I want to explore!

Fallout Wasteland Warfare
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I’m not sure what I expect to accomplish with this post, other than providing some feedback to Modiphius for something I’m not sure any other customers would want except for me. But what the hell.

I really wish Modiphius sold 2D battle maps, dungeon tiles, etc. for this game with a grid system to play on it with.

All the pictures of the fantastic, ornate, and highly detailed 3D terrain that several of you have posted are excellent. I pre-ordered everything for this game before wave one launched (feels like ages ago) and continued going all-in for several waves. I have a couple of boxes of terrain. Cars, buildings, trees, etc. But I’ve steadily dropped off getting new stuff, because I can’t manage to stitch together that content into an actual campaign that lets me explore a world like I can from some of my other board games.

Fallout is such a vast setting with so many fun, interesting, and unique locations to explore. And I don’t get any of that variety from my table top. What I have looks nice, but it’s always the same little patch of outdoor wasteland, with the same handful of buildings, Corvegas, and bits of scatter. And that’s probably after about $500 of invested and a dozen or so hours of hobby time. It’s nice, but replacing a destroyed office building with a destroyed coffee shop or gas station, and re-arranging trees and other scatter around the table really doesn’t do enough.

In my mind the greatest strengths of this game are the ones that Modiphius have been playing to, that being narrative, theme, and customizability. This game won’t win any awards for best tactical combat, most elegant design mechanics, or anything like that. Let’s be honest, this is a super fiddly game for people who are into that sort of thing. But it is a fantastic sandbox of characters, events, equipment, and “stuff” to create all kinds of fun adventures.

But it’s all hampered by the fact that in order to have enough terrain to explore a variety of different locations, I would literally need an entire studio dedicated to the game with walls filled with buildings.

I appreciate all the cool stuff other enthusiasts here build to make their tables look cool. But I feel like realistically, the number of folks who buy into this game that actually have the time, motivation, physical space, equipment, money, and skill to go that far into it is vanishingly small. For every one of you golden demon hobbyists that have your own thread on the forums here, there are probably at least a hundred more of us that just don’t have the capability, budget, or motivation for this.

I want to leave my settlement and explore vaults, RobCo facilities, farms, towns, underground caves, the New Vegas strip, abandoned airports, and all the things that make Fallout such an engaging world to explore. I can’t build terrain for all this.

We know there is a vault exploration mode coming, but I’m betting it won’t be something accessible like a set of 2D dungeon tiles that can be configured in endless ways.

I’ve looked around for 2D map artwork from places like Heroic Maps and others, but I’ve only found a handful of maps that would be appropriate for Fallout, and not one of them capture iconic locations like a Vault-Tec vault, Nuka World, or anything fun like that. And then I’d have to figure how to print this out on sheets of paper and stitch them together. It’s just a mess. I just want to order sets of tiles and maps that are ready to play.

I could go on and on, but I think the point has been more than made and I’ve been long winded enough. I just wanted to post this somewhere on the off-chance that I’m not the only one that would be happy to sacrifice my 3D terrain if I could have a box of battle maps and geomorphic tiles that can transport me to dozens of different and distinct locations. Custom 3D terrain is always an option for those of you with the passion to create it. But for the rest of us that just want to play, it’s just too impractical.

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How does exploration work in Wasteland Warfare? I’m only familiar with the 2d20 RPG.

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There are some exploration kinds of mechanics when you are playing with Settlement Mode. You build and manage a persistent Settlement. There are some “Exploration” cards for sending your characters out to find things near your settlement.

But when I talk about exploration here, I mean the combination of procedural generation tools like drawing random event cards, or rolling on charts to create the sense of not knowing what’s going to happen next.

So maybe I send my characters “south” of my settlement and draw some random events for things that happen along the way, and then I stumble upon an abandoned Nuka Cola factory by chance and decide go check it out.

Then I would grab some battle map or set of tiles from the box that would depict the Nuka Cola factory, and roll on some random charts which tell me it’s being used as an outpost for the Gunners, and I end up spawning models and other things to populate the factory and then have a combat encounter.

A lot of board games use geomorphic dungeon tiles that allow you randomly draw a new tile as you continue making your way through a dungeon, not knowing what you are going to find. I think this kind of thing would work really well to represent underground vaults.

Wasteland Warfare has an amazing amount of content, fantastic models, and all these great ideas like settlement mode, enemy AI, event decks, and character customization. I just wish it had that extra bit to tie it all together so you could play it more like a Warhammer Quest or Shadows of Brimstone style game which is kind of the board game equivalent of an “open world” game.

I enjoy the combat system well enough, but I’m just tired of all the scenarios being in the same generic outdoor location every single time. I don’t see the point in buying into the new waves like New Vegas and the upcoming waves if I’m just going to be playing out the same battles on the same generic patch of outdoor wasteland.

And it’s such a shame because the game has so much content, I feel like it doesn’t need that much more to turn it into something more open and expansive. It just needs a nice varied set of locations for scenarios to take place in and a set of rules/systems to generate it all as you play.

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Modiphius can’t change that as it’s a physical game. You can design printout maps I guess but that’s rather limited and likely to be taken as “cheap” from the community. Battle mats are around but they are also quite pricey I often feel, and you can get a wide range but they are built for covering with your own terrain for the most part. There are some companies that make full colour terrain printout, like rocks and trees and such which makes filling up terrain easy. But I don’t know of any decent ones for corridor type buildings. It is a nightmare to make and keep them connected while also affordable.

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Look at the Big Book of Maps.
It may help.

Or something like:

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If I want quick 2d maps I use either the Necromunda tiles, or set up TTcombat Dungeon Tiles (I have x2 of set A) and use whatever scatter terrain I feel is appropriate. If I’m playing the ‘Into the Wasteland’ expansion (which if you haven’t got, sounds like the very thing you would love!), I just use a 3x3 map and set out dice to mark out out whatever tile set up I’ve drawn. Here’s a link to the dungeon tiles:

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Thanks, I appreciate the suggestions. But my goal wasn’t to get feedback on where I can find generic dungeon tiles or make them myself. I’ve already scoured the internet looking for battle maps and tiles with artwork that would fit the setting.

My goal was to communicate to Modiphius that at least one person (me), would be interested in them coming out with an official line of 2D maps and supporting a system of rules for playing on them as an alternative to playing on 3D terrain.

I don’t think it’s likely that it would actually happen, but I just wanted to submit the feedback somehwere and the forums seems like as good a place as any because maybe I’m not the only person who feels that way and others might want to chime in.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I feel like if this game were playable on a professionally made set of maps and tiles, it would appeal to a whole new audience of board gamers who love games like Descent, Warhammer Quest, Gloomhaven, etc., and sell to those markets as well.

And I’m making that suggestion not because I want 3D wargamers to be left in the lurch, but because it seems like the game is already so close to being able to support both markets, but just needs that extra little push to make it really sing as a 2D tabletop game. It seems like Wasteland Warfare could be opened up to those markets in addition to the 3D wargamers without having to support a whole new game, but just a line of 2D maps to play on and an alternate set of rules for playing on them.

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Rampant and possibly very incorrect speculation here (that likely can’t be verified) but they may not actually have the license to produce something like that. Those examples mentioned (Descent etc.) would normally fall under ‘Board Games’, the Fallout IP licence for which might still be with FFG as opposed to whatever F:WW is bracketed as (Tabletop Miniature Game?). Just a thought and I’m making no claim to any sort of understanding of the process or current licensing.

If that is the case then 2D maps for RPG-esque purposes would presumably be ok but full on 2D boards/tiles probably wouldn’t. Hasbro/FFG and Imperial Assault spring to mind.

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That’s a good point. I hadn’t considered the possibility of licensing restrictions.

I’ve never played any of Modiphius’ D20 RPGs. Do they have any history of publishing 2D maps to support any of those big enough to support miniatures?

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I would expect they can get it through the cover as terrain and maps. It would work for all 3 of their FO lines so would be possible.

Reason why I’ve suggested looking else where is Modiphius has limited release slots and a huge amount of content they are trying to release and have, yet again had their releases pushed back due to recent events. This means even if they want to do this, they haven’t released everything they first displayed years ago.

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I agree with you. The game has so many cool missions, but nothing that really ties it all together like the campaign system in necromunda for example (which on the other hand is lacking in every other way compared to fww).

The good thing with fww though is that thanks to all its cool mechanics and components, you can really be creative.

I started to make a framework for a map campaign system. You can copy that and edit it however you like.

There’s also a cool system called “project lunchbox”. No map though, but it can give you some ideas:

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