Fallout RPG, using sr4 for a fallout rpg Options

[Drace]

Hey, haven't played or posted on here in years, but dusted off my copy of the sr4 rulebook I got, and picked up most of the core books at discount when my local store went out of business.

Anyways, now that I am done blabbing on about nothing, a few friends and me had an idea to play a fallout based rpg since both of them had recently gotten a copy of fallout 3 and finished it. Since I am the only person in the group to know the majority of the rules, let alone to have played all 3 of the games and know the most fluff, I have been given the job of being the gm of the game.

I am looking for any ideas as to how to run the game? Should I let them do what they want, have certain npc's give them jobs like shadowruns, let them go hunting, start a gang/town etc? Any advice would be great as I have a few ideas, but it looks like they may be exhausted out pretty fast depending on what they want to do.

[Matsci]

The Real Fallout RPG

[Drace]

yes, I know about that project, but as you can see it is far from complete, and since me and my friends are already use to the sr4 system, were planning on using it. Plus, if you look, there is absolutly nothing for equipment, gear, weapons etc. All of that would have to be made scratch to go with their system (damage codes, health mods, str mods, stat mods, etc).

[hobgoblin]

was not the first fallout supposed to use GURPS, until there was some kind of disagreement?

[Dumori]

i still uses heavly modded GURPS the disagreement was that fallout was to dark IIRC.

[Wounded Ronin]

OP, it's called GURPS. That system is t3h pwn anyway.

[Drogos]

Well, since you are wanting to use SR4 rather than GURPS (which is a good system, if a bit bland in the flavor department...it is the GENERIC Universal Role-Playing System), I'd suggest picking up Arsenal if you haven't already. Read and reread the rules on hostile environments, paying particular attention to the radiation rules. Without being 100% certain on how close to the storyline of the Fallout backstory you are sticking with, I can't give you a whole lot of ideas on what you may want to do. Some thoughts are to make slightly underpowered (say 300-350 BP) characters with extremely tight restrictions on gear and expenditures. Part of the Fallout universe is the survival aspect. Limited ammunition, incompatitable ammuntion, scarcity of clean food and water, these are going to be your major hurdles the players will face. The idea of just popping down to the store, even in some of the large settlements, should be dispelled. There should be very little available to the team. I'd probably just throw out magic as anything but the opposition, and then only a limited ammount (like nothing above a magic and/or force of 4). Same goes for Cyberware/Bioware. THose two items are responsible for most of the power creep in SR and as such will greatly impact the survival aspect of the campaign. Assuming you want to actually play in the world and not just one city, you also need to pay attention to vehicle operation limits (outlined in Arsenal). Basically, don't let them just drive their car fro days on end, make them work for their fuel. I suggest Mad Max et al. for all your inspirational needs.

Outside of the basic surrvival portion of gameplay, the possibility of keeping them engaged could include things like presented in the PC/Console game. Side quests and little errands can keep the pair engaged. I suggest possibly just ripping off the video game and have a main storyline with side storylines developing as you proceed. This provides a reason for your players to do more than just decide to squat right here and eke out an existance. I'm not certain that you want to run SimSurvival, so that hook to keep the PCs froming staying sedintary could prove useful. This is best achieved by either revenge or tracking someone/thing. I suggest revenge because it allows you to make a really cool reoccuring villain and most players like the satisfaction that a really memorable villain brings to the table. So think of what kind of a villain would really get under your PCs' skin. This will hopefully lead the players off to try and track down thier archnemesis which gives them more of a reason to exist outsiede of mere survival.

In closing, some thoughts on possible games sessions/missions (note, I may be completely ripping off the game since I only just started my own character through the game and am in the VERY early parts of it):

-PCs stumble upon a Vault. Do they try to open it? Is it already open with wails of death and blood spatter coming from the depths? Are the inhabitants hostile or friendly?

-A small community is being harried by raiders as the PCs approach, do they get involved? Is there some key to the puzzle that the community is holding? Do the PCs have a history with these particular Raiders? (Pretty much, you can think of raiders as gangs, and as such, they would do what ever most modern gangs would do as well, such as wear colors, attempt to exhort goods from the populace, distribute drugs, etc.)

-Chems(Drugs): To (ab)use or not to (ab)use?

-The PCs come across a lone survivor of a Raider attack, it's a little girl and she is on the brink of death. Do they help her or leave her to her fate? Helping her will surely tax their meager resources a fair bit.

-A critical piece of equipment is damaged and the only possible place to repair is infested with Ghouls. It looks like it's going to be one helluva night.

I hope these ideas help.

[Drace]

Drogos, thanks for all the suggestions, saved my ass last night when we all got together. Went and read (several times to make sure I got all I could from it) Arsenal, and looking at the gear, decided to do a 350bp for everyone.

For races, I kept humans, dwarves and elfs as simple humans,(the dwarves and elves being vault dwellers, the humans being wastelanders) and for npcs, used orks as non-feral ghouls and trolls as super mutants. The gear they were restricted to were singleshot rifles, light pistols, the gear that made sense (commlink sans matrix ruels (pip-boys), climbing gear, survival gear, tools etc). For cyber/bio, simply got rid of bio for now, if they meet up with enclave/BoS, they may get some, and for cyber multiplied essence cost by 1.5X and tripled the cost, while only allowing the simpler and less advanced stuff in (replacement limbs, dermal plating(think plates ontopof the skin though) and wired reflexes at 2X essense and 4X cost up to level 2. For magic, simply changed it to having to the aspected(sorcer) quality, and made it cost 20bp with a max of magic 3, and called it psychic, which is explained in the stories fluff (A vault near the town where the other char started was hit with a neutron bomb rather than a nuclear and the extreme radiation was strong enough to penetrate the vault, causing all of the women who were pregnant to give birth to psychics of various power. Those that worked near the outer or less sheilded areas got it worse, but became unstable and over a few generations, their great grand kids started a revolt, which resulted in the survivors of the psychotics fleeing and leading/starting raider gang, cults and the like, some becoming SMs if captured, or willingly if crazy enough.)

Vehicles are removed for now, fusion cars will be brought in later, but will be only marginally faster than walking, but don't need to take time to camp. For now only animals can be used, Brahmin as pack animals, and 8 legged horses for travel. Armour is rare, with leather armour being the most common, followed by vests and the like, and every 2 boxes filled on the char's physical health track reduced the armor value of the armor by 1, until it broke or was repaired. Only things that stores sell are food, some tools, and scrap mostly, occaisionally having some ammo, or a broken gun. Melee weapons are more plentiful, but shoddy to the point that if you use one repeatedly will easily break in a combat (No using pipes on a supermutant as one char learned (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) ). Also, forcing the players to be smart, so if they want to bring back a bounty for a raider or the like, have to bring back the whole head so they know it was a raider, and also, if draggin a pile of heads, brings in threats like wild packs of dogs lead by mutant alphas (barghest rules) and the like, so have to think of how to either avoid threats or leave a few heads/bodies and the like.

For the campaign itself, I loved alot of your ideas, and having crammed in asmuch fallout 3 replaying I could the day before, I quickly jotted down the base stats for critters and enemies that they should find, and design a few small scenarios for them, using heavily on the 3rd idea you mentioned.

So for the first day, we made up the char sheets, figured out the lay of the land and the like, did backstories and started off with one of the characters, a vault dweller from the aforementioned vault coming out with a small group to trade with a nearby town, getting attacked by raiders, who slaughter his companions and chase him nearly to the town that the other char was in, who is playing a stealth combat character with some medical skills (High stealth, rifle and first aid basically). The town's guards and characters fight off the raiders, and get some bounty money. The two characters go and use a brahmin to bring the needed supplies to the vault, and the vault character decides he likes the excitement of life outside the vault more and decides to stay out.

The two characters are then go back to the town where the sheriff asks the character who had been in the town to figure out what happened to a caravan going to a smaller settlement near the town on the otherside of a small mountain. They went and say a group of raiders belonging to a larger tribe/gang, and waiting 'till night ambushed em, killing all but one (who ran off and there is now a 80 cap price on each of their heads, unbeknown to them). They scrounged up the ammo, barely replacing what they lost, and found the caravaners dead and either cannabilized or tortured for fun, buried them, and grabbed their supplies, and the last brahmin left uneaten. They brought everything back, got 10caps per raider and sold the supplies to pay off some of the wastelander char's debt he owes for the small shack he bought. They then went to the settlement in question, and came to it as it was being attack by SM's, cue fight, they manage to take down two by suprise before the rest notice them and nearly kill them, and the super mutants run off after a man on a motorcycle comes near and starts to shout at them (messenger for the soon to be revealed bad guy) and taking a good number of the settlers, leave the players to drag their near dead bodies to the burning town, nearly get shot by the survivors, and help the wounded and help fix the town up, including using the gear from the super mutants they killed to pay for the supplies they used (pain killers, semi clean water and gauze, a.k.a a small fortune) which also resulted in one of the chars (the vault dweller) becoming addicted to jet.

After roughly 8 hours, we left off there and called it a night.