Last weekend the lads and I got together to venture back into the world of Fallout. At least, our version of Fallout. Familiar, but with extra weirdness. Think Mutant Crawl Classics meets the Fallout universe. Anyway, powered by my homegrown d20 rules, the lads set forth after their recent success on their way back home to Vault 111... and promptly got lost. Fortunately for them they came across a trader by the name of Roger who had recently had his brahman stolen by a group of raiders. Promising them 1,000 caps reward and a decent trade deal arrangement between himself and Vault 111 our intrepid heroes set out to help Roger get back his pack brahman and his current inventory. Simple right?
Not quite. You see the raiders in question were a group of former geeks called The Reenactment Society. This mob had discovered a warehouse chock full of merchandise from a famous pre-War Space Opera series. They watched those movies and became enamoured believing these films to have been historical documents from the pre-War era. Their leader, a latent but potentially powerful psychic with a dark brooding demeanour, soon became convinced that he was the re-embodiment of the main nemesis of the Space Opera story. He soon had his geek followers dressed in the combat armour to be found in the warehouse. There was enough material to equip them all and the workshop out the back of the warehouse was fully tooled to produce more as other raider bands joined or were concurred by them. They changed their name to The Empire and what started out as a harmless group of low-level raiders fast was becoming a local menace.But our heroes knew little of this until they snuck into the back end of town and came across a group of Empire raiders in an old quick-e-mart. Lazer fire soon started filling the back of the store sending wood shards everywhere and, mercifully due to the Stormtroopers having poor visibility in their helmets giving them Disadvantage on attacks ("I can't see a think in this helmet!"), our heroes were able to dispatch them. There may have been some beer drinking involved in their inability to hit the side of a barn also. Stormtroopers!
What follows is a series of images as the team moved their way across town trying to rescue the brahman. Turns out the Stormtroopers were using it as bait in a trap set in an old shipping container. "Bait?" I hear you say. Yes, bait. But bait for what? Well, something very nasty.
The black car caught fire and I placed a d4 atop it to count down the combat rounds. Nobody thought to ask why as I noted that the car was on fire. One of the heroes however ran across the street and straight into the sights of one of the Stormtroopers carrying a rocket launcher. This messed up his day and as he lay there dying (zero hit points - toss a d6 and your dead in that many rounds...) he had only two rounds until he would die.
The only PC with power armour took off with a stimpack to revive their fallen comrade when another player asked a simple question. "That black car is on fire, isn't it? This is Fallout right, and that's a Fallout vehicle on fire, isn't it?" My answer was "Yes. Yes, it is." His character immediately took off in the other direction as the timer reached to 1. Next combat round a small nuclear explosion occurred doing d100 damage in a one-foot radius over the table. Player 1 was incinerated immediately. Player 2 in the power armour, through a combination of rolling low for the d100 roll (I make my players roll their own potential demise at moments like this so that they can't blame me if the roll comes up high) and using up all his Luck Dice, just managed to survive the blast with only a few hit points left. Player 3, who had bolted for it, was just outside the blast radius and thanking The Almighty that he was smart enough to run. Player 4 had crossed to the other side of town with Roger the Trader by this time when they noticed the explosion.
These guys on the roof ended up giving players 3 & 4 a real headache. As Roger got to the back of the shipping container and began releasing the catches so that he could get Molly & Mildred (his pack brahman) out of it, player 3 was spotted by the Stormtrooper carrying a rocket launcher. The Stormtrooper soon made near toast of player 3, who only survived due to rolling Luck Dice to diminishing the hit points damage taken. Still, he was pretty messed up.
Player 4 had a faceoff with the Stormtrooper sniper. Both rolled very well, player 4 killing the Stormtrooper as his sniper bullet cause a critical back. Player 4's PC had his left arm and part of his chest ripped off by the shot, killing him instantly.
As player 3 began stimpacking himself, Roger released Molly & Mildred and made along the outside of the building for escape. Two dead PC's and a third near death was enough to signal that it was time to get out of there.
