Solo All-Out Apocalypse Session 0
Inspired by Lone Horizons, I've decided to do some solo roleplaying using my Fallout knockoff rules-light system and record what happens as I go. I'm not confident enough to film the sessions as Tom does, but I'll write this up as an ongoing session report.
I began this project a previous night, but I went in half-cocked and wasn't really happy with how muddy and aimless it was. This time I'm going to approach things a bit more purposefully, laying out a quest and tracking down a suitable map for my purposes.
Characters
The characters I made last time are perfectly suitable, though, so I've decided to keep them rather than create any more. I've created three of them: Fly, Altivo, and Baby.
Fly is the fighter of the group with points in Agility and Brawn, and the Guns and Hand-to-Hand skills. I'm picturing this person as a Jerome Flynn type, all leather creases and cold eyes.
Altivo is not entirely different, with points in Brawn and Tough. However, Altivo has Sprinter and Radioactive as skills, so I'm seeing them as more of a hardy survivor, capable of enduring dangerous environments. I'm picturing a bit of a Samwise Gamgee type, perhaps.
Baby is a very different breed from the other two party members: They have Manipulate and Senses are stats, and Roleplay and Inuit as skills. This gives them no bonuses in combat at all, making them a pure face character. I'm seeing Baby as a classic charlatan, like the stereotypical D&D bard.
Quest
So with the party established it's time to go over the mission. To keep things simple for myself I decided to steal from Fallout 1: their village's water source is contaminated, and they must find some way to purify it. Luckily, they are located near the West Edmonton Mall which famously features a waterpark. The water park should have drums of chlorine which will do the job. If that doesn't pan out, perhaps some other part of the mall will have what they need.
I chose the West Edmonton Mall partly because I am a Canadian and wanted to show my country a bit of love, but mostly I just knew it had a really good online map, which I will use during the game as the party explores.
As an alternative side quest, I decided that a bit of whimsy might keep things interesting and fun. A character from the nearby town is hoping to get a teddy bear as a birthday gift for their baby brother, so the party has been asked to keep an eye out for that. I've decided Fly is silently spearheading this initiative as it appeals to his soft spot for babies.
We have characters, a location, and a couple of quests. I'll need some way of stocking the dungeon procedurally, and I am thinking of using a couple of systems in tandem for that.
Exploration & Encounters
Because I want to be surprised by the outcomes of the wandering monsters, I'm going to use a Wandering Monster roll. To stock the list of monsters I went through my Gamma World 7e handbook and quickly converted the entries there to work with my All-Out game.
In order to determine how quickly the party moves and when wandering monsters appear, I'll be referring to the Old School Essentials rules for Dungeon Adventuring (though I'm not promising I'll adhere to them strictly). They state that dungeon turns are ten minutes long, and PCs travel their base movement rate in feet per turn. Since I live in Canada, we typically use meters instead of feet. I also happen to know that the West Edmonton Mall is about 800m long. Furthermore, I don't think a post-apocalyptic shopping mall would be as dark as a classic dungeon, so the movement rate can probably go up. If we say the standard movement rate is about eight meters per turn, that means it takes ten turns to go from one end of the mall to the other - pretty slick.
As the rules suggest, we'll roll for wandering monsters every two turns. However, I'm also going to use the Tension Pool mechanic that I invented accidentally swiped from the Angry DM to penalize loud noises and superfluous exploration. I'm imagining that the mall is not a settled location due to it being infested with Blood Birds (taken from Gamma World), so having swarms of them show up to attack you periodically if you make too much noise is a fun additional layer of challenge.
And with that, I think I'm ready to begin! Next session I will begin the actual gameplay.