A Survivor’s Guide to the Wasteland Table of Contents Welcome to the Wasteland .............................1 Wasteland Survival ............................................2 Character Creation 2 Combat 2 Equipment 3 Armour 3 Chems 3 Close Combat Weapons 4 Energy Weapons 4 Explosives 5 Firearms 5 Meds 6 Tech 6 Perks 7 Wasteland Encounters .....................................8 Critters 8 Mutants 9 Raiders 9 Robots 10 Survivors 10 Tribals 11 Overseer’s Guide ...............................................12 What is an Adventure? 12 Serving as Overseer 12 Stunt Dice 13 Teamwork 13 Skill Challenges 13 Settlements 14 Published June 7th, 2265 by ! in association with the Brotherhood of Steel. In the hopes of giving at least a few of you bastards a fighting chance. by Christopher Perigoe This is meant as a fan-work only, not intended for sale or distribution outside of www.tamrielvault.com . I don’t own Fallout or any related names or images. The cover art is from promotional artwork for Fallout New Vegas and is owned by Bethesda. The watermark is the Brotherhood of Steel symbol, also owned by Bethesda. Welcome to the Wasteland If you’re reading this, congratulations. Pay attention and The Good you might manage to survive in this nuclear hell-hole the You’re still breathing, right? That’s about the start and the world is become. I didn’t spend six months writing this end of the good news. There are a few organizations out crap and finding a working printing press just for people to there that aren’t total shit, I suppose. The New California throw this book in the trash. This is likely the best source Republic is a stable military government, shame they’re a of information on the Wasteland you’re likely to find in thousand miles west of here. The Followers of the the east coast, and maybe, just maybe, it’ll keep you alive. Apocalypse are travelling medics, but they never stay in That’s the idea, anyhow. But first, some basic knowledge one place long enough to make a difference. The that every survivor ought to know, about how this shit all Brotherhood of Steel has the best Pre-War tech around, but got started in the first place. they hoard it for themselves and rarely work with outsiders. I can’t be too hard on the Brotherhood, though, The Great War since they’re the ones who gave me access to the records According to some of the records I’ve found, centuries ago and resources I needed to make this book in the first place. in the years after the Second World War, the Unites States They also insisted on stamping their logo across every of America and the People’s Republic of China emerged as page, so here’s hoping they don’t proofread this, am I right? nuclear superpowers. As oil reserves dwindled, resulting in the devastation of the Middle East and Europe, tensions The Bad between the two remaining superpowers rose, culminating A lot of Pre-War luxuries, like clean food and water, are in a war fought on the soil of Anchorage, Alaska. Then, on almost impossible to find in the Wasteland. Factories and October 23rd, 2077, the bombs fell. Nobody knows who industry pretty much shut down, meaning somethings just fired first, but the world burned in the glow of the nuclear aren’t made anymore. Most gear you’ll find has been apocalypse. It was not, however, the end of humanity. broken and fix dozens of times over, and some stuff is basically held together with duct tape and hope. The Vaults In the years before the bombs fell, an American Those Vault-Tec executives, by the way? They, along with corporation called Vault-Tec created hundred of massive some fancy politicians from Pre-War America, started underground fallout shelters called Vaults. Scattered from working on ‘rebuilding’ the country to its former glory. coast to coast, these Vaults were ‘purportedly’ designed to They formed the Enclave, a pseudo-government armed safeguard humanity in case of nuclear apocalypse. In truth, with technology that far outstripped even the height of the Vaults were a massive social experiment created by Pre-War America. While they might claim to be forging a Vault-Tec scientists and executives. The inhabitants were better America, they see anyone with genetic mutations often underwent cruel or improbable situations, and and an inhuman monster… and that means you, and monitored remotely from a secret unlisted Vault, where everyone you know. Only vault-dwellers and the Enclave the surviving Vault-Tec executives prepared to rebuild are genetically ‘pure’ thanks to all that background humanity. Those vault-dwellers who were not radiation. The Enclave are not your friends. experimented on were instead forcibly removed (via system shutdowns) from their Vaults after years, decades, The Ugly or even centuries. These uncontaminated humans thus The apocalypse irradiated the hell out of the world, killing periodically ventured out into the desiccated, inhospitable most of the plants and turning the few things that survived remnants of the United States we now call the Wasteland. into mutated freaks. Giant fire-breathing ants, mutant eagles, and massive deadly chameleons (called Deathclaws, The Wasteland and for good reason) roam the Wasteland. Some people Despite what you might expect, the nuclear apocalypse who weren’t lucky enough to die from massive radiation wasn’t the end of the world. Pockets of humanity still poisoning were instead turned into mindless freaks called survived, and slowly began to rebuild. A fraction of our Ghouls, though a few still hold onto their sanity. former population, the new settlements and safe havens Something called the F.E.V. virus transformed tens of were built on the ruins of the old. Many people turned to thousands into giant green muscle-men called Super raiding, murdering, and even human slavery, but a few Mutants that see humans as food, and some of them are managed to retain their humanity and forge bastions of smart enough to use guns. goodness and decency in this sea of depravity. A lot of us, well, we just care about surviving day to day. In short, the whole world is out to get you. I guess maybe that’s why I wrote this book, to give some of you a fighting chance. Here’s hoping. !1 Wasteland Survival Character Creation Critical Success and Failure Write down your character’s name, sex, age, and When you roll quadruple 5s or 6s, you’ve achieved a appearance. Describe their appearance, then choose Critical Success, which grants you two additional whether they are a Human or a Ghoul. Successes. When you roll quadruple 1s, 2, 3s, or 4s you’ve gotten a Critical Failure, which counts as minus two Humans successes. If you count 4s as successes with that test, Despite two centuries of background radiation poisoning quadruple 4s is considered a Critical Success instead. the human race is still more or less the same as it ever was. We’re all saturated with extremely low levels of Combat background radiation, which I suppose technically makes Combat tests function much like other kinds of tests. You us mutants, but by and large people today don’t look any roll and compare your successes against the DC or the different than we used to a couple centuries ago. successes of the other Survivor. The character with a Humans have 7 Survival Dice. higher result inflicts Damage equal to their weapon’s Damage value plus their bonus successes. For every time Ghouls this equals their target’s DT value, their target suffers one Some people who get exposed to an ungodly amount of Wound. Essentially, divide your damage by their DT, radiation don’t have the good fortune to die. Instead, they round down, and that’s how many Wounds you inflict. If become Ghouls are hairless rotten-looking people with the characters tied, they both inflict their weapon’s (usually) greenish skin and deep, gruff voices. Ghouls are Damage to each other. crazy resistant to radiation, which actually seems to heal them, but it also drives them ‘feral’ if they suffer too much Example: John gets into a firefight with a Psycho (DC 2). at once. Some assholes shoot ghouls on sight because of He rolls 4 successes with his pistol (2 Damage), two more this, but a sane ghoul isn’t any better or worse than the rest than his opponent’s DC, so he inflicts 4 Damage. The of us. Just don’t call them zombies, that’s racist. Raider has DT 2 so it takes 2 Wounds. It takes 3 Wounds Ghouls have 6 Survival dice. The first three times you to kill a Psycho, so it’s still alive and fighting. would suffer Radiation Stress each Adventure, you may instead remove a Wound. Wounds, Injuries, and Stress Survivors can suffer three types of damage. Wounds Gear represent tangible, life-threatening physical damage like Every survivor worth their salt wears some kind of armour, stab wounds and bullet holes. Injuries represent carries at least one weapon, and has some medical supplies. crippling conditions like broken bones, punctured lungs, Survivors start with the items listed below. For the 3rd degree burns, intense frostbite, etc. Stress represents moment, these items grant you 2 DMG and 2 DT. internal damage to your body like radiation, poison, chem • A set of Light Armour; describe what it looks like withdrawal, and food poisoning. • A First-Aid Kit • Any two of the following: a Pistol, a Hunting Rifle, a For each Wound, Injury, or Stress your survivor Laser Pistol, Brass Knuckles, or a Knife.