Fallout: The Roleplaying Game - 8 Ways To Add Fallout Lore To Your Campaign

Summary

• Connect your own Fallout adventures to the established lore through timeline research and understanding events that have shaped the wasteland.
• Get creative by setting your campaign in areas not yet explored in Fallout games, using real-life geography and landmarks as a backdrop.
• Utilize factions, recognizable NPC characters, and consumables like guns and chems to create an immersive and authentic Fallout tabletop gaming experience.

The worlds of video games and tabletop games often jump back and forth from one another. With those jumps come games on both ends that are impressive, and others that seem to fall short outside their first media platform.

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The Fallout TTRPG and its wide-open world full of lore seems to be one of the better ones out there. However, being a gamemaster for a game with so much established lore can be a weighty task. Thankfully, there are ways to connect your own Fallout adventures at the table to the video games and show that already exist.

8 Understand The Timeline

Keeping track of the established timeline is a big one for your own campaign. The post-war U.S. is big, but the events of the games have had echoes that can be felt throughout the world as a whole. There's plenty of different official and fan-made graphs out there for you to peruse.

A quick reference point is that Fallout 76 is the earliest chronological title, taking place in 2102, and the Fallout television series taking place in 2296, which is the latest in the chronology. The bombs dropped in October of 2077, which is a good starting date to see when you want to make your own adventure take place.

Really, any time-frame works. You just have to know what events will have happened across the wasteland up until that point, and if they have affected your own vision of the world as your characters move through it.

7 Go Pre-War

It's entirely possible to have your campaign take place in an area that hasn't been fully fleshed-out by the Fallout creators as of yet. Thankfully though, with some creativity, it can be easy to connect the Fallout world to your own ideas.

The key for this is to look at the area in question as it is in real life. Get the lay of the land through a mapping app if you're not familiar with it first hand, and then look for landmarks that would be recognizable for players.

How do cities look now? What about the weather in the area? Even look at the topography and the local legends like they did in Fallout 76. All of this stuff that would have existed pre-war would probably have lasting effects in the post-war world as well.

6 Visit Pre-Made Locations

The established lore in the various Fallout media has been great at showing how the survivors of The Great War have gone about rebuilding after the bombs fell. Philly, New Reno, and Rivet City are just a drop in the ocean of different towns and encampments that have been established already.

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Why not have your player visit one of these locations? With many of them, layouts can be found online or through game files. After all, your players will need places to heal, barter, and get quests from, so why not kill two birds with one stone?

The intro book does a great job at setting up a TTRPG version of Fallout 4's Commonwealth, which is a great start if you want to go that route.

5 Use Factions

Depending on where you want your campaign to take place, other factions will probably have staked claim to parts of the wasteland around your characters. Good, bad, or indifferent; these factions can do a lot to develop the lore of your campaign.

There are consistent ones throughout the post-war U.S. that have shown up in most of the games and show: The Enclave, Brotherhood of Steel, and Raiders are a near-constant in the Fallout Universe. But, also consider The Fiends near New Vegas, The Shi Empire in San Francisco, or even The Outcast on the East Coast.

The Fallout Roleplaying Game books have helped out with this already by adding adventures and pre-made campaigns, including factions like the Children of Atom as encounters and enemies, but don't be afraid to branch out further, or even make up your own.

If you are interested in the Children of Atom, the Winter of Atom add-on content has some great ideas on quests and enemies.

4 Add A Recognizable NPC

Throughout the Fallout series, there are plenty of named characters that people have respected, sometimes fawned over, or just loved to hate. It's not a bad idea if you're running a longer campaign to include one or more of those characters as an NPC.

Obviously, this relies on a few things; setting and time-period for one, as the Fallout universe spans a few hundred years. It may not make sense for Joshua Graham to be seen on the East Coast, but that's up to you.

Another added difficulty is playing a character with an already established personality. It can be easy to diverge from what long-time fans may think about a certain character. That being said, the best way to do this is to have unheard of NPCs react to these characters.

Many of the characters in the games and show have altered the landscape around them. Use that in how you build your world. How would Zion look after Joshua Graham? Would the East Coast have fresh water after Project Purity? All of these things are great for connecting the universe to your campaign.

3 Guns, Food, And Chems

No, that's not a shopping list. Well, maybe it is, but it's also a list of smaller things that can be used to establish the world of Fallout in your campaign. The book has a great list of consumables from the world and how your characters can use them (Page 149).

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You're welcome to branch out from there (if your players get a craving for Sunset Sarsparilla, for example), but the book is a great start to understanding health, S.P.E.C.I.A.L., and how they relate to one another. They're more than just ways for your players to stay alive, they're also a great reminder of the lore around you. Remember: Stimpak, not health potion.

2 Gossip

Depending on your campaign, NPCs may be few and far between, or there may be bustling post-war civilizations that have begun to pop-up across the wasteland. Regardless, when your players do meet an NPC, they'll have things to say about the world around them.

Gossip is important in any TTRPG; it helps the players get to know the NPC and how they view the world around them. Where Fallout alters this is that there aren't a lot of people left, and NPCs would probably be all too keen on bending your players' ears with local gossip once they realize they're not horrible raiders.

Include NPC dialogue that includes random gossip: red herrings, ideas about other locals, or just flora and fauna in the area to watch out for. All of this will help solidify your players in the world around them and remind them that it's a setting unlike many others.

1 Look To Capitalism

Fallout as a concept is a strong satire on war mostly, but it also has plenty to say about capitalism and corporations too. RobCo, West-Tek, and the ever-present Vault-Tec are companies that have altered the timeline both before and after the war.

It makes sense then to have them in your game in some way or another. Is there a RobCo factory that your players can scrounge through? Does your ghoul player remember working on horrible experiments at West-Tek before the war as part of their backstory? Or, far worse, do your players come upon a vault with some nefarious scheme going on inside?

Don't downplay how much the echoes of the companies that once ruled the Commonwealth have affected the world after the bombs fell. Through locations, dialogue, or loot, the reminders of the old world can be potent lore in your game.

Page 250 on is a great section about Vault-Tec especially, which is a great help if you want your players to explore a vault or two.

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