Chris Avellone talks about Van Buren PnP campaign

WorstUsernameEver

WorstUsernameEver

But best title ever!
Videogame-themed podcast Gamer's Tavern had Chris Avellone as a special guest for its 48th episode, and rather than going for the usual interview, had Chris talk about the Fallout pen and paper campaign he ran at Interplay as part of the pre-production on the cancelled project Van Buren. As I'm sure most of people that would be visiting this site know, Van Buren was the codename for Interplay's internally developed Fallout 3, before the property was sold to Bethesda.

There's a lot of good stuff in there that is, as far as I know, completely new. For example, Avellone talks about Van Buren's Elijah, an ex-Brotherhood of Steel companion that left the faction to join the Cipher, and that would serve as the basis for Fallout: New Vegas' DLC antagonist. Additionally, he elaborates on the original idea behind Caesar's Legion, a largely capitalistic corporate-inspired slaver army without the Roman theme of the J.E. Sawyer iteration, the idea to hire Bill Nighy as a voice actor (yes, really), and more.

If you're interested in the history of the franchise and "what could have been" thought experiments, this is a really good (and long, given it's almost 2 hours of podcast) listen.
 
Last edited:
Mr Avellone mentioned some details about his own Van Buren pen and paper sessions thought I would have loved to have recreated in the Fallout Texas setting I was trying to set up in the RPG forum.

Not sure what to think of people who think the 'Bloody mess' perk is the best perk in the game though.
Nothing against gore, but it feels a little childish.
 
Someone should write down all the interesting bits (so... like... everything). The audio quality is pretty bad at times, and I had a hard time understanding them every once in a while.
 
Lexx said:
Someone should write down all the interesting bits (so... like... everything). The audio quality is pretty bad at times, and I had a hard time understanding them every once in a while.
Click to expand...
Please do!
 
And we have the opportunity to win one of the Van Buren PnP games, I will give a shot, this is not a game, it is a relic.

Wonder if they deliver here in Brazil
 
Last edited:
veryblackraven said:
Damn, we need that info here - http://fallout.gamepedia.com/Van_Buren_PnP :)
Thanks for the spot, WorstUsernameEver.
I've taken a liberty of posting this on The Vault. With proper credits, naturally. Hope you don't mind.
Click to expand...

Lol, why would I mind. Thanks for the credits, though in all fairness, MCA retweeted the Gamer's Tavern guys and Lexx had also spotted it but couldn't post due to time constraints. Hope the podcast guys get the attention this deserves and the Wikis will be able to compile this material properly (podcast is cool, don't get me wrong, but it's not the most time-friendly format).
 
One of those guys was asked if he'd played Fallout, and he said, that he'd played the originals and got killed by roaches.
 
Roaches, scorpions, manti, where's the difference.
Everything's so pixelated it looks the same anyway.
 
I was saying, I am pretty sure only giant insects in FO1 and 2 were the Scorpions and the Mantises but maybe there were some and I couldn't remember.
 
Scorpions are technically arachnids.
Fallout 2 of course had the giant ants as well.

I think it was Fallout Tactics that introduced rad roaches.
 
I want to say that roaches were first in Tactics as well. Just checked. Yep.
 
I don't believe that I've progressed far enough into the game to have seen them. But then Tactics isn't really the series, it's a spin off ~with some pretty good combat improvements (not counting the RT mode); but I'd not call it an RPG... not any more than I would Myth:The Fallen Lords.
 
Those fuckers haven´t even bother do their homework properly. What a shame we don´t have any interview about Van Buren where people who know Fallout would be asking the questions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top