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jordangreywolf) wrote2017-08-18 01:21 pm
jordangreywolf) wrote2017-08-18 01:21 pm
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[Fallout] Scenario #1: Wok-a-Doodle
My Iron Kingdoms RPG campaign is on hiatus now until Necronomicon is over (in October), so I'm using our once-every-two-weeks game session to "play-test" some Fallout-themed scenarios for the convention. If by chance you plan to play my Fallout games at Necronomicon this year (or at my house), please skip over this, because there will be SPOILERS.
Backstory:
The "Long 15" is a stretch of former superhighway that now serves as a major merchant caravan artery running from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) in the heart of the New California Republic, all the way to New Vegas in the Mojave Desert. The roadway is traveled far more frequently by pack brahmin and cargo rickshaws than by cars or motorbikes, but either way, there are travelers who need to stop along the way for a bite, or for a safe place to shelter the night (or retreat from rad-storms or raiders).
The Wok-a-Doodle was a Chinese-American restaurant amid a cluster of small business sprung up in an unincorporated rural area off-ramp near one of the cloverleaf interchanges -- in other words, far enough from the urban sprawl that it was relatively spared from the nuclear fallout. 200+ years later, some entrepreneurs have set up shop in the old restaurant, tuned up its fusion-powered kitchen, and have started serving wasteland delicacies and relatively radiation-free drinks to traders, mercs, NCR soldiers, and other travelers along the roadway. As with any post-apocalyptic food venture, squirrel-on-a-stick, molerat chunks, radscorpion legs, and grilled radroaches are on the menu, but the real attraction would be the chicken dishes (as befitting the Wok-a-Doodle's name and logo).
The trouble is, there was an ... incident lately with the chicken pens out back, resulting in an escape of the restaurant's entire flock of mutant poultry. There's a large caravan scheduled to stop by for the night, so the proprietor will pay top caps to anyone who can bring in as many radchickens as possible before sundown -- preferably alive, but at least in edible condition.
Note: I might need to find a less mercenary motivation. If the PCs are doing this "for the caps," they could get distracted by other things that could potentially earn them money. ("Hey, let's loot this stuff! It's worth FAR more than chickens!") Maybe the PCs are all good buddies with the proprietor of the Wok-a-Doodle, as they've stopped by there before? Maybe one or more of the PCs was responsible for the radchickens getting loose? ;) Or maybe the proprietor is offering something special in compensation that can't be bought with money/caps.
Format:
I plan on set this up as a sort of "open air dungeon." That is, on one side of the board (GM's side) is the facade that represents the Wok-a-Doodle restaurant. I plan to have a large plastic "pavement" board set out to represent nearby streets, a Secret Weapons Miniatures Tablescape "sidewalk" board to mark off a large "block," and then various ruined buildings occupying that block. The PCs would have free rein to explore the building neighboring the Wok-a-Doodle (the automated Laundr-O-Mat on one side, and the old martial arts studio on the other), the debris-strewn streets, and the ruins the next block over.
The stated objective is to capture mutant chickens -- preferably alive (for more caps), or at least to retrieve their carcasses (serving as a disincentive to, say, disintegrate them into glowing green goo with heavy plasma weaponry). However, I'm not averse at all to some other "story" to be revealed once the PCs start poking around. I mostly just needed some sort of initial motivation for the PCs to start poking around the area, and it's up to the players whether they stick to that or not. (After all, the money they get paid for this scenario isn't going to matter much for the long-term, since this is just a one-shot scenario.)
At its most basic, I suppose I could just define this as a bunch of locations that the PCs can explore at their leisure, either traveling in one big pack, or splitting up and taking their chances with one-on-one encounters. The "time until sundown" is a bit squishy. The hard limit is "how much time we have left to run this scenario," but it also serves as an in-game cap on "time-hungry" options a player might have. (E.g., "I am going to start building a nuclear reactor from spare parts." Sorry, champ, that's going to take a while!)
I've been trying to track down some cockatrice minis to represent the "chickens." I suppose I could make the punchline be that these aren't really "chickens" by any stretch of the imagination at all, and I could substitute in some neo-velociraptors or some other creature that might be more challenging to deal with.
Overall Layout:
My initial idea was to have the central area be a "city block" occupied by various building ruins. The more I think about it, though, the more I think this whole area ought to be more like some sort of roadside open-air mall (the sort of thing lining the highways along I-95 and I-4 nearer to me), possibly with multiple eateries, but also some other businesses catering to travelers. Maybe an "outlet mall" store, maybe a service station, etc.
In that case, the central area might well just be a huge parking lot, with buildings lining the edges. However, I don't want to end up with a whole bunch of "dead space" in the play area. I think I'm probably going to have to start setting up the table over this weekend (I can leave it up, I suppose, in advance of next weekend's game) and get a feel for how much space I have to work with. (It should be comparable to the space I'll have at the convention, as I asked about table sizes at the hotel.)
I don't plan to decorate the INTERIORS of any buildings (or large vehicles) in any detail. Rather, if the action moves into one of the small buildings, I'm planning on treating things as more "theater of the mind" for what's going on in there. Mostly, the minis will be there for handling what happens if the action spills outside into the streets, and for marking WHICH building the PCs are visiting (especially important if they split up -- which I predict there's a good chance of). Basically, once you're inside the diner or the frosty bar or the Laundr-O-Mat, then everyone is in range of everyone else. Melee? You charge and swing. Range? Start shooting. Grenade? Uh oh. Time to dive out the window, because EVERYONE inside is going to be in the blast radius in this enclosed space.
I have a few very loose encounter ideas:
The Laundr-O-Mat
The Laundr-O-Mat has a robot (Mr. Handy) on duty 24/7 ... and has done so for the past 210 or so years. This Mr. Handy is just a little bit unstable, and is something of a clean freak, even as he's incapable of doing much about it in his current state; he's run completely out of Abraxo cleaning powder.
I see this as a "brains or talkie or fight" type of situation. This Mr. Handy is a bit unstable. The techno-expert could "hack" the Mr. Handy and draft him as a robotic ally while poking around the rest of the ruins. The "face" in the group could rely upon his or her charisma bonuses to talk to the Mr. Handy and persuade it toward some end. The "fighter" type could just clobber Mr. Handy if he's too much trouble (though that's probably the least interesting outcome).
Also, a random thought is that this Mr. Handy has been attempting to concoct an Abraxo substitute, using other chemicals salvaged from the area, but to no avail. However, someone with a chemistry background could make use of the stockpile to make some "acid bombs" or the like.
Roleplay-wise, I need to work on my "deranged British butler" accent.
Martial Arts School? Szechuan BBQ?
Actually, I'm not even sure that's what this is. This was from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play set originally, that I transformed into this street scene. Why NINJAS would feel at home in "Chinatown" (as per the original stickers on the toy set) I don't particularly know. (But then, why were there Samurai and Monks and Ninja in AD&D? Maybe I'm over-thinking it.)
I have a vague idea of throwing in some sort of turtle puns somehow here. Like, some Adolescent Genetically-Altered Assassin Terrapins. Or something stupid like that. Not totally sure where to go with that. Ack. And I'm going to try running this next weekend? What a mess.
Actually, I suppose what it COULD represent is where the radchickens were originally kept (interior rooms transformed into chicken coops?), and where they managed to escape from, hence why they spilled out into the street/lot right in front of the restaurant, as they came out the front door or windows.
Travel Service(?)
I have some "Mars Attacks" ruined scenery pieces from Mantic games, and I've assembled a few into ruined brick wall segments (along with some other ruined brick segments done in resin). One of my plug-in store signs is a "Travel Service" sign (images lifted from Fallout), but it could just as well be something else. What possibly could be interesting to find in such a place, other than a mutant chicken or some other random nasty creature hiding out? And why would this be something at an open air mall like this?
Okay, I think there's a good chance I'll swap out the sign and replace it with something else. I could imagine that for campaign play, an interior for a place like this could be fun to decorate with retrofuturistic travel posters (maybe signs extolling the virtues of visiting the "natural springs" at the moon colony), but for this setup it'd be wasted effort.
The Diner
A small diner with two entrances (front and side). Possibly suffering from a radroach infestation (which is what I did the last time I had a roadside post-apocalyptic diner). Good place for some Nuka-Cola vending machines, and thus a chance to get a Nuka-Cola "power-up," such as a new shipment of "Nuka Quantum" (depending upon the game, and the variety, Nuka-Cola grants various perks and drawbacks).
Poseidon Fuel/Fusion Station
Old Poseidon Energy service station, serving both gas-powered and fusion-powered vehicles (by offering pricey fuel as well as coolant). The main purpose of this would be that it's a natural spot for a "McGyver"/tinker member of the group (such as Junkyard Dawg) to find a workbench where he can try modifying gear or cobbling together custom devices to deal with whatever situation the PCs have gotten themselves into. There'd also be an excuse for a hacker in the group (likely Bonnie Clyde the Vault-Dweller and Jack-of-all-Trades) to crack a terminal to open a safe or supply cache. This might also be an interesting spot to have a suit of power armor. Accordingly, it's probably infested by radscorpions or other nasties. ;)
If I recycle my last diner setup, it could also have a "Dine-o-Matic" pie dispenser. (Basically, in Fallout 4, it's this bubble-domed display with tiers of heavily-preserved pie slices, and if you activate it, a robot claw comes down and TRIES to pick up one of the plates to put it in the out slot. An in-game "Easter egg" of sorts is that if you keep, keep, KEEP pushing the button and trying, eventually (after several hundred tries) it will actually pick up the pie slice and deposit it in the slot where you can finally (FINALLY!) get your slice of perfectly-preserved pie.
(no picture ... yet)
Frosty Bar
I've got a Plasticville O-Scale "Frosty Bar" -- not a complete structure, but at least MOST of it. it's basically an outdoor stand with a counter up in front and several stools, and some big letters up top that spell out "FROSTY BAR," with a very, very retro look. It definitely fits with the "open-air food court" type theme. As for what might be special there ... I suppose the fusion-powered refrigeration units are still working. Maybe Junkyard Dawg could use his McGyver skills to convert the refrigeration units into a sort of "Cryolator Lite" weapon that can deal frost damage and slow down targets. (It would deny the "fresh, never frozen!" claim on the radchicken meat, but could still come in handy as a way to defeat the nasty poultry AND keep it in a cookable state, once it thaws back out.)
Possibly an alternative spot for Nuka-Cola vending machines and a stock of Nuka Quantum.
I might also try some sort of "outdoor cafe" type area with some tables, and tattered remains of "umbrella" shades.
Other random feature ideas:
* Phone booths. While lots of things in this setting look very retro, the phone booths in this game lean more toward the retro-FUTURISTIC angle, often with kiosks of multiple clear "sound dome" or "sound bell" structures over the phone area, and hints of some kind of video-phone type operation (though of course in monochrome). Aside from looks, it'd be a good spot for spare parts for techies aiming to do some on-the-fly McGyver-ing.
* Vehicles. Nuclear-powered vehicles in the lot mean: a) a chance for huge explosions if someone shoots it and ruptures the fusion containment shell; b) a chance for someone to get a vehicle running, then use the thing to RUN DOWN radchickens (running them over); c) both of the above, especially if there's a collision; d) loot in the trunk (use for lockpicking skill).
* Caravan Camp? Maybe in the midst of all this, there's a small trader camp (maybe just one brahmin -- not sure if I want to kitbash too many of those two-headed cows! -- or some other mutant beasts of burden), where PCs could attempt to "buy on the fly" (trade "treasure" items they find in exchange for useful tools). Although if I do that, I need to give the PCs some motivation other than "capture chickens and get paid," or spending lots of money/loot on better gear (to capture those chickens) might seem counter-productive.
Backstory:
The "Long 15" is a stretch of former superhighway that now serves as a major merchant caravan artery running from Dayglow (formerly San Diego) in the heart of the New California Republic, all the way to New Vegas in the Mojave Desert. The roadway is traveled far more frequently by pack brahmin and cargo rickshaws than by cars or motorbikes, but either way, there are travelers who need to stop along the way for a bite, or for a safe place to shelter the night (or retreat from rad-storms or raiders).
The Wok-a-Doodle was a Chinese-American restaurant amid a cluster of small business sprung up in an unincorporated rural area off-ramp near one of the cloverleaf interchanges -- in other words, far enough from the urban sprawl that it was relatively spared from the nuclear fallout. 200+ years later, some entrepreneurs have set up shop in the old restaurant, tuned up its fusion-powered kitchen, and have started serving wasteland delicacies and relatively radiation-free drinks to traders, mercs, NCR soldiers, and other travelers along the roadway. As with any post-apocalyptic food venture, squirrel-on-a-stick, molerat chunks, radscorpion legs, and grilled radroaches are on the menu, but the real attraction would be the chicken dishes (as befitting the Wok-a-Doodle's name and logo).
The trouble is, there was an ... incident lately with the chicken pens out back, resulting in an escape of the restaurant's entire flock of mutant poultry. There's a large caravan scheduled to stop by for the night, so the proprietor will pay top caps to anyone who can bring in as many radchickens as possible before sundown -- preferably alive, but at least in edible condition.
Note: I might need to find a less mercenary motivation. If the PCs are doing this "for the caps," they could get distracted by other things that could potentially earn them money. ("Hey, let's loot this stuff! It's worth FAR more than chickens!") Maybe the PCs are all good buddies with the proprietor of the Wok-a-Doodle, as they've stopped by there before? Maybe one or more of the PCs was responsible for the radchickens getting loose? ;) Or maybe the proprietor is offering something special in compensation that can't be bought with money/caps.
Format:
I plan on set this up as a sort of "open air dungeon." That is, on one side of the board (GM's side) is the facade that represents the Wok-a-Doodle restaurant. I plan to have a large plastic "pavement" board set out to represent nearby streets, a Secret Weapons Miniatures Tablescape "sidewalk" board to mark off a large "block," and then various ruined buildings occupying that block. The PCs would have free rein to explore the building neighboring the Wok-a-Doodle (the automated Laundr-O-Mat on one side, and the old martial arts studio on the other), the debris-strewn streets, and the ruins the next block over.
The stated objective is to capture mutant chickens -- preferably alive (for more caps), or at least to retrieve their carcasses (serving as a disincentive to, say, disintegrate them into glowing green goo with heavy plasma weaponry). However, I'm not averse at all to some other "story" to be revealed once the PCs start poking around. I mostly just needed some sort of initial motivation for the PCs to start poking around the area, and it's up to the players whether they stick to that or not. (After all, the money they get paid for this scenario isn't going to matter much for the long-term, since this is just a one-shot scenario.)
At its most basic, I suppose I could just define this as a bunch of locations that the PCs can explore at their leisure, either traveling in one big pack, or splitting up and taking their chances with one-on-one encounters. The "time until sundown" is a bit squishy. The hard limit is "how much time we have left to run this scenario," but it also serves as an in-game cap on "time-hungry" options a player might have. (E.g., "I am going to start building a nuclear reactor from spare parts." Sorry, champ, that's going to take a while!)
I've been trying to track down some cockatrice minis to represent the "chickens." I suppose I could make the punchline be that these aren't really "chickens" by any stretch of the imagination at all, and I could substitute in some neo-velociraptors or some other creature that might be more challenging to deal with.
Overall Layout:
My initial idea was to have the central area be a "city block" occupied by various building ruins. The more I think about it, though, the more I think this whole area ought to be more like some sort of roadside open-air mall (the sort of thing lining the highways along I-95 and I-4 nearer to me), possibly with multiple eateries, but also some other businesses catering to travelers. Maybe an "outlet mall" store, maybe a service station, etc.
In that case, the central area might well just be a huge parking lot, with buildings lining the edges. However, I don't want to end up with a whole bunch of "dead space" in the play area. I think I'm probably going to have to start setting up the table over this weekend (I can leave it up, I suppose, in advance of next weekend's game) and get a feel for how much space I have to work with. (It should be comparable to the space I'll have at the convention, as I asked about table sizes at the hotel.)
I don't plan to decorate the INTERIORS of any buildings (or large vehicles) in any detail. Rather, if the action moves into one of the small buildings, I'm planning on treating things as more "theater of the mind" for what's going on in there. Mostly, the minis will be there for handling what happens if the action spills outside into the streets, and for marking WHICH building the PCs are visiting (especially important if they split up -- which I predict there's a good chance of). Basically, once you're inside the diner or the frosty bar or the Laundr-O-Mat, then everyone is in range of everyone else. Melee? You charge and swing. Range? Start shooting. Grenade? Uh oh. Time to dive out the window, because EVERYONE inside is going to be in the blast radius in this enclosed space.
I have a few very loose encounter ideas:
The Laundr-O-Mat
The Laundr-O-Mat has a robot (Mr. Handy) on duty 24/7 ... and has done so for the past 210 or so years. This Mr. Handy is just a little bit unstable, and is something of a clean freak, even as he's incapable of doing much about it in his current state; he's run completely out of Abraxo cleaning powder.
I see this as a "brains or talkie or fight" type of situation. This Mr. Handy is a bit unstable. The techno-expert could "hack" the Mr. Handy and draft him as a robotic ally while poking around the rest of the ruins. The "face" in the group could rely upon his or her charisma bonuses to talk to the Mr. Handy and persuade it toward some end. The "fighter" type could just clobber Mr. Handy if he's too much trouble (though that's probably the least interesting outcome).
Also, a random thought is that this Mr. Handy has been attempting to concoct an Abraxo substitute, using other chemicals salvaged from the area, but to no avail. However, someone with a chemistry background could make use of the stockpile to make some "acid bombs" or the like.
Roleplay-wise, I need to work on my "deranged British butler" accent.
Martial Arts School? Szechuan BBQ?
Actually, I'm not even sure that's what this is. This was from a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles play set originally, that I transformed into this street scene. Why NINJAS would feel at home in "Chinatown" (as per the original stickers on the toy set) I don't particularly know. (But then, why were there Samurai and Monks and Ninja in AD&D? Maybe I'm over-thinking it.)
I have a vague idea of throwing in some sort of turtle puns somehow here. Like, some Adolescent Genetically-Altered Assassin Terrapins. Or something stupid like that. Not totally sure where to go with that. Ack. And I'm going to try running this next weekend? What a mess.
Actually, I suppose what it COULD represent is where the radchickens were originally kept (interior rooms transformed into chicken coops?), and where they managed to escape from, hence why they spilled out into the street/lot right in front of the restaurant, as they came out the front door or windows.
Travel Service(?)
I have some "Mars Attacks" ruined scenery pieces from Mantic games, and I've assembled a few into ruined brick wall segments (along with some other ruined brick segments done in resin). One of my plug-in store signs is a "Travel Service" sign (images lifted from Fallout), but it could just as well be something else. What possibly could be interesting to find in such a place, other than a mutant chicken or some other random nasty creature hiding out? And why would this be something at an open air mall like this?
Okay, I think there's a good chance I'll swap out the sign and replace it with something else. I could imagine that for campaign play, an interior for a place like this could be fun to decorate with retrofuturistic travel posters (maybe signs extolling the virtues of visiting the "natural springs" at the moon colony), but for this setup it'd be wasted effort.
The Diner
A small diner with two entrances (front and side). Possibly suffering from a radroach infestation (which is what I did the last time I had a roadside post-apocalyptic diner). Good place for some Nuka-Cola vending machines, and thus a chance to get a Nuka-Cola "power-up," such as a new shipment of "Nuka Quantum" (depending upon the game, and the variety, Nuka-Cola grants various perks and drawbacks).
Poseidon Fuel/Fusion Station
Old Poseidon Energy service station, serving both gas-powered and fusion-powered vehicles (by offering pricey fuel as well as coolant). The main purpose of this would be that it's a natural spot for a "McGyver"/tinker member of the group (such as Junkyard Dawg) to find a workbench where he can try modifying gear or cobbling together custom devices to deal with whatever situation the PCs have gotten themselves into. There'd also be an excuse for a hacker in the group (likely Bonnie Clyde the Vault-Dweller and Jack-of-all-Trades) to crack a terminal to open a safe or supply cache. This might also be an interesting spot to have a suit of power armor. Accordingly, it's probably infested by radscorpions or other nasties. ;)
If I recycle my last diner setup, it could also have a "Dine-o-Matic" pie dispenser. (Basically, in Fallout 4, it's this bubble-domed display with tiers of heavily-preserved pie slices, and if you activate it, a robot claw comes down and TRIES to pick up one of the plates to put it in the out slot. An in-game "Easter egg" of sorts is that if you keep, keep, KEEP pushing the button and trying, eventually (after several hundred tries) it will actually pick up the pie slice and deposit it in the slot where you can finally (FINALLY!) get your slice of perfectly-preserved pie.
(no picture ... yet)
Frosty Bar
I've got a Plasticville O-Scale "Frosty Bar" -- not a complete structure, but at least MOST of it. it's basically an outdoor stand with a counter up in front and several stools, and some big letters up top that spell out "FROSTY BAR," with a very, very retro look. It definitely fits with the "open-air food court" type theme. As for what might be special there ... I suppose the fusion-powered refrigeration units are still working. Maybe Junkyard Dawg could use his McGyver skills to convert the refrigeration units into a sort of "Cryolator Lite" weapon that can deal frost damage and slow down targets. (It would deny the "fresh, never frozen!" claim on the radchicken meat, but could still come in handy as a way to defeat the nasty poultry AND keep it in a cookable state, once it thaws back out.)
Possibly an alternative spot for Nuka-Cola vending machines and a stock of Nuka Quantum.
I might also try some sort of "outdoor cafe" type area with some tables, and tattered remains of "umbrella" shades.
Other random feature ideas:
* Phone booths. While lots of things in this setting look very retro, the phone booths in this game lean more toward the retro-FUTURISTIC angle, often with kiosks of multiple clear "sound dome" or "sound bell" structures over the phone area, and hints of some kind of video-phone type operation (though of course in monochrome). Aside from looks, it'd be a good spot for spare parts for techies aiming to do some on-the-fly McGyver-ing.
* Vehicles. Nuclear-powered vehicles in the lot mean: a) a chance for huge explosions if someone shoots it and ruptures the fusion containment shell; b) a chance for someone to get a vehicle running, then use the thing to RUN DOWN radchickens (running them over); c) both of the above, especially if there's a collision; d) loot in the trunk (use for lockpicking skill).
* Caravan Camp? Maybe in the midst of all this, there's a small trader camp (maybe just one brahmin -- not sure if I want to kitbash too many of those two-headed cows! -- or some other mutant beasts of burden), where PCs could attempt to "buy on the fly" (trade "treasure" items they find in exchange for useful tools). Although if I do that, I need to give the PCs some motivation other than "capture chickens and get paid," or spending lots of money/loot on better gear (to capture those chickens) might seem counter-productive.
no subject
What about making the PCs be New California Rangers or California Highway Patrol or something like that? You can give them pre-arranged loadouts, and there might be a short list of rules that the NCR *should* enforce-- among them, no killing of others except in self-defense, no theft, et cetera.
The PCs may of course choose to be creative in how they choose to "hand down the law"-- Judge Dredd-style "the only good perp is a dead perp" or more merciful, maybe even more investigative "*who* exactly released the chickens and what's stopping them from doing it again?"
Having the encounter area be an outdoor mall sounds like a great idea, you can have sidequests, witnesses, 'usual perps', et cetera. The PCs might be new recruits, with an elderly sarge guiding them (until he gets shot or suffers massive food poisoning that necessitates locking himself into a Porta-Toilet).
Random ideas:
* The mutated chickens have gained a low level of sentience over the years! They're not keen on being eaten+. Will the PCs choose to regard them as property and return them, or release them?
+ Or, maybe the chickens *want* to be eaten! They might view it as an act of worship or sacrifice in some crazy cargo-cult fashion, since the owner provides food and shelter. It's just that after a nearby firefight scared them all out of sight, they have no idea *where* their home is. Will the PCs persuade them that freedom is better than captivity?
* The mutated chickens were released by a rival restaurant owner, hoping to sabotage Wok-A-Doodle's business! Even if the PCs draw this conclusion straight off though, there are at least two potential rivals, the Szechuan BBQ and the diner, and shooting all of them will result in the PCs being ganged up on-- these are the only people who can cook anything worth eating! So question witnesses, look for evidence, or try to intimidate the suspect into... ahem... squawking.
* The mutated chickens were released by the sergeant, accidentally (stray shot during a shootout the previous day)! The sergeant rounds up his recruits because he's too old to go chasing chickens -- but they also need to look for materials to rebuild the chicken coop, which is obviously too rickety to survive much longer in the wilderness. The problem is most of the best material has already been snaffled up by other proprietors making their own repairs, so... Can the PCs bargain a proprietor into giving up some material or will they have to "accidentally" blow something up?
no subject
Re: Sentient Chickens: I think I've actually done a warped scenario like that at least once or maybe even twice. I probably wouldn't do that for Fallout, though. It's hard to get a finger on the pulse of just "what is and is not Fallout," but spontaneous mutation of sapience doesn't appear to be one of the things that happens. (Any cases in the canon of sapient critters have been as a result of deliberate experimentation, rather than "mutation" per se. "Mutations" tend toward making things uglier, meaner, and possibly with extraneous extra limbs, an extra head, etc.)
The closest I can think of to that would be Dogmeat, who in his various incarnations seems to be surprisingly smart even for a dog ... but I think that fits in with "Lassie," etc., tropes. (I mean, he doesn't talk.)
I'm not sure about cats. There's one mini-quest in Fallout 4 where you have to track down "Ashes the Cat," who escapes from Vault 81. Somehow, that cat operates an elevator, opens doors ... but then, I guess Dogmeat can do that, too, and I could probably just chalk that up to sloppy programming. (Somehow everything and everybody can chase you through a closed door, presumably by OPENING it rather than battering it down.)
But then the resolution to the "Here, Kitty, Kitty" quest is when you catch up to the cat, your character says, "Ashes! Come home! Erin misses you!" And ... the cat goes back. If you follow the cat, it hops on the elevator, rides back up, and goes all the way back to Erin. Wow. SMART CAT. :D
no subject
no subject
The NCR angle is a pretty neat one and I should have thought of it before. Certainly, I've got enough minis to do the job. My "Travel Service" picture shows a bunch of "Peacekeepers" (from the "This Is Not a Test" game) that I painted up as NCR troopers and some Vault-Tec security. So, I've got the older officer, one female sniper, two figures that could work for the iconic NCR ranger in the gas mask and long coat, and I could easily borrow some Dust Tactics Allied or AT-43 UNA troopers to pass for NCR. I could even have a heavy trooper in power armor. (My main problem is how to BALANCE that.)
And then, if that weren't enough (or if I wanted more variety), I could always have a merc who's with the group, a "deputized" scout/guide, somebody's ridiculously smart pet, or even a robot.
I don't want to spend too much time rewriting new character sheets, so I'll probably just re-purpose ones I've already written up, with a change in background. For instance, my "Great Khans" sniper character could easily be written into an NCR ranger/sniper. I already wrote up an NCR Veteran Ranger, so that should work as-is. I probably need at least one non-human character. I suppose I could either reprise "Ricky NoImNotARaccoon" as a "deputized scout" ... or, hey, call him Ranger Ricky. :D
(Note: "S'Lanter" were cut content from Fallout -- they were going to be genetically engineered raccoons. There are still some terminal entries that make reference to the experiment, even though the "Burrows" never appeared in-game. One of the original contributors rather snarkily suggested that all "talking animals" in the game were dead and gone by the end of Fallout 2 and as such should not appear in any future Fallout games, but a lot of his sweeping Word-of-God proclamations have been directly contradicted by published Fallout material anyway, so I prefer to give priority to published material as "canon" over some snarky remark in the background by one member of the team. I do hate the term "S'Lanter," though, but I guess it sort of fits the conceit. The raccoons make a big deal about living in stick huts, giving themselves fantasy-sounding names with extra apostrophes, and being One with the Earth and such ... but they still speak English [albeit with a bunch of made-up words sprinkled in] and secretly hoard human technologies. My backstory for Ricky was that he just didn't give enough lip-service to the shunning of all things human, and was inadequately hypocritical to stick around with the others. :) I'm using a Rocket Raccoon mini for him, so of course he openly brandishes a gun rather than a stone spear.)
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Brainstorming:
The {name to be determined} Shopping Plaza is a sparse "community" carved into the edge of the ruins of several pre-war businesses that popped up around a highway interchange centuries ago. By no means have the ruins been fully explored, let alone conquered; some of the locals are simply scavengers who've set up shop by the roadside, and make forays deeper into the ruins to hunt for Old War tech and goods to trade with merchant caravans passing through. Others, however, make good on hunting the denizens of the ruins. The proprietor of the Wok-a-Doodle, however, took upon himself the innovation of actually raiding the eggs of some of the mutant birds frequenting the area, and raising them in a controlled farm.
Success can breed envy, however. One of the Wok-a-Doodle's competitors is struggling to make ends meet, and has decided to "cash in": selling out the Plaza to a nearby band of raiders. Hence, the escape of so many "chickens" was a result of sabotage, designed to serve as a distraction. It was only dumb luck that an NCR patrol happened to be passing through at the time.
Hence, the action starts with the PCs at the Wok-a-Doodle, and then the alarm goes off as chickens start breaking loose. The restaurant itself (and the coop) are basically off-stage, though I should have something to represent the entrance to the coops nearby.
I'm trying to figure out a way in which the chickens are kept that could be vulnerable to sabotage. It might be interesting if there's some sort of "old world tech" problem -- something that seemed *convenient* to keep the chickens in, in a facility still powered by an old fusion generator in the basement, but perhaps someone at the Plaza has some tech knowledge and "hacked" the system (not something that could be done remotely, as there is no "internet") so that some sort of automated system would open everything up.
Maybe a pet shop? Perhaps a "pet shop of the future" would have some sort of automated system -- perhaps with robots -- to tend to the cages/pens, and someone could hack the robots so that instead of just checking on the chickens and cleaning out their cages and replenishing their food and water, it's suddenly, "FLY! BE FREE!" (*toss them out the window*) And the first encounter could involve rushing in there to STOP THOSE ROBOTS before the plaza is flooded with savage frenzying mutant chickens!
PCs could alternatively blast robots, attempt to re-hack them, or perhaps even try to outsmart them. (But PCs being PCs, it'll probably be "blast away!")
Hmm. I suppose I need some semblance of a floor plan for a pet store, and some sort of cheesy pet store NAME. It ought to be kitschy. Bonus points if it feels retro in some way, or it references atomic power or nuclear war somehow. (Everyone's favorite cereal is SUGAR BOMBS, the best-selling cola is NUKA COLA, a major radio & TV manufacturer is RADIATION KING, etc.)
So, here comes the "modular" bit. If dealing with this takes up the whole session, that's fine. We wrap on the stopping of the robots, possibly a tussle with some escaped chickens, and call it a day. But otherwise, if the PCs wrap that up handily, then Phase 2 is that raiders suddenly attack, taking advantage of the distraction posed by escaping chickens, as several caravan guards were suddenly distracted by the savage feathered menace.
If resolving that takes up the rest of the session, then we have a Scooby-Doo Gang ending where so-and-so from the rival diner/bar/whatever is caught trying to sneak away, and -- aha! This was all a ruse to distract us so raiders could attack. "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for these meddling NCR troopers and their dog!" The end.
If, however, the PCs trounce the raiders in record time, we could wrap up with a mini-mystery. How/why did this happen? Perhaps a bit of Q&A with NPCs, some basic clues, a chance to use some people skills. I need to work up a few quickie NPC profiles, some good answers to the question "Where were you when (all this was going on)?" and a couple of potential red herrings (e.g., Rita of Rita's Cafe doesn't want it to get out that her alibi is that she was sneaking off for a rendezvous with Ghoulish Garbo the Garbage Dealer when all the chickens got loose, so THAT'S why she can't seem to give a straight answer, not that she's actually responsible).
I could try to spice things up with a few interesting (?) locations to interact with, so it's not just one big battlefield, but that'll likely be a function of what terrain pieces I have ready to go in time for the game.
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Pet store name... The Cat's Meow? >_> https://toughnickel.com/starting-business/pet-store-names
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Are you thinking about doing online gaming again? I thought you'd pretty much given up on it as too slow.
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However, Digital_Rampage is trying an experiment (a pricey one) with doing an online game using Fantasy Grounds (instead of MapTools/RPTools) for the online mapping, and TeamSpeak for our communications (though we also have a chat-log for recording die-rolls and other details as necessary). We've used TeamSpeak a lot for our multiplayer Minecraft games. The OverWolf interface adds a nice little feature by tying it with the Fantasy Grounds interface so when a player is speaking, his or her PC icon gets a "speech-balloon" icon for a quick visual guide as to WHO is doing the speaking. (If there are enough people, that part can get confusing, and I can't always pick apart everyone by voice.)
Real-time communication has its pros and cons, but it's pretty close to the same limitations we'd have at a game table -- with the primary exception that in real life I could in theory take one of the players aside and into the front room to discuss something as an aside, or secondly that I can supplement my verbal communication with gestures (pointing, eye contact, expression, etc.).
No longer shall we be wondering whether a player is 5 minutes into typing up his 20-minute mini-essay that's going to let us know whether he's going to attack Minion A or B this combat round, or whether he's shouting orders to the others, or going Full Defense, or what-have-you -- and only by INTERRUPTING his process can he let us know he hasn't simply gone off to make a sandwich. You can ask, "Hey, you still there?" and reasonably expect the person on the other side to say, "Yep, still here!" or we've got a problem.
Also, Digital_Rampage isn't big on typing. He regularly mangles the spelling of my name (first or last or alternate or nickname).
Now, I may still avail myself of some typing in the course of the game. My plan is to play a bard, and as part of that, I'm likely to subject the other players to occasional bouts of bad punnery and even worse singing -- but there's no way I'm going to make people sit through an entire "epic poem" I've composed about the party's heroics. Life's too short for that. Instead, I'm likely to spam the log with one of my compositions, or submit a note window (I'm still familiarizing myself with the options available) that other players would be free to look at (at their leisure) or simply ignore. The ability to send text messages to each other also fills the role of virtual "note-passing," and since I'm a fairly fast typist, I'll certainly avail myself of that option when I can, but not at the cost of making people wait through many minutes of silence for me to resolve a round of combat action.
The end result won't be a "log" that can be posted for posterity to others to read. As the party bard, I MIGHT attempt to put together some sort of synopsis for the benefit of those players who can't make it any given session, but my own work schedule might hamper my own attendance. (We're doing this Sunday evenings, and sadly Sundays are NOT sacred to my workplace, as I often have to travel on Sunday in order to be ready for a project early Monday morning at a client's site. For whatever reason, Saturdays are far more likely to be spared.)
Now, I realize that isn't going to solve all problems. There's still the matter of, if I ever want to run a game with TuftEars again, we're going to need visual elements as a primary mode of communication. But I'm still looking at all the features of Fantasy Grounds and the suite of programs (TeamSpeak, OverWolf, etc.) that might be layered upon it, and what implications this might have for solving some of the problems that arose from running things exclusively through a single-channel text-based medium such as a MUCK. TuftEars might not be able to take advantage of an audio channel, for instance, but a major improvement would simply be if our text window had a Skype-like "so-and-so is typing..." indicator to simply LET ME KNOW that something is on its way. Or, by having multiple chat windows, one could be the primary "log" window where all the in-character action takes place, and another could be the parallel "OOC" window ... and in such a setup, even if we WERE still typing up half-page masterpiece poses, at least the GM could still "ping" you, and you could take a moment to click the "Yes I'm still here" button or perhaps even answer a question in another window without losing your place.
I don't know. It could be a big boon, or it could be a cumbersome nightmare. We've done nothing so far other than just to tinker around with some of the map features and write up characters, so there's a lot to be explored yet.
Another area Digital_Rampage is interested in is that of making an "electronic game table." Even though Digital_Rampage is the very one who introduced me to Hirst Arts block casting, and has been a major contributor to the bloat of my miniatures collection for the past decade and a half, he is a much tidier person than I am (he has a much easier time getting RID of stuff, it seems), and he has often voiced proposals about how we could replace the heavy, fragile 3D terrain with "virtual" terrain by various means. At first, the idea was to have a ceiling-mounted projector pointing straight down at a table, to PROTECT a battle map that would be managed on a computer, and we'd use physical miniatures to place on the table within that "terrain."
But more recently, with the improvements in flat screen TVs (wider range of vision, lower prices, bigger sizes), he's been floating the idea of building an electronic game table that is based around a big flat-screen TV with wide angle viewing. The idea would be that a laptop could be hooked up to it and could have a view that's scrolling across a battlemap that might very well be much larger than the table itself, but as the PCs explore this way or that, the GM could simply "scroll over," rather than asking players to take a 5-to-10-minute "screen loading" break for the GM to clear away all the scatter terrain and tiles, and set up new ones for the new area. Another interesting factor would be that the GM could even zoom in or out, making scale a bit more flexible (e.g., switching from hand-to-hand skirmish to vehicular action). I could therefore use Photoshop to create new maps and elements, and it would be a LOT easier to store that than an ever-expanding library of terrain pieces.
And anyway, Digital_Rampage has been more into building terrain pieces for miniatures wargames, or glorified boards for particular miniatures-focused board games, rather than pieces made expressly for RPGs. So for a wargame, it might be a castle here or a windmill there, or some sort of refinery or bunker -- whatever you feel like making that'll fit the scene and give some options for troops to hide behind or perch on top of -- but there's no Quixotic quest to have terrain to represent EVERY POSSIBLE SCENE where the action might take place in an RPG, say. Similarly for board games, his creations are typically a 3D recreation of whatever game board pieces were originally included in the game -- and out of necessity, that's going to be finite.
That, and he usually did this in cooperation with a game store, as he had friends running stores -- but all of those have since then closed down, or have moved on from miniatures gaming to focus on more lucrative markets such as for collectible card games. A lot of his creations have either ended up back in his hands (and he's had to figure out what to do with them), or got sold off in bulk with the sale of the store.
So, while the crafting part of making buildings can be fun, what's NOT so much fun is the feeling that you HAVE to keep making new scenery in time for next week's game, etc., or that you have to keep on devoting more and more space to storing everything. Therefore, I can greatly sympathize with his quest to find some sort of electronic solution.
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Ooh, I hope the new tools make online gaming more practical for you! I don't know that I'll ever overcome my dislike of conference-call communication enough to do that kind of thing for fun. I have a much easier time interacting with people in person than using voice remotely, alas, and I don't think it's just that seeing faces helps. :/
I've done some very limited RP inside of Google Docs, which has the advantages of:
Main disadvantage with multiple players is that the only clue about who's typing at a given time is the color of their cursor. Still, works pretty well.
I hope the twenty-minute poses are an exaggeration. <_< My benchmark was 4 minutes, and that's still a pretty slow pace. (I think you usually responded in 1 or 2 minutes. No one could ever match you. :D )
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But that seems to be the pressure for the online games: Polish each and every exchange, like it's part of a shared novel-writing experience, except there are no take-backs, no edits once you hit ENTER. I could put up with it when Sinai was really hopping, my brain was firing on all cylinders, and I could be juggling multiple Holodecks, so if one player was taking his time, that was fine, because I could probably throw something into the next Holodeck over. (Although that's hardly fair: I would be constantly engaged, but it meant that necessarily the players would end up waiting on ME.)
I find it fascinating that you managed to use Google Docs for RP purposes. That seems like a very outside-the-box sort of approach. :)
And as for conference-call style gaming: No, I don't want to say that I LIKE it, either. I suspect that Digital_Rampage has lined up TOO MANY players for the conference call aspect to work well. I'm going to have to rein in my usual impulses, and try not to scramble for too much "spotlight," so as not to be needlessly disruptive, adding to the noise.
My preference is still for face-to-face and tabletop. In a perfect world? Eh, we'd have teleporter gates and could visit each other effortlessly. :) (Okay, so I can already imagine how that might NOT be a perfect world, depending upon who has access to such technology, but ... meh.) But my hope is that it can make the online experience (which is the only way I have to play with people who can't make it to my house for gaming) LESS BAD.