, the party needs to evict the Buckeyes, who rotate squads every couple weeks. To that end, they
>set up an ambush for guard rotation along highway, with a mine for their transport
>nearly fought a Yao-Guai, but avoided waking it up
>woke up to find their ambush targets and the Yao-Guai fighting eachother!
>Put down the ghoul-bear, which did most of the killing for them
>Navigated difficult social encounters:
>convinced the squad leader that they were just nearby to quell suspicion
>narrowly avoided a fight while the party was split

Right now they're holed up in an abandoned community college building, scheming of a way to ambush their remaining targets, who are tending to their own dead by the claws of the bear.

Once they finish off the squad and cut off the supply line from the Buckeyes, they'll take out the military presence in the town. I'm not sure what direction to send them in once they have control of the town. They don't much care for the Wolverines, who are nearby, but the Wolverines and the Spartans dislike the Buckeyes more than they dislike raiders.

I think the next major development is going to be either: ganking a radio tower and its associated strategic value, or having a run-in with the Wolverines.

Additionally the soldiers would go out and "enlist" help from nearby communities to fixing the tracks whenever they'd get to a damaged section that they couldn't bypass making for easy plot hooks.

And I wanted the faction to be led by a general who has possibly lost his marbles but is way too loved by his men to be forcefully retired. always envisioned that col. Fury spoof from venture brothers or something in that vein.

Please pardon the interruption, gents.

I am planning a game where there is a chance of the players visiting and salvaging a high-tech world ravaged by nuclear winter.
I want to have something ready in case it happens, but I'd rather not put any work into something that isn't even a strong maybe.

I was wondering if there was a handy random encounter/loot chart or two kicking around that I could grab and hang onto in case it comes up.

plz giff

I'd just use the lootlist from Wastelands 2 + the miscallaneous item list from Fallout 4 (can be found on the fallout wikia)

Misc. Items are useful when PCs are pestering you for loot but you dont actually want to give them anything valueable

Ah, thanks!

Do you think I could use Atomic Highway to run Fallout game? I have the pdf of the Fallout pnp game and Big Apple wastland but I really hate running game without the physical book

Le epic Natural 20 story xD

You could go to a copy shop and print out the wasteland 2 book, thats what i did

Bump

>Ummmm... it's a 25 page word document.
Export as PDF and upload it here, dummy.

That would be a lot to print
I think I'll translate the bits I need in Big Apple wasteland, the rules seems a bit better than the other PnP game, I'll print the rules I need to run the game

What would be interesting place to set Fallout besides the East coast and the west coast? I think Hawaii or the Texas/Mexico frontier would pretty rad to do but I don't have much experience in world building

Texas sounds nice, desu. With a big enough map, you can get coasts, big cities, marshes, some deserts and even mountains/plateaus in the west...
And you've always the last few drops of oil or something, offshore platforms.
And obviously you can get all the cowboy shit, add more Mexicans to the mix, maybe horses, Texas rangers, all the high tech shit they have now, etc.
Pretty much the perfect place for Fallout.

>want to play fallout over roll 20
>only premade charsheet is the shitty one with explosive resistance AND threshold
>they also made detection a skill

Why tho?

I think I'll take a look at Fallout Lonestar, it's cancelled but there might be some nice thing to take inspiration of
Aztec/Incas shit would be nice to

>bioware

...

Eeeehhhhhhh, they both start with B.

>coolest faction in fo3 vanilla
>reduced to mustache twirling unjoinable baddies

Why was this good again?

It wasn’t

Honestly one of the more interesting parts of Fallout 3, especially with their use of robots and how they actually did spread out throughout the Capital Wasteland instead of being stuck in the DC Ruins. I wish they hadn't gotten handwaved back into the Brotherhood before 4, and there had actually been some sort of civil war or a few split off groups of Outcasts that started moving further abroad in search of tech and founding their own small enclaves.

Technically you could at least become friendly enough with them to get inside their building and take stuff, though it's honestly pretty boring in there. The only interesting part is how they seem to actually be experimenting with what they find, along with cataloging.

I once developed a New York setting for fallout- Nuclear winter style.
>>Large parts of the coastline has sunk into the sea, frozen up with tons of ice. Eternal winter, due to the seas boiling up during the Great War
>>Two opposing AI exist- one a crazy Vault-tec hydroponics-maintaining system that trades with still-living populace for food in exchange for parts, and another is a powerful, malfunctioning war machine that uses citizen records to figure out who's american or not. And since nobody is recorded anymore, it's trying to kill everyone.
>>FEV experiments on pigs have created the PIGMEN. Savage subhumans who are pretty primitive, but sentient- and quickly developing a new society, carving it out from the ice-and-snow-covered skyscrapers popping up out of the ocean
>>Gangs running about, like the PATRIOTS, who think the old america was all about guns, cars, and explosions. So they do ridiculous things like breaking into the mil-AI base to steal their explosives and parts, and blow things up all the time.

NCR black ops team is a nice idea. The cynics behind the idealistic NCR forces. Nothing is above them except the well being of the NCR. The idea is who they attack

read this as NTR black ops team

my brain is broken

How large a region should a Fallout game be set in?

Would it be worth it at all to develop a fallout TTG even if it already exists? I’m figuring on building one that reflects the series’ common game mechanics more (pointbuy character creation, traits adapted from the games, Hardcore mode style survival mechanics)

Isn't that what the Desert Rangers are?

I suppose - there is an offical system, but it's old, and no one seems to quite agree on the various other options.

...

Are you talking about the Enclave?

best metal armor right here.

So.. since there is board game and skirmish game coming out, do you guys think they'd release new official rpg?

I don’t know which version of FOWastelands you have, but here’s the most up to date PDF in my possession. Enjoy!

drive.google.com/open?id=1jtAIrIx7eMDU-FulWwXwwE2uHFunsJTK

Desert Ranger is more like Spec Ops and meant to protect areas. The NCR Black Ops team are the ones sent on the offense. Demolition, inciting revolt and disorder and other un NCR like behavior that invoke a sense they are the aggressors for the NCR.

Maybe, but I doubt it - Fallout 4 was gutted when it came to rules, and they'd basically have to go back to old ones or make new ones. And either way, we kind of lose since they probably wouldn't acknowledge the West Coast.

...

Modiphius has the license if their other RPGs do well I don't see why they wouldn't put out a 2d20 Fallout book.

>thread still alive

Tried half a state and ultimately it was too big, i'd say make a small region and then make it bigger depending on player interest

It's a little surprising how little attention Fallout gets here. The attempts at generals usually fail.

Well, how small a region? Just a town? A few counties? Though you do have a point, if the players never leave whatever city you start in, there's no point in fleshing out the rest of the world - but if they're travelling from city to city like the original Fallouts, you need a larger area.

1 town for first 3-6 Sessions with like 2-3 quests and then you expand from there

I just remembered about the existence of this topic on NMA. It may be interesting to some of you, provided one doesn't mind sifting through all the whinging about the modern games (not to be a hypocrite and say that isn't what I have spent far too much time doing, just that it probably falls on deaf ears).

Digressing, here is the link:
nma-fallout.com/forums/fallout-pnp-pen-and-paper.26674/

Do you know if theres an updated version of the Wasteland 2 d100 rulebook there?

No sorry, I use my own homebrew ruleset, and thus haven't look so much into that area of discussion. Although I will take a look for you now.

I've taken a cursory look through all the relevant sounding threads, and can't even find a single mention of the system.

Gg