Fallout: Equestia (Setting and Rules Expansion)

This is an idea for a modification/expansion of the Pony Tales rules that I've been brainstorming recently.

If I have one guilty pleasure, it's that I love crossover fanfiction. I was smitten with Kkat's Fallout Equestria story, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one. It's grimdark as all get-out, but... c'mon, it's video games and ponies!

For those not familiar with Fallout or the fanfic, this is the FE setting in a nutshell:

An unwanted conflict with the far-off zebra nations forces Equestria to militarize, propelling it into 1950's-level tech (with robots and energy weapons), complete with McCarthy-brand propaganda against zebras. The war gives rise to megaspells and the radioactive balefire bomb, which escalates the war into an all-out nuclear holocaust from the Cold War's worst nightmares.

Ponykind is almost extinguished, but survives thanks to the creation of enormous underground shelters known as Stables. Thanks to the Stables spread out all across Equestria, ponies are able to survive with the hope that they can wait out the nuclear holocaust. But when the enormous doors unseal, they found a ruined, irradiated waste where Equestria once was. Ponies are forced to settle the land, scrambling to obtain all the remaining natural resources and pre-war tech they can find.

Now, 200 years after the events of the show, ponies struggle to survive and bring light to their little corner of the post-apocalyptic wasteland. Ponies change, but war... war never changes.


The Goal
In short: Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Fallout itself is a pretty complex RPG, well-suited to computer gaming. It's also pretty adaptable to d100 tabletop systems. But the goal here is not to apply the Fallout RPG's mechanics to Pony Tales at all - in fact, this expansion will be involving as few of the Fallout mechanics as possible. The Pony Tales system as it stands is a thing of elegant beauty. But to make the Fallout: Equestria setting possible in Pony Tales, some modifications and a lot of content expansion is required.

To make Fallout: Equestria playable in Pony Tales, it needs:
A Rules Companion - Explanation of all the add-ons and changes to the original Pony Tales rules, including all the new character creation content.
A Campaign Guide - All the important locations, factions, history, and notable people in the FE universe, so that PHs and players don't have to read the entire 50+ chapter fanfic to understand things.
An Item Compendium - As explained below, equipment is going to be very important in this expansion. This will be the list of all standard weapons and items.
A Monster Manual - The Fallout: Equestria setting has a wide array of new, unique enemies. This will list their stats and combat talents.


Key Features
Weapon Talents
Fallout is all about weapons. Instead of selecting an array of combat talents that belong to your character, your combat talents will come from the weapons you're currently carrying. At character creation, you can purchase a weapon with the caps (short for bottlecaps, currency) you start out with. Every weapon in the game will have 3-5 combat talents unique to it.* But in combat, before or after your standard action, you may switch weapons to another in your inventory as a minor action - thus switching the set of combat talents you can use. Weapons come in many forms - melee, pistols, rifles, explosives, energy... Improvised weapons can be picked up and used for a limited time, and even stationary weapons like turrets will have powerful, unique talent sets! Players can also give names to the weapons they own.

Loot and Trade
Fallout is all about resources. Some weapons will have limited, specialized ammunition. You'll need medical supplies to combat radiation poisoning and heal serious injuries. Either way, you'll need caps to survive. Fortunately, that rule goes for everything else in the wasteland. After combat encounters, you can loot your enemies to collect caps and items. You can even take weapons from fallen foes who were carrying them. Weapons collected from enemies will be damaged, making them unusable and reducing their value, but they can be repaired (for a fee). All weapons and items will have a standard value attached to them, though selling and purchasing prices can vary from merchant to merchant. Every character also has a maximum weight they can carry in their inventory, and most items have a weight value. If an item you pick up will send you over your encumbrance limit, you can't take it with you.

Factions
Fallout is all about politics. Many rival factions exist in the Fallout: Equestria universe. At character creation, you can choose between the most prevalent ones to add to your character's background. Raiders, Steel Rangers, Grand Pegasus Enclave, Dashites, Unity, Talons, Stable Dwellers, Ghouls... or simply be a normal Wasteland Pony, unaffiliated with any faction. Some factions are limited by race. Every faction (including unaffiliated) provides a couple of additional unique traits, but also defines your relationship with other factions and how others in the Equestrian Wasteland perceive you.


Moving Forward
Fortunately, a lot of the brainstorming is already done for this setting, and collected into a comprehensive couple of wikis. What remains is to convert all this information to balanced Pony Tales mechanics, collect it all into a ready-to-distribute format... and make sure the economy isn't broken. Simple, right?

I need to get some RPG game design work under my belt anyway, so I'll be working on this when I can, but I want to hear if these ideas seem attractive or not.

*Stealing from Guild Wars 2 is fun!

I love this concept. I can't wait to see what you do with it.

In fact, why stop there. We should have equipment tables and all this in the current Pony Tales. Perhaps another expansion specifically on all the stuff you can acquire in Equestria. I know Inky wants to carry around a bunch of daggers, for instance.

Azureink wrote:In fact, why stop there. We should have equipment tables and all this in the current Pony Tales. Perhaps another expansion specifically on all the stuff you can acquire in Equestria. I know Inky wants to carry around a bunch of daggers, for instance.

Good thinking. I'd like to see someone start developing items for Equestria.

The reason why I want to put this particular focus on items is because, in general, items and money have taken a back seat to powers and stats in almost every game I've played in any system (even in a couple of homebrew systems). And there's a reason for that: It's a lot of bookkeeping. The more the party's money and items are in flux, the more work it is for both GM and player to keep track of it all. Every time you pick up something, everyone has to look it up in the book to find its value and stats. If you have an entire economy to balance, it's even more work. It's one of the risks I run with this expansion.

The way to counter that risk, I think, is to make items more important, appealing, and unique. Like Guild Wars 2 does!

Call it a design challenge: How do I make items a cornerstone of the game while keeping it fun?

Newbiespud wrote:The reason why I want to put this particular focus on items is because, in general, items and money have taken a back seat to powers and stats in almost every game I've played in any system (even in a couple of homebrew systems). And there's a reason for that: It's a lot of bookkeeping. The more the party's money and items are in flux, the more work it is for both GM and player to keep track of it all. Every time you pick up something, everyone has to look it up in the book to find its value and stats. If you have an entire economy to balance, it's even more work. It's one of the risks I run with this expansion.

The way to counter that risk, I think, is to make items more important, appealing, and unique. Like Guild Wars 2 does!

Call it a design challenge: How do I make items a cornerstone of the game while keeping it fun?

I'm interested to see how you approach this. Items don't have to be scary, there's probably a lot of interesting ways they could be implemented. After all, one could even rename utility talents after the items that supposedly allowed them and you'd have an easy sway. Like this.

Night Goggles - Utility Item
You can see in the dark.

This kind of approach, the simple swap of Nightwatch to Night Goggles, would both make perfect sense and still have the exact same gameplay that the current system has.

I bring this up not to claim this should be done, but rather to help waft away some of the fear of item systems. After all, it's not items that are the problem, it's the common implementation. I look forward to seeing what implementation you come up with.

Hmmm. Well, the first question I guess is, do we still use the Pony Tales skills or will we use different ones? (I'm sure of course even if we add/remove some a lot of them would stay since they fit.)

Oh man, I love this idea so much. I'm a freaking Fallout fanatic and I read all of Fallout Equestria, plus a few side fics. If I can be of any help, I'd love to do so.

Ok, I slept on it and I'm thinking most of the skills are pretty good as is but might want to change History to History/Science (so that this skill is a bit better and Mechanics is not the best skill ever) and replace Streetwise (which no longer makes any sense) with Survival.

Okay, this thread is now for core rules discussion. I'll make Monster, Item, and Faction threads later once I feel it's ready, but we gotta lay the foundation first. Anyway, it's time for another installment of brainstorming!


Skills
Actually, I think History and Science can be easily separated. No need to have an awkward "slash" combination. One has to do with past events (especially pre-war events as far as Fallout goes), and the other has to do with computers, robots, energy, and other science-y things - of which there are plenty in the Equestrian Wasteland. There's no need to replace Streetwise either, since being able to gather information and find people of interest in settlements both big and small is just as important post-war as it was pre-war. I like the Survival skill, though - gathering food and water from the wild, identifying irradiated water sources, making campfires, identifying landmarks... Makes perfect sense for Fallout: Equestria!

I'd go so far as to say if I could add one relevant new Skill to every Attribute, I'd be happy. The Fallout elements add a lot of new things that simply aren't covered in the standard skill set. Though I'm at a loss as to what to add for Athletics and Precision. Lockpicking for Precision? That could be a tad too specific, even if it opens locked doors and chests, and it might overlap with Mechanics a bit. And what about Athletics? The Stunts skill is just too dang versatile!

Also, just so there isn't a sudden deficiency in overall skill power, perhaps Fallout: Equestria characters can take training in one extra skill? After all, you have to be pretty serious business to survive the Equestrian Wasteland, even at Level 1.

Ammunition
I thought about this issue for a while. Should every weapon have an individual, limited ammo source? Should there be a single shared "Ammo" pool? Should I not bother keeping track of ammo at all? Should there be a "clip" system? Eventually, I decided to go with my original idea: Basic weapons have infinite ammo, while better weapons have limited ammo.

The reason is: I like PiPs. I don't want to replace PiPs. If I add an ammo cost to every weapon's combat talents on top of their normal PiP costs, that's two sets of numbers for each player to track every turn. I could simplify that by removing the PiP system and just having ammo costs, but then I run into theoretical cases where players buy up a bunch of ammo so they can spam the highest-cost talents over and over again. I could mitigate that with a "clip" system, forcing players to reload before resuming their attacks, but that would mean I've 1) lengthened every battle and 2) completely gutted the PiP system. Gaaah.

But at the same time, I like the potential situation where players hold back so much of their best equipment because they're limited by ammo (and by extension, their wallets). So I say it's perfectly acceptable to split the difference. Most melee weapons and basic weapons have no limits, but are generally inferior to rare advanced weapons (explosives, energy weapons) that also have ammo reserves.

Weapon Utilities
Weapons are tools, in a sense. With weapons, there are two obvious cases that really stand out to me. One, a player using a long-range weapon like a sniper rifle to set up a perch and snipe enemies from afar. Two, a player using fragmentation mines to set up a trap. Technically, those are out-of-combat actions, even if they are being used to preempt combat. Since these are pretty intuitive things to do, I could just say that the PH has to figure out how these actions turn out mechanically... or I could go ahead and define the rules for them.

I'm not quite sure how to do it, though. Do some weapons ALSO have one utility talent? Is it something defined in the general rules, or as something specific to that weapon type (all weapons of a certain type have X utility)?

Armor
Another step in the quest to make items cooler: Make armor-type items affect maximum HP. Base HP for each character is lowered (to something around 20). Each individual armor has a value that increases the character's HP when worn. Basic leather barding adds +5 HP, light armor adds +10 HP, Steel Rangers armor adds +20, something like that. In terms of what HP means - the character's ability to avoid a wounding blow - armor simply increases the character's ability to resist getting wounded by bullets. This keeps the balance mostly intact for the d8/d10/d12 damage scheme while allowing characters to become tougher over time. Special armor items could have additional buffs. Simple and full of win!


Those are all my thoughts for now. This thing is still very much in the "generate ideas" phase...

Ok, Skills. Ok then well, that alters the balance of stat power a bit. We could move Perception under the Precision heading. Athletics is harder. I can't think of anything there. That may not actually be that much of a problem though. High Athletics means yeah, you're good at those two skills (and if you train in them really good) but, you don't have something else. It'd be a bad idea for any other stat but Stunts and Endurance are pretty versatile.

I agree with basic weapons not having ammo to keep track of.

I think it'd be neat if some weapons had Utilities. I also think we should end up making some Utilities with this system in mind. In particular ones that deal with weapon types.

As for armor, I think you should just call it Light, Medium, Heavy, Super Heavy, etc. That way the player can decide what their armor is exactly (or it could be a thing to add flavor to by the DM, like Ranger armor being different than some other because it lets you disguise as a Ranger). There is a problem with armor the way listed though. There's no reason for everyone not to just take the heaviest armor type all the time. Not really sure what to do about that without having armor do a thing we don't want and detract from out of combat stuff to gain a bonus in combat. Of course I already have trouble seeing people wearing super heavy armor and not having to make Endurance checks. So we might want to give each armor type an effect it has in and out of combat. Like the heavier armors would logically protect people from environmental hazards (falling rocks, whatever) but give penalties to certain endurance checks and might even have an Athletics minimum to not have to make Endurance checks every hour. I think we'd want to avoid giving specific armors utilities or such though to avoid the whole "Well, I'd like my character to be wearing this but...I want that effect."

Three quick thoughts on this (no irony intended, it just turned out that way).

1) I really like where this is going in general.

2) Might be able to solve the special ammo thing within the pip system. The pokemon RPG I designed solved that issue in a very simple way. By letting Pokemon have a maximum number of 4 pips (starting the day with that) and regaining 2 pips after each battle - we balanced their ‘encounter powers’ against their ‘at will’ and ‘daily’ abilities in the style of 4e in the following way.

Abilities that cost 0 pips were at-will.

Abilities that cost 1 or 2 pips were encounter powers. If a pokemon only used 2 pips in a battle after all, they’d be able to sustain that output throughout every battle for the whole day.

Abilities that cost 3 or 4 pips were the dailies. They fired the canon for the pokemon and could not be used sustainably. You could only fire one of those abilities once every 2 battles.

(Note to non-Newbiespud readers – in this system there were basically no [+] powers, so you had an incentive to switch pokemon out for guys with their pips intact)

Pros: This approach keeps the variables elegant and means people will switch weapons often. It also means weapons will feel different depending on the powers you expend.

Con: This method means you can’t use [+] pip powers on the weapons as universally.


Additionally; the cool thing about getting special ammunition is that it’s treasure that is made to be exploded, and I like that kind of treasure. You could find some of this special ammunition and already imagine the explosions that are to come. I’ve had great success with incredibly strong consumables in dungeon design. However, consumables are hated by a lot of players, like me, and our instinct is to hoard them… But if you want to create an experience of going through an inhospitable wasteland – draining the players’ resources and keeping them on the constant worry of running out; along with a good number of situations that simply say, “Use your ammo or die!” is a great way to build that experience.

That’s how I built the Laboratory Arcane (still one of my roleplay-focused college group’s favorite adventures, despite it being almost entirely a dungeon crawl) and, more recently, it’s how I built the Scar to make it feel deadly and inhospitable. Stealing your surges and making healing nigh-impossible. The relief was palpable in your group when you finally got to the Ghost Wardens’ safe haven and got your radiation shots.

Fun fact: I actually was thinking about the fallout concept when I designed that.

So, both can work. Perhaps even a mixture of the two systems, no reason that can’t work too. It’s no increase in variables. Just wanted to share these experiences to add to your brainstorming fuel.

3) I really wouldn’t recommend tying utilities to weapons. Remember, keeping the combat playstyle choices divorced from out of combat roleplaying choices is one of the core design innovations of the system. Let’s load up our utility belts on the one hand and our weapons on the other. That way people have more freedom in character concepts and the combat design can be isolated from the utility design (giving you less variables to worry about when you work on balance).

Ramsus wrote:Ok, Skills. Ok then well, that alters the balance of stat power a bit. We could move Perception under the Precision heading. Athletics is harder. I can't think of anything there. That may not actually be that much of a problem though. High Athletics means yeah, you're good at those two skills (and if you train in them really good) but, you don't have something else. It'd be a bad idea for any other stat but Stunts and Endurance are pretty versatile.

I had a couple of ideas for Athletics: Carry (lifting and moving heavy things) or Pilot (dealing with vehicles). But those are nowhere near detailed enough to actually add; they're just a couple of ideas I'm throwing out.

I also considered adding Thievery to the Precision attribute. That would cover things like picking locks, picking pockets, sleight of hand, and disarming traps. All very relevant things in the Fallout world, but the problem with Thievery is the one that's always the problem with Thievery: There's way too much overlap. Picking pockets, sleight of hand? Stealth. Disarming traps, picking locks? Mechanics. Disarming magical traps? Arcana.

I could be convinced to leave it in, but the nice thing about the skill spectrum right now is that there's not a whole lot of overlap. There's some tasks that multiple skills can be applied to, but for the most part each skill is more or less unique.

If I start backpedaling now, I could probably do without Survival in Horse-Sense. Identifying irradiated areas and water sources? Get a freaking Geiger counter. Hunting for food? Combat some wild monsters and loot the bodies afterward. Cooking? ...Eh... It's probably fair to say that everypony has at least some meager cooking ability, and having a higher skill wouldn't provide very many bonuses.

I could do the same for most of Science in the Intelligence attribute. Robots can be dealt with using Mechanics. Energy weapons and the like are very much connected to Arcana in Fallout: Equestria. The only real hole I see for the current skill set is computers. Hacking locked computers, using them to open doors and hack robots and turrets... Maybe that's Mechanics? I'm really divided on that.

Ramsus wrote:As for armor, I think you should just call it Light, Medium, Heavy, Super Heavy, etc. That way the player can decide what their armor is exactly (or it could be a thing to add flavor to by the DM, like Ranger armor being different than some other because it lets you disguise as a Ranger). There is a problem with armor the way listed though. There's no reason for everyone not to just take the heaviest armor type all the time. Not really sure what to do about that without having armor do a thing we don't want and detract from out of combat stuff to gain a bonus in combat. Of course I already have trouble seeing people wearing super heavy armor and not having to make Endurance checks. So we might want to give each armor type an effect it has in and out of combat. Like the heavier armors would logically protect people from environmental hazards (falling rocks, whatever) but give penalties to certain endurance checks and might even have an Athletics minimum to not have to make Endurance checks every hour. I think we'd want to avoid giving specific armors utilities or such though to avoid the whole "Well, I'd like my character to be wearing this but...I want that effect."

Cost is one way to balance that. The best armors are also going to be the most expensive. But generally, I think it's alright that players are only going to want the best armors. I just think they should have to work for it. Better armor is not going to be cheap, especially if you have to upgrade the entire party. It should be a significant decision: "Should we buy better weapons and ammo, or should we try saving up for better armor?"

Also, for the Steel Rangers armor example, the thing with the Steel Rangers is that they're like the Brotherhood of Steel. Even if you pick up their armor, you can't wear it properly without special training. Of course, since it will probably be the most uber-powerful armor around, there will probably be some small drawback to balance it... But not every armor needs to be balanced this way, and there's no need to add rules for different armor classes when the goal is maximum simplicity.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:2) Might be able to solve the special ammo thing within the pip system. The pokemon RPG I designed solved that issue in a very simple way. By letting Pokemon have a maximum number of 4 pips (starting the day with that) and regaining 2 pips after each battle - we balanced their ‘encounter powers’ against their ‘at will’ and ‘daily’ abilities in the style of 4e in the following way.

Pros: This approach keeps the variables elegant and means people will switch weapons often. It also means weapons will feel different depending on the powers you expend.

Con: This method means you can’t use [+] pip powers on the weapons as universally.

Additionally; the cool thing about getting special ammunition is that it’s treasure that is made to be exploded, and I like that kind of treasure. You could find some of this special ammunition and already imagine the explosions that are to come. I’ve had great success with incredibly strong consumables in dungeon design. However, consumables are hated by a lot of players, like me, and our instinct is to hoard them… But if you want to create an experience of going through an inhospitable wasteland – draining the players’ resources and keeping them on the constant worry of running out; along with a good number of situations that simply say, “Use your ammo or die!” is a great way to build that experience.

That’s how I built the Laboratory Arcane (still one of my roleplay-focused college group’s favorite adventures, despite it being almost entirely a dungeon crawl) and, more recently, it’s how I built the Scar to make it feel deadly and inhospitable. Stealing your surges and making healing nigh-impossible. The relief was palpable in your group when you finally got to the Ghost Wardens’ safe haven and got your radiation shots.

Fun fact: I actually was thinking about the fallout concept when I designed that.

So, both can work. Perhaps even a mixture of the two systems, no reason that can’t work too. It’s no increase in variables. Just wanted to share these experiences to add to your brainstorming fuel.

Again, I don't want to change too much, so I'm probably going to keep with the player having one running PiP total that persists between weapon switches. Either one would work, but that's what I'm preferring to go with here.

I actually don't think I want to incentivize switching weapons very much... Most of the basic weapons should be solid enough on their own to carry a player through an entire encounter, or maybe just switching once. Basically, each weapon is a single Pony Tales build of 5 combat talents. Being able to switch weapons mid-battle provides variety and options to deal with different threats, somewhat like what the alternate 3 combat talents allow PCs to do in vanilla Tales.

Stairc -Dan Felder wrote:3) I really wouldn’t recommend tying utilities to weapons. Remember, keeping the combat playstyle choices divorced from out of combat roleplaying choices is one of the core design innovations of the system. Let’s load up our utility belts on the one hand and our weapons on the other. That way people have more freedom in character concepts and the combat design can be isolated from the utility design (giving you less variables to worry about when you work on balance).

Yeah, you're right. That's one of the things I like about this system. I guess, if any creative uses like the examples I mentioned come up, it can be up to the DM how that works?

Well I was trying to say I don't think heavy armor should be "better" hands down. But, I figured out another thing besides cost. Kinda. That is, it probably costs more the repair heavier armor than light armor. I mean really, hide armor? No problem. I mean just look at your fellow adventurer, he or she is hide armor just waiting to be made. =P
Heavy metal armor on the other hand requires the right metals, a forge, and tools to repair. Who knows what's involved in repairing Steel Ranger armor. A high tech forge, specialized tools, custom made parts, and a computer with the right software? Sheesh. Yeah, good luck with that.

I thought about the Carry skill too but, I just figured it was a bad idea in several ways and discarded the concept. I really do like the Survival and Science skills though. Without Science, Mechanics is this uber god-skill that's basically science/repair/lockpicking/crafting/etc.

I agree about it probably being silly to change weapons every fight. (Still a cool mechanic though Stairc.)

Oh, right speaking of repairing. That totally has to be a mechanic for this game. It just fits the setting too well not to include. I'm not really sure it should be a "you use X thing Y times and it needs to be repaired" though. It might be fine to just say it's up to the GM how often things need to be repaired. (Which is probably going to be more realistic if it's not always the same amount of time/usage.)

Really, if you're not going to use ammo, with part of the reason being bookkeeping, do you REALLY want to have to repair items? I think the main reason I've never seen a repair mechanic in tabletop RP games is that it's a colossal pain to keep track of, and to deal with.

Well, like I said. Shouldn't be an actual mechanical mechanic. But, it's resource management. And there is ammo, just only for the special items. And I feel armor is "special" stuff. And there really does need to be a reason for not everyone in the party to wear heavy armor, if they can get their hands on it. Because then everyone's physical description is "I'm a pony in heavy armor". It'd be bland. And I should really tone down starting my sentences with and since it's grammatically incorrect (though every author ever ignore that rule).

Ramsus wrote:Well I was trying to say I don't think heavy armor should be "better" hands down. But, I figured out another thing besides cost. Kinda. That is, it probably costs more the repair heavier armor than light armor. I mean really, hide armor? No problem. I mean just look at your fellow adventurer, he or she is hide armor just waiting to be made. =P
Heavy metal armor on the other hand requires the right metals, a forge, and tools to repair. Who knows what's involved in repairing Steel Ranger armor. A high tech forge, specialized tools, custom made parts, and a computer with the right software? Sheesh. Yeah, good luck with that.

I think there can be...

A) Better versions of armor (more HP, some other properties)
B) Different kinds of armor (various economies)

I'm sure you'll be able to flavor items however you like... So how is this a discussion? I'm pretty sure that both A and B will happen either way, right?

Ramsus wrote:Oh, right speaking of repairing. That totally has to be a mechanic for this game. It just fits the setting too well not to include. I'm not really sure it should be a "you use X thing Y times and it needs to be repaired" though. It might be fine to just say it's up to the GM how often things need to be repaired. (Which is probably going to be more realistic if it's not always the same amount of time/usage.)

Repairing's always kind of a pain and it's an extra mechanic, so it's less simple... And does it actually make the game more fun? If it doesn't make the game substantially more fun, why don't we just focus on amunition.

For clarification Newbiespud, are you thinking of...

1) A universal premium ammunition (power cells or something) that activates a special 'Elite' talent or option on your existing weapon.
2) A universal premium ammunition that can only be used to power Premium items, which cannot be used indefinitely like normal items
3) Several various types of ammunition to keep track of for either of the above options
4) Something completely different

I honestly think Ammunition needs to be more vague and generic. In Fallout games, there are tons of different ammo types and you have to micromanage which ones you have and how much you have. But there is a general line of what is and isn't common ammunition. 10 mm rounds? Everywhere. Rockets? Good luck finding those. The more we try to emulate Fallout, the more we take away from the system. The complexity of Fallout is great on a computer that handles the tallying and counting, not in a tabletop RPG. My suggestion for ammo is to keep it semi generic and maybe even slightly simple. One of my favorite ways I've seen ammo handled in a table top game is not to have ammo counted, but simply as a thing you either have or don't have. Instead of keeping track of bullets, running out of ammo was based on how much you used the weapon in a given battle. If you used it once, you were conserving. Should you use it more, you were going all in and would be out of ammo after the battle. In this system, you could conserve ammo with a powerful weapon by only using the + or 0 abilities, but you'd run out of ammo should you use the - abilities. Then you would have to find more ammo before the weapon would be usable again. On the bright side, this means less micromanaging for the DM and players, meaning more fun. On the down side, you don't get to feel awesome cause you've stockpiled a ton of ammunition for that big boss battle.

Lapis-Lazily wrote:I honestly think Ammunition needs to be more vague and generic. In Fallout games, there are tons of different ammo types and you have to micromanage which ones you have and how much you have. But there is a general line of what is and isn't common ammunition. 10 mm rounds? Everywhere. Rockets? Good luck finding those. The more we try to emulate Fallout, the more we take away from the system. The complexity of Fallout is great on a computer that handles the tallying and counting, not in a tabletop RPG. My suggestion for ammo is to keep it semi generic and maybe even slightly simple. One of my favorite ways I've seen ammo handled in a table top game is not to have ammo counted, but simply as a thing you either have or don't have. Instead of keeping track of bullets, running out of ammo was based on how much you used the weapon in a given battle. If you used it once, you were conserving. Should you use it more, you were going all in and would be out of ammo after the battle. In this system, you could conserve ammo with a powerful weapon by only using the + or 0 abilities, but you'd run out of ammo should you use the - abilities. Then you would have to find more ammo before the weapon would be usable again. On the bright side, this means less micromanaging for the DM and players, meaning more fun. On the down side, you don't get to feel awesome cause you've stockpiled a ton of ammunition for that big boss battle.

I'm definitely a fan of less variables to track.

However, I really the idea of running out of items and needing to refuel. Makes the wilderness feel inhospitable provided that you NEED those premium items to survive. Like, really NEED them to get out of the scary-as-hell battles you often get in. Then you start relying on them more.

So, I really like the idea of one core premium ammunition that powers these super-items or however they work. Best of both worlds and, even better, much easier for designers to balance than multiple types of ammunition.

Wouldn't it make things much harder to balance if the ammo doesn't fit into weapon type categories? It's going to be pretty hard to balance a sniper rifle and rocket launchers if you can use the same ammo for both of them. There probably shouldn't be different ammo for each rocket launcher or plasma pistol or whatnot but, I think there should definitely be "rockets", "plasma packs", etc.

Edit: If all special ammo is the same then all special weapons have to balance to the same. At which point you really just have the special weapon formula and it gets pretty dull as there's no real variation in strength between weapons.

Edit 2: This also means the entire party is sharing a pool of special ammo, not just one player. So you always run out of rockets and plasma ammo and sniper ammo all at the same time. The GM then can't hand the sniper less ammo because that would be more useful in upcoming situations or such. Also it means it's impossible for anyone to decide to hoard their ammo because someone else who is of the mind "use it when we've got it" is chewing through everything they save.

As for why I think armor should need to be repaired, it'd be another resource to think about managing which, is the same deal with ammo. But in this case it wouldn't be about damage output or effects but about HP. If someone gets the Steel Ranger armor and can use it, without repairing being an issue they have no reason to ever care about their armor again. They've just "won" and that's the last they ever think about it and they're forever just more powerful than everyone else who doesn't have it. If it's a resource to be managed, even if only in a vague way, it means that it's something they're actively choosing to bring into a fight to try and boost their chance of success. Just like with using special ammo.

Also, I'd be really surprised if weapons or items didn't break too. I mean, it's Fallout. Everything you find is either ancient, jury-rigged, or more or less hand made. You're not looking at brand new factory quality. It would be weird if things didn't break somewhat often. Even modern day equipment needs maintenance and repairs with use and almost nothing in the wasteland is going to be anywhere near in that good of shape. (I suppose you might occasionally find a sealed cache of weapons or something but, even still they've been sitting there for a couple hundred years.)

In case what you guys are worried about is annoying Bethesda style disrepair percentages, that's not at all what I have in mind. I just figure every once in a while the GM would declare that something jams up or isn't performing optimally or such and you need to fix it somehow.

Ramsus wrote:Wouldn't it make things much harder to balance if the ammo doesn't fit into weapon type categories? It's going to be pretty hard to balance a sniper rifle and rocket launchers if you can use the same ammo for both of them.

Actually, it's harder because you have fewer things to weigh the variables against and you don't know if DMs will make certain ammunition more plentiful.

As a point of reference, you can probably see it's a lot easier to balance combat talents when they all use the same resource (pips).

Or, another reference, trying to handle multiple different currencies in the global economy makes it harder to figure out what anything's worth.

*shrug* It still means trigger happy rocket guy is using up all the hoarding sniper's ammo. Unless the party actually divies up their special ammo. But that will just result in the rest of the party pressuring someone one way or the other to give up their ammo to someone else or stop using so much.

Also more diverse ammo types means you're going to have "well, we have to go to crazytown over there or live without X" more often.

Oh, and I've been wondering something for a while. Is there going to be any change to healing mechanics? A big part of fallout is stimpacks (and in my experience ending up carrying like a thousand of them around by halfway through the game but....that's just my playstyle) and doctor's bags and such. In order for those items to have worth we're going to have to have healing work at least a bit differently. I figure stimpacks are common enough that they can just be the items used for in combat healing (again, it seems like somehow they just grow under rocks you find them so often). Maybe restrict out of combat healing of wounds (I don't mean HP, just whatever ailments people would normally suffer out of combat) to being very slow without the heal skill and doctor's bags and such giving a really large bonus to the heal skill? I'm not really sure about that though or exactly how that would work.

I'd say one could find a balance of things in splitting special ammunition into three types: Explosive(rockets and grenades), Projectile(snipers and Machine Guns), and Energy(Plasma Pistols and the like). This way, there is more sense to the ammo typing, but a level of simplicity as well. As far as what I'd said earlier, I'd like to clarify that when you run out of ammo for using a weapon fully, you're out till the DM says you find more. As far as actually tracking ammunition, I'd prefer tracking ammo individually rather than as a group, but that's just me being a selfish hoarder. That ould probably just be DM/Party's discression as far as how ammo is split up and used.

Ramsus wrote:*shrug* It still means trigger happy rocket guy is using up all the hoarding sniper's ammo. Unless the party actually divies up their special ammo. But that will just result in the rest of the party pressuring someone one way or the other to give up their ammo to someone else or stop using so much.

Also more diverse ammo types means you're going to have "well, we have to go to crazytown over there or live without X" more often.

Umm... Doesn't this kind of just compound the problems you bring up? If every party member is using different ammo, they can't be switching between varied weapon types the way Newbiespud mentions (you can't trade out a sniper rifle for a rocket launcher if the whole point is to keep those ammo-users separate). So, there'd still be the same discussions... But with more variables to track and, if you want to encourage going to different places to get different ammo, we'd have brand new arguments over which quest to take in order to get rocket-launcher-ammo for one guy or sniper-ammo for another guy. Doesn't that sound like added complexity for even more problems?

I mean, we do pretty well with a different universal consumable resource that everyone wants. Gold, bits, what-have-you. We don't get so worried about peer-pressure that we make different currency only Wizards can use and different currency only Barbarians can use. The current way, everyone gets excited when you find a chest full of gold.

Now, maybe you could use a very few types of ammunition (probably no more than 3 maximum) for a similar result... But if it's possible to do with less variables, then that's usually a good idea.

Ramsus wrote:Oh, and I've been wondering something for a while. Is there going to be any change to healing mechanics? A big part of fallout is stimpacks (and in my experience ending up carrying like a thousand of them around by halfway through the game but....that's just my playstyle) and doctor's bags and such. In order for those items to have worth we're going to have to have healing work at least a bit differently. I figure stimpacks are common enough that they can just be the items used for in combat healing (again, it seems like somehow they just grow under rocks you find them so often). Maybe restrict out of combat healing of wounds (I don't mean HP, just whatever ailments people would normally suffer out of combat) to being very slow without the heal skill and doctor's bags and such giving a really large bonus to the heal skill? I'm not really sure about that though or exactly how that would work.

Oh! About healing, are you considering introducing healing surges? There's another resource that makes the players feel like they're steadily running out of stamina to weather the day. Could open some new design space too.

Hmmm, doctor's bags adding bonus healing surges would be a really awesome and elegant solution to that issue. I like it!
Edit: Though you should probably still have the option of using them to buff a healing check instead if you want. Because the heal skill kinda still has to actually do something.

Wait...why would we NOT want people arguing about which ammo quest to go on first in this setting? That's totally appropriate. Especially for the kind of characters people are bound to make.

Lapis, that was more or less what I was suggesting. Though I might have had it be six instead of just three. Rockets, Grenades (for hand held or projectile use!), Large Caliber Projectile (for rifles and such? I dunno what I'm talking about really when it comes to guns), Whatever the appropriate term for machine guns or pistols and stuff would be?, Plasma packs, and Energy Packs (laser weapons, Tesla cannon, Gauss gun, etc.). You might occasional have others for really odd weapons like alien weaponry, the flamethrower, or the mini-nuke launcher (you really don't want this to share ammo with anything else...). Because yeah....usually there is quite a difference in power between rockets and grenades and plasma and laser weapons. I figure machine guns' high PiP cost attacks will chew through a lot of ammo ("Screw it, I'm hosing down the WHOLE ROOM!" totally should be an attack name), so it might be kind of odd if that ammo type was the same as for things that normally fire off one shot at a time like rifles.