[Games] Campaign Brainstorming: Fallout Florida
FALLOUT FLORIDA CAMPAIGN CONCEPT
I’ve been brainstorming on ideas for a Fallout campaign. Plus, I painted up a bunch of Fallout-themed minis. (Most images shown here are NOT mine, however - just linked for reference.)
Overview:
Retro-futuristic post-apocalyptic setting drawing elements from American 1950s-1960s pop culture (or satirical takes thereof). The protagonist characters (PCs) are assorted post-apocalyptic survivors who happen upon an automated Nuka-Cola delivery truck, and find it an ideal place to stake out a living in the wastes, as it makes a long journey across what used to be the southern United States of America, eventually ending up in what’s left of Florida. Features include exploration of various ruined sites (“dungeons”), Mad-Max-style road battles, and eventual exploration of a run-down retro-futuristic theme park (heavily inspired by Walt Disney’s original vision for EPCOT, with a dash of Tomorrowland). Culmination of campaign may focus upon trying to set up a permanent base at the ruins of the theme park, or perhaps journeying on to this world’s version of Kennedy Space Center.
(Note: I'm tentatively thinking of the EPCOT-ish place being called "EXPO," with a mind to tying into the theme of a "Permanent World Expo," but I need to think of a clever way for "EXPO" to be an acronym. Also, I have it in my mind to have Mr. Not-Walt-Disney to be Mr. Mimsy. I imagine a tag-line for some TV show to be "... from the Marvelous Mind of Mimsy!" Or, slight variation, "... from the Marvelous Minds at Mimsy!" -- with "Mimsy" becoming shorthand for the corporation rather than just the identity of the creator/owner, who by all rights should be long-gone by 2077.)
My Nuka-Cola Truck conversion, based off of a Hot Wheels transporter toy. In the foreground is a survivor riding the Nuka-Cola delivery bike. To the middle right is the Nukatron 3000, a Nuka-Cola delivery robot that (of course) suffers from completely deteriorated safety protocols, so it’s a good idea NOT to forget your Nuka-Cola employee ID badge when in its presence, and to make sure NOT to get in between it and the nearest Nuka-Cola vending machine.
Setting:
The setting is inspired by the “Fallout” series of computer games. The basic conceit is that in this alternate history, a wondrous (and somewhat silly) future such as might be imagined in such things as the old “Closer Than We Think” comic (1958-1963), issues of Popular Mechanics, etc. - yet still with much of the design and cultural sensibilities of the 1950s-1960s - has come about in 2077 AD. And then the bombs dropped. People survived in the most remote rural areas, in caves, in underground military bunkers, and - in special cases - huge underground complexes known as Vaults. About 200 years later (2280-something), America is still largely a wasteland, but there are pockets in the West where already-rugged desert plant life grows in relative abundance, and scavenger communities that have popped up here and there.
A ”Vault-Dweller” miniature I kitbashed and painted up:
Environment:
Physics and science in this setting are akin to what might pass in pulpy sci-fi from the 1950s and 1960s. Radiation results in giant ants, giant scorpions, giant cockroaches, two-headed cows, freaky mutants, the undead-like ghouls, etc. Escaped lab experiments (coyote-rattlesnake hybrids, dino-man-like “deathclaws,” etc.) run rampant. And of course just about every robot, whether military or industrial or civilian/household in original purpose, is still operating, and has gone berserk in such a way that its primary function is “something to try to kill the heroes.”
Supposedly, it’s been 200 years since the bombs dropped, so everything looks pretty wasted, but decay doesn’t necessarily follow a sensible path (or else maybe space-age materials are just longer-lasting than our modern equivalents). Junk and processed foods from before the Great War are still edible, though they might confer a small amount of radiation that can eventually add up to rad poisoning. “Fancy Lads” cakes, Salisbury steak TV dinners, “Insta-Mash” potatoes, “CRAM” processed meat, “Sugar Bombs” cereal, and - most famously - Nuka-Cola bottled soda can still be found in consumable condition.
A wasteland survivor enjoys a nice, room-temperature bottle of Nuka-Cola! Another kitbashed and painted “Brother Vinni” mini.
Many devices (TVs, radios, ovens, vacuum cleaners, toys) look as if designed in the ‘50s or ‘60s, but work off of miniature nuclear reactors or fuel cells. Some vehicles have been restored to working order, but most abandoned cars have unstable nuclear reactors with deteriorated shielding, and it’s best to keep clear of them if a firefight breaks out, or a stray shot makes them go BOOM.
Scenery piece I did for the Necronomicon convention - a Poseidon Energy “Fuel & Fusion” station. It’s basically just like your regular gas station, except that fusion-powered cars stop here for coolant, and the gasoline is too expensive for anyone to bother buying it anyway. I put this together from an old Plasticville O-Scale gas-station set, and assorted “bits.”
Computer tech is rather backwards in some ways, advanced in others. Personal computers don’t quite exist as such, other than the remarkably advanced (and rare) Pip-Boy 3000. Computer terminals are widespread (micro-fusion-powered!) but the actual computers they link up to are room-sized contraptions. Conventional circuit boards and transistors are a relatively recent invention (right before the Great War).
Many types of “AI” actually employed organic brains (from chimps, or occasionally from humans) as part of their processors. Robots are widely used in the military, and somewhat in industry, and have remarkable capability at visual and audio recognition (to tell friend from foe, and to target enemies), yet are very, very limited in regards to what sorts of tasks they can be assigned.
A Brother Vinni resin model modified to represent a “Mr. Handy” household robot popular around 2077. Yes, he’s a HOUSEHOLD robot, and yet he’s armed with a spinning saw and a blowtorch/flamethrower. So useful for household chores, and so NOT in danger of going berserk and slaughtering everybody! Because SCIENCE!
(Canon) Factions & Adversaries:
NCR: “New California Republic.” Survivor settlements banding together to attempt to recreate a state patterned after the values of the old USA. Not perfect, but as close to a “good guy” faction as can be found in Fallout.
[Resource Note: I don’t plan on having these guys as adversaries. If a player wants to be from this faction, I have some “Dust Tactics” models - a sort of “WWII with anachronistic technology and walking tanks” setting - that could pass for the general look for a PC model. The look for troops is sort of a WWII throwback in terms of personal gear and style, but with some personal body armor.]
An NCR Ranger - one of the really cool commando types who goes about on special missions or general do-goodery, and makes a passable NCR PC type. Painted and modded “Brother Vinni” resin miniature.
My earlier attempt at kitbashing an NCR ranger from assorted other miniature parts.
Brotherhood of Steel:Descendants of US military living in underground bunkers and remote secret military installations, possessing high tech, and developed into a sort of “Knights Templar” organization dedicated to keeping “dangerous technology” out of the hands of outsiders. Sometimes helpful, sometimes not so much (especially if you have said “dangerous technology” and would like to keep it). Sometimes-ally, sometimes-adversary of the NCR.
Some Brotherhood of Steel models I painted up, with slight mods:
[Resource Note: Again, these aren’t likely to be enemies, though a player might opt to play a PC who’s a “Knight Errant” of the Brotherhood of Steel, or even an exile.]
Legion of Caesar: Brutal survivor nation patterned after the Roman Legion or popular depictions thereof (even to the point of making armor and costumes out of scrap to loosely resemble “centurions” and “legionnaires”). Misogynistic, patriarchal, and uber-macho to the extreme, depending upon slave labor and subjugation of all they encounter. Big on cruel, torturous executions (crucifixion, etc.) to strike fear into the hearts of enemies and subjects. Very not-nice.
[Resource Note: Some time ago, I was given some plastic sprues full of Roman soldier models, of which I painted up several for a game - and still have lots of extras. I could so see doing a kitbash by combining Roman Legionnaire models with various Mad-Max-style details - hubcap armor, motorcycle helmets, gas masks, modern/futuristic weapons, etc. - to represent these guys as adversaries. This would just be a problem while the PCs are passing through Arizona, though - not a recurring enemy over the course of the trip.]
The Enclave: Descendants of the governmental, corporate and celebrity elite who were the true beneficiaries of the Vault-Tec Vault Project; they consider themselves the true inheritors of the mantle of the USA, possess even higher tech than the Brotherhood of Steel (they kept developing and experimenting while underground), and their insistence upon maintaining the purity of human genes means they generally have a shoot-on-sight attitude toward anyone else they encounter.
[Resource Note: I’ve been working on some proxy Enclave troopers, just in case. They’re the sort who’d have an excuse to pop up anywhere during the journey to harass the PCs, as tougher opponents.]
Some Brother Vinni “Enclave” minis I painted up and kitbashed:
Raiders/Fiends: Various “tribes” of survivors can be found across the landscape. Most the PCs are likely to encounter are hostile, living by raiding OTHER tribes - and in some cases, they even resort to cannibalism. Most take on a “Road Warrior” style of garb, with armor made of scrap metal, various bones worn as trophies, possibly with spiky mohawks, piercings, tattoos, war paint, etc.
[Resource Note: These guys are SO easy to represent. I could basically just take some Mage Knight “barbarian” models and give them crossbows and/or guns, and I’m set. I’ve already kitbashed a few.]
Some female “raiders” I painted up, with license-plate armor. (No, it doesn’t do much at all.)
Some more survivors. Gas masks are highly advised.
Gangs: In a few places, more organized “tribes” are civilized and organized enough that they develop some kind of a distinctive identity for themselves. “The Kings” of New Vegas are based out of a former School of Impersonation, and every last one of them is basically an Elvis impersonator (though of ‘50s-‘60s Elvis, as it seems like the 1970s never happened in this universe). “The Khans” are basically a biker gang (but without the bikes). Clowns, mimes, baseball players, fast food servers - whatever it is, a gang usually has a “look,” and it’s typically based on some primary resource the gang has access to at its base (so they all can have the same look).
[Resource Note: This gives the opportunity for some fun. I could basically have an excuse to have the PCs attacked by killer clowns, or homicidal housewives, or machinegun-toting gangster-wannabes, or what-have-you - but since “gangs” tend to have very small territories, and this is a road trip, it’d likely be a one-off encounter. This may just be an opportunity for me to take some minis I already have from other genres and repurpose them as filler encounters for the campaign. This concept is also a good excuse for some pretty colorful PC concepts - for pre-gen PCs for my Necronomicon scenario, I had a PC who was an Elvis impersonator from the Kings, and a couple of Khan bikers, for instance.]
WIP picture of a “Khans” ganger, with the “Khans” logo visible in the upper left corner. I never officially “finished” this mini - just roughly painted it up “good enough for tabletop” for my Necronomicon scenario. I need to get back to that.
Another kitbashed “Khans” ganger.
A New Vegas “Kings” ganger, sporting the “Jailhouse Rock” look.
Ghouls: Radiation does weird stuff in this setting. Mostly, it kills, but some survive the process and become “ghoulified” - looking much like the walking dead. Usually this results in “feral ghouls” - savage, bent on feasting upon non-ghoulified flesh for some reason. In rare cases, one’s sanity may be kept (if not one’s appearance), and the odd thing is that there are “ghouls” who have been around since before the Great War (over 200 years old), as the process seems to interfere with normal aging. Keeping one’s sanity and being cannibalistic are not necessarily exclusive; many are disdainful of or even generally hostile toward “smoothskins.”
[Resource Notes: Awfully easy to kitbash, basically by using various zombie minis for “feral ghouls,” or a zombie head-swap for intelligent ghouls. This isn’t meant to be a “zombie apocalypse” campaign, so I’ll try to resist the urge to overdo encounters with these.]
A Deadlands: Hell on Earth “Harrowed” figure (character: “Stone”) painted up as a still-sapient ghoul for Fallout:
Super-Mutants: Some “mutants” are a product of a deliberately bioengineered virus called the FEV or “Forced Evolutionary Virus.” Super-Mutants are big muscled hulking brutes with widely varying degrees of intelligence, extreme resistance to radiation, and extreme resistance to damage and healing capacity. Some may be friendly. Most are hostile toward “normies.”
[Resource Notes: I have several kitbashed, some from minis obviously meant to evoke the idea of a Super Mutant, and some converted from big muscular HeroClix or Mage Knight minis. These guys are for tough encounters, because they are typically armed with uber-heavy weapons; they can carry weapons that are normally “stationary,” and melee weapons are often things like ripped up I-beams, fire hydrants on pipes, etc. They do “squash-in-one-blow” sort of damage against PCs, so they’re more of a deterrent - something to AVOID - rather than a casual encounter.]
Work in progress: A couple of Super-Mutants put together from Reaper minis and Warhammer 40K “Space Ork” pieces, plus a “Junkyard Dawg” mini (a werewolf model with more Ork pieces and putty).
Centaurs: These are a more extreme result of FEV, bizarre and giant chimeric creatures that look like someone mashed together and warped a bunch of different human body parts in very wrong ways. They often have multiple heads, and the general common feature is that they tend to end up moving about on four limbs (some mix of arms and legs), with one or two extra limbs and/or tentacles. Frequently, they have ranged attacks in the form of acidic, highly radioactive projectile vomit. Ewww. They appear to have only bestial intelligence. For some reason they usually get along fine with Super Mutants.
[Resource Notes: Pretty easy to kitbash from spare mini parts, but I likely won’t bother with more than one or two, if any.]
Mutant Animals: Giant cockroaches, giant scorpions, giant ants, bloat flies, ghoulified dogs, two-headed cows, etc. Some creatures have been domesticated. A great many things are hostile that shouldn’t normally be in nature. Some are due to mutation, others due to mad science.
[Resource Notes: Pretty easy to find minis to represent lots of these things, or to kitbash something to give it another head.]
Non-Canon Adversaries:
(Or, rather, a few bad guys we might throw against the PCs, who might fit in-universe, but aren’t firmly established in the games insofar as how they’d look, how they’d act, etc.)
Soviet Invaders: In the Resource Wars that led up to the Great War, China was the primary adversary of the US, but in this alternate universe, the USSR never broke up. US military tech pioneered the idea of personal powered armor with the idea of powered infantry doing the jobs of tanks. China military tech focused on advanced stealth suits, with the idea that you don’t need heavy armor when the enemy can’t even see you to shoot at you. Soviet war technology was behind the curve compared to the rest (their “powered armor” is more akin to “small walking tanks,” and their “stealth” technology limited to color-shifting paint camouflage schemes.
However, their designs were a bit more durable, the heavy shielding is a lot more resistant to radiation, and now without a USA or China to oppose them, Soviet expeditionary forces can make use of their mechanized infantry to roll over mere raiders and ghouls in search of Old World tech and resources to take back to the Motherland.
[Resource Notes: I’ve got a whole Red Blok army from AT-43: retro-futuristic Soviet-themed forces with clunky “powered armor” and outright walking tanks, with lots of yellow stars and hammers and sickles to make the theme clear. Wow, I love pre-painted minis! However, this would represent the sort of firepower that would be more of a deterrent and “thing to run away from” rather than “mooks” to be defeated casually. I mean, one of my Red Blok tanks is basically a walking HOWITZER. There’s no way a PC should be able to walk away from a hit like that. Similarly, it’d be a crazy game-changer if anything like this fell into PC hands and they actually had the skill to maintain and operate it. So I need to restrain the temptation to put this on the table just because I have it, no matter how cool it looks.]
Gorilla Sapiens: Most of the US government’s most secretive experimental research and prototyping laboratory complexes were housed deep in underground bases. Some of them were self-sufficient enough to survive the Great War, and continued their research, no longer fettered by military or congressional oversight. “Big Mountain” would be the most notorious of such complexes, its researchers largely giving up their own humanity to continue on as “brain-in-a-jar” immortals experimenting on any wastelanders unlucky enough to wander into their domain. Others have found other paths to immortality, either in the more conventional sense, or by engineering their own “progeny” to carry on their work.
[Resource Notes: And here’s as far as I’ve gotten with that idea. I have some more forces from AT-43: “Karmans,” who are basically gorillas in bulky armor, sometimes with bubble helmets, and usually with ridiculously oversized guns. Their vehicles have a retro “flying car” look, though the styling is more dieselpunk than atomic-age. Their default armor paint scheme - blue and white - is reminiscent of Vault-Tec, so perhaps I could try a Vault-Tec tie-in. The idea of “uplifted” gorillas with big guns and a general disdain for humanity strikes me as very pulpy and appropriate to the Fallout setting, so I’d like to do something with it.]
Beastmen: This doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing to come about via radiation so much as mad science, but occasionally talking creatures that combine human and bestial features can be found in the Fallout universe - just not widespread, and not in any great numbers, so it’s doubtful that any such community would last beyond a few generations at best.
[Resource Notes: Animal-people are fun! There are a few odd instances of talking deathclaws, hints of intelligent “mutant” (or experimental) animals, etc., in the Fallout universe, but most of it is stuff that’s very temporary - either implied to be destroyed or wiped out by the time the adventure is over with, or else something of dubious canon, or even something that was vetoed during the creative process. I might allow someone to play a “mutant animal” type if that’s that a player really wants. Otherwise, any animal-people encountered are likely to be hostile, because, well, isn’t that the way with MOST people the PCs encounter in an apocalyptic setting? I’m toying with the idea of some sort of bioengineered monstrosities who were originally intended to resemble mascots at a futuristic theme park, but over generations they’ve deviated from their original intended “profile,” as their tailor-made genes weren’t exactly stable.]
”Junkyard Dawg” put together as a pre-gen PC for my Necronomicon scenario.
…
More later on my ideas for what I’m tentatively thinking of as “Mimsyland” or “The EXPO,” until I can come up with better names and backstories. Possible mascots: Ricky Rabbit, and his pal, Larry the Lab Rat! (Maybe work a monkey in there, too, and maybe an astro-dog, a la Laika. Maybe Dali (deliberate odd spelling), the insane cloned sheep. Lab animals as mascots! How delightfully morbid! Whee!)