Vault 35 Postmortem

Vault 35

Role: Content Designer, Systems Designer, Writer

Team Size: 1 (Solo)

Project Duration: 2 Days

Vault 35 is a tabletop roleplaying one-shot campaign I created that is set in the Fallout universe. Taking place between the events of Fallout 1 and Fallout 2, a pair of Brotherhood of Steel members and a lone ranger delve into a newly found Vault in search of technological artifacts rumored to be hidden in its depths. The game uses a role-playing system I created by combining the Roleplaying 101 system (click here for reference) and Fallout 1's roleplaying system (click here for reference). 3 players venture out to slowly uncover the fate of the residents of Vault 35, and uncover what riches lie in wait for them.

Abstract

What Went Well

-Players felt completely engrossed with the story of the Vault, questioning what transpired in the past throughout the campaign.

-The game consisted of moments of humor (stemming from some interesting combat scenarios) and horror. The exact tone I was looking to invoke in my players.

-The game had a proper interest curve, giving players moments of excitement and release while slowly increasing the stakes.

What Did Not Go Well

-The RPG System I created left the characters a little overpowered for the fights. It could be excused since they were brotherhood members and an experienced desert ranger, but it still made the combat a bit boring if it went on for too long.

Lessons Learned

-The "little" touches designers add to experiences can really sell the game as a whole. I used the Fallout 1 and 2 ambient soundtracks in the background to invoke a certain feeling in my players. I also formatted computer terminals to look like they do in the Fallout games to give them a more believable look. These small things I did were what my players said immersed them into the experience the most!

-If you create a strong enough foundation for your world and level for your players to truly roleplay in, their favorite moments will most likely be the ones they created themselves.

Postmortem

Follow this link if you would like to read my full Design Document that holds all story information and my postmortem on the campaign (if you would like to go more in-depth than what is below):

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AUNHi475R3pFeFPBS8zG_YnEbC3Xf2hE9Wcbzbdu7lk/edit?usp=sharing

Introduction

As someone who has just recently delved into the realm of tabletop role-playing games, I wanted to attempt to GM my own one-shot. When given the opportunity to do so through my Game Design class at Carnegie Mellon, I was excited to get to work in designing my own campaign!

I immediately decided to set my campaign in the Fallout universe as I am well acquainted with the world, and I believe that Fallout's form of environmental storytelling could be interesting to translate to a tabletop format. I wanted to create a campaign that has no NPCs, where the story would be completely told by the dungeon and typed information within terminals.

Story Overview

Once the crew arrives into the Vault, they immediately encounter hostile protectrons. After defeating them, they notice several corpses dressed in Vault suits who are facing the direction of the door. It is as if they were trying to escape. This posed a few questions into the player's minds like:

What happened here?

Why would the Vault's robots turn on the dwellers?

Once they enter the second floor and navigate towards the men's dormitory, they find a lone terminal. The entries are shown below:

After reading these entries, the players gathered the idea that there was a rebellion where people resorted to cannibalism because of starvation, and that the Overseer was apparently hoarding food. The set of questions now was:

Why did the robots turn on the dwellers (still unanswered)?

Why did the people begin to starve?

Why on Earth would the Overseer send an inventory list of food he was hoarding to everyone?

They then were navigating the rest of the second floor, they encounter another terminal in the women's dormitory that gives a new perspective to the situation:

This second terminal revealed the reasoning behind the shortage of food, due to the hydroponics lab breaking down. The players were still trying to figure out the robots' and Overseer's motivations. Upon traversing to the third and final floor, they would reach the climax. After obtaining a new companion by hacking a crazed Mr. Handy (newly named Mr. Friendly) and then losing him shortly after, they finally came to the Overseer's Office. The remaining answers came to light in the terminal within the Overseer's Office after a massive fight, shown below:

They come to find out that the Overseer used the "second" password to irradiate his office, and turn all of the robots against all biological life. They also found out that he was not the person who sent that inventory email. If he was not the one who did, who could have done it? They now arrived at the puzzle of figuring out the correct password to the door. The hint was what is most important to the Overseer. The issue being that since the whole room was irradiated, they did not have too much time to figure it out. They were given very slight hints about the idea that the Overseer sees the whole Vault as his family throughout the campaign, but they were pushed to believe that it was his son or wife because of the most recent entries they read. They guessed the son and wife first, as the Overseer talked about how he has nothing to live for without them. Upon getting thee answer wrong twice and taking a ton of radiation, they stopped to really think. After about 30 seconds, the famous “AHA” moment occurred with my players who finally figured out it must be family. Their subconscious remembered the subtle references scattered throughout the terminal entries, and concluded it has to be the answer! Since the Overseer created that passcode right when the dwellers entered the Vault, it still held true that he saw everyone as his family. He saw everyone as precious to him, and would not want to lose anyone. The questions that were unanswered going into the bunker were:

Who set the Overseer up for his dwellers to turn on him?

What is actually inside the bunker?

At this point, the group is fully engaged, approaching the entryway in complete silence. They enter the room to see absolutely nothing. The bunker is a giant, empty room with a lone terminal in the center. They walk over to read the single entry on the screen, seen below:

Analysis

In all honesty, I think my adventure went extremely well for it being my first time running a campaign! The story was conveyed well to the players, they never got frustrated or stuck throughout the experience, and they all claimed that they really felt like they were in a Vault, exploring its depths. I believe that the little touches I did to try to enhance the experience really paid off for me. These include background images for several major areas in the dungeon, reference images for all enemies they fought against, background ambient music (find here) from the original fallout games to help with tone and atmosphere, the terminal entries being formatted to look like the terminals in-game, and the physical weapon props I gave to the players to give them a visual of what they were using to fight.

My anticipated interest curve follows a very similar pattern to what the standard interest curve is structured like. I believed that the initial fight with the Protectrons at the Vault Entrance would kick off the interest immediately. Adding on to the excitement of battle, the scene of several corpses with obvious laser wounds would begin to pique the interest of the players. I wanted them to begin to wonder what exactly happened within the Vault. I then expected them to mellow out from the excitement a bit during the other two rooms on the first floor, giving them a chance to really get into their characters and into the world. Once they reached the second floor, I expected them to head left first to check out the Men’s Dormitory. They would then read the first terminal entry, further piquing their interest. They would slowly expand throughout the rest of the floor, only to find another entry in the Women’s Dormitory that would further expand on the happenings of the past. They would be given a decently long break before the major climax of the Overseer’s Office. I anticipated that their interest would cap while trying to guess the passcode of the Bunker door, since they would be slowly losing health with each incorrect response. I thought that the eventual “AHA” moment would be the highest point of their interest, followed by a close match when they truly find out the truth behind the Vault’s fate in the Bunker.

The actual interest curve from the campaign was fairly similar to what I anticipated. The big changes mostly came from player generated content. That being the giant fight that transpired on the second floor due to the party accidentally causing two different encounters to happen at once! It also helped interest that one of the characters had his penis bitten off by one of the enemies, then placed into a player's inventory to attempt to sow it back on later. That kind of stuff sticks with players. Also, the decision from one of the players to hack an enemy robot caused a fan-favorite companion to unintentionally appear in Mr. Friendly. Even his death was a huge upsetting moment that stuck with the players. The only content that I created that did not go exactly according to plan was the interest in the second floor being a bit weaker than anticipated. Since they had a huge exciting fight before exploring almost all of Level 2, there was a long stretch of time that was just exploring. The break between the fights lasted a bit long, and the fight in the Atrium was a bit tedious. Other than that, it went very close to what I expected.

The most important piece, the narrative of the Vault, came through as best as I could have hoped for. When I interviewed my players after the adventure was over, they all spoke about how much the mystery gripped them.

They were questioning the Vault's history throughout the entire campaign, taking time out after each reveal to discuss what the newly found information may have explained about the larger question as a whole.

The passcode puzzle at the end worked out extremely well, with the players taking time for them to think about the clues that they were given throughout the adventure. The addition of a semi-timed element in the radiation damage within the Overseer’s Office made the puzzle way more engaging! Once they got it, the revelation that the Bunker was completely empty was more surprising than anything else that could have been in the room, according to the players. The revelation that the government who created this sanctuary for the dwellers were the ones responsible for the mayhem that ensued was a powerful conclusion to the story. If any of them were huge fans of the Fallout series like I am, they probably would have seen this coming. Nevertheless, the story concluded for the players in a way that left them in a state of both laughter and sorrow. These emotions perfectly encapsulate what I believe to be the core tone of Fallout to me, so I was very satisfied that these feelings came through to the players.

I would say that the biggest blunder of my adventure was the unbalanced nature of the combat. Since I tried to mix two different roleplaying mechanics into one without playtesting it thoroughly beforehand, I accidentally allowed the players to be way too overpowered for their fights. I can only think of three times any of my players missed their targets, which is a huge problem if you want the fights to feel challenging. Now looking back, I should have easily seen how broken these characters are (+10 in any stat should never be a thing without a HARSH penalty in another area), and I think the combat suffered because of it.

Looking at all of the interest curves I gathered from my players, it is surprising to see that the player-generated content was unanimously chosen as either the most or tied as the most interesting part of the experience. It is kind of crazy to think that the best content in the experience was the content that I just created in the moment to keep the game flowing well. Both the impromptu gigantic fight that ended in a loss of a certain body part, and the short lived life of the companion Mr. Friendly were the two moments that all three players had at the top of their interest curves.

This project taught me that if you build a strong enough foundation for your players to truly roleplay in, their favorite moments will most likely be the ones they created themselves. The ones that are personal and unique to their playthrough. I fully believe that interactive storytelling is at its strongest when players are able to engage with it in any way they think up, and have the game/world react to their decision. This makes them feel like the world is more real, thus immersing them into the experience more and more with each action. This is why I love Western RPGs so much. They encapsulate these beliefs the best compared to any other genre of game out there. They usually pride themselves on allowing the player to create any type of character they want, and will give options in game to facilitate as many different ways to solve any one problem as possible. That is what the ultimate form of interactivity is in my opinion, and this is why I want to create these types of experiences when I join the industry.