Hello. Currently I'm running a table top Fallout game using the Savage Worlds ruleset. I'm working on a 16 page handout for my players with equipment lists and the some background information. Some of the players are familiar with Fallout, and some are not. I'd like to go over the handout, then some of the factions, creatures and other ideas I've gotten and see what resonates here and what doesn't. I know my players pretty well, but I'm always looking for outside input particularly since it helps keep them on their toes.
This is the beginning of the handout I made for the players...
Fallout: The Secret City
War... War never changes.
Everything has a beginning. Even the end.
Hidden in the sleepy hills of east Tennessee lies a city that does not exist. Built to refine the materials necessary to create the atomic bomb, its existence was never made public to the world. It was here that the bomb was made. It was here the enemy struck hardest. It is here the greatest secrets of the lost age are said to lie buried beneath ash and radiation.
Six weeks ago the radiation abruptly disappeared. Why remains unknown. News of this spread quickly, and scavengers from across the wastes have come to find what lies within the Secret City...
---
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America--that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.
Albert Einstein,
in a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
August 2nd, 1939
This is a story about the future feared by America during the 1950's. At that time the technology to utterly destroy the world had only recently been devised, and it was not yet (and perhaps still is not yet ) clear whether nuclear Armageddon would occur between east and west. At that time the effects of radiation was not yet understood. Yet also at that time the future seemed to hold boundless promise, a bright dream - and a dark nightmare.
Fallout is about both of these. The timeline diverges from our own with the death of Mao Tse Tsung during the Liaoshen campaign in late 1948 (An event that did not occur in our world). The result of this single event was to cause the Chinese civil war to last much longer than it did such that by the Korean War the Chinese could not interfere and the United States won a decisive victory rather than having the war come to a stalemate to change the attitudes of the nation. The ramifications of this single even escalate until the timeline becomes unrecognizable to us. By 2077 the Great War, what we would call World War III, is fought and ended in a matter of hours.
Our story begins fifty years later. The year is 2127. The place, what we know as eastern Tennessee, what the world of Fallout knows as the District of Franklin, an area set aside for military training and experiments in the 1960's after the reorganization of the 50 states back into 13 super states. The action centers around Knoxville, the only civilian city left in Franklin, and the Secret City.
For in the Fallout continuity, the existence of Oak Ridge is never acknowledged. Further, rather than being downsized after the second World War, it's size and complexity increased with the years. It became a scientific military city which everyone knew existed - unofficially at least - yet no one knew existed to any certitude for it was on no map nor in any public log. By the time of the Great War it was one of the largest cities in the east, the base of operations for the US Nuclear Weapons Bombers and missiles, and the most important target of the Chinese, so much so that a third of their arsenal was thrown upon it. Nothing survived, or so it seemed. An impenetrable cloud of extreme radiation settled on Bethel valley and seeped into the surrounding towns.
But beneath the Secret City legends say lay another. If Vault Tec could afford to build hundreds of vaults to protect civilian assets, could not the military do the same? Especially since no one had any knowledge of any goings on within the Secret City for the 130 years before the Great War. Shouldn't there be a City beneath the one the Chinese destroyed? Could it have survived? No one knows.
Perhaps you'll be the one to find out.
-----
Factions and Critters
The group is currently in Big Ivy, an area of North Carolina about 2 1/2 hours drive from Knoxville. They crawled out of vault I let them design - a test vault populated by death row inmates - Vault 187. The vault was built on the cheap into a coal seam, and the party blew it up in the first session (So it would seem they want to play the evil bastards route - which is fine by me).
Anyway, they are now in Big Ivy, a fortress town at the juncture of three mountain streams, surrounded by farmland. I actually made the drive out to the real Big Ivy to take photographs, get familiar with the topography. Ashville NC is 20 minutes to the south.
In the game world Ashville is Ashtown - a gallows joke on it taking a direct hit from a bomb. It is the exception though, not the rule - most of the Smokeys where untouched in the Great War.
The most powerful faction in the area is the Cherokee nation. None of the Eastern nation's reservation was hit by bombs and the mountains deflected most of the fallout clouds to the northeast. While not a paradise, it is somewhat intact, certainly in better shape than remnants of Franklin. For the last four years caravans of the western tribes in Oklahoma have been returning and the tribe for the most part controls all of the territory they held prior to the Trail of Tears. They are currently expanding to take over Ashton and the players are in a township that is in their path.
To the north of the players are the Hokes raiders of southern Virginia. I haven't defined this group too much yet, but they are based in and around Virginia Tech's campus.
The most potentially offensive group within the area is the reinvigorated KKK. They are mostly a raider group seeking to reestablish the old order - though they've added ghouls to the top of their list of things to hate/kill.
The New Confederacy backs them somewhat, but is based in Alabama, Mississippi and middle Tennessee.
And then there's the Secret City. Whatever is in there, it sends out robots by the metric ton to patrol and enforce the borders of province, with only a few exceptions.
As for wildlife. I presume everyone here is familiar with the standard Fallout critters. Here's the new suspects.
Razorbacks (mutated wild hogs, some as big as a horse) which actually have razor sharp spines growing along their spines, not to mention tusks as big as a longsword.
Skoonks - Skunks about as big as a great dane that emit a gas cloud toxic enough to kill.
Armordillers - Armadillos as big as a rhino. Rather passive, but good luck penetrating their hide.
Nagas - Rattlesnakes approaching 40' in length.
Rocs. An eagle with a 20' wingspan that preys on deer like they were mice.
And that's just the stuff that presents a serious threat to kill you.
Thoughts?
This is the beginning of the handout I made for the players...
Fallout: The Secret City
War... War never changes.
Everything has a beginning. Even the end.
Hidden in the sleepy hills of east Tennessee lies a city that does not exist. Built to refine the materials necessary to create the atomic bomb, its existence was never made public to the world. It was here that the bomb was made. It was here the enemy struck hardest. It is here the greatest secrets of the lost age are said to lie buried beneath ash and radiation.
Six weeks ago the radiation abruptly disappeared. Why remains unknown. News of this spread quickly, and scavengers from across the wastes have come to find what lies within the Secret City...
---
In the course of the last four months it has been made probable through the work of Joliot in France as well as Fermi and Szilard in America--that it may be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction in a large mass of uranium, by which vast amounts of power and large quantities of new radium-like elements would be generated. Now it appears almost certain that this could be achieved in the immediate future.
This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable--though much less certain--that extremely powerful bombs of this type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory.
Albert Einstein,
in a letter to Franklin Delano Roosevelt
August 2nd, 1939
This is a story about the future feared by America during the 1950's. At that time the technology to utterly destroy the world had only recently been devised, and it was not yet (and perhaps still is not yet ) clear whether nuclear Armageddon would occur between east and west. At that time the effects of radiation was not yet understood. Yet also at that time the future seemed to hold boundless promise, a bright dream - and a dark nightmare.
Fallout is about both of these. The timeline diverges from our own with the death of Mao Tse Tsung during the Liaoshen campaign in late 1948 (An event that did not occur in our world). The result of this single event was to cause the Chinese civil war to last much longer than it did such that by the Korean War the Chinese could not interfere and the United States won a decisive victory rather than having the war come to a stalemate to change the attitudes of the nation. The ramifications of this single even escalate until the timeline becomes unrecognizable to us. By 2077 the Great War, what we would call World War III, is fought and ended in a matter of hours.
Our story begins fifty years later. The year is 2127. The place, what we know as eastern Tennessee, what the world of Fallout knows as the District of Franklin, an area set aside for military training and experiments in the 1960's after the reorganization of the 50 states back into 13 super states. The action centers around Knoxville, the only civilian city left in Franklin, and the Secret City.
For in the Fallout continuity, the existence of Oak Ridge is never acknowledged. Further, rather than being downsized after the second World War, it's size and complexity increased with the years. It became a scientific military city which everyone knew existed - unofficially at least - yet no one knew existed to any certitude for it was on no map nor in any public log. By the time of the Great War it was one of the largest cities in the east, the base of operations for the US Nuclear Weapons Bombers and missiles, and the most important target of the Chinese, so much so that a third of their arsenal was thrown upon it. Nothing survived, or so it seemed. An impenetrable cloud of extreme radiation settled on Bethel valley and seeped into the surrounding towns.
But beneath the Secret City legends say lay another. If Vault Tec could afford to build hundreds of vaults to protect civilian assets, could not the military do the same? Especially since no one had any knowledge of any goings on within the Secret City for the 130 years before the Great War. Shouldn't there be a City beneath the one the Chinese destroyed? Could it have survived? No one knows.
Perhaps you'll be the one to find out.
-----
Factions and Critters
The group is currently in Big Ivy, an area of North Carolina about 2 1/2 hours drive from Knoxville. They crawled out of vault I let them design - a test vault populated by death row inmates - Vault 187. The vault was built on the cheap into a coal seam, and the party blew it up in the first session (So it would seem they want to play the evil bastards route - which is fine by me).
Anyway, they are now in Big Ivy, a fortress town at the juncture of three mountain streams, surrounded by farmland. I actually made the drive out to the real Big Ivy to take photographs, get familiar with the topography. Ashville NC is 20 minutes to the south.
In the game world Ashville is Ashtown - a gallows joke on it taking a direct hit from a bomb. It is the exception though, not the rule - most of the Smokeys where untouched in the Great War.
The most powerful faction in the area is the Cherokee nation. None of the Eastern nation's reservation was hit by bombs and the mountains deflected most of the fallout clouds to the northeast. While not a paradise, it is somewhat intact, certainly in better shape than remnants of Franklin. For the last four years caravans of the western tribes in Oklahoma have been returning and the tribe for the most part controls all of the territory they held prior to the Trail of Tears. They are currently expanding to take over Ashton and the players are in a township that is in their path.
To the north of the players are the Hokes raiders of southern Virginia. I haven't defined this group too much yet, but they are based in and around Virginia Tech's campus.
The most potentially offensive group within the area is the reinvigorated KKK. They are mostly a raider group seeking to reestablish the old order - though they've added ghouls to the top of their list of things to hate/kill.
The New Confederacy backs them somewhat, but is based in Alabama, Mississippi and middle Tennessee.
And then there's the Secret City. Whatever is in there, it sends out robots by the metric ton to patrol and enforce the borders of province, with only a few exceptions.
As for wildlife. I presume everyone here is familiar with the standard Fallout critters. Here's the new suspects.
Razorbacks (mutated wild hogs, some as big as a horse) which actually have razor sharp spines growing along their spines, not to mention tusks as big as a longsword.
Skoonks - Skunks about as big as a great dane that emit a gas cloud toxic enough to kill.
Armordillers - Armadillos as big as a rhino. Rather passive, but good luck penetrating their hide.
Nagas - Rattlesnakes approaching 40' in length.
Rocs. An eagle with a 20' wingspan that preys on deer like they were mice.
And that's just the stuff that presents a serious threat to kill you.
Thoughts?
