I love table top role playing games. I love video games. I really love with sometimes a good table top game is made from a video game I love. But often, table top games are not made into good video games, and good video games are not made into good table top games. It’s kinda like films that way as well.

So when I heard Modiphius was working on a Fallout TTRPG, it was with a bit of joy and bit of trepidation that I awaited it. I was not really familiar with the 2d20 system, and it sounded an awful lot like the d20 system. I had moved away from AD&D 2nd Ed. by this time and had never made the jump to d20. There were also a lot more rules lite systems on the market. And I had also began my love/hate relationship with D&D by that point. D&D was my first love, but we were better off living apart.

However, I didn’t let that stop me. I got the pdf of Fallout and began to read. Now let me start by saying, I am a aural visual type of learner that learns by doing, not by reading a set of rules. My mind started to melt. Didn’t help that when it was first released, Modiphius had let it go out with some big errors, and had not released the errata yet. My mind went numb reading this book. I think the first few days, I spent just looking at the art work while trying to read this book. “Oooo pretty pictures”. It seemed like fun, it seemed like it captured the essence of the Fallout wasteland and the grit of the world, and I wanted to play it.

Luckily, for me, I found a wonderful lets play series on YouTube done by Three Eyed Townie. He broke it down, and made the game mechanics easy to understand. Hats off to him.

I noticed that in 2d20 low was good. Nat 1 is a crit success, while a nat 20 is a complication. You can still succeed with a roll of a 20 if the other dice roll the correct number of successes, but something goes wrong. I like this because sometimes I want my players to succeed at a task, however the complication can make the game a little more fun.

I also like that there seem to be only two types of rolls in most things. A skill roll on 20s, and damage rolls on d6s. The only other things I have rolled on is random loot tables, and again you roll either 2d20 or 3d20 on tables such as random weapons, armor, food, beverages, oddities, etc.

When reading the book, I had a few misgivings at first about a couple of the rules. 1. Players share Action Points. They start off the game with 6 AP to be shared amongst all the PCs. 2. Action Points are gained when more successes. 3. Prices in the book seem to be higher than in the source game. I can say that with two games out, the fact players share action points can be a good thing. I notice my players are discussing when they should be used, and what is the most important. The second concern is still there. They mostly have mostly rolled around a 30% rate to regain spent AP. For now that is good enough. However, I will say that if they have a bad game night and they are completely out of AP, and it is a roll that they are not allowed to buy AP from me the Overseer, that this could be a problem. Perhaps it’s simply me awarding AP for good role playing if they desperately need it. So something for GM to be aware of, depending on their style of play.

The 3rd is not too much of an issue. I have a player that is a trader, has the trader-esque perks, so I have a way for her to barter the cost down, and that makes for some good RP opportunities. I need to go back and play the video game and compare some game prices with those listed in the core book. Again nothing major, but just something I noticed.

The area I haven’t really explored yet in the mechanics is the zones. I get ideas of zones as being ranges for ranged weapons. However, zones in Fallout TTRPG is not a set distance, but based on location in a generality. Example, if you are outside Close Range could be 100 feet, where as in a building Close range could be set at 10 feet. I will get around to playing with that, but as me and my players are learning the basics of the game, this was something I chose to put on the back burner to play with at another time when the rules sets become more accustom to use by us.

Well folks this is an early write up of my thoughts and playing of Fallout 2d20. I will be blogging about the game and my players adventures in the next few posts. See you soon

“Overseer” Ezell signing off.