Fallout: Not-In-USA

[Newman]

Fallout has "being in a retrofuturist postapocalyptic America that's never got far from the fifties, culturally" as a major part of its schtick. However, Fallout 3 started an interesting path in that they left California, where the previous games mostly took place, in favour of the DC area. And it got me wondering... remember how there were games of GTA that didn't take place in the USA? Well, why not do the same with Fallout, even in the form of DLC or expansion packs or something? Some ideas I thought would be fun:


Fallout: Berlin: the Wall and the Iron Curtain have fallen to the strategic nuclear missiles exchanged between Western Europe and the Soviet Block. Berlin, smack-dab in the middle, was blown up. Between the fiercely anti-communist, hedonistic, whoring and magnificently alive Westerners, the haunted, police-state ridden Easterners, the Neo-Nazis (there always are Neo-Nazis) of the Thule Society, the Soviet's Enclave counterpart and their ploys to take control of everything, the Teutonic Knights and the militaristic and low-tech Neo-Prussians, the city... is actually more of a nest of spies than a warzone. Intrigue, plotting and backstabbing fire right and left as the different factions try to break the stalemate, restore the region's brutal industrial power and recover the lost pre-war knowledge and know-how. For whover manages to grasp full control of the city's resources, especially of its brains, could take over the world, for better or for worse. Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBLBD2zyogA)
Fallout: Paris: French May 68 never occurred, and French society, till the war, has remained a Catholic, purtiannical, extremely classist system, where social mobility is null, patronizing and hierarchy is the norm, and productivity is the only measure of the value of a human. And women don't have the vote yet. Now it's all been blow up. In Paris, the City of Light, darkness reigns. As civilization tries to grow anew, the Dreamers (NOT Hippies, check French May 68 on wikipedia, of which this would be a belated and therefore more extremist and "advanced" version) are trying to overthrow the Regime of the Old (as they call the Gaullist Gauls, staunch traditionalists and disciplinarians, militaristic, xenophobic and chauvinistic to the extreme). The Neo-Monarchists, a minority in numbers, but strong in caps, connections and intellectual expertise, want to outright recover the Old Regime. Then there's the Guillotins. Those are just pissed off. Oh, and there's always routine wasteland immorality. Anyone here seen "Delicatessen"? Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feNVUwQA8U&feature=fvst) Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fpCztWWug&feature=fvst)
Fallout Bagdad: ... I have a most wonderful demonstration of this concept, which this margin is too small to contain. Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQY6Ou0UAog&feature=related)
Fallout Jerusalem: I don't even want to get into this one. It has a lot of potential for a lot of things. Among them, for being freaking offensive to people who have shown little sense of humor.
Fallout: Casablanca: take Casablanca the movie, as well as Casanegra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ILH8s-Zy4Y), and work from there...
Fallout Japan: I'd take the ambiance of the novel "No Longer Human", some bits from the manga Akagi, and take all of Japan's most fascist, distopic elements and cram them together up to eleven. Then blow Tokyo up. For the umpteenth time. Heck, make the setting be Hiroshima instead, and have it nuked AGAIN, by the Chinese this time.
Fallout London: Honestly, I'd go for broke and make it a direct sequel to the V For Vendetta comics, with the Serial Numbers Filed Off.


And those are the ideas just off the top of my head.

[RndmNumGen]

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in Gaming(Other)... Eh, whatever.

Anyway...

I really like the idea of Fallout:Berlin. There is a lot of potential for conflict, cool sites to visit, varying routes to success... Also, Vault-Tech was exclusively an American company, wasn't it? A lot of the culture would have to be created from scratch.

Paris... just doesn't seem as interesting. Yes, the French Revolution was cool, but French Revolution + Bombs = .... well... there's no Monarchy then. They were blown up. So yeah.

Baghdad? What about it?

Due to the politically charged nature of Jerusalem, I don't see how the benefit would be enough for ANY company wanting to want to take the risk and the(ahem - pardon the pun - fallout) that would result.

The rest don't really seem to have much going for them either.

[Mando Knight]

the militaristic and low-tech Neo-Prussians,

...I don't see why neo-Prussia would be low-tech. Prussia (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Prussia) is part of the source of Germany's reputation for militaristic efficiency in engineering (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GermanicEfficiency). And magnificent bastardry (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OttoVonBismarck). If anything, I'd expect them to be merged with the Teutonic Order (from which Prussia developed) for the local equivalent for the Brotherhood of Steel.

[SowZ]

I want to run a Fallout:Australia game at some point. The game world will be decent size but not unmanageable. Guns will exist but way fewer than in America or even a number of European countries. And imagine with how wierd Australian animals already are how odd the mutant versions would be! Plus... You know... Mel Gibson... (No, he shouldn't make a cameo.) While I am talking about a PnP, I think it would be fun as a video game as well.

[Newman]

I'm not sure if this belongs here or in Gaming(Other)... Eh, whatever.

Anyway...

I put it here because I don't expect it to be developed, so a homemade tabletop version is the best I can hope for. Or a Fanfic...


I really like the idea of Fallout:Berlin. There is a lot of potential for conflict, cool sites to visit, varying routes to success... Also, Vault-Tech was exclusively an American company, wasn't it? A lot of the culture would have to be created from scratch.

Why wouldn't Vault Tech be a multinational endeavor? The only ones who'd use it would be those of the West side, but no reason not to have the East side develop their own. And yeah, if you want THE hub of the cold war, it's freaking Berlin.

As for "creating the culture from scratch", well, you'd have to rethink lots of stuff, especially thematically. See, America has this theme of the pioneers who'll tame an unforgiving land and grow goodness and prosperity out of it, with a lot of accent on guns and individual vigilantism (few people think in terms of the Oregon Trail (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(video_game)) and dying of dysenteryradiation poisoning). The Fallout games are just a more hostile Frontier.


Paris... just doesn't seem as interesting. Yes, the French Revolution was cool, but French Revolution + Bombs = .... well... there's no Monarchy then. They were blown up. So yeah.


No, the Monarchy has been lost and gained again lots of times after the Ist Republic. There's always a pretendant to the throne, the nobs keep good track of genealogy. They're just not taken seriously anymore, but after an apocalypse everything goes, and French nobs still form a tight-knit network even today. Anyway, a Monarchist and/or Imperialist faction would be the source of a lot of cool, the same way the Broderhood Of Steel is with all their pseudo-medieval-monastic paraphernalia. Now let me tell you about French May 1968 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France): I will especially draw your attention to the awesomecool slogans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_in_France#Slogans_and_graffiti). Think of it in a "Renegades of Funk (http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2240852/rage_against_the_machine_renegades_of_funk/)" way, if you will. There really isn't enough Revolutioning in Fallout. What there is, though, is way way waaaay too much killing to be sustainable, but then again the games aren't exactly in scale.



Baghdad? What about it?
Think of all the factions fighting for supremacy there right now. Now blow up the superpowers of the world and sprinkle everything with a thick layer of radiation cloud. Amusing cluster**** thirty gambit pileup to be expected.


Due to the politically charged nature of Jerusalem, I don't see how the benefit would be enough for ANY company wanting to want to take the risk and the(ahem - pardon the pun - fallout) that would result.

My point exactly.


The rest don't really seem to have much going for them either.

Have you read V for Vendetta? Postapocalyptic England is interesting. As for Japan, let's just say old school japanese mentalities are really really freaking scary. These are the guys that pulled the Rape of Nanjing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Nanking), idolized Samurai warrior culture, existed purely for the sake of the Emperor, the State, the Company, and Society, to the point that the value of a person was measured purely terms of their usefulness to those groups, and undesirables are expected and even encouraged to kill themselves for the sake of everyone else. Now blow up theur Emperor, State, Company and Society, cramp them in Vaults (are all Fallout humans descendent from Valut-dwellers?) for two hundred years, with different styles of society in every vault, different caricatures of the same WWII era mentality, and release them. The pontential for drama is just immense. Unlike Americans, the Japanese are not frontiermen or pioneers, they are not individualists. They're pretty much polar opposites. A Japanese wasteland would look very different from an American one.



I want to run a Fallout:Australia game at some point. The game world will be decent size but not unmanageable. Guns will exist but way fewer than in America or even a number of European countries. And imagine with how wierd Australian animals already are how odd the mutant versions would be! Plus... You know... Mel Gibson... (No, he shouldn't make a cameo.) While I am talking about a PnP, I think it would be fun as a video game as well.

OHGODNO! NOW I'LL HAVE TO DEAL WITH DROP-RAD-BEARS ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE!

I'll call my PC "Rincewind".



...I don't see why neo-Prussia would be low-tech. Prussia (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Prussia) is part of the source of Germany's reputation for militaristic efficiency in engineering (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GermanicEfficiency). And magnificent bastardry (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OttoVonBismarck). If anything, I'd expect them to be merged with the Teutonic Order (from which Prussia developed) for the local equivalent for the Brotherhood of Steel.

You are absolutely right. I wanted to make them into the Kaiser's Legion, but your idea makes more sense and is less of a ripoff. They wouldn't just worry about preserving tech, but also about making new stuff. German industry, my friends.

[Vknight]

Don't worry Newman you can always download the pdf and get the people you play with to try it out

Vault Tec was a part unofficially of the US government by the end. It started as a military contractor company working for American interests
And very true the Fallout world is a harsh frontier slowly getting better.

Nukes would wipe out there funding and others things. So I don't think they would have the ability to become powerhouses that could threaten or maintain any semblance of control.
Brotherhood of Steel are only really the faux medieval on the east coast. On the west coast they have kept to there roots as a Military Organization and still have access to the codex.
Also I like killing the Brotherhood of Steel... I have builds that can do it at Lvl3

Eh I don't care for the Baghdad or Jerusalem ideas I can see how they would work but they don't interest me.

Now this Japan and England both would be awesome ideas with lots of cool potential.
People survived outside of the Vaults. They became tribes or raiders, well others formed small communities and groups to keep the knowledge of the past alive(The Followers of the Apocalypse). Also most Vaults failed and the people inside are dead, mutated using F.E.V, mutated into Ghouls, were in a Vault built to the standards, or the experiment didn't kill them all off. Also again Vault Tec is a American company stationed in D.C that's work was first in making weapons like Laser Rifles, then the Vaults which got used all across North America. Now some other countries may have had there analogous but Vault Tec was the leader in this type of Tech.

Cool if your Rincewind can I be someone called Eggagul?

Caesar's Legion. They don't want people to depend on tech but the developers made it look like they hated the stuff. Oh sorry but the idea for them was great but someone, somewhere said they needed a villain group.

[Nerd-o-rama]

I want to run a Fallout:Australia game at some point. The game world will be decent size but not unmanageable. Guns will exist but way fewer than in America or even a number of European countries. And imagine with how wierd Australian animals already are how odd the mutant versions would be! Plus... You know... Mel Gibson... (No, he shouldn't make a cameo.) While I am talking about a PnP, I think it would be fun as a video game as well.

The question is, how in the hell do you make Australia's fauna more dangerous? Super Dingos?


Also, as a canonical note, some humans are descended from Vault-dwellers, some from people who took shelter elsewhere or avoided the worst of the blasts (which were, after all, concentrated on American and Chinese cities, leaving large areas of countryside unblasted, but irradiated by Fallout/exposed to FEV/just generally useless). This is where you get "primitive" tribals like Sulik, and the racism between Vault descendants like the Vault City guys and...well, everyone else.

[Mando Knight]

The question is, how in the hell do you make Australia's fauna more dangerous? Super Dingos?

Thirty-foot kangaroos. House (sized) spiders. Flying flesh-eating koalas.

[Cespenar]

Radcrocs. Just saying.

Anyway, Berlin and London sound like excellent ideas. Jerusalem, maybe not so much because in Fallout the existing religious aspects often disappear, being replaced by other, sometimes original-ish and sometimes satirical stuff. Thus, it would lose its biggest potential appeal. Or so I think.

[DoctorGlock]

Radcrocs. Just saying.

Anyway, Berlin and London sound like excellent ideas. Jerusalem, maybe not so much because in Fallout the existing religious aspects often disappear, being replaced by other, sometimes original-ish and sometimes satirical stuff. Thus, it would lose its biggest potential appeal. Or so I think.

This really. The scenery here is nice but when washed over with the green and brown it will be repetitive and dull. None of the interesting landmarks would realistically survive and the end result would be rather "meh"

[Starbuck_II]

The question is, how in the hell do you make Australia's fauna more dangerous? Super Dingos?


There were Komodo Dragons in Fallout Tactics, (too many for non-native creatures) so I'd expect a few of them in Australia version.

Giant Spiders? I mean, some of Australia's spiders are dangerous. Why not make them bigger. :smallbiggrin:

[Tyndmyr]

I put it here because I don't expect it to be developed, so a homemade tabletop version is the best I can hope for. Or a Fanfic...

Keep an eye out for when I finish White Rain(hoping for this summer). It should be able to pull off this sort of setting quite well.

I feel like Fallout: USSR is essential, and has almost as much crazy potential as germany. You've got massive projects like the ridiculously large flying boats and happy use of nuclear for things like AA guns(shoot a bomb into the air) or icebreaking. That would go with a fallout atmosphere perfectly.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Fallout so far has so far been built on retro-futuristic Cold War America stereotypes (you're more or less in an 80's action film in the ruins of a 50's sci fi film). Switching these out for Cold War Soviet stereotypes can only end in hilarity. As for major factions...possibly peaceful anarcho-communists on the one hand and a cult-of-personality technological police state on the other? Just to give a more Russian parallel to the "NCR vs. people who aren't the NCR" dichotomy in America. There also might be the threat of a Chinese faction making an expedition across Siberia as the global climate changes to make that more feasible. Even if this isn't happening, heck, even if China's a huge glass plate after the initial nuclear exchange, it could be a good source of traditional Russian dour paranoia. I imagine that what elements of Soviet culture remain are probably cheesed off at their revolutionary brothers in the People's Republic ending the world when they managed not to.

Speaking of ending the world, though...the Dead Hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29). Was it built in this alternate reality? Did it fire during the Great War? Is it still there, active, waiting for some nihilist to activate it and finish wiping out civilization? Could this be the main plot?

[Yora]

Fallout in 50s style Germany would be hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

Especially the cars.

[KnightDisciple]

Fallout: Berlin: the Wall and the Iron Curtain have fallen to the strategic nuclear missiles exchanged between Western Europe and the Soviet Block. Berlin, smack-dab in the middle, was blown up. Oh, definitely. Obviously there'd need to be more than a glowing crater here, but still. This would definitely have been a point of contention.


Between the fiercely anti-communist, hedonistic, whoring and magnificently alive Westerners, the haunted, police-state ridden Easterners, the Neo-Nazis (there always are Neo-Nazis) of the Thule Society, the Soviet's Enclave counterpart and their ploys to take control of everything, the Teutonic Knights and the militaristic and low-tech Neo-Prussians, the city... is actually more of a nest of spies than a warzone. Hooray exaggerated stereotypes, I guess.


Intrigue, plotting and backstabbing fire right and left as the different factions try to break the stalemate, restore the region's brutal industrial power and recover the lost pre-war knowledge and know-how. For whover manages to grasp full control of the city's resources, especially of its brains, could take over the world, for better or for worse. Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBLBD2zyogA)I dunno. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance of the city being either "subtle backstabbing politics" or "open street warfare", considering the exaggerated level of contention between the USA and "the forces of communism".




Fallout: Paris: French May 68 never occurred, and French society, till the war, has remained a Catholic, purtiannical, extremely classist system, where social mobility is null, patronizing and hierarchy is the norm, and productivity is the only measure of the value of a human. And women don't have the vote yetFrance, even before that, wasn't exactly the "last bastion of Catholicism" or anything. Some of this smacks of some personal bias here.


Now it's all been blow up. In Paris, the City of Light, darkness reigns. As civilization tries to grow anew, the Dreamers (NOT Hippies, check French May 68 on wikipedia, of which this would be a belated and therefore more extremist and "advanced" version) are trying to overthrow the Regime of the Old (as they call the Gaullist Gauls, staunch traditionalists and disciplinarians, militaristic, xenophobic and chauvinistic to the extreme). The Neo-Monarchists, a minority in numbers, but strong in caps, connections and intellectual expertise, want to outright recover the Old Regime. Then there's the Guillotins. Those are just pissed off. Oh, and there's always routine wasteland immorality. Anyone here seen "Delicatessen"? Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0feNVUwQA8U&feature=fvst) Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3fpCztWWug&feature=fvst)See, Paris is your chance for lots of subtle backstabbing, since the factions would all be French, and be more focused on the "details" of how to run things.
There's definitely opportunity here. Certainly a post-nuclear-war landscape of Paris could be filled with surreal, haunting imagery.



Fallout Baghdad: ... I have a most wonderful demonstration of this concept, which this margin is too small to contain. Music. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQY6Ou0UAog&feature=related)To be blunt, I don't see how you could make Baghdad relevant within the context of the premise of Fallout. This smacks of trying to capitalize on a recent conflict that has taken its toll on the nation, without considering how it might fit in the larger picture of the setting you're attempting to use. It feels more than a bit tasteless.




Fallout Jerusalem: I don't even want to get into this one. It has a lot of potential for a lot of things. Among them, for being freaking offensive to people who have shown little sense of humor.I can say with certainty the offense wouldn't be for a lack of "sense of humor" and rather a lack of desire to see the nuke-blasted scraps of what 3 major religions consider to be the collection of some of the holiest sites in the world.

Whereas Fallout:Baghdad felt a bit tasteless, this idea smacks of purposefully trying to troll segments of the population for "the lulz", and frankly lacks anything approaching taste.
I mean, seriously, you even acknowledge here that your whole intent is to offend other people. That should be a major red flag that it's a tasteless concept that should never be realized.



Fallout: Casablanca: take Casablanca the movie, as well as Casanegra (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ILH8s-Zy4Y), and work from there...I'm pretty sure Casablanca would have trouble surviving even as much as some places in the existing Fallout games did. Besides, beyond the movie, it's not actually a "world player", so it begs the question of why to involve it.
(All the existing games take the overall approach of being set in the USA, which as a nation was, of course, one of the 3 big players in the whole "nuking the world" thing.)



Fallout Japan: I'd take the ambiance of the novel "No Longer Human", some bits from the manga Akagi, and take all of Japan's most fascist, distopic elements and cram them together up to eleven. Then blow Tokyo up. For the umpteenth time. Heck, make the setting be Hiroshima instead, and have it nuked AGAIN, by the Chinese this time....Really? That's 3 rather tasteless suggestions that seem to be included only for shock value. :smallsigh:



Fallout London: Honestly, I'd go for broke and make it a direct sequel to the V For Vendetta comics, with the Serial Numbers Filed Off.This one might play out like Fallout 3, except with British sites and such.
Not so sure about the (somewhat overrated) V For Vendetta angle, though.


Some good ideas, some not so good ideas.


And yes, Fallout: Australia with fire-breathing mutant koalas, 30-foot kangaroos that hunt humans, and super-dingos that have spikes instead of fur and are 10 feet high at the shoulder could be fun. You'd need some awful big guns, though.

[Cespenar]

You'd need some awful big guns, though.

Which Fallout game didn't have some of them anyway?

[DoctorGlock]

heh, currently playing FO3...

We have the gatling laser
The alien blaster
The mini nuke

and those are just the non standard

minigun
missile launcher
plasma grenades

and 10 foot murder dingos are still a few steps below deathclaws

[Beleriphon]

Thirty-foot kangaroos. House (sized) spiders. Flying flesh-eating koalas.

Drop bears? Just make drop bears, real ones.

[The Glyphstone]

What's the difference between an irradiated mutant Mel Gibson and a regular Mel Gibson?

[DoctorGlock]

What's the difference between an irradiated mutant Mel Gibson and a regular Mel Gibson?

The healthy green glow?

[KnightDisciple]

Yeah, but I've played FO3. You start with an air rifle and a 9mm pistol.

Fallout: Australia would require you to start with at least an assault rifle with AP-HE rounds.

[kpenguin]

The question is, how in the hell do you make Australia's fauna more dangerous? Super Dingos?

By making the wildlife resistant to housecats.

[Vknight]

How to make the Australian wild life more dangerous
Cyborg versions designed to resist the radiation
Robot versions to show future generation what they look like and to keep them safely as a pet
Spines on former herbivores
Make predators larger
Super Tasmanian Devils, now averaging 30pounds with bigger claws etc.
A small hidden population of Thylacine did survive the nukes and are the Australian equivalent of Deathclaws.

[Ravens_cry]

As a Canadian ,I am partial to the idea of Fallout: Vancouver or some other Canadian city. Thanks to Nuclear Winter, all the stereotypes of Canada been an icebound glacier year round are now true. You even got some built in conflict between the remnants of invading US troops and the Canuck and Canadien rebels. You could have sharpened hockey sticks as weapons and flannel armour, with dogsleds, mutant beavers, polar bears and trappers.

[Vknight]

Hey we were doing that on these forums! We only got 3pages though so we didn't get to all the awesome stuff... That kind of sucked

[SowZ]

As a Canadian ,I am partial to the idea of Fallout: Vancouver or some other Canadian city. Thanks to Nuclear Winter, all the stereotypes of Canada been an icebound glacier year round are now true. You even got some built in conflict between the remnants of invading US troops and the Canuck and Canadien rebels. You could have sharpened hockey sticks as weapons and flannel armour, with dogsleds, mutant beavers, polar bears and trappers.

Of course, you'd have fewer guns then just a few miles south. I would imagine lower population in general, too. This is not necessarily good or bad.

[Newman]

This is probably the riskiest post I've ever written so far, because it deals so heavily with controversial Real Life elements. Took me a lot of time and effort to write, but I'll edit it away at at hair-trigger. Anyone responsible, just say the word. (Is this a mea-culpa double fault? Does it become a triple fault if I wonder about it, making it a mea-culpa of a mea-culpa? Do they stack like that? Is speculating on an infintely recursive series of mea-culpa grounds for a ban? (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach))


Speaking of ending the world, though...the Dead Hand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_%28nuclear_war%29). Was it built in this alternate reality? Did it fire during the Great War? Is it still there, active, waiting for some nihilist to activate it and finish wiping out civilization? Could this be the main plot?

Wait a minute... the Doomsday Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove) is REAL?!?!


Fallout in 50s style Germany would be hilarious. :smallbiggrin:

Especially the cars.

The Trabant, my friend...



And who could forget the Trabant, vehicle of "choice" for East Germans before the country collapsed. Affectionately called "Trabbi", it would seem like this car was designed as a Communist backlash against Western cars — which then embodied the capitalist principles of freedom and prestige (and, it must be admitted, often needlessly excessive luxury) — by creating a car whose sole and only purpose was moving people from A to B (noisily, and with an exhaust plume trailing all the way back from B to A). There are a number of reasons it qualifies:

The engine was a two-stroke, 15-20 hp, 0.5 liter in-line 2 cylinder with a fuel efficiency of 34 mpg (7 liters/100 km, 14.28 km/l) — same as a 150 hp, 2.4 liter in-line 4. From 1997. Top speed was 112 km/h (70 mph — even a modern compact can reach 110 mph / 170 km/h), and acceleration was 0 to 60 mph in 60 seconds. Quite ideal for the limited number of destinations avaiable, for a country that asked for travelling passes to cross the state borders.
The engine was so weak, they had to resort to plastic instead of metal for the hull. And forget about modern polymers, mind you — we're talking about whatever was available in the sixties, including wool and wood pulp. Later models were made with molds that had expired their lifetime two times, making the results extremely flawed and unreliable. On the flipside, you didn't have to wash it, just wait for the next patch of rain.
Add in the fact that the gas tank was mounted in the cowl above the engine (and the driver's legs) for additional fun. (the gas "gauge" was a sightglass in the dashboard.) To fill it, you had to open the hood, pour gasoline in the 24-liter fuel tank, pour two-stroke oil, and mix.
What was funny was that a couple of German motoring journalists took the 'Trabi' through the notorious 'moose test' - where a car is swerved very sharply to avoid an obstacle - and passed with flying colours. Even funnier still? The 1997 Mercedes A-Class, with among the world's best engineering - didn't.

All that right now were real facts. Now here's some classical jokes:

How do you double the value of a Trabant? Fill up the tank! (The Czechoslovak Skoda cars were subject to similar jokes, but unlike Trabant, Skoda didn't fold and now makes decent cars—as a subsidiary of the formerly West German Volkswagen)
What did East Germany do with all its surplus Trabants after the Wall fell? They became East German toilet paper! (Trabants had a lot of cheap material in their bodies, including, sometimes, a material known as duroplast made up of papers and plastics, usually incorrectly reported as cardboard.)
There was also an untranslatable one based on the German word for "dual-circuit brakes" containing the word for "county"/"circle"; "Have you heard that the new Trabants have dual-circuit brakes (Zweikreisbremse)?" "That's a big improvement! The old ones took three or four counties/circles (Kreise) to stop!"
"Trabant 601? What does 601 stand for?" "600 people ordered, one has gotten delivery". (Or for the 1990 model, "600 cars on the lot and one customer").
How many workers does it take to assemble a Trabant? Two. One folds, one glues.
Why is the Trabant the most silent car in the world? Because it's so small you have to squeeze your knees on your ears while driving.
An Arab Oil Sheikh hears that there's a German car you have to wait twelve years for. (Yes, it's the very Trabant, and yes, people really had to wait years to get one.) He thinks that it must be a very great car and orders one. The East Germans think that it can't hurt to be friendly to a rich sheikh and send him one Trabant immediately. Soon after, the sheikh tells a friend: "These Germans were very nice - they sent me a cardboard model of the car, and guess what? You can even drive it!"
Why were there no bank robberies in East Germany? Because the robbers would have had to wait for a getaway car for twelve years.
What's the difference between a Trabant and a coffin? You order the coffin after the death of a person and the Trabant after their birth.
In The Berlin Republic. A professor from western Germany is teaching at a university in eastern Germany. Outside, it starts raining, and some students want to go out. Professor: "You don't have to be afraid for your cars, they won't swim away - cardboard doesn't float!" (This actually happened.)
Also a Real Life example: The Trabi for once had the last laugh, when a couple of German motoring journalists took it through the notorious 'moose test' - where a car is swerved very sharply to avoid an obstacle - and passed with flying colours. Even funnier still? The 1997 Mercedes A-Class, with among the world's best engineering - didn't.
Policeman: "Aren't you the guy who stole a Trabbi this morning?" Guy: "Of course not! If you don't believe me, frisk me!"



[QUOTE]I dunno. I'd say there's a 50/50 chance of the city being either "subtle backstabbing politics" or "open street warfare", considering the exaggerated level of contention between the USA and "the forces of communism".

Don't forget that West Berlin had an American, a British and a French sector too. I don't know if East Berlin had Red Army presence or if it was all under the authority of the DDR regime.


France, even before that, wasn't exactly the "last bastion of Catholicism" or anything. Some of this smacks of some personal bias here.

Not as such, more like small reference pools: it's just the way I've seen it presented in the media I've had access to. And, well, the way the story was presented to me, pre-68 France was basically this [SPOILER]http://www.venamimundo.com/GrandesPersonajes/DeGaulle/DeGaulle-12.jpg or maybe this http://www.journaldugeek.com/files/2010/08/le-gendarme-de-saint-tropez-1964-6995-889621371-536x540.jpg while post-68 was more like this...http://img.over-blog.com/374x500/3/56/07/48/dossier-1/l-imagination-au-pouvoir-mai-68.jpg


See, Paris is your chance for lots of subtle backstabbing, since the factions would all be French, and be more focused on the "details" of how to run things.

Why would you expect the French to be any less gung-ho and violent than, say, the English?



There's definitely opportunity here. Certainly a post-nuclear-war landscape of Paris could be filled with surreal, haunting imagery.

I forgot to mention all the Arabs and African people though (and the Turks in Berlin, and the Pakistanis and Indians and Africans and Iranians in London). Mostly because most of them immigrated in during the seventies, if I recall properly, and I'm not sure how they'd interact with "eighties action movie in the ruins of fifties science fiction"... Some of the more xenophobic factions might make shooting them on sight a policy, but I don't want immigrants' desendants to have the role of ghouls. I mean, what'd the poor ghouls be left with? (joking on that last one, forgive the black humour)


To be blunt, I don't see how you could make Baghdad relevant within the context of the premise of Fallout. This smacks of trying to capitalize on a recent conflict that has taken its toll on the nation, without considering how it might fit in the larger picture of the setting you're attempting to use. It feels more than a bit tasteless.

Well, on one hand, there's the whole "Cradle of Civilization" thing going on with Mesopotamia, Babel, And Man Grew Proud. An interesting place for a post-apocalypse if you play that right. On the other, it has lots of devious factions killing each other all the time, lots of scavenging, vandalism, civilization breaking down... so Bagdad-during-the-war and the actual stories that took place there could bring inspiration for great Wasteland stories. And finally, well, there's Creator Provincialism. I just want to play a Fallout in a place I can really relate to personally. I mean, stealing Lincoln's Hat and freeing the Slaves was cool and all and Universal History, but it didn't feel all that personal to me, you know what I'm saying? That and, well, the actual conflagration in Fallout took place in 2077: there's plenty of time from 1945 to alternate!2077 for Irak and the Middle East to become relevant one way or another.


I mean, seriously, you even acknowledge here that your whole intent is to offend other people.


Nope. When I say something has the potential for something, I mean it in a neutral, value-less way. Not to say experimenting with the idea of having the Holy Sites blow up isn't very interesting from a sociological standpoint, especially in a future, postapocalyptic world where those religions would have mostly disappeared or turned into something else entirely. Additionally, two of those religions have fairly detailed depictions of an Apocalypse, and it's curious to speculate on how the different factions and branches and sects would integrate the events of a worldwide thermonuclear war into the preexisting beliefs.


I can say with certainty the offense wouldn't be for a lack of "sense of humor" and rather a lack of desire to see the nuke-blasted scraps of what 3 major religions consider to be the collection of some of the holiest sites in the world.

"Lack of sense of humour" in that, well, it's just fiction, and a world that has a place for works like GTA and Independence Day Life Of Brian, Preacher (the comicbook), Spawn, and Hobo With A Shotgun should have a place for Nuked Jerusalem, but you wouldn't expect some of the communities there to agree. The correct adjective to such an endeavour wouldn't be "tasteless", since, executed correctly and with good writing, it can be plenty high-brow and narratively sophisticated. More like something between "tactless" (if you think one should care for the hurt feelings of those religious communities) and "reckless" (if you think it's reasonable to expect them to retribute the creators of the work with dangerous backlash). Regardless, a postapocalyptic world will have a blown-up or irradiated Jerusalem, and not-looking-at-it won't make it any less destroyed. As a semantic note, "holiness" is in the eye of the beholder: more than half of the current human population does not see them as such (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups#Largest_religions_or_belief _systems_by_number_of_adherents).

I would never advocate for an action of "Trolling for the Lulz". I'd advocate for an action of "Taking a Long Hard Look At A Painful Topic For The Sake Of True Meaningful Challenging Art And The Enrichment Of Human Experience". Yes, I do think games (both tabletop and video) aren't as high-brow as they could be.

That said, your critisim is harsh, but it is polite and honest, and I just want to say that I really really appreciate that. A lot.



I'm pretty sure Casablanca would have trouble surviving even as much as some places in the existing Fallout games did. Besides, beyond the movie, it's not actually a "world player", so it begs the question of why to involve it.
(All the existing games take the overall approach of being set in the USA, which as a nation was, of course, one of the 3 big players in the whole "nuking the world" thing.)


Well, for one thing, there's no reason Africa wouldn't develop something fierce between 1945 and alternate!2077. Even today, Casablanca is one of the hugest cities, most influential cities in the contient, nay, the world, and, well, again for provincialism reasons I'd rather have an African story set there than in Johannesburg, but now that we're talking about South Africa, they used to have nukes if I remeber right, and a Zeerust South Africa might have not done away with Apartheid... Again, potential, and more easily than Casablanca.


About Tokyo: That's 3 rather tasteless suggestions that seem to be included only for shock value.

You keep using that word (http://memegenerator.net/cache/instances/400x/12/12331/12627831.jpg). Of course, I do believe shock is not something to run away from, and it tends to come with the package if you're aiming for high drama and emotional torque, which is something I like to aim towards. There's still plenty of ways of using this in high-quality ways. Plus, if by "tasteless" you mean "gratuitously sensationalistic", I don't see how the pre-existing Fallout games are anything but "tasteless" , especially Fallout 3 (although at least in that one you don't get to shoot children). If you want an understated, emotionally clean gaming experience of the nuclear apocalypse, I suggest you play DEFCON instead.

For one thing, there is irony and pain of an iron-fisted, Fallout!USA-backed (and Fallout!USA was pretty damn horrible itself), violently and virulently anti-communist Japan getting nuked by the Chinese, their main victims during WWII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War), and Red Chinese on top of that. Try to see this from the perspective of a Japanese guy, after the apocalypse, who just begins finding out about all that happened. Their perspective and ours would be very different. There's also another reason this scenario interests me. Have you seen Satoshi Kon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon)'s Paranoia Agent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_Agent)? The thesis he posits through that series is (and I'm grossly summing it up) that Japan had ran itself into a corner during WWII (by following a policy that demanded constant expansion and was completely unsustainable), and the bombings were like getting knocked unconscious by a bat to the head, allowing them to awake from the nightmare, take on a victim role in their own eyes, escape the moral and emotional fallout of their actions, and forfeit responsibility for their own destinies, drowning themselves in childish escapism and kawaii obsession until today.
If you start from there, you can see that a second, much more violent nuclear encounter would be interesting.


Not so sure about the (somewhat overrated) V For Vendetta angle, though.
No harm in overrating what is already outstanding.



And yes, Fallout: Australia with fire-breathing mutant koalas, 30-foot kangaroos that hunt humans, and super-dingos that have spikes instead of fur and are 10 feet high at the shoulder could be fun. You'd need some awful big guns, though.

I really need to find out what the word "tastless" means to you, dude :tongue:


Just make drop bears, real ones.

What are you talking about? Don't listen to him, everyone, there have always been real drop bears. Meanest buggers that side of the Indian Ocean.


As a Canadian ,I am partial to the idea of Fallout: Vancouver or some other Canadian city. Thanks to Nuclear Winter, all the stereotypes of Canada been an icebound glacier year round are now true. You even got some built in conflict between the remnants of invading US troops and the Canuck and Canadien rebels. You could have sharpened hockey sticks as weapons and flannel armour, with dogsleds, mutant beavers, polar bears and trappers.

Additionally, don't forget "Vive le Québec! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCox6p5HejY)". And the Inuits. Oooh, the Inuits... It'd also be interesting to see the effect all that "Occupation by the USA" thing had (from the opening video to Fallout 1, it was pretty damn brutal (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ee606aJ-ccY)).
Don't underestimate the Canadians. (http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/304) The niceness is just an act to throw foreigners off. (http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/836)

[Ravens_cry]

Of course, you'd have fewer guns then just a few miles south. I would imagine lower population in general, too. This is not necessarily good or bad.
Maybe fewer pistols and other similar weapons, but I know plenty of Canadians who love to go a'huntin'. A smaller initial population, sure, but Canada is so darn big and spread out that a few thousand miles from the border the effects of fallout from the nuking of American cities would be far less significant. Of course, the mutated beasties would start crawling north, polar bears crawling south, and, as mentioned, the weather changes would be pretty brutal. I am imagining small forts of semi-civilisation with frigid, lawless wilds between them, with the RCMP in red power armour.

[Pokonic]

Thirty-foot kangaroos. House (sized) spiders. Flying flesh-eating koalas.

Cloned Thylacine: Super Nightstalkers? With spider parts instead of snake?


EDIT: Ohh, best idea ever! Sentinent octopod humanoids, in lew of horseshoe crabs! Its like everything thats wrong with a deathclaw mixed in with the other aquatic horror of fallout!:smallbiggrin:

[Newman]

Its like everything thats wrong with a deathclaw mixed in with the other aquatic horror of fallout!

Funny, I'd have thought of a Big Daddy instead. Or maybe the Swamp Thing.

http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0809/15/sagaofswampthing1.jpghttp://www.nuestroscomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/18-04.png

In fact, wasn't there a similar-looking monster in Point Lookout?

[Pokonic]

The moss-creatures? Those abominations?

[Nerd-o-rama]

Wait a minute... the Doomsday Machine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove) is REAL?!?!

Yeah apparently that was one of those things that was so strange even Stanley Kubrick couldn't have made it up.

EDIT: Goodbye thread, it was nice reading you.

[KnightDisciple]

Well, on one hand, there's the whole "Cradle of Civilization" thing going on with Mesopotamia, Babel, And Man Grew Proud. An interesting place for a post-apocalypse if you play that right. On the other, it has lots of devious factions killing each other all the time, lots of scavenging, vandalism, civilization breaking down... so Bagdad-during-the-war and the actual stories that took place there could bring inspiration for great Wasteland stories. And finally, well, there's Creator Provincialism. I just want to play a Fallout in a place I can really relate to personally. I mean, stealing Lincoln's Hat and freeing the Slaves was cool and all and Universal History, but it didn't feel all that personal to me, you know what I'm saying? That and, well, the actual conflagration in Fallout took place in 2077: there's plenty of time from 1945 to alternate!2077 for Irak and the Middle East to become relevant one way or another. Was that bolded mis-spell intentional? :smallconfused:
My point was that, bluntly, there's not really a lot of stuff in Baghdad that's immediately recognizable to the broader American audience, which is who this will primarily sell to.
The "Cradle of Civilization" angle has some merit, but half the reason it wouldn't work is they'd need to cook up some sort of alternate timeline for Iraq to flow by just to figure out what the nuke-blasted future version looks like. With America, you've got a plethora of sources to draw on for the "50's feel" vibe that they grabbed.



Nope. When I say something has the potential for something, I mean it in a neutral, value-less way. Not to say experimenting with the idea of having the Holy Sites blow up isn't very interesting from a sociological standpoint, especially in a future, postapocalyptic world where those religions would have mostly disappeared or turned into something else entirely. Additionally, two of those religions have fairly detailed depictions of an Apocalypse, and it's curious to speculate on how the different factions and branches and sects would integrate the events of a worldwide thermonuclear war into the preexisting beliefs.Those Apocalypses have other elements that didn't manifest in a nuclear war. Some factions would likely regard it as a sort of "end times judgement", perhaps declaring it "Hell on earth". But then, you don't need to blow up Jerusalem to do that.
And I don't find the idea of all the holy sites being blow up "interesting". It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and has a heavy sense of exploitative shock value.


"Lack of sense of humour" in that, well, it's just fiction, and a world that has a place for works like GTA and Independence Day Life Of Brian, Preacher (the comicbook), Spawn, and Hobo With A Shotgun should have a place for Nuked Jerusalem, but you wouldn't expect some of the communities there to agree. The correct adjective to such an endeavour wouldn't be "tasteless", since, executed correctly and with good writing, it can be plenty high-brow and narratively sophisticated. More like something between "tactless" (if you think one should care for the hurt feelings of those religious communities) and "reckless" (if you think it's reasonable to expect them to retribute the creators of the work with dangerous backlash). Regardless, a postapocalyptic world will have a blown-up or irradiated Jerusalem, and not-looking-at-it won't make it any less destroyed. As a semantic note, "holiness" is in the eye of the beholder: more than half of the current human population does not see them as such (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups#Largest_religions_or_belief _systems_by_number_of_adherents).GTA, Preacher, Spawn, and Hobo with a Shotgun are all examples of tasteless shock-value entertainment. None of them are in any way "high-brow".
But yes, tactless would apply additionally. I think one should care for their hurt feelings, but maybe I'm biased as one of them.
Also, the "it's there whether you look or not" isn't great reason to give for showing it in a game. I mean, even super-gorey games aren't 100% accurate to how wounds would really look, but we're not demanding that, are we? And we're certainly not demanding it in the less realistic games for the sake of "art" or whatever.





I would never advocate for an action of "Trolling for the Lulz". I'd advocate for an action of "Taking a Long Hard Look At A Painful Topic For The Sake Of True Meaningful Challenging Art And The Enrichment Of Human Experience". Yes, I do think games (both tabletop and video) aren't as high-brow as they could be. Your original wording was basically "this will be awesome and hilarious because it will offend several religions, and because we get to see Jerusalem nuked! Yay!". That seemed pretty close to it for me.
Maybe if you'd given it that more serious approach (which also doesn't really feel like it fits FO in general), I might have initially approached this different. Also, I have to question, ultimately, how enriching "let's look at nuke-blasted Jerusalem" is. I mean, it sounds like your whole goal is a combination of a.)see how horrible we can make that landscape look and b.)see what sort of reaction those religions have.



That said, your critisim is harsh, but it is polite and honest, and I just want to say that I really really appreciate that. A lot. I strive to be succinct, direct, and un-emotional in such situations.




Well, for one thing, there's no reason Africa wouldn't develop something fierce between 1945 and alternate!2077. Even today, Casablanca is one of the hugest cities, most influential cities in the contient, nay, the world, and, well, again for provincialism reasons I'd rather have an African story set there than in Johannesburg, but now that we're talking about South Africa, they used to have nukes if I remeber right, and a Zeerust South Africa might have not done away with Apartheid... Again, potential, and more easily than Casablanca.Well, in this regard, fair enough that it's more developed. That said, it's still not a big player on the world stage.




You keep using that word (http://memegenerator.net/cache/instances/400x/12/12331/12627831.jpg). Tasteless: not having or exhibiting good taste.
Taste: the ability to choose what is appealing, attractive, appropriate, or enjoyable; used in phrases to say that something (such as a person's speech or behavior) is or is not proper and acceptable.

Nope, was using it the way I thought it was defined, and exactly how I meant it. I applied it everywhere I felt it appropriate.


Of course, I do believe shock is not something to run away from, and it tends to come with the package if you're aiming for high drama and emotional torque, which is something I like to aim towards. There's still plenty of ways of using this in high-quality ways. Plus, if by "tasteless" you mean "gratuitously sensationalistic", I don't see how the pre-existing Fallout games are anything but "tasteless" , especially Fallout 3 (although at least in that one you don't get to shoot children). If you want an understated, emotionally clean gaming experience of the nuclear apocalypse, I suggest you play DEFCON instead.There are also different levels of "tasteless". FO perhaps has a low level of it.
This would be in relation to the series itself.
Perhaps because even now Japan is dealing with the aftermath of that nuclear plant, which has included the potential dangers of some nuclear fallout.
Also, in a colloquial sense, my use of tasteless was more "needlessly gratuitously sensationalistic".




For one thing, there is irony and pain of an iron-fisted, Fallout!USA-backed (and Fallout!USA was pretty damn horrible itself), violently and virulently anti-communist Japan getting nuked by the Chinese, their main victims during WWII (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War), and Red Chinese on top of that. Try to see this from the perspective of a Japanese guy, after the apocalypse, who just begins finding out about all that happened. Their perspective and ours would be very different. There's also another reason this scenario interests me. Have you seen Satoshi Kon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Kon)'s Paranoia Agent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paranoia_Agent)? The thesis he posits through that series is (and I'm grossly summing it up) that Japan had ran itself into a corner during WWII (by following a policy that demanded constant expansion and was completely unsustainable), and the bombings were like getting knocked unconscious by a bat to the head, allowing them to awake from the nightmare, take on a victim role in their own eyes, escape the moral and emotional fallout of their actions, and forfeit responsibility for their own destinies, drowning themselves in childish escapism and kawaii obsession until today.
If you start from there, you can see that a second, much more violent nuclear encounter would be interesting.This also completely ignores the fact that Japan has intentionally renounced war as a nation. They didn't un-renounce it during the real-life Cold War. I'm not totally sure they would have un-renounced it in FO-verse. Especially not if it would have meant getting more directly involved in potential nuclear exchanges, not when people were still perishing from the aftereffects of the 2 that had struck them.
Honestly, a game doesn't feel like the right place to address some of the issues you're bringing up anyways, since they'd be missed by the average gamer, or probably even most insightful ones, unless it was rammed in their faces so much it harmed the game as a whole.



No harm in overrating what is already outstanding.Eh. "Outstanding" is a stretch.




I really need to find out what the word "tastless" means to you, dude :tongue:I gave both a dictionary definition and an "off-the-cuff" definition just a few lines above, though I'd imagine one could infer my general attitude and meaning simply from reading my initial response. :smallconfused:

[Newman]

Very very long response to knight disciple:

Was that bolded mis-spell intentional? :smallconfused:
My point was that, bluntly, there's not really a lot of stuff in Baghdad that's immediately recognizable to the broader American audience, which is who this will primarily sell to.

Sales in the rest of the world are still far from negligible (http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry), and I think they would be even more important if games's prices weren't artificially raised to the double accross the pond. Also, maybe people outside would by more games if more of them took place in their own countries or neighboring ones, rather than always taking place in the USA, especially Los Angeles and New York City. Not that that ever stopped them: if you can get a Frenchman to buy Modern Warfare, I don't see why an American wouldn't buy a game where they basically play Les Misérables Aprés L'Holocauste Nucléaire.



The "Cradle of Civilization" angle has some merit, but half the reason it wouldn't work is they'd need to cook up some sort of alternate timeline for Iraq to flow by just to figure out what the nuke-blasted future version looks like. With America, you've got a plethora of sources to draw on for the "50's feel" vibe that they grabbed.

Worldbuilding and the pleasures thereof!


Those Apocalypses have other elements that didn't manifest in a nuclear war. Some factions would likely regard it as a sort of "end times judgement", perhaps declaring it "Hell on earth". But then, you don't need to blow up Jerusalem to do that.

It'll still be blow up, and there's probably people living there, and imagine if it were still a pilgrinage hub despite the higher levels of radiation, and what if there were miracles that even Fallout's "WEIRD SCIENCE" couldn't explain and what if... I'm sorry, the concept just sparks the imagination...


GTA, Preacher, Spawn, and Hobo with a Shotgun are all examples of tasteless shock-value entertainment. None of them are in any way "high-brow". They still got released to the world, which treated them fairly well, despite two of them featuring God in a grotesque parody which I found rather stupid and pointless and a squandering of potential in both cases. For an actually interesting approach to a flawed God, I suggest Lucifer, wonderful series, very tasteful.





And I don't find the idea of all the holy sites being blow up "interesting". It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and has a heavy sense of exploitative shock value.
But yes, tactless would apply additionally. I think one should care for their hurt feelings, but maybe I'm biased as one of them.
Also, the "it's there whether you look or not" isn't great reason to give for showing it in a game. I mean, even super-gorey games aren't 100% accurate to how wounds would really look, but we're not demanding that, are we? And we're certainly not demanding it in the less realistic games for the sake of "art" or whatever.
Your original wording was basically "this will be awesome and hilarious because it will offend several religions, and because we get to see Jerusalem nuked! Yay!". That seemed pretty close to it for me.

I'm sorry that it came out sounding that way. I certainly don't derive any pleasure from offending religions (honestly, that sort of thing is just juvenile, it's like a child going to a formal dinner and shouting "POOP" at the top of their lungs). However, I would expect people from those religions to derive an appreciable angsty experience from simulating such a scenario. I remeber, upon my first reading Sartre's "No Exit" and "The Devil And The Good Lord", or Migel de Unamuno's "San Manuel Bueno, Mártir" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Manuel_Bueno,_m%C3%A1rtir), how those works got into me and had me thinking and seriously questioning stuff. As the Jesuits would say, one should not fear doubt, but confront and weather it.


Maybe if you'd given it that more serious approach (which also doesn't really feel like it fits FO in general), I might have initially approached this different.

I tend to get overexcited when I feel there's low-haning fruit, ideas ripe for interesting stories, and when I the challenge it represents, to wax them into a well-executed story and not underuse and spoil it (unlike movies like, say The Surrogates or In Time or Equilibrium, which I feel completely squandered their potential).

Also, I have to question, ultimately, how enriching "let's look at nuke-blasted Jerusalem" is. I mean, it sounds like your whole goal is a combination of a.)see how horrible we can make that landscape look and b.)see what sort of reaction those religions have.



I strive to be succinct, direct, and un-emotional in such situations.

You still come off as emotional, which is great. Nothing wrong with feeling right about the right things, and making your feelings known. Just don't use them to bully or cajole or browbeat.



Well, in this regard, fair enough that it's more developed. That said, it's still not a big player on the world stage.

Not in our timeline it isn't. Won't you let a guy dream though? Plus, you could see it this way: not being a major player, nobody bothered to nuke it (much), and, 200 years after the war, it's the healthiest, most developed place on earh... which isn't saying much, but still.



This also completely ignores the fact that Japan has intentionally renounced war as a nation. They didn't un-renounce it during the real-life Cold War. I'm not totally sure they would have un-renounced it in FO-verse. Especially not if it would have meant getting more directly involved in potential nuclear exchanges, not when people were still perishing from the aftereffects of the 2 that had struck them.

Close, but no cigar. Japan has renounced war of aggression. They kept absolutely smashing defensive capabilities and have one of the most expensive, well-equipped armies on the planet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures). As we speak, and for many years, the Diet has been exerting great efforts towards bending the constitution: notably, they have sent forces in Irak and Afghanistan. They're still one of the nicest if not the nicest army around, and they're really proficient at "peacekeeping".

Again, the Fallout USA weren't very nice people at all, and it's plausible that they ended up asking Japan to take arms to aid them against the Reds.


Honestly, a game doesn't feel like the right place to address some of the issues you're bringing up anyways, since they'd be missed by the average gamer, or probably even most insightful ones, unless it was rammed in their faces so much it harmed the game as a whole.


Well, to be honest, the main reason I started playing these games in the first place was a fanfic called Fallout Equestria (http://www.equestriadaily.com/2011/04/story-fallout-equestria.html), which is one of the most brilliant works I've read in a while, and it does practically nothing but address those sorts of issues. Among other things, the Godesses that raise and set the Sun and the Moon and rule the nation have been killed during the war. Or, well, I'll just quote the first few paragraphs of a recent chapter:


Faith.

We are all called, at one time or another, to have faith.

Faith in the Goddesses.
Or faith in ponykind, as Velvet Remedy was struggling to regain.
Or, as with Homage, it is faith in heroes, and the value of the Good Fight.

Sometimes the faith you are called upon to have is faith in yourself.

Faith doesn’t require us to be willfully blind or dogmatically stupid. But it does require us to take risks. To put our trust in something we know might not be true. Even when the cost of failure could be very high.

Especially then.

For some of us, faith becomes our central reason for living, for pressing on. Faith is what allows us to believe in a happy ending, even in our moments of greatest sorrow. It is what allows us the hope of rescue even in the most suffocating darkness.

And faith, more than anything else, is what the Wasteland is ravenous to devour. More than kindness. More than innocence. The Wasteland does its best to tear away your ability to believe in anything other than itself.

When you no longer believe things can get better, when you stop trying, that’s when the Wasteland has won.

The Wasteland can kill us, but so long as we die trying… as long as we die believing… then its success against us is a pyrrhic victory at best.

I had been thinking of a story Spike had told us that night in his cave, one of many tales of the Mares before the Ministries. This particular tale was about a time when Twilight Sparkle’s magic had failed her…

Do you know any spells for turning a hydra into a mouse? How ‘bout a squirrel?
No! No small rodents of any kind.

…and she had been asked to rely on Pinkie Pie’s irrational Pinkie Sense.

You’ll be fine. It’s your only hope. You have to take a leap of faith.

I am, almost certainly, about to die.

This is my leap of faith.

So, yeah, I sort of entered Fallout with the idea that "How do you keep going on when all that is holy and sacred has been destroyed, and you can't rely on traditional frameworks and institutions and values anymore? How do you make new meaning, how can you grow moral again, and what does it take?" was actually the main theme. I'm kind of disappointed that it doesn't seem to be.

And I don't think one should underestimate the "average gamer". Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore's works don't underestimate the average comicbook reader, for example, yet still manage to be very enjoyable and accessible. I could say the same about Whitewolf's sourcebooks, or Hideo Kojima's games, or the Tales Of series.



Tasteless: not having or exhibiting good taste.
Taste: the ability to choose what is appealing, attractive, appropriate, or enjoyable; used in phrases to say that something (such as a person's speech or behavior) is or is not proper and acceptable.

Nope, was using it the way I thought it was defined, and exactly how I meant it. I applied it everywhere I felt it appropriate.



I gave both a dictionary definition and an "off-the-cuff" definition just a few lines above, though I'd imagine one could infer my general attitude and meaning simply from reading my initial response. :smallconfused:


Fallout: Australia with fire-breathing mutant koalas, 30-foot kangaroos that hunt humans, and super-dingos that have spikes instead of fur and are 10 feet high at the shoulder could be fun. You'd need some awful big guns, though.


There are also different levels of "tasteless". FO perhaps has a low level of it.
This would be in relation to the series itself.
Also, in a colloquial sense, my use of tasteless was more "needlessly gratuitously sensationalistic".

We probably have different tastes then, because the stuff in that Australia paragraph is precisely what I find tasteless in Fallout. I play those games to explore a blasted world where human morality is stretched to breaking point and you don't have many options and they're all the wrong ones, where society has to rebuild itself from scratch, and people learn to trust each other again, where your body and mind must constantly fight all manners of poisons, and drugs are a fatal temptation. Not to run away from ridiculous bloated fauna. That's not fun, that's tedious, especially after you've gained a few levels. And don't get me started on the gratuitous zombies and the ludicrous gibs.



Perhaps because even now Japan is dealing with the aftermath of that nuclear plant, which has included the potential dangers of some nuclear fallout.

Dude I've never said any of these games should see the light of the day, much less that they should do so now, the same way I wouldn't have suggested releasing Fallout:Manhattan circa 2001. There's "daring to stare into the abyss", and then there's "being a complete sod".

[Newman]

So, everyone agrees on Berlin, Canada (the Yukon? the Great Lakes?) and Australia?

[The Glyphstone]

Something in Asia might be interesting, like Nepal/Tibet. Maybe in the Falloutverse, Shangri-La actually exists, as a healthy and intact valley of agrarian civilization that was isolated enough to escape the nukes, and shielded by the Himalayas from the radioactive spread.

[Newman]

Hm, but what would be their technological development after 200 years in isolation?

The problem with Asia is that, due to language barriers and such, we don't have many people who know much about their culture (and the way it evolved over the XXth century, doing something mean to it).

[Nerd-o-rama]

I'm more interested in seeing what happened to the People's Republic of China, if anything, after their war with the US. Plenty of the American population, and a fragment of the government, managed to survive. What happened on the other side?

I think Shangri-La as a primary setting would be a little out there for Fallout, though, and pretty far away from the questions of "Did China have Vaults? What about an 'Enclave'? How do they feel about the results of the Great War? Do any of them still care enough to blame The Capitalists?" which I think are a little more setting-pertinent.

[Newman]

Well the US Wastelanders don't say all that much about commies, either.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I'm more interested in seeing what happened to the People's Republic of China, if anything, after their war with the US. Plenty of the American population, and a fragment of the government, managed to survive. What happened on the other side?

I think Shangri-La as a primary setting would be a little out there for Fallout, though, and pretty far away from the questions of "Did China have Vaults? What about an 'Enclave'? How do they feel about the results of the Great War? Do any of them still care enough to blame The Capitalists?" which I think are a little more setting-pertinent.

I could almost see there being a Shangri-La, assuming the Fallout-verse had its own "NuclearTM" Three Gorges Dam or some retro-corruption there of. It'd be interesting, but it feels a little tasteless.


Fallout lore always interests me, so seeing other parts of the world would be nice. I'm not much for post-apocalyptic retro-sci-fi politics, but I feel like most of Europe could work, what with a Fallout!EU versus the old Curtain. Actual European opinions would help, naturally. Maybe have some looney Limeys thrown in as an oddball "faction," assuming the focus is mainland Europe.

I'd vote for a Canadian Fallout setting, simply due to "Post Annexation" worries, maybe throwing in a bit of New England and old Kaybec, too. It could lead to be a bit too Americano-centric, but having a "Canadian" opinion on Indypendence or some such seems interesting.



Also, I feel like Australia would come out mostly unchanged, in so far as pop-culture portrayals go. Everything is "DANGER! DANGER!" or "OUTBACK! GIANT ROCKS!" Maybe toss in a bit with the Great Barrier Reef as a safe haven (be it for pirates or sentient "crazed" box jellyfish)?

[The Glyphstone]

I'm more interested in seeing what happened to the People's Republic of China, if anything, after their war with the US. Plenty of the American population, and a fragment of the government, managed to survive. What happened on the other side?

I think Shangri-La as a primary setting would be a little out there for Fallout, though, and pretty far away from the questions of "Did China have Vaults? What about an 'Enclave'? How do they feel about the results of the Great War? Do any of them still care enough to blame The Capitalists?" which I think are a little more setting-pertinent.

Shangri-La as a primary setting obviously wouldn't work, but it might still be an interesting side aspect to ponder alongside the major questions about China you bring up. It'd work as a legend/goal to pursue as the end-goal of a game or campaign.


As for China itself, I could see it surviving, even Vault-less, as a sort of patchwork nightmare of irradiated wastelands and areas of relative purity, being nine and a half million square miles big (for reference, the lower 48 US total 3.7 million). That's a lot of land to nuke, and some of it might have ended up unscathed just by sheer luck.

[Newman]

Well, you know, the USA are pretty huge too, yet the stories focus a lot on the worst places.

And Punga fruit. I really really liked that sidequest. I'd love it for more games to be this fun.

[The Glyphstone]

Which could be fodder for story development, if played right. In the US, the Vaults kept people alive and anyone aboveground was melted or mutated. In China, it was the people who avoided getting nuked (probably more likely in the western, agrarian regions) that survived. It'd be a story of fighting back against the Wasteland itself more than its inhabitants, trying to keep the safe zones clean and fending off incursions by ghouls or monsters across the borders, heavily armed expeditions venturing into the polluted lands for valuable pre-war artifacts or supplies.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

Which could be fodder for story development, if played right. In the US, the Vaults kept people alive and anyone aboveground was melted or mutated. In China, it was the people who avoided getting nuked (probably more likely in the western, agrarian regions) that survived. It'd be a story of fighting back against the Wasteland itself more than its inhabitants, trying to keep the safe zones clean and fending off incursions by ghouls or monsters across the borders, heavily armed expeditions venturing into the polluted lands for valuable pre-war artifacts or supplies.

I'd say this is a good way to go with it. Fallout has a lot of "bad-ness" to it. The world is hell, "war never changes," but people still live out their lives doing as they learned, even if what they know is far from the "truth."

Without having much knowledge on the little nuances of other cultures, it could be a lot of fudging (based on the region) intermixed with certain themes. Kind of like how Planescape: Torment uses a bunch of old Cockney rhyming slang for its "Cant" and other things like that.

For a more "British" feel, Necropolis (http://index.rpg.net/display-search.phtml?key=background&value=Necropolis&sort=system) works well, albeit with a greater focus on Tesla-esque gear and the Victorian Empire in a warped London landscape. It's a bit different, but you could slap some Fallout themes onto the crunch for a London or British Isles shot.

[The Glyphstone]

You could also go with a regression theme, at least politics-wise. In terms of Chinese history, unification under Communism is barely a blip on the historical radar against the time they spent ruled by various emperors or caught up in wars between rival dynasties and pocket kingdoms. With the total destruction of their government, civilization, and most of their arable land, its easily possible to see China splinter entirely into a collection of semi-independent kingdoms.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I feel like that's a big theme to go with in almost any of the "big" powers (Britain, Russia/USSR) and other nations with an Imperialist past. Reminds me of one of John Oliver's sketches and the ole timey "Aaah, we had an empire..." glory-day views some British (Also, American, natch) people have.

[The Glyphstone]

And now I want to see someone come up with a Lot5R hack to represent post-Great War China.

[Newman]

^That game sounds awesome. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Five_Rings) Especially this bit:
What separated Legend of the Five Rings from other role-playing games was that players could either follow the traditional RPG style of hack/slash adventure or play as courtiers and take part in a campaign in which they never enter a single battle.

I wonder how one'd play neo-classical chinese strategic meetings? What are the stylistic differences with the Japanese?


Let's not fight, gentlemen. This is the War Room, after all.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_g2eoavTbPKM/TD2v94tYuFI/AAAAAAAAAg8/QWGf2ipynLQ/s1600/1278838456679.jpg


How come that Necropolis 2350 doesn't have a TV Tropes page? However am I going to quickly find out what it is about in any detail otherwise?

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I wonder how one'd play neo-classical chinese strategic meetings? What are the stylistic differences with the Japanese?

The short answer is: a lot. It's kind of like trying to understand all of the various nuances of the Balkans throughout any length of history. This applies to a lot of different things and skirts around various issues. Your best bet is to find some sort of educational book focused on either "World History" or "History of [Region]: Years X to Y." The golden rule of "don't be rude and crude about it" is in full force, too.



How come that Necropolis 2350 doesn't have a TV Tropes page? However am I going to quickly find out what it is about in any detail otherwise?

It's a "recent" Indie game, most likely. I only know of it because of a friend who got a copy at Gen Con. I've heard about it second hand, and it seemed like fun.

[Gnoman]

To be blunt about it, according to existing fallout lore, the US was the last entity to be destroyed. A series of non-nuclear resource wars had already destroyed most of the rest of the world, and China was already wrecked by conventional war when the first missiles were fired. Thus, there's little reason for Fallout's traditional abominations, because there was nothing left outside of China and the US to shoot nukes at. Likewise, there's less likelihood of organizations like the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel ever existing, because most advanced weapons and technology would have been lost, either expended in the fighting or lost in combat. Most of the advanced tech in the US settings of Fallout was found in bunkers or other prewar storage caches, or built by groups that survived the war mostly intact.

Of course, that doesn't make the project less interesting. For example, the aforementioned technological gap makes it a perfect place for Enclave remnats or a second Master cult to set up shop and build a new empire.

[Newman]

To be blunt about it, according to existing fallout lore, the US was the last entity to be destroyed. A series of non-nuclear resource wars had already destroyed most of the rest of the world, and China was already wrecked by conventional war when the first missiles were fired. Thus, there's little reason for Fallout's traditional abominations, because there was nothing left outside of China and the US to shoot nukes at. Likewise, there's less likelihood of organizations like the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel ever existing, because most advanced weapons and technology would have been lost, either expended in the fighting or lost in combat. Most of the advanced tech in the US settings of Fallout was found in bunkers or other prewar storage caches, or built by groups that survived the war mostly intact.

Of course, that doesn't make the project less interesting. For example, the aforementioned technological gap makes it a perfect place for Enclave remnats or a second Master cult to set up shop and build a new empire.

Okay, this entry completely confused me. Can you rephrase it somehow?

[The Glyphstone]

I think he's saying that in Fallout canon, there was no civilization left except for the US even before the nukes flew. Sad, because it means we'll never see an official outside-the-US Fallout game.

[Thrice Dead Cat]

I think he's saying that in Fallout canon, there was no civilization left except for the US even before the nukes flew. Sad, because it means we'll never see an official outside-the-US Fallout game.

Basically this. From the various bits of lore and trivia (and whether or not you count things like Van Buren for legit Fallout lore), the world went to hell fast with wars for oil, aluminum, steel, whatever else have you. There are mentionings of old bits of propaganda in some of Fallout 3's terminals about how the European Union went down and blew up with infighting for who gets how much of what with a bunch of non-nuclear fights. Then the A-bombs drop between the USA and China.


Not saying the 'verse wouldn't be fun for a romp in Australia or anywhere else for a "Dear god, how do we make it to the next day?" type of campaign or one shot, it's just that we probably won't see Fallout: Outside of USA.

[SowZ]

Well, if people groups survived in a country ravaged by nukes, I think people in countries who were just destroyed by terrible wars would have an even easier time rebuilding and reclaiming lost technology. As for irradiated animals, the animals may be less mutated in nonnuked countries but enough radiation could spread across the globe, (especially in fallouts fantasy interpretation of what a post nuclear apocolypse would look like,) that there could be a degree of mutation. And has been stated, Australia wouldn't need much more intensity to its wildlife to increase the danger of American Fallout wildlife.

[Newman]

To be blunt about it, according to existing fallout lore, the US was the last entity to be destroyed. A series of non-nuclear resource wars had already destroyed most of the rest of the world, and China was already wrecked by conventional war when the first missiles were fired. Thus, there's little reason for Fallout's traditional abominations, because there was nothing left outside of China and the US to shoot nukes at. Likewise, there's less likelihood of organizations like the Enclave or Brotherhood of Steel ever existing, because most advanced weapons and technology would have been lost, either expended in the fighting or lost in combat. Most of the advanced tech in the US settings of Fallout was found in bunkers or other prewar storage caches, or built by groups that survived the war mostly intact.

Of course, that doesn't make the project less interesting. For example, the aforementioned technological gap makes it a perfect place for Enclave remnats or a second Master cult to set up shop and build a new empire.

Yeah, "The rest of the world doesn't exist anymore" feels like lazy horseapples to me. A way to not-bother about fleshing out the rest of the planet, and working with a closed-room system with no suprise external players.

Stuff does not work that way. Anyone here seen the documentary series Connections?

[Pokonic]

Yeah, "The rest of the world doesn't exist anymore" feels like lazy horseapples to me. A way to not-bother about fleshing out the rest of the planet, and working with a closed-room system with no suprise external players.

Stuff does not work that way. Anyone here seen the documentary series Connections?

No, its more like " In the grim world in which the U'S never advanced socialy past the fiftys, the only power that has not scumed to anarchy is China, and that has less to do with there economic power as it is that war has broken everyone else besides these two."



Something in Asia might be interesting, like Nepal/Tibet. Maybe in the Falloutverse, Shangri-La actually exists, as a healthy and intact valley of agrarian civilization that was isolated enough to escape the nukes, and shielded by the Himalayas from the radioactive spread.

Yetis are actualy the Chinese eqivulent of Deathclaws, develped from the DNA of a rare high-range dwelling cat. They are on rather good terms with the people in the vally, and keep out those who might stumble apon it in order to get a steady supply of food. Part of a chinese pre-end plan had a massive number of these creatures implanted with primitive stealthboys and dropped over the american midwest. It is unkown if the plane ever reached the states.

[Cirrylius]

Maybe toss in a bit with the Great Barrier Reef as a safe haven (be it for pirates or sentient "crazed" box jellyfish)?

The amphibious dire radsharks currently populating my imagination would like a word with you :smallbiggrin:

[Avilan the Grey]

Thirty-foot kangaroos. House (sized) spiders. Flying flesh-eating koalas.

Bunnyips.

Oh and a return of the old megafauna? What about a 40 feet comodo dragon?

[SoC175]

Also most Vaults failed and the people inside are dead, mutated using F.E.V, mutated into Ghouls, Actually they didn't fail but did exactly as intended. Most Vaults were never supposed to keep the people inside safe at all

[Pokonic]

The amphibious dire radsharks currently populating my imagination would like a word with you :smallbiggrin:

Also, do not step anywhere. Most things there have more spines than a library, and the strange humaniods traped in the Diving suits would like you to die. Sea ghost people, anyone? Sidney has more than its fair share of expensive Villas...


Oh and a return of the old megafauna? What about a 40 feet comodo dragon?

There called dragons, actualy.:smalltongue: Also known as "Livestock" around those parts.

[Vknight]

Actually they didn't fail but did exactly as intended. Most Vaults were never supposed to keep the people inside safe at all

Very true (http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/vault/pennyarcade.php#) but the experiments inside them failed. And often left the Fallout universe worse off. Such as experimenting with F.E.V, which leads to a different strain of Super Mutants on the east coast. Among others.

Though they did make Vaults with that express purpose to be to the standards the people entered were expecting. We've seen 2of those Vaults

[Pokonic]

Indeed. On could not say that the Fiends where ment to invade another vault, no?