101 Fallout Side Quests and Environmental Stories

[Reynard]

14. Amidst all the ruin the PCs find a perfectly pristine house: manicured lawn, unbroken windows, freshly washed siding, etc... Inside it is even better: not just clean, but all the best and newest amenities from the Pre-War era. It turns out this "house of the future" was a model show-house and is inhabited by a Handy robot family (Mr., Mrs., Jr. and Dot, plus a robodog!) programmed to both keep the house up and try an sell it to anyone who comes knocking.

 

[Reynard]

15. Strange lights are seen in the sky over a remote hilltop. When the PCs investigate they find a small settlement of people who believe aliens have come to judge Earth and are trying to get the aliens' attention. Unfortunately, it works. Can the PCs fight of the Zetan assault team come to eradicate the settlement and abduct a few brahmin?

 

[Reynard]

16. Inside a Pulowski shelter, the PCs find a skeleton and among the possessions of the dead person is a note. The individual was writing a desperate confession to unburden themselves in case the shelter didn't work (it didn't): they were a RobCo employee that conspired with a fellow employee to steal a bunch of robot modification to sell for a windfall, but the dead man got worried he couldn't trust his partner in crime and knocked him out and slipped him into the queue to become a robobrain! This all happened at a nearby RobCo facility, so the PCs can go there and "interrogate" the robobrain and find out where the cache was hidden the day before the bombs fell.

 

[Reynard]

17. The PCs find a remote cabin on top of a rocky hill. There is a terminal inside that if accessed during specific time intervals (each interval is 17 minutes long and repeats every 341 minutes) the PCs can converse with someone that seems half mad but also knowledgeable about the Pre-War world. They are talking to a ghoulified astronaut in a tiny capsule that has been orbiting the Earth since the War. There is no way to help them and the astronaut can't do much for the PCs, but they could be friends.

 

[MarkB]

18. The party come upon an occupied Vault whose denizens offer a unique service. Their Vault, as scrutiny of records in computer terminals will affirm, was the subject of a radical Vault-Tec experiment in which they were subjected to a variety of mental rigours and exposed to exotic radiation in the hopes of causing them to develop psychic powers. The experiment worked, and they now possess unique powers of clairvoyance, which they use in service of nearby settlements for a fee.

Sufficiently intensive investigation will reveal this to be a scam. They were actually a control Vault, and have overwritten their terminals with false logs. They monitor radio signals to get a bead on local goings-on, and are very good at reading people and providing seance style directed experiences, and horoscope style vague prognostications.

 

[Bohandas]

I was going to suggest a Vault 420, which had drugs dispensed via the ventilation system, but then I learned that apparently Vault 106 already has this as its gimmick officially

 

[Reynard]

19. A new brewery opens up in the wasteland. But it's basically Slurm -- they are milking giant mutant grubs and distilling it. Those that get addicted turn into raging drunk zombies until they explode into a swarm of tiny versions of the grubs.

 

[Bohandas]

20.) A settlement filled populated enitrely by clones or brain upload robots of a single original person. But none of them get along with one another anyway.

21.) A tribe or cult whose rites and initiations are inspired by a cache of old Jackass DVDs

 

[Bohandas]

22.) Vault 3000, whose only entertainment was the worst movies the builders could find

23.) A Discordian religious sect

24.) Megavault A- a vault that is literally Alpha Complex from Paranoia

 

[Reynard]

24.) Megavault A- a vault that is literally Alpha Complex from Paranoia

I think it is pretty common head canon for Alpha Complex to be a Fallout Vault, and I hold it myself. I would be more inclined to make it an easter egg, though: a long abandoned vault full of clone corpses with security cards and a mad "friend computer" running the place.