2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 1: Fallout

War. War never changes. But it may use a different dice system to determine the outcome.

So let’s start this thing. Welcome to the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. If you haven’t read up on the idea, click on the link above. Feel free to join the large online community that is participating in this event.

For the past several years, the first game that I create a character for in the challenge is a game that I’m really excited about. In 2022 I created one for Dune: Adventures in the Imperium and in 2023 I used Alien. I had my first chance to play Fallout The Roleplaying Game at SaltCON-End of Summer last year. I remember being very impressed. I’ve made a character for John Carter of Mars and I had played Dune and Star Trek Adventures, but there was always something that I felt that I was missing about the 2d20 system. I don’t know if it was the presentation or the GM, but it all clicked somehow. Since I was really excited about this game, my daughter purchased the book for me from a black Friday sale. Ding, here is my first day already taken care of when I started my list of what games I was going to use..

For those of you not familiar with Fallout, it is a series of video games about a post-apocalyptic world where survivors hid in underground bunkers (called Vaults). After several decades after the bombs drop they come out to a changed world. This has become a franchise with various games and merchandising (where the real money from the movie is made) and soon to be a TV series on Amazon Prime. I’ve attempted to play a few of the video games, with some success and some flat out flopping. But the game world is very well thought out. When I started gathering interest in this series, I started watching some fan-made videos that explain the world and history. They may prove useful to anyone wanting to run an RPG in this series.

The core book is hardbound with 429 pages in full color. The character creation starts in chapter three with the details on page 50. There is a two page character sheet.

Step one is to select the origin of the character. This is basically your race (such as Ghoul (humans suffering from prolonged exposure to radiation), Super Mutant (mutated human big and bulky) or Mister Handy (robot freed from programing) or starting group (such as Brotherhood of Steel (religious knights trying to recover technology), Survivor (humans that survived on the surface) or Vault Dweller (humans that survived in a vault)). Since the first video game I played (Fallout 3) had me starting as a Vault Dweller, I wanted to try another one. This comes with the trait, Vault Kid.

Next comes the attributes. They were pulled straight from the video games. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. or Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. These all start with a score of 5 and I have 5 additional points to allocate. I can reduce a score if I wanted to but only to 4. I made my selections and wrote them down.

Skills is what I select in step 3. Like the attributes, these come from the video game (it was practically a computerized RPG). These skill include Athletics, Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Pilot, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech, Survival, Throwing and Unarmed. In this 2d20 system, you tell the GM what you want to do, and they let you know what attribute and skill you add together for your target number. If it is an easy task, you may only need one (or even zero) successes. If it is a more difficult task, it may require three or four successes. I was instructed to pick three skills to be my “tagged” skills. These start with a base score of 2 with the rest starting at 0. I then add 9 plus my INT score to come up with a list of additional skill points that I can allocate. For this character it will be 14 in total. My three tagged skills are Small Guns, Sneak and Pilot. I then allocated my points.

Each character gets a perk. Something that gives him an advantage. There is a large list available to pick from (some with minimum requirements). Think of the Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 traits. By this time I was starting to think of a possible backstory for this currently unnamed character, so I looked for a perk that I thought would fit him and wrote it down.

For step five we get to discover our derived statistics. These include how much the character can carry, damage resistance, defense, initiative, health points and how much damage he can do in a melee fight. I wrote these down.

The last step is to choose the starting equipment. I’m very grateful that starting packs were made available (depending upon your position with your origin). You also got a trinket, which is a special item that you own. I could make one up, pick from the list or roll for a random one. Since I haven’t rolled any dice yet, let’s see what the dice gives me. A postcard with an address. Interesting. Next is the tagged skill items. The skills I had tagged above came with their own special equipment items. I wrote these down.

There were still a few blank areas on the character sheet. What is my luck points (I think it’s the same as my luck score when starting out). What is TN and tagging in the weapons description? I had to track down some equipment information and I think I found most of it (especially since there is a carrying capacity within the game). I think I’m mostly done with the numbers side of the character, but I know I would have asked a few questions if I was creating this character in a session zero.

Ragnal Walker was born in Vault 47 (I don’t know if that number has been used in the game yet, so subject to change) and was one of the standard kids that got into trouble while growing up. While he didn’t have the smarts to be a doctor or scientist, he was always getting into places he shouldn’t be. In order to keep him out of trouble, the leaders instructed that he be taught how to drive some of the vehicles available to the vault for use in the outside world. While the leaders mostly kept the hidden vault sealed, they knew that they needed to trade with one of the other vaults several miles away. This loose relationship helped keep both vaults running. On one return trip, the caravan was ambushed by a band of raiders. Walker was able to fight his way out of the attack and headed back to Vault 47 on foot. A day later he discovered that the same raiders had just come from the vault and had destroyed it after the raid. Walker had to make a decision, start a new life out on his own amongst the surface dwellers (whom he had little contact with) or try to make it to the other vault to see if they would take him in. His adventure starts.

Here is the character sheet. After I had scanned it, I realized that I hadn’t added my vault kid trait onto the second sheet. So I added that afterwards.

Afterthoughts:

Unlike some of the other Modiphius products, Fallout is avoiding the “pop up” syndrome where you get distracted by the side notes in the book. This made it very easy to read (and I found myself reading more than I needed for character creation). While the creation process wasn’t 100% smooth, it wasn’t a frustrating ball of mess that I’ve experienced in other games.

Do I want to play this game? Oh yea. Do I want to homebrew for this game? At the least I’d like to write up something about the state I live in since I’m familiar with the area. As mentioned above, I’ve played this at SaltCON and I’ve signed up for another session at the next convention in March.

Additional Notes:

I’ve already had a ton of people reach out to me regarding the 2024 Character Creation Challenge. Several of you were looking forward to this event. Thank you, it is nice to know that my efforts have been appreciated. I hope that you all remember that this is for fun, so have fun with it.

A lot of blogs were added to the links section at the Character Creation Challenge page. I’ve also stumbled across another fan run message board for Alternity that apparently has an active thread running since 2021. Another participant has elected to post his entries on the TardisCaptain discord server (under the Character Creation Challenge channel). You are not required to use it, but it is there if you don’t have any other options. And (of course) you can email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain dot com or tag me on one of the social media platforms that I use.

Coming Up Next:

Hackmaster Basic

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.