The Fallout tabletop RPG emerges from the vaults

The officially licensed Fallout tabletop roleplaying game is now out, bringing post-nuclear roleplaying to your tabletop from publisher Modiphius Entertainment. With the digital edition now available, Fallout: The Roleplaying Game becomes the latest property to get the tabletop RPG treatment, with a big colorful rulebook that'll probably be bought by just as many people who want to read a fat book of Fallout lore as want to actually play a TTRPG.

The Fallout TTRPG rules are generic to the setting, but they are written from the point of view of Fallout 4, so it gives stats for things like Synths in the bestiary and details, locations, and characters from Fallout 4 in the examples of play. It's a pretty straightforward game system, with players rolling a pair of 20-sided dice and looking to roll equal to or under a target. True to modern Fallout style, you can spend action points to roll more.

A piece of interior art from Fallout: The Roleplaying Game. A vault dweller surveys a ruined cityscape. — (Image credit: Modiphius, Bethesda)

Fallout's rules are an adaptation of Modiphius' pretty well tested in-house tabletop game engine, called 2d20 or Momentum, and it's actually in the tweaks to make it more Fallout-y that the cool stuff emerges. You have SPECIAL attributes, a big Bethesda-style skill list, and you pick Perks as you level up.

You can play as a Vault Dweller or Wasteland Survivor, but you could also go for a Brotherhood of Steel Initiate, Ghoul, Super Mutant, or my favorite, a Mister Handy robot. The rules are pretty easily extended, too: It'd be very simple to just hand a Dogmeat character sheet to that friend who always checks out and looks at their phone, for example.

Besides the digital edition, several physical editions are coming. There's a standard rulebook, special edition rulebook, custom dice, and gamemaster's kit. There's also a pretty cool-lookin GECK-themed special edition packed with maps and handouts and—my favorite again—Nuka Cola caps to serve as action point counters.

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An image of the book and box for Fallout: The Roleplaying Game, a tabletop RPG based on the Fallout series. — Fallout: The Roleplaying Game(Image credit: Modiphius, Bethesda)

Fallout is the second Bethesda world to get the tabletop RPG treatment from Modiphius, as Dishonored: The Roleplaying Game came out last year.

You can find Fallout: The Roleplaying Game on its official web site, and the digital edition is also for sale on popular PDF store DriveThruRPG. Physical editions, including the collector's editions above, are currently available as pre-orders but are scheduled to ship this Summer.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.