Fallout: The Search for the Fountain of Youth

I love Fallout.  I mean, I reeeeealllyyy love Fallout.  Interestingly, it was the announcement of the miniatures game by Modiphius, in what must have been 2016 or 2017, that turned me onto the franchise (miniatures tend to do that to me!).  I decided to try one of the video games while I waited for the miniatures game to be released, and on the advice of my brother (who had played them all) New Vegas was probably the best, so if I was going to play only one – that would be the choice.  I did start there, and by golly did I enjoy it!  I finished it before the miniatures game released, then proceeded to binge Fallout 3, Fallout 76 and then Fallout 4.

Now I’m faced with a long wait until the next video game, and that is quite depressing.  BUT we do have the miniatures game, and I’ve been a fan right from the very start.  I was even at the launch party in London in August 2018.

The game is fantastic, and it’s gone from strength to strength since its release.  So much so that its grown a few arms and legs since its launch and I must admit I neglected it for a few months and now I need to get caught up.  So part of this project will be getting myself back organised, getting game ready, and getting more minis on the painting table. Oh and buying the releases that I’ve missed 😉

Mainly though, I want to create a tabletop experience that is as close to a traditional Fallout RPG open-world adventure experience as possible.  The game system can totally handle it, I don’t think I’ll need to add much in the way of “rules” to link all the parts together to create the experience.  I’ve been playing Five Parsecs from Home recently, and have learned a lot from that about procedurally generated campaign development.  The tabletop battles in Five Parsecs are quite simple, Fallout is a much chunkier experience, so I’m really excited to get started!

The first point of order is to decide where to set my campaign.  I don’t want to get too exotic, because I want to stay true to the model range and setting of the miniatures game.  It needs to be believable that the characters and factions would be present where I am.  But I also want to be able to discover things as I encounter them and not be limited by a location that is already covered.  So, to make @Warzan proud, I’m gaming in the gaps.  Someone online made a map showing the locations of all the existing Fallout games.  And I’ve found my gap.  The Cincinnati region around the Kentucky/Ohio border!

The must-have tool for any vault-dweller-turned-wasteland-explorer is a device called a Pip-Boy.  Essentially a wrist-mounted computer that serves as your in-game inventory/quest/map manager among other things.

I don’t think I am going to go too mad recreating all of the screens, because that would be a crazy undertaking, but I do want to have a map reveal and exploration experience that is similar.

So with the aid of Snazzymaps.com I’ve created a pip-boy style map for my location.  I’ve got one with the real-world place names on, and one without.  The one without the locations is going to be the one I’ll use – as mentioned I really want to explore and discover, unbiased by knowing what’s where.  I will need the locations to refer to as I move around the map. That will also allow me to research a new area and try to bring some real-world influence to the locations. I just want to try to avoid knowing too much about a location in advance.

Like every good prepper, I don’t want to enter the post-apocalyptic nightmare of the post-nuclear war world without being ready. One of my learnings from my 5 Parsecs campaign is that if you have too much to do in between missions, that can lead to large gaps in progress. I recently rolled an enemy consisting of 9 “punks”. That took some work to find, build and paint the models, and led to lots of opportunities for distraction!

Having said that, I have so many unbuilt and unpainted Fallout models that if I wanted to wait until they were all painted before starting the campaign…well…it would never get started. But I want to make it as easy as possible.

First bit of prep is consolidating all the cards and tokens into one place. I bought this accessory from Folded Space some months (years?) ago and finally got round to installing it. It turns the original game box into a full storage solution. Worked a treat!

There’s still a bit of campaign prep to do, including working out what the starting conditions will be, but as is the way with Fallout it’s likely it’ll start by emerging from a vault, which gives me a bit of focus in terms of determining what models I need to prioritise to give me options in the early game. Vault dwellers!

Another element of prep is getting all the various scenario documents, expansions etc organised. One of the downsides of the Covid-19 pandemic was that it severely impacted the distribution of physical product. But the legends at Modiphius kept the content coming via PDFs. I lost track a little bit, but with the aid of an online printing company, I’m getting everything spiral bound and ready to use as a menu for the campaign.

Robots and their Mechanist master should make for some interesting encounters. In Fallout it is common that the allegiance of robots can be changed using computer terminals, so there are a multitude of possible scenarios where the robots are friend, foe, or a combination of the two!

A huge part of the Fallout video games are terminals. You hack them to access various gameplay actions, such as opening doors, controlling defence systems, or to glean nuggets of lore.

I thought it would be a pretty cool way to tell some of the story of my campaign in an in-game style, so I’ve been playing around with Google Docs to let me do just that.
By photographing my own computer screen, I think I’ve got something that fits the theme.

Very cool to have my robots featured on the Modiphius Fallout Friday roundup this month!

Also got another little mention on the 11th November Fallout Friday blog!

Next up for the wasteland-full-of-dangers are mirelurks!

I didn’t manage to catch all the steps in photos, it was nothing fancy, but I got a few:

I also bought a 3×3 gaming mat, and some MDF terrain from Warcradle Scenics to create an environment for them.  This will make for some interesting scenarios trying to clear out the infestation!

The photo setup.  Not professional by any means, and just using my phone handheld, so a lot can be improved, but I enjoyed crawling around on the bedroom floor to try to create some environmental pictures!