One of the key parts of the Fallout game and therefore the RPG is scavenging for Loot. Not a lot of this in the TV program, but I guess it’s not that exciting. But the core rulebook does a bad job of helping the GM with the neccesary tools to make scavenging work. It gives you the base rules, some random tables for the loot but misses some information on how you decide what’s in a location. There is nothing in the GM chapter, and although there is some more help in the GM toolkit even that still misses useful stuff. Even the adventures I have seen just have general loot tables and then a list of which loot you might find, and don’t follow the corebook info. Apparently the new Wanderers toolkit book has more and the Screen is helpful. But if you only have the Corebook, this should help you out. In this 3 part guide I will be looking at making scavenging more workable for the GM.
In this part 1, we will look at how it’s meant to work.
A scavenging Location is meant to have the following information:
- Category – Not explained!
- Level – as in level of PCs and NPCs
- Scale – the size
- Degree – how much stuff is left
- Items – what sort of items are here
- Other – Obstacles, Hazards, Occupants
(Even in the adventures they don’t follow this information fully)
When you enter a location you make a PER + Survival test. If you succeed you find the minimum items for the location and can then spend Action Points (AP) to get additional equipment.
(The book gives an example of a listing – the only one we see outside of adventures)
We get this table to determine time and difficulty:
This is really two tables. The left half of the table determines the difficulty of the search based on the Degree of the location:
And the right hand table determines the time taken based on the scale:
So these tables are useful for when we have a location, but don’t help us make one (see next blog).
We are told how complications work, but again, that depends on GM and the rules for the location that have been pre-planned.
So lets look at 2 examples of Locations and how the search might play out.
1 Lone PC, Dave, finds this shed. He breaks the lock easily, but doesn’t look for traps and triggers the booby trap, taking damage. He rolls his PER+Survival and gets 3 successes. This means he finds 1 Food, 2 Beverages and 3 Junk (the minimums for the location). He spends the 2AP he gained from beating the difficulty to also get 1 Chem and 1 Oddity. He rolls 6d20 to find out how many junk items he finds. then rolls 2d20 on the loot tables for Food, Beverages (Twice), chem and 3d20 on the oddities table. These tables are in the corebook and repeated in the GM toolkit.
2 PCs, Sarah and Grishnak are scavenging the wasteland and come across the gas station. They sneak in and take out all 3 raiders. Sarah rolls PER+survival with Grishnak assisting and they get 4 successes. This nets them 1 clothing, 1 Food, 1 Bev and 3 Junk. They spend the 2 AP earned (4-2) on a Weapon and Armor roll. They roll on the various tables, and the GM decided they can roll on the Weapon (Ranged) table.
So Scavenging is actually very simple, although takes a while to do all the loot rolls. But, the GM has to create these locations up front, doing it on the fly is a bit harder.
For how to create your own Scavenging Locations, read the next article.
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