Fallout tabletop?

[Tsotha-lanti]

Having "finished" FO3 (that is, played through the main plot once - it's a great game, although just like Oblivion it gets screwed over bad by the obsession with voice acting, which limits dialogue to silly stumps and makes it repetitive - although FO3 did way better than TES:IV on that front), I find myself obsessed with the idea of GMing tabletop in the wonderfully schizophrenic post-nuclear world. (And with replaying all three old games again.)

I found this, but I don't really have any interest in using some PnP conversion of SPECIAL; it's just no good for PnP. So I'm looking for a good system to use for or convert to use for Fallout.

The two that jump out at me from all the systems I'm familiar with are Twilight 2000 v2.2 and Unisystem / All Flesh Must be Eaten. I'll analyze them a bit, which should give an idea of what I'm looking for...

Twilight 2000

Pros: The game's already set in a post-nuclear world and the rules reflect that well. Excellent survival and travel rules, including rules for water, food, foraging, radiation, and diseases. Malfunctioning and breaking vehicles and equipment, jury-rigged repairs, building your own equipment (from stills and alcohol-burning generators to forges and smithies), pack and riding animals that can get injured and need care. Realistic and deadly combat system, which includes good rules for vehicles and artillery. Cool character creation.

Cons: The combat system is limited in that it wouldn't handle energy weapons or different types of armor very well. Ruling in non-human creatures, especially ones that aren't actually animals, would be tricky - robots, super mutants, ghouls... there's no existing systems of special abilities or features to accommodate such things.

Unisystem

Pros: AFMBE (which obviously is designed to accommodate the classic zombocalypse settings) already includes a lot of rules for survival similar to TW2K, including building your own junk, jury-rigging, repairs, and the like. Vehicles, deadly combat. Would accommodate different kinds of creatures very well. The character generation system includes handy advantages and disadvantages.

Cons: I'm not sure the rules are nitty-gritty enough, in places. In a wasteland survival game, you sort of need good rules for starvation, dehydration, radiation, carrying capacity, etc. I'm also not sure the combat rules are that good at differentiating between weapons, and that energy weapons (lasers, plasma guns) would really differ significantly from conventional small arms with the same damage values.


Then, I suppose, there's GURPS, which is certainly as nitty-gritty as anyone could want, but while I like the system well enough in theory, I find it way too much work to use in practice. (Just having to read through all those endless rules to decide which I'll use is a huge chore, in my experience. At least now they're all in one book...)


So, any advice? System recommendations? I'm not very familiar with the post-apocalyptic RPG genre.

[Iku Rex]

Alternity could work. It's a science fiction system and should be a good fit for Fallout.

It even has a post-apocalyptic setting, Gamma World, if you need inspiration beyond the core books. (I don't remember how relevant it would be for a Fallout game.)

Dragon 259 has a conversion of Fallout 2 weapons for Alternity.
(Edit: Found a pdf with the article. http://www.identicalsoftware.com/rpg...nCheckGuns.pdf )

[Fax Celestis]

Why not nWoD?

[Satyr]

I remeberr to have read a homebrewed conversion of Fallout for the Unisystem. Apart from Gurps (which was originally planned to be used in the Fallout games), Unisystem seems the best choice by far for this - One of the Living and All Tomorow Zombies should include anything you need. One of the living includes most of the material you find to lack for the 'nitty-grittyness', but focus stronger on the psychological than the physical aspects (which are included there as well). After having read (and loving) the chapter 'Envy the Dead' in One of the Living, it is hard to understand thsat you find AFMBE not gritty enough.

And if you are able to read a German book, try Degensis. It's free, it is very post-apocalyptic and has great artwork, even though it is quite setting-specific at times. The rules are not nearly as good as the artwork, but that probably hard to achieve.

[Winterwind]

And if you are able to read a German book, try Degensis. It's free, it is very post-apocalyptic and has great artwork, even though it is quite setting-specific at times. The rules are not nearly as good as the artwork, but that probably hard to achieve.

Seconded, thirded and fourthed. DeGenesis is awesome (as far as I know, it is currently being translated into English, too; the official website is here).
The only part where I do not agree is the rules, because I find the elegant simplicity of DeGenesis' rules to be vastly superior to almost anything else out there.

[LibraryOgre]

Palladium's After the Bomb. Play down the mutant animals. You've got a simple system for skills and combat, and fun to play and run.

[Satyr]

I don't say that the rules are particularly bad, but not nearly as good as the artwork or some of the texts. And they have their weaker points, like the sometimes ridiculously difficult tasks - and I don't like the idea much to roll both under the ability and over the dificulty. That does not seem to elegant to me. And I have often heard that the very unequal distibution of equipment is considered as very unfair with some players ('hey look - I get a self made blunderbuss and a pushcart' 'Well, I have a Yawa Sandcrawler tank and 1000 times as many money as you. By the way, you work for me.')

After a session or two of Degenesis, we decided to convert to Gurps. But in that time we converted almost everything to Gurps, so that is not that significant.

[Triaxx]

I'm still working on porting SPECIAL into DnD in place of the stats it has now. There was a published tabletop wargame with Fallout Tactics, but it's not much for interaction. Might help with the logistics though.

[Tsotha-lanti]

[snipped]

"Gritty" and "nitty-gritty" are completely different. One of TW2K's strengths, for example, is that everything - including ammunition - has a weight. When every bullet is precious, it really is pretty important to know how much ammo you can lug around for all those guns. Similarly, TW2K has rules for how much rest you need compared to how much work you do, and for getting tired from lack of sleep (so two people traveling together won't be able to keep watch all night without getting more and more tired as they go on).

Then there's the rules for random breakdown or animal injuries when traveling, etc.

This sort of thing is easy enough to come up with rules for, but it's definitely a point for TW2K that these rules already exist.

[Fri]

Actually, this board run at least two fallout play by post game at this moment. And one of it (that's incidentally the one that I play) is currently missing some player.

We use the SPECIAL system directly converted from the game.

[Satyr]

"Gritty" and "nitty-gritty" are completely different.

These are the fineries werre my language skills ocasionally just fail. Sorry, if I have misinterpreted your post.

Nonetheless, I think that too much bookkeeping is a hindrance for a game and stuff like the weight of ammunition is most of the time not nearly as interesting as to know how many shots you have. Having too much rules or details can be easily as hindering as having too few and calculating carried weight is often not very interesting - and usually easy to manage with a bit common sense.

This sort of thing is easy enough to come up with rules for, but it's definitely a point for TW2K that these rules already exist.

There are several aspects of this in One of the Living. The AFMBE Core Book seems mostly to be focused on One shot adventures, not long term campaigns. All the campaign stuff was swapped out to the source book, so rules for starvation, jury-rigging or putrefication of undead flesh can be found there.

[Wckd]

Fallout as a tabletop game sounds great! Having played through the original, the sequel and tactics I really like the idea!

Now the rest of this post may be slightly off topic, and thus I offer my apologies at this point!

As mentioned before I've played the original, the sequel and tactics, and I wonder if investing in fallout 3 is worth it!
I like the strategic system used in the series so far, but in the FO3 trailers it looks like they've turned it into a fps game instead of a strategic rpg.
Thus I have to ask:
Is it possible to play FO3 in the 'original format', and does it still have that special 'Fallout feel' or is it just another fps game?

If it is just another battlefield clone fps then I probably won't buy FO3...

[XBobbis]

I've played the tabletop version before, it's based on 1, 2, and Tactics. It's actually quite well done. There are PDFs out there, as well as character sheets, though you'll probably have to do some digging to find them.

[kbk]

Pinnacle followed up deadlands with Hell on Earth, which was a setting for a post-apocolyptic earth. Pinnacle updated deadlands into the savage worlds setting, but they haven't done a hell on earth update for savage worlds yet. There is however a d20 for hell on earth.


Savage worlds is fairly broad, and could easily be adapted for a fallout game, or you could even stick with d20 and go find the hell on earth d20 book.


By the way, I finished fallout3 on Sunday and was just thinking the same thing. Fallout has such a rich setting, and the three games barely even touch on other parts of N America, or the rest of the world.

[Satyr]

The original Fallout rules are painful to use in a tabletop game. Especially when it comes to armor and damage absorbtion. The idea of a conversion is basically very good indeed.

By the way, I found the Fallout Unisystem conversion I montioned. There are good thins in it, and things I think that are improvable, but mostly it is a helpful base for a more individualised conversion, I think.

[kbk]

As mentioned before I've played the original, the sequel and tactics, and I wonder if investing in fallout 3 is worth it!
I like the strategic system used in the series so far, but in the FO3 trailers it looks like they've turned it into a fps game instead of a strategic rpg.
Thus I have to ask:
Is it possible to play FO3 in the 'original format', and does it still have that special 'Fallout feel' or is it just another fps game?

If it is just another battlefield clone fps then I probably won't buy FO3...

Wckd, Fallout 3 is completley worth it. Its more than FPS thanks to VATS. VATS lets you queue up some attacks and target specific areas of the baddies. VATS captures the whole action point system quite well, and meshes into the graphically pleasing FPS.

And they did awesome justice to the setting. It has the feel of the other Fallouts, but I'm still looking for the porno theater to star in some flicks.

[Darrin]

So, any advice? System recommendations? I'm not very familiar with the post-apocalyptic RPG genre.

I think someone already mentioned this, but the original Fallout game was supposed to be based on the GURPS mechanics. As far as post-apocalyptic games go:

Gamma World/d20 Modern. Published by Sword & Sorcery Studios from 2002 to 2005. Of all the various Gamma World incarnations, probably one of the best supported, but apparently not all that popular with fans.

Omega World. Published in Dungeon 94 (September 2002), written by Johnathan Tweet, who of course was responsible for a lot of the design work on D&D 3.0. Unfortunately, this is just a magazine article and not a fully-fleshed-out rulebook, but fans are *still* raving about how exceptional this was. I believe some fans have provided additional support online.

The Morrow Project. I know nothing about it, other than it has some very devoted fans who love it to death. Looks like it's still in print and being supported... new edition is being playtested by Timeline Ltd.

Paranoia XP. The ultimate anti-RPG of dark distopian humor, framing your friends for treason, and then executing as many of them as possible before you run out of clones. Incredibly cathartic, convulsively funny game, but only loosely post-apocalyptic. Difficult to run long campaigns and the game needs a lot of tongue-in-cheek backstory to hold it together, but this would be an absolute blast to throw at your group as a one-off to let off some pent-up frustration.

Deadlands: Hell on Earth. I absolutely loved Deadlands to death, wasn't exactly so enamored with the post-modern incarnation, but for an RPG it had quite a bit of tangy flavor and pretty extensive support up until Pinnacle kinda-imploded. The meaty background more than makes up for the klunky mechanics, but I'm not sure there would be anything tasty left if you tried to strip off/ignore the extensive backstory. On the other hand, one of the few of the more recent games to throw things at you like "Toxic radiation gave me death-beam eyes!" and make it sound somewhat plausible.

Tribe 8: A good friend tried to explain this to me, but all he managed to get across is that it sounds like a really dumb idea unless you actually sit down and play it, at which point it becomes incredibly awesome.

Wasteworld. Appeared briefly with some sourcebook support in 1997. Sounds a bit like Battle Angel Alita meets RIFTS.

Creeks & Crawdads. Really more of a spoof of 1970's-era D&D than a full-fledged RPG. Never actually seen a copy myself, but as I understand it, WWIII wipes out humans, and radiation has allowed semi-evolved crawdads to take over. Only they're a bit half-baked out of the evolutionary oven, and you have to spend brain points to do even somewhat basic tasks, like tying your shoes, assuming you ever got around to evolving feet that needed shoes. There's a newer re-imagining floating out on the web somewhere, using the Impact system.

Cyborg Commando. This old boxed set is laughed at a lot more than it ever gets played. More of a bargain-bin curiously than an RPG, but if you're looking for some old-school "Gygax" flavor with that cavalier "watch me pull a random table out of my keister" attitude... yeah, well, you may want to leave it in that bargain bin anyway.

[ColdSepp]

Well, I can't suggest a setting, but the No Mutants Allowed website used to have all the history that the Fallout 1/2 developers made. Which was some very cool reading.

And being a Fallout fan, I loved it to death, especially the bits about the rest of the world. (The American army that was left in China, for instance, was quite cool.)

[Winterwind]

I don't say that the rules are particularly bad, but not nearly as good as the artwork or some of the texts.

Okay, to this, I can agree. Though that's more of a statement about the artwork and texts.

And they have their weaker points, like the sometimes ridiculously difficult tasks

That would be because the philosophy behind DeGenesis is different that for most roleplaying games - the rules are meant to get as little into the way of roleplaying as possible, therefore the rolls are kept down to a minimum by saying that checks have to be done only if the character is either completely uneducated in the required skill or the challenge is so big even a professional is likely to fail. The checks are meant to be this difficult to reflect that.

and I don't like the idea much to roll both under the ability and over the dificulty. That does not seem to elegant to me.

That would be another thing I see completely the other way - this way, there is no math at all involved anymore, as you do not have to add or subtract any modifiers from any other values, as all that needs to be done is the comparison of the dice roll with two other numbers - quicker than having to do arithmetics first. A minimum step, sure, but it shows how very thoughtfully the system was streamlined to be quicker.
(Also, the probabilities would be completely different if it was done differently - and for anyone but the most skillful elite, the checks would become a lot harder)

And I have often heard that the very unequal distibution of equipment is considered as very unfair with some players ('hey look - I get a self made blunderbuss and a pushcart' 'Well, I have a Yawa Sandcrawler tank and 1000 times as many money as you. By the way, you work for me.')

Hey, the Scrapper should consider himself lucky to have a firearm at all!
Jest aside, I see how this could be an issue for some. I consider it yet another feature - the rules not compromising the integrity of who and what the character is supposed to be for the sake of some supposed balance.

But it seems DeGenesis is generally rather polarizing. Most of my friends love it (and I consider it my favourite RPG, if that has not become clear yet - I mean, even my avatar here is nothing else but a stickified version of one of Justitian's Marshalls, ripped straight out of the DeGenesis core book), but the one who does not hates it with a passion.

[Tsotha-lanti]

Man, I didn't even know there was a SF/cyberpunk book for AMFBE. Totally going to check that out. (Also, as an avid reader of cyberpunk, I love the Gibson-referential title.)

And being a Fallout fan, I loved it to death, especially the bits about the rest of the world. (The American army that was left in China, for instance, was quite cool.)

That honestly just sounds like they'd read their TW2K... the game's default premise is that the PCs are part of the US military stranded in Poland when the world went to hell...

Wckd, Fallout 3 is completley worth it. Its more than FPS thanks to VATS. VATS lets you queue up some attacks and target specific areas of the baddies. VATS captures the whole action point system quite well, and meshes into the graphically pleasing FPS.

And they did awesome justice to the setting. It has the feel of the other Fallouts, but I'm still looking for the porno theater to star in some flicks.

As a Fallout freak since the first game came out, I totally agree. Really, it's no surprise to anyone who played (and liked) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You can't really beat first person for atmosphere and exploring post-nuclear ruins.

The game does have its faults, but they are minor and easily forgotten. Like I already mentioned, the dialogue is crippled by, on one hand, the obsession with voice acting, and on the other hand, not being willing to invest in it. When dialogue is suborned to voice acting, you always end up with way less of it, and it's never as free and complex. You can forget about being able to talk to most potential enemies you encounter - they'll just charge at you guns blazing. But it's still an amazing game - the look and the feel of it are incredible. After finishing the game (it ends way too soon), I've already spent another 20 hours just combing the map, scavenging ruins, etc. (Although the fact you level up to 20 so fast, and then can't advance other than by finding books and bobbleheads, kinda slowed my enthusiasm after I hit 20. Now I'm playing FOT:BoS.)

What dialogue exists is pretty cool, and there's a lot of points where a specific perk, or a high enough skill or attribute lets you get ahead without relying on Speech (and random chance).


Darrin, thank you for the list. I will see about checking out some of those.

[ShaggyMarco]

I'm just about to start PCing a Fallout table-top and we are using a re-flavored version of the Star Wars Saga edition rules.

Basically, we've removed all Jedi and Use the Force type abilities, and reskinned the rest.

We've also introduced a hybrid of the Iron Heroes/Fallout traits systems in place of character races.

[Neo]

Don't suppose anyone has tried Exodus? The system that almost was the Fallout PnP.

[ColdSepp]

That honestly just sounds like they'd read their TW2K... the game's default premise is that the PCs are part of the US military stranded in Poland when the
world went to hell

Well, I can't say for sure, since I don't know what TW2K is...

But, the premise was energy crisis.

The US annexed Canada, then China invaded Alaska. The US eventually drove them back and followed (Yay, Power Armor!) into China. Then the bombs happened.

Also, Super Mutants come from F.E.V., not radiation, just like all the other large creatures. None of them, save ghouls, come from radiation, IIRC. It's the F.E.V. that was released when the Glow was hit by an off course ICBM. Europe was at war before the US (The EU fell apart, and went to war with each other) but that's really all that was said about it.

I don't know how much of that Fallout 3 changed, though.

[kbk]

-snip-

I don't know how much of that Fallout 3 changed, though.

To my knowledge its not much. I still have hours of extra quests and zones to go through, but there are a few more details (behind spoiler for christ's sake!)

Spoiler

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Vault-tec is clearly engaged in pretty horrific social experiments. It seems they gave some vaults more resources of X, but not enough of Y. Some are given G.E.C.K.'s, most are not. Some vaults are programmed to open early, and some later. Some are given very authoritarian overseers, and some are not. Some seem to be involved in experimentation of FEV.

Most of the mutants in the D.C. area seem to have lost a lot of higher reasoning abilities, but they all seem to be consciously capturing people alive to subject them to FEV.

The brotherhood of Steel fought a massive battle with Super Mutants around Pittsburgh.

There are a few more details that I won't even hide behind spoiler tags. Play the game!

[ColdSepp]

I will be gettting it soon... Thanks for the spoilers.

As for the Vaults, yeah.. they have been that way since Fallout 1. In fact, the whole purpose of the first game (find a waterchip) was because the chip was designed to break (in that vault). There where supposed to backups, and it was supposed to lead to tests of stress.

Vault 0 was the control vault, and much of Fallout: Tactics is about it, and also explains why it failed.

[Tsotha-lanti]

I don't know how much of that Fallout 3 changed, though.

None - why would it? It's a sequel, after all. The Vault Experiments thing might be considered a change (at least if you take FOT:BoS's Vault Zero plot as objective fact rather than 22nd-century fantasy), I guess, but it just seems like exposition to me.

And I'm very familiar with the canon from the games, thanks. ;)

I don't recall mention of FEV causing all the monstrous creatures, admittedly (I wouldn't imagine they'd have been so widespread so early, if that were so). Ghouls are definitely caused by radiation - the oldest ones were born before the war. There's two FEV ghouls in the games, although I admit I'm a bit unclear on whether they were ghoulified before being FEV'd.

[ColdSepp]

Because it was made by a different company. As for the Experiments, the developers where very clear that they where exactly that. There is even a list of different vaults, and the experiment types in each one.

As for FEV, yeah, it made some. I am not sure which, though, because it only targeted certain species. You are correct about the two ghouls, as well, though I believe it says they where FEVed first, then ghoulified. I could be wrong, though, I haven't kept up on the Fallout lore for a few years.

[Fax Celestis]

Vault 0 was the control vault, and much of Fallout: Tactics is about it, and also explains why it failed.

LIES!

Spoiler

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Vault 13 was the control group, but due to a shipping incident, Vault 8 and Vault 13's had some exchanged items--notably, Vault 8 had extra Water Chips instead of a GECK, and Vault 13 had a GECK instead of extra Water Chips.

Vault 0 was the "official" centralization in name only--the Vault experiments were mostly managed offshore on the oil platform. Rather, it's intent was to reunify the surviving Vaults and act as a storehouse of technology.

[ColdSepp]

What Fax said. It's been to long since I read up on this. I never meant the Vault 0 was the control group, but I did think it was the HQ unit. I think that is because the makers of Tactics didn't check with the makers of Fallout 1/2.

[Doomsy]

The general rule of thumb is that Tactics is the least canonical of the series. Entertaining but it has a lot of stuff in it that just flatout jars pretty badly with the rest of the universe. Especially the deathclaws, the airships, the state of the BoS, and the whole Vault Zero thing. And Brotherhood of Steel is the Highlander 2: It never happened.

Corrections! How do I spoiler tag? I can't seem to do it right and this requires it.

As for FEV, I'm pretty sure it is the key ingredient in every major mutation in the wastelands. In FO2 they claim ninety percent or more of the surface population was exposed to a very small dose of it. Ghouls are the result of high intensity radiation exposure with a minor dose of FEV, with the exception of Harold, who got exposed to the hardcore real heavy duty FEV virus during a fun misadventure that also made the Master. And his damn tree. The Enclave makes it pretty clear in FO2 that they consider everyone exposed to it to be a mutant in one way or another, and they consider pretty much the whole world mutated.

Oh, the deathclaws were a designed weapon from Jacksons chameleons, I think. Non-FEV related. They were just tough enough to survive and spread in the wake of the bombs dropping.

As for Vault Zero - honestly, I'm not sure. Fax makes sense, but I personally like to think that Vault Zero was the public face and the Enclave was the shadow government. The Enclave evacuates to the oil rig and other hidey-holes across the US. The unnecessary elements of the government run to Vault Zero and think they are running things and safe and secure. It would be in line with how the Enclave thinks.