All-Out Playtest 1
Players
My brother, playing two characters at once, Harry and Harriet
Character Creation
Character Creation went as smoothly as could be expected. My brother did not have time to read the rules before we started and we had limited time, so he made a few wrong assumptions as I led him through the creation process. It was a good early highlight of the things I needed to clarify in that section, as well as where players coming from other ttrpg systems might need extra guidance. All in all it took us 15 minutes to make two characters which is pretty good imo. Experienced players could have it done in 5 minute easily.
We wound up with two characters, like so:
Harry
Agility 1, Brawn 1, Manipulate 1
Hand-to-Hand, Barter
Pipe rifle, Chicken-Wire Armour, Can of dogfood, flashlight
Harriet
Senses 1, Toughness 1, Education 1
Scrounger, Keen Eyed
Crustacean-shell Armour, Pool cue spear, 3-bug soup (food), rusty multitool
The session
The map I provided for the session:
I told the players that they are from T-Town: a small settlement distinguished by its placement at a major crossroad and its access to electricity from the nearby Dam. Unfortunately the power went out, and some traders coming in from Cliff Road said they spotted what looked like bandits at the Dam! The elderly engineer in town says she's worried that if the bandits at the dam have messed with the mechanisms up there they could permanently destroy it, and even worse: the whole Dam could break, flooding the Small River and flooding T-Town. Someone will have to go up there and sort things out before it's too late. Unfortunately recalibrating the dam mechanism requires precise coordination from both ends of the Dam, so they'll need some way to communicate over the distance.
Harry and Harriet decide that what they need are radios. They ask around town to see if any traders have any available. I roll 1d6 to see if they have any: a 5 or 6 means yes. I roll a 2, so no radios.
Some travellers from afar have come through town and are all sick. They don't know what's wrong but if anyone can help them they are willing to reward them. After talking briefly they realize the travellers have been eating Road Toad and that they all have radiation sickness. They are grateful for the info and hand over 1d6 scrap (3, I think, but I don't remember). They ask if Harry and Harriet have radiation medication, but unfortunately it's unavailable. The travellers promise a better reward if it can be found.
They decide to head for the Junkhole to scrounge. I roll for random encounters, but nothing turns up, so they get there safely. Once there they see the broad floodplain filled with ancient junk. Most of it is just rusty garbage, but there's good stuff to be found. Captain Mercy overlooks the swamp. It's a massive military tank-bot whose treads are broken and whose guns are empty, but whose lust for violence remains insatiable. It's harmless if you're not within arm's reach. The players elected to not mess with it.
They spend a few hours scrounging and turn up a few bits and pieces: binoculars, matches, and a radio! They are rooting around in armpit-deep muck water so I make them roll a test each hour to see if they get radiation sickness. They succeed all their rolls except for Harriet, who fails the last one, but she uses up her point in Toughness to turn that into a success.
Looting was immediately a problem. Fallout has a lot of looting and I am committed to supporting that. However, it was unclear to me how the results of looting would be determined. Do they find the thing they're looking for if they succeed? What if it's a rare item? In this case I miraculously rolled a 29 on my random items table which happened to be a clock radio, so I did not have to solve the problem at the time.
They make it back to town with no random encounters. The townsfolk are in a tizzy: there is now smoke coming from the direction of the Dam. Who knows what's happening up there? Harry and Harriet decide to set out right away, but they leave the binoculars, matches, and radio in a safe spot in town in case they don't make it home safe.
The journey to the Dam is uneventful, and they find a set of switchback concrete stairs that lead up from the bottom of the Dam to the top. They carefully make their way up the stairs, but when they are 3/4 of the way to the top a figure appears near the top of the stairs, leaning against the railing. It's not a regular bandit, it's a super mutant ogreman! Ogremen are 8-foot-tall violent brutes, far tougher than any human!
Harry and Harriet try to hide, but fail their tests while the ogreman passes his. There's just nowhere to hide, and the ogreman spots the scuffling movement. He pulls out his machine gun and descends a few stairs to get a better view. Combat begins!!
I am using simultaneous turns inspired by what I have seen used on the 3d6DTL Arden Vul podcast, but slightly modified. Only the PCs roll initiative, and if they pass, they get to decide what they do AFTER the monsters decide. If they fail, they decide first and the monsters react. Everyone declared their actions, and then it's all resolved at once narratively based on the results.
Harriet sprints up the steps trying to close the gap while the ogreman tries and fails to hit her with the machine gun. Harry hits the ogreman with his pipe rifle with a solid hit, punching through its armour. Harriet makes it up to hand-to-hand range and stabs it with the spear. Harry takes a couple turns to get up to the top, but he does so and together Harry and Harriet manage to beat the ogreman to death with minimal damage to themselves. All of their armour and weapons are looking a bit worse for wear, however.
One thing that became immediately clear was that a 1-in-6 chance of success results in a lot of failed rolls, and therefore a lot of broken weapons and armour but not so many dead combatants so everyone winds up fighting with their bare hands. Furthermore, the assumption that two melee combatants automatically cancel out each other's successes makes this issue even worse. Finally, since the bulk of your dice pool usually comes from your hit points, you wind up with with a really slow tail end of combat as everyone gets worn down and rolls smaller dice pools. This is something I will change in the next iteration.
They resolve the combat but the noise has drawn the attention of two more ogremen who are coming from the opposite side of the Dam. They haven't seen the PCs yet, so they hide behind one of the towers on top of the Dam. They fail their stealth rolls, so the ogremen see something moving, and they approach with some caution.
As soon as the first ogreman pokes its head around the corner Harriet stabs with the pool cue. The melee is close-quarters and everyone quickly runs out of ammo and their weapons break. One ogreman goes down, but the other remains. We have a VERY tedious back and forth where nobody rolls any successes, and finally my DM brain gains a new wrinkle: This combat is happening at the top of a Dam! There's a precarious drop just a few feet away, and everyone has been reduced to bare-handed wrestling.
A few dice rolls determine that the ogreman picks up both Harry and Harriet in succession and chucks them off the edge of the Dam. So ends the session.
I learned a lot from this playtest that wasn't obvious in my head. I knew that players would have less chance of success when they were hurt. In fact, that was a core design principle. However, somehow it did not occur to me that this was true of Bad Guys as well, so battles would not just become more desperate, they become SLOW AS HELL. That's bad. I also didn't realize that weapons and armour would be broken so early in combat. That's also not great. Looting is a mystery I'll also need to solve.