I plan on making a Fallout campaign on the Savage Worlds system. Set on Mexico City and elements of Underrail because thats what i've been playing and some of that stuff sounds cool. This would be my first time being a dm after some shitfuckery with some friends codming some massive campaing that fell off.
Its there some advice you could give about dming, fallout or savage worlds?
I've been running a Fallout game set in Detroit and it's been working out pretty well. The rules are easy to learn and it's good for games where you'll be expecting a lot of action. The core rulebook will cover about 90% of everything you need to make a Fallout game, but you'll have to homebrew the rest or get it off somebody else's homebrew. If you want, I can post my homebrew stats so you can get an idea of what you need to do or just use it for yourself.
For Fallout, you need to figure out what kind of enemies your players are going to encounter. The main point of Fallout is that humanity remains the same no matter what may happen to it and there will always be war despite this. So the question is who is going to be in Mexico City and what are they fighting over? It's mentioned in
New Vegas that Mexico City wasn't hit too hard in the war. So maybe there's enough industry left intact that would give who ever controls it a clear advantage over their rivals. Your players could be mercenaries fighting for those fighting over Mexico City, or scavengers trying to get whatever they can get hands on while avoiding the major factions. For the who, I can't really answer because I'm not the most familiar with Mexico. The Cartels, the remnants of the Government, and the Catholic Church are the only ones I could think of for Mexico, so you should do some research. Be sure to have some smaller factions and groups as well. New Vegas did this really well, so replay it or
read the wiki if you want a good idea Flesh them out, figure out how they would adapt to the post-apocalyptic environment, and give them some quirks and a reason to side with any of them. It also helps if you read some post-apocalyptic stories to get some inspiration. Fallout had a lot of influences so you might as well get some ideas from them. I recommend
A Canticle for Leibowitz as a start.
As for DMing, I can give some general advice. Avoid sandbox games for your first time. Player agency may sound good, but more often than not they'll just wander aimlessly and get bored without a clear goal and obstacles. It can be as simple as getting rich or just killing a specific type of enemy (faction members, death claw hunters, etc.). Sandbox games are also more work than linear games so try keeping the plot simple. Be sure to be well read on the rules so you don't have to halt the game to look something up every couple minutes. For notes, I like to type up an outline of what's going to happen without getting too detailed. Your players might always find a way to accomplish something you didn't anticipate so you need to be prepared to improvise.
Hope this helps out, and maybe someone more experienced can help out as well.
