Fallout: The Long Haul



This is not Fallout New Vegas .5. This is not a story of settlers, or wanderers. It is the story of an expedition. If you are ready to write, love Fallout, and are ready to explore areas of the Wastes never before explored, read on.

A decade following the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, Mr. House rules over the prosperous city of New Vegas, with the combined forces of the NCR and his Securitrons pushing Caesar’s Legion far beyond the banks of the Colorado River. With a firm grip on his upgraded Securitron army, House is too formidable a foe for the NCR to attempt to remove, forcing an uneasy peace between the factions.

After Mr. House revealed his hand at the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, a young entrepreneur, based in The Hub, sought a partnership with the elusive dictator. The wealthy young man, Sherrington Tenpenny, along with brilliant engineer Hayley Carter, reverse engineered a lost technology of the pre-war world.

Thought lost to “ancient” entities like Mr. House, Tenpenny uncovered a series of underground magnetic rails which once linked the east and west coasts, stopping in large cities along the way. These rails used Mag-Lev technology to send high speed hover trolleys across the nation, making a cross country trip no more than a 2 day endeavor.

After the Great War, the various powerstations (located in major cities along the trolley’s routes) that generated the magnetic fields necessary to move the trolleys were scavenged for parts, lost to destruction, or simply fell into disrepair. The necessary energy, a patent protected fusion core owned by the LevTram coach company, was never recreated, and soon the memory of the cross country transit system was lost to the memories of the few ghouls old enough to remember a time before the bombs fell.

Until now.

Hayley Carter, using Tenpenny’s funds, has reverse engineered the fusion core, and the two, together with the security backing of Mr. House, plan on resurrecting the LevTram Lines.

Quick cross country travel will bring drove to New Vegas--furthering House’s empire and further lining his pockets, as well as increasing his influence over the recovering wastes.

It will bring the current caravan companies to their knees, giving Tenpenny an insurmountable edge in the shipping and transit industries, growing his wealth exponentially.

Before they can see their dreams come to fruition, there is a final obstacle standing in their way: the powerstations must be revived.

That is where you come in.

Personal messengers, encrypted Pip-Boy frequencies, and special radio broadcasts have been made across the wastelands from The Hub to New Vegas, calling for any and all adventurers willing to ride the trolley from one side of the country to the other, aiding Hayley Carter as she repairs and revives the trolley system.

For those who make it across and return to New Vegas? The ultimate prize--total freedom. A penthouse room at whichever Vegas casino they choose, and a monthly salary more than what any man or woman could spend in that time.

The catch?

The wastes are full of those who would never see the trolley live again. Raiders, tribals, dangerous fauna, “concerned” caravan company mercenaries, and if they don’t stop you, the Brotherhood of Steel may have a certain aversion to such technology being in the hands of Mr. House and Tenpenny.

Will you answer the call? Will you ride the rails, and stick out the hardships for The Long Haul?

***

Here’s the run down on this RP--

You can play essentially whatever characters you want, so long as they aren’t awful Mary/Marty Sues and they aren’t Godmodders.

Also, this RP will ALWAYS BE RECRUITING AND OPEN TO NEW PLAYERS. Since we’ll be visiting a variety of cities and smaller destinations along the way, there are always new points for entry.

There are three possible lines for us to take. The Green, The Blue, or the Red, as shown on the crudely made map below. We'll be voting as a team as to which we follow.

Here’s the biggest thing: I need you guys.

We’ll be going to a variety of cities across the nation. Bethesda/Obsidian spend months to years of time researching and coming up with creative ways of taking their locations and making them really feel “Fallout”-y. I can’t do it alone. I need you guys to bring the creativity to the table to help make these cities different from one another. You have creative freedom here, and I’d love to see what we can create together.



Green Line: LA (The Hub), Las Vegas (New Vegas), Reno, Portland, Seattle, Spokane, Billings, Fargo, Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City

Blue Line: LA (The Hub), Las Vegas (New Vegas), Salt Lake City, Denver, Lincoln, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Columbus, Philadelphia, Washington, DC (Capital Wastes)

Red Line: LA (The Hub), Las Vegas (New Vegas), Albuquerque, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Atlanta, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, Miami

So, who is interested? Comments? Questions? Slander?

Interested.

One query: If one presumes the Lone Wanderer did some inadvisable experimentation with the Death Ray aboard Mothership Zeta prior to the confrontation with Mothership Tau, this happens:

Fallout Wiki said When fired, the death ray initially strikes the Northeastern Great Lakes region, though as the resulting dust cloud expands, it eventually covers the general region of South Eastern Ontario, Western New York, and most of Michigan. The major cities of Buffalo and Toronto as well the natural landmark of Niagara Falls would be the closest to the devastation, assuming they still exist.

Sources elsewhere on the wiki indicate a minimum blast radius of 250 miles - pretty hot stuff, as it were. If that happened there's a definite chance a long segment of the Green Line is simply gone, along with basically everything else in that area.

Did or did not the Lone Wanderer push that button? ;)

Terminal said
Interested.One query: If one presumes the Lone Wanderer did some inadvisable experimentation with the Death Ray aboard Mothership Zeta prior to the confrontation with Mothership Tau, this happens:Sources elsewhere on the wiki indicate a minimum blast radius of 250 miles - pretty hot stuff, as it were. If that happened there's a definite chance a long segment of the Green Line is simply gone, along with basically everything else in that area.Did or did not the Lone Wanderer push that button? ;)

Thanks for the interest! For the sake of the RP, we'll assume he did NOT push the button.

I think for the sake of continuity we're going to assume the protagonists of New Vegas and FO3 made heroic choices, though individual instances (Did the LW put the FEV virus in the water, leaving DC a purified but largely empty waste?) can be discussed by the players, as it is their world to build as much as it is mine =)

This is a cool concept - a good way to run a long-term Fallout RP, considering how long it'd take to travel through these rail-lines. I'll keep an eye on this.

I'll give this a shot.

The character I have in mind is gonna be an ex-raider struggling with drug withdrawal and anger issues. The guy the team needs working on the sidelines to make and repair things. But when he fights, he's gonna fight. And he's also going to be really hard to get along with, and he could also end up causing lots of trouble if he's provoked. Which could very well be a lot with his temper. Expect lots of tension created between the player characters with this guy.

If we take the Green Line, New Reno is the first stop from New Vegas. Between the two points are Tonopah and Hawthorne. New Reno to Portland is where we'll be leaving the more settled Core Region, and everything from Portland onwards to Pittsburgh (The Pitt) is free game. Though we could possibly come across some throwbacks to Fallout Tactics in Chicago as well.

The Blue Line takes us to Van Buren territory in Salt Lake City and Denver, and how much you want to pick out of Van Buren is up to you. After Denver, Lincoln to Kansas City could also take some stuff from Tactics if you so wanted. From there, we'll see what awaits us before we reach DC.

Aside from possible Legion stuff in Arizona and New Mexico, the Red Line would allow us the most creative freedom, knowing how Texas and the South haven't really been covered all that much in the Fallout series. One suggestion though, Phoenix would probably be important enough to be a stop between New Vegas and Albuquerque, would it not?

Yes! I actually meant to include Phoenix in the updated list I was making last night but I got distracted.

Also, I love your character's idea. Nice to see something a little more gritty than just "super ex soldier killer dude"

Just a heads up--I posted this game over at Casual too. I'm hoping between the boards we can create a good cast. I'm being very selective with who I allow to join from casual, and will not compromise the integrity of the writing for the sake of numbers. I just know there are a good group of writers there who can hang at the advanced level, but they stick to the casual board because it's more active.

Badass killing machines are overrated, I'll say that much.

As this is going to be my first Advanced game, I'd like to provide some further thought. As nice and juicy as 3+ paragraph posts are, I find that Advanced standards shouldn't really be dictated by length of material as they should by the amount of dedication and effort both the GM and players are putting in to the RP. I can definitely put in 2-3 paragraphs no problem on average, but when it involves interaction between PCs, I end up having to make collab posts on Piratepad just so I can reach the 3+ paragraph limit that folks normally expect in Advanced. And collab posts can be hard to set up because then I have to put everyone's time schedules into account.

*hops over from the casual thread to make some comments here*

A friend and I are currently writing up some of our homebrewed fluff for what happened to the east coast after the Vault Dweller had their fun.

I'm focused mainly on the Pitt, and unless the GM shows concern about it, I'm going with the vault dweller wasn't willing to kidnap a baby and realized that Wernher was just a prick who wanted all the power for himself (I had so many arguments with an old friend about this topic >.> I dont give a shit what the karma bull says, Ashur was more a dark grey than being fully evil and his intentions were FAR purer than wernher's. Than entire DLC's karma crap was as backwards as getting negative karma for stealing from the Legion)

I'd like to know what everybody else chose for the questlines in the capitol. What did you do to Bob? Kill him? Accelerate the growth? absolutely nothing? What about the super heroes in canterbury commons?

GM says that the vault dweller was a hero, so I'm assuming megaton's bomb was deactivated, not detonated. Vault 101 was sealed off rather than irradiated, the modified FEV wasn't put in the water, so on and so forth...

I'll have to keep an eye on this. Got a character from an old Fallout RP I'd like to revive.

Then comes the excuse if I should copy pasta the old posts of hers with some editing to get them up to my current quality, or otherwise start back up from where I left off.

Wayne said
Badass killing machines are overrated, I'll say that much.As this is going to be my first Advanced game, I'd like to provide some further thought. As nice and juicy as 3+ paragraph posts are, I find that Advanced standards shouldn't really be dictated by length of material as they should by the amount of dedication and effort both the GM and players are putting in to the RP. I can definitely put in 2-3 paragraphs no problem on average, but when it involves interaction between PCs, I end up having to make collab posts on Piratepad just so I can reach the 3+ paragraph limit that folks normally expect in Advanced. And collab posts can be hard to set up because then I have to put everyone's time schedules into account.

I hear you 100%.

Dialog is tricky, and yeah sometimes you're not going to hit that mark when trying to write up that conversation--I'm totally cool with that. I am much more concerned with the quality of writing and the creativity put into the characters than I am with length or even frequency. I'd rather have someone who can consistently put out good material once every other day than someone who puts out 4 crap posts a day.

So no worries there, I'm not going to be busting any balls.

Any way, between both boards there seems to be a good amount of interest, so I'll start working on an OOC.

I'd like to know what everybody else chose for the questlines in the capitol. What did you do to Bob? Kill him? Accelerate the growth? absolutely nothing? What about the super heroes in canterbury commons?

The following choices are based (mostly) on the assumption that the Lone Wanderer made basically moral choices, but with the caveat that they were assisted by a high Intelligence stat plus high scores in both Science and Medicine. Accompanying are the actions of one of my more-played characters.

The common argument regarding the Pitt is that supporting Ashur is the logical choice in order to uphold the stability of the city. If Werher succeeds, there are no more workers making tools, building materials and ammunition, and while the cure is still sort of being researched the baby is being kept in a rat hole and studied by someone who MAYBE has 25 points in either Science or Medicine, but not both (as opposed to being studied in a modest if sufficiently equipped lab by a trained professional). The floodlights that Wernher makes a big deal about turning on to keep out the Trogs are entirely tertiary concerns, since the Pitt also has to deal with Wildmen, other Raiders, and more Slavers if Wernher's revolt works out.


Accelerating the growth would be tempting if one aims to restore the Wasteland. However, personally, the whole thing reminded me just a bit too much of Vault 22 and the Spore Carriers found at Big Mountain and Zion. Also remember that the damn tree has been influenced by FEV, and I trust that about as far as you can get trying to approach the door to Vault 82 without dying horribly. Assuming that our Lone Wanderer has sufficient Science and Medicine tagged, they would likely recognize both the danger of the FEV and any mutations present in the plants. The only 'moral' choice at that point is to burn Oasis to the ground. If you're feeling nice, stop Bob's heart before setting him on fire.


I like to imagine the Lone Wander took one good look between the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist during their verbal exchange on the street, rolled their eyes, and then blew both of them away with the Blackhawk.

Kill all the slavers in the Lincoln Memorial and assist the slaves with the restoration. One could make the argument that Old World influences are a bad thing due to how it makes people think (a common theme throughout all the Fallout games), but it's the Lincoln Memorial. Relatively speaking, that's more ancient world. There's no advanced technology on the spot either, so no harm to be done.


Do not kill the Slavers of Paradise Falls. Aside from Megaton and Rivet City, Paradise Falls is the only stable 'city' in the Capital Wasteland. Same general reasoning as supporting Ashur, really. Distasteful, but necessary for the purposes of regional stability. One good thing about Paradise Falls is that they have a monopoly on the slave trade - all human traffic goes through them. Better the devil you know.

Destroy the vial of FEV you get from Eden as soon as is feasible once you leave Raven Rock.


Don't blow up Megaton, obviously.


Talk Tenpenny into allowing Ghouls to stay in the tower. The Humans and Ghouls live together successfully enough at first, and there's enough positive thinking on both sides to make it seem outwardly viable even before WHOOPS Roy goes and murders all the humans.

Thanks for sharing that, I got a good laugh from a couple of those stories. Especially the Lincoln memorial.

Most of what I have planned is fairly independent of what would be the RP "canon" for the Capital and Mojave wastelands. I'm mostly concerned with what's going on in New England and New York. More so since I never got far enough to get my RP'ing into the Capital Wasteland and eventually into the west. Beyond that if I do so lazily and selflessly port then I don't imagine there'll be any concern in doing it, I didn't interact with anyone else when I ran my own thing. The plans to be never transpired in time.

Given when and if I alert a friend of mine they probably will.

Dinh AaronMk said
Most of what I have planned is fairly independent of what would be the RP "canon" for the Capital and Mojave wastelands. I'm mostly concerned with what's going on in New England and New York. More so since I never got far enough to get my RP'ing into the Capital Wasteland and eventually into the west. Beyond that if I do so lazily and selflessly port then I don't imagine there'll be any concern in doing it, I didn't interact with anyone else when I ran my own thing. The plans to be never transpired in time.Given when and if I alert a friend of mine they probably will.

Yeah, I'm with him. I had a character who spent time tooling around the Capital Wasteland (Enclave-related.) But no real interactions, even if I had plans.

I'm not 100% certain if I'll join, but if I do it'll either be as an NCR Intelligence guy looking to sabotage the operation, or more or less the same thing, except Enclave.

If that's cool with you. If not, I could probably think of something different.

I'm definitely interested in this.

TheEvanCat said
Yeah, I'm with him. I had a character who spent time tooling around the Capital Wasteland (Enclave-related.) But no real interactions, even if I had plans.

Let our intentions reach their inevitable conclusion!

Pepperm1nts said
I'm not 100% certain if I'll join, but if I do it'll either be as an NCR Intelligence guy looking to sabotage the operation, or more or less the same thing, except Enclave.If that's cool with you. If not, I could probably think of something different.

Is the Enclave even still a thing after the events of Broken Steel? I don't doubt that there's probably a few bunkers left here and there, but East Coast/West Coast/Central America Enclave has pretty much had its command structure stomped flatter than all the soda lying around the wastes, and both the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel have shoot-on-site policies concerning them.

Terminal said
Is the Enclave even still a thing after the events of Broken Steel? I don't doubt that there's probably a few bunkers left here and there, but East Coast/West Coast/Central America Enclave has pretty much had its command structure stomped flatter than all the soda lying around the wastes, and both the NCR and the Brotherhood of Steel have shoot-on-site policies concerning them.

There is reason to believe the Enclave is still out there somewhere, especially in the Midwest. I know that their command structure has been wiped out in the west, but I'd be going on the assumption that there were still more bunkers out there that managed to survive the purge. Given this is the remnants of the US government we're talking about, I don't think it'd be hard to believe that they had a lot of bases, some of which could have gone undiscovered after the war with the NCR and Brotherhood of Steel.

Some small bases could have survived with a strict isolationist policy that made their discovery more difficult. If I go with the Enclave - which I haven't decided - I'd have my character be from a small bunker that went full-blown isolationist/radio silent after their main command structure was destroyed. Their resurfacing would be a relatively recent thing.

Sounds good. I suppose if you guys don't want to interact with the main group, that is ok, but keep in mind if you're an east coast central character, nothing in the story will likely be relevant to you for quite some time.