Hi all,
I've been about this forum for... well, a while. This is because I've been working on my own Fallout 'Vault crawl' game. It is set in Vault 26 - a vault of my own imagination. It is located near Troy, Michigan, and was filled with adventurous types, but given strict instructions NEVER to leave the vault without the all clear. However, the vault technology was designed to fail - and fail quickly. Sections became exposed to the surface, and were sealed off, only to be later inhabited by all manner of wasteland wildlife. How long could the inhabitants, all outgoing and adventurous people, be kept locked up in their shrinking, collapsing, failing vault before they would ignore Vault Tec instructions and strike out on their own? The board I have created reflects this idea - a vault already heavy with corrosion.
It's kind of inspired by Warhammer Quest - there are map, loot and event cards to pick, each themed as a GECK deck. The stats are based on Fallout 3 - ish. You have gun skills and melee skills and so on. It works on a D10 system, and is still in very initial phases of testing.
I'm a very slow hobbyist, so this has been going for a few years. I'm an even slower painter, so my test mini's are mostly unpainted. However, I've reached a point in my rule writing where I really felt I needed to play some test games. And that is how I spent this evening, and is what I am reporting to you now!
The stage I am at are core-mechanics testing. So, the loot cards aren't done, mainly as I need to know the core game system works. I have my map tiles build (they are all plastic, '2D+', and magnetised), but there will need to be changes to the map cards - which I will explain later.
The first game was pretty quick. There is a random event mechanic, where in corridors and the like, a random event occurs only when you first enter the corridor, and even then only on the roll of a 1. That was my first change. There wasn't any random events, so I changed the rule so that you roll each turn, where ever you are. This worked well in the next game.
As you can see, the map ended up being rather small - in fact, the objective of the Overseer's office was reached in only 4 board sections, after the map was split by a T-Junction. The room was filled with a single Brainbot and two radroaches - easily seen off by the group with little damage. This gave the second rule change - instead of encounters involving critters giving 'd10' creatures, it was swapped to D5+5. The final room was populated with 6 bloatflies (but as those aren't based yet, I used roaches for the models and didn't photograph it).
As the first map was so short (especially with a super simple objective of just 'get to the objective room'), I played two more games.
The first has no photos, as there were no random events (even rolling every turn), and only 3 tiles drawn - 2 corridors and a dead end. So, that ended then and there. Dead ends are a part of the game I wanted - You've found the wrong way in, and must go and look again elsewhere. This is to add to the exploring feel - you have to start again exploring from another point.
This I did, but will come back to again in a bit.
The third game was a bit more substantial, but it still felt a little... Spartan. I need to work on a way to get more regular encounters - fewer corridors and more rooms (which always have an event), perhaps. There were two main events. Getting to the first room - a bedroom - I rolled one unexpected event, filling an otherwise empty corridor section with flammable gas - this was ultimately no issue as I encountered no combat there. therefore, the first main event was in the bedroom, which was filled with 7 fire ants.
Despite their flame attacks, and an 'on fire' mechanism, the party of 4 vault dwellers never seemed in much danger. Their health dropped for around 20 points per character to around 17. Hardly a deadly danger. The damage mechanic may need work...
The next point was not an encounter, but a second living quarters - this time the Overseer's. This was another dead end room, and thus the end of a second mission due to 'wrong way'. This felt a bit much, so I changed the card so that the Overseer's quarters had a new exit to explore. I think that is better than there being 3 or 4 dead end rooms, and reduced that number to two (toilet block and collapsed corridor). It does mean some bedrooms are also corridors.... but then vault dwellers can't be choosers...
Anyway, change to map rules made, the objective room (the generator room), was reached. This was where the second main encounter was: a centaur leading 10 molerats! Objective rooms draw 2 Event cards, rather than one. I rolled D5 centaur, getting 1, and D5+5 molerats, getting 10.
The molerats swarmed forwards, attacking the vault dwellers in melee. The Vault dweller's shooting was wild and inaccurate (most had a Small Guns skill of 30+, giving them a To Hit roll of 4 or less on a D10, 5 or less if they didn't move so could take an aimed shot - I ignored my VATs mechanic for this game). Event then, they were struggling to hit, and as my DMG mechanic is a fixed DMG rating for each hit, it meant killing bad guys is slow. Not sure how to fix that yet.
The Centaur hung back, spitting bile at a distance, and slowly adding damage to the Fighter character. The Molerats taking of 1 DMG point per hit were also taking a slow toll. With two HP each, the Hunter could kill them in a single shot, but the others (armed with pistols) got 2 shots, but each only did 1 DMG. The molerats were wounded, but the hunter couldn't hit them!
As the turns passed, I finally rolled a 1 for an unexpected event - and 6 Radroaches swarmed out a hole in the floor (I also realised I hadn't written rules for placing unexpected events).
After a lengthy battle, the roaches, molerats and finally the centaur were taken out. The fighter was down to only 2HP, but the whole encounter still never felt... truly dangerous. The Scientist even had a Stimpack he never needed to use.
So, A useful few test games. I learned:
- Remove some dead-ends
- change random encounter rolls so they are made every turn
- damage needs review. Is basing DMG randomisation on building up to weapons with more shots per attack limiting?
- I need smaller dice/counters to track wounds
- NPC attacks need to be a bit more potent - likely to be done by making them hit more often, or via a change to the DMG system
I hope this test play report has been of some interest! Will try to report again some time.
Thanks!
Welcome, Guest. Please 
April 25, 2024, 06:43:22 AM
December 14, 2013, 10:32:06 AM
