Fallout Trinity

[Hatless]

It has been weeks since you were forced from the only home that you have ever known. This world outside the vault has tested you in ways that you were wholly unprepared to face. Half of those that began the journey have already perished. The food is scarce; the water is dirty. You need to find civilization if you want to have any hope of surviving, but in your travels, all you have found is one ruined town after another.

But there is still hope. Some wanderers—those not trying to shoot you, rob you, or eat you—tell of a safe haven. They say that on the edge of a crumbling pre-war city to the east is a settlement surrounded by concrete walls. This settlement has guards. It has power. It has water. And if all of that wasn't tempting enough, the few friendly faces that you've encountered in your journey have all said the same thing: it's the only settlement you're going to find for a hundred miles.

You have no choice but to head east.

What This Is

I'm looking to tell a story in the Fallout universe with a few folks. Everyone will be recently displaced vault dwellers. After a few weeks of aimless wandering in the wasteland, the vault dwellers finally come upon the settlement of Trinity. I'll delve a little more into why Trinity isn't the greatest of places later in the ad for those who want to read more, but it's essentially a cult that has taken residence inside of a mall. The cult is comprised of eight founding families that all swear fealty to The Leader.

The arrival of a bunch of vault dwellers is a momentous occasion in Trinity. The families place a lot of emphasis on recruiting the best and brightest into their ranks. It's all very feudal feeling with family politics, arranged marriages, and alliances. The pervading belief among the families will be that vault dwellers are more 'pure' than the average wastelander, so adding their blood to the gene pool would strengthen future generations. As such, there's going to be a heavy emphasis on the families testing the PCs, courting those that stand out, and trying to sway them through whatever means necessary into joining their house. It's a story of whether you fall in line for the guarantee of safety, or if you resist the wishes of someone else to your own detriment.

My initial vision for this was as a sandbox game, but I suspect I won't get the numbers necessary to fill all the positions I'd like to see filled. With that in mind, this will most likely be a GM-led story for a small-ish group of vault dwellers. If you're interested in the game and find yourself dying to play one of the family leaders, we can talk it out and I'll see what I can do.

There will probably be some light dice rolling because I like the randomness that dice add to stories. I know there's also at least one Fallout RPG out there. I'm not against going that route if the people that come along want something like that.

Vault 52

Vault 52 is your home. It is located in eastern Kansas, a few miles north of the ruins of Topeka. For the longest time, Vault 52 was a paradise. Numerous robots were added to the vault to aid the residents with all of their daily tasks. The robots cooked for you, cleaned up after you, handled all of the vault maintenance, and took care of vault security. Because of this, very few people in Vault 52 actually held any kind of job or developed the skills necessary for independence.

After a predetermined length of time had passed, all robots in the facility were set to turn hostile. As one might expect, the residents of Vault 52 didn't fare too well. Only a few dozen souls were able to make it to the vault door (which was programmed to open simultaneously with the planned robot uprising) and escape into the unforgiving wasteland.

Life in Vault 52

Robots were a major part of your life in Vault 52, from the second you were born to the day that they forced you out into the wasteland. Miss Nanny bots handled nearly every aspect of child rearing, taught the children a pre-approved Vault-Tec lesson plan, and they tended to Vault 52's medical needs. Every dormitory had its own Mister Handy, there to see to the needs of the residents. Protectrons roamed the halls, with a wide variety of models taking care of tasks ranging from vault security to vault maintenance.

Most of your time in Vault 52 was spent pursuing your own interests. Residents typically poured themselves into their hobbies. Communal events such as watching Vault-Tec approved pre-war films were common, and the ping pong table and pool table in the atrium were always booked days in advance.

There were no weapons or armor in Vault 52. Given the Vault's intended outcome, it should come as little surprise that Vault-Tec didn't want a populace that could fight back. At the time, the residents never questioned it. Why have guns when there's hundreds of Protectrons guarding you?

The World Outside Trinity

Before talking about Trinity itself, it is probably best to talk about what awaits outside Trinity.

Radnados are one of the most fearsome features of life in the post-war Midwest. They're whirling vortexes of radioactive debris and torrential rain that roam the plains with alarmingly frequency. These destructive storms are one of the largest reasons why the wasteland west of Trinity isn't dotted with small settlements cobbled together with whatever scrap survivors could find laying around like in most other parts of the US.

The city around Trinity has a super mutant problem. Trinity is large enough and well-defended enough that the super mutants typically steer clear, but with radnados to the west and super mutants to the east, Trinity finds itself largely isolated from the world. Caravans aren't completely unheard of, but Trinity has learned not to rely on any kind of regular trade.

Mirelurks that call the river home are abundant and regularly wander the nearby ruined streets. While numerous, they pose no real threat to Trinity, and actually serve as more of a food source than an adversary. Still, it's best not to wander too close to the river without sufficient backup and firepower; more than a few careless travelers have lost their lives to mirelurk ambushes.

The Settlement of Trinity

The settlement of Trinity is a largely intact mall that has mostly been cordoned off by 8 foot tall concrete barriers, each with the words "Curfew in Effect, Keep Away" printed on them in fading letters. The mall's fusion reactor is still functional and supplies the mall and the surrounding area with power. With some work, the 8 founding families were also able to put together a functional plumbing system, but it only extends to the mall itself and some of the surrounding farms.

The 8 founding families call the mall home, along with the handful of families that the leadership has taken a liking to for whatever reason and invited to stay inside. The rest of those that have been attracted to the settlement over the years live in the surrounding buildings or in the shanty town that has popped up in part of the mall's parking lot. The remaining parking lot that isn't used for housing has been converted into farms.

The Law of Trinity

The Leader is the supreme authority in Trinity. His word is law. All of the usual rules one would expect from a civilized society are in place: no killing, no assaulting, no stealing, no destruction of property. Officially, Trinity is even anti-slavery, but the deeper one digs, the less meaning that stance starts to hold.

To really understand that freedom is more of an illusion in Trinity than it would appear at first glance, you first have to look at Trinity's economy. Trinity does not use caps; all transactions in Trinity are done with coins and tickets taken from the mall's arcade. The real issue is that The Leader completely controls the distribution of Trinity's currency. It's sold as a system where "If you work, you eat," and the top performers are rewarded with more.

On paper, it all sounds completely fair. In reality, it's riddled with corruption. The 8 families oversee all work that is done in Trinity and report back to The Leader. Their word decides whether you can buy a little extra this week or if you go hungry for several days, and this fact is not lost on them. A family's favorites or those willing to cave to a family's demands can find themselves living a comfortable existence. For those that don't play ball, the families can make their life a living hell.

Relationships are also closely monitored in Trinity. The Leader views having a partner less as a right and more as a privilege to be earned. Those that work hard enough or curry enough favor can be matched with an equally hard-working partner. Everyone is told that it's in the settlement's best interests—two diligent parents produce diligent babies and laziness is removed from future generations. Obviously, much more goes on behind the scenes. Paying to get matched with a certain someone is incredibly common, as is a family marrying two people to punish them both.

SPECIAL

It wouldn't be Fallout without those 7 letters. I've decided to tie each attribute to a family and the work that each family oversees. There's an 8th family without an associated attribute, but I'll touch on them later.

If I go the light dice rolling route, I'll hand everyone a number of points and ask that they assign points to each attribute in whatever way they think best fits their character. 1 is the lowest an attribute can go, and 9 is the highest. The plan is to have players roll a d10 whenever I think a roll is warranted. Rolling equal to or lower than the appropriate attribute will yield positive results. Rolling more than your attribute will introduce some kind of complication.

The 8 Families

The 8 Families claim to be able to trace their roots back to the original founding of Trinity and have taken their name from the mall itself. Each family has specialized over the years, essentially becoming the supervisor over one aspect of Trinity's daily operations that reports directly to The Leader. While the term 'family' is used, it's probably more accurate to say that the matriarch or patriarch of the house, their partner, their offspring, and potentially their parents are the only ones that enjoy all of the benefits of carrying the name. There are certainly plenty of cousins, brothers, and sisters around that might have one of the prestigious eight names, but they're technically not afforded any special treatment. In practice though, only an extremely disliked black sheep of a relative can ever expect to live anywhere other than inside the mall.

The Macy Family - Strength - In charge of Trinity's security force

The Dillard Family - Perception - In charge of Trinity's hunters and gatherers

The Hollister Family - Endurance - In charge of Trinity's farmers

The Nordstrom Family - Charisma - In charge of Trinity's vendors and traders

The Barnes Family - Intelligence - In charge of Trinity's science and medical fields

The Maxx Family - Agility - In charge of Trinity's industrial operation

The Penney Family - Luck - In charge of Trinity's scavenging operation

The Spencer Family - N/A - In charge of Trinity's "Black Rooms", which is basically a brothel that's used as extra incentive to work hard, especially for those who haven't been given a partner

The Leader

If the 8 families are to be believed, The Leader has been running Trinity since its founding over 150 years ago. They claim that all that Trinity provides would not be possible without The Leader's wise governance. While disputes between citizens are typically resolved by the Macy family, The Leader is responsible for settling matters between the 8 families. Whatever it is that The Leader does in these secret meetings appears to be working; not once in Trinity's history has the head of one of the 8 families ever attempted to seize control or overtly eliminate another family.

During his rare public appearances, The Leader appears to be a man in his mid to late 30s. Those who have called Trinity their home for multiple decades can at least confirm that The Leader has maintained the same appearance for as long as they've been here. No one can explain it, and The Leader's apparent supernatural longevity has given him an almost god-like status among the settlers.

[Hatless]

Character Sheet:

For your character's SPECIAL stats, each value will begin at 1. You then have 33 points to distribute however you wish. When you're done, all SPECIAL values should total to 40.

Code Select Expand

[float=left][img height=300 padding=5]Face claims or realistic art. No anime art, please.[/img][/float]
[b]Name:[/b]
[b]Age:[/b] Characters must be at least 18 years old.
[b]Gender:[/b]
[b]Sexual Orientation:[/b] Any orientation is welcome, but do keep in mind that the 8 Families are motivated by strengthening their bloodline.
[b]Hobbies:[/b] What did your character do to pass the time in Vault 52?
[b]Personality:[/b] Give a paragraph or two about how your character usually behaves and any changes that might have occurred in the last few weeks.

[b]Strength:[/b] 1
[b]Perception:[/b] 1
[b]Endurance:[/b] 1
[b]Charisma:[/b] 1
[b]Intelligence:[/b] 1
[b]Agility:[/b] 1
[b]Luck:[/b] 1

[b]Ons & Offs:[/b] You can link your thread or write something specific to your character.
[b]Plots:[/b] Are there any situations that you're particularly interested in pursuing?



[MetroFallout]

Would it be alright if I plant an interest flag here early?

[Caela]

Hatty, this looks really interesting...definitely looking forward to reading more and interest is piqued. 

[Callie Del Noire]

I am piqued.

[Hatless]

Thanks for the quick interest, everyone.

I'm planning on expanding the family section a bit throughout the day, as well as adding a section for The Leader. I might expand the Vault 52 section a smidge too to give everyone a better idea of their character's former life.

I'll get a character sheet put together shortly. It should be pretty straightforward, but I do encourage everyone to put some thought into relationships with the other Vault 52 residents. You probably all at least know each other given the small size of vault communities.

[Aiden]

I am here for my pipboy and station of oldies

[RattledSnake]

This seems interesting! I’ll have to see what my schedule looks like in coming days but I’d love to join

[Kara Danvers]

Fallout is the best, without a doubt.

[Envious]

Post per week expectation?

[Hatless]

Post per week expectation?

For you, at least 20.

The real answer is that I'm not really sure. The rough outline that I have in my head says that this will probably develop into solo stories with some overlap rather than being some kind of D&D-esque 'everyone stays together no matter what' kind of group games.

If someone ends up in their own scenes, I don't really care what their posting speed is—you're only affecting yourself. For scenes with other players, I'd say just be respectful and use your best judgment. My personal plan is to update within a day or so, so things should generally move along at whatever pace each writer is setting.

[Envious]

For you, at least 20.

I like a challenge!

[TippedVelvet]

I'm so down for this!

[TippedVelvet]

Name: Ruth Martin
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Hetero but bi-curious.
Hobbies: Reading. Editing Vault 52’s media feeds. Gardening in the hydroponics lab. Occasionally, gossiping.
Personality: Popularity came easily to Ruth, a natural peace-maker and social butterfly. She was school president her senior year, and post-G.O.A.T. worked with the Admin offices, where she was close to the Overseer and his inner circle. Following her promotion to Administration and meteoric rise, rumors circulated that she slept her way to the ‘top’. Naturally, she adamantly denies these slanderous allegations.

The weeks following the robot-revolt were the most difficult of her life. She is not a natural-born survivor, and while that period brought an inner strength she did not know she had to the surface, she still had to rely on others in the group to survive.

She still had an important-if-secondary role to play in the group, functioning as a defacto diplomat, peacemaker, and therapist. Her knowledge of horticulture also helped identify edible plants.

Strength: 3
Perception: 7
Endurance: 5
Charisma: 9
Intelligence: 7
Agility: 6
Luck: 3

Ons & Offs: Link in my sig. I’m comfortable with NC and dubcon for this RP. Please discuss first.
Plots: Ruth will definitely dive headfirst into the political scene of Trinity. Despite the hardships, her inner-adventurer was awakened by the exodus. She would be eager to join another expedition and will be looking for opportunities to improve her survival and martial skills so as to be more of an asset to the team.

Please let me know if anything is incorrect or changes need to be made. I'd love to brainstorm connections with other writers!

[Hatless]

My first character! Looks good, TippedVelvet. 🥳

To everyone else that's interested and those that might just now be wandering by, I don't have any plans to cap the number of players in the game so don't be shy about adding your own character to the pile. I'm also around to answer any questions you might have about what is acceptable and what might not be.

I'm going to go ahead and pencil in a soft start date of November 30th. That should give everyone plenty of time and avoid the holiday hiccup.

[TippedVelvet]

My first character! Looks good, TippedVelvet. 🥳

To everyone else that's interested and those that might just now be wandering by, I don't have any plans to cap the number of players in the game so don't be shy about adding your own character to the pile. I'm also around to answer any questions you might have about what is acceptable and what might not be.

I'm going to go ahead and pencil in a soft start date of November 30th. That should give everyone plenty of time and avoid the holiday hiccup.

Thanks, Hatless! I look forward to seeing more characters come in!

Hatless, do you forsee any adventures taking place outside of Trinity?

[Hatless]

Hatless, do you forsee any adventures taking place outside of Trinity?

Yes, I imagine at least someone is going to end up going outside. A lot of what happens early will probably go into determining who and how frequently. Aligning with certain families will drastically increase your odds, while others might guarantee that you never have to leave the safety of the mall if you don't want to.

[TippedVelvet]

Yes, I imagine at least someone is going to end up going outside. A lot of what happens early will probably go into determining who and how frequently. Aligning with certain families will drastically increase your odds, while others might guarantee that you never have to leave the safety of the mall if you don't want to.

Hmm...Ruth is high on Charisma, so maybe she can attach herself to anyone looking to trade or acquire salvage? That could but her in contact with the Hollisters or the Penneys. She is interested in leadership wherever she finds it. The Spencers would be a worst-case scenario for her, but fun times for me :)

[Caela]

@Hatless for images, is art ok? I usually prefer actual pictures but finding something with the right vibe feels easier with actually Fallout artwork. 

[Hatless]

@Hatless for images, is art ok? I usually prefer actual pictures but finding something with the right vibe feels easier with actually Fallout artwork.

Yes, art is perfectly acceptable. I'd just prefer that no one uses anime style art.

[Remiel]

Is there going to be a player limit?

[Hatless]

Is there going to be a player limit?

Probably not. I don't expect this to get to a point where I can't manage it. If it does, I can just go with my initial vision of a sandbox game with some GM meddling.

[MetroFallout]

I feel like I'm mostly finished with my character so here he is (lemme know what you guys think and if I should change anything):

Name: Diego Reyes
Age: 30
Gender: Male
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual
Hobbies: Shooting (with BB guns), Machinist/Tinkerer, Programmer, Cyclist (in the gym), Sparring, Baseball
Personality: Perhaps unusually for an inhabitant of Vault 52, Diego deliberately went against the grain and learned to work with his hands from a young age and established himself as a machinist and general handyman. Despite trusting and deciding to work alongside and with the robots, he had a habit of stepping in whenever he had reason to believe that he should intervene once the robots had finished and moved on. He justified it to the Overseer as putting the finishing touches onto whatever it was he was doing after the robots had done most of the work.

Inspired by his favourite Hubris Comics characters of The Silver Shroud and a non-villainous version of the legacy character of The Mechanist, Diego similarly used his free time to indulge in his hobby of making costumes and gadgets for an original character of his that put elements of both of his favourites together that he took to calling The Silver Mechanist.

In the collection of Holotapes that he used to record his fan work and to document his progress in the designing of his character's outfits and gadgets, The Silver Mechanist was written as the product of a union between the Silver Shroud and a talented roboticist who moonlighted as a heroic vigilante with a suit of roboticised armour.

In many ways, his writing on the adventures of The Silver Mechanist taking on crime and fighting for justice in the pre-War cities was a reflection of his fantasies of living a life that wasn't as sterile as the life he led in Vault 52 as he put a lot of himself into his original character while he worked mostly unacknowledged on the machines that run the Vault for the inhabitants.

In the middle of all of that, he managed to find time to befriend one of the GAVIN (Greeter Assaultron for Vault-Tec, Interlinked Network) units that served as human-to-machine dispatch interfaces. While poking around in the robot depot's storage, Diego had the opportunity to take a good long look under the hood of one of them in storage. While the GAVIN unit that he'd taken to calling Alba was inactive, he customised her and found some strange programming that was dormant in her systems while he was digging around on the programming that he'd downloaded into a holotape. After studying the programming, he decided to make some changes of his own and excised the strange command programming before surreptitiously uploading the tape's content back into Alba and it turned out to be the most important decision that he could have made in his life and was instrumental in saving the lives of some of his fellow Vault Dwellers.

When the command to turn all bots hostile came, Diego was in the batting cage taking swings with his personal bat that he'd taken to calling Excalibur to work off some steam after work, the bat built from an ash bat with an axe handle that was then encased in a welded clamshell of AR500-grade steel with the welding beads ground down came in handy when he was approached by a Mr. Handy that approached him with blood dripping from the saw blades and homicidal intent. With the help of the heavy and extremely hardy bat, he managed to defend himself against the Mr. Handy by simultaneously destroying the saw blade while parrying it, buying him time till Alba reached him after he had called for her using his Pipboy, trusting the changes he had made to Alba's programming. Once she arrived, Alba reaffirmed her loyalty to the dwellers and briefed him of the situation using Vault 52's network to her advantage while he geared up with his functional Silver Mechanist costume that he'd built by repurposing reshaped robot parts that he'd squirreled away from when he fiddled with the other bots.

During the harrowing escape, Alba remained friendly and helpful to all surviving dwellers and was instrumental in securing an escape route for those that survived the initial attacks by exploiting her robotic IFF chip to catch the roving bots unaware and destroying the ones that were in the way. The customizations made to her body made her instantly recognisable as the sole robot that could be trusted to protect the lives of the dwellers and the oil sprayed onto her chassis rather than the blood also helped seal that impression.

In the weeks following their expulsion, Diego got his wish of a more exciting life than the one he'd left behind in Vault 52 but it came at the cost of his taking a life for the first time once he'd left the Vault's doors when he came upon a group of raiders who attempted to accost him and his fellow dwellers. That first kill weighed heavily on his mind but he knew he had to steel himself for the future as things were only ever going to get more difficult.


Strength: 5
Perception: 5
Endurance: 5
Charisma: 4
Intelligence: 9
Agility: 7
Luck: 5

Ons & Offs: On/Offs
Plots: Re-taking the Vault from the hostile bots

[Remiel]

Welp, MetroFallout just took my idea of the antisocial mechanical-minded type. 

Question for @Hatless -- okay, so if I understand it, Vault 52 sounds like it was more or less an Eden of leisure and easy living, prior to the robots turning hostile.  Would the occupants have had the time or incentive to learn any skills?  If Diego, for example, wanted to assist in building and maintaining the robots, would they have let him?  If there were no weapons or armor allowed in Vault 52, I imagine that no one would be skilled in, say, marksmanship.

Anyway, my point is that I imagine that this group of soft, coddled Vault dwellers is in for quite the rude awakening when they finally make it to Trinity, since no one would have any useful skills?

[Yukina]

Tempting. :) Especially if I can play a vaulter gal married off to one of the more affluent women in the Trinity.