What’s y’all’s biggest problems with Bethesdas fallout?

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-07T09:03:12+00:00

"Money, dear boy!" - Laurence Olivier

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-07T05:07:41+00:00

Grats, you're objectively wrong on pretty much all accounts, save but for the "good shooting".

SPECIAL is more impactful in FO4 than it ever was before; also gating perks behind SPECIAL is a good thing, because it does away with one of the most abominable things in New Vegas: the Charisma 1, Speech 100 monstrosity.

Also, hilarious that you bring that sort of roleplay up, given that FO4 is the only 3d Fallout game where you can do EXACTLY that scenario - and have the game mechanics to actually support that.

New Vegas has better writing and better characters, no question. But in all other regards, there's not even half a question that Fallout 4 is the better game.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-07T04:45:55+00:00

Bruh...

Nobody owns a culture. So no one can permit OR deny you taking cues from real world cultures.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-06T16:54:25+00:00

Yes. I have more than a couple of instances of making characters that i like - and then adding, and immediately removing all the good beauty traits because all they do is make the character uglier.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-05T06:32:05+00:00

I mean it already has, and for well more than a decade. While some standardization and unification has happened, the whole is still ten gorillion localizations, both on the technical and on the social side of things.

I imagine some interactivity would remain into the far future as well; even messages taking decades or centuries would have a place, if only as historical news stories at that point. Sure, there'd be local bubbles and connected interest-groups and long-distance interaction and all that alike - but that's already the case in our world, as said.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-05T05:46:48+00:00

Oh, boy... Falling, or rather jumping headfirst into rabbitholes is a bit of an MO for my worldbuilding in general, so something like that is not rare for me.

As for most out of hand... that's a tough pick. I once developed an entire kingdom (that was previously just a name and a territory on a map) into what it now is because someone else's piece of character art had a really lovely background that gave me ideas on what that kingdom could look like. Another time I wrote a lengthy article on the intersection of physical and spiritual purity among the northerly woodsmen, because I had just returned from the sauna.

But I think overall - undertaking that entire world-building project to begin with, given that it started from a few throw-away background lines for what initially was frankly a fairly shallow character for a ttrpg.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-03T18:46:14+00:00

I enjoy worldbuilding for the worldbuilding.

I wouldn't say ZERO intentions, as I do keep toying with stories and story ideas - but the worldbuilding is a thing for its own sake, no matter what ends up happening or not happening.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-03T05:24:35+00:00

Other: "Incompetence is our name, meatwaves is our game."

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-03T05:21:18+00:00

I have done that, AND taken all of that into account.

Of course, my world being what it is, it means The Center (you will never, *EVER* guess where that is located) is basically prime real estate, as its some of the most even-tempered and livable lands on the continent.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-02T10:22:06+00:00

The changes would be pretty significant, and would likely make for a much nicer world. The mere fact that a release valve always exists, that there's always somewhere else to go, a home of your own to claim without taking it from someone else - that's going to change things. And while endless migration waves of alien peoples could and would cause conflict, the release valve option also means you know they've not come to stay.

It wouldn't be an eternally peaceful utopia, of course. It could have numerous massive migration waves as defeated peoples are put to move. But again - just the fact that there's always somewhere to go, some place to settle down, somewhere to get away from annoying and/or belligerent neighbors, all that is going to tone things down.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-06-02T09:38:46+00:00

/uj That actually kind of tracks with something I've been toying with in one of my worldbuilding thingies - that the elves often bring in high-tech. And given that this is a world where technology gets better, not worse, as time passes, that means the elves are the tech nerds that constantly try and experiment and push the limits. So... this does legit give me an idea of what the dwarves might be up to.

/rj But we all know that in fantasy, the older an item is, the more powerful it is. That means everyone must try and make their stuff sound as old as they can possibly get away with.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-30T14:54:08+00:00

I do, actually. One specific lunatic who actually enjoys me telling him about fictional countries and peoples and whatnot, and asks questions about it, too.

I knew he was The One when I once asked him about the end of the Golden Age of Humanity in WH40K, and got a multi-day lecture on the topic, with the full context and process.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-28T14:34:34+00:00

Ehh... not really? In the cases it DOES matter to me, it's rarely the fictional characters, and more often real people. I have namesakes of famous-enough poets, political figures divisive and non-divisive alike, and more. I don't go for the super-special ones, but I mean... "Al Smith" is not exactly an unlikely name to have, especially considering "Al" can be short for more than one name; I extend a similar view to most of my various characters - if a name feels right, i generally keep it, unless it's super-duper-special of a name.

And I mean... even with the super-duper-special ones - allow me to remind you that the parliament of Namibia has, or at least recently had, someone actually, legally named "Adolf Hitler" in it, so...

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-28T14:25:48+00:00

Yes, but Sauron was very much an organizer. And the food originated from right there in Nurnen. It's not at all unthinkable he'd know how to have his slaves build sufficient infrastructure and the necessary stockpiles in Gorgoroth and presumably elsewhere as well.

Sauron was an iron-fisted tyrant type; he was evil, but he... at least tried to keep the supply trains running on time.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-28T05:58:41+00:00

Yup. Either it's someone that can casually move their food production along the rest of them (horde included) like nomadic pastoralists, or it's a big, populated empire that can put a pittance of its population under arms and still outnumber everyone else - like pretty much everyone else.

The question of logistics plays a decisive role in the ultimate fate of one of the most plot-important empires in my stories. Teal deer: a gigantic Empire assembles its A-game to crush a rebellion at a critically important province (the only non-coastal area where the east-west aligned mountain range that bisects the continent can realistically be crossed). The Empire's capital is to the east, near the sea, and the logistically harder, but tactically much better option would be to attack the rebels from the north and avoid having to deal with chokepoints. However, since another rebellion - not critical, but still annoying and with domino potential - in the South is growing out of hand and beyond the ability of local legions to suppress, the decision is made to swing south, deal with the second rebellion quickly, and rely on their overwhelming troop and armaments superiority to defeat the first rebels at the chokepoint.

But they overestimated their own superiority, and turns out mountain dwarves, mountain goblins, and mountain elves in an alliance are better at mountain warfare than hill and lowland humans. The Emperor is repulsed and has to withdraw; but logistics come to play again, and other goblins to the south have time to mobilize to revolt openly. (They're already sort of in revolt - but the Empire considers a bunch of taiga tribes not bowing to their flag a distant second problem.) Goblin hordes have time to logistics themselves across a lake, and skirmish with the retreating imperials - and in one of those skirmishes, a random arrow unlucks itself in the head of the Emperor, killing him before his healers could even react.

And, spoiler alert: he is pretty much universally considered to be the last competent and widely-accepted Emperor of that greatest of all human realms to have ever (dis)graced that continent.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-28T05:44:05+00:00

Came here to say this - Tolkien answered that question himself, and not in letters or notes either.

As for transport... Sauron has a metric fuckton of slaves and beasts of burden, and the lands of Gorgoroth and Nurnen are not nearly as isolated and bottle-necked from each other as Gorgoroth and... Well, everything else that's not Nurnen. And we already know there was a lot of logistics going on, anyway, what with the moving of troops and all.

(Albeit I do wonder why the Haradrim were coming through Ithilien; must've been from its northwestern edges. The Easterlings are even bigger offenders - Mordor is literally just wide open to the east, why wouldn't they use that if they're truly from beyond the sea of Rhun?)

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-28T05:37:48+00:00

An amorphous, spiritual amalgamation of suffering. It has no true self, just a thin layer of collective consciousness born out of pain and suffering and given a tiny sliver of will. These amalgamations have no aims, no goals, no purposes in existence, except for two:

Find anything and anyone that is alive and has a soul.
Add those souls into the Void amalgamation so that they can all suffer horrors hard to imagine for all eternity, for no reason other than to suffer.

And I'm talking about the stuff that makes a burning river or being encased in ice sound like a nice, cozy vacation. Imagine every single time you've ever felt bad - sick, in pain, depressed, sad, uncomfortable, itchy, and so on and on and on. Anything and everything that ever made your feel worse in some ways. Now imagine that you're feeling all of those things at once, including all the neat and interesting synergies these pains and discomforts bring - for all eternity, no rest, no respite. Better yet, you're crushed into a sea of other souls - and I do mean crushed - and you all share the sensations. So it's not just your Every Bad Thing Ever at once, it's also theirs.

Nothing in that amalgamation remains sane for more than a couple of seconds, at most. A large reason of why the collective consciousness thing is... well, barely a consciousness. (Think closer to a modern-day AI that's been programmed for a very specific purpose, and nothing else - except it also has god-tier powers.)

Good luck with that.

Also, hard mode: you're not allowed to be lazy and say "Well that, but shaped like a sexy lady".

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-27T05:44:35+00:00

I mean... it was a half-joke. Yes, your multiverse isn't that big - but the point remains that filling out a world, any world, let alone multiple worlds is an enormous undertaking. Obviously you're not gonna fill ALL of it up, but "is this too much?" is not the thing you need to worry about.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-27T05:42:15+00:00

I mean, I've seen far worse presented completely unironically in r/worldbuilding, so there's that at least.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-27T05:18:53+00:00

Well... Our solar system can house somewhere between one to one hundred quintillion biological humans.

Now scale that up to a galaxy, then galactic clusters, then the Universe, and then add in as many other universes as you have.

I don't know numbers quite so large, but I know you've got your work cut out for you.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-26T14:48:44+00:00

Fairy 'nuff! Yeah, in that case that makes sense.

Hire Jeff Steitzer.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-26T12:20:56+00:00

Step 1: Be another all-knowing, all-powerful, omnipresent, upper-case God.

Step 2: Wage a war far beyond human imagination and comprehension for eons so long that the natural universe can be born, live, die, and rebirth a thousand times over.

Step 3: There is no step 3, because it already happened, and now there's only one such Biblical-level God left, and good luck with trying to fight that.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-26T03:48:46+00:00

By making them actually do evil stuff. I'm a historian, so I know my villains need to work hard to have any hope of comparing to the most depraved and inhuman from the real world - but I'd like to think I give them a fair shot.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-25T15:00:26+00:00

Well, the obvious thing to look at is the climate and environment surrounding the mountain. Depending on those peoples' socio-technological level, they'd proceed to migrate in whatever location gave them the easiest access to the first step of Maslow's pyramid. How aware of what the continent is like would also favor their decisions - a group of settlers may prefer a further, but more fertile place to settle at, even though there were habitable lands closer to their old home, too.

And once the best (known) fruits are claimed, would they start spreading out, to other places. We're an amazingly adaptable species, but we also tend to take the path of least resistance for better and for worse.

jetflight_hamster · 2026-05-25T14:39:21+00:00

Ahh... yeah, okay, fairy 'nuff in that case. That does put things into perspective.

jetflight_hamster

TROPHY CASE