Fallout: Yellowstone - Session One

Building on the success of my last two Fallout sandboxes, I recently ran my first session of Fallout: Yellowstone.

I had three players, one returning from a previous Fallout adventure.

• Professor Delores, high powered scientist
• Ethan Hollister, eagle eyed wasteland scout
• Dani Masterson, villager from Colorado

They entered Yellowstone under the following pretenses:

Your prairie village in Montana has been struck by plague. A burrowing creature with a glowing belly bit a child, who fell ill a few days later. By the time the town doctor noticed the swelling in the kid’s lymph nodes, the disease had already spread among the populace. It’s easy to treat with antibiotics, but the town doesn’t have nearly enough. The caravan was due a week ago, and hasn’t shown up yet.

You were spared the ravages of the disease. You’ve been sent South into the seething cauldron of Yellowstone, to search for enough medicine to save your town. You were given a healthy supply of bits (the silver tokens used as money in Montana) and the last of the stimpaks (a rare trade good from down South, since Broc Flower and Xander Root don’t grow in the tundra).

As you travel South from Gardiner along the 89, the air smells like pollen, flowers and sulfur. The peaks and valleys are covered with snow, but everywhere else you see evidence of Spring. You heard this place was spared the worst ravages of the nuclear dust storms that swept the region after the war, but you'd never seen it for yourself.

There's a fort up ahead.

 

Fort Yellowstone was a collection of pre-war buildings, surrounded by a wood and earthworks palisade. The figures atop the wall wore leather coats and wide brimmed hats. They welcomed the Searchers inside.

The Yellowstone Rangers introduced themselves as a pre-war knightly order, dedicated to preserving the balance of the park. The Searchers were welcome to rest in the cabins, drink at the longhouse, and explore the park to their heart's content - as long as they didn't go around starting trouble and disrupting the balance. The Searchers went to the longhouse and drank some Ranger Ale, while the Rangers showed them the map and explained the factions operating in the park:

• The Great Khans have claimed Yellowstone as theirs. They have a whole empire in Wyoming, ruled out of Xanadu (Casper). They’ve taken over several road junctions but not seized control of the whole park. They brought a cult of doctors called the Followers into the park.
• The Loggers are a tribe of woodcutters. They traded timber with the Khans for a while to feed their steam engines, but are now at war with them over a labor dispute.
• The Roughnecks are an isolationist tribe that makes fuel from the earth. They sell it to wastelanders in exchange for goods they can’t make themselves.
• The Eighties are a raider gang that rides motorcycles. They’re bottled up somewhere in the East side of the park by the Khans
• The White Legs are a tribe from Utah, driven North into Wyoming. The survivors of the first winter are somewhere in the South end of the park.
• The Prism is a psychic hive mind that controls West Yellowstone. The brightly colored Stoners are its servants. Ranger scouts have spotted super mutants hanging around the geothermal pools.

They also had some advice about where the Searchers could find medicine:

• The Happy Trails caravan sells medicine. They’re down at the old Park Store.
• The Followers down at West Thumb know more about medicine than anyone in the park. Hopefully the Khans will let them help you.
• The Roughnecks in Tower Junction have lots of pre-war technology. They might have medicine.
• The Prism can manufacture chemicals, but it’s going to want something in return.

The Rangers also changed the Searchers' money free of charge from bits (the silver pieces used in Montana) to Khan Scrip and Hub Caps, the currencies used in Wyoming. The Searchers decided they needed more money, and asked the Rangers if they had any work. Ranger Rhondie said she wanted help getting the Great Khans to leave the Museum of the Park Ranger, which they had taken over and turned into a drug den. If the Searchers could get them to leave peacefully, great. If they had to use violence, it couldn't look like the Rangers were involved. For this, she would either pay 200 caps, or the Rangers would help the Searchers on a quest.

The Searchers headed South along the 89, toward Norris Geyser Basin where the museum and store were located. The road wound between rock faces, past clear streams and rich green plains, in between stands of evergreen trees. Tatanka - enormous winged buffalo - circled overhead. Ethan, the group's scout, spotted some people in the hills. A group of spear carrying tribals and a single super mutant, apparently foraging for food in the bushes. Ethan hid and covered the group with is rifle while Dani introduced herself, with Delores providing close range backup.

The foragers were the Children, formerly of the Cathedral. They were looking for food to bring back to their camp in Madison. Their leader, the super mutant Mom, had forged an alliance with the Prism, a biological entity that could cure hideous injuries. The Searchers should consider visiting if they were passing through the area. The Searchers said they'd stop by, then left.

A herd of skelks crossed the road in front of the group, passing warily into the treeline beyond. The hairless creatures were probably full of FEV and radiation, and nobody felt like eating one. They were a little more excited when one of the flying buffalo deviated from its course and banked around to strafe the road. Ethan and Dani stepped off the flight path, while Delores stood her ground. Delores dodged the beast's horns, and the trio crippled its wing with a hail of spears and bullets as it tried to pull up from the dive. It went spiraling into the ground, killing it. They chopped it up for its meat, horns and hide.

 

The museum was occupied by a party of Great Khans, drinking and doing drugs and not tending to the steam crawler parked out back. Dani introduced herself to the leader, who launched into an amphetamine fueled rant about how annoyed he was by the younger Khans, who were more interested in "statecraft" and "economics" and "transportation" than doing drugs and raiding things. The Khan didn't like the Rangers, who were total buzkills, like the Followers but lamer in every way. Ethan snuck into the longhouse, but didn't find anything worth stealing from the Khans. Just a 9mm submachine gun, a couple hits of psycho, and an old .51 Sharps carbine that nobody had bullets for. The Khans offered Dani jet if she would "party" with them. She made a counteroffer: the Rangers would give them free drinks at the longhouse if they drove up to Fort Yellowstone and left the Museum alone. One Speech check later and the Khans were piling into the steam crawler, leaving the Museum in peace.

The Happy Trails Caravan had set up shop in the old Park Store by Norris Geyser Basin. The Searchers browsed the items on offer, and asked the manager how much it would cost to buy antibiotics for their whole town. The manager quoted them a reasonable rate of only 5,000 caps. The Searchers wondered if that much money existed in the whole world. Atdman, the Caravan's security head, made them an offer. He knew a guy in the Republic who would pay lots of money for exotic animal parts. He'd pay the Searchers 1,000 caps for every Yao Grizzly carcass they brought him. The Searchers thought this sounded fair, all they had to do was kill five bears. He even knew where they could find one: on the South side of the park, shaking down travelers for food. The team bought a stick of dynamite for the road, and headed out.

By Rikkitz

The Searchers went West, toward Madison. They wanted to meet up with the Children and talk to Mom before they went bear hunting. The camp site at the crossroads was full of old RVs, which the super mutant and human Children were using for shelter. Mom emerged from the shell of a beat-up trailer to discuss their next steps. She told them that the Prism was a pool of thermophilic bacteria that had been mutated by radiation and FEV, and posseessed a psychic hive mind. It had promised to reverse the effects of the FEV on her gametes and make her fertile again, if she did some work for it. If the Searchers wanted to know what work, they needed to talk to the Stoners to the South. The Searchers decided to do that before continuing.

The road to the South was blocked by geothermal vents, craters and geysers, which had burst through the broken ground and cut off the road. The steaming pools were full of brightly colored microbial mats, along with brightly colored people covered in microbial mats. These people lounged in the pools, unconcerned by the skin-melting heat. They welcomed the Searchers, and offered them a job. They could either:

• Get them a nuclear warhead from the Roughnecks in Tower Junction
• Convince the White Legs on Mount Sheridan to come down and be absorbed by the Prism

In exchange, the Prism would synthesize all the antibiotics the Searchers needed to save the village. Oh, and whatever the Searchers decided to do, they needed to NOT travel South to Grand Prismatic Springs. The Prism would probably interpret that as an act of aggression and try to absorb them. The Searchers decided to continue with the bear hunt, before committing to anything for the Stoners. They hiked cross country across the wooded slopes of Central Yellowstone to avoid going near the Prism.

On the way, the players decided they wanted to visit the Loggers. With his superb perception and survival skills, Ethan was able to lead the group to their camp without stepping in any bear traps or wandering into any ambushes. The Loggers (rough looking tribals armed with axes, bear traps and chainsaws) asked if he was a scab. They almost attacked him when he didn't immediately answer in the negative, but were persuaded that he didn't know anything about the labor war. The players bought a single bear trap from the Loggers and left to go South, headed for the campsite at West Thumb (where they'd been told the Followers were encamped).

A couple miles out from the Logger camp, Ethan's superb Alertness wasn't enough to spot a Great Khan patrol, which ordered them to halt from a perfect ambush position. Fortunately, the Khans didn't identify the Searchers as hostile tribals or raiders, and let them go. It was clear that the Khans were looking for the Loggers.

 

They walked for a couple more miles, and a bear showed up. A big Yao Grizzly, which snuck up to biting range before they noticed it. It stood there until they fed it a piece of the buffalo meat from earlier. It was ready to leave them alone after that, but they decided to keep feeding it so it would follow them. They named it Bosco because that was funny to them.

They were interrupted again about an hour of hiking later by a Khan steam crawler crashing through the woods, headed in the same direction as the earlier patrol. Bosco hid in a tree because he was scared, the players hid in the bushes, and the Khans didn't see them. So they kept walking until they exited the forest near the road junction at the Thumb.

The Followers had set up a clinic at the ranger station and campsite. The leader, Dr Astra, wouldn't even talk to them after seeing the bear following them. They were feeding the animals and therefore part of the problem. Dr Kravitz was willing to parlay with the players though. He had a real issue that he needed dealt with. It had come to his attention that the biomass of Prism had offered a super mutant a chance to reproduce. This alarmed him because super mutant sterility is the only thing that stopped the Master from taking over the wasteland and wiping out humanity. Reversing it now could only be bad for the species. He would give the Searchers the antibiotics they wanted if they would either:

• Kill Mom
• Get a biological sample of the Prism bacteria, so that he could design a countermeasure that would poison it

He gave the Searchers a big pool net to collect the samples. By this point, the Searchers had decided they didn't want to kill any bears, especially Bosco. Killing a big pile of biological jelly seemed like an easier, more humane task. So they went back the way they came, hiking through the woods toward Prism.

Ethan's superior survival skills helped the group sneak up on a group of white-painted tribals, who were discussing something in a language the group couldn't understand. They carried some nasty weapons, and the team decided to let them be. Then Bosco jumped out of the bushes and killed two of them with his powerful claws. The White Legs shot Bosco with their .45 caliber SMG and Brush Gun, and the one with the Mantis Gauntlet struck Delores in the torso. She ignored him and swatted the Thompson guy with her sledgehammer, killing him instantly. The two surviving White Legs ran away. The Searchers looted the Thompson, a bunch of .45 ACP, a Recharger Rifle, and some Datura. They gave Bosco a stimpak to restore his HP, but couldn't heal the broken ribs the White Legs had dealt him. So they gave him some Datura to eat, so he at least wouldn't feel it. They hiked on toward the Prism. Ethan spotted a big den of Strontium Dogs before the group walked into it. They walked around the holes, while the blue bellied rodents watched them from the holes.

They saw steam rising through gaps in the forest ahead, and knew they were getting close to Prism. Ethan snuck forward ahead of the group to take a look.

There was a huge concentration of thermophilic blob creatures in the exact area where the team was planning on sneaking up to get a sample of biomass. Clearly something had alerted the Prism to their approach. As Ethan watched, a Strontium Dog crept up to the edge of the pool and flung itself into the biomass, killing itself. The creatures were spying on them, reporting their findings back to the psychic blob.

Delores was fed up with this shit. She walked forward to the blob creatures and swatted one with the pool net, getting a biological sample and running away before it could roll over and crush her. The group fled the scene, outrunning the rolling blob monsters that appeared to disintegrate and lose cohesion as they got further from the steaming geothermal pools. They were almost overrun by a swarm of Strontium Dogs, but a hail of automatic gunfire, dynamite, and Bosco's claws killed enough of them that the group escaped without getting infected by sylvatic plague.

The Searchers were halfway back to the Khan camp, when a Ranger stepped out of the woods to confront them. He told them that what they were planning was genocide, and he couldn't allow them to do it. It would disrupt the park's balance. The Searchers reminded him that they had completed Rhondie's quest to get the Khans out of the museum, a task for which the Rangers had offered help in a quest of the Searchers' choosing. The Ranger relented, acknowledging that part of "balance" was repaying people for their help.

Still, this put a spark of doubt in the Searchers' minds. Did they want to save the village by wiping out the psychic blob people? The thing about reprogramming super mutants to breed true was certainly scary, but killing people because they're scary was how things got so fucked up in the first place. Delores even admired the mutants for their lovely genes. The Searchers were also impressed by the Rangers' commitment, and thought about joining them. Ultimately, the team decided to return to Dr Kravitz with the sample and go from there. We ended the session as they returned.

I went easy on the players, like I always do in the first session of a Fallout game. Let them get away with stuff and learn about the factions before springing traps and starting fights. Two of the players chose Animal Friend as their perk after the game, to lock in Bosco the Bear as their ally. Delores was already loaded up on damage resistance and HP perks, making her tough to kill. All of that will be put to the test in the next session.