Solo TTRPG Babble about Fallout: Wasteland Wanderer

For all my reservations, when it comes to game purchasing, I can be incredibly impulsive. I was excited when I first saw the printed book of Fallout: Wasteland Wanderer being advertised on Modiphius' website and eagerly awaited its PDF arrival on DriveThruRPG.

So what is it?

Fallout: Wasteland Wanderer is a solo tabletop roleplaying game that allows you to create a vault dweller within the Fallout milieu. Your character wanders the Wasteland around their vault in hopes of completing a main mission while acquiring a whole lot of side-missions along the way - all while trying to deal with those who are surviving/thriving on the surface like super mutants, ghouls, and other quirky characters.

Character creation - as simple or as complicated as you'd like to make it.

Overall, I found creating a character in this game to be a lot simpler of an endeavour than doing so in Fallout: The role-playing game. The descriptions of what each of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats do is simple and there are multiple ways of building your character to make the process as simple or complicated as you'd want it. I do have the benefit of being someone who played the Fallout computer game series since Fallout 3, so that no doubt makes things easier, but I daresay that the process would be tolerable for those who haven't had that privilege. 

The initial quest generation is also straight forward with a number of random tables that help you along the way. By the end, you'll know why you're leaving the vault, who you are, and you won't have spent more than 30 minutes on the whole process. This, I have to admit, is a big draw as some solo TTRPGs I've played takes hours of creation time before you get anywhere near playing.

Wandering the Wasteland

The process of playing the game has you following certain steps. If you end up in an area that you haven't explored yet, you first determine whether there is a settlement or whether it's just a wasteland location - with each option offering you other things to generate and do. My first location was a wasteland area, then I had to roll to determine what encounter I'd have as my character approached. These encounters could be hostile from the get go or you could respond in ways that would make it so. In my case, I intervened on two people arguing and got thrown with a spear for my trouble. How nice!

Once you've determined the location and the encounter, you have a set of actions you can take depending on how safe you are. In my case, I shot the spear-throwing dumbass, and now I am safe to do other things (yes, this is how far I've gotten in the game so far).

Each action has a space dedicated to it in the book that gives you information on how to determine your success or failure. The dice mechanic is also fairly simple. You roll 2d20 (two twenty-sided dice) and you want to roll lower than the target number - which is determined by your stats. The better you are, the higher the target number and the likelier you are at rolling below it. Simple enough if your dice don't hate you.

Hiccups

I think in terms of critique I could offer is that, while 99% of the information is in the book, it's not always clear or in a place you expect to find it. I've had to comb the pdf repeatedly during the combat sequence to try and figure out how it works, for example, and I feel that could have been made a bit clearer. It's not as frustrating as some other games to puzzle out, but I'm lazy in this sense. I don't want to have to search and guess and make conclusions I'm not sure of. I want certainty as quickly as I can have it and things feel a little fuzzy with this game. I kinda found myself hoping I'm doing it right as opposed to knowing.

That said, this isn't an insurmountable task, more a gripe that I had. And that said, it's a lot clearer than some other gaming systems out there that require hours of scouring pages just to find the simplest of answers - I'm looking at you Shadow Run.

Who would I recommend it to?

I think Fallout gamers who would like to try their hand at solo ttrpgs would be people I'd target. People who like solo games and want to try something a bit more challenging than conventional journaling games.