New info about Fallout PnP

JHMN · Post by **JHMN** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 6:22 pm

[ Community -> Article ] - More info on <a href="#Jason Mical">Person: Jason Mical</a> | More info on <a href="#Fallout: Pencil and Paper">Game: Fallout: Pencil and Paper</a>

The new <a href="http://piratelog.blogspot.com/2007/07/f ... -also.html" target="_blank">article</a> on Jason's blog ends with this:<blockquote>So, fellow Fallout fans, I contacted my friend Ausir who runs <a target="_blank">the Vault</a>. Although I've toyed with the idea of working on a new version of the Fallout PnP, unless it was a paying gig I couldn't justify the time. Mercenary I know, but them's the shakes these days. So I turned over all my PnP materials to Ausir to convert to a Wiki, and the result is this: the <a href="http://pnp.falloutvault.com/wiki/Main_Page" target="_blank">Fallout PnP game Wiki</a>, completely open-source and available to the fans to edit, take apart, restructure, correct, and change as they see fit. It's not complete yet, and Ausir has some materials I don't have, but I encourage everyone to check it out.

Additionally, as I have been asked for these on several occasions, I zipped up the last version of the document I worked on along with all other Fallout PnP-related items I could find and uploaded them to my website. Get that file <a href="http://www.jasonmical.com/files/fopnp.zip" target="_blank">here</a>. Ausir promises me that a larger, updated .zip with more materials will be available on the Wiki soon, at which point I'll either mirror that file or simply take mine down (but I'll update when I do.)

The resources in this .zip:
<ul><li>Fallout PnP "Unlimited" (a never-released, partially completed revision) .doc format
</li><li>Psionics rules, .doc format
</li><li>Great Wastes sourcebook, .doc format
</li><li>The Enclave 2.0 sourcebook, .PDF format
</li><li>Tribes sourcebook, .PDF format
</li><li>Waterworld total conversion, .txt format</li></ul></blockquote>It's worth to read the whole text, interesting approach towards Fallout 3 presented.Spotted @ <a href="http://www.nma-fallout.com">No Mutants Allowed</a>

Koki · Post by **Koki** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 7:58 pm

What? Fallout PnP is shit.

Killzig · Post by **Killzig** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 8:26 pm

his blog post is pretty lulzy.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 9:32 pm

Psionic rules? Waterworld? :kevincostner:

Mechanurgist · Post by **Mechanurgist** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:55 pm

Mical's Fallout PnP was great, though a tad complicated for my taste. Nice to see this project going open-source, so to speak. Good catch, Ausir!

Machiavelli · Post by **Machiavelli** » Wed Aug 01, 2007 2:19 am

I had fun with Micals Fallout PnP, but I agree that it was too complicated and made it difficult to get new players interested when all that D20 shit was around and most of them already knew that system.

Matt_Helm · Post by **Matt_Helm** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 1:14 am

There are a couple of goal for FOPNP. One is to produce some alternate rules that streamline the game a bit for those that want this sort of thing, the second is to introduce new material that would allow using the SPECIAL system in settings other than Fallout, and the third is to try to bring some logic to the screwed up FO firearms damage system.

S4ur0n27 · Post by **S4ur0n27** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 1:04 pm

Streamline the game? Care to explain?

Koki · Post by **Koki** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 1:46 pm

Roll for Soil Erosion

Machiavelli · Post by **Machiavelli** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 9:52 pm

The original game was almost a complete copy of the system for the computer, so it was complicated to follow at times with a pencil and paper. I really don't see how it could be streamlined though without it losing its fallouty feel.

Ausir · Post by **Ausir** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:21 pm

It is possible to simplify the combat system while keeping the character system largely intact, I don't think it would lose the Fallout feel.

Matt_Helm · Post by **Matt_Helm** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:36 pm

After going through the rules the two points I am looking at are the rather baroque aiming penalty for lighting conditions and armour vs damage. The lighting chart can be easily simplified. The armour is another question.

Fallout armour has both a flat damage subtraction as well as a percentile damage mitigation. I need to crunch some numbers to see if I can reduce this to just a new flat damage subtraction value (taking into account the old percentile mitigation) to remove the need to use a calculator every time someone takes damage.

The other issue is the myriad of categories of damage types. Normal (physical), laser, plasma, fire, and explosive were used in FO 1 and 2. FOT used normal, energy, fire, gas, electric, and explosive. I am considering reducing all this to physical, energy, and laser.

One thing to rememer, all this will be presented as optional changes from the canonical presentation. If someone likes using calculators for every shot they'll be able to do so, same with using the original group of damage types.

The issue dogging me right now is Sneak skill and what controlled NPCs being able to notice or not notice the sneaking individual. There is no Perception skill of any kind and adding new skills has problems as the amount of skill points for advancement are fixed. Using the PE stat means that a character can never improve their perception ability, something I am not really happy with. I'm already adding one skill, Athletics, for use with situations involving climbing, jumping, running, etc. The FO games didn't have to worry about this as there was no way to do any of that within the game engine.

Ausir · Post by **Ausir** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:48 pm

You might want to look at J.E. Sawyer's Simple system (which IMHO is too simplified, actually):

http://pnp.fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Simple:_Main_Page

Since his original site is down, I mirrored it in the wiki as well.

JHMN · Post by **JHMN** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:51 pm

Matt_Helm wrote:Normal (physical), laser, plasma, fire, and explosive were used in FO 1 and 2. FOT used normal, energy, fire, gas, electric, and explosive.

Not really, there was Electrical Damage in F 1 & 2, although this value was not visible for the player - take a look: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Damage.

Matt_Helm · Post by **Matt_Helm** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 10:55 pm

Ausir wrote:You might want to look at J.E. Sawyer's Simple system (which IMHO is too simplified, actually):

http://pnp.fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Simple:_Main_Page

Since his original site is down, I mirrored it in the wiki as well.

I'll mine it for ideas but I think he veered too far from the original, most of the original game is not hard to play out in a PnP environment.

JHMN wrote:
Matt_Helm wrote:Normal (physical), laser, plasma, fire, and explosive were used in FO 1 and 2. FOT used normal, energy, fire, gas, electric, and explosive.
Not really, there was Electrical Damage in F 1 & 2, although this value was not visible for the player - take a look: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Damage.

Interesting, thanks.

Ausir · Post by **Ausir** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 11:01 pm

Matt_Helm wrote: I'll mine it for ideas but I think he veered too far from the original, most of the original game is not hard to play out in a PnP environment.

It's also worth looking at Sawyer's changes to SPECIAL in Van Buren:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Van_Buren_SPECIAL

Some of the stuff in Simple is an extension of those changes.

chang · Post by **chang** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 2:40 pm

Matt_Helm wrote:The issue dogging me right now is Sneak skill and what controlled NPCs being able to notice or not notice the sneaking individual. There is no Perception skill of any kind and adding new skills has problems as the amount of skill points for advancement are fixed. Using the PE stat means that a character can never improve their perception ability, something I am not really happy with.

The Fallout 2 Manual says: "When you are Sneaking, you don’t actually know if the skill is working properly. When you first start Sneaking, and every minute after, the computer rolls against your Sneak skill. If successful, all critters will have their Perception halved when trying to notice you."

Going by this, I'd do it by requiring a check of the sneaking character's sneak skill, followed immediately by a Perception roll on the NPC/PC being snuck upon. If the sneak roll was succesful, the guy being stalked checks at half his Perception. In this case, you could succeed on your sneak skill but still be noticed (the other charcater was extremely perceptive) or fail it and still remain unnoticed (the other guy is oblivious.)

Unfortunately the only way to improve the PE stat is thru perks. (Gain PE or Death Sense; bonus against sneaking characters.)

The problem I have with this was the "check every minute" part of sneaking, how do you determine how long it takes to sneak up on someone? How much time does it take to move 1 meter (measurement of one hex in Fallout) when sneaking?

Thor Kaufman · Post by **Thor Kaufman** » Fri Aug 03, 2007 4:02 pm

just add in a ninja perk