In my opinion, Fallout should be a non-stop struggle for survival.

Other RPGs don't have this because they are afraid they will alienate the casual player. Well, given how popular the 'hardcoe' mode in FO:NV was, I think gamesas can take a risk. Players will learn that their character cannot always be 100% perfect and unscathed.

ITEMS ITEMS ITEMS
Not every person should have a Pip-Boy. There should be separate items that characters need to watch out for themselves. Instead of having a free HUD that gives all the info you need, maybe the HUD should be filled with info based on what the character has in their possession.

Do you have a Geiger counter? Good, then you will not walk into radioactive areas without knowing it and get yourself burned.

Do you have a compass? Good, then the typical N-S-W-E directions will be added to your HUD.

Do you have some fancy-schmancy sonar-tracker device? Good, then you will have a short-range radar screen in the corner of your HUD.

And these items will create a demand for the items to be looted, crafted, and bartered. (The need for demand is a recurring theme in my ideas.)

FOOD/WATER DEBATE
Characters should become dehydrated, tired, hungry (Not as quickly in a real-time sense as NV). This will increase the need for the players to do the following things:

1) Plan ahead. This is not some stroll across the plains to get easy-to-find loot. Each mission, journey, needs to be an expedition. At the very least the player needs to have some basic provisions on them.

2) It will create a demand for basic goods that players can sell to make profit, whether they be looted (Salisbury Steak) or crafted (Radscorpion Tacos). Some games that had a food-crafting skill set, just had it all go to waste because NOBODY bought the items unless they were really high-level buffs after days and days of meaningless grinding.

3) It might even create objectives for player-originated PvP conflict--such as control of a water resource etc.

MEDICAL PROFESSIONALISM
Healing in most video games, online or not, is usually freaking LAME. The healer character pushes a button or a magical salve is used. Though obviously Stimpaks are needed for continuity and playability, I think some serious effort should be put into the medical skills of the game.

Instead of it just being a magical ability at the push of a button--it needs to be a mini-game in essence. Though characters can help themselves to a basic Hit-Point replenishment degree with a stimpak many times, there needs to be inflictions that only a character with medical skills can address, such as broken bones, poisoning, organ injury, radiation burns, etc.

The character filling the role of the healer needs to have such tasks before them that are more interesting, challenging, and rewarding than "Push J to heal the character and get 50XP points!!!!". For example, there could be a Pip-boy like menu in which the medical character inspects his ally for advanced damage or afflictions (Maybe lower skilled medics can have difficulty identifying certain problems). Then they must use their limited supplies to prioritize and address the problem. Maybe the afflicted player can have symptoms--random barf animations, bouts of dizziness, etc that can actually be used to DIAGNOSE a problem. If the character is barfing--he could have been poisoned OR he could have radiation sickness.

And if these supplies to help are made from items that are uncommon--then BAM--we've created more instant demand that can be used to reward the player for their time.

I like what some games do where if you're knocked out (damaged severely) you'll get a debuff or hampered vision. I liked what Fallout for consoles did with head concussions. If you've never had a bad one, its kind of like that. Well I guess we're just a couple of problem solvers

FNV shows that just wandering through the wastelands, trying not to die, is more interesting then even moving through the storyline Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

I'm sorry, but Fallout was -never- intended to be an ultra-realistic survival simulator. It's an RPG. It's more akin to Dungeons and Dragons then anything else. It follows the same tradition of old-school (western) RPGs with epic quests, a variety of characters and playstyles, and a focus on roleplaying and storyline. Point to one aspect of Fallout 1 or 2 which could be considered realistic, really. The storyline itself is almost entirely unbelievable (but very entertaining), and the setting (world) is unique and entirely different from our own.


Fallout is a post-apocalyptic RPG, not a survival sim. ALL the survival aspects of the wasteland are boiled down into one skill: Outdoorsman. In Fallout, outdoorsman covers your ability to find food and water, avoid encounters with enemies and generally make your way around the wasteland without getting hurt. As it should be.

In Roleplaying games, tactics is the focus of combat, therefore the actual combat is an abstraction of the real thing. This has the benefits of keeping the rules simple, not bogging down combat too much, and allowing players to focus on combat decisions rather then 'twitch'.
The same theory applies to the outdoorsman skill. It makes decisions for the player using the character's 'knowledge' of survival. The player has more time to focus on playing the interesting parts of the game, instead of stopping every mile or so to rest, eat and watch out for dangerous environmental obstacles.

And no, I don't give two s***s about what was in F:NV. FOOL is not being developed by Bethesda or Obsidian, no disrespect to those companies, but this will be an gamesas game.

I liked the medical profession idea. SWG (MMO) and Shadowrun (pen and paper) had a 'wound damage' system in addition to simple damage taken.
In SWG the character would get wounds that lowered the total amount of health they could have. Say you had 500hp total. After a couple days of heavy fighting where you healed yourself you might still have 100 points of wound damage. This meant you only had 400 usable hp. To get rid of the wounds you had to see a PC doctor/medic/etc. who would charge fairly reasonable rates. I thought it worked out pretty well.
It would be nice to see something similar.

Google "Dungeon&Dragons, hazards" and you will find starvation, suffocation, drowning, dehydration, hypothermia and so on. Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

Google "Dungeon&Dragons, hazards" and you will find starvation, suffocation, drowning, dehydration, hypothermia and so on.


All of which you roll to beat. Dehydration? Roll survival skill, on success you find water. Starvation? Same deal. Drowning? Roll fortitude to resist damage. Hypothermia? Same deal. Suffocation? Same deal. Resisting environment damage? Roll fortitude save.

This doesn't seem very interesting, but it frees the player's hands to consider the bigger problems: "My character is starving, so I can roll survival to spend some time looking for food. But will I have enough to to do that before the Gnolls invade the elven village? Should I even bother, since my survival skill isn't too high and I'm traveling through a barren desert, and if I fail I'll be even worse off. Should I take a risk and hope I make my fortitude save against starvation damage?"

This is what RPGs are about, making the important decisions and letting the characters do the highly skilled work themselves. I can't imagine a 'super realistic' RPG where the dungeon master asks what your character does every little step of he way: "Okay, your character is hungry, what does he do?" "I search for food" "Okay, what kind of food are you searching for? There's a river, and some mountains, and some plains with vertain types of plants." "I look at the plants, can I identify any of them as food?" "No, not with your knowledge skills." "Okay, I fish in the river" "Do you have a fishing pole?" "No, but my survival skills are pretty high so I think I can fashion one out of the environment?" "Okay, how do you do that?" "I, uhh.... I guess I'll try to get a stick to use as a fishing pole. I look for a tree." "You spend 3 hours searching for trees. You find one and it has 26 branches 7 feet off the ground, how do you get the branches?"

And so on and so on. Even minecraft eschews a hunger system, and lets you punch down trees and box defenseless animals for food. This sounds tedious with just back-and-forth with a dungeon master, imagine trying to figure this all out in a realistic game. Doesn't just rolling sound easier, and you can get back to playing the interesting parts of the game? Also, it allows you to play a character who has more knowledge in survival then the player himself!

The OP puts forth some good suggestions, i really like the one about certain portions of the HUD being unavailable based on the character's equipment. Toss skills in there, and i'm solid behind that idea. Such as, for a compass rose on your HUD you could either have a compass or an outdoorsman skill greater than 30 (for example). It would actually fall in line with how some equipment worked in FO1+2 (the gieger counter comes to mind).

Ugly brings up a good point about realism in games. That can be a double bladed sword though. Relying too much on a dice roll can take away a lot from the emersion of the game. For example, do you use dice to determine what is said in a conversation, or the effects of the conversation?

Also, just about every PnP RPG out there have rule sets which are as realistic or as unrealistic as you like, and the DM/GM could always influence the realism aspect even more. Just look at D&D's called shot and critical hit systems.

That's actually a good point, worth talking about I think.

If we're staying as true to the original Fallout games as possible, then it's really a middle ground. The player chooses what is said, of course, but with stat (intelligence) he gets more choices (and they're always better ones), and with a speech 'dice roll' determines the effects of the conversation.

In the case of Dungeons and Dragons or other PnP games, I've seen it both ways. Some Dungeon Masters have everything roll played out, making Charisma skills like diplomacy practically never used. Others, it's just roll and move on. And then there's the middle ground, of course.

I guess a middle ground with survival could be reached, to. But I maintain that I'd rather have my character spend 10 seconds healing his team then play through a tedious ( And it would get tedious) mini-game every time. And I'd rather have my character struggle for survival, and I would play the game; it might be fun to be constantly on the edge for a while, maybe in short bursts, but it would get tiring very quickly, in my opinion.

I also think it's entirely out of the spirit of the Fallout series to be a hardcoe survival simulation, as I mentioned earlier. It's clear to me that even if that game was very fun, it wouldn't work with Fallout. This is still a Fallout roleplaying-game, not a wasteland survival game set in the Fallout world.

I'm not suggesting your character become a virtual pet that needs to be fed and watered on a regular basis. But I think that if FO:NV can implement such ideas and make it unobtrusive yet challenging, then it can be a serious consideration for FOOL.

This DM is a maniac. His players will die of age before they complete the adventure Excuse my bad English... I am a Russian bear, it's hard to type with claws.

I like what some games do where if you're knocked out (damaged severely) you'll get a debuff or hampered vision. I liked what Fallout for consoles did with head concussions. If you've never had a bad one, its kind of like that.

In addition to symptoms, I would like it to be an actual TASK to identify the affliction.

Instead of there being a message saying "You have Radscorpion Fever" for the afflicted player or the healer, have the afflicted character display symptoms. Then the healing character must use a mini-game or deductions to figure out the affliction. If the healing player makes an incorrect decision--they will only end up wasting precious meds/supplies. But if they are correct in their diagnosis and treatment, they get XP as a reward.

Gamers are much more savvy than they used to be. Instead of having a healing character have a bunch of game-displayed messages saying what is happening--let them figure it out. Perhaps there can be medical reference books. These books describe symptoms. Take this scenario for example:

Healing Player: "What symptoms are you having?"

Afflicted player: "My av barfs every 15 or so minutes, my endurance is down, and I have migraine flashes."

*Healing player consults an in-game book or computer file that lists symptoms. There are three possibilities:

1) Radiation poisoning: Vomiting, headaches, loss of strength.
Cause: Exposure to excessive radioactivity.
Treatment: Rad-Away is only known treatment.

2) Radscorpion Poisoning: Vomiting, headaches, loss of Endurance.
Cause: Radscorpion sting or ingestion of radscorpion poison.
Treatment: (1) Type A anti-venom serum OR (2) Tribal Venom Remedies

3) Mole Rat Rot Disease: Vomiting, headaches, loss of Endurance.
Cause: Bite from infected Mole Rat or consumption of infected Mole Rat meat
Treatment: (1) Anti-biotic dose OR (2) Red Healing Powders

Healing Player: "Well, I can tell it's not Radiation poisoning since your strength isn't affected. Have you fought any Rad scorpions or Mole Rats Recently?"

Afflicted Player: "I fought a pack of Mole Rats last night and got bit a few times."

Healing Player: "Perfect, I'll administer an Anti-Biotic then."

*YOU'VE SUCCESSFULLY TREATED MOLE RAT ROT DISEASE! 100XP awarded!*

It can be as simple as that. Don't TELL the player what's wrong, let them figure it out on their own with simple means. In this example, the healing character could have mistakenly given anti-venom, and not had any ill-effects other than being wrong and wasting his medicine. Players who are accurate in their diagnosis will use less medicine and gain XP faster.

For my opinion on your idea... just read over my posts and try to understand what I'm saying.

Other then that, I'll just single this one sentence out so we can all have a good laugh reading it.

Actually, it's almost worth putting that quote in a sig.

For my opinion on your idea... just read over my posts and try to understand what I'm saying.

Other then that, I'll just single this one sentence out so we can all have a good laugh reading it.

Actually, it's almost worth putting that quote in a sig.

I read your points, and I still think that different directions can be taken with the Fallout franchise, FOOL in particular. I take issue with how you try to compare D&D to Fallout. Apples and Oranges. IN addition, making a survival roll for everything sounds like a one-way ticket to complete boredom. We've been playing RPGs like that for YEARS, it's time to up the ante.

Be a jerk all you want buddy. I stand by my statement that gamers are more savvy today than they were in the past.

Who needs a compass anymore? This (hopefully) isn't Wolfenstien 3D where every wall looks the same... Why do games studios have to fight and die? War, war never changes : (

I'd also like to add my support to the OP's idea's about the HUD components.

I also like the idea of adding complexity to the standard stimpac/'First Aid skill' idea of healing, but I think adding too much may have a negative effect.

@Impavido, if I may offer a counter scenario:

Your party of five get into an extended firefight with a band of high-tech raiders by accidentally stumbling into their territory. After you win the battle the medic treats the first team member.....

Medic: Ok, whats wrong with you?

TM1: I'm in a bad way doc. I took two laser pistol shots to the face, I can't see good. I stood on a land mine some where, as well as taking spash damage from a frag or maybe two, I couldn't really tell what was happening, but I can't feel my legs. I'm riddled with 9mm holes, and the bleeding won't stop. I jabbed myself with stimpacs a few times, just to stay conscious. I'm think there was someone taking shots at me with a long rifle somewhere, but in the heat of the battle I couldn't be sure. I'm also having trouble breathing.

...There are three other team members looking equally battered queued up behind him.

Now if we make the medical/healing system too involved, the poor guy who's at the end of the queue could end up standing around waiting 15-20mins for his turn. The medic is having the time of his life, putting to use all those skillpoints he placed into Medical, but its possible his fun is at the expense of the enjoyment of the people he's treating, or about to treat.

Please don't take this as complete criticism, I offer a different scenario and am interested in hearing your thoughts.

Very valid issues that could come up if it was too in-depth. Ways to make sure that the treatment is fast would have to be thought of. And the detriments of advanced injuries/illnesses should be marginal at most.

Maybe just a limit of 1 to 2 simultaneous advanced injuries or afflictions could keep it simple.

the game should give the doc the option to go the long way as discussed before, for bonus (see later in post), or the standard meds/chems mix. the long way bonuses should be extra XP, maybe save a med/chem, xp to the the Med Experience skill. the Med Experience should be a Sup Skill within the Medicine/First Aid skill. The player gains Med Experience by how many times the prober procedure is done right. ME (Med Experience) helps the long way go faster by showing the right answer to the lesser wounds/infections. and well help display the better answer for worse wounds.

Perhaps it could be as simple as the difference being the use of consumables?
1. Quick battlefield patch up: Does the job, but uses full medkit.
2. Full systematic medical treatment: More time consuming but only part uses medkit.

A lot depends on the availability of the medical items for the balancing. If they are too common, no patient is going to be interested with waiting around for the long way. People would end up carrying medkits so they can "buy" the fast way.

With the xp bonus, again this is a benefit to the medic and probably of little interest to the people they are treating.

I like what some games do where if you're knocked out (damaged severely) you'll get a debuff or hampered vision. I liked what Fallout for consoles did with head concussions. If you've never had a bad one, its kind of like that.

In addition to symptoms, I would like it to be an actual TASK to identify the affliction.

Instead of there being a message saying "You have Radscorpion Fever" for the afflicted player or the healer, have the afflicted character display symptoms. Then the healing character must use a mini-game or deductions to figure out the affliction. If the healing player makes an incorrect decision--they will only end up wasting precious meds/supplies. But if they are correct in their diagnosis and treatment, they get XP as a reward.


If you have to play a minigame everytime you heal someone, that's way too repetative and would become very boring, very fast.

However, if whenever you encountered a new injury/disease you play a mini-game, or have to research the symptoms (which could include consulting other players with a higher doctor and/or first aid skill) it could actually add a lot to the game. It could actually be done with just about every skill in the game. IMO, though, anything like that needs to have a consiquence for failure. For example: if you fail to set a broken leg, you wont be able to attempt to set another broken leg for several days to a week, real time.

I still say the idea about skills and items affecting your HUD instead of automatically getting every bit of information possible is pure gold though.