Gaming guidebooks for wargaming

Fallout Wasteland Warfare
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It’s been a awhile since I last posted a topic on the forum, though this time I thought I’d share something very useful for all eras of the Fallout franchise and TES franchise.

Remember gaming guidebooks? Big books that contained everything you needed to maximise your build, and the means to beat your enemies without struggling. Or as someone once told me “the cheaters book”.

What videogamers wont see to how wargamers see is that these guidebooks are actually a comprehensive source of knowledge of creativity.

How? Let me explain.

Let’s imagine we had a copy of TES: Skyrim, and we wanted a campagin set in Whiterun and it’s surrounding area. Right away you can see a detailed map of the Hold with all the locations marked, as well as the geographical birds eye view of the land. Already you’ve got map which you can chart the journey (be it as a campaign tree or a literal chart grid like Warhammer Mighty Empire hexagons of old)

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(Sourced from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gaming guide book by Bethesda)

This can be your sand box to create a journey for 1v1 campaign or a club campagin where the organiser creates a grand quest. Be it a lost relic, a conquest to capture a mighty fortress or even a Civil War event.

You can read the lore about the Hold in the guidbook, with some handy illustrations of maps and locations.

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(Sourced from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim gaming guide book by Bethesda)

For Fallout Wasteland Warfare enthusiasts, you can also find useful information too, such as Fallout: New Vegas guidebook with faction units, locations, maps, lore and other useful information for wargamers.

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(Sourced from Fallout: New Vegas gaming guide book by Obsidian Entertainment)

When you think about it, it’s a good thing Modiphius didn’t go for the army book approach for factions, as you can get it in these books and more. You might even combine expansion rules by Modiphus with a bespoke pool of cards relating to a chosen dungeon.

If this post isn’t suitable for the forums as a related topic on wargaming, I’ll take it down. However, I think it’s something worth checking out if you’re interested in creating campaigns, settlement mode or group games playing F:WW or TES: CTA.

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I went out and got the FO3 guide (the only one I was missing) after Wasteland Warfare was released purely for the maps!

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I reference these when coming up with sets/card lists for sure.

Nothing like theming your games to match an environ as closely as possible right?

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I’ve got every one of them from FO3 to FO76 and ES Morrowind to Skyrim. I got them so I could build the different vaults and dungeons from the maps. I wonder if they ever released one for FO and FO2? If not, I’m sure someone’s mapped out the caves and towns on the wiki, which is another good resource. :slight_smile:

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The maps are really useful, especially for RPG and wargaming as a reference. Fallout 3 and NV have got tons of awesome locations for inspiration. If only Honest Hearts DLC had a gaming guide book of its own. :sweat_smile:

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That’s a lot of gaming guide books, tons of references for inspiration. :grinning:

I’m not sure about the first two Fallout games having guidebooks, way before my time haha. I’d imagine they did have a guide book or booklet, though they must be hard to come by these days.

I’m 50/50 on wiki sources as it can be edited by anyone. I stick to official sources unless there’s none available, like Honest Hearts DLC since it dosent have a gaming guide book. Though I did find some interesting information on the tribes on the Fallout Wiki. :slightly_smiling_face:

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There’s pretty much a great wealth of inspiration in the guide books, a lot of which even I didn’t know about! Probsbly one setting could last several wave releases based on the amount of factions, individuals, items and so on are in it. :slightly_smiling_face:

If only the DLC expansions had a gaming guide book for reference. :sweat_smile:

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The one I would love maps for is the Pitt - the steelyard is an amazing area that makes what is a simple fetch quest really interesting and fun

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You might be able to find some maps on Google images, or fan made maps of the Pitt on fan art sites. There’s quite a few good New Vegas and Fallout 2 designs for reference. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I looked it up and there were guidebooks for Fallout and FO2 and they sell for gobs of money now. I remember since the early 90’s when I played X-wing, there were “cheat books” for pretty much every PC game. I had a couple of of them for X-Wing. There was no Google, not even Yahoo search at the time. I have a couple of books that collected the url’s and even IP addresses for fan sites about Star Wars and Star Trek. They were each as thick as a phonebook and looked a lot like the yellow pages (wtf are those, you may ask? :slight_smile: ). DNS servers and the World Wide Web were just becoming a thing, you actually had to type in a web site’s address, hardly any sites had their names registered.

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