Who here roleplays fallout 3?

[OddballE8]

Ok, so i just restarted the game and decided that i would ignore the "hey, your dads missing, but im suuuuure someone in the oh-so wellknown to the inhabitants of vault 101 town of megaton knows where he is" clue and just find myself outside the vault with no clue as to where he is.

 

i also chose to impart some more restrictions on myself when playing: i cant carry more than one handgun and one rifle at the same time (with the exception of one extra handgun of the same type for repairs) and possibly one or two melee weapons (depending on size).

Also, i will not pick up a set of armor from anyone that is dead (killed by me or otherwise) since there are too many problems in real life with wearing clothes and outfits that are the wrong size and possibly (well probarbly in the case of dead people) riddled with bulletholes... only exception here is headwear... i can grab that off any stiff hehe... but again, only one sort (so no hoarding of helmets in your inventory)

 

(i use a few mods in this game so it might not play out exactly like yours would and it will also point out some of the flaws in bethesdas thinking when they made the game)

 

so... with that in mind i exited vault 101 to the charred remains of the DC outskirts area.

First thing i see is a couple of ruined houses below the cliff.

 

I start wandering over there in my vault 101 security armor, baseball cap and tinted glasses. 10mm pistol at the ready.

I notice some kind of freakish floating robot and decide that im not gonna risk it and instead veer off to the left... I find myself on a hill overlooking an old school of some sort.

 

Whilst surveying the landscape for some sort of clue as to where my father might have gone i get assaulted by some sort of freakish pig-rat looking thing. My shooting then attracts some very unfriendly types from the nearby school and i have to deal with them too.

So, almost out of ammo and half dead i decide that those guys might have taken my dad prisoner and i cannot afford to bypass the school completely. So in i go.

 

One emptied school later i emerge with a new huntingrifle added to my arsenal.

I decide that my father might have headed off to those larger buildings on the other side of the river so i keep trekking over there.

 

Once i reach it, nightfall is coming and everything goes eerily quiet. I sneak up to the first building and peer out of a ruined window to spot one of those evil looking dudes (thank goodness for the black-and-white stereotyping of the wastes otherwise i might have just walked up to them to ask for directions :whistling: ) standing guard in some kind of old ruined vehicle.

As i sit there looking i suddenly hear an explosion from their direction. The bad men start running around alarmed, but im sure they havent spotted me yet.

And out of nowhere to the left of my building four well-armed men in dark armor start running in and attacking the evil men. I decide to help out from my vantagepoint in the window and take out one of the evil men trying to flank the guys in black armor.

I slowly make my way forward from rubble to rubble whilst the men in black keep up their attack. None of them shoot at me so i assume they either havent seen me or theyre just not that interested in me.

 

After the dust settles i notice that the guys in black are all dead. Theres only one of the baddies left hunched over a dead guy looting him so i take him out with a shot to the back of the head with my (not-so) trusty huntingrifle.

 

I quickly round up some more ammo and stuff from the dead, and thats when i notice that one of the guys in black armor was carrying some kind of note saying that they were out to kill a guy... a guy with my name! surely it cant be me! i just got out of a vault merely a few hours ago!

oh well, at least one of them had a decent helmet i could use.

 

I decide that i should clear out the buildings nearby to see if i could possibly camp there for the night. Inside i find more bad men and barely make it though! (two of them had flamers for christ sake!)

Anyway. Next morning i exit the building rested and healed with a brand new sniperrifle. My old not-so-trusty hunting rifle discarded.

 

Thinking i might be able to move safer underground i decide to venture into the subway tunnels that lie outside.

Not a good thing. In there i meet some kind of walking dead type of cratures. As they slowly shamble towards me i unload a full clip in one before it dies! So i decide to use the handgrenades that i found in the building, and that does the trick, but theirs just too many of them and they just keep walking mindlessly towards me!

I use up my last grenade and then empty my pistol completely on the last one.

Going into the subway was not a good idea...

So i go back.

 

Moving towards the built up area of Washington i finally run into a trader who was friendly and helped me kill some of the local wildlife and i decide to travel with her for as long as i can. I also buy myself a brand new (well kinda) football helmet from her to replace the worn helmet i had picked up from the dead soldiers in black.

We walk together along a road up to a place called friendship, wich as it turns out, wasnt very friendly. I spot through my scope more of the evil looking men (how many are there!?) and when i turn around to ask my friend if she would like to take the lead, i notice that she has already turned around.

But i decide i cannot turn back. I need to find my father.

 

So i advance quietly. Then i notice gunfire from the station up ahead. I look again through my scope and see three heavily armored men, well more like machines really, assaulting the evil mens camp. One of them is carrying a large multi-barreled gun that spews out bullets at an astonishing rate...

but that didnt help him because before i know it, he is blown in to several pieces by one of the bad men!

the rest of the armored men make quick work of him tho, and as quickly as it started it is suddenly over.

I decide to risk it and approach the men in armor. They seem completely uninterested in me (although not violent towards me either) and call me a savage and a tribal... Apparantly they cant see the difference between me and the poor inhabitants of the wastes.

Anyway i clean out the area for supplies and ammo, finding no new weapons of any greater quality.

I think about making it a basecamp for the day, but the day is still young, so i just sit down and eat some brahmin meat and listen to the radio (apparantly these wild-men had one that was working still after all this time)

On the radio some wierd and freaky man called three-dog or free-dog mentioned that some guy had left vault 101 and visited him and now a second guy had left 101 as well!

That first guy must be my father!

Although i cannot understand how he knew that i had left, i decided i had to find this galaxy news radio place.

Remembering that i had seen some scribbling on the wall to the entrance of the subway nearby saying "GNR outpost" i dediced that it was too good a clue to ignore.

 

With trepedation i ventured into the subway, remembering the enounter i had last time i ventured underground, i readied the handgrenades i had found in the camp.

 

Sure enough, i found more of the vile slow-moving creatures down there. I decded to sprint past most of them, and then set up some traps using frag mines i had found in the camp.

For a while this plan worked. But i wasnt paying attention to what was behind me and suddenly one of them attack me from behind whilst i plant a mine. I trie to run away, but it triggers the mine and i fly into a wall like a rag-doll and cripple both my legs. I am restricted to a slow crawl now and the monsters are coming ever closer... i have to fight them!

i start shooting at their heads and manage to take down two of them, but three of them still remain! As they start clawing at me i pull out my fireaxe and desperately swing it, trying to take as many of them with me before i die!

 

as the last one falls, i am barely standing... I sit down and use a couple of my stimpacks on my legs. After a while i feel well enough to walk and i resume my travels through the dark tunnels.

 

I walk alone for a while. The only things i meet are dead humans clad in leather armor. Apparantly killed by the foul monsters i had tampered with earlier.

Then all of a sudden i see a huge hulking shadow at the end of the tunnel...

This creature was almost twice the size of a man.

I decide that im not even going to risk it being unfriendly so i start shooting at it with my sniperrifle.

First shot hits it square in the face, but it doesnt go down!

It pulls out a huge shovel and starts charging me!

I pull out my pistol and start shooting at it in panic!

right as it comes up to me swinging, i manage to bring it down.

 

I hope i dont run into more of those!

 

Moving on i finally find my way back up to the surface. Some place called Chevy Chase.

 

I emerge into a duststorm. I can hardly see my hand infront of me, but i see a blinking light ahead... So i move on.

It seems to be some kind of survival-booth.

As i open it, two more of those huge monsters come charging at me from a building behind the booth! I manage to get off a shot or two before theyre mowed down by fire from across the ruins!

More of those heavily armored soldiers.

I approach one of them and she berates me for walking around in these dangerous ruins.

We talk a bit and it seems she is going to galaxy news radio (my hunch about GNR standing for galaxy news radio turned out to be right) and i decide i should tag along.

Safety in numbers right?

 

So on the way we meet more of those huge monsters. But this time they are gunned down easily by the Brotherhood of Steel (i found out that thats what the armored soldiers are calling themselves... A fitting name if you ask me).

I manage to take down one or two myself, but i mostly just tag along for the ride.

 

When we reach GNR it seems like all is over. Until there is a loud bang and suddenly two huge explosions hurl one of the brotherhood of steel initiates through the air like a paper napkin!

From the burning wreckage of the explosions walk a gigantic monster, at least three stories tall!

A true freak of nature, this think swipes the heavily armored soldiers aside as if they were made of straw...

The woman-leader of the group shouts to me to shoot the man with some sort of gun that one of the dead soldiers have. I rush over there and pick it up.

Some sort of slingshot operated thermal detonator.

I wait for the right moment...

And when the monster turns its back on me i let it fly!

BOOM!

 

when the dust settles, i see the mayhem left behind by the incident. Dead brotherhood soldiers and monsters everywhere. I dedice to only loot the dead monsters out of respect for the brotherhood, but i do collect some sort of tags they all seem to have around their necks, thinking this might be of importance to the group leader.

I find myself a decent assault rifle to replace my sniperrifle with. As i am almost out of ammo for the sniperrifle i settle for the assault rifle.

 

With great anticipation, i enter the building to talk to three-dog.

 

 

And thats where my story ends for now.

 

 

i must say i have enjoyed this type of play more than i normally like fallout.

It usually turns in to a great hoarding exercise when i play normally. I run around with at least five or six large weapons at the same time and tons-and-tons of stuff...

This time i had to take some tough decisions as to what kind of weapons i had to use. And i didnt get super-armored right away since i can only use armor that i either find on a shelf or something out in the wild, or buy from some trader.

[OddballE8]

Having played a bit further ive revised my "rules" a bit.

 

I can now have up to two different pistols (wich includes the sawed off shotgun) since they are quite easily carried in holsters or just the lining of your clothes...

I cant sleep in beds unless ive secured the immediate area.

I also cannot read books unless ive set up a basecamp of some sort (as in clearing out an area and finding a good place to rest/relax)

When reading a book i have to wait 1 hour after to represent the time it takes to read a book (stopping me from just spamming books for knowledge)

I need to eat food of some sort once a day.

I also need to sleep once a day (and when i sleep i sleep for 8 hours)

 

I cannot use stimpacks unless im out of combat (and by that i mean, noone is actively shooting at me or attacking me in other ways)

 

Also, i try to avoid using stimpacks to heal crippled legs and i also use stimpacks only if im litterally dying...

Sleep is the best healer for me...

 

 

I can also add that ive now moved on from GNR to do Three-dogs quest for more air-time...

ive run into supermutants fighting raiders and raiders fighting ghouls and im now on my way to the museum district.

I found myself a sawed off shotgun that has proved most helpful in dispatching ghouls (my ghouls shamble forward and to compensate for that ive increased their health alot)

[Tony the Wookie]

well, I didn't read that whole thing, but...

 

I like to limit myself to only carrying 100 pounds of stuff, including what I have currently equiped. I don't make a limit to what type of gun simply because I think it is interesting to come up with different combinations that work withing my weight limit.

 

I also don't bother raiding the bodies of people I kill unless I am desperately low on ammo. But this is mostly because I get bored running around raiding everyone I shoot, when I would rather just continue on with what I am doing and not constantly have to be stopping and takeing myself out of the action to loot stuff.

 

In the vanilla game I get more than enough ammo just takeing it off the shelfs at Raider bases and the like.

 

The last thing I do is play the game on a day to day basis. So I pretty much avoid being out in the Wasteland at night unless my mission requires me to infultrate someplace. So I return home to Megaton and sleep for 8 hours every game day, and that is when I will decide what mission I want to do for the next day and choose my equipment accordingly.

[OddballE8]

yeah, due to the fact that i "must" sleep once every day i usually end up playing on a day to day basis as well...

 

just got to the museum district by the way... got out of the subway on the wrong side of the square and this is what happened when i met up with about a dozen supermutants in a duststorm:

 

http://i49.tinypic.com/e63gvl.jpg

"mowed down by a minigun at short range"

 

Also, i forgot to mention that i dont ever fasttravel, but that goes without saying if youre roleplaying it...

 

Anyway, i reloaded, went up the other side of the subway and ran for cover at the brotherhood of steel outpost. They went on attacking the supermutants and i helped clearing out the area.

Ive since been to underworld and gotten myself some new armor (combat armor) using up almost all my caps, but at least now im equipped to find my dad in this dangerous area.

 

 

Oh and one more thing, i dont carry big guns around. I can pick them up and use them if i find one in a battle, but i will not carry them with me unless i get a powerarmor (and i usually also crouch when using them to "simulate" the heavy weight of one... yeah i know thats kinda going overboard, but still)

[OddballE8]

Decided to post a few pics as well...

 

Heres one from the epic clearing of the museum district in a joint operation with me and the brotherhood of steel.

 

http://i47.tinypic.com/so70hl.jpg

 

Heres me before buying the new armor, basically just a vault 101 security armor with bits and pieces added from my wasteland travels, and a football helmet.

 

http://i50.tinypic.com/2hg5m52.jpg

 

And here i am dressed up like a proper soldier. Full combat armor outfit with a new beard thanks to snowflake :)

 

http://i49.tinypic.com/aljcw8.jpg

[Starsickle]

Very hard to roleplay FO3 for several reasons:

 

1. Not many NPCs around. Many of them are simply filler.

 

2. Travelling with others isn't that great. This is disappointing as you learn nothing about your companions and they have no initiative to get to know you and are more or less as dumb as the NPCs.

 

3. Not many choices with the few quests: There's more or less a Gray side, a Light Side and Jerkass option for most quests. Rather contrived at times, but your solutions have no long lasting outcomes. This takes good writing and lots of time to pull off, though.

 

4. Not much in the way of game: This game is about shooting things and running around in power armor. To roleplay properly you'd need several mechanics in place that go beyond what bethsoft has allowed us to have. It's a disappointment.

 

That being said, I've played this game just about every way I could. It's the same each time. It's really hard to do when there isn't a lot to do. Roleplaying isn't about gimping your game, IMHO. It's about focus.

[SATMA]

It's complicated. Immersion is very important to me, and if I encounter something in a mod which breaks that, I tend to either deaccession that mod or remove the offending details manually. I've been tempted, but never gone through with, writing a narrative of the characters I play. I don't, though, consistently roleplay, even though I have done it before in games like WoW, or inject it overmuch into my gameplay. To me, roleplay is above all about telling a story, and if there isn't anyone around willing to listen there isn't really a point to it for me, at which point I will do what comes naturally, be that lugging around 300 lbs of power armor or smashing the stimpack hotkey in the middle of an intense firefight.

[evilneko]

I didn't RP it too much with my first character. I'd have a hard time explaining away all the changes I made mid-game by adding, removing, updating mods and such, and I'd definitely have to think long and hard about my motivations for going certain places. Sometimes, "the need to explore" just seems passé, y'know? Although, after I got CUTE, that's when the game and my character really started to come alive to me. I made my character into a dead-ringer for one of my actual RPG characters, and a personality started to emerge. Looking through my screenshots, I came up with the idea that my first character had actually been several, to explain the differing styles and appearances.

 

Then later, on a lark I picked up a flamer, and found the inspiration for my current character. I'd written brief narratives involving the latest incarnation of my first character, and I'd seen a person or two starting their own narrative as well, so I decided I'd do the same for my new one, only I'd write it differently. Instead of the normal third person narrative, I'd attempt to emulate the style of a diary written by the character herself and post it in blog format. The result is in my sig, and on-going. If you're interested, it might be helpful to start at the beginning.

 

I set myself some restrictions (listed on the About page), too, though I've modified them over time and they're not quite as heavy as yours. For one, I use fast travel. I don't want my RP restrictions causing me not to enjoy the game and I just think it'd be a pain to hoof it. I do try to keep a sleep cycle going, though sometimes I fake it--use the wait command near a bed, instead of actually sleeping, to avoid the bonus XP and therefore level slower--and it's not in my rules.

 

Unlike my first run through, Blaze has to have a reason to go somewhere, and things can't just pop into her inventory, either. I must come up with some explanation for how exactly she got the Rock-It Fire Mortar, or why she went to Vault-Tec HQ instead of straight to Vault 112. Fortunately for me, the format allows me to keep such things brief if I see fit.

 

All in all I'm having fun with it, though at times I find myself not wanting to play due to the need to keep notes on what happens and/or write it up shortly afterward even if I don't post it immediately. Bear that in mind if you decide to write about your adventures.

 

 

Very hard to roleplay FO3 for several reasons:

Sounds more to me like you're not really trying. :rolleyes:

 

To me, roleplay is above all about telling a story,

 

Try thinking of it as living that story. And then if you want to tell it, write it, and post it somewhere. ;)

[LoboOddball]

Well ive actually gotten the "find dad in vault XXX" quest and the place is marked, but i have never been near it so instead i chose to ignore that and try to find the place that is referenced to as being east of that place...

by just wandering and seeing if i can find it...

 

so far i stumbled into the outcast emergency broadcast and im currently engaged in a simulation of the anchorage liberation...

 

EDIT: oh and this is my new temporary account, since my other account got messed up when i tried to change e-mail adress...

[shadowmadnezz]

Very hard to roleplay FO3 for several reasons:

 

1. Not many NPCs around. Many of them are simply filler.

 

2. Travelling with others isn't that great. This is disappointing as you learn nothing about your companions and they have no initiative to get to know you and are more or less as dumb as the NPCs.

 

3. Not many choices with the few quests: There's more or less a Gray side, a Light Side and Jerkass option for most quests. Rather contrived at times, but your solutions have no long lasting outcomes. This takes good writing and lots of time to pull off, though.

 

4. Not much in the way of game: This game is about shooting things and running around in power armor. To roleplay properly you'd need several mechanics in place that go beyond what bethsoft has allowed us to have. It's a disappointment.

 

That being said, I've played this game just about every way I could. It's the same each time. It's really hard to do when there isn't a lot to do. Roleplaying isn't about gimping your game, IMHO. It's about focus.

 

Just be creative, u dont need 2 have a buncha preset things to make a story for ur own character. :confused: