A look at Fallout 2d20 part 1, core system overview

This is probably going to be a quick post to start but I wanted to talk about the Fallout 2d20 TTRPG by Modiphius. I have been reading through this system for about two weeks now and I must say I have enjoyed what I read so far. The system strikes a good balance in emulating Fallout and being a playable TTRPG, the 2d20 system is a pulpy action driven system with a minimum of maths. 

The core of the system is the skill checks where you need a number of successes equal to the difficulty of the check(ranging from 0-5) these checks consists of rolling 2-5d20 and every roll bellow you Attribute + Skill level is a success, a critical count as two successes and occur on a nat 1 or rolling under your skill level on a tagged skill, rolling a 20 (though the range can be increased based on how risky the action is) results in an additional element which is something detrimental happening (these are largely contextual to the skill check and ill talk about these when I talk a bit more specifically about certain checks)

By default you have 2d20 for each check though you can get more d20's from spending action points (that are a pool shared by the party) the cost of which increases based on number of d20's purchased (+1d20=1AP, +2d20=3AP +3d20=6AP) or buying action points from the GM(which also increases their action point pool) your party's action point pool is added to for every success over the difficulty level.

Opposed checks are simply where someone rolls a skill check as described before and the number of successes they generate equals the difficulty of the check for their opponent to beat the winner converts any excess successes into Action points, you can assist someone else with a skill check by rolling your own skill check at 1d20 if they get at least 1 success you can add any success you generate to their total successes.

this system encourages team work and cooperation since your successes can help your party to achieve more successes, there's even actions you can do like the Rally action that has a difficulty of 0 meaning ANY success is converted into Action points which could lead to some interesting party comps (high Charisma Hype man anyone?) of course I have it on good authority (a friend who is familiar with the Conan 2d20 system) that its important for the players to spend and buy action points to keep the game moving at a good pace, it is also worth noting that complications don't prevent successes they just add additional detrimental elements to the scene.

the book is ordered in a bit of an odd way so going forward ill be jumping around a bit to pull stuff from different sections of the book, next time I will run through character creation and skills.

M.C.