Different Ways to Roleplay a Mailman

[charwo]

I'm wondering if others do creative roleplay with their Couriers, things that don't necessarily have anything to do with mods, or at least the way mods were intended to be played. Like some things I do:

 

1. Play is not in chronological order.

 

I'm all over this. Any Courier has been a wandering badass for a long time, so some of the quests I set in the 'way back' and play them as flashbacks. I mod my game so that it starts in 2181 instead of 2281, compressing the Fallout timeline to something less...leisurely. But Honest Hears is a flashback to the late spring of 2180, which makes more sense than doing it in the winter. Bleed Me Dry takes place before the game opens, Talent Pool was in 2179 and That Lucky Old Sun, minus the rangefinder, took place was four months after Operation Sunburst in 2176, and thus even before the destruction of the Divide.

 

2. My character is "a Courier" as a half assed cover

 

What I figure is that if the Courier is that badass in New Vegas, s/he was at least as badass as before. And besides, even Cass knows the rules of the road not to f*#@ with the mailman. So it's possible that in general package couriers, the ones who take small parcels are part time badasses who like to walk the earth, looking for adventure/damsels to save/maidens to rape. Couriers who are more like UPS drivers (trucks and all) are probably 'only' as tough as the caravaners that circle around Vegas (as in not exactly easy pickings). So the notion that Fumentarii can pass as Couriers isn't exactly surprising in universe. My Courier wants a cover to walk the earth, playing hero for hire and still have a day job. Any protection from Legion assassins.

 

But its a job, not a living. Unlike most RPG characters that BECOME rich in their travels, the Courier is in media res in their career, so their not hurting for cash from all the looting over those dumb enough to shoot at the postman. And this I wouldn't see as totally unheard of.

 

3. The mini-games aren't what they preport to be.

 

In this case, I have a mod that allows for non-lethal take-downs and looting, so in a case of gameplay/story segregation my Courier's knocking out NCR troopers right and left to get the dogtags and Caesar's Favor. I figure fair's fair here. But the in story reason is very different. My Courier is a robotics expert, in this case between deliveries is open to being hired as a 'robotic retrieval expert.' What this means in practice is she goes into crazy dangerous instillation with their often berserk and regenerating security units, and disables them one by one. That's why she was hired in Lucky Old Sun: they sent her in not just to start the power plant up, but to capture the facility and its robots without a fight. She then charged them a finders fee based on each robot's value.

 

She's done this A LOT for the Legion in Four States installations. The whole Fortification Hill thing? She's done it a dozen times before, but this is the first time she meets Caesar. Casesar's Favor in story isn't for appearing to kill NCR, and the delivery doesn't even occur in the Mohave. Caesar keeps her on retainer, largely because the Legion has no use for military robots, so they pay her in the robots on the proviso she can't sell them to the NCR military industrial complex. Which means she sells them to trading houses, the Van Graffs, Reno and if I could figure out how to do it in Robco certified, Westside militia would have a sentry bot at every checkpoint.

 

4. My Courier has a finger in every pie in all factions

 

Much like House, or the Historian in Firelady's Quest for Heaven II (which is you like Fallout 3 you should play....NOW!) Theresa uses Robots to obscurate the depths of her wealth and power. As far as most people understand her, she's a hero for hire and Couier, and a part time lackey for various interested parties. In truth, she acts like the message boy when in fact she's set up half a dozen shell companies to do various rebuilding projects. She's the major real estate developer in Flagstaff, but nobody knows it. With hundreds of robots at her command from various junkyards and old installations, she doesn't need workers per se. And hers tend to do dangerous, repetitive, lethal construction work few humans are qualified to do.

 

Fallout is a salvage world. And Theresa is the best at salvaging.

 

Honestly, how else can you play a business savvy Courier with Robco Certified?

 

5. Automobiles

 

My computer can't run CarsXE. But the thing is when I cheat and add 10,000 pounds of carry weight to a character, I'd better have a damn good justification. And here's my justification: as far as I'm aware, the Gamebryo engine isn't built to simulate my Courier's system of salvage tagging, protectron disassemblers, drop points, and Fallow's Chalks (her protege, don't want the boy to get killed by being naive and alone in the Wasteland, now do we?) selling the gods and running the simple logistics on her behalf.

 

Also, my Courier has a motorcycle. It can't be seen in game, but its there. That's how she was going to bypass the 15: running by the cazaodors like a bat out of hell at 80 miles an hour. Makes sense as much as anything.

 

6. Playing multiple characters

My Courier's actions are done by t least two different people: a Courier named Theresa, and the medicine stuff, as well as the incessant raider and fiend murdering, by my Vault Dweller (Albert Cole and his family founded Arroyo, she shot him in the knee trying to convince the deserters to go back to Vault 13. Didn't work. Soured things). She's old and bitter and a whirlwind of death and pro-America as any Enclaver. Been experimenting with playing as some of the companions, hard to do.

 

You guys do anything alternative like that?