Fallout Goes Tabletop
Surviving bandit attacks, scavenging for resources and all together surviving the post-nuclear wasteland of America in the Fallout series has been something people have been doing for 24 years. Now all of this and more comes to your own table in Fallout: The Roleplaying Game published by Modiphius.
This tabletop version of the beloved video game series brings over everything you love and converts it into a pencil and paper tabletop roleplaying game. I was able to get my hands on the digital version of the core rulebook, and it is chock-full of so many fun ways to bring the wasteland to your imagination.
The core rulebook comes with a short beginner adventure for you to run with your group, which is exactly what I did. I will avoid spoilers for this quest because I would highly recommend it to anyone who loves tabletop games or just the Fallout universe in general. The adventure is a very straightforward quest with a good mixture of roleplaying, combat and mystery solving. It gives you a lot of freedom to solve encounters how you feel your character would do so.
Let's talk mechanics. The game uses a 2d20 system, so instead of rolling 1d20 to see how well you do something, you're basically given two chances to succeed on every check. One thing I enjoy about this system is all of the numbers you are trying to beat are laid out for the whole table to see, giving each roll a sense of tension and weight behind it. The difficulty of each check increases by how many times you need to succeed a check. For example, if I set a Perception+Lockpick check with a difficulty of 2, the player needs to roll equal to or lower than their perception and lockpicking skill added up, twice.
Character creation is another important thing in an RPG. Who are you going to be in this world? Do you want to be a smooth-talking smuggler with a sensitive side? Or do you want to be a brute who is hit first and never asks questions? The choice is entirely yours! The group I played with was the most rag-tag bunch of misfits you could imagine working together. We had a Super Mutant who loves to cook but isn't very smart, a French Vault Dweller who had a dog companion and a chain-smoking Ghoul who took charge. The possibilities are endless!
The book gives you a lot of freedom in how you make the Wasteland yours and encourages world-building with your players. I love when a tabletop RPG says in the rulebook that "these rules are a guideline, not hard and fast rules" which prioritizes fun over rules. You can buy the PDF of the core rulebook now, and physical copies will ship out to the public in the summer of 2021! I highly encourage anyone who has an interest in TTRPGs to take a look at this! As always, stay safe and keep gaming.
