The perfect starting role?

Ugly Kid

Ugly Kid

Still Mildly Glowing
I don't know how to word that better, but, we can all agree that vault dweller is getting pretty bland by now. People liked tribal, prisoner, and courier, but what other roles would be great for a new Fallout game to start you as?

I'll start by saying that a slave would be a great role. Slaves are generally media deprived and only know what is within the area their slaver puts them in. So it would work for a story where the player is supposed to be clueless as to what's happening in the world.

Although, I don't know what a great role would be for someone who should know what's going on in the world, like a courier.

Remember, there are no bad answers.
 
The Farmhand: you start the game (or mod, as I imagined it) working on a ranch and is the center stage for the main conflict of the plot. You already have the PIP Boy in the beginning and like the Courier, part of the player's back story is set in stone. While they can role play how they got the "protagonist device", it's map already reveals a few locations. These are places The Farmhand frequently visits, and so people know him or her, and his or her Reputations with these communities are preset. Hopefully, players see it as a boost to their role playing when doing Quests.

The Raider: you start the game as a raider that hunts down a weary Vault Dweller. The intro is a tutorial as you subdue him in anyway you wish. A cut scene plays of you standing over your prey, and donning their PIP Boy. The main theme for this game would revolve around redemption or justifying the raider lifestyle or something ... Nuka World is my favorite Fallout 4 DLC.

The Overseer: I know the point of this thread to avoid being a Vault Dweller but it's something I realized about Fallout 4. The Sole Survivor should have been the Overseer of Vault 111. This change of title would improve Fallout 4's theme of being a leader, and maybe justify why the game beings during the Pre War era. Maybe instead of being admitted into the Vault because of their service to America, the player won a cereal box top contest (as a joke). They won not only their survival in the Vault, but won the position of the Vault's Overseer.

The Witness: not thought out at all. The name just sounds cool.

A good idea is to make the player moniker something all NPCs would call the player. Or go with "the rule of cool" as people say. Also, to imitate the Courier, just take a job you'd see in the Wasteland and have that be the player moniker.
 
I think a combination of slave and prisoner could be fun.

Your character is enslaved and put to work in a post-apocalyptic chain gang, working on some project for a faction. Could be anything from a petty raider tribe using you for fodder or a larger organized faction sending you to work in a mine. Your opening sequence is your escape, colluding with a fellow inmate who dies and tells you of something to seek in freedom, like a buried personal treasure.

You'd have total freedom of backstory with the sole exception that at some point you got captured by this faction before setting off into the world. For fun you could even have a villain who tracks down escaped slaves looking for you.
 
The (lost) Solider: An idea for the protagonist for a game set in Louisiana (now named The Big Easy). An NCR Trooper who got separated from their platoon during the Republic's expansion along the border. Whether they did genuinely get lost or went AWOL is, of course, up to the player. Also, the player can roleplay their own head cannons or educated guesses to explain their situation. Either the NCR won or lost the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, either they became weaker or stronger because of it, either they became more militaristic and aggressive or bureaucratic and humanitarian. No matter how educated players are with the lore, they might have fun coming up with their backstories. Newbies may (hopefully) be inspired to check out the previous games.
 
I think it’s important to have as vague a backstory as possible, so the player can fill in the details. Even Fallout 1 and 2 were somewhat restrictive in this way. New Vegas probably allowed for the most freedom in imaging your character’s backstory, but even establishing that the player is a courier can seem a little restrictive.

What if your player character had literally no history? You start in the desert, dying of thirst and exposure, stumbling upon some small town. Where you are from, who you are, who your family/friends are, how you got stranded alone in the wasteland (there are tons of different scenarios that could lead to this), or whether you even remember the answers to any of this, can all be left up to you to decide. I suppose it wouldn’t really tie your character to the main story, whatever that may be, but I still think a vague start like this would be ideal for role playing purposes.
 
I came by to say my opinion, but the previous post by Iprovidelittlepianos already says something similar to what I was going to say.

Having the most vague background possible is the way to go.

Another way would be of letting the player pick a background during character creation. This would still be as restrictive as whatever backgrounds the devs make available to choose from.

But for me, having a very vague background is how it should be done. Basically, a character's background in a Fallout game should be reflected on the skills the player picks at character generation. This means that we don't need a set background, because our character skills already tell us what background that character has.
 
I would prefer as little detail as possible as well, altough it could complicate things a bit for the moniker and the plot hooks, but it is possible.

I liked how they did it at the beginning of pillars of eternity.

Let's not forget that the little as possible informations about the character's background should fit for any kind of character, including the weak, ugly, unlucky moron that you could come up with if you purposly screw the character creation to make the worse unchosen one possible.
 
I think having Background be a section like Traits could be interesting. Little flavour boxes that have gameplay impacts with stuff like stats, and possibly detractions. Prisoner (Guilty), Prisoner (innocent), NCR Citizen, Tribal, former Brotherhood, et cetera. You could then have an option for basically "None of the above" which would allow you to shape your own backstory, but you wouldn't have any background-related dialogue integrated into the game.
 
The idiot. You start with a guy who doesn't even know how to talk. Then you don't need to engage in boring dialogues and you can only shoot things. Peter Hines would love it.
 
The Vault Explorer/Ranger: You come from a none retarded vault who have set up their own community and have sent out a party to look for trade and resources. Maybe you were the leader or 2nd in command. maybe the doctor, computer expert or security, possibly even the dumb muscle to act as a mule or just so god damn useless this was a way to get you hell out of there, either way do some rather nasty plot elements you find yourself cut off from your compatriots and now are on your own.
 
The thing is you have to give the character some type of role so they can be connected to the main story of the game. If the protag in NV was never a courier, they wouldn’t have had any reason to go after Benny.
 
mabey a new concept for the "outsider"? like someone from a different state that gets to the region in the game from a caravan.
 
I know its restrictive, but honestly we never a main series Fallout game where the protagonist is a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Not someone who joined up I mean, someone who was born there. Game would need a strong and consistent "Brotherhood" atmosphere, where the player really feels like a metal monk or a post-apocalyptic paladin.

The Brotherhood is pretty isolationistic, so it could work easily as a set-up for why you don't know anything about the outside world.

Maybe have the Protagonist be an Initiate who for reasons, ended up cut off from the Brotherhood. So for reasons, you're alone and lacking in any resources except your wits, muscles and a sick robe. Maybe your character was noted for his promise, and they called you something refering to that - say, Star Initiate, or Golden Pulpil, or something like that.

Eventually the player would be able to reconnect with the Brotherhood, and then choose their path in the Brotherhood, entering the path of Knight/Paladin or Scribe - the idea is to make a player choose based on their skills (not force, more like "what do you want to do?"). Make friends and allies and rivals, get involved in the politics of the Brotherhood, research, go into missions, etc. I think it would be an interesting way to get an inside look into the Brotherhood. Possibly better than a boring extended start sequence.

Or just forsake the Brotherhood entirely and do your thing.

TheodoreRoosevelt said:
i think a cool role would be "The Prospector" maybe "The Mercenary" as well.
Click to expand...

I actually had the Prospector one some time ago,

The idea was that the player(s) was (were) part of a crew of miners and prospectors, who found a pre-war map and went on a car to the Gold Country area of California to explore the place for precious minerals.

And they get ambushed and their car stolen with the map inside it, with the surviving player(s) being The Prospector(s). The early game would literally be the PC(s) going like "Dude's where my car".

Intended for PnP, so as many people die or survive as the game requires.
 
I think it'd be cool to take the Bethesda route and start us as a prisoner somewhere in the modern timeline era L.A. Boneyard. No particularly reason for the location, other than I love it and want to see it expanded. Plus I figure it's gotten pretty big by 2280 and is pretty far from most other cities, so I feel like it'd naturally make a good place for a prison
 
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