Fallout: Seattle - Session 2

Session two of Fallout: Seattle. Session 1 saw the players getting to know the major players of the Drowned City, and come up with a plan to find a fusion core.

In attendance, same as last time:

• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe, scavenger from the ruins of Two Sun
• Professor Delores, high powered scientist and Amazon
• Dr Emily Ridgeway, surly drugrunner
• Chews on Fat, smooth talking tribal and "honorable cannibal"

The Seekers woke up early at Establishing Shots, woke up Sean the Researcher, and went to the Gun Runners' outlet store on the South side of the Sound. Chewie picked up a Ripper, while Delores grabbed a set of Security Armor to boost her substantial natural defenses (she grabbed a perk to boost her damage resistance after last session).

 

Before dropping Sean off on Capitol Island, the team decided to check out the neat mansion they saw on Beacon Island.

The Turner-Koepf House

They passed a solitary buoy on the canoe ride over - a ghoul in a life vest, which tried its best to thrash toward them and didn't achieve much of anything. The hike up the hill to the house didn't reveal anything of interest. The house itself had a rickety wooden fence around it, written in English and simplified Chinese, warning visitors to go around and use the front gate. The front gate had a sign instructing visitors to deposit their weapons in a green plastic recycling bin - which had a tarp and drainage holes in the bottom to protect its contents from water. The players dropped their gear off and followed the path to the house, where a sign on the front door instructed them to knock and then step well back of the door.

ANGUISHEDWIRES Masterpost

The Commonwealth has raised a colony city over the ruins of ANGUISHEDWIRES, a Dwarf Fortress destroyed by an ancient catastrophe long ago. Adventurers have barely begun to plumb its depths, but already upturned fabulous riches and ancient horrors. More of both await in the unknown depths below.

 

From Atlas Obscura

 

ANGUISHEDWIRES is a system-neutral dungeon crawl based on a run of How to Host a Dungeon, a solo game by Tony Dowler. It was an experiment, to see how much work it took to convert a map from that game into something playable in an RPG. The answer was “a lot!” It's a little primitive compared to the Manor of the Giant Arminius, which makes sense since I created it first. The maps are all hand drawn, and some of the plot elements and NPCs are less refined versions of stuff that shows up in the Manor.

Still, it's got ancient dwarven train stations, vampire bartenders, secret reactor complexes, radioactive labs, glass deserts and magma lakes, rat people, ant people, mushroom people, smugglers, fiends, and too many fucking ghouls.

 

I playtested the game with my own system called Begone, FOE. I based a lot of the stat blocks on the Old School Essentials SRD, so the game should be compatible with all your other Basic-likes. OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, etc. No promises though, since I haven't actually played those games.

 

Enough talk. Here are the links.

• The Dungeon Itself. This folder holds the scenario text with the key entries, along with the maps.
• Session 1 Play Report
  
• Part 1
• Part 2
• Session 2 Play Report
• Music Post
  

Fallout: Two Sun Political Compass

 

Based on the Fallout: Two Sun campaign

Fallout: Seattle - Session 1

After I finished Fallout: Two Sun, I had the idea for a "DLC" adventure set in Seattle. I didn't have a whole lot of ideas I liked, at first. The breakthrough came when I remembered Jeffrey Linn's Flooded Seattle Map. Not only did this create a lot of unique terrain for the players to explore, it also reduced the amount of the city I had to fill out and detail. So I worked on it for a couple weeks, and ran the first session.

 

After nuking Two Sun, Scythe and Spider made it all the way to Washington in their fusion powered M113. Then the casing on the ACAV's fusion core failed, and they had to find a new one. Spider stayed behind to guard the vehicle, while Scythe took the new friends they made along the way North to the Drowned City, to find a new one.

 

(I had three returning players from the Two Sun series, but only one of them brought a character from that game. The others made new ones)

• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe, scavenger from the ruins of Two Sun
  
• Professor Delores, high powered scientist and Amazon
• Dr Emily Ridgeway, surly drugrunner
  
• Chews on Fat, smooth talking tribal and "honorable cannibal"

Play began at Thanh Tran, an old Vietnamese cultural center in South Seattle, which now sat right on the waterfront in the flooded city. Chews On Fat, descended from a tribe of Chinese-American internees, angrily began tearing the anti-Chinese propaganda posters down, but was interrupted by Harbormaster Osman, owner of the docks and restorer of canoes and wood burning steamboats.

Osman gave the Seekers a basic rundown of the situation in the Drowned City.

Based on the previously linked map by Jeffrey Linn

 

Fallout: Two Sun - Masterpost

This is a materpost for my Fallout: Two Sun mini campaign. It includes play reports of all the sessions, the rules I used, and the scenario document in case you're interested in using it yourself.

I'd been thinking about running this game for years, but kept putting it off because of the heavy content lift. I came back to my old design documents this year after the randomizer mod rejuvenated my interest in New Vegas.

 

First, the play reports. I tested the game over three session with a group of veteran Delta Green players.

• Session 1
• Session 2
• Session 3

 

Next, the system itself:

• Player Document - start here
• GM Playset - the content that populates the world
• GM map - the places where it all happens
  
• Character Sheet - auto calculates so you don't have to
  
• Folder, containing all of the above

 
As a bonus, have some character art from my initial concept for this campaign, back in 2015.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading!

Fallout: Two Sun - Session 3

The third and final Fallout: Two Sun session! The version of the rules I used can be found here.

We had a trio of returning players this time:

• Wilbur "Spider" Webb, Odd Job Man - Vault 24 Exile
• Alex Bradshaw, Technician - Vault 24 Exile
  
• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe- Scavenger retained by Vault 25 for odd jobs

Last session, the Exiles retrieved a vital computer component from the Pima Air and Space Museum, bringing it back to Vault 25 - along with a super mutant programmer and his retinue of autocannon armed sentry bots. That brought the Legion onto the Vault's doorstep. Which meant the Overseer had another job for the Exiles: finding weapons of mass destruction to disperse the barbarians at the gate.

The Blue Hoods used their fully functional GECK to fabricate a badass vehicle for the Exiles to travel in. Fully tracked, lightweight, armored, CBRN sealed, and with a plasma rifle in the turret.

 

I think this one's by Malaysia Model Kits

The Exiles had two options: a CIDR base holding New Plague germs in Marana, to the Northwest, or an unfired Titan silo holding a nuclear warhead in Glass Valley to the South. They chose to go South for the missile. The plan was to hook up a remote operating device to the missile silo's control network, allowing the Blue Hoods to fire the missile by radio if the Legion refused to negotiate.

Because none of the Exiles knew how to drive, the Blue Hoods took the liberty of kidnapping a slave from the Legion who could help. Gasket used to be a Highway King, a raider tribe that terrorized Arizona with salvaged vehicles, until the Legion hemmed them in with landmines and roadblocks and wiped them out. She was happy to be behind the wheel of a vehicle again, and even happier to run over the people who had enslaved her.

With a suite of other useful equipment in hand, the Exiles mounted up, and Gasket took them down the bumpy trail, through Pima Wash and down into the alluvial plain of Two Sun.

 

Fallout: Two Sun - Session 2

Session two of Fallout: Two Sun was shorter than the first, but kept the plot moving at a brisk pace. Once again, we used these rules - a riff on the Delta Green system. This session I introduced a short list of perks for the players to choose one,

In attendance:

• Dr Hernando Beckenbauer, Physician - Vault 24 Exile
• Wilbur "Spider" Webb, Odd Job Man - Vault 24 Exile
• Alex Bradshaw, Technician - Vault 24 Exile
  
• Elizabeth "Scythe" Forscythe- Scavenger retained by Vault 25 for odd jobs
  

Last session, the Vault 24 exiles found a new home in Vault 25, a thriving hidden community of congenitally blind Vault Dwellers with superhuman senses. These "blue hoods" were happy to welcome the exiles into the fold, provided they pulled their weight. Vault 25 needed special computer hardware to access their GECK's advanced functions, which wouldn't interface with the assistive technology their vault came with.

 

The most likely place to find the necessary hardware was the flight computer of a B-52 bomber. The nearest place that had one was the Pima Air and Space Museum. The museum was a no-go zone thanks to some pre-war defense systems that annihilated anything which came in line of sight of the building. Witnesses from the tribal population (which the blue hoods kept as "servants" to do things that required eyesight) described it as a noise like a giant cloth ripping - indicating to the exiles that the defense systems had miniguns or some other fast firing weapons. They debated a number of approaches to the problem, including burrowing beneath the museum, welding armor to a vehicle, and using radio signals to hack the automated defenses. Ultimately they settled on observing the site from a safe distance to gauge the defenses, then heading South to the old Tucson speedway to see about salvaging parts to create an armored car and run the blockade.

Before the bombs fell, the Pima Air and Space Museum had its own aircraft graveyard.

The exiles removed the identifying marks from their Vault 25 security armor, shouldered their weapons, consulted their map and hit the road.

Fallout: Two Sun - Session 1

I ran a session of my custom Fallout RPG, based on the Delta Green system. You can find the rules I used here if you're interested.

The time was 2270, seven years before the first Battle of Hoover Dam. The place: Vault 24, just outside Tucson Arizona. The protagonists: four vault dwellers, about to be exiled into the wasteland.

• Mabel Abernathy, Scientist (Crime: Mentat addiction, corruption of public morals)
• Dr Hernando Beckenbauer, Physician (Crime: Drug dealing, banging the Overseer's wife)
• Wilbur "Spider" Webb, Odd Job Man (Crime: shiftiness and general criminality)
• Alex Bradshaw, Technician (Crime: misuse of vault resources, careless handling of explosives)

The Exiles waited in the vestibule while the Overseer fussed over some bureaucratic irregularity, giving them a chance to talk to old Dan Watanabe. Dan had been exiled three times, every time returning with something so valuable the Overseer had been forced to let him back inside. He was an experienced wasteland survivor, and it was obvious he didn't fit in at the vault anymore. But nobody wanted to try exiling him again, until he felt like leaving. Watanabe gave the exiles his map of the wasteland, showing the locations and factions he'd discovered on his travels. He warned them about the Legion, a powerful raider tribe that had taken over the city. He also mentioned an encrypted Vault Tec radio signal he'd picked up from the mountains North of the City. Then the Overseer showed up and kicked the players out of the vault.

They found themselves in a cave. Colossal Cave, Southeast of Tucson. Mabel stole some eggs from a few cave swallow nests, intent on isolating the cholin from the whites and eventually brewing her own mentats. Leaving the cave was easy - they just followed the tourist signs and railings to the visitor's center on the surface.

Concept Art, I looked for the artist but Google would only give me Pinterest results

They waited for their eyes to adjust to the light, then stumbled inside to see if there was anything to loot. Years of exiled vaulters (they were far from the only people to get kicked out) had picked the place clean, but they extracted a few interesting mechanisms from the empty soda machines. With their combined scientific knowledge, they easily decrypted the encrypted transmission: a repeating broadcast from Vault 25, somewhere in the mountains North of the city.

They set out into the wastes.

Esoteric Enterprises - Welcome to Salt Bay - Weekend With Good Friends Special

I ran another game of Esoteric Enterprises for the latest Good Friends of Jackson Elias Virtual Convention.

I used the same pitch as last time. I got two players, both last minute signups

• James -  Occultist with a sword-cane
• Rick - Lockpicking drug addict
  

They started off at the Love Shack, same as last time. I took the job from the previous convention off the list, which left the players with the following:

• I've got a line to a collector who wants art from the underground gallery to the North.
• Druid drugs are always a hot commodity. They've got a secret grove somewhere under the West side.
• Guy in the underground frontier pays good money for "dungeon meat". What's dungeon meat? Anything, once you kill it.
• Neighborhood Association isn't too happy about the abattoir re-opening. They'd pay big money to shut it down

The players decided to look for the dungeon druids. They could steal their stash and sell it, or just smoke it all. A win, either way. They went into the backroom of the Love Shack and descended into the dungeon.

 

The Manor of the Giant Arminius - Masterpost

The Giant Arminius is dying. Rebels have besieged his manor, fed up with the Giant’s endless raiding for food, slaves and plunder. His children and their human Soldiers mount a desperate defense. Now would be an excellent time for an adventurer to steal his treasure - before his favorite daughter Morwenna arrives to break the siege, and hear her father’s dying words. 

 

By Gustave Doré

The Manor of the Giant Arminius is a system-neutral dungeon crawl for players of varying levels. It's an attempt to correct some stuff I wasn't happy with about a module called Castle Gargantua, while preserving both the atmosphere and the part where you get to climb on the giant furniture. It's got ghouls, wizards, grotesque magical experiments, peasant rebellions, cults of Dionysus, man eating hogs, man eating hog-men, gunfights, guerrilla warfare, giant undead babies, and a whole lot of treasure to steal.

 

The dungeon isn't intended for any particular level or party size. Low level parties can avoid the worst fights by hiding, running, or talking their way past the NPCs, grab a couple giant treasures and get the hell out. High level parties can tackle threats head on, then loot whole rooms full of giant size items at their leisure.

I playtested the game with my own system called Begone, FOE. I based a lot of the stat blocks on the Old School Essentials SRD, so the game should be compatible with all your other Basic-likes. OSE, Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry, etc. No promises though, since I haven't actually played those games.

 

Enough talk. Here are the links.

• The Dungeon Itself. This folder holds the scenario text with the key entries, along with both the PNG maps, JSONs for use with the RPGmap software I used, and the original sketches of the dungeon.
• Session 1 Play Report
• Session 2 Play Report
• A Weekend With Good Friends Virtual Convention Play Report
• Music Post for tracks used

The Manor of the Giant Arminius - Session Two

A second session of the Manor of the Giant Arminius, run a week after the first. Again using Begone, FOE.

 

The second session took place an in-game day after the first. The Rebels had seized the ground floor of the mansion, and carried off or destroyed all the treasure. The floor above was a battleground, Arminius' soldiers mounting a desperate last stand against the attacking Levelers. Smoke billowed from the second floor windows. If anyone was planning on robbing the place, this was their final opportunity to do so.

From The Ogre Gods by Hubert and Gatignol

 

I had the same players as last session. Thanks to the haul of treasure from the basement crypt, their characters were Level 5.

• Jack Fatherd, Sheep Handling Rogue
• Iren Benedek, Lock Picking Witch
• Aldrich Brisbane, Crusading Dwarfaboo and Ex Hoglord

The adventurers approached the manor in much the same way as last session, stealthily advancing through the brush until they reached the house. Then they walked right in through the front door.

 

FATAL and Friends Reviews

Over the last year, I wrote some reviews of games for the Somethingawful FATAL and Friends thread.

You can read the reviews here.

The RPGs I reviewed were:

• Eclipse Phase: Zone Stalkers
• Esoteric Enterprises
• Castle Gargantua
• How to Host a Dungeon
• Mothership
• Maria in Three Parts
• Think Before Asking
• Delta Green Shotgun Scenarios

The Manor of the Giant Arminius - Session One

I few months ago, I ran a couple sessions of Castle Gargantua. The players loved the weird encounters and giant environments, but did not like the random generation system for stringing the rooms together. Unlike Esoteric Enterprises, which uses random tables to build a huge interconnected world for the players to explore, Castle Gargantua generates rooms one at a time in a linear sequence, without any regard for how they all link together. Meaning the exploration element - ordinarily the most fun part of the dungeon crawl - was nonexistent.

 

So I wrote my own dungeon that used my favorite parts of Castle Gargantua, set in a map of my own design.

THE MANOR OF THE GIANT ARMINIUS

 

From The Ogre Gods by Hubert and Gatignol

 

I ran the game using Begone, FOE, my own homebrew dungeon crawling rules. All the players had played in my Anguishedwires and Castle Gargantua games, where I playtested previous versions of the rules.

 

In attendance:

• Jack Fatherd, Sheep Handling Rogue
• Iren Benedek, Lock Picking Witch
• Aldrich Brisbane, Crusading Dwarfaboo

We began play with the characters approaching the manor through the forest. They had the following briefing to draw from:

The Giant Arminius is dying. Rebels have besieged his manor, fed up with the Giant’s endless raiding for food, slaves and plunder. His children and their human Soldiers mount a desperate defense. Now would be an excellent time for an adventurer to steal his treasure - before his favorite daughter Morwenna arrives to break the siege, and hear her father’s dying words.

Up ahead, the wedge shaped bluff rose out of the ancient wood. Atop its hundred foot peak: the Manor of the Giant Arminius.