War. War never changes.
Men - certainly - may, through the roads and trials they tribulate. And if the society of old is naught more than the collection of the will of Man, then by some rightful thought we may possess the inkling to suggest that the horrors of the wasteland have, perhaps, made us emerge stronger. Better? Wiser? More intelligent? More acute? Perhaps not, but, barring these inclusions, certainly...stronger.
But alas, to seek strength for strength itself - to grow for the sake of growth - is the ideology of a cancer, and the sun-blasted rays of the wastes may thoroughly irradiate all tumors away from the land...or, perhaps, have only emboldened their growths.
Which of these is more true? Well...peradventure, it is our duty as chroniclers to decide for ourselves.
So, after two other attempts at a Fallout Nation RP - the monumental first thread, and the fatefully incomplete revival last year - a few of us around Discord have gotten around to the idea of trying to reboot one of our favorite settings in fiction into a fully-realized nation roleplay. We know for a fact that there's more to it than just us few asking around in our little circle, and to that I say, welcome!
That being dismissed, there were some things to be said about where we should take the RP in question to both avoid the errors of past iterations of this roleplay, as well as to set down a few rules that we would like to more firmly establish beforehand.
Setting:
Okay, yes, let's just get this out of the way. I love New Vegas. I love Fallout 2. I even love Van Buren's unfinished design docs. I'm a West Coast fanboy through and through and i'm not going to even attempt to keep it hidden. Even so, it's a point worth bringing up:
We've talked about this over Discord and we more-or-less all are in agreement that we really should just pick one coast and stick to it, instead of doing what we've done previously and just trying to cover the entire continental North America with most people in the wastes being (generously) capable of foot and horse travel. So, with all this being said, as per "Session Zero", everyone really should cast in their vote as to whether they prefer the East Coast or the West Coast (or even something else?).
Time Period:
Again, similar sort of thing to the Setting question. Putting it after the events of Fallout 4 (2290 onwards) gives you some more freedom, but means that both there has to be an agreed canon established for the games, and the steady advance of civilization makes it more difficult to justify a lot of the "post-apocalypse" tropes; After all, people will have more time to rediscover technology, establish towns, congregate, repopulate, and organize. Setting it earlier would put the games possibly into AU territory - which i'm perfectly fine with - but again, it's something that'd need to be decided upon fairly early on.
"Expy Nations":
But you know what
Any new WNC must have a moratorium on LARPer nations outside of the khans and legion
Fuck your stupid samurai or epic prussia in the wastelans
Shoehorning in some culture into America's post war is a cancer of creative bankruptcy
Outside of a few exceptions with pre-established factions (I.E. The Shi, Legion, etc.), I think this is a fairly honest request to be made. I get that Fallout has its share of wacky stuff to it, but please try not to go overboard on it.
Well, with all that established, I hope that everyone takes a good gander at this, and hopefully we can get this ball rolling!
Well, with all that established, I hope that everyone takes a good gander at this, and hopefully we can get this ball rolling!