Fallout: New Reno

[The Washoe Wasteland]

War.

War never changes.

On October 23rd, 2077, the sum of man's aggression against his fellow man unfolded in the span of two hours. Nuclear war scoured the face of the earth, wiping the slate clean and setting back the march of progress by millennia. Despite mankind's attempts to obliterate each other from the face of the earth, life endured.



As the blanket of background radiation eased, the few and far between survivors of nuclear armageddon emerged into a world unlike any they had imagined. Mankind was persistent. Through generations, civilization scratched a living amid the blackened bones of a bygone era.

In the upper reaches of what was once called Nevada, a city untouched by atomic fire glowed fluorescent against an atomic sky. Once called the Biggest Little City in the World, Reno stood as a haven for the pious and the wicked alike. The allure of a promise of wealth in its casinos drew survivors from the hardscrabble, eager to turn their fortunes around for the better.

In the shadow of Reno, many towns and settlements sprung from the parched earth like scrub brush. One such town, nestled in a valley to the south, is called Unity. It is home. Your home.

But in the quiet of the Nevada night, you can hear the sounds of motors running far in the distance, signalling things to come.

[The Washoe Wasteland]

QUESTIONS AND STUFF

What is Fallout?

Fallout is a post-apocalyptic roleplaying universe, depicted by several video games (Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout Tactics, Fallout Brotherhood of Steel, and Fallout New Vegas)

The game takes place in an alternate future, based upon a society that never really grew out of the 1950's optimism and pie in the sky world of tomorrow ideals. For 120 years, everyone was convinced in truth, justice, the American Way, apple pie, and the benefits of nuclear power. The best way to think of Fallout is to imagine if all of those whiz-bang "World of Tomorrow" newsreels came true. What if you did have a nuclear powered robot butler to help your wife in the kitchen? That's pretty much the world of Fallout, prior to the Great War.

I've never so much as played a Fallout game, halp!

Easy you big baby, there's not a whole lot to know. Here's a great resource if you've never played any fallout:

The Vault: The Fallout Wiki

It's got a lot of info about locations, history, factions, and the fancy whiz-bang doo-dads you might find in the wasteland. That being said, this is only part of the equation. The rest involves you using your own imagination. Just because something isn't in the Vault doesn't mean a thing. As long as it would make sense, it's fair game, like always.

I've played every Fallout game under the sun. Where does this take place and when?

The year of this RP is 2287, thus putting it roughly around the same time Fallout New Vegas takes place. As far as the setting, it's going to center around New Reno, in a much tighter focus than Fallout 2 had (which covered much of the pacific northwest). This will include Reno, Carson City, Tahoe, and points around that area. That is until one of us finds a nuclear car or a vertibird or something!)

I want to be a level twenty drow wizard and...

Ease off your main thruster, Maverick. Yes, there are different races in Fallout, but neither they, nor any classes really define you. Your actions define you. Here are the generic different kinds of races you can be though:

• Human - well this is self explanatory. You're of more or less the same genetic stock as the rest of folks before the Great War, give or take some minor mutation due to exposure to whatever radiation you've gotten.
• Ghoul - you used to be "human" but at some point you got exposed to a bewildering amount of radiation. Rather than just die off, you were given a second chance at life. Your skin and hair sloughed off here and there maybe, and maybe you aren't the first pick in a Vault prom, but you've got a good chance of still having your cognitive faculties. Did I mention that whatever the radiation took away in good looks it gave you in effective immortality. Why, there are even some ghouls who were alive before the bombs fell! If that ain't a cincher, then how's this? You can be healed by radiation! Ohhh that soothing glow!
• Super Mutant - the next step in human evolution (according to a top secret military experiment, of course)! You were probably minding your own business when you were dipped into a vat of the Forced Evolutionary Virus by some jerk. Well it means you probably don't read too good now but on the other hand LOOK HOW STRONG YOU ARE!!! Did I mention it's okay to TALK IN ALL CAPS?!? Probably not gonna win a beauty contest either but if dem dum dums don't like it you can throw rock in face!
• Robot - Ah, mankind's erstwhile vacuum tube & nuclear power-laden helpers. Whether it's helping with kitchen duties, teaching Timmy how to play baseball, or lobbing high explosive ordnance at tresspassers in an office building somewhere, humanity just can't get enough of their synthetic servants.
• Other - wanna be a dog? A sentient mole rat? Want to put babies on spikes? GO! IT'S THE AMERICAN DREAM!!!

What kind of factions are out there?

Well, this one is gonna largely be up to you exploring and seeing what you find. A few of the ones that might be mentioned:

• The New California Republic - Think of these guys as the Galactic Republic in the Fallout series. They're huge, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and paving the road to hell with very good intentions. The NCR stretches from south of Los Angeles upward to Klamath Oregon, and east well into Nevada. The NCR champions democratic ideals of the pre-war era, and tries their darnedest to bring its citizens into that semblance of normalcy, with very mixed results.
• Khans of the Great Basin - are a criminal empire of motorcycle gangsters, originally from the Utah. They have loose ties to other groups calling themselves Khans, and carve out a living with motorcycle-based pillage, drug running, and the occasional bit of kidnapping. Recent wars in the Utah against Caesar's Legion have gone poorly for them, and they are being pushed further northwest.
• The Brotherhood of Steel - The Brotherhood is a sect of technology-fetishists that seek to hoard all high tech weapons and keep them out of the hands of common people, believing this route will prevent atrocities like the Great War from happening. They generally keep to themselves beyond that, and are known for being heavily armed and clad in power armor.
• New Reno crime families - There are four families of note in New Reno, the largest of which (and the one with effective control on the city) are the Bishops. The Bishops owe their position of favor in New Reno to efforts by the NCR to install them as proxy rulers, in exchange for the Bishops' help elsewhere. Smaller crime families are the Wrights (bootleggers) and Mordinos (drug runners), although the Van Graff syndicate has also cornered the city's energy weapon market and made a name for themselves, taking the place of the Salvatore family, which was destroyed a generation ago.
• The State of Unity - A semi-autonomous district in the NCR (located in what was once called Smith Valley), Unity is a partnership between members of the Followers of the Apocalypse (a sect devoted to free dissemination of knowledge, aid, and charity) and the community of Broken Hills, which gathered humans, ghouls, and super mutants to co-exist peacefully. Unity is ostensibly pro NCR, but generally keeps to themselves.
• Knights of the Eagle - A fanatical group of technologically-advanced raiders from Idaho, based out of a series of vaults built with private funds by zealots obsessed with the purity of the United States and the sanctity of the human race.

[The Washoe Wasteland]

So, you want to create a character, right?


S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

What the hell does that mean? Basically, it's Fallout's way of assigning attributes to a character. While not numerically binding, it's a good idea to build a SPECIAL chart just to see what a character is good at and what they suck at. SPECIAL stands for:

• Strength
• Perception
• Endurance
• Charisma
• Intelligence
• Agility
• Luck

Basically you start off with 5 points in each category, and have another 5 points that are assignable. You can add to or take away from each category, depending on what type of character you want to play. These are specific numeric modifiers in Fallout games, but here, setting up a SPECIAL for your character is just to mainly get an idea of where they are coming from and what they're capable of.

[The Washoe Wasteland]

Post your character bios and stuff down here:

[Brother Kermit]

Name: Kermit Jones
Age: 268
Race: Ghoul
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 162

S: 5
P: 8
E: 4
C: 8
I: 7
A: 4
L: 4

Background:

Pastor of the Yerington New Life Fellowship Church as of 2077, Brother Kermit Jones had his faith shaken in the Great War. Interpreting the cataclysm to be the foretold Rapture, he had to come to the conclusion that he was not one of God's chosen, and was instead fated to remain in torment through Armageddon until Judgment. With hundreds of years to think about this, he drifted away from his faith. Surviving with a penchant for knowing how folks think, knowing what to say, and knowing how much dynamite to use when that doesn't work, Kermit spends years trying to find a way to make some good of this terrible world, on occasion thinking back to the Word, and the life he left behind, wondering if there's anything left for him there.

[Runner]

Name: Runner
Age: somewhere between 18 and 28. He doesn't keep track.
Race: Human
Height: 5' 9"
Weight: 150

S 4
P 7
E 7
C 3
I 5
A 9
L 5

No one is exactly sure where Runner is from, but most suspect from Mexico. He's dark skinned and his only notable feature is a mustache that changes occasional, but is always a mustache. Runner works as a courier and reliably delivers small packages and notes between settlements in western Nevada and Eastern California. He's a man of few words and keeps to himself.

[Bobby Blue]

Name: Bobby Blue
Age: 26
Race: Human
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 168

S 7
P 7
E 6
C 1
I 4
A 9
L 6

Background:

A former inhabitant of Vault 19, Bobby's early years were coloured - quite literally - by one of Vault-Tec's social experiments. Vault 19 was segregated into two sectors, Red and Blue, and it was the latter that his parents had been a part of. With limited contact with the Red Sector, the residents of Blue Sector were anxious and paranoid towards their neighbours, believing that any misfortune they suffered must be in some way the work of the "damn Reds" - a phrase uttered so often that Bobby, to this day, distrusts anyone or anything marked with the colour red. Conversely, he will immeadiately warm to anyone or anything blue.

When sulfuric fumes, from the deposits beneath Vault 19, began to leak at an alarming rate into the vault, the residents were forced out into the wasteland above. Their mistrust of each other - and anyone that was not part of their community - worked in the Vault-dwellers favour, making certain that they were not easy prey to Raiders. Most had been practising with firearms since childhood. Bobby himself is a crack shot and particularly competent with a sniper rifle.

Although he left Vault 19 over a year ago, he has yet to adapt to the changes in his life and maintains a "headshot 'em from a distance first, search their body for answers later" approach to human interaction.

[Bonny]

Name: Bonny Fairchild-Wright
Age: 26
Race: Human
Height: 5'5"
Weight: 126lbs

S: 4
P: 6
E: 4
C: 5
I: 6
A: 8
L: 7

Background:

Supposedly a bastard child of one of the Wrights, Bonny was raised in New Reno running errands for the crime family. A small, agile child, she found her calling in pickpocketing and petty theft around the city. As she became older, the young woman became more and more disenchanted with the concept that she was some sort of second-rate individual simply because of her birth. Desperate to prove the naysayers wrong, Bonny had struck out to make something of herself whether it's by robbing every wastelander blind or leaving behind a trail of corpses with the help of her trusty shotgun, Lucy.

[Mimi]

Name: HR 1127; "Mimi"
Age: 3 (Chassis: 100+)
Race: Robot
Height: 8'2" (248cm)
Weight: 4230 lbs

S: 8
P: 5
E: 7
C: 1
I: 8
A: 9
L: 2

Background:

In 2198, the Midwestern Brotherhood successfully defeated the Calculator of Vault 0, and destroyed or disabled much of his robotic army. Some of the robots were appropriated by various groups; others turned up in junkyards across the wastelands, and were left to rot and rust.

Three years ago, a wandering mechanic stumbled upon the chassis of HR 1127, an Acme C-27 Humanoid Robot. The central processor and much of the electrics had either been scavanged or had deteriorated, but seeing the benefit of having a two-and-a-half metre bodyguard, the mechanic cannibalised parts from a Mister Handy in order to get the robot operational. Unfortunately, the Mister Handy was none too pleased about having its innards unceremoniously dumped within a clunky, rusty, and decidedly non-floaty shell; his annoyance was only worsened when the mechanic decided to name his new creation after the asteroid that shared the number 1127: Mimi.

What happened next is unclear, and Mimi claims that his memory banks for that time period are damaged; somehow, he found himself without his owner ("That body-stealing bastard", as Mimi prefers to call him), roaming the wastelands near New Reno looking for something constructive to do with his clumsy and oafish new body.

[Chirp]

Name: Chirp
Age: 15
Race: Mutated Chicken or Skink/"Troodontid"
Height: 3' at hips; tip of head at normal position: 4'6" to 4'10"
Weight: 110 lbs
Length: 8' from nose to tail

Strength: 2
Perception: 7
Endurance: 9
Charisma: 3
Intelligence: 7
Agility: 7
Luck: 4

Background:

Chirp is the culmination of an evolutionary process much interfered with by humans. He's evolved from a line of skinks or chickens (an earthquake broke down the barrier between the two groups and they mixed, so the scientist isn't quite sure) that showed a radical reaction to the radiation after the bombs went off; and a dinosaur nut/scientist who became a ghoul and thus was able to breed to life an approximation of the species Troodon Formosus.

Delighted by the intelligent dinosaurids, the ghoul scientist manufactured special translation collars with speakers to allow his 'pets' to communicate with him and others, as he could not understand their developing language, which reminded him of birdsong.

Chirp is, in fact, something of a genius by the standards of his people, and quite intelligent by any other standard. Given this, the Scientist has sent Chirp on a quest to request help against the Khans and Caesar's Legion, as well as to get supplies, if possible.

The scientist was forced to use his new creations as guards when the Khans drew closer to his hideaway; he equipped them with light sub-machine guns, and has managed to keep the location of his facility a secret as of the time Chirp left the facility.

["Lucky" Luke McCann]

Name: "Lucky" Luke McCann
Age: 18
Race: Human
Height: 5'4"
Weight: 130lbs

S: 2
P: 7
E: 2
C: 7
I: 5
A: 7
L: 10

Background:

Lucky will be a legend all across the American Wasteland some day. In all his life, he's never met or heard of anybody who's been chased by a trio of Death Claws across the desert only to be saved when an meteor crashed down and vaporised them. Or that time when he shot at a gang of raiders and the bullet ricocheted off an armour plate and hit the combat inhibitor on one of their Protectrons, who in turn shot the inhibitor of the other protectron before the pair of them slaughtered all seven raiders then fried each others neural circuits. But for now, he simply hasn't been around long enough to be known outside of Unity.

At just 18 years old, he's just recently flew the nest, living out of a small shack in the center of town. Comprising of a single room big enough to hold his bed, lockbox, a large chest, sink and toilet, he rents it from one of the land owners in return for pest control duties - blasting molerats with his laser pistol, and cracking bloatfly's with a baseball bat for fun. Hailing from a Brahmin ranch in Unity, Lucky's parents tried to raise him with a good dose of hard work and strong family values - a nice quiet rancher life, along with the occasional unavoidable run-in with rustlers or raiders. But no matter how hard they tried to raise him like his Salt 'o' the Earth father, he always drifted with the wind, always looking for adventure.

He has three older brothers and two younger sisters. While he generally gets on with all of them, his eldest brother, Ged (28), thinks him a teenage fool with his head in the clouds. His other two brothers, Sam (25) and Jake (22) always liked and encouraged his carefree mischief, hoping it would one day take him away from Unity. They both hate working on the ranch. They love Unity and their family, but that ranch - it's just so boring! If they weren't already accustomed to what they have, they'd probably join him on his adventures - but don't tell Dad! His sisters, Sharon (18) and Daisy (15) are very fond of him. He always has time for them, and they always listened. Up the ladder above the barn door, he'd enthrall them with tales of his adventures, and plan the ones to come, hoping one day they'd join him. But Mom would kill them.

As for Mom and Dad, it's not like they've disowned him. They love him and they welcome him. But when he's not around, they tend not to mention him, feeling somewhat abandoned. They just don't understand why he feels the need to go off galavanting and looking for danger. He's tried to explain, but they just don't believe him. He's apparently the only person who saw it that night. That pale green glow outside the bedroom window one night. That strange, eerie noise that nobody heard except him. But what everybody else did see was half the Brahmin missing the next morning. Vanished.

He's since given up trying to convince people. His sisters believe him, which is enough for now. He promised himself that night, when he was just 12 years old, that someday he'd find out exactly what it was that stole the livestock.

[Morgan Evanar]

Name: "Lucky" Luke McCann

He's since given up trying to convince people. His sisters believe him, which is enough for now. He promised himself that night, when he was just 12 years old, that someday he'd find out exactly what it was that stole the livestock.

Oh my yes.

[Dreams When Bitten]

Name: Dreams When Bitten
Age: 22
Height: 5'0"
Weight: 105

S: 6
P: 7
E: 10
C: 1
I: 3
A: 8
L: 5

A Wind-Chaser (lever-gun) warrior of the feared cannibalistic Hipi tribe of Californian Tahoe, Dreams When Bitten earned her name like all her people. During a hunt for wild bighorners among the ponderosa forests, her hunting party was overrun by a surprise attack from a pack of ratta-ratta (nightstalkers). All but Dreams When Bitten were killed by the lethally poisonous abominations, but the venom only brought her to the brink of death, in a coma. She was dragged with the corpses of her tribe to the nightstalker's den to be devoured. She awoke in a feral fever and killed half a dozen with a bone knife before scrambling to her wind-chaser to finish off the pack. Returning to home, the Hipi shaman declared that the ratta-ratta had given her a great gift, which she had accepted by not dying. She too would be fast, and her spirit would inbue her bullets with death water (venom).

Fleet of foot, sharp-eyed, and deadly accurate, she was always the first to be painted when her clan leaders made Bear Talk and gave war to their hated enemy across the mother lake, the Yupi. When the battucappo (invaders from the outside) would occasionally encroach on Hipi lands, she was equally vicious. She wears a necklace of human teeth from each of her kills, and her wind-chaser's wooden stock is wrapped with the scaly hide and distinctive rattles of ratta-ratta.

[Brother Kermit]

Something to suggest for folks creating characters is that it would be fun if each character had one or two personal quests that they could get the group(s) to embark on at one point or another. Basically something that ties into each character's story and builds their storyline up, in addition to the Main Quest or whatever other side quests we run into.

Also, we may have the main quest group split up from time to time to pursue different things. For the sake of keeping us all on the same page, we'll probably have some ancient walkie talkies on our group to keep everyone in the know, so if folks do get split up, they can rendezvous or swap party members, etc.

Thoughts on that?

[Dasquian Belargic]

That makes sense to me. I've got a couple of ideas in my mind for Bobby's "side quests."

[Emelie Shadowstar]

Same here for Bonny! Already had an idea for down the road so that works great.

I have no arguments on if we split the group up if it makes sense to do so either! Sounds like a sound idea.

[Dasquian Belargic]

We gotta shove Bobby in a group with Bonny, for paranoid shits and giggles

[Rossos Atrapes]

I pretty much made Chirp thinking of him as a character in a side-quest, or a companion gotten through a side-quest. Safe to say that I've got some ideas for a side-quest or two on Chirp's end.

[Morgan Evanar]

I dunno I jus' deliver packages.

[Captain Untouchable]

Not sure how quests would work out with Mimi - like Chirp, he's kind of a companion type character, who'll kick around with whoever asks for his help, I guess.

That said, if Clone Wars can manage R2 / 3PO centric episodes, I guess a Mimi quest isn't totally out of the picture. I don't know enough about the game to cook something plausible up - any ideas?