Savage Fallout in the Upper Midwest. (Inactive)

Game Master nilesr

Discuss...because War, War never changes.

That's my line!

Here are a few snippets from our setting

Axe Tribe
National parks had little strategic military value, so when
the Great War came, the Boundary Waters parks between
Minnesota and Ontario fared much better than most.
Many who survived the initial attack fled to this area.
Slowly they met up and formed communities. One such
band is the Axe Tribe, named after their favorite weapon
and tool.
The Axe Tribe lives off the land, hunting, fishing, and
gathering. They’re also very talented wood craftsmen,
particularly adept at making dug-out and birchbark
canoes, which they use to navigate the lakes and rivers of
their homeland. They’re semi-nomadic, and move their
homes with the season. All tribe members are expected
to know how to wield an axe, both in battle and to fell
trees. (At large gatherings, tree chopping is a favorite
competition.)
Most members of the Axe Tribe are human, though
any who can prove themselves worthy are inducted into
the tribe, including a good number of ghouls.
The Axe Tribe’s spiritual beliefs are an eclectic blend
of many pre-war religions, but one especially notable
element is their reverence for Palbun. They believe that
he is a giant who once roamed the earth accompanied by
his bull steer. His skill with the axe is legendary. The Axe
Tribe has crafted many statues of Palbun at holy sites, but
the holiest of all are the statues that survive from before
the War.
As the Axe Tribe grew, it split into several smaller
bands that number anywhere from two dozen to two
hundred members. All of the bands are friendly toward
each other and tribesfolk. The adventure assumes PCs
come from the Santloose, the easternmost band in the
Axe Tribe. Youngsters from the Santloose frequently
go on exploration missions to discover the lands to the
south.

The Iron Shelter (might be redacted...)
The Iron Shelter is so named because it was converted
from an underground iron mine. Before the Great War,
a group of academics and scientists foresaw the very
real threat of nuclear war. Hoping to preserve human
civilization, they refitted the mine with a miniature
nuclear reactor and recycling systems for water and air.
They stockpiled food and set aside a section for indoor
gardening, complete with powerful lamps. Finally,
they gathered massive libraries of reference materials,
textbooks, technical manuals, historical accounts,
and popular fiction; anything that would help future
generations understand what human civilization was like
before the fall. They hoped to one day return to the world
above, but if need be they believed they could maintain a
small population indefinitely.
When the missiles flew, the Iron Shelter closed itself
off from the outside world, and the hundred inhabitants
escaped the destruction that followed. For decades
everything proceeded as planned. Through careful
rationing and proper recycling, the inhabitants of the
shelter lived completely cut off from the world outside.
But all that is about to change.
History
Things were looking bad before the Great War, and many
sought a way to avoid it. One such attempt was started
by a group of university students and professors. They
sought to establish a long-term shelter deep beneath the
earth. For the site they chose the Soudun underground
iron mine. This mine was already being used for physics
experiments, and there was plenty of unused mine space
that the new project could expand into.
They sought funding under the pretense of an
experiment studying the ability to create a self-sustaining
community, the kind that would be necessary for longterm
space flight. They began fitting the mine with living
quarters, subterranean gardens, and a micro nuclear
reactor to power it all.
Almost everything was in place when the Great War
broke out. Almost. People scrambled to get their friends
and families into the shelter and to find last minute
supplies. Fights erupted at the mine entrance about who
was allowed in. Finally, the cage screeched to the bottom
of the mine shaft for the final time.
For a few days the sheltered watched broadcasts from
the surface, showing images of death and destruction.
Then there was nothing left but static.
The survivors were on their own. They soon formed
new rules to govern their isolated society, creating a
constitution. In many ways this mirrored the laws of the
American society they came from, but they also added
crucial laws governing population control. The founders
thought they might be down in the mine for generations,
and their resources were finite, so they instituted strict
controls to ensure that they didn’t overuse their resources.

So, are we going to be wastelanders or vault dwellers to begin?

EDIT - Nevermind. Interesting, we're gonna be tribals. Nifty!

Wright Town
As humanity slowly started to crawl its way out from
disaster, many returned to former large cities to reclaim
the remnants of technology they had lost. Many died in
the process, falling victim to radiation or mutant beasts,
but those who escaped danger found wonders from the
old world and prospered.
This was the fate of the Wright family, who returned
to the ruins of what was once Duluth. They combed
the ruins, and not only found many tools that they
could use, they began trading their goods to the small
number of settlements beginning to form in what
was once northern Minnesota. Over the decades, the
Wright Trading Company has expanded to include not
only members of the family itself, but also hundreds of
employees who scour the landscape for scrap, protect
caravans, and provide other support roles. The actual
buying and selling is still reserved for members of the
Wright family, which now includes several branches.
History of Wright Town
According to family lore, Jed Wright’s father, Anthony
Wright, was born the day the Great War ended. His
parents were survivalists who had stockpiled enough
food and ammunition to see them through the end of
the world. Little else is known about them, as Anthony’s
children never met their grandparents, and he refused to
even mention their names.
Anthony started out fending for himself, hunting and
gathering food, and salvaging what he could from the
ruins. As he grew up he started to realize that he could do
more serving as an intermediary. He learned what people
needed, found it someplace else, transported it, and took
his cut. Not long after he started trading, Anthony met a
fisherwoman named Sable. The two fell in love and were
soon married. Their children became the first employees
of the Wright Trading Company.
As Jed Wright and his siblings grew, so too did the
Wright Trading Company. They established a base outside
of the ruins of Duluth and hired a dozen scrappers to
sift through the ruins for anything usable. They set up
regular trade routes with nearby fishing and farming
communities.
The Wright family weren’t the only ones with this
idea, and early on several other scavengers and traders
attempted to compete with the Wright family, but the
family didn’t tolerate friendly competition. The Wright
Company either convinced traders to work for them,
pushed them out of the territory, or the rival traders were
executed “for the crime of unlicensed trading.”
On his deathbed, Anthony Wright named Jed his
successor to lead of the Wright Trading Company.
Unfortunately Jed’s brother Ben thought he should
control the company. The brothers’ arguments turned to
brawls and soon to bloodshed. The families fought for a
year and a half, and the violence didn’t end until Ben and
all of his children were dead.
The brothers’ war hurt the Wright family, and for
some time it looked like they might fall from power, but
in the twenty-four years since then, the company has
grown even stronger and has regained its place as the de
facto power in the north.

The idea is that everyone plays as one of the three major factions.

You don't all have to play the same, I have a hook to get you all on the same page.

Just FYI for everyone not named Green Tea Gamer, I'll be using a book called "Broken Earth" for alot of the setting, and importing Fallout setting information into it. The setting is located in the Upper Midwest of the U.S/Canada (Minnesota, Montana, Michigan. Ontario)

I'll be linking ALOT of info in google docs, along with GTG's awesomely made google doc sheet.

I'll figure out a good story to go with one of those soon. Mechanically speaking, I want to dual-wield pistols or energy pistols...or maybe melee weapons...since that's just something you can't do in the videogames. Definitely a two-fisted and ambidextrous type, high in agility. Probably melee/thrown, just because a tribal character could be pretty fun, and that fits a lot better than a John Woo type. Dual-wielded Shishkebabs could be nasty. (Basically two tubes running into the single backpack).

Hi there, I hope I'm doing the right thing. Green Tea Gamer shot me a PM about this and it looks very interesting. I'd be delighted to play if you'll have me! No hard concept just yet, but I'd come up with something soon. The setting info above looks very neat!

How many caps are you going to start with? Most SW games give the equivalent of $500 unless you have rich, noble, filthy rich, or poor.

Oh. Hell. Yes! =D

I saw the free previews for Broken Earth on drivethru. Do you want us to glance at those, or do you want it to be a surprise? =)

For this game, I'm thinking that maybe I'll be more of a social character- one of the Wright children, maybe skirting the line between trader and mafioso.

'Ello 'ello.

Iron shelter sounds neat.

It sounds almost exactly like a Vault, frankly

Yeah, but a Vault that actually has usable resources to sell to the outside world (Iron), and is of course akin to the ever-so-rare "control" Vault, with no weird ass experiments being run. Which makes it Vault++, really.

Plus, I had assumed the Shelter would be opened up by now, for decades at the least. But it doesn't say that, so maybe I'm wrong.

Personally I would have reflavored it as either a control vault, or one of the ones made for company employees that wasn't a Vault by name, but by product. They're alluded to in some of the computers in Fallout 2, and I think there is one in Brotherhood of Steel. But Vault City was almost the exact same thing, and it was a control Vault.

Yeah that's why I went ahead and put (might be redacted) next to the name of the Iron Shelter. Let's go ahead and say it is a Vault.

I just threw some copy/paste up there for you guys until I can sit and do some serious editing and make it look (and feel) more Fallouty.

So basically if you want to start in the Iron Shelter you are a Vault Dweller, Axe Tribe makes you a Tribal and Wright Town makes you a civilized wastelander.

As far as starting wealth. I'll say that if GTG balanced out item costs well that you can start with 500 caps. There is no Noble edge as that is replaced by the Wright Family edge.

I tried to balance 500 as a standard when I made. I knew my game would have no starting gear, but I kept other games in mind when making the overall setting. That should keep you from starting with anything outrageous, but allow you to be equipped to begin with whatever your weapon style is.

Ok, reading through the Broken Earth pdf some timeline issues come about. Basically their timeline has the campaign starting some 80 years after the Bombs Fell. We can either stay with that OR ignore it and start 200+ years like all of the other Fallout games.

Reading through Fallout's timeline...80 years is fine for a campaign to start. Lots has happened in that time.

It would be around Fallout 1, I think, right?

Hmm... 80 years should be fine. I think the first game started about 90 years after the Great War, in 2161. About 80 years puts us in the lead-up to Fallout 1, with things like the Master building his army and such. Still plenty to play around with and canon to disrupt to our hearts' content!

Reading over the stuff here, I think I might make an Axe Tribal. Play very different from my character in the other game, and should be fun. Any naming conventions I should know about for that group?

I was thinking of axe tribe, too. Lemme know if you wanna be related. Always a good excuse to automatically trust someone!

I was thinking Wright Town, mostly because I'm already playing a melee based Fallout Savage Worlds character, and a Vault Dweller to boot, so that's the remaining option.

I'm getting together some info on all the three starting communities. I'll be posting it all shortly in some Google Docs.

Yeah 80 years is right at Fallout 1. So, Super Mutants are a thing... although maybe they haven't gotten far enough East yet to harrass the good people of the Upper Midwest.

A couple more things. If we follow the Broken Earth campaign as its written it incorporates ALOT of hexploration type activities as well as a "kingdom building". The metaplot revolves around an external threat that makes itself known early and then some sciency stuff becomes very important.

Honestly, the more I read this Campaign setting carefully the more I'm convinced that the writers were massive fans of Fallout. There isn't much that doesn't fit...in fact ALOT of it takes direct inspiration from things in the Fallout universe.

Who doesn't like Hexploration and Kingdom Building? TBH I was thinking of converting the Kingmaker rules to SW after I found out about the communities and stuff in FO4. Wouldn't be too difficult...Str = Str, Agi = Dex, Vig = Con, Spi = Wis, Sma = Int; d4 = 8, d6 = 10, d8 = 12, d10 = 14, d12 = 16, d12+1 = 18, etc. Charisma would be whatever your charisma score is, that's your charisma modifier equivalent in PF. So, +2 = 14 charisma, etc.

Okay, here is a link to all three of the starting communities

The Iron Shelter, aka Private Vault 16

Wright Town

The Axe Tribe

Please read through them, especially the Iron Shelter one, I changed a bit to make it more in line with Fallout lore.

As far as names go, they seem to be normal. I'll give some examples from the PDF

Wright Town: Jed Wright, Jack Wright, Sally Wright, Cal, Jordan and Cody Wright, Honea, Rose Levy

Iron Shelter: Jack Reynolds, Samantha Vang, Abdi Johnson, John Malina, Chelsea Vang, Kim Olsen

Axe Tribe: Eagle Eye, Freya Erdrich, Paul Pegahmagabow, Carla Vizenor, Maple, Raven McPhail

I mostly meant as far as the Tribe goes, since there've been cases of strange names for tribals in Fallout. The names in Honest Hearts come to mind, for example; while most folks have fairly regular names, you start meeting tribals named Follows-Chalk and Salt-Upon-Wounds (and of course, Two-Bears-High-Fiving).

From those samples, it looks like the Axe Tribe isn't quite that different, but has some oddities to it. Less pronounced, but worth keeping in mind while I work on the character and name.

Green Tea Gamer, I'd be totally down for our characters to know each other. Any particular route you're thinking for yours? Or how you want the characters to be related, for that matter. I'm still not totally decided, there are a few tempting options.

Mechanically speaking, definitely a dual wielding guy. I'd like to get a pair of proton throwing axes, since those axe edges are decent, or maybe martial arts.

Give me a little to read over some of the other factions, though, because dual pistols was my original plan.

...actually, it could be interesting to be a tribal who thinks we should dig up tech and stop being so damn primitive.

Hah, that'd be amusing. Especially given that I was looking through the document and immediately thought about my character being a storyteller and a bit of a traditionalist.

Yeah, definitely a tribal who doesn't want to live like one. Internal struggles make for great characters.

Especially since Vulture is tribal slang for someone who picks through ruins for scrap. Gonna be something like Two-Headed Vulture for his name (since he's of two minds about his culture, and totally ambidextrous).

You can be an older sibling. It's common for older siblings to be more traditional, favored by parents, and when younger ones can't live up to their shadow, for the younger to rebel to exact opposites to get attention or simply to distinguish themselves from a pattern they can't measure up to.

I'm thinking my guy would $#!+ a brick with joy if he met the Brotherhood of Steel, with their tech obsessions combined with tight familial structure and internal attitude. It's like the best of both worlds.

Hmm. While I like the older sibling idea, I kinda want to take the risk and use the Elderly Hindrance. It's a lot of fun, or at least it has been in the past, and there are so few games where you can really play an old character effectively at all.

I think he'd make a good granduncle or something of that nature, though. an elderly relative trying to keep you on the straight and narrow (and failing miserably, of course). Probably more a shaman and speaker for the tribe than a warrior, these days, although he was proud in his day.

EDIT: Not feeling that idea as much for this character, actually. Drew up a draft and didn't love it. Think I'll stick with a melee brute, and maybe add in a little social effectiveness if it fits.

The only thing is the hit to vigor REALLY sucks, and you can never raise it. There's only three ways to raise your toughness - armor (AP can get past), edges (or the obese hindrance) - of which there's only one you can take pre-legendary (brawny - which you can't be brawny AND obese), or raising your vigor die. Elderly is kinda like asking to make a new character soon.

...I will admit, the extra skill points are nice.

I definitely agree, it's tough. Last character I played much with it was an old retired fighter in a fantasy game, who blew most of his regular skill points on getting his Fighting to a d12. Used a rapier, so his pitiful Strength didn't matter too much, and his hefty Parry (would have been 9 if my math is right) made up for his horrid Toughness.

Thinking I'm gonna go with a beefier guy for this, though. Probably Brawny and Axe Fighter to terrorize people up close.

QUESTION: Are we using the skill changes that Green Tea Gamer put in his document, and uses in his game? Main reason I ask is for Fighting and Throwing, wondering if they're rolled into one skill for throwing melee weapons (like throwing axes).

Sounds like a big brother to me. ;-)

Sounds like a big brother to me. ;-)

"You bet. Just try not to embarrass me this time. And quit it with the Vulture talk. You're never gonna get a snag if you keep that up..."

"I'll take an outser snag if I have to...I didn't give me this name. I just accepted it as my own for the naming ceremony. People were calling me that long before, since I found that bunker by the river and kept itching to find more. I will wear it as a badge of pride instead of an insult."

Still need to hammer out gear and a story, but I do believe I'm done. SW is so much quicker than Pathfinder!

"See, there you go again. You're so weird. Never gonna land a nice lady with that kind of talk!... Get back here, I'm gonna ruffle your hair whether you like it or not!"

Think I'm fairly set here, as well, in terms of base stats. If Throwing is rolled into Fighting for melee weapons, though, I may rearrange some things and grab Axe Thrower for lots of nice attacking.

Yes, we will be using GTG's Fallout document, I'll link it here for you guys to see.

The SW Fallout bible, courtesy of GTG

How'd you guys start with 3 bennies, I thought it was 2?

Two is what the GM gets for HIS Wild Cards....plus one per player that he can use for wild cards or extras of his choosing. Players get three.

Oh, well I need to update Kristophe.

Three f@##ing bennies, f+$$ yeah. I'm gonna smash some f!*%ing faces WOOOH. Someone get me some Jet!

DANGIT, I really wanted to look badass with a pair of .45 autos, but one clip for each, both guns, and a basic leather armor took all my money!

May have to save 30 caps, look even cooler by downgrading to a duster, and get some basic supplies...

Yes, we will be using GTG's Fallout document

Awesome, lot of cool stuff in there, big fan. Now the question is whether I want to drop my Vigor by a die to pick up Axe Thrower... by the way, how exactly does that work? Would it give us Hatchet/Tomahawks rather than Throwing Axes? And what does it do to the range increment, since they start at 5/10/20?

DANGIT, I really wanted to look badass with a pair of .45 autos, but one clip for each, both guns, and a basic leather armor took all my money!

.45s? Going for the Joshua Graham vibe, are we? Probably not, but any time I think of .45s in Fallout now I think of him. He was probably my favorite character in New Vegas by a long shot.

I'll fiddle around with my character some, and work on backstory. May not get it up today what with preparing for the holiday tomorrow, but hopefully it'll be mostly set.

Man, I -really- wanna like the Born in a Library feat, but it just doesn't seem like it is as good as Scholar. +2 Invest. is nice, but I get the feeling that once we leave the vaul--erm, ah, iron shelter, we'll not be back soon.

Here's something I'm surprised you guys haven't asked yet: Does Heave Ho stack with Axe Thrower? Becaue if it did, we'd have a new name for you: OnlyUseKnife =)

edit: Wait, is Investigation back in (the google doc says it's removed) or does Born in the Library instead now apply to Science?

If he's using ALL my rules, there is no investigate; mostly it's been folded into Science.

Loop...you might REALLY wanna reconsider that major delusion. No armor? At all? Oh man...that's....that's not gonna end well. (Plus, how else am I gonna talk you into wearing T-45d for that +2 die type strength bonus? Imagine wielding a proton axe in that!)

If Sulik can wield a Super Sledge, I don't think it's a stretch :-)

I'd say that we can use Investigation...this campaign will be feature rebuilding society, so that means books are important!

Okay, so I've just compiled all the Scavenging and Community Building rules from the Broken Earth. Please everyone (especially GTG) take a look at them (especially the notable items table) and help me make them more Fallout compatible. I'd appreciate any help you can give me! It'll make the game that much more enjoyable.

Scavenging and Community Building

The document is fully editable so go ahead and edit away (please don't delete it, I'd have to restore it)

I'm worried mostly about the economic value of items, example

Scavenging is worth like 1000 Trade (caps) per week. Does that sound decent?

Example: The Broken Earth value of a Handgun(Heavy Revolver 2d6+1) is 3000 Trade. But in the Fallout Manual its value is only 175.

I'd like to get this figured out before we start equipping characters and whatnot. I really think it would be easier to use the Broken Earth values, but that means that starting with nice items becomes much much harder (especially as a tribal).

TBH it seems to add a whole other level of complications that I am not terribly interested in.

The values I compiled for weaponry are all from the various videogames, taking the newest values I could find, increasing the value of crafted items to balance with purchased, and balancing older items to newer. It took me longer than the rest of the game combined, including the Bestiary...it wasn't haphazardly thrown together.

I think Broken Earth is reflecting a much lower technology level apocalyptic setting than Fallout. Remember, basic pistols are affordable because Tesla Canons and Antimaterial Rifles and Grenade Machineguns are things.

I also put some scavenging rules on the GM doc, which at this rate will be up in about three hours or less for you to check out.