This past Wednesday night we tackled the tabletop version of Fallout, a fun but flawed take on the seminal video game series. For the record, Chad did a phenomenal job explaining the rules, so hopefully I won't dishonor his efforts here.
You start out by selecting one of Fallout's seminal character templates, such as the "Ghoul" (me), the "Super Mutant" (Dean, natch), the "Vault Dweller" (Alex) or the "Brotherhood of Steel Outcast" (Chad). Of course, every character has some sort of cool, thematic special ability. My Ghoul, for example, had a lower health cap but regenerated hit points whenever he passed through irradiated areas on the map. He drinks that shit up like lime-flavored Kool-Aid.
In order to keep track of your shiznit, every player gets a handy-dandy cardboard "pip boy", which you'll use to record skills, conditions, experience points, radiation levels and health. At the bottom of each template there's a place to equip your limit of one weapon, one armor and one companion. You also have a backpack which holds up to three unused items.
The location tiles are head and shoulders above the shitty "drink coasters" included in Star Trek Fleet Captains. The muted and detailed art is super-slick and really evokes that post-apocalyptic vibe. As you can see, the character minis are great but the monsters are just wargame-style cardboard chits. Easy to read and nicely illustrated chits, I'll concede, but chits nonetheless. The cards are either miniaturized or made busy with a riot of micro print but this doesn't render them impractical, so no demerit there.
Striking out from the starting tile, players take turns performing two actions which they'll use to explore the concealed map, search locations for loot, get into assorted scrapes and pursue the expanding storyline. If your character is standing next to an unflipped tile you can use an explore action to reveal it. When you choose to move, you can typically can travel two spaces, but red-bordered difficult terrain eats up all of your movement while green bordered irradiated regions bump up your rad levels. If your radiation level ever intersects with your dwindling life points, you dead, son.
You can also croak in combat, which is cleanly resolved in a single die roll. As veterans of the video game will attest, it's all about hit location and the customized combat dice, featuring icons for arm, leg, head and body shots, elegantly reflects this. Each creature you fight is susceptible to certain types of damage and if you roll enough matching icons to overcome its "level", you'll kill it and gain some experience points. Re-rolls, courtesy of equipment, skills and being refreshed from the "camp" action, will hopefully mitigate a spate of bad luck.
You end up taking damage based the number of pips generated from the same die result, multiplied by the enemy's "level". In other words, a level two monster deals 8 damage with 4 pips to an unarmored character. Yikes! Word to the wise: find some armor and a decent weapon as soon as you can. Unsurprisingly, you're pretty vulnerable out in the wasteland without these two important assets.
Fortunately, as it is with most video games, death isn't the end of the game. After respawning back home and chucking out anything in your backpack, you're ready to strike out again. This might seem kinda weak sauce, but going "back to start" typically puts you so far away from any Victory Point goals, so I think its suitably harsh.
Leveling up in the game is ridiculously elegant and certainly reminiscent of the original IP. Just like in the video game, each character's abilities are covered by the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. acronym, which represents Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. After gaining enough ex pees to clear a level, you draw two new random letter tokens, cherry pick the one you like the most and then slot it into your pip boy. With the appropriate attribute now unlocked, you'll get a re-roll whenever your use the matching skill. Like I said, easy and elegant.
But, honestly, the scenario details and the branching story deck is what gives the game its main appeal. For example, our scenario, featuring a turf war between two rival factions, set up a co-operative ticking clock situation, influenced our revealed character affiliations and determined the frequency of hostile threats on the board. Also, when you do an explore action, you're often faced with an Above and Below-style story adventure choice that challenges one of your character's skills in order to score some new reward or avoid a terrible punishment.
When these are resolved, it usually opens up a few new quests and avenues to explore. Needless to say, completing these quests provides the victory points you need in order to win. If anything, quests popping up all over the board makes the board game feel more like it's original source of inspiration than anything else.
Fallout is far from perfect, however. A full compliment of four players can really drag the game out, especially if someone is prone to analysis paralysis. We started at 7 pm and finished just after 11. Yikes!
Also, if you fall behind, the game has a tendency to keep kicking you right in the blocks. Given the fact that I was at full health and my irradiated surroundings promised plenty of potential recovery, I felt pretty confident taking my first low-level enemy right away. Unfortunately my notoriously-bad dice rolling skills were characteristically awful and, since I had no way to re-roll, I got spanked pretty badly right out of the gate.
That's when I found out that enemies go after the weakest characters first. Thematically that makes sense, but becoming the entire board's punching bag because of one bad call and some crap luck kinda blows.
And trust me, I tried to improve my odds. I really did. I took approximately one-hojillion in-town explore actions, just begging for the chance to go on a simple shopping trip and buy some basic equipment. But I got denied over and over again to the point where I had close to 30 caps (I.E. cash money for the uninitiated) and nothing to spend it on. I think I only scored some proper armor in the second or third final turn of the game.
But, you know something, I still liked this stupid game. Like, irrationally liked it. Granted, that's probably because I'm a sucker for adventure / exploration type story games, especially ones with a post-apocalyptic vibe. Lately I measure my appreciation for a game based on whether or not I'd play it again, and, given half a chance, I'd venture back into this cardboard wasteland anytime.
Fallout scores three pips outta six with a huge tilt up towards the perpetually ashen sky!
