Fallout Lonestar (Poll For intrest)
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Alright I know Fallout: Montreal is already in the works and I'm not going to lie seeing the response that's already gotten is what finally gave me the get up and go to actually ask about a fallout project I've wanted to make for a while.
The basic pitch is that it'd be an aresmush game running the latest fs3 set in the small town of Carbon Texas shortly after the bombs drop. Players would do their best to survive the earliest days of the nuclear armageddon. We're talking the launch event would actually be the bombs dropping.
The idea of the setting is that Texas has declared independence from the united states and at the time of the game starting has already been at 'war' with the US for weeks. So far the war has been very one sided and is turning out more like a military blockaid then an actual war.
One day the soldiers just leave their posts, the fighting stops and Texas solidifies its independence by default Then the bombs drop, and right after our game starts.
It's a simple concept, nothing too ground breaking and I'd like to stay close to fallout lore as I can. Just want to know if anyone is even interested before I start trying to secure a server.
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As much as I like Fallout, and as much as I would love a game set in a time period closer to Fallout 1 than 4, playing the immediate aftermath of the bombs just wouldn't work for me.
Honestly, it just sounds kinda depressing.
But also, the pseudo-50s-with-robots society is just weird and vague enough that I'm not sure what even I might play. I feel like it'd be more like apocalypse Mad Men, with more robots and possibly fewer gender issues, than anything recognizable as Fallout.
But it's original and we could use more of that, so there might be players for it.
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Best of luck with development and building, fellow survivor!
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Its HARD to say what will take off and what won't. Most mushes fail, sometimes I have no idea why (sometimes its obvious) - and its hard to say beforehand. I know thats a terrible answer, but its true. You'd have to have a great wiki, I think. I'd start with that, NOT a server.
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I, too, find this 'just after the bombs'... hard. It sounds a lot painful and depressing. Most Fallout games happen in a world which was horribly scarred, but life exists, survives. Just after the bombs? Not so much.
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Why not set it before the bombs? In the pseudo 50s turmoil of a true Cold War? You'll have China advancing in Alaska and the beginnings of the Texas Independence.
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@downwithopp That seems 10000000x more depressing.
Honestly, rural texas, alaska, south america - any of these places are pretty safe from a nuclear war. They'll have global fallout to deal with, not local fallout, and that'll follow the seven-ten rule:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fallout#The_Seven_Ten_Rule
They'd mostly have to hide for a few weeks, take shitloads of iodine, and worry about Crazy Weather for ~20 years or so. The 'in game representation' of it taking 200 years and there being skeletons and blasted trees is pure fiction.
If people WANT that pure fiction, they could just Vault 111 it.
EDIT:
You could always start it 20 years later, and have flashbacks. Some PCs could be old-timers, the others could be the first 'new generation', so to speak. Even for the young'ins, they could have occasional flashbacks of being kids.
Advantages: 1. You get past the radiation and nuclear winter. 2. You allow time for Odd Communities to pop up.
Disadvantages: You do loose the initial mixture of hope and despair. Yes, despair at the 'paradise lost' of it; but in the guise of the Lonestar, the CHARACTERS political perspective is of, largely, secessionists from a fascist state...so hope, too. You'd probably be able to maintain it though, with good GMing and having incentives for people to play family members, and a mixture of old/young pcs. Plenty of ruins. Lots of wildlife - 20 years later, nature will essentially be back to normal.
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@secretfire said in Fallout Lonestar (Poll For intrest):
The 'in game representation' of it taking 200 years and there being skeletons and blasted trees is pure fiction.
Wait, you’re okay with the 1950s fashion and retro tech hanging on for a hundred years but not this?
I rationalize the trees and grass as being a side effect of lingering genetic changes and the fact that Bethesda went for the feel and not the facts of what Interplay/Black Isle did. All of their games are in insanely hot areas. It’s pretty obvious that the climate has gone through the wringer. I imagine Texas is hotter than a mofo in the current Fallout timeline.
But then, these are my imaginings. I think the OP should make the game they want, and be excited enough to bring us along. And if it doesn’t excite, no harm no foul.
And with Texas being drained dry leading up to the Resource Wars, I can imagine why they they would want to break away, but I can also imagine why they’d be one of the more messed up states. I’m not sure at that point what Texas would have that’d be worth nuking, other than it’s America.
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There's a bit of a difference between the Bethesda and BIS Fallouts. Yes. Bethesda went for 'quick and lazy and aesthetic'. I LIKE the Bethesda stuff; but they'd have skeletons sitting inside buildings being actively used and lived in at the time. So its been 210 years, but no-one has bothered removing the skeleton? Easy to mod out. I mean, for mu* purposes, I don't care. But someone specifically said that they thought it would be 'too dead and depressing' - and I was merely correcting that idea. Consider it a professional nitpick as someone with a science background. Again, I don't care either way. Just trying to be helpful.
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Even in the BIS Fallout there were large pockets of radiation hanging around, but I get your point.
I think that if we have something that feels like Fallout, and staff ready and willing to lead the charge, we will be happy campers.
The single most depressing moment in any Fallout for me, besides the premise, was in Honest Hearts, in the diaries of the survivor of the war. Everyone has their thing.
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I don't generally like apocalypse settings, that's all. Rebuilding or even just surviving in the aftermath is one thing, actually living through it just makes me think I'm playing the origin story of my character's future PTSD. But this is totally a personal thing! It doesn't feel like Fallout to me, but I also don't like things like zombie apocalypse settings for games, and lots of people do.
The 20 years later game sounds a lot better, by contrast.
But Fallout, even ignoring Bethesda's, has ghouls and radscorpions and billions of dead people. I feel like you can pretty much just handwave your setting into whatever it is you think would be the most fun to play in, just don't worry too much about realism in terms of the science involved.
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I think that you should do it and that there's a market for it! Even if it's not something I personally would enjoy, I know a lot of folks DO like that sort of game, and it would be great to have further variety on offer.
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I concur with Sunny.
I love post-apoc games. I would play the shit out of this one and Fallout: Montreal (presuming I could get myself to play a game set in Quebec).
“It is better to live doing the things that you like. It is foolish to live within this dream of a world seeing unpleasantness and doing only things that you do not like.” -- Yamamoto Tsunetomo.
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Build it and they will come, seriously. I think this sounds really different, which I almost always like, and I hope you make it happen.
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@ganymede said in Fallout Lonestar (Poll For intrest):
I love post-apoc games. I would play the shit out of this one and Fallout: Montreal (presuming I could get myself to play a game set in Quebec).
You do know that dark irony is at the core of Fallout, right?
Roll with your inner self-loathing and you should be fine.
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Alright so what I'm getting, if I understand this right is: People aren't super keen on the bombs dropping being the start of the server. I'm totally fine with that, and can understand completely why it would put people off. I don't think I really want to shift the setting too far forward because I've always been a fan of immediate aftermath of a disaster.
For me seeing how people react right after the event is a big source of the fun for me, seeing if society solidifies or collapses in the face of overwhelming odds. In my head Texas is almost completely untouched by the bombs directly. It's been stripped down to the bone. The oil's gone completely the land's already been over-farmed to the point of being almost completely worthless. The America of the fallout verse has stripped it completely clean of resources. After stripping it clean they pretty much just threw it aside and that's why they decided to leave the US, because they felt abandoned and used.
I mainly wanted, at least in my head anyway, this to be a PVE game focused on seeing how people handle such drastic change and adversity.
How long can a government hold itself together when the rest of the world is effectively gone? Will people go full lord of the flies right off the bat or will the peace be kept? Can society as we know it even exist in these conditions?
If I decide to set it further after the bombs drop I'd most likely only put it out about a month or so give time for the initial mass radiation to die down a bit. I kind of like the idea of a nuclear winter for the setting to be perfectly honest.
Then again? You never know I might get into setting this up and eventually decide to set it a bit further. The most I'd probably set it down the line would be about 2118, but that would completely change the game from what I want it to be about.
I realize it's not for everyone but hey if it fails completely on its face being what I want it to be I can always relaunch the game as a 'sequil' to itself set in a time that people are more comfortable with. At least then I would know I tried to make the game I wanted to make.
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@therealfake You are right, I think. It's very much a case of you can't please everyone so might as well please yourself. And one of the keys to a successful game is staff that is enthusiastic about it!
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Just make the game you want to make. Do what interests you. Don't base your decision on what anyone here says, how much interest is HERE, etc. -- this is a relatively small slice of the population. I think it's way more important to appeal to yourself than it is to appeal to us, and as @Kay says, enthusiasm of staff is a key factor in success.
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Don't try to appease others, or you will end up with a game you are not interested in running more than likely. Instead, take what you are passionate about and roll with it. People will come.
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Also realize that a lot of us are jaded and biased to what we believe it should be. There's a well-known survival mod for FO4 that's just after the bombs fell, literally just after, that is hellish and deadly. I need to clear my thoughts of that. I also have a bias against any Texas Is The Only State That's Right ideology I run into with many modern-day Texans. Hell, if they wanted to leave the Union, I would smile and tell them not to let the Constitution hit them on the ass on the way out.
Except Huston. I'd miss Huston.
I'm 100% wrong to let these color what you WOULD make.
I mainly wanted, at least in my head anyway, this to be a PVE game focused on seeing how people handle such drastic change and adversity.
Be prepared to be the source of all that change and adversity. Warn people that if they log in, even if they stay in their huts, things are Going To Happen To Them. That kind of thing.
