Now that we’ve established a lot of the world information and gotten on the same page, it’s time to move on to characters. This thread will be for everyone to start discussing character concepts, and any requests or ideas for NPCs you guys want to meet. It’s going to be a struggle selecting character portraits but I’ll do my best to find suitable ones. I’ll always take recommendations. I know we could do away with no character portraits but I like the portraits myself.

I'm thinking an armourer, which probably means engineer to have been put in the vault. I think Gadgeteer should be banned, so making weapons will not be super-quick.

I like character portraits.

So many options....

I am mulling around the Vault-Tec Employee concept that our Overseer mentioned, likely someone that works in Security.

He could have been disqualified for military service (flat feet perhaps? A quirk version of Lame?), and is dealing with being branded "4F" and all the shame and self doubt that comes with that in the hyper patriotic pre war culture. He could be compensating for that in some way.

He could have been wowed by a Vault-Tec exhibition at some place like Nuka World, or have been in a vulnerable place for recruitment after personally suffering in the Food Riots?

He could have even been the victim of some some sort of Vault-Tec conditioning while living so close to a Vault? Had a curious reaction to one of their subliminal programs? or was earmarked by the Overseer while still in school for obedience traits?

Whatever the reason, I think it could be fertile ground for a good story.

Yeah, no Gadgeteer or Quick Gadgeteer.  I'm regoing over my handful of sources for crafting stuff, nothing was super in depth, but I'll see if I can bang something workable together from the Gadgeteering rules.


Aye, me as well.  Though caution, go through the Avatars first, then decide on what your Character looks like... the number of times I've gone into the avatars pages with a firm idea in mind and found nothing even a little close is disheartening (I guess it would help if I had more white characters with brown, blonde, or black hair in mind... le sigh for my creative process).



Easy-peasy lemon squeezy.  How does the Quirk "4F - You've got flat feet and slightly misaligned joints, nothing anyone would casually notice, but physical Long-Actions tire you and cause discomfort and mild pain.  +1 FP loss on physical Long Actions."

He might have even been disqualified because early Powered Combat suits would have put too much strain on his [whatever is misaligned, slight scoliosis, shoulders, hips, knees?] and so the doctors disqualified him.


Good stuff, I'll leave the squishy deets to Overseer... but...

I could see Chauvinistic (Patriot) as a solid Quirk, where you have a serious grudge against those "foreigners that started the war" (so mostly Chinese, Canadians - suck that you maple leafs!, and... I want to say Russians and Mexicans?*) but work fine with Eurotrash, Australians, South Americans, Africans, etc, and any non-humans that are identifiable as being from "Murica! FUCK YEAH!"†.  So Mr Handys that have "Made in the USA" stamped on them are fine, those foreign imports however are "unreliable and not as well built".  This would also extend to weaponry (and basically anything you come across that isn't "American"), but being east coast, your not very likely to run into foreign guns or weapons.

As for the Duty/Compualsion, I'm going to leave that for if Overseer wants it, and the build will have to wait for us to have a chat, but it'll probably be between 5-15 points depending on how often those 'subliminal' triggers or direct orders from a Vault Overseer or other ranking Vault Tech employee might occur.


* I might be conflating some other games here.  but I coudl swear Russia go into it in Alaska over oil and Mexico crossed into the lower southwest over food (and not officially, I think the people just swarmed and were brutally massacred.  The USA in Fallout wasn't a pretty place to be if you were an outsider, but then it's also built on that 50's Cold War sentiment and it grinds it deep).

†  You, you don't ever have to devolve into Team America pastiche...  unless it's funny. ;)

I figure mostly it's going to be fixing stuff that has been found, making ammo, or making stuff well below TL limits and not totally new. p.473-474 work well for the latter, and probably everything will be simple to average. Those rules don't require Gadgeteer.

I think we are on the same page Asst.

I can work with Overseer on some of the lore specific details, but I think we are moving in a good direction.

Actually, surprisingly enough Russia and America are relatively peaceful in the Fallout world. It’s the Chinese the Americans hate and fought at Anchorage. The Americans annexed Canada and the Canadians didn’t put up much of a fight (the two nations were basically the same). The United Nations proved powerless when America invaded Mexico.  Europe is destroyed and mostly filled with the remnants of a few bickering nation states  pre war because of the resource wars, that’s why Russia isn’t much of a threat anymore. The Middle East was devastated as well during the resource wars. The United Nations collapsed soon after.

After several smaller nuclear exchanges that led to a nuclear strike in Tel Aviv, the USA contracted with Vault Tec to start building the Vaults. I believe this is around December 2053. The resource wars end when the Middle East runs dry of oil. Shortly after a devastating plague hits the USA.

Things continue to worsen, China invaded anchorage, the US invaded China and starts annexing Canada, riots break out, jobs are lost as robots replace workers, until the Great War in 2077. I’ll get up a timeline thread today for everything the characters would know, and then as you guys learn more I’ll update the thread.

Russia was the enemy in Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics in the backstory, but that was retconned by the time Fallout 3 was released as Real Life^TM politics had changed in the world, and China became the Commies the hyper-nationalistic United States fought in two hour war.

Was tactics considered canon? I can’t remember. I know there were one or two fallout games that weren’t canon. I never got to play Fallout 1 or 2 I’ll have to read up on the lore for those

Tactics is no longer canon, but some parts of it are still acknowledged as canon. It's sometimes fuzzy, but canon has been really odd since Bethesda took over Fallout.

As this is an AU, canon is what you say it is as you are the game's BMD.

You should watch the Fallout 1 intro some time... it'll change your mind on 'why' Canada didn't put up much of fight (they had no real military, but still US forces gunned down civilians in the streets).  In Fallout: Tactics there's even a scenario where you met some farmers and you can get some more backstory about the Canadian Invasion of the US (which was used to justify the US atrocities on Canada), just like with Mexico, it was locals that crossed the border raiding for food, but the local 'settlers' were still worried (hundreds of years later) that they'd be back to do it again.



Ah, yeah, okay, that jives.  It's been years since I've played 1, 2, and Tactics.  At least 15 years by now, wait, no I played Tactics again right after Wasteland 2 came out because I could swear it was the same plotline (they're just very, very similar).  So yeah, it's been awhile.

We'll want to share some information for niche preservation. But should we try to keep our backgrounds secret from each other right now so that we'll learn about each other when we emerge? Or are we sharing most things now?

I'm in favor of keeping it more secret honestly.

If my concept for the Vault-Tec Security character goes through, we will see what templates come down, but I imagine maybe some close range combat, as well as some social and physical utility.

That's just a guess though.

Vault Tec Security is perfectly acceptable, although we will need to hash out why you were put in cryosleep instead of being with the Vault 111 security detachment. But we can easily find some good ideas for why.


In regards to sharing things, keep it secret, but everyone lives in the sanctuary neighborhood, so feel free to share things your neighbors would know about you. If you want a pre established friendship with another character that works as well, you can be neighbors who attend each other’s bbq and the like.

Cool, I can work with that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:08, Wed 22 June 2022.

Quick favor, can everyone who hasn't yet, start a PM titled "Potential Character Background - [Character Name]" for me?  If you don't have a name in mind yet, go ahead and put your current screen name in place, thanks.

Anachronist and Bravo, you guys are golden.

Also, once I get the Chargen Rules posted, let's do the nuts and bolts in a PM Titled "Chargen - [Character Name]" keeps things easier on me.  ;)

So far it looks like we have Bravo aiming at an Engineer (maybe fullblown Artificer, maybe just Armoury and Battlesuits?) and Anachronist going for Vault-Tec Security grunt or Officer.

aguy777, jobe00, and Marco, go ahead and start tossing your general ideas in here and Background thoughts in a PM.

I have so many ideas... I'll just pick up a make-weight or fill a desperately unfilled niche, like if no one takes Doctor, or Heli-Door Gunner, or Martial Artist - aka "First to Die", or something.

I pitched my idea to the Overseer a little bit ago; I'll send it in a PM to you, as well.

I'm leaning towards a scientist for General Atomics. Specifically, someone who worked in setting up the General Atomic Galleria, but wasn't super high up the totem pole.

Ah, cool.  I haven't read all the RTJs yet... /sheepsihgrin.jpg

Just address it to the Overseer, if it's a Background or Chargen PM, I'll read it, otherwise I'm mostly keeping out of them.  If you ever have rules questions, go ahead and PM directly to me though, or put something obvious like "Rules Question" in the subject (both GMs can read any PMs, but I'm going to pretty much ignore anything not related to Chargen and Rules, or that's addressed directly to me - Assistant).

I appreciate that assistant, that’s very respectful. But I have no qualms about you keeping in the know on everything. I like what you’re doing with the chargen PMs, I was also going to eventually have everyone label a PM with their character name and then only use that PM thread to message me. But I’ll set that up later on my own. It just really helps us GMs keep track of the PM and who is who because it can be difficult to remember which player goes with which character and all that.

It should be that both GMs can see all PMs. But they show up in different spots depending on whether it was addressed to you. So we could address certain PMs to only one of you if it helps you organizationally.

In reply to aguy777 (msg # 17):

aguy777, what university do you think your character would have gone to? I've already written in MIT, which fits for a few reasons. If we overlapped, we might know each other at least vaguely.

Yea, any GURPS mechanics or chargen related questions and messages address to assistant, anything else to me.

I have some good news! Our mapmaker is not only excited to build battle maps for us, but is going to make them fallout themed! They are working on Vault 111 as we speak :)

I was thinking of MIT, as well. I'm up for us knowing each other in some way or form. I'm not 100% set on the character's age, but I was thinking early 30s.

I have my character starting there is 2066 undergraduate through finishing a PhD in 2074. Could have been my character's TA if older?

Wow, that's great news!

Shaping up to be a top shelf game.

Yeah, I’m really excited. They sent me a rough draft already and they plan to include the entire floor plan as it is in game. Obviously we won’t always have battle maps for every encounter, but for the big areas I’m going to try and at least have one map pertaining to that location and then a bunch of regular apocalypse themed maps we can use when necessary.

I haven’t used maps much on rpol, so if it proves to be a novel idea but not worth the effort, we can drop it later. But for now, I’m excited!

Chargen Rules Thread is finally up, but it's not done.  Post number 2 has been giving me "problems".

I've discovered my old computer simply cannay handle posts of that magnitude, apparently older chrome (I'm on Win7 so it won't update anymore) has a ferocious memory leak.  Looking at the post wrong while it was open to be edited can cuase Windows to catch on fire and crash... and so does having a document editor that auto-saves while it's open being editting.

Chrome just doesn't liek it.  SO I'll keep chipping at it little by little, but until it's finalized, Post 1, 3, and 4 are fine.  Perfect if I do say so myself.

No gear lists.  But then hopefully I won't need those till later in the week, or even Monday...  what?  We won't need gear till we start scrounging it up after we wakey-wakey, no eggs and bacey.


Any general questions, pop them [here], personal ones pop into your PM thread.  I'm taking a few minutes off to stretch my back (get dinner) and then I'll start chipping away those Skill Lens packages...


[This post was brought to be the 'copypastaing my other post cause my brain hurts department'.]

In reply to Assistant (msg # 27):

You've got different costs for Eidetic Memory and Photographic Memory in the Attributes part v. the Perks.

Thanks you!  I missed that when I was adjusting Eidetic and Photographic Memory to be Perks, Eidetic is level 1, Photographic level 2 - they do the exact same thing they did as more expensive Advantages... but no one ever takes them and memory rolls almost never come up.  I can't really justify Photographic at 10 points when that's High Pain Threshold's cost, and almost Combat Reflexes cost (which is insanely cheap, but that's fine, it's a Sacred Cao).

It's also wrong in the Skill Pack "Intelligence", but I'll fix that one tomorrow (hopefully I'll get past the 'I's tomorrow) as it requires a little bit more thought.

Being a TA makes sense to me. What field was your character studying in?

2066-2070 undergrad mechanical engineering, which of course includes some math, physics, etc. as well as taking some other engineering classes.

I was angling for my character to be someone with knowledge and experience with electronics systems, so it sounds reasonable to me that you might have taken a course in electronics engineering with me as a TA. Could've also been a math course we met in; plenty of overlap for us.

In reply to aguy777 (msg # 32):

Yup. What years were you at MIT at what degree level?

I was thinking he got a masters degree in 2068, stuck around for a few years as a TA and RA, then started working for General Atomics somewhere around 2071 or 2072.

In reply to aguy777 (msg # 34):

Figuring 2 years for a masters, that would mean an overlap from 2066 to 2068. Those would be intro class years for me, while as a early grad student you would be at the typical TA timing. So having been my TA for some class could make a lot of sense. I'll move this over to PM.

If anyone wants help, I figured out how to dissociate Per and Will from IQ as well as adding things like LFP in GCS (GURPS Character Sheet).

I have a spreadsheet I use... I just find the GCS is not set up in the manner I like (I've been building characters this way for pert near on 30 years daggumit).

But everyone is free to use whatever Character Sheet programs, spreadsheets, or GCA (shudder) they want.  You can post whatever character sheet you want in your character sheet tabs... I'm a gonna set 'em up my way on my desktop, so whatever you want for you're use here is fine with me.

And with that, think I'll go ahead and open up everyone Character Sheets instead of waiting and doign them piecemeal as character's come in.

Seems like my character is just about done with the addition of the new Everyman template.

He came out about pretty much like we expected, close range combat with some social and physical utility.

If that helps anybody with their choices.

Just to name a few filled roles:

Walt (Anachronist), is a Vault-Tec Security guard.  He is The Goon and low Social guy (Streetwise, Fast-Talk).  He's good in an unarmed melee and decent with his baton.  Do not get between him and the PIP Boy bobble-heads (his collection makes Hummel grannies jealous - though I guess it's 'Funky-pops' with the kids these days?  I dunno, now get off my lawn!).

Marco (Marco), is the Doctor and Cyberneticist.  He is the doctoriest doctor to ever doctor.  He also knows his way around a computer and robots.

This should not preclude others from making similar Characters, particularly our nascent Artificer/Engineer (I haven't forgotten you Bravo or aguy777's MIT prodigy, I've just been busy), just if your looking to fill a niche by yourself, those spots have been well covered.

What I don't see so far, but would have a useful place in the party, are:

Infiltration Expert - Even a Counter-Intrusion expert who is simply good at "Red Team" actions (if you don;t know what "red Teams" are, I'll be happy to talk at length about Blue, Red, and Purple Teams).
Slick Socializer - Used car salesman, campus activist, politician, investigative journalist, ChiCom Propagandist.
"ex-Soldier" - This covers a few bases, but mostly I mean: DX and HT based, has melee, hand-to-hand, guns, Soldier, some Stealth, and group co-ordination skills (tactics, strategy).  Walt does some of this well, but a second PC would not be remiss.
"Survivalist" - Even light levels of the skills like a camping enthusiast would have, maybe a Naturalist, or "In field" Biologist, Naturalist, Archaeologist, who has some survival knowledge.  Could also be a business person who loves the rugged outdoorsman life.  I'm not suggesting going hardcore 'off-the-grid' style, you do still have to live in Sanctuary City, though... maybe.
and lastly "Leader" - his is a somewhat "specialized" category, if you want this, I'll point you in the right Skill Lens directions - also "Leader" doesn't mean person in charge of the group, just someone who has the skills to organize and lead groups of people.  Can easily be filled by the 'Slick Socializer", "ex-Soldier", etc.

Just jumped in. Armand is an outdoorsman type. Probably country and military background.

Niche "Protection" List Current

Walter Bjornberg - Vault-Tec Security Guard - Area Security, Law Enforcement, The Goon.
Marco Grey - Brilliant Doctor - Doctor, Disease Control, Computer Intrusion (Cyberneticist).
Sarah Deitrich - College girl - Better Lucky Than Skilled*, "Checkered Past" (still unsure which "Criminal/Thief/Party Girl" Lens)
Armand Villeneuve - ex-Soldier.  Mountain Training, Recon, Sniper School.
Bravo - Engineer - Still working out specifics.
aguy777 - MIT prodigy.
Pepper Lewis - ex-Soldier.
Francis Lawrence - Unknown at this time.


Between Marco, Bravo, and aguy777 it looks like we have our "Tech Geniuses" well and covered.  However there are still likely to be gaps so don't be shy about asking if there are specific tech niches that you want to fill.  Also, back up Geniuses are never amiss (like front-line fighters, you can never really have enough - and just like chips, Super Mutants can eat just one...)!


* Better Lucky Than Skilled is new Lens that has no Skills.  Two imaginary cookies if you can figure out what it has instead...  ;)
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:05, Sun 26 June 2022.

Well Walter and Armand are certainly physical opposites. How tall is Walter?

Armand is definitely a country mouse, any city mice here?

In reply to Armand Villeneuve (msg # 42):

Ems is a suburban mouse. Fewer predators than in the country, and you get better pickings. Though it is easier to get into a lot of country houses.

He's a good seven foot* easy (barefoot).  He definitely has to stoop for some doorways and occasionally tuck one shoulder in, then the other, to cross older more narrowly designed doors (like the one down the hall to the communal bathroom from his apartment - what, you think Vault-Tek Security can afford a house?).

His baton almost looks like a child's toy in his meaty fist.

* Up to Anachronist if he's taller, but Gigantism puts him into that range minimum.  200 years hunched over in a cramped crypod, expect Walter to have a sore back when he wakes up.


Bravo - and sorry Bravo, I keep losing your Chargen thread in the shuffle, digging into your submitted build now.

Seven foot is plenty, and probably around 280lbs, will all the pro's and cons that go with it.

Walt does not have medical Gigantism per say, he is just abnormally large, without the pituitary complications. As far as GURPS goes, he is SM+1, needs to eat an extra meal per day due to his higher caloric requirements, etc.

He does start taking penalties after longer periods of exertion due to a quirk, and he was classed as unfit for military service due to his size and flat feet, something he is still a little bitter about.

He can probably say goodbye to ever fitting in a power armor frame, and he does have a few ranks in sewing from blowing out seams and trying to make his specialty clothing last.

The character concept that came to mind for me is a small kid who can fit into small places. Good at finding things and fixing them. Going through the skill list, Parkour kind of sounded fun. So maybe this could fill the Infiltration Expert role.

I'll take you up on that Blue, Red, and Purple Teams explanation, please!

Nicky "Tunnel Rat" Lee is my character's name.

"Colour Teams" are about counter-intrusion vs intrusion.  Red Teams are intrusion specialist, they try to hack your security, Blue Teams are counter-intrusion, they are all about defending your security (Red vs Blue - an old army thing, not just Halo).

In security system/method sales often a Blue Team will first go in, tour the facility, note of obvious weaknesses, and report these with notes on what their company can do for you.  Often a Red Team will follow, sometimes unbriefed, but usually warned that "these areas of weakness are known, attack from other vectors" without being told of any other weaknesses.  Once the Red Team has hacked the security, they will brief the client on those weaknesses and 'this is what our company can do for you'.

"Purple" Teaming is something some companies claim to do uniquely, it's bafflegrab.  Basically they idea is once both Blue and Red have done their jobs, they brief each other completely and then re-examine the facility from fresh perspectives, and a combined report is submitted.  Alternately, if security is handled in house completely, then Purple Teaming is when both 'teams' work together to break and improve the security.

all security has done this since the dawn of "Unga-bunga, we keep you out of our cave", so any security company that starts signing the praises of how they use Purple Teams is full of it.

any defense, no matter how you describe it, is analogous to a house with nine windows and only eight panes of glass. there is always an opening. this anecdote represents the fact that a defensive situation cannot account for all factors of an opposing force, physical or otherwise, so there is always something that can be exploited once discovered.

the biggest problem with real defense is twofold. firstly, it is counter-intuitive. meaning it doesn't work in a manner that is what would be obvious to casual observation but can be proven to be empirically true. secondly, being good at defense assumes an understanding of not only opposition to the defense but an understanding of being offensive. after all, what are you defensing against to begin with. it is one of the oldest chicken and egg arguments out there.

This is fact.  As an ex-Red Teamer... some of the things I've seen.

In my last office job, people hated me because I'd take photos of every "Red" weakness I spotted and post them to the security department (habits man, they die hard).  Which was one old guy who came by once every 3 months to recode the door locks, which then took one to three days for HR to recard everyone (flexible work schedules so it coudl randomly be upt to 1/4 of the office staff's 'weekend' at any given moment), so people would prop doors open when they went on breaks, doors which had signs on them saying DO NOT LEAVE OPEN - IF FOUND OPEN REPORT TO SECURITY - PHONE# XXX-XXX-XXXX and which had auto close arms that would be damaged if you forcibly propped them open, thus leading to doors that people would open and then complain "They aren't shutting properly"...  "Well no shit [PERSON], you broke it last week because you were too lazy to walk around to the front smoking area and just 'popped out back for a minute' to rear parking."

*sigh*

That building is so fucking porous.  Social Engineering is a thing, it really, really is.  When you see a movie where the hero can just pop into a slowly closing door unnoticed after an absent-minded employee leaves the TOP SECURITY FACILITY, or snag up an absent-mindedly misplaced keycard, or really any 'crazy' situation... that's not just Hollywood, it really does happen.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:04, Sun 26 June 2022.

Yeah, and good luck if you try to actually apply the stuff your employer's security training offers you.  A guy I've worked with for years, and I know he's taken the same online training courses I have (at least on this subject) was once in this conversation:

"Thanks."  (after I held the door for him, knowing I shouldn't)
"You know, I'm supposed to close this door and make you card in on your own."
"That wouldn't go well."

This guy has a known (to me) anger management issue, which somehow turns into my issue whenever I try to talk to the boss about it (saw him get into a fist fight in the parking lot after a road rage incident, and despite him being first out of the car, it was only him defending himself when I talked about it later).  Yep, my boss is a gaslighter, too.

Fortunately, we don't have secrets, just hazmats that might be attractive to terrorists (says the training) -- if they could ever figure out our system to locate a particular material instead of just opportunistically grabbing a case of acetone or methanol if they happen to notice the labeling while walking by.

Anyway, hello all.  I'm Tracy Tani.  Yes, I'm tall -- just about the size of Walter over there, except considerably narrower.  One of my grandmothers was a Tutsi and I got the height, and my dad was from Fiji, which is why I have this stand-up red hair.  The blue eyes came from some other branch of the family, I guess.

Anyway, I'm a detective, I fix guns and related stuff, and I'm pretty good at sneaking around getting out of tight spots, but I'm not much of a fighter.  I'll let the big guys handle that...
This message was last edited by the player at 16:16, Sun 26 June 2022.

Oh, saved points!  So my Eidetic Memory only costs 1 instead of 5?  I like it...

Ah, that explains your height Traci. I was wondering.

One of the scariest moments i ever had as a young soldier was working in an infantry platoon. we had a night patrol return one morning before dawn. Just a squad of nine soldiers, but when we were counting the patrol back into our perimeter there were ten of them! I sounded the alarm up the chain of command while my buddy and our squad leader drew their M16s down on them. It almost precipitated a firefight right there. In the end, the patrol had gone out with one extra member. Only that information wasn't relayed in any way along once the decision had been made. I was 18 at the time.

I've got a long funny story about that, from that company that involves the division assistant manager, remind to tell it after I finish Chargen...

(But suffice to say, I'm a 6' tall, was 225lb, guy who grew up tiny and bullied, so I don't take shit from anyone - me and the asst mgr went around and around (politely on my end though) a few times before she finally decided I was awesome and her best friend in the company - no I have no fucking idea how that happened either, but she cam back from christmas break in 2020, 2021 January, and said "You know what?  I fucking love you.  All that hate and shit we had going on before?  I'm sorry."  I was unable to articulate for like a whole damn day.)




Oh yeah, that shit can be fucking down right terrifying.

I had a buddy in Iraq during Desert Storm who was completely inept at way-finding, time keeping, etc.  Like his brain just could not process how far or for how long he'd been walking or doing something, he was shite without a map, compass, timepiece, gps, and a personal fucking navigator, but there he was a damn tank commander anyway.  I know right?  So anyway, one night he's in the tank on guard duty and needs to piss, so he tells his driver, "I'll be right back, gonna find a bush", no he wasn't supposed to, but, well, you know, shit happens?  So anyway he walks to what he thought was a nearby bush, takes a leak and then turns around to find his way back on a moonless desert night.  Oh, and they were under blackout conditions, no light anywhere.

So he's stumblin around for a bit, trips over the razor wire at the edge of camp and down the hill (luckily doesn't end up caught in it), stumbles around some more trying to find a break in the wire to get back, and then after what he thought was like "five minutes, ten tops" decides, "Fuck this, I'm going over it the next time I find a bush" (to lay across it).  Well, he did and suddenly got lit up by three spotlights and a speaker saying "Lay down or get shot mother fucker."

He somehow managed to circumnavigate half-way around the camp, it took him over an hour, had been under surveillance for half of it by other armor units, and almost had kill orders dropped on him three times because they couldn't verify his identity under blackout (they actually thought he was lost shepherd from the local village until he crossed the wire).  Yes, he did end up on KP for like ever and had to change his pants.  Oh, and he got fined for 'vandalism to military property', the fence and his uniform.  But he didn't get busted down and got a funny story from it.

The End, and now it's time I get back to Chargenning.

Sigh.  So, I found a really right portrait image for my character, and went to find the submission thread -- and they apparently haven't accepted a new portrait submission since tail end of 2016.  My Elder Spawn character in Northport was in that last batch.

I wouldn't care much, except there doesn't seem to be a single redheaded black woman in the bunch.  Going to go finish flipping through them, in case I'm wrong, but...  :p

Chou-Zhen Mou!  I didn't recognize you without the head tentacle.  :P

I would be happy to drop Giant if Tracy wanted to be our resident tall person.

It's not essential to the concept at all, and having two seven footers running around seems unlikely.

Yeah, it gets damned dark in the desert at night. it can be a real bitch. i was in the infantry, spent most of my time with second ranger battalion in the recon company. it was great training. i really enjoyed the military life while i was young and single. but, there are moments. and deeply dark nights are some of the worst. close contact at night or dark areas like tunnels, caves, or interiors is damn-right frightening.

Growing up, I was dead focused on enlisting. I joined Boy Scouts, went on all the high adventure trips and primitive camping trips, earned my Eagle Scout Award, learned to shoot and studied military history (can’t tell you how many times I had hour long conversations with full grown adults about the events of World War Two, as a 14 year old).

Once he hit 18 shortly after me my best friend and I went up to the USMC recruiting office and told them we wanted to enlist together. I made it to MEPS and got disqualified because of my hearing loss. Crushed me. I’ve never really gotten over it, there was nothing else I really wanted to do. But that’s one reason I really like our resident Walt character, I can relate to his backstory quite a bit.

I’m glad to see we have some vets in the game, you guys will be a valuable resource for any questions I may have about operating procedures and tactics! And thank you for your service guys, means a lot to me.

I don't much care.  I just ran with the name, size, and hair/eye colors that GCS randomized for me when I hit "new character sheet" -- except I upped the weight from "blow me over" 131 to a much more normal for the size 191.  The ancestry was what made sense based on the height and coloration.

And the most unlikely things do happen, that's why we say "unlikely" instead of "impossible."  Maybe the guy thawing out the corpsicles that day thought it'd be funny for Tracy to finally have a chance to date someone close to her own height, or vice versa for Walter.  And I'd presume Walter's a LOT more intimidating than Tracy.

Heh, Armand is at a "blow me over" 110 (from the Skinny disad).

So far we have three Skinnies.

Hey Overseer, I think this means I should make us some Arachnid... I'm doing my part!

I'm not Skinny.  I upped the weight so as NOT to take Skinny.

not a fan, verhoven really ruined a great chance for the real story with that pseudo propaganda movie.

In reply to Pepper Lewis (msg # 64):

How about adding a skinny dwarf? Don't need to be big as a paramedic...well a combat paramedic anyway. Smaller target... though contemplating a mechanic as an alternative. Thoughts?

I'm one of those. Walt is like three Michiko's.

I can never tell if Verhoven made it so over the top on purpose or by accident, regardless I love the movie.  It's so cheesily propagandist it's hilarious.

But no, it really isn't the book.  Which is also why I mentioned the Skinnies... ;)

Too bad Heinlein turned into 'weirdo' in his old age.

yeah, those eccentric types from that era all seemed to grow old in odd ways.

i hear the new dune remake has the names but not the story. that's sad to me. but, then kindle audio is making people rich now doing the whole audio book thing. i guess people have forgotten the beauty of reading for themselves.

I don't know, Dune was a foundational book for me when I was very young and I have reread it several times.

I thought the new movie really did it justice personally, it was not exact, there were concessions to the medium, but overall I was very impressed.

I loved Dune. It was so visually stunning and the score was immersive. I never read the book, but I loved the movie. I hope they finish the story

I am currently working on the first in context game thread.

We now have 13 (!) players. The introduction is going to be crowded. I am well aware of the challenges a large cast presents, and I ask everyone to be patient and understand the group won't always be this big. Players will inevitably drop out, characters will split off into different directions, and groups will likely become much smaller and more manageable.

My original plans were to have everyone start off roleplaying a day in the life of their character pre-war, then have a neighborhood get together to sign up for the vault, and then drop the bombs and move everyone into Vault 111. However, after working on some location threads and establishing how things are going to work, I've realized it would be better if I changed my plans.

Here is the new plan.

I am going to send out a private message to everyone. This private message will contain some important information related to your characters acceptance into Vault 111. We are going to skip the pre-war roleplay and jump straight to when the bombs fall. It was a cool idea, but just not worth the amount of work and time it would take to set that up for all of you. Your characters first introductory post will basically be their reaction as they realize their world is about to end and they need to get to Vault 111 before it seals shut.

Sounds good to me Overseer.

13 players is a lot, and a little triage only makes sense.

Funny coincidence, there's 14 houses in Sanctuary Hills. We have 13 players and then Nate and Nora. I love when things work out like that.

In reply to Overseer (msg # 73):

Oh, if we're all from 14 houses in one spot, then it's that much more likely we know each other from there. We would probably at least recognize some immediate neighbors.

I thought our homes were near the other park. It looks like the game has just little variations from around north bridge or near Minute Man Park I need to edit some locations a little in my description.
This message was last edited by the player at 05:32, Mon 27 June 2022.

Well, in our game there can be more than 14 houses, but I thought it was mighty convenient that that number worked for us too. You guys won't see it for another 20 minutes, but the Location: Sanctuary Hills thread is about to be posted and it has a map of Sanctuary Hills to give you guys some reference on the layout and general look of the neighborhood. But, since the map shows 14 houses you guys each get to pick one as your own house. Of course, you might not want to live there after the bombs drop but might still be worth visiting sometime.

Ya, nuclear war plus 210 years of abandonment. I don't imagine the houses are in good shape anymore.

Ditto.  I've read it the initial trilogy four times.

I've run exactly one game based on Dune mashed with Star Wars mashed with Fading Suns... it worked oddly very well.


And Overseer, I'm goign to make a suggestions:  Go ahead an set up the "Pre-War Thread", maybe trim down the initial premise a bit, but get it opened and, introduced, and then sit back and leave it for Players to chat in.  They can make some "and this is what I looked and acted like when everything was normal" posts.

And then, even after you open the "And every ones wakes up in a pod, cold, in the dark..." leave the Sanctuary 2077 thread open.

Some PCs will make a few posts, establish themselves and then never open it again, and some will chat up a storm in there, and continue having "and this conversation happened back in the before times" fun for days, or weeks.

I think it'll establish a nice distinction of 'what was' from 'what we wake up to'.


Also, it allows you to hold off on the Vault opening for like another day so I can catch up on the 6 new characters who jumped in feet first...

Don't worry! I planned for this, we won't be getting to Vault 111 until Wednesday! It will be pre-war sanctuary roleplay. I do have a few railroads, I'm sorry guys I hate them and promise I won't use them often, if ever again but...

1. Your character is inside your home at 9am on October 23 2077

2. Your character owns a TV, and it is tuned to the news channel. And you are at least within earshot of it.

3. Once their new reality starts to sink in, your character heads to Vault 111, and does not go looking for grannie who lives in Boston. You don't have time to save anyone but yourself.


Once you guys emerge from your homes, you should all naturally form a group as you head into Whitney Hills Park to follow the trail that leads to Vault 111. Those of you who have played Fallout 4, feel free to get creative with your posts. You guys know the scenery and know how it plays out.

I'm going to get back to that Sanctuary thread now, was supposed to drop 23 minutes ago

Looks like Oct 23 is a Saturday. Figured people might want to know.

Edit: Oh, GM posted that in the thread. Sorry.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:29, Mon 27 June 2022.

Thank you for noticing that, I had literally just edited that in when you posted :)

new game syndrome. just about every game that i start on rpol has way too many players. it never lasts. give two weeks and you will be hanging the needing players flag. for any number of real reasons people will move away from the game quickly. don't sweat it. not every game is suited to every player.

read through the backgrounds on everyone. Ems is a most impressive background. PhD by 22, three years working as a power armor weapons design team leader, she must have like a 14 IQ (since that is our starting max).

and we have several MIT eggheads I see. that's good. Pepper has base IQ. He relies on skill rather than base attribute to succeed with IQ based skills, so yeah, glad to have you guys.

and we have a bevvy of well placed company employees; Vault-Tec, Armco, General Atomics.....

this group is shaking out well. if everyone stays we may need two groups. or more.

I can easily see the group splitting informally into two sub-cliques.  There are definitely people who will not get along well with each other (hahahaha I get to see all the Disads*) and then some who will have some amazing synergies.  I also expect an awful lot of "I begrudgingly tolerate [Person]'s presence because we need to survive and they can do X, Y, Z which are damn important"...


* We have some incredibly well put together Disad groupings.  I love it, this bunch isn't afraid to 'take' risks with some very evocative traits, and some really nice Skill+Advantage pairings.  Even the GURPS newbs have made excellent choices with themetic pairings.  I'm going to love rules wrangling for y'all.

Yeah, once we get past the bombs dropping you guys are welcome to split off into separate groups. I’ll even allow solo play at the point.

That sounds interesting. I guess we'll learn about those pretty quickly.

Location: Sanctuary Hills (Pre-War) Thread is officially re-opened for business (not that I actually locked it, I'm a dummy sometimes).

Any Sanctuary Hills residents who make it to 9am in their own post, please go ahead and copy an individualized version of the following in Aqua when you receive it (the message hits your indicators at 9am, either your key fob, 'desktop', tv, or household security panel.

"Hello [Polite Personalized Pronoun] [Character Last Name], this is a good morning from Vault-Tec, we hope you are settling into your new home well and apologize we couldn't welcome and invite you individually to the community picnic this afternoon, there will be some catering, but we also request each family bring a small potluck to represent themselves.  Later as the sun sets there will be fireworks and games, both for children in the kid's park, and slightly more adult, but family friendly, games on the green.  Unfortunately Mr. Rushidde has fallen ill, oh no, nothing serious, he simply ate something that has disagreed with him and can't make it to invite your household personally. I know he feels quite regretful.  We're hoping his stomach troubles have passed by this afternoon though.  Please do accept our apologies, I look forward to meeting with you at the community function.  Please indicate RSVP by double tapping the green indicator once this message has ended, and again thank you for choosing Vault-Tec as your future safety provider.  Good morning, and welcome home [Polite Personalized Pronoun]."

If you answer it from your keyfob or personal desktop logon, I'll be personalizing it a bit, otherwise, if you answer it from a family neutral station (tv, sec station, family logon for the family desktop) it will be Family Name and no Personal Pronouns.



Any Non-Sanctuary Hills Characters, hold off a tick and PM me directly if you haven't already posted in thread.  I think we already hit everyone who isn't a resident, but it's been a hectic few days and I can't remember everyone's background off the top (and some are still limboing).
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:03, Mon 27 June 2022.

Looks like Armand's the old man of the group.

So char description updated and first Sanctuary Hills post up.

If any of the ex-military of the group might be working for Armco in prototyping (probably a part-time gig), they might have worked with Michiko. She's been developing small arms for Armco for the last two and a half years or so.

Armand retired two years ago after 30 years in the Marines. I could see him freelancing as a
'user' consultant.

In reply to Armand Villeneuve (msg # 90):

Cool. I'll PM you.

Looks like they probably regularly pass each other jogging, too.

So I’m working on Ghouls, and I am taking inspiration from some Zombie/infected stuff. Also FEV is going to be a fungal based virus. Expect ghouls and FEV to behave differently than as Fallout lore as established.

Repeated from Out of Context for reach assurance:

Tracy Tani, Boris Ivanovich, Pepper Lewis, your first posts have been edited, please check them and then make any fruther corrections as needed.

Armand Villeneuve, Marco Gray, your first posts have been personalized.

Michiko McManamy - Your first post was given a second personalizing touch.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:29, Mon 27 June 2022.

post has been updated.

Nice.  I like the edited version better.

Minji, your first post has been personalized.

Boris give me a few, I'm getting you up to the path in a moment, just need to do some time traveling...

Boris and Walter can go ahead and update themselve to 9:15 am, and then please hold.  We;ve got like 6 more PCs to get into the thread, adn I need to get numbers crunched.

Tracy, your good to go ahead have another post.

If there is someone we've missed, I'm combing the PMs now, and if I still miss you, please post in here.

I'm trying to decide which categories to pick for Cheaper 10%. Sounds like a bunch of us have this. Seeking to spread the coverage, I've tentatively got Medical and Electronics. What are we light on? Keep these?

In reply to Nicky Lee (msg # 98):

I have cheaper guns...

I'm cheap. It's a from the womb thing. Didn't need to modify anything, just be me. Cheap is sort of my thing. Just ask my ex.

Added a bit to his char description and a minor edit on his Sanctuary post.

Just a reminder, Overseer wanted our location in a bio line.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:00, Tue 28 June 2022.

Yes, thank you Armand. That may change in the future but for now it is helpful

I will take you up on that offer, please!

Hint: don't use any of the options under the burger menu in the upper right of the Attributes editor after editing -- it'll undo all your edits before applying whatever change that option includes.  Ask me how I know...

Ahah!  This unit has finally figured out how to get vital statistics to fit into a single Bio line!

<--- Feast your eyes to the left.

"H 00 F -- L -- S 03 L 07"

That is H=Hit Points, F=Fatigue Points, L=Long-Term Fatigue, S=Stress, L=Long-Term Stress expressed as "Damage".

As you old time GURPSer know, normally we'd be listing stuff like HP as say "HP 10/10" to show you had 10 out of your max 10 Hit Points.  Well, we don't have room to get everything I want on those lines to fit, so instead we're just tracking damage there.

I know, it's not as useful to some, since your maximum isn't listed, but if For instance Walt is showing say "H 08 F 03 L 02 S 04 L 01"

Then at a glance our doctors, medics, and first aiders will know Walt has taken 8 damage, which is significant for most folks, he's a bit winded and stressed, but as long as he's at least average, he's okay there.  We're not showing Radiation Points, because A) I ran out of room (stupid short bio lines) and B) it's harder to diagnose at a glance (so it works thematically, coincidence!).

So as you can see our Robobrain, Unit 1138-N3D7 is physically fine - no damage, as a machine it cannot suffer Fatigue (it uses fuel tracked behind the scenes, but a robo can go days with out a recharge needed), but it is beginning to show signs of severe mental distress... if we had a robo-psychiatrist on scene they'd be shitting bricks and trying to talk it down before it suffers a Breakdown (or ordering it to maintenance for a Corrective Adjustment, aka memory purge).   Unfortunately Stress and Long-=Term Stress while visible are harder to intuitively diagnose, but as long your PC doesn't have certain Disads (Clueless, Oblivious, etc) you'll notice when those numbers start getting too high in others if they're human, or if you have the right Psychology Skill Specialty (or your Psych is just high enough without it) if they aren't human.  (And i'll be giving individuals with the right skills more in depth information in game when necessary).

And yes, Stress is visible.  As your PC takes Stress you get jittery, irritable, rapid mood shifts, some Disads become more pronounced or like Bad Temper or Stuttering, as the Long-Term Stress piles on you get shaky, start exhibiting Stress Release Behaviors (if your a drinker, you drink, smokers smoke more, wall punchers get rough with the furniture, maybe you compulsively open and close your switchblade, or start taking more obvious self destructive behaviors like cutting).

So for now, everyone should be showing "H 00 F 00 L 00 S 00 L 00", you're unhurt, fresh, and unstressed.  Once we get out of the starting 'cut-scene' (where nothing bad can happen to you) please try to keep this line updated when you suffer damage to those vital statistics (so if your Character takes damage, just pop into the Bio line, edit, then post your next post).

"Faceless" NPCs will not be tracked this way (as they won't be getting Character Sheets), I'll pop OOC Spoilered notes into posts with descriptives for you guys on them, but "important/reoccurring" individual NPCs (like Neddy here) will be tracked for your convenience.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:47, Wed 29 June 2022.

Love it. Great idea.

I really like the concept of stress being a visible thing in the group.

Me too, Assistant has been teaching me a lot about how to be a better GM. Shaping up to be one of the best games I’ve ever participated in

Yeah, one of these days, if we both live long enough, I've love to play in a game run by Assistant.  Both a good rules lawyer, and a good role-player -- as well as having a very good grasp of how to run a game, from what I've seen of his posts on my other RPoL game.

And yes, I know all his gear will be gone by the time we wake up. Just giving Overseer some options, all of his possible items are there.

Well, I've had great GMs and terrible ones, I learned from both.  I've had excellent Players and fellow Players, as well as some of the worst, nothing that'd make the more infamous "RPG Horror" stories lists, but plenty of "those guys" (and "gals'), and learned from all them too.

Mostly I just try and not let my OCD and anal-retentive nature get too much in the way, and try to run a game I'd want to play in.

As I was telling Overseer the other day, this last week has been more fun than the entire last year of my regular weekly group (we play board games so it's just not the same).  I've forgotten how much fun just making characters with Players who are into the game can be.




Oh yeah, we're taking notes.

So we can make sure we mention every single little thing that doesn't make it.  ;)

In reply to Armand Villeneuve (msg # 109):

Yeah. I am still coming to terms with the gear. Concealed armour, which you can buy today, is not available, but fusion cell powered armour is? Apparently even what I thought I knew about fallout is not accurate, so I do have a steep learning curve for the world. Lucky I know GURPs a little. The dual GMs are working well will all our varied learning curves.

Yeah, I don't know Fallout gear at all. GURPS I'm familiar with. Normally I can be a bit of an OCD gearhead, so this is  different for me.

The way technology was developed is different in the Fallout world, , and it’s complicated by the fact that Assistant and I are changing quite a few things. In the Fallout lore, the tech stops being similar to ours after ww2. So anything post world war 2 is based on a different type of technology (they never miniaturized their tech).

But, the first Fallout games had modern weapons, NV had western firearms and the Service Rifle (basically an AR or FN FAL), you’ve got the Chinese assault rifle that’s basically an AK in Fallout 3. Then came Fallout 4 and Bethesda decided to go back to ww1/2 styled weapons.

Also note, I haven’t said anything to anyone about it because it doesn’t matter but in Fallout 4 it suggests that most citizens didn’t have firearms, and if they did they were pipe weapons. Yes, pipe weapons existed pre-war (they are pictured in pre-war posters and advertisements, as well as found as loot in pre-war safes).

We GMs are still deciding what weapons to include and what technology is going to look like in our version of The Commonwealth, we have most of the basics figured out but need to put together lists and all that fun background stuff. I’m helping where I’m needed, but honestly guys, Assistant is to thank for everything so far.

I saw Lonnie use "eejit"!!! I'd used that only a couple days earlier in writing up background. More Irish blood. If Lonnie happened to frequent the same pub Michiko did, they'd probably know each other.

For our players who aren't familiar with Fallout technology, here you go: https://fallout-archive.fandom...vely%29%20widespread.

That Wiki is my go-to for everything Lore related.

I think GM's can set up a 'Game Links' section. Might be helpful to put this there.

In reply to Overseer (msg # 115):

Beginning to feel that putting points into pistolera was a waste of points, as pistols sound less than impressive and ammunition very rare. Too late to change a skill pack?

It is not to late, but firearms will definitely still have their place. Just not so much at the beginning. By the time you guys are attacking the Institute and establishing Settlements, you will be well equipped. But I want you guys to work towards that, not leave the vault strapped to the teeth with a bunch of ammunition. Kind of takes away from that gritty feel you know?

In reply to Overseer (msg # 118):

Yeah. But for a medic?

Well, like you implied in the IC thread spoiler -- "small man syndrome" is real.

I've got points I knew I'd never use -- fluency in Swahili, probably "wasted", one-way fluency in Kinyarwanda (Tutsi/Hutu native tongue)?  The only person Tracy knows who speaks that is Grandma Luta.  Not many, about equivalent to my quirk total, but they're still there.

AND I took real disadvantages instead of "free points" for Grandma Luta as a dependent.  Y'all will find out what, eventually...

That may be where characters like Michiko come in. She's an engineer who could build guns and ammo, given materials to work with.

Chemical slugthrowers don't just exist in 2077, they are still the most widely spread self-defense weapon known to Americans (okay baring the clubs, knives, and such of inner city gangs - in Fallout the USA doesn't have the problem with pistols and carbines being a common tool of criminals - but militia forces, sportsmen, mafia, enthusiasts, etc they still have access - it's weird).  I'm not envisioning most or upper-class USAins carrying pipe-rifles... that's a thing of gang-warfare, which is largely , as I mentioned, the weapons of the greaser era, switchblades, billy clubs, 10 pound hammers, etc...  think The Warriors mixed with West Side Story.


In the Wasteland, expect Raiders with a jumbled mix of clubs, long knives, axes, spears, junk handcannons, pipe-shotguns, and a few dearly treasured "antique" pistols and longarms from Pre-Fall.  Expect those with the means to where some form of body armour, from the used steel-belted tire reinforced shoulder-pad/football armor https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g...w~npeXoyn/s-l400.jpg to plate cuirass, to chainmail, to flak jackets and ballistic vests.  And crazies who go naked screaming into the night.  Leather and pleated cloth isn't unknown either.  Not that your Characters should expect this, but Players should.

The link Overseer posted above isn't quite in line with our world (but's it's damn close), it's the Fallout of Bethesda's F3+, and doesn't include the earlier games that I draw from.  It certainly does not give anyone the impression that the baddest-ass weapon in the older games was the .223 autoloader ( https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/.223_pistol_(Fallout) ).  In 2077 energy weapons are only in the hands of the military.  In the Wasteland they're in the hands of the few who can maintain them, Warlords, or the very, very lucky.

Lastly, you can (with the right equipment) make your own ammo for firearms.  It's probably never going to be possible for the PCs to make their own energy weapon powerpacks and cells, so if they go out, get damaged, etc, energy weapons are fragile in a way that robust firearms are not.  Expect your pistols to have a viability long into the dim future of the of the campaign, just remember to police your brass.  ;)
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:37, Thu 30 June 2022.

An armorer (like me) has the knowledge that would be needed to make or refill primers (might need to get a chemist involved, since we probably won't find chlorates just lying around and even reasonably pure sulfur is a trade item from somewhere with a good sized volcano), and nearly any gun ever made will run on black powder (small bore rifles like a .223/5.56 won't run long, though) -- sulfur again, but good charcoal is a craft item and potassium nitrate isn't hard to make (hint: horse manure piles produce it naturally).  Making smokeless powder?  Very dangerous, you go first.

Not to mention I can machine anything we're likely to want if we can come up with a medium sized lathe and milling machine, plus the tooling for them, and a suite of 1900 technology measuring tools.

No, not even going to try to replicate a 1911 or Witness, but single-shot or double barrel pistols are child's play in a working machine shop.  Springs are the only part that's hard to make, if you don't mind a smoothbore.  A pepperbox (the muzzle loading variety) is probably within reach.  Sorry, no Peacemakers, either -- a blowback semi-auto is easier to build, has fewer parts, and less to go wrong before you even have it in shooting condition.

My chemistry isn't great, but we do have someone with better chemistry. I don't even know what I can manage with small arms. My armoury (small arms) and machinist skills are really good, and my engineer (small arms) is even much better. Sounds like we're looking for some similar equipment. We'll probably become buddies or rivals. :)

You can build, modify, and repair Small Arms (man-portable firearms).  You can manufacture parts if you have the tools.


If you have the tools, you can make the parts and tools (to a degree) needed for other skills.

If you wanted to be able to go from Stone Age to Modern, you'd also need Blacksmithing and Metallurgy.  But as long as you can get some tools and materials, you won't need to start at the Stone Age...


You can design improvements and completely new, Small Arms, like it was your job.  (Which it was!)

Reminds me of these guys.

https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Gun_Runners

Long-Term Fatigue Points should be up in the 30s. Correct? (not sure if I'm figuring it right)

TL/DR - skip to teh bold below.


I think I wrote part of the LTS sloppily (I'm changing all abbr forms to LTF and LTS as I find them, Long-Term Fatigue and Long-Term Stress).

Fatigue Points, Hit Points, Stress Points, Radiation Points in GURPS are Pools that you reduce from their maximums, and as you pass 'milestones' with them you suffer penalties (1/3 and then -HP, -FP, -RP you suffer worse).  For instance being at less than 1/3 HP, that means you've taken 7 points of damage (for most PCs - HP 10 divided by 1/3 is 3.33etc, not rounded down!  This is the only area in GURPS you don't round down!), puts your Move and Dodge at one half.

However because for tracking purposes this game we're tracking damage as it accumulates.  So your bio-lines won't track down, but up.  I will be giving everyone handy cheat sheets like so, for Average McAverageguy it might say "At H 07 reduce Move and Dodge to 1/2, at H 10 make Consciousness check every round you Do Nothing or fall Unconscious, at H 20 make a Death Check. etc".

Stress Points (SP) and Fatigue Points work as above, however they have much smaller "hard maximums", once you hit that they are 'empty' and they convert directly into damage for another categories, FP turns into HP damage and SP turns into LTS damage at a one-to one rate (I might retool SP into LTS ratios if that proves to be too high or too fast, play will show fast Stress 'damage' is racking up and beign recovered).  However it continues to track independently to show how long it will take for you to recover from exhaustion or mental/emotional trauma.

Long-Term Fatigue and Long-Term Stress were always "fill" pools, so this doesn't change. Your "maximums" (bad things happen if you exceed this) for them are LTF = HT, LTS = Will.   LTF can be increased cheaply (too an extent), the only way to increase LTS is buying up your Willpower.

So for most people, LTS is 10.  It can only be 'healed' by via Psychology or by suffering Breakdowns.  Thankfully we have several PCs with Psychology.

There will be ways to gain "Damage Resistance" to Stress in the future.  Damage Resistance (DR) to HP and RP damage already exists in the form of body armour, NBC suits, etc.  Fatigue 'damage' can already be reduced via a few Advantages (Very Fit comes to mind), but there may also be other methods in the future (drugs, cyber-implants, Gear, etc).

Stress damage always will be difficult to mitigate, though there are ways.

Hmm.  I set up my GCS sheet to track LFP and LS down from their maximum.  I'll see if I can get the internal calculations to work right with them tracking up from 0.

Edit: Doesn't seem that way.  Michiko, you were the one with the GCS experience, right?  I've got the extended stats, but the only way I see to make LFP and LTS work is as a regular pool with arithmetic on FP and SP to reduce their maximums as the other pools drain.  Works the same way as in the character creation thread, but only if it counts down from the Max value...
This message was last edited by the player at 21:26, Fri 01 July 2022.

That's fine, as long as it works for you.  I'll be tracking them here as filling pools.

"Tracking down" might just be simpler on your end anyway as both act as limiters for their respective "points" pools maximums anyway.  LTF is subtracted from FP to create a new FP maximum, and LTS does the same for SP.  So unless you bought more FP or SP individually (and a few of you did), then FP and LTF are the same and SP and LTS are the same, thus you couldn't take more Fatigue or Stress damage than you would have "remaining" LTF or LTS.

So if you want, you can leave your sheets tracking in that way.  I won't be paying any attention to them anyway...

Okay, I won't worry about trying to write a one-liner program in what amounts to a single spreadsheet cell, then.  Take one point of LFP, my FP max drops as it should.

I foresee a lot of folks carrying a lot of LFP due to food, water, and sleep shortages.  I further predict that we'll have LFP-induced deaths around the same rate as combat-related deaths.  Hope I'm just being my usual pessimistic self...  ;)

Pessimism-shmessimism.  Depending on how cautious, audacious, timid, or bold the group is, dependent on both choice and chance... yes, it's more than possible to see PCs starving to death long before anyone dies to combat.

Or maybe no one makes it past the Red Rocket service station a gentle 30 minute stroll down the road.  I aim for IP to take up the slack of teh occasional bad choice, miscommunication, and a capricious RNGesus.  I doubt anyone will die before you get out of the Vault and manage to encounter your first group of peaceful locals.

But RNGesus is fickle god.

Okay, I've gotten the "All Hell Breaks Loose" post up, next comes the Crisis Scene with special rules, but I've been smacking keys into pretty words for three hours and need a break.  I'll be back and hopefully have it up in an hour.  It's waaaaaaay shorter and then ball is back y'alls court.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:10, Sat 02 July 2022.

What the hell just happened? Did we see all that mini-gun killing? What are the rest of us doing?

I sort of pre-sent what Lonnie was up to, but if (Assistant) could let me know if it fits what we're doing, please do?

Well, I'm posting a question (mainly a request for documetation) on the GCS Discord, and I'm about to go send an email to the (almost dead) list as well, then I'm going to bed.  I'll check back in the morning.

Yes, the mob to the east was mowed down, however if when you describe what you are doing now (the Crisis Scene post is coming momentarily, I just finished dinner), you can describe some getting through and finishing the charge into the ragged (now panicking) line of residents, or even being hit (like in an arm and losing it) but continuing on as though they hadn't noticed.



Read and responded sir.  Now I'm off to write up the rules for y'all's Crisis Scenes.

(Because Lonnie was in a weird spot, he got a little bit of a heads up as to the up-coming Crisis Scene... and then I still him dirty and moved him back outside anyway.  Someday I'll learn to remember this stuff.)

In reply to Assistant (msg # 136):

Thread is still locked. Dwarf will duck and stay put, until he sees what happens next. Follow the security if they take off...

In reply to Assistant (msg # 136):


I'm sorry. I don't follow. losing an arm or losing their shit? And, continuing as though they hadn't noticed what? I'm so confused.

So some of the rioters survived and attacked residents, delivering (major? Minor?) injuries. Then those rioters get killed? or keep moving? or keep attacking?

Losing an arm, maybe.  Because if they lose anything else, they wouldn't be able to keep going now would they?  (Maybe losing a hand, but if they took a hit from a fifty caliber minigun to the torso, head, or leg, they'd either be dead or barely crawling, and dead in moments).  Technically, they wouldn't last long after losing an arm either, but I'm allowing a little 'berserker' cinematics to creep in if someone wants.


If that's what you wish to describe.  I'm stepping back in a moment and leaving the next few minutes of panicked scrambling to you guys to write from each of your perspectives.



Because I'm not done setting up the Crisis Scene, I need to check a few things, then make an edit (which I just realized).

Boris beat me too it.


That's a hook if anyone wants to tie onto it.

And you see two of Armand's disads here.
This message was last edited by the player at 07:23, Sat 02 July 2022.

Nicky grabbed Grandma Luta's keyfob hoping he'd see her on the way to the vault. I wasn't certain he had a keyfob issued to him as well. Does Nicky also have his own keyfob? That would mean he has two.

Also- with earning or trading IP. Does that stand for Improvement Points? (sorry, wasn't familiar with that term)
This message was last edited by the player at 07:34, Sat 02 July 2022.

As a non-resident, he has no keyfob of his own.


Impulse Points.  Usable for "rerolls, buying Player input to scenes, even cheating death if you have enough".



I asked a few days ago but no one answered, is the House Rules Thread not showing up?  Does anyone have questions about Impulse Points?

The thread is showing up fine to me. :-)

Thank you.

One of the pains of being a GM is we can't see the threads the way you do.  So things like Threads showing up/not showing, Private Lines not formatting properly, Language Group and Known Words sometimes not showing properly (I have a game where the GM premakes posts, PMs them to me and I make a screenshot so he knows what they look like, because he can't figure out how Language Lines and Known Words work - Thankfully we probably aren't going to use Language Groups here), etc.  Wish we could have a separate login, only for games the GM runs, that let us log in as a Guest Viewer.  It would make stuff so much easier.

Ah, that answers a minor question I came across the other day and figured would be answered in context before long: what's IP?  Figured it wasn't Internet Protocol or Intellectual Property...

In reply to Assistant (msg # 125):

Thanks. I wasn't clear enough. I get the GURPS end of it in general. She could make laser weapons. But we have yet to discover what she has to work with. Caps will show up outside of the straight-up rules. So I have no idea yet what her limits will be. We will discover. :)

Just FWIW...

People do lose arms and continue functioning for a good while.  Just ask Def Leppard's drummer.

Just about sixty years ago, a twelve year old boy name Everett Knowles got into a scrape while trying to hop a moving freight train, and came into an emergency room under his own power with his severed right arm still inside a bloody shirt sleeve, supported with his left hand.

I recall reading about a young woman who lost both legs in a wood chipper, and remained conscious and able to hold herself from falling further in until someone found her (don't recall how long that was, but it was more than a few minutes).

And a minor nit-pick: a "mini-gun" is a six-barrel .7.62x51 Gatling with 2000-6000 rpm fire rate (depending how fast you run the spin motor).  A .50 version is (in our timeline) a GAU-19/B, three barrels and 1300 rounds per minute.  Nope, don't want either one aimed at me, thanks...  There's also the "Six-Pack", the semi-mythical "man portable" (by two troopers, for tripod or pintle mounting) 5.56 mm version, which, with battery and 1000 rounds (400-4000 rpm -- yep, that's 15 seconds of sustained fire at maximum rate) weighed 85 lbs (battery good for about 3000 rounds, it says here).  Don't think even Jesse Ventura could actually carry one any distance, but maybe that mutated guy in the second or third Resident Evil movie...

Okay, back to waiting for the freezer bags to get sealed up...  ;)

I do remember reading in a wiki about the Fallout miniguns are man-portable and use 5mm ammunition. Although there are .50 cal conversion barrels I believe. Something about advanced arms research and needing more firepower for Power Armor units. But good catch Traci, yeah anyone who’s seen A-10 footage knows the GAU-19 shreds. One of my favorite planes

The Securitron had a pair of what are closer in appearance to the M61 Vulcans, and yes it ran dry on the mob ..


The M61s are 20mm canons, "fifty cal" was me not being super-duper accurate at the moment (and forgetting the diff between the Vulcan and the M134 Gatling), once I have various things stated up, that won't happen again.  ;)

Actually, Overseer, the A-10 cannon (30 mm six-barrel) is a GAU-8.  In ascending order of size, current and past-century American Gatling type guns have included the XM214 Micro-Gun (which became the Six-Pack), M134 7.62 mm Mini-Gun, GAU-19/B .50 3-barrel, 20 mm Vulcan (used in a couple fighter jets and at least one C-130 gunship version as well as the Phalanx CIWS point defense system) and a lighter 3-barrel 20 mm that was installed in a couple fighters, the GAU-8 mounted in the A-10 (and a lighter 30 mm 3-barrel that may never have seen service but was to have gone into Rutan's Ares ground support fighter).  There doesn't seem to have been a 40 mm rotary cannon -- probably because the rate of fire would go through far too heavy a load of ammo in much too little time.

I call "game designers don't know their hardware" on a .50 conversion for effectively a .22 (or .20 if it's really 5 mm) Gatling gun.  The barrels would be 4x the diameter and the fireball from the unburned powder at the muzzle would be as dangerous as the bullets if you could make it fire.

BRRRT

There is a wikipedia entry awaiting your edits!  (I hit wiki for quick info, I'm not even sure if Hans stated up the various miniguns in High-Tech, I'm sure there's at elast 1 or 2 in there, and I'm too busy with CHargens to go check today).

Why does it sound like mini-guns aren't really mini? They sound awfully big.

I got most of that from Google searches, surely including at least a couple Wikipedia entries.

Well, an M134 isn't tiny -- it was "mini" in comparison to the slightly earlier Vulcan (or even the original 1860s vintage hand-cranked Gatling, which was mounted on a carriage like a light cavalry cannon).  Didn't weigh much more than the pre-WWII M2 Browning in .50 BMG, especially in a vehicle mount where the vehicle electrical system provided power for the spin motor, but the 7.62x51 round is less than 1/3 the volume and about half the length of a .50 BMG round.

Part of the reason the Six-Pack was so heavy was the battery -- good for about 3000 rounds, it was like a small car battery.  That and a thousand rounds of 5.56 NATO accounted for more than half of the 85 lbs.  The gun itself -- well, you've seen Predator and might have seen Resident Evil 2; it's like half a dozen full length M16 barrels mounted in a rotisserie.  The mythical carry-and-fire version had grips so a human could support it and fire from the hip; the real one mounted on a vehicle pintle or tripod (which wasn't included in that 85 lbs.).

Put it in a vehicle, though, and you could eliminate the built-in battery and connect several additional boxes of belts -- but if you try to fire 5000 rounds continuously you might find your engine stops and won't start again because you've drained the truck battery and need jumper cables to get it going again.  Wasn't done much because the same vehicle could mount the more effective M134 or even the GAU-19/B when that became available -- or an M2 even as far back as WWII (Rat Patrol)
This message was last edited by the player at 22:37, Sat 02 July 2022.

In reply to Tracy Tani (msg # 155):

LOL. Thank you for that very complete explanation. :)

Hmm.... I like to think they named it that as an ironic oxymoron, personally :)

What until you learn the XM214 Microgun weighs 22 lbs (85 with the tripod)...

But yes, as Tracy mentioned, it's because compared to Vulcans (which are aircraft mounted and weigh between 200-250 lbs), miniguns (41-85 lbs) and the 'microgun' are scaled down versions, so 'mini' and 'micro' for being smaller, 'gun' because they use rifle ammo instead of 20mm autocanon shells.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 05:01, Sun 03 July 2022.

Like the really short distance that is a micro light year. Of course, we only use the bigger prefixes with light years.

Thanks Traci, I thought GAU-8 but then saw your post and was like well maybe I’m wrong I’ve been wrong before lol. I just recognized the GAU. If you don’t mind me asking, how come you know so much about these things? At least it seems like you do.

In reply to Assistant (msg # 158):
You guys realize that this is all going right over my head, right? I mean the bullets and all the details. I try to sort it out, but..

This player has been interested in guns for half a century.  I've done light gunsmithing, reloading, shooting, hunted a few times (with zero success other than a pleasant day in the woods).  That's the aspect of myself that I included in Tracy when I chose the the Armorer (Small Arms) skill, pretty high Guns (Pistol), Machinist (she's a lot better than I am; it's an expensive hobby and requires space and time).  I know the Witness in particular because I've got one, with 9 mm, .38 Super, .40 S&W, 10 mm, and .45 ACP slide/barrel sets, plus the (I'm not very impressed) .22 conversion (in fairness, I need to try it again after a thorough cleaning and with dry-lube ammunition).

And I'm good with Google.  Been Internet connected since before there was Google; it was Ask Jeeves or Yahoo! or Spider, and good luck finding anything.  In fact, I've actually used Archie (search) and Veronica (file transfer), back when AOL first opened their Internet gateway around 1989 (and the comment among that time's old timers was "Oh, Lord, it's September all year 'round.")

Sarah, the beauty of GURPS is that you, the player, don't need to know anything about guns (or energy weapons, or Renaissance or medieval or ancient weapons, for that matter) to play and enjoy the game -- but the details are there us geeks to smile or snicker at.  Honestly, GURPS doesn't do all that much detail with guns unless you dig around in High Tech; otherwise, you're hard pressed to find rules admitting there's a difference between a 1911 in .45 ACP and a Webley .455 -- or a Smith & Wesson "Lemon Squeezer" in .32 S&W Long (they'll give questionably accurate differing levels of damage and usually get the ammo capacity right, at least).

And similarly, I don't need to actually know Criminal Psychology, Intimidation, Observation, etc. or combat skills other than actual shooting to play a Detective.

Likewise, I only 'found the detail' that the leaky coolant pipe in the Vault that Lonnie was fixing was using ethelyne glycol because that's what a hot-rod in the 50s would have used, it would be completely insane and cheap to try to use it in cryonics , and "Cheap and insane" fits VaultTec's MO to the ground. It affects nothing if it's in there, so I tossed it in.

(Liquid Nitrogen is much more likely, but the results of a liquid Nitrogen leak/mishandling are so much nastier than just 'caught on fire' that it just wasn't fun.)
This message was last edited by the player at 17:44, Sun 03 July 2022.

Tertiary cooling might well use glycol or water/glycol mix like a car radiator in a heat exchanger.  Liquid nitrogen for the direct pod system, anhydrous ammonia or sulfur dioxide, maybe a methane/ethane mix for the intermediate (cold end can get cold enough for the hot end of a nitrogen heat pump, hot end well above about -30 C like a home freezer turned all the way up), and a regular CFC or butane/propane system pumps heat into a glycol/water radiator that can carry through long pipes to the outside.

If any stage fails, you have maybe an hour to get it working again or the colder stages will start to stall.

BTW, glycol as used in coolant isn't particularly flammable -- yes, you can ignite it, but it's not like gasoline or even light alcohols.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:30, Sun 03 July 2022.

Honestly, it's VaultTec- if their coolant system involved fuzzy newborn chicks, it would still somehow be hazardous to everyone involved, possibly   as an experiment of some kind. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 20:38, Sun 03 July 2022.

Like cryo-preservation in itself isn't experimental?

I saw a Tom Scott video on YouTube the other day -- apparently every piece of science fiction we have that talks about freezing humans and thawing them, alive, some time later, including a silly late-1960s sitcom titled The Second Hundred Years, all of Larry Niven's corpsicle stories, and at least one Heinlein tale (The Door Into Summer) were founded on real experiments done in the early 1950s (which involved an English researcher independently inventing the microwave oven) in which a number of hamsters were frozen solid and successfully revived, some more than once.

Turns out if won't work on anything much bigger than a hamster, but the speculation around it almost seventy years ago created a huge body of science fiction -- including the pods we're all about to sleep in for a couple centuries.

One of the problems with freezing/reviving people, apparently, is that once you get ice crystals forming in delicate structures like veins and brains, that's pretty much the ballgame.

So, one time, for writing practice, I outlined the darkest possible F4 fanfic, in which everything is the fever-dream style hallucination of the Sole Survivor as something's gone wrong and the effects take hold. (Which- in context- explains why we start out fairly mundane and grow more outlandish, and the increasingly central role the Survivor takes in world affairs.)

I got the whole outline, but never wrote it, because it was kind of.... too much?
This message was last edited by the player at 21:39, Sun 03 July 2022.

Well, yes -- but then there are those hamsters.  They used some kind of glycol bath, but in the end, they were frozen solid; Tom Scott interviewed the guy who independently invented the microwave oven to rewarm the experimental hamsters for those experiments (almost seventy years ago), and he said they were like wood -- knock them on the table, frozen like a chop from the freezer -- and yet several of them (including the very first one warmed with microwaves) didn't even require CPR to wake up and start walking around after a little gentle warming.

Not to mention human embryos that have spent up to decade in a liquid nitrogen Dewar, animal sperm that has been successful at AI from longer in LN2 than that...

And then there are at least two cases I'm aware of where a human -- an adult, mind you, though one who was fairly well pickled after some partying -- was found, seemingly "frozen solid", no pulse, no brain activity for a couple hours after getting to an ER -- and when the ER folks left them on a table while they tried to figure out what to do (haul them to the morgue or try to thaw them out first) they subject, on thawing enough, recovered a pulse and breathing; after warming up, they had not even frostbite injuries.

So perhaps we just don't yet know the correct way to freeze down a live human, and of course, the research to find out would be extremely expensive (progressively large animals, lots of them, ethics reviews for anything larger/smarter than a house cat) or wildly unethical (experimenting on humans, even volunteers).  And of course all those actual corpsicles (cryonauts, to use the industry term) were dead for multiple hours, sometimes more than a day, before they were frozen down; some of them (like Ted Williams) are just severed heads anyway (and there are persistent rumors of the "cranial preservation" cryonauts being abused by cryopreservation workers).

Even if we find they were frozen "correctly" we a) don't know how to cure death yet, and likely won't any time soon, as well as b) not (yet) having the ability to regrow a body or transplant the severed heads (or even keep them alive long enough to do so, if they were to be thawed and "cured" of being dead).  Freeze down a living human, and once they're clinically dead (no heartbeat, no brain activity) somebody goes in for Murder 1 unless you've got all the paperwork in hand for "assisted suicide".

As long as Vault-Tac knows how to do it well. I would not enjoy hearing from the GMs that we all have to make new characters because no one survived.

In reply to Michiko McManamy (msg # 169):

Lol, this sounds more like Paranoia every day...

Hah, sounds like one of those really old school RPG's.

Roll to survive the character creation process!

Bro, come on now, this isn't Megatraveller.

GURPS Goblins had something similar...

See, what you could do then is Ghosts of the Imperium, where the surprise is that there's a robust Traveller universe afterlife. :)

My history might be a little fuzzy but didn’t the Nazis experiment with freezing Jews in world war 2? I believe they figured out how long a person could withstand freezing temperatures, but that’s different than Cryosleep.

I can’t imagine all the horrible research we got from operation paperclip

Anytime I hear about any of that I cringe. The horrible things that humans can do to each other.... she says before wading enthusiastically into the apocalypse aftermath.

It wasn't just the nazis and didn't end with them. I believe the US was still doing secret medical experiments on unsuspecting people at least close to 1980 if not a little beyond. And, of course, there could be unknown things that went on longer.

I believe you are correct, Michiko.  There was the syphillis experiment, that ran for decades (the last of the involuntary subjects victims died after 1970, as I recall) and ruined thousands of lives (that started in the 1930s,but effects ran much longer than that and down a couple generations), various tests in which "volunteers" (whose consent was surely not fully informed) were given drugs like LSD and methamphetamine.  And the nature of secret "research" being what it is, it's entirely possible there is still stuff going on that won't be out in the open until the younger players here are in their dotage.

Yup. The syphilis experiment actually continued to 1972, at which point 74 were still alive. Considering there were children born infected, it's likely some people who were infected in the experiment are still alive.

Okay. A *lot* less Mengele talk: In my last entry, I have an NPC I would like everyone to remember makes a really dramatic entrance (and subsequent exit), if you don't mind.
This message was last edited by the player at 01:51, Wed 06 July 2022.

Noted!

I just got home, about to eat dinner and put the toddler to bed after then I will get to work on a post. It will be closer to midnight, so appreciate everyone’s patience. It’s time we finally get to Vault 111!

Added a new player, everyone welcome Gil Robinson.

Still working out when and how to introduce them. For now I have turned off the players wanted tag. We will not be recruiting more players unless we experience a significant reduction in players, or I decide to recruit more co-GMs in the future to run specific groups of players through storylines.

Also, once everyone has left the Pre-War Sanctuary Hills thread, I will make one final “End of Introduction” post, and then players will be allowed to continue to post and role play “Pre-War” memories of their lives in the thread. Totally optional, but will be allowed if you so wish.

Welcome Gil!

Hey Gil! Welcome to the Apocalypse!

Hi, Gil!

Welcome Gil.

Just an FYI, sounds like Walt is more of less out of the picture until we wake up, so if anybody is waiting for him, don't feel the need.

Welcome, Gil, to the first day of the last day of the good life.  You're about to take a nap, and when you wake up, you'll wish you were back in grade school getting bullied out of your lunch money...  :)

Information on the Sino-American war for those interested-

Link: https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Sino-American_War

Trench warfare was fairly common, especially in the Alaskan theatre before the introduction of Power Armor. While none of you know who fired the first nuke, the war and information about it would be common knowledge to all of you. And many wastelanders are going to get things wrong. When I feel it appropriate, I will let you guys know OOC what your characters would know about pre-war stuff.


Somebody mentioned getting a thread with relevant links like this up, I do plan to do that one day there’s just so much other more important stuff that needs my attention right now, but one day!
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:13, Thu 14 July 2022.

Hmm.  Did we scare Gil away?

If you go into the GM's menu there should be a 'Edit the external game links' button. That will create a tab at the top like the Game Map or Dice Roller with all the links.

You can also make a wiki for the game.

Gil might well be joining us as we emerge.

I believe Gil has dropped out, I sent them a PM a few days ago and they told me it was looking like they may have to back out. I haven’t removed them yet, giving them a couple weeks to decide.

Thank you Armand, I didn’t know that. And I still need to figure out the Wiki stuff, I’m still fairly new to all this!

I can help with some wiki advice if you want to do that.