NanoEther

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Sounds good, makes the book immediately useful, gives them a reason to carry it around for a week per person, and provides a way to get a benefit that doesn't require the book. Only other limit is the understood 'can only study one book at a time'

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) After some discussion, we're opting for the book just giving an experience point towards buying that skill.

Re: Post-WW3 campaign idea The core question still stands: How realistic do you want it? If you just want to give a nod to the need for ammo, and not worry about deterioration or tampering (like Fallout and other games), then you just need to determine the values of the rounds and go. Otherwise... If it's possible to make/re-manufacture ammo, there's going to be a lot of people doing it. And while we're discussing it, there's going to be some who take a couple grains of powder out of each round they intend to sell, resulting in poor ballistics. That's one of the problems with army ammo and the M-16 family. It's a great target rifle and can easily reach 300m, as long as you have match grade rounds. Unfortunately, the army rarely provides match grade to the troops, so the rounds fall off before 300m (of course, modern combat is done at much less then 300m, but it'd be nice to be able to trust your ballistics out that far). Other people would be worse, pulling the powder out and mixing it with more filler, reducing the effectiveness of the round even more; some rounds would end up with so much filler that they would fail a lot, potentially leaving a round in the barrel. One way to nip this in the bud and continue to use use it as a currency is to make the casing the actual currency. In a post-apocalyptic setting, the needed manufacturing capabilities to produce the brass would be non-existent, making brass valuable no matter what the setting is (well, except New Vegas, maybe I should change that...). This satisfied two of the needs of early currency: rarity and difficulty to reproduce. The third is the need for some group or groups to recognize it as valuable, otherwise you just have a barter system. This would change some of your world dynamics though. You don't have to worry about firing ammo, but you do have to worry about policing your brass. This would mean that you avoid starting a fight that you can't win, since you stand to lose a lot of 'money' if you have to retreat. Personally, I'd go with a barter system and just make the brass valuable. If you stick with rounds or go with brass, how do you value it? are 9mm casings worth as much as 22? What about 308? Your values may end up not matching up with size of the rounds. As an example, let's look at the the 9mm and the 5.56 NATO. The 5.56 has a larger case then the 9mm, so by material a 5.56 case is more valuable then a 9mm case. This is only true if utility is the same, if one is rarer or is in higher demand, it will be worth more then the value of the material. So if there are more 9mm weapons around and the 9mm rounds and cases are harder to find, then the 9mm may end up more valuable then the 5.56. I would still figure base value by the size of the case (which does not always follow the size of the round, a 22 is close in size to a 5.56 round). First, figure out the rounds you're going to start with (you can always add more later). Then figure out the relative sizes and figure out some standard, determining the weights of the different cases would be very helpful. For a more realistic value system, My next step would be to build a deviation chart for the values, then use it to determine the base world values of the rounds; I would use modifiers for some rounds. Each region is going to have different values for some of the rounds, so I'd roll for regional deviations for the region the characters are in and any region that borders them (using Indiana as a template, there's at least 11 regions: Chicago, Indianapolis, Louisville, North, South, East, West, North West, North East, South West, South East. For the cardinal regions, I'd roll the NE, NW, Se, and SW regions and use an average of the neighbors to figure out the cardinals (N, S, E, & W). I'd adjust world values annually and regional values quarterly. Any region that the characters routinely go through would need to be tracked all the time; regions they're entering for the first time, or rarely, only need to be determined if they shop in those regions. Of course, using a value deviation chart can be used for anything of value. But, you only need to be this detailed if you have a character whose background depends on trading, such as a trader or a scavenger/prospector. Since their livelihood depends on them not only knowing how valuable an item is, but where to get the best price for it.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Nukes & Overlap Yah, that is an issue, but since I'm use google earth to plot the points out I can adjust according to what I see. My primary concern is making sure initial damage to the area reflects what should have happened. In other words, I'd like to be able to lay a template over the detonation sites and be able to determine the rough area where things would have been vaporized, set on fire, or remain untouched, as well as where the pressure wave should have done damage and how much should be expected in an area. I use a random table built for Inspiration Pad to determine nuke spread from target zone, basically a scatter generator. I use the target potential of the site, from none to primary, to determine number of nukes, direction from target, and distance from target. I do adjust from there, adding or subtracting nukes as desired, or adjusting where they fall. I ignore radiation in most cases since most were air-burst and there are very few times where enough nukes detonated in close enough proximity to create a lasting rad zone. In FO3, most high radiation zones were the result of dumping or a crashed aircraft. There are only two cases where enough nukes hit close enough together to leave a lasting rad zone (the White House and Vault 87), in both cases, the nukes appear to be surface or sub-surface blasts. Books I rambled a little on the end of the books post, but I felt that FO3 didn't really make undamaged books available enough, I think New Vegas hit the mark pretty well. But you'll notice that even with all those books, there's only 52 skill books in that region (+13 for Sierra Madre). If you plan on making skill books easily available, I go with requiring 6 or more skill books to get the permanent bonus, all of them being expended (you've learned everything you can from them). Cut the number required in half or reduce by a set number of books (2 or 3) if they have the comprehension perk. If going with multiple books to get the permanent bonus, I wouldn't allow the effects to stack, i.e., if you have 3 books on medicine, you only get a +1 to medicine, not a +3. Of course, with Hero, there's a lot more skills to work with. Some of these skills I'd only give familiarity with the skill until they had a chance to practice it (Transport Familiarity, Combat Driving, etc). I think I'll go through the list of skills and figure out what's what. New Topics? I am considering adding a a couple more topics to cover specific parts of the conversion, like a bestiary, and maybe a vault or equipment thread. Edits Edited the first post and copied the links in other posts into that one, and added a few other links I ran across. Levels Clarification & Perks (Fallout style) There are inherent differences between a level based systems and story based systems that preclude using the same processes when try to convert from one to the other. This primarily affects the availability of perks, but only if you want to restrict their availability. If I do end up using Perks, the interval between them will likely be 40 points which I figure is close enough to every 2 levels. After building a few, a lot of them are coming in under 10 points, so I plan on reducing the cost by 1 point to encourage taking a 'world element'. Scratch that, I think I'll award some of the experience as 'usable on perks only,' so 1 point out of every 4 or 5; or 1 for each session. Can't decide if I should allow other points to be spent on these perks. If I do, then I still need the intervals, if I don't, then I don't, the number of points the character has will control when they can buy them. Speaking of perks, New Vegas added challenge based perks, where if you do a certain thing a certain number of times you get a perk. Sometimes it was a one-time perk, others could be gained up to three times adding to the benefits each time. i.e., Camel of the Mojave was a one-time perk that made water heal you better, while there are a number of perks where if you kill a certain number of creatures (50, 100, and 150), you gained a bonus to damaging them (3%, 6%, & 10%). Of course, this raises the question: what is the equivalent in Hero? is a single raise in DC equal to a 3% bonus or is it closer to a 10% bonus? Bestiary? Speaking of a bestiary, would you go for tailored for Hero System (take the core idea and write it up with Hero system), or try to stay as close to the source as possible? I'm leaning towards Hero tailored, using damage dealt by attacks as a guide to building the attacks.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Tools I've been using google earth to map out locations and determine travel times. One thing I've been trying to figure out is creating a series of circles to determine the extents of the fireball and pressure waves.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Next, FO style perks OK, I restricted almost all of the powers during character creation, and only the Ghoul template has a batch of powers (I don't allow Supermutants to start). So, I'm building the perks with 20points as my target, with a 10% price reduction after they're built (I may change this as I detail more of them). Originally, I was going to allow a character to pick one every 20xp, but I think every 40 would be better

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Skill books & magazines I originally wanted to use skill books, but every +1 in Hero ~ +5 in Fallout it becomes really overpowering if you don't control availability of the books. Then came New Vegas and skill magazines, a +2 temporary bonus is about the +10 you get in FO (+4 = +20). So, what if the skill books give you a temporary +1 and are reusable while magazines give you a temporary +2 but are Expeded? And with the comprehension perk you get a permanent +1from a book and it is unusable after that, while magazines give a temporary +4. You still need to be carefull about placemen and number available, but not as much. As a note, a bookstore is almost half fiction, half non-fiction. In the non-fiction titles less then 10% are going to satisfy a specific need. And once those beautiful plate glass windows break, and after the survivors pick out choice tinder for building fires, there's not going to be much left. A library is going to be similar, they do carry more non-fiction, but it tends to be more specialized, of course, more books means the odds are about the same. So you can expect to find a number of books that survive, but you can dictate what skill books are available.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Few more ideas: the Lysol Vault (AKA Vaultboy in a Bubble): Once vault was completed, entire facility was cleansed and occupants spent a day decontaminating before getting into the vault proper (there was a area large enough for the occupants to wait, in very cramped conditions). Upon opening, most occupants died from exposure to germs and disease. Germ Lab: Opposite of the above, not really dirty conditions, but the occupants were exposed to various germs and bacteria throughout their stay, resulted in very hardy wastelanders. Trash Heap: Automated recyclers failed. Some items could be recycled by hand, but other items could not.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Survival Fallout: depending on when the bombs drop and when the show ends, it could be interesting. The contestants may have only been in the vault a month or two when the bombs hit, and they think it's part of the game, since the program was written out before hand, they just go one playing the game and voting people out, so there's a pile of bodies within 100 feet of the entrance. Or it's the end of the season, the winner's going to come out, but the bombs hit and the door seals tight, the computer having so many overrides, thinks that the vault is already ready to seal. Alternately, the doors open the bombs drop and everyone rushes into this too small vault. There are two sizes I can see, small, for the first show, it's large enough for 20 people to survive comfortably for a year (probably 40 to 60 additional people, production staff, camera men, executives, season survivors). And large, shows been running for 5 or 10 years, so the vaults can support 100 to 200, and the influx isn't as big a deal. If the vault was being prepped for the next season, supplies could already be on hand for the next year. So, think Probst will get voted off first?

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Which still supports the 'more then 122 vaults' idea. Only 17 of the 122 (commissioned) vaults were control vaults, There's no record of how many VaulTec actually built some other contracts: private, communal (look up intentional communities), state/commonwealth then there's always re-appropriation of funds, in other words: why just build two when I can build three? Of course, with a nuclear strike comes all out martial law, and all those private vaults become government vaults, so the government may have helped vaulTec with incentives to build other vaults, maybe not officially, but out of secret funding. Which means that there is no vault safe from the potential of social experimentation. All vaults, private and federal, were designed and built as part of a series of social experiments. This should be considered a fact, of course this also means that there are more then 17 control vaults total. Of concern to some people is: what if a vault number I choose is used later in a game? Don't worry about it, VaulTec may have had another way to track the vaults and reusing numbers could have been a way to hide the number of vaults from congress/senate or any other organization. Of course, if you just use numbers higher then 122, you shouldn't have to worry about duplicating. OK, so designing a vault What's the minimum population one should start with? 20 families where the youngest children are at least three generations removed, that means, you have to go to their grand-parents grand-parents to find a common ancestor: (parent 0 --> grand-parent 1 --> great-grand-parent 2 --> great-great-grand-parent 3) if the families are unrelated, this gives a vault population of a little over 100 (mother, father, 3+ children), extended families can easily bump the number to over 300. Pregnancies would be heavily discouraged during the first 10 years and slowly reducing in restriction during the 2nd 10, to light restrictions during the end. Of course, in an experiment, once it concludes, the subjects are a liability, so heavy restrictions would prevail throughout the time in the vault. Facilities required: power generation, food service, life-support (includes water and air recycling), quarters, entry Optional facilities: recreation, hydroponics (though it satisfies some of needs of food, air, and water recycling) Aside from the ones already done, anyone have an idea for vault experiments? Classic Maze: The vault is laid out as a maze with dead-ends (maybe literally), so it takes at least 10 minutes to get to anywhere. The experiment vault should keep the halls cold and poorly lit to keep people from just living in the halls, a control vault built on this plan should keep the halls at a normal level. Ethnicity: the vault is seperated into multiple, self-sufficient sections (all vaults should do this), but each section holds families from different social/cultural backgrounds. To make it more interesting, maybe each section contains all rooms of a type. i.e., on section has all of the food service, another has all the power generation, another the hydroponics, another the recreation, another has life-support, etc. (This vaults layout should also be done as a control vault). Earthquake: the vault rooms are mounted on actuators that cause the vault to shake at random intervals Inferno: Vault is prone to fires Hot Box: The vault is always hot, maybe even humid (great for fungus growth) Chill Chest: The vault is always cold Dutch Oven: The vault emits offensive odors from the ventilation system Logan's Run: This vault should be a long-run vault and start with at least 500 inhabitants and no pregnancy restrictions. When someone turns a certain age (30 in the movie, 21 in the book), they are required to attend a ceremony where they are killed. If the vault starts with children, it could be treated as a cult, where the adults (vault employees) raise them and 'attend' the ceremony. The subjects may be killed or just moved to another, linked vault, or just kicked outside. If 30 is used, it could be seen as a duty to allow the continued survival of humanity. Another alternative is as a population limit, for each birth, the oldest must die. Little Lamplight is a variation on this premise.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) I've checked out all of the PA & Fallout threads on the boards, most never really got far or didn't cover converting the system. My major resources are: Mudpyr8's Legendsmith page: http://sites.google.com/a/legendsmiths.com/legendsmiths/adventures/fallout And the aforementioned Vault wiki: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_Wiki I've also searched other wiki's for period information, found out that malls and strip malls started in that era, so they'd still be around, and other goodies.

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) I've been using the Vault wiki extensively. One of my issues is that I'm doing an uncovered region, so I have to detail a region from scratch. That means, determining where bombs were dropped, what settlements sprang up, what factions exist, etc. To that end, I've been building tables to help with random placement, and have been converting some to Inspiration Pad (Free at: NBOS), I'm trying to upload my bomb drop generator now, it's basically a scatter chart that generates the number of warheads dropped on a location based on it's target value. It generates the actual number dropped & what happened to each bomb (where did it go, and did it detonate). I'm working on an encounter matrix right now, to be followed by an item generator.

Re: Toy Story Hero? I work at a bookstore and we spent a month with TS playing on a screen and me and another gamer started talking about what would cause Buzz to act like he did. After a bit of discussion, we decided it most closely approximated a psychosis where he believed he was really alive and that he was Buzz Lightyear, anything that contradicted that was ignored or re-written by him. At least until he was faced with the image of himself on a TV, then the doubt began, and when he tried to fly, and failed, his conviction in the psychosis failed. Now, there was a one-shot adventure book that used cards as the random generator called "Psychosis: Ship of Fools" in which your characters had to save a colony ship while dealing with various psychosis brought on by sudden revival from deep-sleep. So, we started talking about a game based on this premise: what if the characters were all toys suffering from the false belief that they were alive (or at least real vs being a toy). Originally I was looking at White Wolf, but then you have the issue of why can't I play a Ventrue or a Glasswalker? Then I started going through my Hero books and realized that it was a much better solution. Here's some of the key ideas I was working on: Truth: this is how much of the truth you know and accept, ranges from 1-10, if doing a campaign dependant on finding the Truth, characters should start at level 1, if you're just running around your childs bedroom anything goes. It has some importance since you can use your level of Truth to protect yourself from another characters special abilities. (Truth, Base 1, 5 points per level; it may be better to set this up as a Perk or Talent since it has a limit) Belief: A child imbues his toys with a bit of his imagination, this allows toys to delve into their psychosis to do things that they normally wouldn't be able to do (or to convince other toys that they had). Since belief powers any special abilities it is very important, but it also allows them to act like they are alive. Unlike Truth, there is no upper limit and toys should start with a number of points. Since toys really don't need an END characteristicyou can just use that or you can add a Belief characteristic. In general, a character can be anything or anyone, but there are some limits on the powers: Automation Powers: Even though the characters are basically golems, they do not start with any automaton powers since (most of them) believe that they are living beings. This is an aspect of their psychosis, after they gain some levels of truth they can purchase automaton powers to reflect their acceptance Extra-Dimensional Movement: Not allowed, If key to a character; tell him it's unavailable at this time, allow him to buy a focus as a placeholder, when he discovers the truth, allow him to sell back the focus. FTL Travel: as above Flight: May be bought so long as a hard ceiling limitation is taken (normally about 10m); if they complain, tell them it's reducing the cost, it doesn't matter if they take the limitation or not they still have it, if sthe situation changes you will allow them to extend the limit, or remove the limits entirely. Teleportation: must have some kind of Line of Sight limitation, cannot pass through physical barriers (Must Pass Through Intervening Space is close); so no Blind Teleports or anything similar. So, you can't teleport into a closed contained, like a beachball. But, if there is an opening, like a hamster ball, a character could "teleport" inside it. Anytime you limit or prevent a power from being purchased or used, think of how the character would rationalize it. Why can't superman fly more then 10m up? Luthor must have laced the air with Kryptonite! Why can't the mage teleport into the mystical sphere? It must either be composed of some anti-magic material or be enchanted to prevent teleports from working. If they get frustrated because they can't use the power like they wanted to, consider allowing them to use the points on something else

Re: Fallout Hero (6E) Switching tracks a little, moving over to world-building (or destroying) Any ways, kicking around some of the issues with the vaults, namely, how many are there? Common statements about the number are listed as to how many times I have seen them: 1) there are 122 vault experiments 2) there are 122 vaults 3) the US commissioned 122 vaults to be built I tend to believe the first one, since 122 vaults spread between 13 commonwealths of more-or-less equal size would mean that each commonwealth would have 9 vaults and there would be 5 left over, that's around 3 per state, that's 3000 people 'protected'. The upper limit seems to be that it would take 400,000 vaults to 'protect' the entire population, there ar Here's a little more to throw on the fire. These are the Vaults that I know where they are, they've been placed in their commonwealths: North West (5) Vault 6;Mt. St Helens, WA Vault 8 ;North CA Vault 13 ;North CA Vault 15 ;North CA Unfinished vault South West (1) Vault 21;Las Vegas, NV four States (1) Vault 29 ;Colorado Texas (3) Vault 12 ;Bakersfield Vault 39;Abilene, TX Vault 70 ;Salt Lake City, UT Columbia (9) (some of these are actually in Virginia, others are in Maryland) Vault 74;Washington, DC Vault 76;Washington, DC Vault 77;Washington, DC Vault 87;Washington, DC Vault 97;Washington, DC Vault 101;Washington, DC Vault 106 ;Washington, DC Vault 108;Washington, DC Vault 112;Washington, DC The Los Angeles Vaults are not mentioned as most were 'non-production' vaults, these would otherwise add to the South West Commonwealth. The Columbia Commonwealth is the most telling, 9 vaults are clustered around DC, leaving none for the rest of the commonwealth, and with 2 other major cities to draw test subjects from, this is unreasonable. Back to the original question. the second option allows for no flexibility, so I chose to reject it. The other two can work, since there is a loophole in the third statement. The US commissioned 122, but individual commonwealths may have commissioned additional vaults, and some communities or organizations may have as well. I'm going with a rough triple the US numbers at this point. Of course, as they said in contact, why build one when you can build two? There could be a number of vaults built by overcharging the various commissioning groups, I'd say enough to quadruple the number of vaults to 488, I'm making it a nice round 500 (that's 38 per commonwealth, around 10 to 13 per state). The upper limit seems to be that it would take 400,000 vaults to 'protect' the entire population, there are very few vaults so I think the true upper limit is lower then 0.5% of the needed number, or 2000 vaults is the upper limit (this gives you an upper limit of 150 vaults per commonwealth, which is around 40 to 50 per state) So, what numbers are used? well, even if you use 122 as a hard number, you are not limited to numbers below 122. A good psychological trick to convince the populace that there are many more vaults being constructed, is to number them higher. Besides, there were 122 commissioned out of a list of how many? If they keep their original number from the proposal, there's no reason for a vault to not have a higher number. Any other thoughts?

Re: Commando Hero Speaking of Special Forces, that probably should have been a better title... Commando has, well, other connotations