War...war never changes [FALLOUT]

[Aryxbez]

Note: For what its worth, this thread likely may contain SPOILERS to games past and present (pardon in advance,try to avoid it otherwise).

So this is about the Fallout video game setting, though a solution not too clear to me. I've been wondering what Tabletop RPG system one would use for a Fallout campaign? The story potential within the setting isn't that hard, given a perusal of the wiki in the core region since New Vegas alone, are pretty intriguing (I've ideas given vague info in midwest as well).

It'd seem 300pt Shadowrun would be a good fit, fast paced fire fights, but cybernetics isn't exactly common as it would be in Shadowrun (unless PC's from Vault City or the Common wealth), as well it'd be questionable to its handling of humanoid-android characters (though imagine would do RoboBrain justice). I've heard of some "official" Fallout RPG, and vaguely an unbalanced D20 one, but those both don't give much confidence, based on its systems (percentiles usually pertain to bad as I recall).

Races would be: Human, Super Mutant (Or 'meta human' if you prefer), Ghouls, Android, (Intelligent) Deathclaw, Robot (Gutsy,Protrectron,Robo-Brain), and Geckos?

Archtype wise I'd imagine could be little difficult to cover, balance issues, sense of uniqueness, and that Fallout always been mainly a game with a party size of 1-3 (though aware of exceptions with high Charisma in Fallout 2).

[Wrathzog]

As per Tactics and Dogmeat, Dogs are the animal race you'd want for the game. It's arguable as to whether you'd want to make Tribals their own race.

[hogarth]

I'd probably use a system like Champions or Mutants & Masterminds (where PCs are fairly durable), but that's because I'm unfamiliar with Shadowrun.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Jason Mical's original Fallout RPG was cool when it came out because that's all there was, but it reminded me of Palladium- shit just kind of thrown together. He ended up working on the Fallout D20- the license fell through on that, so they filed the serial numbers off and released it as "Exodus". And it's pretty bad. I mean, if you REALLY need D20 stats on a Super Mutant, I guess it would be your go-to...

I've been working on a Fallout setting using Storyteller- but I wouldn't recommend that to anyone. I know I've read arguments elsewhere about what pre-existing system to use. There are certainly plenty of post-apoc systems.

[mlangsdorf]

Any reasonable game capable of handling modern and near future settings can handle Fallout. The requirements are just not that complicated.

I've run Fallout in GURPS and Savage Worlds quite successfully. Mutants and Masterminds is an odd choice, but it could be made to work. It could be made to work in FATE if that's your speed.

Although Gamma World seems like it would be a natural fit, there isn't a single edition of GW that is mechanically coherent and interesting, so that's probably a no-go.

[hogarth]

Any reasonable game capable of handling modern and near future settings can handle Fallout. The requirements are just not that complicated.

I guess that depends on what your requirements are. Speaking of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas (I haven't played #1 or #2 or Tactics), there are a number of idiosyncrasies that might be hard to model in a tabletop RPG:

• In those games, some enemies have a very large amount of health. For instance, you can shoot a tough enemy with an automatic weapon dozens of times without killing him.
• Having separate hit locations is an important part of combat.
• A short nap is enough to recover all of your hit points, aside from any permanent damage to one of your limbs.
• Medicine and food is basically only useful in combat situations, and you can consume an unlimited amount of it in an instant.

I'm hard pressed to think of a system that would replicate all of those quirks.

I've run Fallout in GURPS and Savage Worlds quite successfully. Mutants and Masterminds is an odd choice, but it could be made to work.

The more I think about it, the more I think that M&M might not be a good choice. It does have the "all is healed after a brief nap" bit going for it, though.

[JigokuBosatsu]

Medicine and food is basically only useful in combat situations, and you can consume an unlimited amount of it in an instant

This just recently bothered me about Skyrim, as well. So your health regenerates slowly, enough that it's really only useful out of combat. But you can eat ten hams, some sushi and a sweetroll in an instant inside of combat. Seems backwards. Like, you should only be able to eat food outside of combat, and maybe there would be a time-based requirement that only if you've eaten X amount of food in the past day would your regeneration work. Or something.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Fallout was originally going to be made on a GURPS engine, if that means anything.

I haven't played much outside of d20 or GURPS, but of the two GURPS would work better.

This just recently bothered me about Skyrim, as well. So your health regenerates slowly, enough that it's really only useful out of combat. But you can eat ten hams, some sushi and a sweetroll in an instant inside of combat. Seems backwards. Like, you should only be able to eat food outside of combat, and maybe there would be a time-based requirement that only if you've eaten X amount of food in the past day would your regeneration work. Or something.

With heroic fantasy (where food is usually cheap and plentiful) that doesn't bother me as much as post-apocalyptic sci-fi (where you're expected to scavenge for anything and everything.)

IIRC in New Vegas part of Hardcore Mode was that you had to eat every once in a while in order to avoid starvation penalties (which grew increasingly worse over time, culminating in death.)

[JigokuBosatsu]

Yeah, I hated Hardcore Mode. It's very fiddly and I find it hard to take an "ultra-realist postapocalyptic survivor" mode seriously when you're an almost bulletproof mutant shooting insane jingoist robots with a machine gun whose targeting system utilizes a dog brain.

[Wrathzog]

In those games, some enemies have a very large amount of health. For instance, you can shoot a tough enemy with an automatic weapon dozens of times without killing him.

Having separate hit locations is an important part of combat.

These are both things that got changed quite a bit in the newer Fallouts. In the older ones, creatures generally had less health and critical attacks were a lot stronger (they had a separate table that they rolled against and some hit locations included instant death). So the game was a whole lot more lethal in general.

It was totally feasible to take down a Deathclaw or Super Mutant in one combat round with two called shots to the eyeballs. Or even a single burst with one of the heavy weapons (The Browning M2 in Tactics was a beast with DU rounds).

A short nap is enough to recover all of your hit points, aside from any permanent damage to one of your limbs.

This changed too. Regenerating health naturally in the earlier fallouts could take like a full day of resting if you had really bad endurance.
Which is why you horded Stimpacks and lived off of those instead but whatever.

Oddly, while entering your inventory cost Action Points, using items while you were in there didn't. So, that part is actually more or less unchanged. I don't remember if they ever fixed that.

[Username17]

First off, the Fallout games are surprising incoherent when you try to stick them together. They try to have the games reference each other even though they are located rather far apart (Fallout 1 is in Southern California, Fallout 2 is in Northern California, Fallout Tactics is in Illinois, Fallout 3 is in Virginia, and Fallout: New Vegas is in Nevada). They ended up excusing this by having large amounts of time pass between the games, which just opens up a whole different problem of "how the fuck are these people still living and still living like this if it has supposedly been several generations since the last time we checked in on these assholes?"

Anyway, the core thing you need to decide in a Fallout style game is whether you are playing a game about creating a civilization or whether you're playing a game about a small group of badasses wandering the wasteland shooting fools and solving episodic problems. For the latter you just need a game that handles shooting fools, for which there are many options. For the former, you're going to want to have lots of logistics and dragons minigames and to probably be controlling groups of people. For that, you want to take Ars Magica, Necromunda, and some game like Warp Cult and hit the blenderize button.

The big issue is that you're going to want to play a game system that has a lot of finicky equipment rules like Shadowrun or RIFTS, and not at all like a game system that handwaves swag like FATE or M&M. Because whether or not you are playing a game where you're Dwarf Fortressing your technicians to comb through your junk piles to get rolls on charts for ancient tech items they can get working, you're still playing a game about scavenging, which means that writing down that you have found a working music box or a couple sticks of dynamite with no blasting caps or whatever is seriously half the fun.

But I would seriously suggest having running tracks of food, ammunition, medical supplies, energy, bottle caps, and "junk" all over and above the specific weapons and devices that people have.

-Username17

[Mask_De_H]

Outside of the hoarding part, if you just want wasteland wanderers Apocalypse World was made for Fallout. Use the extra harm/battle moves (and put the harm move in the player's hands) and most of the work's been done for you.

[JigokuBosatsu]

First off, the Fallout games are surprising incoherent when you try to stick them together. They try to have the games reference each other even though they are located rather far apart (Fallout 1 is in Southern California, Fallout 2 is in Northern California, Fallout Tactics is in Illinois, Fallout 3 is in Virginia, and Fallout: New Vegas is in Nevada). They ended up excusing this by having large amounts of time pass between the games, which just opens up a whole different problem of "how the fuck are these people still living and still living like this if it has supposedly been several generations since the last time we checked in on these assholes?"

This has always been a problem. It was a problem as far back as Wasteland where they couldn't quite seem to figure out what year it was. And trying to weld those two canons... blech.

you're still playing a game about scavenging, which means that writing down that you have found a working music box or a couple sticks of dynamite with no blasting caps or whatever is seriously half the fun.

One of the best resources I found for this were a series of tables and geomorphs done by someone running a Fallout game. God, I love fucking random tables.

But I would seriously suggest having running tracks of food, ammunition, medical supplies, energy, bottle caps, and "junk" all over and above the specific weapons and devices that people have.

That's the best idea I've heard all day. In working on COTEOTM I was trying to create a treasure/money system that wasn't too fiddly, and I decided up on having "Units" of treasure( with one Unit being a small pile of coins, or a finely jeweled goblet, or one exquisite tapestry). I think this would work very well for other things- so a box of Sugar Bombs or three withered apples are worth one Food Unit, etc.

[Hicks]

So should stronger characters have larger tracks of stuff?

I can also see a system where you can stash a functionally unlimited amount of stuff in a location, but the larger the stash the more likely it is to be found and stolen by the time you come back to retrieve it.

[hogarth]

The big issue is that you're going to want to play a game system that has a lot of finicky equipment rules like Shadowrun or RIFTS, and not at all like a game system that handwaves swag like FATE or M&M.

I don't believe that M&M handwaves equipment unless you've actually paid for it with character points.

[Antumbra]

https://sites.google.com/site/tectuctit ... oversions/

http://gurps.fallout.free.fr/ - French site, but all the documents are english - there's a Compilation as well.

http://forums.sjgames.com/tags.php?tag=fallout

This might help, I have little experience with GURPS, but these looked rather solid.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I also forgot to mention that my friend Toren (of Delta Green, Spaceship Zero, and Darkest of the Hillside Thickets fame) has a game called Mutilator in playtest right now that is very directly inspired by Fallout and Gamma World. What little I've seen in their Facebook group indicates that there are a lot of limb critical shenanigans and good stuff like that.

[Lokathor]

First off, the Fallout games are surprising incoherent when you try to stick them together. They try to have the games reference each other even though they are located rather far apart (Fallout 1 is in Southern California, Fallout 2 is in Northern California, Fallout Tactics is in Illinois, Fallout 3 is in Virginia, and Fallout: New Vegas is in Nevada). They ended up excusing this by having large amounts of time pass between the games, which just opens up a whole different problem of "how the fuck are these people still living and still living like this if it has supposedly been several generations since the last time we checked in on these assholes?"

In A Canticle for Leibowitz there's a nuclear fire war/apocylapse that lasts about 48 hours, and then everyone that's left over ends up rebelling against all of science and literacy. A few select items are secretly hoarded by the catholic church, and other than that basically all knowledge is lost within the first generation of survivors. Society reverts, and a majority of the world population is still being taught that knowledge is what ruined the world 400 years later.

Which isn't relevant to a Fallout specific game, but it'd be an easy way to go if you just wanna do post-apocalypse in general. And then you get to have serious time jumps without having to add techs and advancement each time you do one.

[CatharzGodfoot]

To make combat really feel like Fallout, it should be done with miniatures on a hex grid.

[Josh_Kablack]

Fallout 1 is pretty straight up "no casters" D&D 3e.

And not merely because you have feats every 3 levels and combat is mapped on a 5' grid, but

• You learn the combat system by fighting rats.
• You spend the first half of the campaign questing for the macguffin artifact left by the ancient civilization.
• At the first town you have to help them deal with the Goblins Radscorpions in the cave in the hills.
• You can beat the Orc Tribe Raiders by challenging their leader to single combat and winning
• You have a bunch of trap options for chargen and levelup
• You spend the second half of the campaign gathering intelligence and allies for fighting the gathering Uruk-Hai Super Mutant Hordes of the Dark Lord Master.
• Most of the best loot and toughest fights are in subterranean locations. The most notable exception is in the Wizard's Catherdral Tower.
• The only way to get good stats and skills is to abuse boosting items (Books, Drugs) and paying for Wishes operations.
• The Dark Lord Master doesn't just keep the magic Telsa armor and helmet psychic nullifier which allow you to survive his attacks in his very own lair, but Mount Doom Erupts the nuke timer sets when you beat him.

[Username17]

To make combat really feel like Fallout, it should be done with miniatures on a hex grid.

Disagree. You want to do it Warp Cult/Necromunda style on a gridless battle table using tape measures.

I can also see a system where you can stash a functionally unlimited amount of stuff in a location, but the larger the stash the more likely it is to be found and stolen by the time you come back to retrieve it.

Not just have stash size affect your chances of being raided (with sentries getting to make checks to see whether you just lose stuff or you have encounters/battles at your stash), also have encounter checks based on the distance you are traveling to locations you are "working" to get new supplies. And locations can be things from arable land (that you can farm to get food) to partially collapsed buildings (that you can dig in to get stuff that depends on what kind of building it was).

The team as a whole might decide to have their secret base in a partially collapsed grocery store because they have access to canned food, or in an old police station because of access to ammunition or whatever.

-Username17

[Voss]

In A Canticle for Leibowitz there's a nuclear fire war/apocylapse that lasts about 48 hours, and then everyone that's left over ends up rebelling against all of science and literacy. A few select items are secretly hoarded by the catholic church, and other than that basically all knowledge is lost within the first generation of survivors. Society reverts, and a majority of the world population is still being taught that knowledge is what ruined the world 400 years later.

Which is wholly stupid. You might get small communities of idiots who try that, but sane people will want things like water purification, sanitation, medicine, alternate means of food production and electricity.

'Nukes are terrible, so let us kill the remaining doctors and people who know about crop rotation' isn't a high priority response.

People might take time out of their day if someone walks up and says 'I'm a nuclear physicist, please kill me,' but mostly they're going to welcome people with knowledge that helps them survive. And people who actually remember what it is like to not die from simple things like the flu or tetanus are going to reject the idea of forsaking knowledge pretty quickly.

[Kaelik]

Yeah, that is literally the dumbest possible explanation for the apocalypse ever. Everyone just deciding to be super stupid and die of starvation because if they don't, they might die of nuclear war later makes literally negative sense.

[Hicks]

So the more powerful you are, the bigger your stash gets, the more people try to take your stash, and more useful locations are occupied/desired by more powerful opponents who will try to shoot/stab/claw you in the face to get at your stash and the location's resources. That's a nice mechanic for autoscaling difficulty and scope of the game from guarding cans of spam from roving radscorpians to holding a settlement supermarket against bandit slavers to a securing a vault of lost-tech from super-mutants.

[Winnah]

I don't have a problem with the idea of a nuclear catastrophy bringing about a Dark Age, similar to the collapse of Rome. Suspension of disbelief and all that.

What I find ridiculous and slightly offensive is the idea that religious institutions would store and safeguard ancient knowledge from roving bands of 'Simpletons,' as opposed to leading the mob on a campaign of self-harm and ignorance.