As a Game Master (GM) at home, in conventions, and on StartPlaying Games I have run the Fallout Starter set and am currently playing in a campaign. It’s a great system.

Your Future Is Rad

You are SPECIAL! You all survived. In the wastelands you and your group of survivors take small jobs to earn caps and equipment to help you increase your survivability. As you take stock of the fortress made of crushed cars in front of you you take a deep breath. The acrid air burns your nostrils, but it is somehow better than the stale air of the vault you left not long ago. You look at your robot and mutant companions ready to find out what’s in store. You knock on the semi truck in front of you hoping to gain access to the metal fortress without incident…

Fallout is a successful video game with an Amazon Prime TV show. The RPG is successful in its own right and is made by Modiphius. For even more info on the game and to read some reviews from GM’s with proven track records with Fallout check out this page.‍

Your Mechanics

Fallout RPG uses Modiphius’ elegant 2d20 system. When there is a chance for failure, or a complication you may be asked to roll. You roll two 20 sided dice and try to get a roll under a target number derived from adding an ability and a skill together from your sheet. A roll of 1 is a crit and counts as 2 successes. A roll of a 20 is a fail and earns a complication. When hitting any enemy you calculate damage with combat dice. Damage is calculated by D6’s. Your weapon, skills, and perks help you decide how many dice to roll. There are special D6 you can buy or you can use regular D6’s following these results:

1. 1 Damage
2. 2 Damage
3. Blank
4. Blank
5. 1 Damage and effects trigger
6. 1 Damage and effects trigger

Difficulty is determined by the GM somewhere between 0 and 5. That is the number of successes you need. Action Points (AP) are a resource for the group and the GM. They are earned when the players roll more successes than needed on skill tests. Groups can hold 6. They allow for more d20s to be rolled when spent. They can also be spent for other in game perks.  Players may also earn dice by giving the GM AP they can spend on complications or more dice. ‍

You Have An Origin

Who are you? Think first about what you want your job to be or what you want to look like. This is your core fantasy. This is the way you imagine the character for you. You have origin choices. The core rule book Fallout RPG offers 6 origins that cover 4 “races”: Human, Ghoul, Robot, and Super Mutant. Origins provide traits, perks and equipment packs to get you started. 

• Mister Handy: Robot servants capable of household chores. They have a number of detachable arms. 
• Super Mutant: A mutated human large in size and brutal and typically rage filled killing machine
• Ghoul: Necrotic once-humans not affected by radiation but they’re  also dead. 
• Brotherhood Initiate: Mostly human faction with strict doctrines regarding finding pre-war tech
• Survivor: Your family was prepared and comes from a non vault shelter
• Vault Dweller: You come from a protected Vault that recently opened

We will choose the penultimate fantasy of being a Vault Dweller human named Kibble Bitson (named after the piles and piles of dry dog food in the vault). You grew up in a Vault and you were a test subject subjected to the following experiment. Pictured were 5 rubber balls, but the scientists tried to convince you there were 4.

You get the trait Vault Kid: You may reduce END (endurance) tests by 1 to resist disease and you may tag another skill of your choice. And once per quest the GM may subject you to a memory of the 5 balls experiment. When they do, you gain a luck point.

You Are S.P.E.C.I.A.L.‍

You have unique abilities. Your time as your origin and your training in your skills has made you good at certain things or everything. You are S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

• Strength - your strength
• Perception - How you see the world and affects initiative
• Endurance - your toughness affects hit points
• Charisma - your ability to influence others
• Intelligence - your cunningness and cleverness
• Agility - your swiftness, balance, and bodily control
• Luck - your ability to seize an opportunity

Each ability starts with a 5. You can customize that by distributing 5 points amongst the attributes to a score no higher than 10. You may also add points by reducing a 5 to a 4. But no ability may be less than 4. You may also choose from 1 of 3 arrays: balanced, focused, and specialized

Kibble Bitson is going to use the Focused array 8,7,6,5,5,4,4. That focus will drive the core fantasy of him being Lucky and Agile from his time climbing the scaffolding in store rooms. He is not super intelligent or perceptive as the Vault was short on books and things to widen experience. We will distribute his points this way: STR 5, PER 4, END 6, CHA 5, INT 4, AGI 8, LCK 7.

Luck is an expendable resource you start with points equal to your ability. You can spend luck to scavenge better, swap out an ability to your luck score, go earlier in a round in initiative, or reroll a d20 or 3 combat dice.

You Are Skilled‍

Fallout RPG Has skills! There are 17 skills. Each skill is attributed to an ability score (though you could make a case for a skill to represent a different ability: Running could just as easily be END or AGI as it is STR). If you are building a character this is where you should invest time into core fantasy. Having access to a weapon is essential for your survival. You will also get 3 tag skills. A tagged skill gets a critical success when the roll meets the skill’s rank or lower. Kibble’s Vault Kid Trait gives him an additional tag so he gets 4. Tagged skills start at rank 2 and all others start at 0.

Players get an additional 9 points plus their intelligence ability score to add ranks. At level 1 skills cannot go above a 3 in rank. Kibble gets 9+4 (INT) for a total of 13 points to spend. Kibble is going to take tags in Melee Weapons, Small Guns, Sneak, and Survival and use 4 points to increase the ranks from 2 to 3. Additionally, Kibble will lean into AGI and STR skills taking ranks in throwing, unarmed, and athletics. We’ll round him out with 2 charisma skills he learned fast talking in the vault, Speech and Bartering. 

‍

You Get Perks And Equipment

There are a lot of perks.  Some have prerequisites, be sure you meet them. Kibble gets one perk which adds benefits to his skills and abilities. Kibble is going to take Light Step, giving him the ability to ignore a complication on an agility test by spending 1 AP. Additionally, he can reroll agility athletic tests that involve traps.

Equipment comes from your origin and your tagged skills. Kibble gets extra ammo, a baseball bat, a dose of calmex, and food (iguana on a stick) and 2 water from the tagged skills. There is an easy to follow table in the core rulebook in the equipment chapter. From his Origin he gets the classic pipboy (a multi functioning tool). Additionally, he gets radiation reducing armor, 2 stimpaks, a 10mm pistol and ammo, a switchblade and Vault-tec branded canteen filled with purified water. Put the non weapons in the gear section of the sheet and log their weights. 

‍

Add the weapons to the weapons section of the sheet. Note each weapons damage, effects, damage type, rate of fire and range (if applicable), its qualities, the ammo type, and the weight. Note the weapons skill and add its ranks to the ability score for easy access to the target number.

‍

You Get To Complete The Sheet

• Hit Points: Endurance + Luck
• Carry Capacity - 150 + Strength * 10
• Poison Resistance - 0 no Poison resistant gear/traits
• Damage Resitance (head) - 0 we don’t have headwear
• DR (Arms/Legs/Torso) - Vault Jumpsuit: 0 Physical, 2 Radiation, 1 Energy 0 HP (HP comes from Power Armor only)
• Defense - AGI 8 = 1 or AGI 9+ = 2
• Initiative - PER + AGI
• Melee Damage -STR 7-8 = 1DC, 9-10 = 2DC 11+ = 3DC
  
  

You Get To Play‍

Both the Core rule book and the startup rules do a nice job of helping the player through character creation. Stick to your core fantasy in this post nuclear world and you are bound to have fun.  For immediate fun go to StartPlaying Games and Use Fallout in the search. Or you can use this link here to get directly connected to games of Fallout with open seats immediately.

Fallout Sheet from Modiphius: Fallout: The Roleplaying Game Downloads

Adam McDivitt is a father of 3 boys, professional GM, and a full time therapist. His love of D&D was reignited when his son asked him to help with a game 3 years ago. Since then He has learned a number of new systems and fell in love with TTRPG systems outside of 5e. Follow him on bluesky gmadam.bsky.social he posts there sometimes.