Been over a year since the last time I ran my tabletop Fallout Florida game - and it looks like I will be starting over in more ways than one: My notebook seems to have vanished....

System: Spycraft 2.0 - despite being designed for espionage games, Spycraft 2.0 is very well suited for any action style game. (But I recommend getting Spycraft 2.0 soon - Spycraft 3 is in the works, and does not sound promising - they are limiting the scope, so that it will only work well for espionage games. )

Supplements:
Fragile Minds - adds insanity to the game, as well as hints of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Bag Full of Guns - more guns

Practice Makes Perfect - standing in for combat Perks.

The Big Score - the standard Spycraft game assumes that the PCs will have the support of an Agency... not so much in the Wastelands.

The Shooter's Guides - more guns, statted out for Spycraft and for Twilight 2000.

Crafty Games cleared out the old Wikis with the completely unofficial rules for running games in the war torn Wastelands  - but Archive.Org still has them archived - I will post a link when I am able to do so.

So... current starting 'quests':

Explore and Engage - the starting premise is that a Vault has decided to open its doors for trade and expansion. The Overseer finally deciding that it is time, as resources are running low.

So, any characters with  the Vault Dweller background have tis as a long term goal - explore and establish routs of trade and communication through the Florida Wastelands.

The Dreadful Things That Rabbits Do - no matter what direction the PCs go they will encounter MacGregor's Farmstead. Or what remains of it.

Something has gone horribly wrong - a combination of modified FEV and radiation have changed common rabbits into Lepus Atrox; a communal pack predator that did for everyone in the compound.... (Looks like an accident, but isn't - the behind the scenes introduction of Henry P LaTota (an anagram of Nyarlathotep).) Comining the starting quest from Wastelands with the horrible old movie Night of the Lepus.

Other plots:
The Darkened Tunnels - Involving night ghoul and former Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel Nathan Sparkes.

Seeking a new home for non-feral ghouls, and the maintenance tunnels under Disneyworld still has a functioning reactor - a bit leaky... but they are ghouls.

And the story also involves Walt Disney on Ice.... (For those familiar with the old urban legend.)

The Guns of Splash Mountain - The Guns of Navarone, with Enclave instead of Nazis and Splash Mountain instead of the Navarone.

The Visitors - remember those aliens in Fallout 3? (But disregarding Mothership... I hated that DLC....) They have plans... two plans, and the factions behind those two plans do not agree....

The Freakshow - my favorite. Set in Gibsonton (Gibtown), a carnival based community that started as a retirement place for circus freaks.

My surviving notes survived because I posted about the game in the Crafty Games forums - again, I will post a link when I am able.

I also had information about it on the old VGU site....

The Auld Grump

Based on what you have provided you prefer rules driven vs narrative driven play, but after watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX9AvqSc0hs&index=2&list=PLRyohiTqNQ9EwUwP-l3ArOsAle0fdNVsC I cannot recommend Apocalypse World (http://apocalypse-world.com/backpitch.html) enough. It feels exceptionally Fallout to me. The website doesn't do a very good job of selling it, but that Youtube play does. I would recommend the first and last episodes as they cover character basics, and a "what does this system do well".

Sounds to me like you more or less remember exactly what was going on, or going to be going on, with your previous game, judging by what I remember of your postings on Old VGU. I am glad you found your way to the "new address", and I look forward to hearing how things go with the game.

It is going to be a few months - but I found my stats for Lepus Atrox (Literally The Atrocious Rabbit), hidden away on an NPC forum.


Lepus Atrox (Animal — 41 XP): Init VII; Atk V; Def III; Resilience II; Damage Save: II; SZ T; Spd 40 ft; Qualities: burrow, fearless (+4), fearsome, feral, fleet (+10ft), horde, inferior attribute (Str 6), minion, natural attack (bite II), swarm, treacherous, undersized (Tiny).

Lepus Atrox Major (Special NPC — 52 XP): Init V; Atk V; Def III; Resilience IV; v/wp: III; Competence: II; Skills: Acrobatics III, Athletics III, Intimidate III, Sneak III, Survival III; SZ S; Spd 40 ft; Wealth: None; Weapons: None; Gear: None; Vehicle: None; Qualities: beast, burrow, fearless (+4), fearsome, feral, fleet (+10ft), henchman, natural attack (bite III), undersized (Small).

Mama is treated as a Henchman, though she is actually a lone menace, aside from her get. As she is a Special NPC I gave her the Beast quality, while mute she has the equivalent of a 10 Int.

Meadicus has an NPC program for Spycraft/Fantasy Craft - NPCs in Spycraft scale with the level of the PCs, in much the same way that foes in Fallout 3 scale, but on a more personal basis. (Rather than running into Albino Radscorpions instead of Radscorpions you just run into tougher Radscorpions.)

What I have forgotten is mostly how the various Raider/Tribal folks interact - I remember the fact that I have raiders wearing kilts and using bull roarers, but I no longer remember why.

I remember the 'Indian/Tribal Elves with Neon Hair', but again... no idea what they were up to. They were based on the miniatures for elves from Shock Force.

Some are armed with what look like the rotary saw arm from Mr. Handy - so I remember that killing a bot is a rite of passage. And that Iko Iko is their battle song....  And that war between the tribes of those 'elves' is generally non-fatal....

I have about a dozen painted up.... and no idea why.... So, I think that I will put them near Disney.

The Auld Grump



The Auld Grump

Livnthedream wrote:

Based on what you have provided you prefer rules driven vs narrative driven play, but after watching this: I cannot recommend Apocalypse World (Link Removed - I haven't been here long enough....) enough. It feels exceptionally Fallout to me. The website doesn't do a very good job of selling it, but that Youtube play does. I would recommend the first and last episodes as they cover character basics, and a "what does this system do well".  

Yeah - I lean toward rules heavy - I was in a few rules light games that had GMs that played favorites, simply because the rules had wriggle room. (I noticed that the GM in the video that you linked to mentions that exact problem - thumbs up for his honesty!)

So, I avoid rules light games - I see no reason to trust me more than others....

So, I use Spycraft - which is very flexible, and very... rules heavy.

Fishwife Games on RPGNow have a bunch or PA scavenging tables - really tempting, and not expensive. (An example is 100 Scavenged Food Sources.)

There is also a game that started as Fallout D20, but eventually became Exodus, because the deal that Glutton Creeper Games had made with Interplay was cancelled by Bethesda. (I could have sworn that I bought the PDF years ago... but if so then it has vanished form my collection.

There is also Darwin's World - where the world is evolving after the apocalypse - not just mutation, but survival of the fittest. (Darwin's World I do have, along with the D20 Gamma World....)

Still trying to find a radiation system that matches what I want for Fallout... last time I used poker chips....

The Auld Grump

Jelly that I'm not wherever you're running this. Also, I want a rabbit companion. It can be a horrible lepus.

I have rabbits IRL. I've watched the trailer for Night of the Lepus, but I haven't gotten around to sitting down and watching it while I laugh until I can no longer breathe. ; )

nyaalich wrote:

Jelly that I'm not wherever you're running this.  Also, I want a rabbit companion.  It can be a horrible lepus.

I have rabbits IRL.  I've watched the trailer for Night of the Lepus, but I haven't gotten around to sitting down and watching it while I laugh until I can no longer breathe.  ; )

Night of the Lepus is a terrible, terrible movie.

I am certain that you will enjoy it. (I did.)

The Awful Things That Rabbits Do

As I mentioned, the farm is in whatever direction the PCs head - so it is a bit of a cheat.

The purpose is to teach the combat system (especially the Campaign Qualities - Spycraft has rules for modifying the game to fit different genres, one of the two best things about the system).

It will also give the PCs some needed supplies - including a varmint gun and ammo for same.

Written on the wall, in blood is this poem -
The Rabbit has a charming face,
His private life is a disgrace.
I really dare not name to you,
The awful things that Rabbits do....

No sign of the person that wrote the poem - whoever it was took the blood, wrote the poem, then walked away. (The above mentioned Henry P LaTota.)

If the PCs do not manage to kill all of the bunnies then they will be added to the encounter tables - the Lepus Atrox breed fast, and are very, very dangerous. Apex predators with long floppy ears....

And the mamma rabbit (Lepus Atrox Major) is sentient.

There are a few survivors, locked up in the house - food running low... cannibalism has already taken place, but not yet murder.

Bad things happen to folks that eat Lepus meat.... (Growing hunger, loss of control, madness, and finally cannibalism. Think of the old Wendigo legends.)

Another minor plotline involves two Vaults that were built near to each other - divided male and female, each vault relying on cloning to maintain numbers - the equipment needed to create a colony all in the female Vault, the weapons all in the male Vault... in theory this was planned as a test of the War of the Sexes.... With the expected outcome being the subjugation of the female Vault.

What actually happened was the two overseers both smelled a rat, and were in communication before the first bombs fell.

The result is a stable community, with shared resources and duties.... The Vaults have both been open for over a decade, and underground tunnels connect the two Vaults. (Yes - a pair of Vaults that had a happier ending than planned. The resulting community may end up being either the greatest ally the newly opened Vault can find, or their most dangerous rivals. The PCs have a chance to screw up big. And the shared Vaults have a functioning G.E.C.K..)

Miami is Raider territory. The gangs have taken over the city - a teeming hive of scum, villainy, and anarchy.

A minor Miami plotline is The Arena - blood games in the old Burdine Stadium (in the real world it became the Orange Bowl, and was eventually torn down).

Football, with melee weapons.

The first game in the Arena will have the PCs face off against a 'team' of Feral ghouls. (The ghouls aren't trying to 'win' they are just hungry, and have a Glowing One as their quarterback....

Which reminds me - I need to get some USGS maps of Florida....

The Auld Grump

"The ghouls aren't trying to 'win' they are just hungry, and have a Glowing One as their quarterback...."

I almost spit a mouthful of tea at my monitor when I read that part!    And again, some of this sounds rather familiar from your original postings. Now, as then, I look forward to hearing how things turn out for your players.

Sounds fun, me and a few mates are playing a Post Apocalyptic campaign using CyberPunk 2020, we started as clones in a escape ship for 200 years that never launched but told everyone inside it was still in flight.

This will be my third time running this campaign.

One thing that I noticed in both of the first two run throughs - the PCs almost immediately trusted the Freakshow. :?

There was just something about a mix of humans, super-mutants, and really strange critters that said 'you can trust us'.

Dammit, the point was that the PCs weren't supposed to trust them! Yeah, they are trustworthy, but it was supposed to be learned slowly....

Even when they met the real Ringmaster....

Or... maybe the PCs just wanted to run off and join the circus....

So, a quick punt - what ideas can folks come up with for Vaults?

So far we have:

A pirate Vault - using their weapons to control the Keys.

An underwater Vault that is at war with the pirates (and are also not nice people - they have the Innsmouth look)

The Gender War Alliance Vault

Newest to be added is the Vault of Dreamers  - REM experiments with people in suspended animation... based very loosely on a film titled Shadowzone.



Dreamers that have died in the Gestalt continue to live for as long as somebody in the loop continues to dream, but become less and less... human/real over time - sometimes becoming eidolons, other times becoming nightmares. And the resulting gestalt affects everyone sleeping within a mile of the Vault, whether they are hooked up to the computers or not. And there is some other consciousness in the gestalt... something that calls itself The King in Yellow. (No, it is not Hastur - but the Overseer of the Vault has gotten a little strange.....)

Also... I need a plot for the Super-Mutants. Right now they are only reactive - fighting, well, everybody - but not having their own plans.

The Auld Grump

Good gravy... ran across this miniature on DakkaDakka -


I... need to think about the gobbo.... A super-mutant midget, maybe?

The Auld Grump

http://falloutpnp.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

^^System.

http://www.brother-vinni.com/shop.htm#!/~/category/id=5965003&offset=0&sort=normal

^^Miniatures.

Systemwise, I am pretty much wedded to the Spycraft 2.0 system, with some tweaks (I like the floating initiative system, the players don't - so away it went).

Mostly it is because of the way encounters scale - much like critters in Bethesda games they NPCs/Monsters/etc. scale with the PCs - so that a single statblock can be used to define an encounter that the PCs may not reach for a while, or can blunder into at first level. (This is the best part of the Spycraft system - and is invaluable for a sandbox game where the PCs are allowed to roam free, rather than follow a plot on rails.)

Decided on a neat possible side effect of the Vault of the Dreamer - much like the Ringmaster it can affect the Behemoth, either calming it or, more likely, triggering a nightmare rampage, one that could ruin the reputation of the Freakshow. (Giving the PCs a reason to explore the Vault.)

Brother Vinni's miniatures are indeed awesome - some of those models just can't be found elsewhere.

The Auld Grump

We went with Cyberpunk because it has every gun known to man, Vehicles, Space/Vampires/Netrunning etc without the complex Shadowrun dice system. We added a few fun ideas to the cyberpunk system so on dice rolls, for one dice rolling a 6 on d6 or 10 on d10 for the a group of rolls, it is rerolled and added again giving us potential openended damage, makes things much more interesting, it means that some dumb punk may just roll well enough to spoke that 1d6 screwdriver into a players neck through a weak / damaged spot on their heavy armor. We reduce armor by 1 point for every hit wether it penetrates or not, so yeah that guy with a 1d6 mingat suddenly becomes no laughing matter if you are wearing SP 25 armor and are hit by 30 rounds of the 100 rounds fired at you.
Or we get stupidly high initiatives where someone rolls lucky to get a total of 36 initiative against someone with 11 so they get to draw their gun on 36, head shot the opponent on 26 and reholster the weapon on 16 before the other guy gets to draw on 11.

Yeah, Cyberpunk sounds nice for the setting too. I recently got hold of the vampire supplement, and as a big vampire buff wish my group had nay interest whatsoever in playing it.

I had originally thought to run my own Fallout table-top game after I had found the Fallout PnP rules online a few years back. As well fleshed out as they were, I wanted a bit more flexibility and options in my game play, so I began looking through some of the other rpg rules that I had used over the last, what, 20 years. I decided that I would go with D20 Modern, using the D20 Future and Gamma World supplements. Going this route was almost a no-brainer for me, as I have played Gamma World on and off over the years since the original box set hit the shelves back in the late '70's.

The White Wolf/Swords & Sorcery version of Gamma World?

Looked interesting - and the PDF was given away free on Drivethrurpg.com - once upon a time. (WotC called in all the licenses on the run up to 4e....) Pretty sure that I have it on a hard drive somewhere.... It looked a whole lot less goofy than the original Gamma World.

Have you seen Darwin's World? (A bloody bleak D20 PA game.) You can get the PDF of the D20 Modern version for a buck on RPGNow. The 2nd edition - redone as a stand alone game, runs $10 in PDF.

The first PA RPG that I ever played was Aftermath - another rather grim setting. (Lots of ways to die.) Then there was The Morrow Project, which was grim, but had hope. Gamma World... seemed a bit sillier - six foot upright rabbits with lasers....

But I like the retro-future of Fallout, and it's dark humor. (Plus, I have a suitable music selection.)

The Auld Grump

I was planning on, and still am to an extent, of using the D20 system and supplements more for the mechanics and weapons than the critters. I planned on keeping mostly to Fallout creature-wise, as well as throw in my own creations based upon my version of the "lore".

Of course, as long as everyone is having fun and wants to keep coming back for more, you are doing things the right way.

Spycraft 2.0 is a d20 variant - and the original Spycraft predates d20 Modern by a year or two.

That said... I believe that there is a conversion of my favorite part of Spycraft to d20 Modern, but I am not sure that it is still around, let me check for a moment....

Found it - Foe Factory.

It allows easily scalable NPCs for d20 Modern, from the description on RPGNow:
Craft your NPCs!

Foe Factory: Modern allows GMs to quickly create entertaining and interactive Non-Player Characters for their d20 Modern-based games and to rapidly scale those NPCs to challenge Player Characters of any level; without having to rewrite them from the ground up. NPCs created with Foe Factory differ from normal ancillary characters in a few fundamental areas while maintaining essential playability and quick statistical recognition.

Foe Factory: Modern NPCs are rated based on the players' Average Character Level, meaning that the same write-up can be used for games set at any level, and are easily adapatable for any d20-based game.

Pretty much lifted straight from Spycraft 2.0, but it works, and allows you to use it with d20 Modern.

Conversely, there is a Spycraft 2.0 supplement that allows you to use the d20 Modern classes in Spycraft.... Back to Basics. (I prefer the Spycraft classes, but for converting....)

The NPC system in Spycraft doubles as a monster creation system. A handy dandy online tool can be found here, created by Meadicus, for use with both Spycraft and Fantasy Craft. (I tend to use the Fantasy Craft version for both - conversion between the two is easy, and Fantasy Craft has more options.)

Once upon a time Spycraft 3 and and Fantasy Craft were supposed to be compatible, but they have since ditched that idea - which means that I will be skipping Spycraft 3. (I wanted to run a fantasy Elizabethan espionage game, featuring Walsingham and Elizabeth's occult expert John Dee. (John Dee, in the real world, was referred to in the espionage game by the number 007....)

The Auld Grump

Thank-you for posting those links! I just might find that material useful, eventually....