Origins and Origin-Related Traits for Fallout: Year Zero

[FlukeboxHero]

As I slowly tinker away at this, I would appreciate insights/feedback on the origins so far.

Spoiler: Notes on Previous Design

For those unfamiliar with the system, Year Zero is based on rolling pools of d6's (standard six-sided dice) and rolling a six to succeed at a roll. Players can reroll (a "push) at a cost. Currently I have the cost penciled in as a "Karma Point" which the GM (Overseer) can use to make rolls/enemies more challenging.

There are 5 stats.
Vigor - Strength and Endurance. How hard you hit and how much you can be hit. (Athletics, Melee, Endurance, Outdoorsman) - Replaced Strength Skill with Athletics from agility.
Agility - Affects Shooting, Sneak, Security (lockpicking and pickpocketing), and Acrobatics (?)
Understanding - "Book Smarts" (Academics, Science, Mechanics, Medicine)
Luck - Gives players Luck points to spend on rerolls, reducing damage, or boosting rolls.
Tact - "Street Smarts". Persuasion, Deception, Insight, Perception

Here's the though process currently, if you want
The characters in the Year Zero Engine (YZE) are created off of Archetypes. These are a basic template that is individualized by acquiring Specialties (Perks).
I originally had ghouls, super mutants, and robots (which have since been cut) as archetypes. However, that sucks. Players should be able to start as a super mutant scientist, or a ghoul soldier.

Anyway, here's the Origins.

Super Mutant:
+ The Strong Survive: Super Mutants roll d8's for all Vigor tests, gain "X" amount of bonus HP
+ Immune to Radiation
- Roll 1 fewer die for Tact rolls against non-Mutants
- Large frame: Armor is more expensive (need more), and -1 to any roll requiring fine motor skills

Ghoul:
+ Immune to Radiation
+ Heals in Radiation (?)
- -1 Die when dealing with non-ghouls (unless specifically ghoul friendly)
- (Should they get another debuff?)

Human:
You're a person, No pros nor cons.

 

[Gizmojunk]

Ghouls are effectively the anti-elves in Fallout. They are immortal until killed, but they are not lithe, not beautiful, not elegant, and not fragrant.

IMO, all ghouls should have the following in common:

• Originated from Vault 12; all of them. This means that there should be less than a thousand individuals roaming the US; mostly on the West Coast.
• They are the only ones who remember the pre-war era first hand; having each lived there before the great war.
• Only possible from the singular event at Vault 12 during the war. Not possible by radiation alone. Not related to FEV; Harold is not a ghoul.
• Obviously feral ghouls are nonsense. They exist because Bethesda could not make them look and move accurately using Face-gen and the common humanoid animation rig. They could make them as a standard animal/monster entity, but those can't equip clothes, nor use the preset marker/animations for chairs, beds, stools, and other interactive assets that pose the entity. There are no feral ghouls in Fallout 1 or 2.
  
  And Typhon tells it like it is:
  
  

 

[FlukeboxHero]

Okay, that makes sense.
Then it may actually be easier to have them as a Ghoul archetype, since there is one way they showed up. Same with the super mutants.
Here's a mock up of the Archetype sheets (art will change... eventually...)

 

[Gizmojunk]

since there is one way they showed up.

I (personally) consider it canon (it's in the games), but it's not Bethesda's canon, and is still debated among fans and even the Interplay devs themselves hadn't been unanimous about it. Later work by black Isle on Van Buran would seem to contradict it totally.

 

[RoosterCole]

Ghouls are effectively the anti-elves in Fallout. They are immortal until killed, but they are not lithe, not beautiful, not elegant, and not fragrant.

IMO, all ghouls should have the following in common:

• Originated from Vault 12; all of them. This means that there should be less than a thousand individuals roaming the US; mostly on the West Coast.
• They are the only ones who remember the pre-war era first hand; having each lived there before the great war.
• Only possible from the singular event at Vault 12 during the war. Not possible by radiation alone. Not related to FEV; Harold is not a ghoul.
• Obviously feral ghouls are nonsense. They exist because Bethesda could not make them look and move accurately using Face-gen and the common humanoid animation rig. They could make them as a standard animal/monster entity, but those can't equip clothes, nor use the preset marker/animations for chairs, beds, stools, and other interactive assets that pose the entity. There are no feral ghouls in Fallout 1 or 2.

i disagree that ghouls should be only vault 12 relevant they were created by radiation in general nothing stops the idea that they were everywhere but they were a rare condition most of them didn't have immortality and died shortly or years after they were mutated and i think vault 12 only decreases radiation and has better medical treat which will help to increases their chance to live
and ferals were in the originals but they develop dementia
tim mention those on his channel here:

And Typhon tells it like it is:
View attachment 36242

i don't think he means necropolis ghouls are the only first and last ghouls but that there's only one generation of ghouls

 

[Gizmojunk]

i don't think he means necropolis ghouls are the only first and last ghouls but that there's only one generation of ghouls

I'd say that is —precisely— what he means. That is the humor of the joke. He says it right there, "We are the first, and last generation of ghouls"; there are only old ghouls (meaning no new ones).

The ghouls were a product of the [mysterious] event at Vault 12; itself a product of their cultural fear and foreboding of all things atomic. There is a reason that all of the monsters in Fallout all look like they've come out of 50's pop-culture B-movies.

In the Fallout world setting, the laws of reality are bent to the pop-cultural expectation, apprehension, and ignorance of the atomic age rather than hard nuclear science. Ghouls like to feel the warm rads; early US military were said to have once stood in front of radar transmitters to keep warm —for whatever reason, real or assumed. Ghouls in Fallout could be the product of their own terror at being exposed to the nuclear unknown.

I say (for me) that normalizing a fluke event in the lore diminishes the ghouls in both novelty and concept. They become commonplace; simple plaque victims, essentially lepers. Their condition being meaningless, rather than like —for instance, D-Day survivors, all of them tied to a significant (and not casually repeatable) event.

A side note, not Fallout related per se, but it came to mind on the subject:

Spoiler: One clip split into two...

 

[RoosterCole]

I don't think normalizing them weakens their concept they still resemble the atomic horror there will never be a new generation of ghouls because the radiation is already starting to fade in fallout (1) the only places that can create ghouls are hotspots like the glow and even then it's only if you were lucky enough to live making their entire existence tied to mysterious events is even cheaper and raises a lot of questions especially if vault 12 was the only source of ghouls unlike how the gen 2 super mutants in fallout 2 New Vegas vault 87 etc did to super mutants as concept


Also at least for me it was implied that ghouls were made by high levels of radiation everywhere and even so they weren't a universal case they were rare maybe I see it this way because of the way I understand it from while playing fallout and Tim video

 

[Gizmojunk]

Ghouls should not be reduced to simple cause and effect. Not only would there be too many of them, but there would also be many —many instance of humans inflicting the ghoul condition to attain immortality, either for themselves, for revenge, or for profit—upon a coerced labor force.

Black Isle made a terrible mistake IMO with inventing born ghouls, but they were doubtless needing to include new ghouls in a new Fallout, for the same reason as including the Brotherhood of Steel (itself a minor West Coast tech cult in the original, and a footnote in Fallout 2). One could complete the original game without encountering them at all —afaik.

Vault 12 should be considered an isolated freak occurrence that spawned Fallout's ghouls. A one-off event that not only limits their number, but ensures that at some point they will all die out.

 

[RoosterCole]

Ghouls should not be reduced to simple cause and effect. Not only would there be too many of them, but there would also be many —many instance of humans inflicting the ghoul condition to attain immortality, either for themselves, for revenge, or for profit—upon a coerced labor force.

Black Isle made a terrible mistake IMO with inventing born ghouls, but they were doubtless needing to include ghouls in a new Fallout, for the same reason as including the Brotherhood of Steel (itself a minor West Coast tech cult in the original, and a footnote in Fallout 2). One could complete the original game without encountering them at all —afaik.

Vault 12 should be considered an isolated freak occurrence that spawned Fallout's ghouls. A one-off event that not only limits their number, but ensures that at some point they will all die out.

I don't think there's a sane person who would trade their healthy body for a crumbled melted body that can't hold up without external assistance where your body decomposes and has a high chance of becoming feral because of the trauma and pain while you body melting or due to neurodegeneration even so turning into a ghoul (at least in tim version because beth version sound like mutants super hero from marvel that everyone can be) is risky maybe you'll get cooked alive and die or get radiation poisoning or turn into one but die shortly after You might even not gain immortality at all it sounds like the 10% chance of surviving a bullet to the head but with only a 0.1% chance of becoming more intelligent would you take it

 

[Gizmojunk]

I don't think there's a sane person who would trade their healthy body for a crumbled melted body that can't hold up without external assistance

You don't see much of that in Fallout 1 or 2; there are no feral ghouls in the series until Bethesda starts adding to it. I believe that feral ghouls come from an inability to get series accurate ghouls using Face-gen, so the more accurate ghouls are implemented as monster/animal entities, at the loss of equipping items and outfits, and inability to use interactive animation markers.

Basically (as I understand it) the ghouls are walking cancer that continually overwrites itself; a perpetual healing factor with a nasty disregard for symmetry and order. Their outer flesh is continually falling away, while at the same time continually regenerating from within; like regular people, but vastly accelerated with no end.

They effectively live until catastrophically injured; that's effective immortality. The ghouls in Fallout 1 and 2 don't seem to be withering away, and can survive even extended periods of being buried alive.

If the condition of Ghouldom were possible through a repeatable process, then people would exploit it upon other people if not themselves, to gain the positive side effects, and not care about the negatives on their victims, or in some cases upon themselves.

 

[RoosterCole]

You don't see much of that in Fallout 1 or 2; there are no feral ghouls in the series until Bethesda starts adding to it. I believe that feral ghouls come from an inability to get series accurate ghouls using Face-gen, so the more accurate ghouls are implemented as monster/animal entities, at the loss of equipping items and outfits, and inability to use interactive animation markers.

no feral ghouls exist in fallout and 2 but in different names in one they are called mindless you meet them in random encounters near necropolis and they also exist in necropolis if you try to talk they ask you to let them alone and make noises in fallout 2 there called ghoul crazies you find them in random encounters near gecko

If the condition of Ghouldom were possible through a repeatable process, then people would exploit it upon other people if not themselves, to gain the positive side effects, and not care about the negatives on their victims, or in some cases upon themselves.

well you're right some will see it as earned because of the healing factor and immortality but my point is it's risky not everyone will turn into a ghoul if they can you wouldn't see a bunch of charred black crisp in the glow also radiation start to fade in fallout 1 so i don't think this normalize them they are rare and not repetitive because the radiation fade and the low chance to get one like tim said in the video not every ghoul was immortal some had short or normal live span

 

[Gizmojunk]

If it's radiation exposure (speculating), what would be the cause of the variance? Would it be a kind of Goldilocks exposure period(?); duration, intensity, or both? Individual genetic anomalies? It's not age, Typhon was a child when he became a ghoul.

I would say that it could even be a self-fulfilling fate, akin to placebo effect; if they believe it enough, then it will happen. This could have happened at Vault 12, where the door failed to seal, and they were all exposed to the ongoing war radiation (and whatever else). Perhaps just seeing it happen to others (in the moment, to one's neighbors, friends, and family) could increase that it happens to themselves.

The interesting question is... would it happen to someone isolated from the event; seeing it happen on the other side of the glass, and not knowing (or not comprehending) that they aren't exposed to it themselves.

I have always assumed the effects at Vault 12 would have been far more intense and unique (in the moment) than could be replicated afterwards.
I don't believe that mundane radiation exposure should ever result in ghouls. I think that in-world there could be a way to replicate the events at Vault 12 without repeating the war, but that it shouldn't ever become truly (or provably) known. It could be a result of (and requiring) any number of chaotic factors. Perhaps it could happen only to those people exposed within minutes of having used super-stimpacks, Rad-Away, or both at the same time. Psychics are real in Fallout, perhaps it could be an unconscious psychic adaptation brought on by terror, or by other factors. This could mean that radiation alone is not sufficient—or not even necessary.

But whatever else it could mean, I think it's a mistake to have it mean that conventional radiation exposure gives anyone decent odds at developing near-immortality from it; costing little more than their fair appearance. (For one thing, anyone terminally ill would take the risk to have a shot at surviving.)

 

[Iprovidelittlepianos]

Just popping in to say that I’m pretty sure “mindless ghouls” are a complete fabrication by the wiki. There’s a thread here from probably a year ago where I believe Risewild proved it.

Post in thread 'My review of Fallout: the Series Season One 9/10'

Apr 24, 2024

In Fallout 2, the ghouls that attack on sight are called crazies as seen on these screenshots I just took while playing the game (for some reason FO2 screenshots come out small, I think it might be because of the hi-res patch):

And they can use shotguns and I think one used a frag grenade in this encounter too. Here's a screenshot with a combat log message saying that the Crazy has run out of shotgun ammo (the Ghoul at the centre near my character is also wielding a shotgun, but it's hard to tell in the picture)...

• Iprovidelittlepianos

Click the link and scroll up a bit to find the post I’m replying to.

 

[Risewild]

Just popping in to say that I’m pretty sure “mindless ghouls” are a complete fabrication by the wiki. There’s a thread here from probably a year ago where I believe Risewild proved it.

Post in thread 'My review of Fallout: the Series Season One 9/10'

Apr 24, 2024

In Fallout 2, the ghouls that attack on sight are called crazies as seen on these screenshots I just took while playing the game (for some reason FO2 screenshots come out small, I think it might be because of the hi-res patch):

And they can use shotguns and I think one used a frag grenade in this encounter too. Here's a screenshot with a combat log message saying that the Crazy has run out of shotgun ammo (the Ghoul at the centre near my character is also wielding a shotgun, but it's hard to tell in the picture)...

• Iprovidelittlepianos

Click the link and scroll up a bit to find the post I’m replying to.

I forgot about that. I did some more digging around after I posted that and found out why the wiki calls them mindless. It's because they are called "mindless ghouls" (or something similar) in the game files, but not in the actual game.

I was going to come by and post my findings, but my computer broke and I was without one until a month or so ago.