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Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook PDF |
€18,27 |
Average Rating:4.5 / 5 |
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A great adaptation of the videogame to tabletop. The main criticism I habe is it focuses too much on Fallout 4's Commonwealth at the expense of covering the setting of earlier games.
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To be honest, I'm immensely pleased with Modiphius as a publisher, they take a deep dive into the source material and bring a faithful recreation with a reasonably simple system and ruleset.
Very happy to add this series to my collection.
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Shocked by how easy it was to pick up the 2d20 system (this was my first one in the system) and how plug-and-play creating an adventure was with the wealth of adversary information/stat-blocks in the book itself. It feels like a very, very faithful adaptation of the games to a TTRPG, and I am interested in seeing further supplements or additional products after trying this out. Pretty impressed!
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UPDATE on 4/15/2022: After finishing my run as a GM on this, I can safely say that unless the rules for Spread were misunderstood by myself and one of my players, shotguns are completely broken and your players who pick that and Gun Nut will wipe things out within minutes. Even when increasing the difficulty of enemies, my players had no time at all killing things. The game is not balanced very well in many ways and there definitely needed to be simplification. It does many things well, but it does many things poorly and I don't think I'll be playing it or running it again in the future. Everything else still stands below,
So having began a first session as a GM with it this past Sunday in a custom homebrew setting of New Orleans, and also as a first time GM, it's a hell of a game to try and run and for everyone to learn on the first go. However, everyone had a lot of fun and after working some of the kinks out, it's a lot of fun to run, too! I do have some quibbles with the book itself that keep it from being a full 5.
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No published errata means that both the PDF and hard copy are full of errors (Glowing One's base stats for health are incorrect, as an example) and also some rules are seemingly made more obtuse than they need to be (NPCs have Wealth 1, Wealth 2 -- but there's one paragraph in the NPC section that mentions what wealth is and it's basically you roll a d20 equal to the value next to Wealth. Well, why not say that up front?)
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When it comes to looting, there is no table within the book itself that gives you what sample values there should be for a generic type of location. An example is given for it but no where in the book is it listed. Instead, it has to be found in the GM Guide they sell, which is incredibly stupid and forces you to buy another product. Luckily, one of my players found a table online made in Google Sheets that lists these values and automatically calculates the dice rolls (and it came from Modiphius' own forums no less).
- I do not like the emphasis it places on Fallout 4. While a great game and great frame of reference, the Fallout universe is wide and expansive with multiple locations that could have been mentioned to detail the lore of the world. As is, all you get is the Commonwealth. What about the NCR, Vault 13, New Vegas, the Capital Wasteland, Appalachia? Just including anything more would have added so much more to it.
However, I will say that the constant exchange of AP is very fun and has made for many great scenarios already. I have a guy playing a Luck based character, a Ghoul fisherman focused around strength, a slick-talking mercenary, and a stealthy ex-Raider turned town bodyguard and everything meshes really well. What worries me is that the Dune core book came out in 2020 and errata wasn't made for that officially until January 2022, so if there is anything for this game, I'm afraid it might be long off.
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I'm a GURPS guy and not terribly fond of the d20 in general. However, this game seems quite interesting. My group is going to, after our current game goes on its break, give this a try. It looks interesting. It has a lot of similarity to D&D 5e, but, really, in a good way. The short description is 2d20, roll low, success-counting. Each die is read separately and can generate its own successes. Successes are counted compared to a required number of Successes. Extra Successes build up Action Points which can be used to do other things. Damage is handled with specialized d6’s, but, they’re easy enough to emulate with normal d6’s. It’s like every other 2d20 system out there. Just a bit more crunch added. But, honestly, not enough crunch. But, take that with a salt-mine, I am a GURPS guy, after all.
Mechanically, the only thing I really have a problem with is the horrible "area-based" combat. It barely worked for FASERIP Marvel back in the 80's, and it doesn't work for this game. In one scene, you can shoot across a city block, in the next, you can't shoot across a room. Areas are bad. It doesn't fit for Fallout--they need to spend some time and get an actual movement/range system. Me, I'm going to be cribbing from D&D. I thought about cribbing from GURPS, but other than using hexes, D&D is a better fit.
Beyond that, the book has a bunch of errors that have been reported, but haven't been corrected yet. I did reach out to the publisher and they told me that since the game hasn't gone into full release yet, they haven't updated anything. I deeply appreciate that they took the time to answer the question of internet guy. But, the decision to not update is a bad look for the developer. If they're asking for money, this shouldn't be selling the play-test documents. At least, not without saying “hey, these are the playtest documents, if you go here you can give us feedback.” At the very least, they should have an official errata document bundled with this indicating that they are aware of the error, and will be correcting it in the future. One of the best “source books” I can suggest is getting the Fallout 4 GOTY Strategy Guide and using their cost/weight information for anything that seems hinky (because it’s probably typo’d or two columns in a table have been swapped! I’m looking at you Powered Armor table!).
All in all, the game looks interesting. Experienced GMs will have no problem fixing the bugs in this game. Much like the CRPG Fallout 4, this game will be made much better with community-provided Mods.
ETA:
I'm docking my review by two stars as they said, in September, that errata was due to be out by the end of September, and nothing came out. They've been radio silent here for five months. The book is more than six months old, and looks like there is no, further support for it.
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This book is horrible. For a start, it's not a Fallout roleplaying game, its a Fallout 4 mimic that supports role playing. Just before I continue, I wanna say I have nothing against Fallout 4, I hundreds of hours in it. The game tries to stick to the vibe of Fallout 4 to the point of which it shoots itself in the foot. The skills list is missing essential skills that need to exist, it looks like it belongs in a vido game, not a TTRPG. The 2d20 system initself is agressively meh, i didnt enjoy it but this is a review on this book not the system in general, but, its way too simole and just feels small. Also, as per standard with Modipheous, the editors are useless, at least in regards to explenations and layouts, however, I will admit that this is a gorgeous book. Like serious eye candy, but as much as I love the looks, its edited poorly and thease things cancel out. This game does nothing origional whatsoever in the Fallout universe, I already have hundreds of hours institute interaction, popegun use and crafting. If you've played Fallout 4 you do not need to own this book, if you have not, go buy that instead of this book. I hate this book so much, I paid like 30$ for it or something ridiculous, and am prob gonna delete it permanently from my library, just so I don't have to be reminded that it exists.
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I was a bit skeptical coming into this RPG. The only previous Modiphius 2d20 games I had played were Conan, which I thought was mostly pretty solid, and the Dishonored RPG, which I thought was kind of a mess. I really like the core concept of the 2d20 system, but both Conan and Dishonored had several systems that felt really underdeveloped and poorly explained (doom, chaos, truths, momentum, etc). I’m very happy to say then that the Fallout RPG pretty much fixes every problem I had with these previous games and feels like a fully-realized version of the 2d20 system.
The 2d20 system is simple: for every skill test, you roll 2d20s and try to roll below your skill rating. Every 1 you roll is a crit, which acts as two successes, and every 20 you roll is a complication, which allows the GM to do something really nasty to your character. Both the players and the GM have a resource called action points (AP) that they can use to, among other things, add more d20s to their pool when they make a roll. This replaces the more confusing meta-resources that the other games had with something much simpler and easier to comprehend, but you still get the fun head-to-head metagame of the players and the GM trying to use their AP against each other as strategically as possible.
The combat system is really good here too, with just the right amount of complexity. Combat uses the normal 2d20 rolls to determine if you hit, but uses D6s to determine damage. The book really wants you to order Modiphius’ fancy custom Fallout dice (which don’t even exist yet last time I checked), but you really don’t need them; you can just roll normal d6s and consult a table. In combat, you can do things like make called shots, or spend extra ammo to inflict more damage, or spend AP to let you do more actions. There’s a good amount of player agency in the combat without it feeling too overwhelming.
There’s many more player options than I expected. Players can not only be Vault Dwellers or Wasteland Survivors, but also creatures like Ghouls and Super Mutants. You can even play as a Mister Gutsy if you want, which is awesome. You also get to choose a background for your character that determines your starting equipment, so if for example you decide to be a Brotherhood of Steel member, you can start as either
]an initiate or a scribe. Overall, I quite like the way that this game handles character creation, and the way that the designers translated the “tag” system from the video game to the TTRPG is really quite clever.
Lore-wise, this book is mired in the Fallout 4 version of the Fallout universe. It’s a bit of a weird choice considering 4 isn’t exactly universally loved, but I guess it’s better than Fallout 76 being the setting. The book goes into a lot of detail about the Commonwealth setting and factions, but as the GM you can easily move the setting to New California or the Capitol Wasteland or the Mojave if you would prefer. Just be aware that all of the world-building, bestiary, and gameplay inspirations for this book come directly from Fallout 4 and seemingly nowhere else. I find this a bit disappointing but it’s not a huge deal to me, since the setting is probably the one thing that I liked about Fallout 4. I would love a New Vegas sourcebook in the future but since Bethesda doesn’t even like to acknowledge that game’s existence, it’ll probably never happen.
I saw some people complaining that this book doesn’t feel like it has enough information for the GM and that you would probably need another supplement to properly run the game, but I don’t think that’s true at all. After reading through this whole book just once, I feel like I could easily and confidently run a session of this game with no problem, and that’s not something I can say about many RPG core rulebooks. And with a very complete list of items, weapons, and enemies, it feels like there’s enough content here to keep your group playing this game for quite some time.
My one real complaint about the game is that it imports a lot of rules and systems from the video game that just make no sense at all in an RPG. For example, there's a long list of modification for each weapon (all of them straight from the video game), but many of them make no sense in the context of a tabletop game. Why would I ever need to modify my rifle to fire a different caliber of ammo? That mod makes sense in the game, but makes no sense in an RPG. A lot of the time it feels like they just included game mechanics simply because they were in Fallout 4, even if they don’t have any practical use in a TTRPG.
Regardless, this game completely exceeded my expectations on almost every level and is honestly a very impressive and comprehensive take on a Fallout tabletop RPG. I was expecting this to be a rushed, unfinished, messy cash grab but it’s actually anything but, with a wealth of options and a very well-designed gameplay system. Unless you really, really hate Fallout 4 and its setting, I highly recommend this game to any Fallout fan.
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I'm a longtime Fallout fan, and a longtime rpg fan, and while I was nervous and skeptical of this release at first, I can say I am VERY pleased with it.
-Layout: Better than most more contemporary rpgs, the layout is fairly clean. Most information you need is in appropriate places, and not scattered ALL over the place. (Side note, many of my favorite rpgs have horrible layouts, and I still love them, but when one DOES have a good layout, it's just that much better.)
-System: The 2d20 system is pretty easy to grasp; small dice pools of d20's (2-5 dice) with a roll low target (equal to or under stat+skill for a success), more successes, the better you do, extra action points, etc. I am not a huge fan of the 'need' for the unique dice for the combat dice, but unlike Fantasy Flight/Edge's Genesys (again, love the hell out of Genesys,) managing without the special dice is MUCH easier, since it's just d6's with special faces.
-Setting: Already a well established setting, the book/game does a pretty good job of explaining the world of Fallout, the major players pre-war, and giving a brief explanation of the anticipated setting of the book (The Commonwealth) while still mentioning expanded portions of the known world (NCR, Appalachia, New Vegas,) but also doesn't give away tooooo much. It threads existing lore into a new medium pretty fantastically, gives me solid hope for the future of the rpg releases.
-Art/Design: Here's where I was blown away. The art is top notch, and the design behind the layout felt VERY Fallout. Gorgeous and easy to read, a truly well put-together piece.
-Overall: If you love a good blend of crunch and fluff, an easy to learn system with lots of options, or just Fallout in general, it's a fantastic book/game to pick up! I really hope for books that give material from other games, I'd really like That Gun, from Fallout 2/New Vegas, or the Scorched from 76 introduced. Maybe even working with Bethesda to come up with a new region for the rpg to cover. I know I've been brainstorming my local area for a Fallout game!
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This corebook does a great job of detailing both the 2d20 system used to play the game as well as the Fallout World the game takes place in. I'm only passingly familiar with the World having never played the video game (Although I have played the board game) and had no issues getting the feel of the Vaults and the Commonwealth as well as the adversaries both human and otherwise.
Various quests and plenty of background are included to give a GM dozens and dozens of gaming ideas to fuel a fertile mind. At the end of the book is included a more detailed adventure. This quest is a murder mystery that gives the players an opportunity to create new characters for a long campaign or have seasoned characters come upon a town during their travels.
As always with Modiphius products the art is top notch and goes far to give readers a visual feel for the game, which further helps GMs new to the world immerse PCs in it. All in all I consider this book well worth the price of admission!
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The book does a good job of making the game feel like a Fallout game, and despite the focus being on the Commonwealth, there is good reference to other settings and the rules are robust enough to allow you to homebrew to adapt to a different locale. The system also keeps true to lots of Fallout themes, if mildly crunch heavy. Only downside is a major lack of focus on GM rules and aids, requiring another supplement only available from the publisher as a physical supplement. Not very new GM friendly therefore and probably more of a Player's book than a Core book.
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A book that weighs in at 438 pages. The art in the book is great and shows off the world of fallout well. The rules section is short but easy to use and understand. pc creation section is straight forword and has examples covering each part. The book contains chapters on the major companies and vualt tech. Campaign area is the commonwealth area. If you have played the video game you can tell how detailed Modiphius covered in this book. An extensive equipment section is included as are rules for scavenging and crafting. The book does a good job of covring the enemies in the game.
One thing this book has is a lot of charts. It seems like there is a chart covering everything. If you have played any other 2d20 game you will pick up the rules quick. For new players they can pick up the rules with little difficulty. If you like fallout or post nuclear war settings then this book has you covered.
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Just amazing. Modiphius realy got the feel of the Fallout universe in this one.
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I will start with where I think that Modiphius product, did best with this book. The artwork is on point and catches the correct vibe all the way through. One scene is so out of the video game, I am pretty sure I went through the exact scene that the artist drew. The font is easy for my dyslexic eyes to read, and the layout is pretty good with pink(ish) callouts for important notes etc. So a good job there from Modiphius there.
If you have played the traditional 2D20 systems of these, I think you will be able to pick it up well. It’s a traditional 2d20 maybe a bit more mechanically heavy and random tables (I love a random table!) and equipment choice along with a new luck mechanic. I think that the 2d20 system is a good basis for converting video game to tabletop game, as I think was clear from how I can spot elements derived from the video game instantly. So, while I have yet to play it, I think that will be a nice transfer of experiences! It might be a bit time consuming the first couple of sessions (as are most games), but experience will help with that.
My core problem is not with the game itself (the 2d20 system is well trodden at this point), but really who the book is for in a manner of speaking.
There isn’t really an introduction of what is Fallout (at the time of Fallout 4), it kinda assumes that you already know this. While this might be true, if you are buying the Tabletop RPG of a video game RPG its likely because you are cool with the IP. But if you are picking it up off the shelf, I think that you will clearly get its from a video game and then have to open the wikia to understand what the setting is. I do not know if that will be enough. If you are an experienced GM and know the video games, you can pull it together. However, a newbie for both wanting to play in a post-apocalypse world, I think you might struggle even though they try to give you a good list of locations in the Commonwealth, random vaults, pre-War corps and what their schemes were to act as plot hooks.
It’s a solid looking system, but one that needs you to have played a DM that has played and loved at least to get a sense of what is going on, and to make best sense of the material provided. Like, I know the Brotherhood of steel and you get rules for playing as Brotherhood of Steel PCs, there isn’t really anything there to tell you what being a member of the Brotherhood is. There is no mention of the Enclave, etc. Plus given how much its drawn from Fallout 4, we seem to be missing the whole settlement creation and management part of the game
Therefore, it will be key to see what the next books they produce will be to really flesh out missing bits. At the moment, I would be tending towards just throwing out as many Fallout 4 plot hooks and see what evolves organically as the players live in the community from the starting adventure. This the core rulebook, it provides a good core, but it really needs the fluff and background to be fill out. A short campaign book will be a create start to give me a more solid idea of what a PC does in the setting, rather than just being a love note to the video game.
Overall, I would rate it somewhere between 3-4 stars depending on how well you love the video games.
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Very mixed feelings about this book. Given securing IP rights to the beloved Fallout background could have given Mordiphius a shot at being the go to post-apocalypse TTRPG it feels like a missed opportunity.
Every part of it is beautifully done: art work (of course its Modiphius); beastiary; character and weapon creation rules in Fallout flavour; detail of the Commonwealth setting. The "read the room" section in How to GM section is the first I´ve ever seen to advise on specific body language tells for if players are not enjoying the darker themes of the game ... masterful.
However given what´s missing these beautiful parts don´t mesh well together. As if the original concept wasn´t defined between an introduction to the Fallout universe for experienced TTRPGers, or an introduction to TTRPGing for existing fans of Fallout.
For the former group there is a good gazeteer of the Commonwealth setting from Fallout 4 and world background (lack of maps is galling, especailly given they are available on company website, but plenty available at online forums as is much else of background detail). But little meat on the bones of rules for anything besides combat and modding weapons for combat. For example even the armour mod "Pocketed" isn´t defined beyond being on the list.
For the latter group there´s a robust straightforward rule system, and the chance to play characters of different origins. But nothing is added to a world they are already intimately familiar with all the secrets of, or much of an idea how to set up characters for weaving their own plausible stories - "a Ghoul, a Super Mutant, a Brotherhood Initiate and a Mister Handy walk into a bar..." Even fleshed out examples of classic NPCs like Preston and Piper are missing.
As it stands this book is best suited to an experienced GM willing to put in the legwork of filling in gaps; ideally with a group of players who don´t know the background world particularly well.
What this game needs to reach its huge potential is support material to plug those gaps. Details of Commonwealth fraction members and their plans beyond re-enacting Fallout 4 game, or different locations/time peroids of Fallout universe. Community building and defence including construction. Trade and travel around the area and beyond it. How to give your own hometown area "the Fallout treatment". New creatures and other challenges. A couple of Vaults not discussed in the video game might be a good place to start...
The ball is in Modiphius´s court whether this game fully exploites its brand recognition to becomes a genre staple or is relegated to a few one shots of blowing up the odd Deathclaw plus a few die-hard homebrew campaigns. Fingers crossed.
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Mechanically-dense and full of random tables and a massive equipment list, Fallout is a Rules-Heavy take on the 2d20 system. If the Devil is in the details, then Fallout is firmly in hell, but in a good way. Fans of the videogames will instantly recognize analogues of the mechanics they’ve come to know and love reflected in a way that is playable on the tabletop.
The game oozes the unique Fallout vibe, and is generally complete in terms of everything you’ve seen in the games. My concerns lie with the possibility that it might be slow going given all the rules, but with time and familiarity, I expect things to go faster.
Combat is a common feature, but seeing Scavenging and Survival being given a lot more space in this book is a relief. In a setting like this, stuff (even junk) is valuable, and the game takes pains to make everything you can possibly pick up worth something.
That said it isn’t for everyone. People who are looking for a narrative game will have to give this one a pass, as it falls firmly into simulation. People who enjoy shorter story arcs and hex-crawl-ish exploration will love this game, and I’m eager to see what else Modiphius will release for the game, whether it’s new settings, or a means to explore further.
Art and Layout
As a Modiphius product, I’ve come to expect good art and layout in their books, and Fallout is no exception. Font choices and clean layout are accompanied by gorgeous artwork, with the bestiary being a notable section for featuring the various kinds of disturbing things you’ll see in your wanderings in the Wasteland.
Conclusion
Fallout is big, beautiful and might be a little hefty for those who aren’t used to a lot of mechanics, but everything about this book is a love letter to the videogames. Get it if you’re a fan of the games, or if you’re looking for a darkly humorous take on the apocalypse mixed with 1950’s Atomic Age nostalgia.
It’s a game that lends itself well to both irreverent play, or serious storylines. Like a beaten up Chryslus Highwayman, it might take a bit of elbow grease to learn get going, but once you do, you’ll be exploring the vast expanse of the Wasteland like a pro.
This is the review portion of a full Let's Study series looking at the entire Fallout RPG in detail. You can find those here: https://philgamer.wordpress.com/tag/fallout/
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