Post date: Apr 24, 2013 6:52:59 PM
So after wrapping up I asked each of my players to provide feedback, so this post is their responses - unedited - for future consideration.
Wayne-
I believe that this adventure drew me in more than any other game I have played in. The open-ended exploration made the world feel more "real" and your willingness to let us gallivant off track and do little things like creating a "thriving metropolis" as our home. I also really liked that you incorporated our decisions into the core of the game instead of just leaving the world untouched by our passing (for example, you took the name I conjured up on the fly and soon the "Gotham Knights" was a household term in the wasteland).
While occasionally Wayne's role was limited, especially in the beginning, I believe that is part and parcel of running a game for multiple people and trying to make sure that they all have a unique place in the party. My non-traditional advances also had a smaller impact (some, like my bear, because of game needs and others, like cooking of d8, because while the skill was fun, the world had little place for it), so stat-wise I was behind most of the party. This was not a huge issue because of my personality and the fact that i get just as excited about another player completely destroying the bad guy as I do taking him out myself, but I could see how this could easily cause a problem with other players.
Doc
I think that your Fallout game was easily the best game I have ever played in. Honestly, it's the best game I've ever heard of someone playing in. It was really a privilege to get to be a part of it.
So my thoughts, in no particular order:
When I first saw the Savage Worlds rules, I really didn't understand them. Mechanically, they made sense, but the concept of how to use the Savage Worlds framework to make your own setting completely escaped me. For me, it was a sort of revelation to take a thing that I understood (Fallout 3) and apply it to a tabletop setting in Savage Worlds. Understanding how metal armor had worked in the video game, then seeing that translated really illustrated the versatility or Savage Worlds. I went on to do Savage Worlds conversions for Mass Effect, Iron Kingdoms, and Rogue Trader. I don't think I would have ever thought to attempt something like that if I hadn't been inspired by Nate's work with Fallout.
As a long time GM, I usually ended up running the games that I would play with friends. Having Nate as a player was something I was often unprepared for. When playing a somewhat investigative game, he asked everyone he spoke with their name. You know, what you'd expect an investigator to ask a witness. It confused and frustrated me that he'd ask all these questions I had never thought to consider answers for. Then I played in his Fallout game. The degree of preparation that he brought to the game literally astounded me. He had pages and pages of notes, but looking at how he had everything organized was what really blew me away. He had built a flexible framework with all the pieces, but the ability to move things around to respond to events. It never once felt like our adventures were set on rails, he managed to take things and make them feel like natural events. It was a very different method of preparation from how I ran my games. When I tried some of the same techniques in a subsequent game, I felt it had a dramatic difference on my preparedness.
Along that line of thought, it is important to talk about Nate's characters. He did an excellent job of populating the world with well-rounded NPCs. From our first meeting with Handy Mandy through our final confrontation with Dr. Preston, it never felt like we were alone in the wasteland. NPCs had their own agendas which they followed, sometimes ruthlessly. We ended up developing relationships with a lot of these people, Grim's torrid (and honestly, a little freaky) love affair with Dr. Preacher, Wayne discovering the fate of his Grandfather through Moriarty, or Jim and Cory Vega at the Bombs Away Cafe surreptitiously passing information through their radio broadcasts. We ended up caring what happened to these people (or in Ace's case, at least whether or not their brains were recoverable) and took pride in their accomplishments (to the extent that we helped).
Nate also did a magnificent job of including us in the story telling. My hands down favorite moment in the campaign wasn't something that Nate had planned. While traveling north from Corvallis, he had us play through an interlude, where each player had to tell a bit of a story from their past. During this interlude, we were traveling north to a town called Amity and to a lonely house upon a hill. We decided to explore the house during Grim's interlude and discovered it to be haunted with a number of clever and spooky traps. Grim went on to relay a story of the borderline malicious pranks she would play on the other kids as we grew up. Picking up this thread, Wayne took it and narrated how we found survivors from our vault that we had been searching for. The thing about this that was really amazing for me, was that Nate said yes to all of this. He not only gave up control of the game, but forced us to take part in it. We went from five blank slates with roles (medic, melee, stealth, tech, face) to five people with histories, relationships, and beliefs (Ace, BW, Grim, Wayne, and Doc).
I think the thing that made the biggest difference though, was Nate's obvious love of the setting. The probable thousands of hours of work that he spent on the campaign showed through in almost everything he did. The unbelievable terrain setups that he assembled were, as a roleplayer and wargamer, incredibly impressive. During any conversation with him about the game, you always had a sense that he had layers of plans in place and knew things backwards and forwards. You could tell that he had poured his life into the game. In hindsight, realizing how much of his life he has dedicated to bringing this to life, it's a little humbling to have been able to take part in it.
Thank you Nate, it really was an amazing experience!
Grim -
Here are my thoughts on the Fallout game, broken down into various sections.
The System
Savage Worlds is a great system. It's flexible, adaptable, and very easy to use. I liked that it's a classless system. It let all of us evolve our characters to accommodate skills we didn't know we'd need and interests we picked up along the way (boating!!) without worrying whether they were 'class skills.' The interlude system really helped us establish our characters' quirks and personalities, and the Benny system rewarded us for playing them up. I usually end up being a "I hit it with my mace" kind of player, but this system really rewards a more creative, character-driven play style.
The Setting
I really enjoyed the sandbox setting, and the post-apocalyptic Fallout world lent itself really well to that style of game. Despite being a sandbox game, I never felt lost or that we didn't know where we needed to go or what we needed to do next. The WoW-style quest hubs felt logical and comfortable. I also liked the sense that the world was evolving and changing around us. NPCs went off and did things, whether we liked it or not, and that gave the world a great sense of being alive and dynamic. We were the prime movers and shakers, but we definitely weren't the only ones.
The painted miniatures and outstanding terrain set pieces also really helped to bring the setting to life. I don't even know how much time and effort went into designing, creating, and transporting the terrain, but it was an honor to play on such detailed, dynamic terrain.
The Characters
My favorite part of the game was the characters, both the players and the NPCs. All the player characters, developed mostly through interludes interactions with each other and NPCs rather than through written back stories, had very distinct personalities, quirks, and situations where they could shine. The NPCs helped ground the player characters in the world and gave us people to care about, even if they weren't directly related to our goals.
Grim's epic love story with Dr Preacher was awesome. Describing the dark courtship was a source of great amusement, but it also brought out a whole new side to Grim's character. Rather than just be the weird creepy death-dealer, she was also allowed to care for someone else and develop a life and goals outside of the rest of the group.
And the ending was *spectacular*. I honestly get little tears remembering the "I'll kill you, Dr Preacher!" "No. You won't." *kaboom!* exchange, with our eyes locking through the towering explosion. That is definitely one of my very favorite moments from the game - thank you for letting Grim and Preacher's love be so romantic, so dark, and so, so perfectly timed!
In Conclusion
The Fallout game was, by far, the longest game I've ever played in, and really the only one that had a definite ending. Between the great characters, spectacular terrain, world-ending romance, the game will always hold a special place in my heart.
Thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of it!