Fallout Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Great War

[Inerrant Lust]

A solitary radio half-buried in the sand flickered to life, a soft and calming tune lazily flowing out. Beside the radio, a burnt and charred skeleton rested on a towel sunbathing under the yellow skies. Further away, the shrivelled husk of a palm tree offered shade to another skeleton reclining in a wooden beach chair.

In the distance, the wasted toxic soup of the Pacific cascaded on, waves tumbling over one another as they ebbed and flowed onto the beach. Past the beach, on a debris-strewn road and boardwalk, a solitary fully armored figure overlooked the scenic purview of the beach. He turned, looking back inland through the orange orb-like visor that covered the upper part of his face. Holding a Chinese assault rifle, the veiled figure looked up at the thick clouds above. The mysterious soldier took a few steps back under the cover of a half-collapsed roof and crouched down. He disappeared, ripples flowing through the air. After a short while... the soft pitter patter of falling droplets gradually rang through the air as rain began to fall. Black rain.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Since there's going to be competition of any kind, and because the SPECIAL system is so awesome and so easily converted for pen and paper.... this will be a system game. The setting is Hawaii and the date is October 23rd, 2131. Precisely 54 years since the bombs first fell and the world ended.

Looking for 1-3 characters, possibly of the same background (Born and raised in a Vault) or from various backgrounds (Raiders, Settlers, Prospectors, ect.)

Not quite first come, first serve... but it wouldn't hurt to have an interesting character concept.

I have a few ideas for some of the Vaults and communities existing on the islands so if you have any questions or have a vague concept in mind, feel free to ask. I'll put up the rules here, but don't be in a hurry to write anything up. What's important is the RP elements, not the mechanics. ;-)

Character Creation
Primary Statistics (40 points to distribute for Humans)
Derived Statistics
Perks (One every 3 levels)
Skills ([IN * 2] + 5 per level)
Traits (Choose up to 2)

Sample Character Sheet

Name: Albert Cole
Gender: Male
Age: 27

Level: 1
SPECIAL: 5 ST, 6 PE, 4 EN, 9 CH, 6 IN, 4 AG, 6 LK
Traits: Skilled, Good Natured

Action Points: 7
Armor Class: 4
Carry Weight: 150
Critical Chance: 6%
Damage Resistance: 0
Healing Rate: 1/day
Hit Points: 28
Melee Damage: 1
Perk Rate: 4
Poison Resistance: 20%
Radiation Resistance: 8%
Sequence: 12
Skill Rate: 22

Skill Name: Initial Value (Skill Points) Final Value
Small Guns: Tag 11% (+5) 21%
Doctor: 44% (+9) 53%
Barter: Tag 51% (+3) 57%
Speech: Tag 60% (+5) 70%
For the sake of streamlining the process initially, you only need to include skills you've invested points in. Although as you use them throughout the game, it may be worthwhile to jot them down for future reference. Also remember tag skills don't work as they did in FO3 and New Vegas. When you invest a skill point into a tagged skill, the increase is doubled.

Perks: -

[ManyMindsManyVoices]

"Hey, not totally sure about my interest, but I thought I'd mention that there is a PnP system using the SPECIAL system, I don't know if you're actually using that. However, I thought I'd make note of it, I'm sure there's probably fan made updates to it online to include things from Fallout 3 and NV as well."

[Inerrant Lust]

Hmmm..

I read a while ago that there was a rather unsuccessful attempt to make a Fallout PnP, but it was pretty terrible. If that has since been changed... I'll take another look at it.

So yeah, consider the mechanics part somewhat vague at the moment.

[rhev]

Alternatively, you could just use GURPS since that's what the SPECIAL system was based off anyways.  :)

[meikle]

Hmmm..

I read a while ago that there was a rather unsuccessful attempt to make a Fallout PnP, but it was pretty terrible. If that has since been changed... I'll take another look at it.

So yeah, consider the mechanics part somewhat vague at the moment.

That Fallout PnP (that old one, Fallout PnP 2.0) was pretty much the result of translating the mechanics of the video games directly (FO:T, IIRC, because it used a similar/same system but included stuff like stats for Ghoul and Mutant and Deathclaw characters).  As you can imagine, doing things like individually calculating each of 40 shots fired from a minigun each turn is easy with a computer, and pretty annoying with dice!

[Inerrant Lust]

I'm not all too displeased with what I've read of at least this version of the Fallout PnP RPG.

At the moment, I'm exhausted from work. Don't want to think too hard about anything involving numbers at this moment. X_x 'Sides, the most important part is the fluff and RP, so I'm curious as to anyone's thoughts about this particular setting and if you'd like to see something different or have any ideas.

And now to pass out. o_O

[Hellion000]

Not gonna actually play, but...

You are hereby awarded 1000 CoolPoints in recognition of your use of a Dr. Strangelove reference, IL.

[MissFire]

I love the Fallout games and the universe but I've never played any pen and paper games before.

[The Great Triangle]

I'd be quite interested in playing!  I like the fallout setting quite a bit, though I'm more of a fan of fallout 1 and 2 than the other entries in the franchise. 

I have a sort of character concept of a scion of a wealthy family, the kind of people who formed the enclave, but couldn't get a seat on the Poseidon Oil Rig.  A guy with a name like Raegan Jefferson Milton III.  The character would have been close to the overseer of the vault, and likely had access to unusual luxuries, but he's actually a lot more of a cowboy than the rest of his family, which gives him the practical survival skills he needs to survive in the atomic wasteland.  ...Unfortunately, his privilege also leaves him with signifigant moral blind spots, and a lack of street smarts, often getting him into trouble. 

Basically, I'm interested in playing a fish out of water with some practical skills, possibly a leader for the group, or a lead negotiator.  The character could also end up being a fighter, but I think other characters better suited to the enforcer role will end up appearing.

[Inerrant Lust]

If nobody else picks up on this, I'd still be willing to run it.

I did say 1-3 characters. 

[Urbanzorro]

I'm interested, though I'm currently trying to sort out what sort of character I'm going to want to play as

[The Great Triangle]

Is Dogmeat a valid character to play as?  That would be awesome!    (though likely end up not being very funny after a while...  Of course, Timmy the Talking Deathclaw wasn't very funny to begin with)

Skynet would also be an amusing completely insane character, as would any character from later in the timeline who walked through the Guardian of Forever. 

[Inerrant Lust]

Urbanzorro: Any ideas? I can offer some suggestions...

Hawaii was nuked pretty hard. Pearl Harbor was hit again, and pretty much for the same reasons. Alot of the pre-war battleships litter the shallow sea floor half-submerged. Could be used as makeshift communities...

The Big Island, which is largely unpopulated today and would likely remain as such in the FO timeline, would probably have avoided any direct hits. But seeing as how the canon says the PRC was fond of biological and chemical weapons in addition to nukes... It would have been dusted with a 'just-to-be-sure' chemical agent.

That's why the little intro I've written has a pair of skeletons on a perfectly unharmed beach towel and chair.

Of course these chemical agents would have had profound effects on the local habitat and inhabitants...  Back to the Big Island, however, the strategic unimportance of it would also naturally be a place for survivalists and the well-prepared to flock to in secret. As well as being an optimal place for a vault or two. However, the central location of the game would probably be the most populous island of Oahu.

TGP: I onced played as a ranger in D&D... that was a dog. His animal companion was a human. So I could use the human partly for interaction and the dog for having the real personality.

But by all means, I wouldn't have a problem with a dog PC. I have a soft spot for dogs anyways, hence why I always made a bee-line to get them in the games. But as you said, it could get boring after awhile... I'd be more than willing to look for ways to keep it lively. (The dog ranger was relatively easy because of the human there as a go-between.)

Or, there's always a robo-dog.

I haven't decided how serious or flippant the story will be. Probably in line with most of the games as they are. (Serious main story line... the occasional less-than-serious side-quest or special encounter.)

[TheHangedOne]

I'd definitely be interested in this. I'd like to  play as a simple Wastelander trying to get by (scavver, maybe as part of a small group, or more likely, more of a hermit).

[Inerrant Lust]

So, is there a general consensus of the level of adult content for this game? I'd like to know where everyone's boundaries lay. Personally, I'm kinky enough to explore slumming around with the centaurs... but I can settle for something much more vanilla.

[The Great Triangle]

I'm perfectly fine with adult content within board limits, though I have emotional problems with anonymous violent sexual assault, so I'd like to keep that to a minimum.  (More contextualized non consensual scenes are fine with me, but I have a hard time coping when people do horrible things to each other for no properly defined reason.)

[TheHangedOne]

Seems like the scenario, at least to me, would favor more vanilla pairings, but hey, maybe their's a dominatrix raider gal out there, somewhere... Oooh, that'd be lovely. 

[Inerrant Lust]

Duly noted, O three-sided one. Although, considering the source material... acts of random violence isn't altogether uncommon among survivors. It was more evident in Fallout 3, where raiders and cannibals and other baddies were the majority. In Fallout 1 and 2 (and to some extent New Vegas), the tone at least suggested that bad people were a minority.

As for prewar governments and their successors, well they were definitely bad. The whole vault project just reeks of MKULTRA-esque pointlessness and disregard for human dignity.

But I never intended to have a significant raider presence in this game. Perhaps plenty of tribals. But you could probably guess from my 'intro' what some of the themes will be. I'll admit a certain perverse interest in the more extreme possibilities (like centaurs  ) but that's probably not going to work out for two reasons; One, I'm not sure if FEV will be too important or relevant to this particular setting. And more importantly, my players might not enjoy it! 

[The Great Triangle]

I'd say that, cannon-wise, centaurs are pretty unlikely, since I'm fairly sure they were created by the Master's mad scientists.  On the other hand, I don't think anyone would object if they happened to be terror units designed by the enclave, later unearthed  by the Master...  Perhaps one of the vault experiments even involved locking people in a vault full of centaurs, to determine if they could live alongside such creatures.

My thoughts on a Hawaii setting in fallout is that the lack of land area and food stockpiles wouldn't really encourage raiders, though tribals could certainly engage in raider activity from time to time, even though they would need to rely on hunting and gathering as well as light agriculture for survival for the most part.  Hawaii's soils are fairly fertile, but most of the existing seed stocks are for cash crops, rather than food crops, meaning that civilization will tend to be fairly tenuous.  The Great War likely depleted pacific fish stocks, but if FEV, radiation, or changing ocean currents brought some kind of edible superfauna to the surface, then hunting the megasharks/hypersquids/gigantic jellyfish would provide some kind of help to coastal communities.

In a pinch, algae farming might also work, if the ocean isn't excessively toxic, and/or an edible form of algae capable of handling the problem can be found.  I imagine that fresh water is reasonably easy to find in hawaii, since in the worst case scenario, one can simply locate a volcanic fracture point to build a distillery for seawater.  Even if there isn't any practical use for the ocean, it will still support the most obvious sort of raiders for Hawaii: pirates.  The limited land area of Hawaii, especially that not screwed up by radiation or chemical/biological weapons, means that raiders can only find enough communities to support their existance without getting pushed out on the biggest islands.  Everywhere else, they'll need to come from and then dissapear into the sea, like vikings.

Most pirate crews could likely scrounge and/or refit an old metal hulled boat, but I doubt they could repair or easily power the fusion engine, and would likely dump it if they possibly could.  Sail power would be more efficient, and would almost certainly be relied upon by any legitimate fisherman or traders, though pirates might want to rev up an engine to approach becalmed vessels.  If the wind patterns in Hawaii post war leave the air still too often, the pirates might even retrofit vessels as modern day slave galleys, though this seems more like a tactic for extremely strong viking type pirates, or pirates too stupid to figure out how to get a ship going in the right direction under sail.  The art of sailing likely wouldn't be something pirates would be too intimately familiar with, but a combination of guesswork, old pirate movies, and surviving pre war knowledge would give the pirates a decent idea of how to rig a ship.

I'd imagine a lot of ship to ship combat would be resolved using energy weapons in place of cannon, though boarding actions would eventually be the order of the day.  Piratical raiders likely wouldn't invent scrap metal armor, but might find ways to make combat armor lighter, or create reinforced leather hides, perhaps out of an exotic creature to help out in that sort of setting.  If the post war ocean is possible to swim in, surfboards, possibly equipped with sails, could be used for boarding actions and inter-island transportation, which might create another class of surf-raiders paddling on their boards to get in and out quickly.  Speedboats and Jet-Skis would essentially be the ultimate vessels for attaining mastery of the sea, but getting the fusion cells would be hard, and keeping them in repair even harder.  If anybody got a pre-war US navy vessel online, even a frigate or a mothballed WW2 destroyer, they would likely become undisputed master of the Hawaian ocean.  Of course, US navy vessels probably ran on petroleum, so keeping the doomsday device going would take some doing.  (On the other hand, the idea of an entire island empire keeping its subjects in line to produce ethanol to run a Cruiser is kind of cool)


Well, hopefully that's not stepping on some toes, Inerrant, just my thoughts on what Hawaii would be like in the fallout setting.

[Inerrant Lust]

Woo!

I thought about some of those same things, though you went in much more detail. I veered off into another direction, though... which I'll keep secret.

It might be possible that an early version of FEV or PVP was shipped there in order to be used against China. Afterall, FEV made its way to the capital wasteland, so it was at least transported around before the war. And there's nothing saying that the Chinese hadn't developed bio-weapons of their own. Afterall, they were advanced enough to produce the stealth armor (which the US could only partially emulate via temporary stealth boys) and other advanced weapons.

I'd like to get this going sometime next week, if possible. 

[Ex68471]

I am extremely interested in this. Do you have any more slots open?

[Inerrant Lust]

Perhaps.

You know, I haven't really gotten any specific character concepts quite yet. (Although that's probably my fault for being vague on the rules)

The character creation rules largely remain unchanged... mostly because they're almost the same as with the PnP I linked earlier. 

[TheHangedOne]

Much as I'd love to make a character for this, I'm going to have to opt out. Too much stuff going on for me to take on another game.

[The Great Triangle]

Well, here's my attempt at a character sheet:


Name: Raegan Jefferson Milton III
Gender: Male
Age: 24

Level: 1
SPECIAL: 6 ST, 8 PE, 5 EN, 9 CH, 7 IN, 8 AG, 4 LK
Traits: One Hander, Gifted

Action Points: 9
Armor Class: 8
Carry Weight: 175
Critical Chance: 4%
Damage Resistance: 0
Healing Rate: 1/day
Hit Points: 31
Melee Damage: 1
Perk Rate: 3
Poison Resistance: 25%
Radiation Resistance: 10%
Sequence: 16
Skill Rate: 14

Skill Name: Initial Value (Skill Points) Final Value
Small Guns: Tag 33% (+8)  49%   [69% with one handed weapons; 9% with two handed weapons]
Speech: Tag 25% (+4) 33%
Outdoorsman: Tag 24% (+2) 28% (If there's a seperate sailing skill, then I'll tag that skill instead)

Big Guns: 6%
Melee Weapons: 38%
Throwing: 22%
Unarmed: 44%

[Inerrant Lust]

While I confess a certain predisposition for female characters in these sorts of adventure games, (This idea was inspired, in part, by idle naughty thoughts while playing all the fallout games... "I'm cold and hungry, can I stay with you raiders for awhile?" "Sure, lady. For a price..."  ) Raegan doesn't look too bad at all, particularly considering the fluff you gave for him before.