#it’s funny because me and my friends are playing a tabletop of Fallout

[meltykarasu]

Failures In Worldbuilding

Rather than my usual post I’d like to celebrate a little; I run a little tabletop group online and we recently completed our third campaign with myself as DM/GM — this one taking place in the Star Wars universe and acting as a strange mix of The Mandalorian-inspired bounty hunting coupled with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead-ing through the background of the Star Wars films (a device I liberally cribbed from the very funny Tag and Bink comics they did in the early-to-mid-2000’s). We grappled with friends and foes and the esoteric systems of West End Games’s d6 system and the honestly janky Roll20 sheet I had to edit myself after a style update busted the fanmade one we were using.

Starting in a couple weeks, we’re going to be playing Dungeons & Dragons again in a setting I’ve been building for some time. I’m not going to discuss it a ton because, well, some of my players do follow this blog, and I’d rather not tip my hand before the first session. I’d rather talk about my earlier settings right now. 

The second campaign I did was a contemporary setting inspired heavily by Sailor Moon and Persona 4 and etc, etc. Admittedly, I think that Dungeons and Dragons was a poor choice for this and if I had to do it again I would find something more rules-lite, like FATE Accelerated. I think that the plot setup, however, made me really flex my muscles in world and especially character building, because the PCs were stuck in the same town for the entire thing and ran into the same characters repeatedly, including one of my favorite villains: a talking skeleton named Commandant Bones, who once introduced himself by declaring, “Prepare for trouble! And make it single! Because it’s just me.”

I think that my first campaign, though, is what I want to talk about, because a lot of my ambitions for it and the failures to meet them are part of what led me back to D&D after spending fourteen or so months immersed in Star Wars. (The other part, by the way, was Berserk, The Witcher, and D&D: Honor Among Thieves getting me back into fantasy as a genre.)

Long story short, I had neat worldbuilding ideas going into the first campaign and I want to talk about how a couple of them failed to manifest properly. None of these are going into my new setting as a result of the differing focus/foundational worldbuilding, so if you ARE one of my players, feel free to read this through.

Idea One: Couriers

Do you know what Death Stranding and Fallout: New Vegas have in common? No, it’s not the inexplicable celebrity cameos, although we can all love Matthew Perry saying “What in the goddamn?” No, it’s couriers. In both you play as couriers thrust into something greater after a delivery gone wrong, which is an idea I really liked as a plot setup. 

So I had this idea that the couriers were the adventurers of the setting, and that the players were couriers, and there were these isolated settlements they were meant to travel to, but I think that I jumped the gun too soon on giving the players a vehicle. They never really got to experience trekking through the wilds of the very imaginatively named Home Continent (I also have an issue with naming things, but we don’t need to get into that right now.)

I also never gave them the option to have another courier job beyond the initial plot one. I think this would have allowed them to grow a cash base and run a business (very Acquisitions Incorporated, whose book does have rules on business forming that I would use if I were to run this style of game). I think it would have been better for that. Players like having ownership over A Thing they they get to fill out and make stronger.

Third, and maybe most importantly, they never encountered another courier. I think that this, too, would have helped make this job feel more important. During this latest Star Wars campaign, I had them run into other bounty hunters — big names like Boba Fett and Bossk, along with original small names like Wolfram Aphra and Molly Ringworld. They had professional, preexisting notions and relationships with these characters, which makes the profession feel alive — important if you want to convey that this is an important job that more than just your PCs do.

Idea Two: Barter

I also had the idea that things were primarily barter-based: you did not get paid in coins, but in things: items or favors. This immediately fell out of the worldbuilding a couple sessions in when I realized that I had not told the players and the wizard attempted to pay for an inn room with gold pieces. Yikes! 

Basically: reinforce these fundamental ideas if they do not mesh with what is established in materials like rulebooks, etc. This should be a bullet point on your lore doc or something you state in session zero.

Idea Three: The Silos

I’m going to admit that I’ve never seen the show, but I read the premise of Turn A Gundam and knew I wanted it to be part of this campaign: the idea that fantastical advanced technology had been buried, and the world turned ever on until someone discovered it and caused an arms race of unearthing progressively more destructive technology. 

I just don’t think I communicated this enough! I had all these grand story ideas but I think that they weren’t well-exposited or depicted. We didn’t even go to an excavation site! How foolish of me!

Going Forward

James Cameron and Stan Winston, on the DVD commentary for Aliens, discussed how everything that they’d done for that film had, in effect, become R&D for The Abyss and Terminator 2 — everything you do is research and development for your next project. I think that this is an important mentality to have in the creation of art. 

After I had what I perceived as a failure of a campaign, where it felt like maybe a third of my ideas for the setting and plot went anywhere, I sat down and I experimented. I set an entire campaign in and around a single town. I think this worked well because there were locations there that kept getting revisited — the school, the local shrine, the main characters’ houses, their usual haunts. They formed a more effective bond with the setting and NPCs because they couldn’t gallivant around the world on an airship. 

On the opposite end, I let my players roam relatively free in our Star Wars campaign. They had open choices on where to take the story, what they wanted to do each week (generally from a short list of adventures). Revisiting the bar after a hard job or dropping by the Merchant after a firefight to restock or taking the ship in for repairs and upgrades meant more when it was a choice the players made.

I still had things go wrong (which, hopefully, my players did not notice too much) but I think that my skills are much more sharpened for another crack at this. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

[calpalirwin]

True Crime

Loosely based on/inspired by True Crime by Taylor Acorn

Word Count: 2.6k

And away, and away we go!

__

The stars were bright as they stared up at the sky, their eyes blurry. He pressed the last sip of the bottle to her lips and pulled the blanket tighter around them. “Promise me something,” she whispered, her words slow and slurred.

“Anything,” he nodded, lighting a cigarette. 

“Promise me you’ll love me forever.”

“Only if you promise the same.”

She cupped his face in her hands, looking deep into his blue eyes. “Promise.”

“Promise,” he smiled at her before bringing her in for a kiss that tasted like cheap booze, smelled like cheaper cigarettes, and felt like young love that would last lifetimes.

~~~

Y/N woke with a start, the dream replaced with the blaring of the alarm next to her bed. With a groan, she shut off the alarm, wondering if there would ever come a night where she didn’t dream of Lip Gallagher. But after seven months, she wasn’t holding much hope, and the wondering progressed to thoughts of how to come to terms with the fact that this was her life now.

Y/N had no one to blame but herself. Ian had warned her that his brother, while mostly filled with good intentions, was a ticking time bomb of self-destruction, much like all the other Gallaghers. But his charm, sharp wit, and those piercing blue eyes had made it hard for Y/N to resist the older boy. And the almost year they spent together had left her thinking that maybe Ian had been wrong. Maybe she could be the one good thing in Lip’s life that didn’t explode.

But the explosion had happened. And in the fallout, she had lost not only Lip, but herself as well.

As Y/N left her house, out of habit she started to head south. But like every day for the past seven months, she paused thinking if she really wanted to go that way. Any other day she would have turned to go the other way, not risking being in his part of town, not risking going by the places they used to frequent together. But today, she didn’t change her path. The Southside was big enough, and before the fallout she remembered Ian had mentioned his new job at Fiona’s diner. And just because her and Lip weren’t a thing anymore, didn’t mean she had to let go of Ian too. And today, missing her best friend outweighed the risks she’d been avoiding.

She sucked in her breath as she passed by the open field that had been one of her and Lip’s preferred spot to escape to when things got crazy at his house, which was often. She also picked up her pace, but it didn’t matter. The memory replayed anyway.

~~~

“If you could live anywhere, where would you go?” she asked.

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. “Literally anywhere that’s not here. Why? You wanna run away with me? Train should be coming by soon. We could just hop on, and see where we end up.”

Y/N laughed. “We can’t actually leave, Lip. It’s hypothetical.”

“Well why does it have to be hypothetical? Nobody fuckin’ needs me here. I’m smart, you’re hot. We’d find a way to get by.”

Y/N laughed louder, pushing into his shoulder. “Real funny, Lip.”

“I’m serious. I used to think that maybe I was just fuckin’ useless, but I’m starting to think it’s just this city.”

“It is the city, because you are anything but useless.”

Lip scoffed again. “Nah. All I am here nowadays is another mouth to feed. Another body taking up space. I stopped being useful the minute I turned eighteen, and Frank couldn’t cash a check on my existence anymore. But away from here? Fuck, I could be anybody. A somebody.”

His tone was flat, a simplistic statement of facts. But his eyes betrayed the hurt he still associated with who he thought he was, and the bitter disappointment that he’d never be more than what he was now. “Oh, Lip,” she said softly, cupping his face in one of her palms. “You’re so much more than who they think you are.”

For a brief moment, he leaned into her touch, allowing himself to trust in someone other than himself. “You might be the only one who believes in me.”

“That’s what happens when you love someone, Lip.”

“Again, you might be the only one who does. And trust me, I’m not saying this shit to gain sympathy, or to bring down the mood, or whatever.” His shoulders shrugged, “It’s just the reality of the situation.”

“Well, I love you Philip Gallagher. And if you wanna run away, just say the word, and I will happily follow.”

~~~

The bell on the door jingled as Y/N pushed her way inside Patsy’s Pies. A waitress in a white top tucked into black jeans and an apron tied around her waist told her to have a seat wherever, so Y/N slid into one of the booths along the window. As she glanced around the place, she spotted a busboy cleaning up a nearby table, with bright red hair. “Ian!” she called out, her voice bright.

The busboy turned to the sound, a wide grin breaking out across his face as he recognized her. “Give me two minutes!” he told her before hurriedly going back to his task.

Not even a full two minutes later, Ian was sliding in across from her. “Oh, my God, Y/N! How have you been? I haven’t seen you s- Oh… Right…”

She smiled softly, as she reached across the table to pat her friend’s hand. “I’m okay, Ian. Still hurts, but not as bad as it did. And I’m not here to see him. I came here to see you. See how you’re doing.”

“Oh, I’m good. You know… considering.”

“That’s great, Ian. And it looks like you got a nice routine here. Working out okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, it’s not the greatest job in the world. Like I know I have it because it’s how Fiona can keep an eye on me. But better than nothing, I guess. How are things with you?”

“As good as they can be, I guess. Taking some classes at the community college. Nothing extremely brag worthy or anything.”

“So same shit, different day?”

She laughed, “Exactly.” She was about to work up the courage to ask how the rest of the Gallagher clan was doing when the bell on the door jangled, and both their heads turned to the sound.

“Oh, fuck…” Ian groaned at the same time Lip mouthed the words himself.

Y/N steeled herself as Lip walked there way, one of his hands coming to rest on the tabletop. “Y/N. Good to see ya. You look good,” Lip greeted quickly before turning his attention to Ian. “I’m gonna grab Liam, check in with Fi, then we can head out.”

“I’ll do it!” Ian volunteered and shot out of the booth before either Lip or Y/N could protest.

“I-” Lip sighed, rubbing at his face. “Okay…” He sighed again before taking a seat on the edge of the bench seat. “So…” he said, fingers drumming on the wood.

“Don’t,” she cut him off. “We don’t have to do this,” she went on, waving a finger between the two of them. “Make pleasant small talk, or whatever. We can just sit here until Ian comes back, and then you guys can go your way, and I’ll go mine, and it’ll be just like it’s supposed to.”

“Alright, fuck me then…” his defensive snark came out.

“Yeah, you’d like that wouldn’t you?” she snapped back.

Lip rolled his eyes. “Whatever, Y/N. God forbid I try to be nice to you.”

“See? That’s exactly what I told you not to do. You don’t get to do what you did, and then play the victim, Lip.”

“Do what?! Say hi?!”

“Do anything, Lip! Seven fuckin’ months of radio silence, and the first thing you decide to say to me is ‘hey, you look good’? What fuckin’ shit is that?!”

“So I was just supposed to ignore you?!”

“It was working so far, wasn’t it?! Until you went and ruined it by talking!”

“I ruined it?! You came here- where my family works- but I ruined it?!”

“Yes! Because I was just fine until you came along!”

“Yeah, well so was I!”

“I’m gonna see you at home, Lip…” Ian’s voice piped up, a backpack slung over his shoulder, one of his hands holding Liam’s. “Y/N, it was great to see you. Catch up soon?”

Y/N flashed a smile at the two Gallagher brothers, her demeanor shifting completely. “Of course, Ian. My number’s still the same. Hey, Liam!”

“What do you mean, you’ll see me at home? I’m coming with you,” Lip cut in.

“No,” Ian shook his head. “Liam and I are going home. You two are gonna finish whatever… this is.”

“It is finished,” they both told him.

Ian snorted. “Yeah right… Y/N, if Lip hadn’t walked in when he did, were you going to ask me about him?”

“Yes…” she mumbled.

“And Lip, were you gonna ask me about Y/N the second we left?”

“Yeah, probably…”

“So just talk to each other now, and leave me out of it.”

“I- Fiona would kill me if you left with Liam, and I didn’t go with you, you know that.”

Ian shrugged. “Guess there’s only one thing to do then.”

Lip gave a shake of his head, muttering some curses under his breath. “Fine. C’mon then,” he finally, getting up from the table and motioning for Y/N to follow them.

“Me?” she asked in disbelief. “You’re joking…”

“Really wish I was. But Ian’s right. We should probably finish whatever this is, rather than ignoring it.”

“How mature of you,” she sarcastically crooned at him as she got up. “Let’s go then.”

~~~

The happy chatter around the dinner table in the Gallagher house warmed Y/N. That had been her favorite part about being in their lives. For as chaotic and dysfunctional as they were, the six siblings were always ride or die for each other.

“So,” Lip prompted, once the chatter had died down, and the Gallaghers had disbanded to various parts of the house.

“So?” Y/N asked.

Lip jerked his head in the direction of the back porch. “C’mon, we can talk outside.”

With a huff, she followed him outside, both of them taking a seat on the steps.

“So,” he started again.

“Why?” she demanded, cutting straight to the chase. “Why?” she repeated again, her lip trembling.

“I don’t know.”

“That’s the best you got? You left me there waiting for you, and the best you got is ‘I don’t know’?”

“Don’t be so dramatic… I didn’t leave you there waiting.”

“Oh!” she scoffed, “Right. My bad. You showed up two hours late, said you couldn’t do this, and then left me.”

“Were you really naive enough to think I could leave with you? That I could ever get out of that?” he flung a hand in the direction of the house.

“No,” she said flatly. “No. I was naive enough to think I could trust you to begin with. Ian warned me about you right from the beginning.”

“Yeah, well you should’ve listened. But you were never good at doing what you were told to do now were you? Always doing the opposite just to prove you could.”

“Classic Lip, putting the blame on others for his own screw ups.”

“Aw, I’m sorry,” he mockingly pouted. “Did I ruin your fairytale by being a fuck-up?”

She snarled as she gave him a hard shove with enough force to make him have to stick out his hand to catch himself. “My life was just fine before you came along, and fucked everything up!”

“Well I guess I did you a favor by leaving then, huh?!”

“A favor?! You think you did me a favor by making me fall in love with you, letting me believe we could be something, and then leaving?!”

“You think I left for my own health?! I was in love with you, too!”

“If you loved me, then why did you leave?!”

“Because I’m a fuckin’ fuck-up! It’s what I do! I ruin good things because I don’t believe I deserve them!”

“So your solution was to break your promise to me?! You didn’t have to run away with me, Lip! In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t leave that night either! We could have just kept being us!”

The words shocked the fight out of him. “You didn’t leave?”

Y/N shook her head, the fight leaving her too. “No. I only wanted to leave because you wanted to.”

“That’s fuckin’ stupid. You know that right? Only doing something because of me? It’s stupid to pin your life on anyone, especially when that person is me.”

“I didn’t pin my life on you because I’m dependent on you, Lip. I wasn’t kidding when I said my life was fine before you. It was. My life just happened to be better with you in it. I was happiest with you. And I was stupid enough to believe you when said you felt the same.”

“You know you’re the only one I ever meant that shit to?”

“If you meant it, then you shouldn’t have broken your promise. You should have stayed.”

“Yeah, maybe I should’ve. Or maybe we did everything right, and we still end up here.”

“Guess we’ll never know.”

“Guess so. And hey, I’m sorry alright?”

“I don’t want your apology, Lip. I want you to be the person I thought you were.”

“Yeah, me too. But I am sorry. I guess part of me thought I was protecting you by walking away before I could let you down. Protecting myself by leaving before you could leave me. But it didn’t work. I just made a bigger mess of my life. And hurt you in the crossfire.”

“Did Lip Gallagher just admit to his own screw ups?” she teased lightly.

“Ha-ha,” he laughed humorlessly. “Believe it or not, sometimes I’m not a complete ass.”

“Only sometimes,” she continued to tease.

This time he chuckled a little. “Well, as much as I want to, I can’t go back and fix what I did. And I can tell you I’m sorry all night, but it doesn’t mean you’ll forgive me. And I can’t blame you if you don’t. I mean, it's not like I forgave myself, either. But, kinda glad for running into you, and getting to talk this out. I’ve uh… missed you being around.”

She smiled softly. “Yeah, it was nice. I’ve uh… missed being around you, too.”

“So… where do we go from here? Is this where I swear that I’ve changed, and I’ll do better if you give me a second chance?”

“Is that what you want?”

“I don’t know. Do I want to be with you again? Yes. But I don’t think it’s as simple as that. What if I haven’t changed? What if my life flies off the rails again- which it will- and I push you away again? I can’t guarantee that I won’t hurt you again. That my instinct won’t be to run the minute things get hard.”

“I guess we gotta decide if that’s a risk worth taking.”

“Is it? Am I the risk worth taking again?”

“Oh, Lip…” Y/N said softly, resting her hand against his face the way she used to. Her thumb brushed along his cheekbone as he leaned into the touch, his eyes watching her carefully. “You’re always gonna be my risk worth taking.”

__

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[warsofasoiaf]

Have you played Fallout 4? What did you think of it?

Joseph Anderson had a phenomenal video on Fallout 4. Although it is enormous, so be careful. Overall, there were things to like and things not to like about Fallout 4. I’ll start with what I liked first. Throwing a cut in here because it’s long.

Combat in the first-person Fallout games has always been clunky, and enemy AI relatively largely consisted of straight charging or shooting from as maximum range as possible. Difficulty came primarily from enemy quantity, high damage output, or incredibly enemy hitpoints. The last of these has been a particular Bethesda problem in their games, with enemies being incredible damage sponges, making late-game fights a boring slog as you slowly whittle down their health while being impossible to damage in any meaningful capacity. While enemy variations aren’t nearly as high as the game’s fans would have you believe if you conceive of them as AI patterns, the AI activity did have some nice variations. Human enemies used cover, ghouls bobbed and weaved as you shot them, mole rats tried to ambush you. It’s got nothing on games with fully realized combat system, but it does make the combat that you do engage in much more enjoyable. 

All of the random crap you can pick up in a Bethesda game having a purpose is another positive. It is a true nuisance to find out when playing a game that I hit my encumbrance limit only to find out it’s because I’ve picked up a bunch of brooms, bowls, and other garbage accidentally while grabbing coin and other worthwhile treasures. Actually having these things mean an object is worthy mechanically, aside from level design; typewriters are useful as items as opposed to something that shows you that the ruined building you’re in was formerly a newspaper. As crafting is a big portion of the game, having these things provide component parts that you use for crafting on their own creates more utility in these elements of clutter which still require modeling, rendering, placement, etc. Now if you need aluminum, you’ll try to raid something like a cannery because it will have aluminum cans, which is an excellent way to create player-generated initiative. It also reinforces one of the primary themes of the game which is crafting and design, where even the trailers of the game suggest building as a key idea of the game. Certainly sensible for a post-apocalyptic game to focus on building a new society upon the ruins of the older one, and given what the game was trying to do with their four factions mechanic, it’s clear that this was their intent, and good job for trying to ensure that things factor back into their principal intent. 

Deathclaws look properly scary, the animations with Vault Boy were funny, there’s some pretty window dressing. The voice work wasn’t bad, the notable standout being Nick Valentine. The Brotherhood airship was an impressive visual. I had a little fun creating some basic settlements, particularly in Hangman’s Alley where I tried to create a network of suspended buildings and Spectacle Island where I had room to grant every prospective settler a shack. Bethesda clearly looked to create a game with mass market appeal, and I believe the metrics bears out that they succeeded in that regard. The robots in the USS Constitution quest were very funny, the writers were able to make the absolute ridiculousness of the situation work (curse you Weatherby Savings and Loan!) and framed it well as a comedic sidequest, with a final impressive visual if you side with the bots and the ship takes flight.

Now that this is out of the way, I think that a lot of what Fallout 4 did was not the right move. 

The quest design was particularly atrocious in this regard. Most of the radiant quests boiled them down to a simple formula - go to the dungeon, get to the final room where you need to either kill the boss or get an item from the boss chest, return. In this game though, the main story quests often were boiled down to just this simple formula. You need to find a doodad from a Courser to complete your teleporter? Go to the dungeon, kill the boss, recover the item. The Railroad needs you to help an escaped synth! Do it by going to the dungeon and getting to the final room. This really hampers the enjoyment of games because the expressiveness of the setting and elements of an RPG is often explored through quests. Quests are meant to get you out into the world and give you an objective, but they are also meant to connect you to the people that you’re dealing with. If every quest is boiled down to the same procedure, that hurts the immersion, but the bigger sin is that when you return you have another quest waiting for you. That robs the player of the sense of accomplishment because there is no permanent solution to problems, even for a minute. There is no different end-state for the player to see the transition from one to the other and feel accomplished that they were the ones who did it. Other RPG’s always understood this - a D&D game might have a party save a town investigate an illness dealing with a town, take out an evil druid who has charmed the wildlife into attacking supply and trade shipments, slay goblins who are raiding cattle, there are a lot of possibilities that might even feel samey: if you’re killing charmed dire wolves or goblin cattle thieves, you’re still going to the dungeon and fighting the boss, the usual flair and variation came from encounter design. After you’d do that though, the NPC’s might say “Hey, Mom is feeling better after you cured that disease, she’s starting to walk again,” “Hey, we were able to send a shipment of wine from the vineyards out to the capital, here’s some coin for the shipment as reward for your service,” or even just a simple “Hey, thanks for taking out those cattle thieves.” There’s a sense of accomplishment even if it’s a fleeting “we did a cool thing.” Computer RPG’s are tougher in this regard, part of the sense of accomplishment in tabletop gaming is also with your friends, it’s a shared activity, but usually in that the reward was some experience and character growth and going to new content. There isn’t new content here in Fallout 4 though, because of the samey quest design and lack of progression.

The conversational depth was also ruined, with so much of the voice choices mangled by the system of conversation they designed. By demanding a four-choice system, they limited themselves to always requiring four options which completely mangled interactivity. The previous menu design allowed for as many lines as you wanted, even if the choices were usually beads on a string. The depth and variation, however, are even lower than what could be found in games like Mass Effect 3, and the small word descriptions were often so inaccurate that it created a massive disconnect between myself the player and the Sole Survivor, because they weren’t saying what I thought they would be saying. That prevented me from feeling immersed, because a “Sarcastic” option could be a witty joke or a threat that sounds like it should come out of a bouncer. The character options were already limited, with Nate being a veteran and Nora being a lawyer, but this lack of depth prevents me from feeling the character even moreso than a scripted backstory. You get those in games, but being unable to predict how I’m reacting is something that kills character. 

Bethesda needs to end the “find (x) loved one” as a means to get people motivated to do a quest, or if they don’t want to rid themselves of that tool in their toolbox, they need to do a better job getting me to like them. More linear games can get away with this, but open world games encourage the sort of idle dicking around that doesn’t make any sense for a person who is attempting to find a family member. Morrowind did this much better, where your main task was to be an Imperial agent, and you were encouraged to join other factions and do quests as a means to establish a cover identity and get more acquainted with combat. Folks who didn’t usually ended up going to Hasphat Antabolius and getting their face kicked in by Snowy Granius. Here though, what sort of parent am I if instead of pursuing a lead to find my infant son I’m wandering over east because I saw what looked like a cool ruin, and I need XP to get my next perk (another gripe, perks that are simple percentage increases because they slow down advancement and make combat a slog if you don’t take them, depressing what should be a sense of accomplishment). By making us try to feel close with a character but by refusing to give us the players time with them, there is no sense of bonding. I felt more connection to James in Fallout 3 than I did for Sean, but even then, I felt more connection to him because he was voiced by Liam Neeson than because of any sense of fatherly affection. The same goes for the spouse and baby Sean, I feel little for them because I see them only a little. I know that I should care more, but I also know that I the player don’t because all that I was given is “you should care about them.” You need time to get to know characters in game, along with good writing and voicework. I like Nick because he quoted “The Raven” when seeing the Brotherhood airship and I thought that was excellent writing, I didn’t have any experiences with Sean to give me that same sense of bonding. 

They’ve also ruined the worldbuilding. The first-person Fallout games have always had a problem with this, with Fallout 3 recycling Super Mutants, the Brotherhood of Steel, and other iconic Fallout things into Washington D.C. Part of this is almost certainly the same reason that The Force Awakens was such a dull rehash of the plot of A New Hope, they wanted to establish some sort of continuity with a new director to not frighten off old fans who they relied on to provide a significant majority of the sales. The problem of course, is that this runs into significant continuity problems, now needing Vault 87 to have a strain of FEV and having a joint Vault-Tec/US Government experiment program there on the East Coast, so we can have Super Mutants. Jackson’s chameleon isn’t native to Washington D.C., but we need to have Deathclaws because they’re the iconic scary Fallout enemy, as opposed to creating something new with the local fauna, which is only made worse because they did do that with the yao guai formed from the American black bear (the black bear doesn’t typically range in the Chesapeake Basin near DC these days, but it’s close enough and given the loss of humans to force them back they could easily return to their old pre-human rangings). Some creatures are functions of the overall setting and can be global, ghouls are the big one here since radiation would be a global thing and fitting considering Fallout is a post-apocalypse specifically destroyed by nuclear war. Others though, are clearly mutated creatures and so they would be more localized. Centaurs and floaters were designed by FEV experiments and collared by Super Mutants, they should really only be around Super Mutants. Radscorpions shouldn’t be around, there would probably be instead be mutated spiders. Making things worse are that the monster designers do develop some excellent enemies when they think about it. Far Harbor has a mutant hermit crab that uses a truck as a shell (a lobster restaurant truck, which is passable enough for a visual joke even if it falls apart when you think about other trucks that they might use) and a monster that uses an angler lure that resembles a crafting component - these are good ideas but the developers needed to awkwardly shoehorn in iconic Fallout things that have no place there. This isn’t to say that I’m in love with a lot of Fallout’s worldbuilding, a lot of the stuff in Fallout 2 I found to be kind of dumb particularly the talking deathclaws, but as the series went on it took objects without meaning. The G.E.C.K in Fallout 3 was pretty much a magic recombinator which makes no sense as a technology in a world devastated by resource collapse, something similar can be said about the Sierra Madre vending machines. 

Fallout 4 though, had a lot of worldbuilding inconsistencies that really took an axe to the setting. The boy in the fridge outlasts the entire Great War, but apparently never needed to eat or drink water. This is, of course, stupid, because ghouls have always been shown to need to eat and drink - Fallout 1′s Necropolis section has a Water Chip but if you take it without finding an alternate source of clean water, the ghouls will die. Ghoul settler NPC’s that flock to your player-crafted towns require food and water. The entire thing was ruined from a complete lack of care, to build a quest where you reunite a lost boy with his still-alive ghoulified parents. I think this one bothers me not simply because of the egregious worldbuilding which isn’t even consistent in the very game it’s written it, but it’s done so frivolously for a boring escort quest. It feels scattershot, and that’s the problem I think with a lot of Fallout 4′s quests. They feel disconnected, like every writer worked in a cubicle without talking to any of the other writers. Same with things like the Lady in the Fog.

Are we done with that? Good, because now we’re going into the parts that I really dislike - the main quest and the factions. These are just awful. The developers took what folks really liked when it came to Fallout 2 and Fallout: New Vegas (Fallout 1 did have interesting factions but they were largely self-contained, more towns than anything else) and completely botched it. New Vegas was the clear inspiration for these factions, with the four faction model of NCR, Legion, House, and Indepenedent meaning that there were four different ways to go forward into the future, so we get three factions that fight each other and a fourth more player friendly faction that roughly resembles the Independent Vegas where you can pick and choose which factions you bring in with you and which you get rid of. Thematically, this fits in with the core of the game, crafting is a big portion of what you do and so crafting what sort of world the Commonwealth would be is simply a logical extension of it. The factions aren’t presented well though. The Railroad are impossibly naive and don’t demonstrate any rougher edges like denying supplies to humans in order to fuel their synth effort, even though such a thing should be evident if the post-apocalypse of the Commonwealth is to be believed. The Institute are sinister murderers and replacers without bringing any of the advanced technology that could provide some benefit such as the gigantic orange gourd that can grow. So much of their kill-and-replace mentality seems to be done for no great overarching purpose. The Minutemen are basically blank, pretty much just a catch-all for the player-built settlements, though the player as the leader of the Minutemen ends up getting bossed around by Preston to the point of the faction rejecting your commands to proceed with the main quest, a significant problem with Bethesda factions where you are the leader but never get any actual sense of leadership. There doesn’t appear to be any addressing of the failures of the previous Minutemen whether that be the previous summit, or new problems such as settlements feuding with each other requiring the general to intervene and mediate. The Brotherhood come the closest to a real faction with advantages and drawbacks if you squint, they are feudal overlords with the firepower to fight Super Mutants and other mutated nasties, but also violently reject ghouls and synths as part of their violent dogma except for seemingly not caring when you bring a companion around or killing ghoul settlers in settlements they control. But even then, we don’t really see the Brotherhood providing protection to the settlements that they demand for food, the typical radiant quest to destroy a pack of feral ghouls or super mutants is directed from a Brotherhood quest giver to a randomly determined location, hardly a good way to illustrate whether or not the Brotherhood is actually protecting settlements that they administer. We see little change in the way of the Commonwealth save that certain factions are alive or not because the game needs to stay active in order to perform radiant quests, so not even the signature ending slideshows can give us the illusion of effects building off of our actions. This is contrary to the theme of building a better world in the Commonwealth because there is no building. 

Special notice must be given to the Nuka-World raiders because they show the big problems with the factions. You can be a Raider in Nuka-World but only after becoming the Overboss, which is fair enough. But you’re already a Minuteman, but the Minutemen don’t activate any kill-on-sight order and Preston still helps you out. The game is so terrified of people losing out on content that they make permanent consequences rare, and when you do something like order an attack, it can be rescinded automatically if one of your companions is there. As an Overboss, you do grunt work in the Commonwealth, and the factions get mad and pissy if you don’t give them things despite even if you only give one section of the park to one of the factions, that’s more than they got from Colter. It’s like they don’t exist until the player shows up, which is exactly how a lot of modern Bethesda character and faction building seems to be. While in most computer games a sort of uneasy status quo is the desired beginning state because it gives the protagonist the chance to make ripples while justifying the existence of a status that allows the player to change it, it has to be applied consistently. 

The main quest itself is silly. There’s a decent twist with Sean becoming Father that sort of works, which would have worked much better if we had actually gotten a chance to bond with him, although the continuity of everything gets wiggy quick. When he said that he looked over the world and saw nothing but despair, I was wondering if they were going to actually bring a big question up and a debate between Father and the Player, the idea of what worth the people on the surface have, but it goes nowhere, it’s a missed opportunity. The main quest is just a means to meet all four factions and it’s a barebones skeleton at best. There are some interesting concepts they try, but what they do often falls flat. They try to establish some sort of empathy for Kellogg in the memory den, but it’s lazy and cheap because he kidnaps a baby and wastes your spouse, a wasted effort of empathy only made worse when you get criticized for not showing any sympathy. Kellogg then shows up in Nick’s memory for one second and then that little story nugget is ignored. The half-baked nature of the story keeps being brought back up, which is a pity because we actually saw them do a competent job in Far Harbor. The Followers of Atom are crazy and they really aren’t sympathetic in any way, but some of the folks inside the sub aren’t so bad that it might prevent you from wanting to detonate the sub, or at least you might think enough that you look for another solution. DiMA did some monstrous things, and if you bring him to justice, the game actually takes the time to evaluate whether or not you helped out Far Harbor, with meaningful consequences being taken if you took the time to do the sidequests which imparts far more meaning to them. 

While there’s a lot of problems that show up in terms of binary completion, the question of whether to replace Tektus and turn the Children of Atom to a more moderate path is a good question, it actually gives a lot more merit to the Institute if they were ever to have been shown to enact the same level of care. That only makes the Fallout problems stand out more, because it shows that they were capable of it but didn’t. This isn’t the only missed opportunity, synths themselves become a big problem. The goal was to create a very paranoid feeling but it was so sorely under-utilized that I never grew suspicious of folks because the game never gave me enough incentive to be suspicious of them. I didn’t think that Bethesda made synths that would give you false information or ambush you because that would have been potentially missed content. The idea of whether you are a synth or not is clearly an attempt to give the game more depth than it is presenting. You’re not a synth, Father’s actions make no sense if you are one, and DiMA attempting to make you think you are is silly because you know you aren’t one.

I think the game would have been much better if they had dropped the notion of Fallout entirely. If they had instead looked to create an open-world post-apocalyptic game focusing on crafting and building towns, perhaps with an eventual goal state of building many towns, establishing transportation networks, and rebuilding a junkyard society as a decent place (or going full Mad Max Bartertown complete with a Thunderdome for players looking for an evil and over-the-top option). That might have been an interesting game for Bethesda to potentially develop a new IP, even contracting with smaller studios for those who wish to tell story-heavy games in the setting. Instead, they applied Fallout like a bad paint job, cobbling together weak RP elements and story that made the game feel like a hydra that couldn’t recognize it was one being with multiple heads, constantly tearing the other parts of itself to ribbons. 

If I wanted to further improve it, I think I would have instead made the spouse a synth. It would require some serious reworking, but I would have made it so that Sean did believe that synths were people, or that they were real enough that the difference was negligible, they had free will. During the initial grab, the Institute took the entire cryopod where Sean was, baby and parent both. They used Sean to create the next generation of synths, but something happened with the parent, and they died during defrost. Sean hates the Institute for what they did, but what happened was truly a medical complication, not malicious in any way. When he learns that the player character is active, he creates a synth programmed to believe they are the spouse. He believes that exposing who he really is to the surviving parent would be traumatic, and as he hears that the player character is thriving, he wants to give them a chance at a normal life, and to alleviate the loss that he had in his life with the loss of his own parents. So the spouse is sent to you, and for a long time, you and the spouse have no idea. You adventure together, you build settlements together, the game encourages you to have a good relationship. It doesn’t have to be hunky dory, and I’d argue it’s actually better if it’s not. Have the spouse be programmed with some rough experiences in the Wasteland, so they’re nervous, skittish, maybe even a little resentful that the player character snoozed their way through everything, but slowly rebuild the relationship. That way, when the quest eventually comes where you find the truth, the player character has to confront that reality. Then when you confront Sean, Sean explains himself and the player is given the choice to forgive him, be understanding but still angry, or be hugely pissed at the manipulation. That’s drama that uses the core theme of what synths are about with the whole kill-and-replace motif the Institute does. There’s a plot twist that batters the player, there’s one that’s just messy and gross and tough to reconcile. There’s one where the conclusion the player comes to is valid because it’s the player themselves deciding what the meaning of it is.

So overall, I see Fallout 4 as a bunch of missed opportunities and clumsy writing wrapped up in the popular shallow open-worlds that triple-A games end up having. 

Thanks for the question, Jackie.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[trombonechurchill]

@the-jonesy replied to your post:(someone ask me questions about my tabletop...

Do you have pinboards about thrm **? Would you ever consider making one? Tell me their name and class please **

(bless u) I’ve never made any pinboards but I am 100% going to consider it now.

I have 3 active ones right now..which I think I’ll put under a cut because I love talking about my children

Firstly, I have Farren, my half-elf Warlock. He’s my first ever actual DnD character and I adore him.

He didn’t really have a lot of friends growing up and accidentally befriended Death (capital D, Death) as a result and now has cool magic powers because Death thought it’d be funny. Literally. His Patron’s motivations are “do it, it’ll be funny.”

He doesn’t really have the best social skills and he tends to get weirdly hyper focused and pick up or touch things he shouldn’t, but his party loves (or at least tolerates him) and he’s so excited that people want to spend time with him.

Then there’s Reyna, a tiefling Sorcerer. She’s for a friend’s test game set in some kind of Fallout/DnD fusion experience who found a magic slot magic in the middle of the desert and is now cursed gifted with magic. She prescribes to very much being at the whims of luck and fate and likes to just roll with whatever Fate decides will happen to her. The living embodiment of that John Mulaney bit like “Life is already so weird, this might as well happen.” 

And lastly, there’s Eli, who’s for a World of Darkness game my friend is running (for those unfamiliar, it’s Urban Fantasy style stuff). He’s a garbage fire of a human being and a somewhat unwilling Hunter (of monsters). He’s mostly there for sarcastic commentary and trying to seduce people into helping the party. He’s not very good at it. I have written character studies on this boy and I probably put waaay too much thought into how I play him, I just.. love this disaster child so much.

[otherpens]

So Critical Role looks like something I should be aware of, but I know absolutely nothing about D&D or how it works (Is it even a game of D&D? That's how little I know about this). My question to you: should I watch it anyway? Will I be able to keep up with what's happening?

Okay SO I just got into it a few weeks ago myself, and it may seem daunting because the episodes run long but honestly it’s kind of a thing you can run in the background or a tab ‘cause there’s stretches that are math or bathroom breaks etc.

It is D&D, kind of.

It is a group of friends who happen to be voice actors who got together a few years back for one person’s birthday and he said he wanted to try a tabletop RPG. They all enjoyed the one-off campaign so much that they made it a regular thing, playing Pathfinder, which is kind of like an alternative to D&D but shares many common elements.

They then were approached to make it a live streaming feature of a web channel, and decided to make the switch to D&D 5th edition as that brand is just generally more recognizable–however the game they have ended up playing is what they call a “homebrew” version of D&D with some changes made to accommodate the transition and also just what the DM and players prefer. Apparently this has miffed some stricter nerds but as most people don’t fall into that category, screw it, they’re having a blast.

So each player has their character who they have already privately been playing for a year or two in these fun sessions at this point, so at the start of the streaming series they have established some backstory as a group and as individuals, having gone on adventures and become loyal companions and friends (though they certainly don’t always agree or get along!) Some characters come and go on the basis of player availability as it’s live on Thursday evenings when they film and stream it, but these changes are deftly woven into the narrative by the brilliant Dungeon Master, Matt Mercer, who handles setting up the world of the story and populating it with NPCs (non-player characters) who may interact with the played characters to offer information, alliances, conflict, or even just silly fun. The characters and their choices drive what happens, however, and so there are times where Mercer has clearly got A Plan but then the players chose to go do something completely different and he just has to go with that flow and it’s amazing. Apart from rare expressions of baffled surprise or helpless laughter at extreme ridiculousness, Mercer has a hell of a poker face and an uncanny knack for imbuing dozens of different NPC characters with distinct voices, mannerisms, and their own inner lives. Like that alone makes it worth watching.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Every one of these goddamn players is a goddamn master at playing with humour and tragedy in equal measure and their improvisational skills and creativity are stunning. A merry band of misfits and every one of them managing to have moments of being adorable dorks, amazing badasses, frickin dummies, and heartwrenching infants who just need to be held by me and kept safe forever and ever.

I didn’t really know much about the mechanics of D&D when I began watching but they really do explain a lot as they go as well as having some early videos where the DM explains things in a tutorial. Basically each character has stats–numbers of points on a range of high to low which affect parts of their personalities and skill sets. (My terminology is paraphrased here so bear with me.) These numbers may then be modified with basic addition or subtraction by the following: racial qualities - skills/abilities granted on the basis of their species and its culture; class bonuses - basically whatever their chosen “career” is…rogues/thieves have boosted stealth, fighters have better attacks, etc.; as well as modifiers linked to any objects/tools/armour/magic that the character owns or has access to. These modifiers may be physical/practical or abstract/magical, and may add OR subtract. (One character, famously, wears plate armour which gives her a higher protective armour score and a lower stealth score because of all the noise it makes when she moves.)

Then, to add the elements of fate and whimsy to the choices made by characters and in their conflicts and interactions with the world and characters around them, the DM guides players to roll “checks” for abilities when they want to try something, to see if it is a success or failure. They roll from sets of many-sided dice of varying numbers according to a rule set I don’t pretend to even begin to understand but as long as the DM knows, you’re golden. These base numbers given by the dice rolls can then be modified by character stat numbers and their modifying objects/magic, should they choose to use them. Obviously a higher score means a better outcome and lower score may lead to indifferent or even negative consequences. These numbers are interpreted by the DM (who often rolls his own dice and keeps his own notes to determine where his own NPC characters are in reaction to the played characters,) who gives out an explanation of how the character’s attempt panned out, and where it takes them, next. A “critical roll” is where a player rolls the biggest 20-sided die and it lands on either a 1 or a 20–as these are before any moderating scores are added or subtracted they are known as “natural” ones and twenties, and they themselves have a moderating effect when they occur, doubling other points rolled for a more effective and lucky outcome, in the case of a 20. I don’t know what a Nat One does exactly in terms of numbers but safe to say it is never good and sometimes so bad it’s funny unless you’re actually in a dire spot of combat.

Because the characters can actually die. Permanently. Resurrection exists in this world but the rules around it make it HARD and uncertain. One character did die in a battle before the steamed show began and though she was brought back to life it is clear that the event shook the foundations of this character’s life and she’s still struggling with the fallout of that event in several ways. One wrong turn, one moment, one unlucky roll of a dice and nobody, not even the DM, can say “do over”. These are characters they’ve built and played for years as friends and now on a popular show and the emotional attachment is extreme. I won’t spoil anything but the risk is real, and everyone knows it all too well. Which, for me, is part of the excitement and fascination. It’s so well-written, and yet it’s not written, at all. It’s a complex and beautiful and funny and tragic and exciting adventure and it’s solely built on the commitment of these disgustingly-talented friends to a rich and wondrous world and characters they’ve come to love.

Clearly I could talk about it forever so feel free to ask me any more questions you might have! And there’s heaps of spoilers in tags if you wanna stay clear of them so I’ll do my best to keep my responses clear of the magnificent twists and turns.

So YES please give it a try (archived episodes are all on YouTube on the Geek & Sundry channel,) and you’ll totally get what’s going on. Mercer explains things pretty well, for the players and the audience. They jump right in with a new adventure and there’s an intro bit where they narrate character backstories, for the first several episodes.

[kayawagner]

Fallout Wasteland Warfare Q&A with Designer James Sheahan

Stargazer’s World is first and foremost a roleplaying games blog, but that doesn’t mean we can’t cover board or tabletop miniature games from time to time. One game I am very excited about is Modiphius’ Fallout Wasteland Warfare. It’s an exciting Fallout miniature game which can be played cooperatively, competitively and even solo. Since I am a huge fan of the Fallout franchise, I reached out to Modiphius and asked if James Sheahan, designer of the game, was willing to answer a few questions for us. Luckily he agreed. Before delving right into the interview I want to thank James for taking his time to answer my questions!

Stargazer: Thanks again for taking your time and answer our questions. Before we talk about Fallout Wasteland Warfare, let’s talk about you. Who is James Sheahan?

James: My pleasure, Michael.  I worked in video games for 10 years and then as a consultant/freelancer game designer for the last 12 years working for games companies, global ad agencies, Google and others.  Like most of us, I have played board games, RPGs, wargames and video games since I was young, and I love film and fiction too.  I actually didn’t start out in games as a designer, but I worked my work across into design as that was my main passion.  I have been very fortunate to have had a very varied experience – some of it, even I can’t quite believe.

Stargazer: Can you tell us a bit about how the idea for a Fallout miniatures game was formed? What problems arose during development? Feel free to share any interesting anecdotes – we love those!

James: The idea for a Fallout miniatures game was Chris Birch’s – owner and Director of Modiphius Entertainment – who knew a wargame with great models would fit perfectly with Fallout.  Fallout has such a broad fan-base that it needed a game that could appeal to all types of players and this was one of the key challenges: To create a game that could appeal to both lighter/general gamers (who may not have played a wargame before) who want to experience story-rich adventures in the Fallout Wasteland, as well as appeal to experienced wargamers who want pure wargaming, like organised play, plus all types of player inbetween.  It needed simplicity which could also deliver detail, plus could handle lots of variety to bring the myriad of creatures, weapons, items in the Fallout games to life.  It’s interesting to look back and the hand-drawn unit and weapons cards I made are very similar to how they are in the final game – so the fundamental systems were created at the very start.  The tough part was then how to enable players to choose which optional elements they wanted so they could tailor the gameplay and experience to what they wanted.

Stargazer: For many people Fallout is first and foremost a roleplaying game franchise. Does Fallout Wasteland Warfare have some roleplaying aspects in it?  Is there a progression system for the various units? 

James: Fallout: Wasteland Warfare matches the video games closely with plenty of combat, but also you can lockpick, hack computers, search for items, etc.  Also, you can scour the wasteland for helpful items although they may be booby-trapped, locked or near a hostile creature.  You may encounter strangers who need a favour, or can assist you.  The skill rolls tell the story of what happens too.  So, whilst it’s not role-playing game, there’s a great amount of story, variety and actions – one of the main things I hear when giving game demos is how it really feels like Fallout.

Progression is an interesting one.  I wanted to create a system where you were not at a disadvantage if you played against someone with a more experienced force.  Also, playing a series of games against a friend with on-going forces can quickly become unbalanced as one force replaces lost forces whilst the other upgrades surviving ones – it was something I didn’t enjoy in some games in the 90’s.  I still wanted a player’s force to progress over time but the battles would be even – plus, you and I can play even if you are using progression and I am not.  (I do like to set myself a challenge…)  As a result, the progression is built into the (optional) Settlement system which happens between battles, instead of your force itself.  The Settlement system lets you buy buildings for your settlement which determine what sort of weapons and equipment you gather from the wasteland to use in next battle.  It also lets you go exploring inbetween battles which are like single-card, micro role-playing encounters.

Stargazer: Most tabletop miniatures games focus on competitive gameplay, but from what I’ve read you can play Fallout Wasteland Warfare cooperatively and even solo. Can you please elaborate?

James: From the start, Chris wanted the game to be playable solo and co-operatively as well as player-versus-player.  To deliver this, Fallout: Wasteland Warfare comes with an AI system so a player, or players, can play against the game too (or even add an AI element to their versus games).  The AI is one of the areas of which I am most proud of as each unit in the game has its own personality, can attempt almost any objective (not just attack), whilst remaining simple to use when playing.  It can defend a moving convoy, hack computers, find hidden objects, walk patrol routes, and more.  Funny thing is, it actually plays better than I do!

Each model-type comes with a single AI card that dictates its behaviour using a small matrix.  This matrix determines the actions it will take based on its current situation – how much health it has remaining, if there are friendlies nearby, etc..  The AI’s matrix also flavours their responses such as whether they will be reckless or careful, or remain engaged in combat or not, etc.  Super Mutants get more reckless as they get more damaged, whilst the Enslaved Tech won’t take risks unless there are friendlies nearby.  The Alien Zetan makes me laugh as it runs away when there are too many enemies around, will usually attack lone enemies, and will only try to achieve the objective if no-one is nearby.  The two-player starter set comes with 5 scenarios specifically for play against the AI, but the AI can be used with pretty much any scenario.  Also, we’ve just released a free AI handbook to assist players in using the AI for their own scenarios, plus 3 scenarios that really showcase the AI’s capability.

Stargazer: What can you tell us about Narrative Mode? Could this be the mode most exciting to us roleplaying game fans?

James: If you want lots of Fallout story and setting in your game, then narrative (default) mode is the one for you.  The game contains the items Fallout fans will be familiar with such as power armour (which can degrade), chems (which you can get addicted to), mods, stealth boys, junk – the list goes on.  Some items you find may be booby-trapped, or need lockpicking skill to open them.  As I mentioned, Fallout: Wasteland Warfare lets you do more than just combat so you can lockpick, hack, search, climb, etc.  You can give your models Perks and your Leader can pick some special skills.  You can meet strangers or encounter creatures in the Wasteland, and you can even go on personal Quests (some of which have multiple parts) which are independent of the scenario being played.  And that’s just some of it!  Fallout: Wasteland Warfare can really deliver lots of the Fallout experience.  The scenarios add lots of story to the game too so I think those will really interest you.  Most are focussed on achieving objectives in short timescales, like blowing the support columns of an old overpass to destroy a gang’s camp, hacking computers to find technical data, defending a farm from attempts to burn their crops, and many more.  My advice: Remember your objectives.

Stargazer: Can you tell us a bit about the mechanics driving the game? What sets FWW apart from other miniature games?

James: I wanted a game with modern systems to make play simple and visual.  The mechanics driving the game are the colour-coded measuring sticks (which make ranges simple for weapons and skills and have with markers to help colour-blind players) and the skill rolls.  The skill dice is the main dice for making a test by rolling equal to or under the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute next to the relevant skill icon.  Not every model’s skills are derived from the same attribute; for example, Sole Survivor’s Health is based on their Endurance but Dogmeat can last in combat due to their Agility.  The skill dice has multiple 1s so low-valued skills are still useful.  When you roll the skill dice, you often roll coloured effect dice too – weapon cards show which ones to use depending on the range.  Black dice mostly add damage, yellow mostly reduce armour, green mostly lower the number rolled on the skill dice, and blue give icons that can trigger special effects.  Just by looking at the dice colours, you know what sort of effect a weapon has.  These dice really tell the story of each test too as you can see what aspects helped it succeed or fail – you can see if a Super Mutant was killed because the shot penetrated its armour or just did lots of extra damage that over-powered it; you can see if a scope made the difference between a hit or a miss.  There are many other mechanics that are a bit different to other games too which each impart more of the Fallout feel.  Overall, it was great how naturally most aspects of the video games could be melded into game mechanics such as action points, using criticals, V.A.T.S., radiation damage, power armour, and so on.  As a result, I believe the game feels different to most miniature games out there, and I think that’s a good thing.

Stargazer: I faintly remember reading about some game mode in which player’s can actually build their own bases in FWW. How does this work?

James: That’s the (optional) Settlement mode I mentioned when talking about progression.  When you use your Settlement (recorded on the Settlement Sheet), it simulates your inhabitants creating items, growing food, or scavenging and exploring out in the Wasteland.  The structures you build determine what and how much you draw; for example, having a cooking station lets you draw one food/drink card for each crop field you have and you then keep one of those drawn cards.  When you go into your next battle, your models can always equip their standard equipment (usually just a weapon) so the cards you draw give you more to choose from.  The structures also determine how much of what you find you can equip, as well as letting you keep cards from one battle to the next.  As I mentioned, it also lets you draw Explore cards too which include some of my personal favourites.  The Settlement only restricts what equipment you can use, not your units; therefore, players using the Settlement system can still play equally versus players who are not as both start with the same caps (points) total.

Stargazer: Aside from miniatures based on characters and places from Fallout 4, Modiphius also announced a Frank Horrigan (which was the Enclave president’s bodyguard in Fallout 2) miniature. Does this mean,we’re going to see more scenarios, miniatures and scenery inspired by the older games in the series in the future?

James: Definitely.  We’ll be releasing models from other Fallout games like the Enclave and many others.  We plan to release new models and other expansions for Fallout: Wasteland Warfare for a long time to come.  The Fallout world is so rich that the hard part is working out which to do first, but it’s a nice problem to have.

Stargazer: What are your plans regarding FWW for the immediate future and in the long run?

James: We’re currently shipping wave 1 of products and it’ll be in stores too.  After that, we plan to release smaller waves of products so they can be released more frequently.  New waves include new cards that expand all areas of the game so your Fallout world expands too.  We’re planning on releasing some campaign sets too which I am very excited by as they should deliver story like no other wargame.

Stargazer: Modiphius is mainly known for their roleplaying games, so will we ever see a Fallout tabletop roleplaying game by you folks or is this totally off the table?

James: There’s not been a Fallout RPG before so it’s definitely something we would love to do.

Stargazer: Is there anything else you want to talk about but which I forgot to ask? Here’s your chance!

James: I’ve talked a lot about the gameplay, but it’s important to recognise the fantastic work the modelling team have done sculpting the models – they look amazing and truly bring the world to life.  Also, the wargames team and our Vault Dweller volunteers have worked really hard too.

Overall, I hope people have fun immersing themselves in the Fallout world in the way and depth they want to, whether playing against each other, co-operatively or solo.

Related posts:

Fallout: Indianapolis

Fallout Fudged

Fallout: Indianapolis – From SPECIAL to Atomic Highway

Fallout Wasteland Warfare Q&A with Designer James Sheahan published first on https://supergalaxyrom.tumblr.com

[bearrigan37]

Mind Vomit, Mind Laundry and Mind Garbage

Hey everyone.

Its been about a year and a half since my last real post. A lot of things have happened since that last post. I am not going to talk about a good chunk of it, because I just plain don't want to. The gist is that I lost a friend, I lost my job and lost my place to live. Thankfully my mother is tolerant of our shenanigans and is letting us stay with her. It's been rough, to say the least. The good things are that my sons are healthy and happy, and get to play around with their cousins and grandparents almost every day. The older one is almost done with his Pre-K, and even has a little ceremony coming up for it.

The thought that this child has grown so much is mind boggling. He's a little cutout of me (unfortunately, but thank the abyss that he also has his mothers genes). He'll start actual Kindergarten soon. His little brother is growing in his teeth, crawling, standing, and damn near walking already. The older one is the young ones favorite person in the world, and that's a big ray of happiness in my otherwise bleak worldview.

My wife has had her ups and downs as well. The school she used to go to that caused her tons of grief is going down for being generally shady and terrible, but the school she is going to now can no longer offer the classes for the degree program she is on. She did, however, get into some classes that will lead to a job with an old folks home, and will make her a CNA. Hopefully that acts as a foot in the door for her to get closer to her career of choice, labor and delivery nursing.

My mom and stepdad are slowly starting to do all the alterations to their house that they have been wanting to do, and seeing them out there painting and cutting wood and doing all their little projects makes my super happy for them. It took them both a long time to finally be in a place that allows that kind of stuff, and they're both finally in a place mentally where they are actually very happy. My sons adore my mom and stepdad, so that's a bonus.

My dad got his shop/cave set up and has a bunch of cool things in there. Amazon Echo turns on his air conditioning and that will always be novel to me. My boys got to spend some time with him recently too. My oldest preferred to play outside, but the younger one had a bit of a fascination with him. His laptop, his beard, the dog, all very exciting to the little guy. Being closer to my parents has brought a good amount of peace to my mind.

In the past year and change, I've done lots of thinking. Lots of anxiety, depression and dysphoria have rushed through me at breakneck speeds. I read an article from Transgender Universe lately that was pretty spot on, I'll link it at the end of this post.

Basically, it talks about the anxiety and mental acrobatics that a person goes through when even thinking about transitioning. It hit all the marks, and I recommend that you all read it. Funny that at the moment I type this paragraph, “Wired Wrong” by Steam Powered Giraffe started playing on my computer.

Anyway.

I lay awake a lot at night. I wake up at all hours in blind panic, or crushing anxiety. I think and think and overthink. The me that is now and the past me, have all laid the foundation for my current life. They've laid down the building blocks for what I have to deal with later on. I did a lot of things wrong, and a few things totally right, but they are both things that keep me up. Does the future me, the correct me, even have the strength to figure out how to deal with all that later on, when I'll be forced to? My decisions and lifestyle now have basically doomed me, lets breakdown how so that everyone has an idea of whats going on in my head.

First off, the two big things that are doing things to my general mental and physical health are my diabetes and my gender dysphoria. Because of the diabetes, I can’t take the pills for transitioning, because the pills are bad for your kidney and liver. The other options are injections or cream/ointment/patches. The injections are the most effective way of taking the hormones, and the cream is the least effective way. The injections are on a national shortage, and there is no real sign of that shortage coming to an end. I'm not sure how the cream would play out for me, honestly. I've been too in my own head to actually call my doctor and find out. More on that later.

Everything that has happened in the past year and change has stopped me dead in my tracks in doing whats best for me. I haven't called doctors, I haven't taken medicine, I haven't gone to school, I've done nothing. Well, I did finally get to go camping, and took a few trips into the desert with my brother in law, those always helped clear my head, but now its spring and my allergies would literally kill me if I stayed outside for too long. I got pericarditis last spring, every time I sneezed or coughed, it would create too much pressure on my heart and stop it momentarily because of a build up of fluid in the pericardium, or something like that. This happened because of viral infection, because allergies.

I worry about everything. I don't sleep, because I think of what is going to happen in the future. When I finally find work again, how far into my transition can I go before things get awkward, or violent for me? How long before someone finds a reason to fire me that allows them to claim that it wasn't discrimination? How do I explain myself to my sons teachers? What do I do if one of the parents of my sons friends decides my son can’t play with their child because of who I am? What do I do when faced with all that? How can I even justify going through with my transition, using all that money when it could be used to pay bills, pay for food, pay for doctors, or even just buying toys for my babies? This whole thing terrifies me. I'm scared to exist, merely because existing the way I want to exist could mean no job, no house, no life if I'm not careful, as in I could be killed because of what I am. The thing that scares me more than that is what will happen to my kids and my wife if I start presenting and people make the connection. Everything that could happen to them keeps me awake.  

I can't justify putting myself first at all. I need to put other people before me. I have a compulsion to do small things for myself to keep myself sane, like archery or hiking, but in the long run, I will never allow myself to put myself first. This leads to more problems.

Like my steadily declining health.

In that regard, I am purposefully putting off everything because of stupid reasons. Its like those fetch quest strings. Go get this, so that you can get this thing from that guy, who'll give you a thing to give to that guy over there who needs this other thing because blah blah blah. I put off working out because my back and feet wont allow me to work out in the ways I want/need to, but I dont go to the doctors to fix those things because [reasons], [bullshit], and [nonsense].

My diabetes is uncontrolled. I have had plenty of opportunities to go to doctors of all kinds of different fields to get me healthy. Doctors for my feet, my organs, my eyes, my back, doctors to get my weight down, start meal planning for a gastric sleeve, therapists, etc, etc, etc. I don't go. I never go. I know I should. I need to get myself into shape. I need to get the fatty tumor on my liver taken care of. I need to get insoles for my feet. I need to stay alive, but I hardly want to.

Because its inconvenient for everyone else.

I have to go to the doctor, well then I need to use the car to go way out to the outskirts of town to see her. I have to see another doctor later, and another later, well I've already used a ton of gas to do that, and I cant forget about how last time I went out to see my doctor, the tire went flat so we had to pay for new ones. Cant let that happen again. Doctors appointments at weird times? Cant try to get someone to babysit, they might be doing something else, I don't want to bother them. I'll just not go. It's easier that way.

That's how it goes.

Hell, even right now I feel terrible writing this instead of searching for a job. I mean, I know there isn't much more I can do to find one, short of getting out and going to places instead of applying online. I just feel bad. I don't really even play games anymore, because I feel guilty enjoying myself instead of providing, or even just trying to provide. I play strictly mobile games now, and the ones I play I just play because I'm part of groups and don't want to let them down. I'm playing a tabletop Fallout game with my wife that I created, mostly because she has been wanting to play D&D for a long time. My game is unpolished and rough, but she's enjoying it, so that's what matters.

I'm not writing this to complain, mostly. I'm going to complain anyway, because I try not to in real life, so I'm writing this on the off chance that more than five people read this. I'm writing this so that if there are any people that feel the same thing, they know that they aren't alone. The only reason I am comfortable typing this out in the first place is because I think only five to ten people read these when I put them out. Some of my dearest, closest friends have no idea who I am, even though I laid it out plain in the past posts. I guess that in a sense, it is a bit of a cry for help, but I'm allowed at least one, right?

Anyone?

*Ahem*.

Losing my job is the worst thing. I had started working at Sportsman's Warehouse, at the archery counter. It was great. Talk about bows, shoot bows, fix bows, and when I'm not doing that, head over to the gun counter and talk about guns, or do some minor work on scopes, sighting in rifles or whatever. Stock the shelves and clean when there is downtime. It was a fun, easy job. I lost the job because I fucked up an interaction with a customer, and mistakenly thought he wouldn't fire the air rifle I just cocked. Well he did, it was loud, and some people thought it was loaded. Corporate HR and Corporate LP decided I had to go. The managers did what they could for me but, I don't think they could even do much. I loved that job, I enjoyed the company of all the people I worked with. My bosses were cool.

All gone now.

Since I am living with my mom, there have been more troubles. My mom and step dad really like everything to be clean and neat, but I'm very lethargic most of the time. I try to help with cleaning and whatnot, but I just don't have the motivation. I know in my head that I shouldn't need motivation, I should just do it because I’m a god damn adult and that's what adults are supposed to do but... eh. Granted, I'm cleaning more here than I did when I was on my own.

My oldest son keeps telling us that he wants to go home, or go to the new house. Having to tell him that we are home, that there is no new house, and watching his little heart break is just the worst thing.

Living with my mom and step dad is great. We all get along great, we have fun and things aren't bad. I just know that we are a bit of an inconvenience. We dirty the house, eat the food, use the water, and don't really do much to help other than cleaning or occasionally buying beer. I wish there was more we could do, but I don't even know what there could be, without income anyway. We have money, but we need to use it to get a place, if there even is a place that will take us with no income, even if we can pay 6 months all at once.

Another thing is that my uncle was supposed to move down a while back, but the only place he can stay is here at my moms. We're still here, so he cant move down. I don't think he will move down until he knows we are back on our feet and stable. He's just like that, he likes to make sure everyone else is comfortable. He doesn't want to impose, I guess. Something like that. We create more inconveniences. So I'm a huge ball of anxiety and guilt and awful. This all contributes to the decline of my mental health. Dysphoria itself is bad enough but damn, just add everything else up and there's just a massive shitstorm on the horizon and I don't know whats going to happen when it hits. I don't know.

Additionally, I don't talk to anyone anymore. I don't know if I don't talk to them because of whats happening, or I just don't, or anything. I don't anymore. I would like to. I would, but I just don't. I guess its that motivation thing from before.

I mean, at this point I feel like I'm just rambling, but this is an important thing for people to know. Contact with humans outside of family is important. Having friends is important. I talk to a few of them online, but rarely.Plus I need to say all this stuff and not actually say it.

Point is, I don't know what my point is. I've got issues.

Everyone has issues, I know. I know that this is also my outlet, my way of letting people know how I feel about things and letting people know stuff about my life. It started out as my Daddy Blog thing and man did that go downhill fast. I feel the need to apologize for the content of these posts, though I know I have no reason to. Should be a little gateway into my head. I open myself to the public for that reason, to give people that gateway. Maybe something I type out and ramble about helps someone. Who knows?

God I hate posting these things, but I have to do it. I have to let it be known. Even if it makes me want to throw up because of nervousness. It’ll all just get worse if I don't.

Thanks for reading.

Links for more reading (Better reading)

My dads Amazon page! He has a ton of books.

https://www.amazon.com/Ron-Washburn/e/B008MN7D2U

My friends blog, she has adventures and ideas!

http://nearlyeloquent.com/

Transgender Universe article, and really just check out the site.

http://transgenderuniverse.com/2017/04/03/the-darkest-moments-in-a-transgender-existence/