Attempting a Fallout Van Buren Campaign W/ Friends

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PipBoyofSteel15

First time out of the vault
So, I have no doubt in my mind that people have done this, which is why I feel I'm inclined to at least try. This/Next Weekend (Depending on a few things) I will be Game Mastering a Fallout PNP Campaign with my friends using the Van Buren docs and my own writings filling in some stuff that the docs left out.
As time goes on, I'll probably have questions / things that I could need help on narratively, that I'll post here, and in any case you have questions for me, I'd be happy to answer
Also, let me know if this is something you've ever attempted, or if you're just that godly, have succeeded in.

To make a quick list of the things I've settled from the understandable inconsistencies and unfilled holes in the documents:

Presper and Co. did not infect themselves with Limit-115, though Presper still plans on using the Nursery to make a cure for Limit-115 for the future generations.

Harold was the key to Limit-115 cure at the Nursery, using organic FEV found in his fruit (I believe this was confirmed to be true by John Deiley on a very old thread here)

I probably won't be using Fort Abandon since Doc 13 is missing. It will be replaced by Circle Junction, an area with a little bit more info on it, of which I can probably design an area around that info.

That's about all I can think of right now. Please, if anyone has any more tips, I would greatly appreciate it :D
Wish me luck
 
I tried to run a game based on Van Buren, and so I'll say my number one bit of advice is to make sure your players have a strong goal upon leaving the prison, and if they don't just group up naturally, make sure you have a hook to help keep them together. And don't draw attention to the Pipboys or make sure to make them very useful right away, or they'll ditch them as fast as they can.

And I kept Fort Abandon, but kind of merged it with Circle Junction.
 
Pax said:
I tried to run a game based on Van Buren, and so I'll say my number one bit of advice is to make sure your players have a strong goal upon leaving the prison, and if they don't just group up naturally, make sure you have a hook to help keep them together. And don't draw attention to the Pipboys or make sure to make them very useful right away, or they'll ditch them as fast as they can.

And I kept Fort Abandon, but kind of merged it with Circle Junction.
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Thanks man :D
How far did you guys get when you ran it?
 
To be honest, things went really not well for me. First session I had them escape from the prison pretty cleanly, and tried to keep them together by effectively making them a chain gang via electric shocks from their Pipboys whenever they got too far apart. Unfortunately, this lead to them resenting being around each other, and trying to get their pipboys off as quickly as possible. As they ran out of the prison without looking around at all, they had no weapons, and all but one of the group got killed by a radroach in an old gas station. The survivor just hacked off his arm and made a run to the North. He encountered an Iron Lines (Rivers) scout outside Fort Abandon/Circle Junction, but noped out of there at the sight of Legion slavers holed up there. After that he made for his home village and I kind of called it for the night.

A big problem was that I didn't give them a goal in the prison other than their innate desire to no longer be in the prison. My plan was for them to stumble around having adventures for a while spreading the Blue Flu before calling them to the Boulder Dome to explain to them how badly they'd screwed everything up.

Now, because I'd spent so long preparing, my players took pity on me and let me redo from scratch. This time they weren't a pipboy chain gang, and I put them on the same work out schedule so they were out of their cells when the attack hit. I trapped them in an inner portion of the cell block that they should've had to work together to escape, and put some other prisoners (some friendly, and some not) around for them to interact with. Long story short, one of my players got stupid and mouthy at the bad guy faction lead by Ron Perlman and got murdered, while the other managed to escape. It was the same player as last time, so again they escaped to their tribe. I ran one more game with the tribe, letting the dead player make a new character that belonged to the others tribe, but it very quickly turned into not the game I wanted to run, so I pulled the plug.

My main plot plan was a little better this time around, at least. Since the docs alternately call the prison computer Ulysses and Odysseus, and say it has a split personality, I decided Odysseus was the sane part that wanted to follow its programming (as it was the correct, Poseidon-named Roman-style), and Ulysses was the broken part that wanted to escape (As it followed Greenway's original Greek naming scheme). Ulysses posed as a prisoner who was trapped deeper inside the prison, and tried to get the players to retrieve the other prisoners so that the lockdown would lift and he could escape. Unfortunately, they sniffed this out as a scam from the start, and I'm not sure they would've gone through with it even if the game hadn't gone to shit.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I researched Van Buren waaaay too long before the game started (which made my heart hurt when it never really got off the ground.)
 
Pax said:
To be honest, things went really not well for me. First session I had them escape from the prison pretty cleanly, and tried to keep them together by effectively making them a chain gang via electric shocks from their Pipboys whenever they got too far apart. Unfortunately, this lead to them resenting being around each other, and trying to get their pipboys off as quickly as possible. As they ran out of the prison without looking around at all, they had no weapons, and all but one of the group got killed by a radroach in an old gas station. The survivor just hacked off his arm and made a run to the North. He encountered an Iron Lines (Rivers) scout outside Fort Abandon/Circle Junction, but noped out of there at the sight of Legion slavers holed up there. After that he made for his home village and I kind of called it for the night.

A big problem was that I didn't give them a goal in the prison other than their innate desire to no longer be in the prison. My plan was for them to stumble around having adventures for a while spreading the Blue Flu before calling them to the Boulder Dome to explain to them how badly they'd screwed everything up.

Now, because I'd spent so long preparing, my players took pity on me and let me redo from scratch. This time they weren't a pipboy chain gang, and I put them on the same work out schedule so they were out of their cells when the attack hit. I trapped them in an inner portion of the cell block that they should've had to work together to escape, and put some other prisoners (some friendly, and some not) around for them to interact with. Long story short, one of my players got stupid and mouthy at the bad guy faction lead by Ron Perlman and got murdered, while the other managed to escape. It was the same player as last time, so again they escaped to their tribe. I ran one more game with the tribe, letting the dead player make a new character that belonged to the others tribe, but it very quickly turned into not the game I wanted to run, so I pulled the plug.

My main plot plan was a little better this time around, at least. Since the docs alternately call the prison computer Ulysses and Odysseus, and say it has a split personality, I decided Odysseus was the sane part that wanted to follow its programming (as it was the correct, Poseidon-named Roman-style), and Ulysses was the broken part that wanted to escape (As it followed Greenway's original Greek naming scheme). Ulysses posed as a prisoner who was trapped deeper inside the prison, and tried to get the players to retrieve the other prisoners so that the lockdown would lift and he could escape. Unfortunately, they sniffed this out as a scam from the start, and I'm not sure they would've gone through with it even if the game hadn't gone to shit.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I researched Van Buren waaaay too long before the game started (which made my heart hurt when it never really got off the ground.)
Click to expand...

Hopefully the initial problems won't happen since my players coordinated on all of their character backstories. They already have a history together from previous campaigns we did (So thank god). In terms of the Pip-Boy problem, I'll probably go the Fallout 3/NV route and have it attatched to the arm itself, so they *can't* take them off. Or do like you said, and have some important game-changing function on it that discourages them from taking them off.
What I'll probably do is have the prison be attacked, have them explore freely as they wish, spreading around Limit-115 enough before they start getting attacked by ODYSSEUS's hunter bots. To give them a hint of what they need to do to stop the hunter bots (Gathering the other lost prisoners) I'll have townspeople mention how other people with "those things on your arms" bring about robot attacks. Eventually, they'll find Boulder Dome and find out ODYSSEUS's true purpose through ZAX, finally fleshing out the true goal of Act 1. Hopefully by then, the ball will be rolling and I can relax and take the reigns from there.

God, I really want a Fan Buren to come out to see how they did initial character motivation XD. I'm really hoping I can do this. Van Buren docs are my favorite things to read XD
 
You'll probably be fine. It sounds like you already have the major problems that plagued me taken care of, and I doubt your players are as damn ornery as mine are.

If you have a hard time getting them to Boulder Dome, somewhere I found a mention that ZAX might actually try to contact the players on their Pipboys to lure them in. You could just assume he sent the message to all the prisoners' pipboys, and the players are the only ones who care. And if your players aren't as ORNERY as mine, they won't question why they have to cross two larege states on foot in the post apocalypse when he could just tell them what he knows over the radio.
 
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