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).