Fallout RPG - what time period to use?

[Cikomyr2]

I'm planning to do a Fallout game with some friends, the idea being we'd play 1-shots once in a while when we have the spare time, and some time passes between each sessions that reflects the advance of seasons.

As the players would be Vault Dwellers sent on basic missions, it helps that the party start and end every game at the Vault.

Now, I was wondering.. fallout can mean so many things. How far after the bombs fell do you believe is the best time to start this game? Is it funnier for the players to have already established new societies that have emerged (like in New Vegas or Fallout 4), or is it better to be in the wasteland where only a few settlements of survivors have started gathering, but no large scale trade or production is truly happening (like in Fallout 1).

Fallout 2 being a sweet in-between spot between the two, where properly formed societies are starting to emerge and reach out toward each others but have not have had a history.

This is.. if you were invited to play a Fallout game, would you be dispointed if there were no Brotherhood of Steel because the game is set at a time/period where they are absent? Would you be expecting a world like Fallout 4, or Fallout 1?

[LibraryOgre]

Generally, I'd prefer a Fallout 1 timeline, partially because I think the timeline of 3, NV, and 4 gets really weird... stuff in 3 would be a lot more appropriate in a Fallout 1 time, simply because of the huge jump between 1 and 2.

For me, a good place to start would actually be Vault 15; different internal factions, eventually leading to the abandoning of the Vault and the founding of Shady Sands and the various raider tribes.

[TeChameleon]

Honestly?

I'd say the bigger question than when for a Fallout game would be where. Things are going to be very, very different if you're in, say, Seattle, as opposed to, I don't know, New Orleans, even if you (like all Fallout games to date) completely and utterly ignore the rest of the world beyond the US borders (part of me has always wanted to see a Fallout game where it's revealed that Canada is an advanced, intact society and just prevents the American remnants from learning this so that they'll be left alone...)

This sounds like a Session Zero question more than something that would be decided before you started up; unless it's something that would bug you personally, Fallout-flavour is pretty easy with Vaults, the Brotherhood, Nuka-Cola, some flavour of giant bug, Deathclaws and Raiders.

To answer your question more specifically, I always liked the feel of Fallout 2. Civilization getting back on its feet, but still very much a wasteland feel.

[Cikomyr2]

Ha, funny you mention that. Yhea actually, we'll be playing in Quebec since we are a bunch of french canadians playing together in french.

I had already decided we'd have our corner of the world to create our own lore, but i was wondering if its just plain funnier to already jump in the established societies of the Post-war period (New Vegas/Commonwealth style), or actually have the overall story progress there.

Even if fans online usually completely ignore Canada in their maps of expected bomb location, Canada had been formally annexed and occupied by the US by the time of the Great War, and thu I'd assume China would have targeted their most strategic location and population centers, if only to take out the american army stationed as occupying army.

We'll probably be close the St Lawrence River, so i was thinking that the somewhat spared canadian countryside was still heavily impacted by the nuclear winter and the St Lawrence River became heavily polluted/radioactive as a result of draining all the Great Lake's captured fallout, so "the river spawns monsters" would be a thing.

The vault inhabitants of (completely fanon) Vault 624 would be the descendant of american occupiers and canadian collaborators.