We've been playing a LOT of Fallout76 the past few weeks. Like probably more than is healthy, and definitely more than we should be for the amount of other games, video or table top, that we should be playing. But we've also been watching High School DxD when we need to take a break. That's unrelated, merely illustrating that my wife is way cooler than most.
ANYWAY, back on topic. So, whilst playing FO76, I've been making a lot of mental notes and sketches for terrain to use in Wasteland Warfare. The aesthetic and building construction is similar to Fallout 3 and 4, with elements of New Vegas (the survival ones on hardcore at least) and it's easy to visualize how something could translate to the table top.
The biggest problem, however, is the greenery. Not that all of Fallout is drab, post-apocalyptic, gray, mind. Just that F076 takes place 25 years after the bombs fell, versus 210 in Fallout 4, so it is much less... Devastated. I assume that's before taking into consideration the three active nuke silos in the West Virginia area, and what players will inevitably do/what will occur further into the bridging of the two time periods. Especially when you consider that the southwest corner of the Commonwealth map in FO4 is the Glowing Sea - an area much more heavily radiated than any other in that particular game, and the West Virginia area of FO76 is southwest of the Commonwealth (point to point, Charleston WV is 622 miles SW of Boston, and 252 miles west of Washington DC). These leads me to think that at some point, the Glowing Sea may thin out, or it may be even worse as the nukes of FO76 would have been launched more recently than any others in the northeastern US.
What changes could have happened to WV in 185 years between the two games? Has the Scorched menace abated? Worsened? Where did the Scorched even come from? When the Brotherhood of Steel finally ended their self-imposed exile, with Elder Maxson's forces reclaiming the Citadel and the Commonwealth, have they returned to Appalachia to discover what their fallen brethren may have uncovered? Is Whitesprings still an Enclave holdout despite their setbacks on the West Coast and Capitol Wastes? What humans have returned to the area in the intervening years? Raiders, certainly, but do any of the locations survive enough to see a resurgence? Have the Responders rebuilt? Have new groups taken up the torch? What of the other Vaults in the area? What weird-ass experiments was Vault-Tec running in them, and have they opened with survivors? What of the descendants of the Vault 76ers?
Big B Rest Stop, in The Mire of Fallout 76 is going to be my starting point here. Since I want terrain to be mixable, matchable, and "location neutral," wherever possible, I'm looking at the two sections of the Big B to start - the Red Rocket portion and the convenience store (Super Duper Mart) portion. Pulling these away from the background elements, such as the hill the BBRS is on, or the roadway, or whatnot, achieves my neutrality and maintains the feel we're going for.
FO76 Red Rockets are, by and large, configured differently from the ones we see in FO4. So I'm looking at a TTCombat Dinogas Station Deluxe to start, but having spent a little bit more time in the location, I think just the smaller Dinogas Station may actually work a little better, minus the canopy piece maybe. For the convenience store building, which isn't connected (I thought they were initially), I'm looking at either the TTCombat Comic Book Store or Fast Food Store, depending on how many windows I want to work with for the second floor, though I feel like the Comic Book Store is a better fit. In either instance, I'll need a Freestanding Staircase from the TTCombat Wild West range so that characters can reach the second floor. It may or may not even matter from a FOWW point of view, but something tells me Modiphius may also release a table top RPG for Fallout using the minis and basic concepts, and I would -love- to run people through the wasteland roleplaying. A couple of burned out car wrecks to the easternmost side of the "footprint" (Corvegas or otherwise) and a grove of dead trees to the west & we have ourselves a nice little location to fight around/in/over. Plus, since it has been 185 years, there can be some significant changes around it, like the addition of a scaffolding section to reach the rooftops of the buildings, plus more sleeping bags/change of furniture on the insides, accomplished with TTCombat Back Alley Accessories.
