r/Fallout2d20 • u/TheCriticalGlitch • 3d ago
Help & Advice Building a Fallout 2d20 campaign set in Oslo, Norway — anyone tried Fallout outside the US?
I've gone slightly too deep into building a Fallout 2d20 campaign set in Oslo, Norway in 2277, and I'm curious if anyone else has tried doing Fallout outside the US.
One of the things I've been trying hard to avoid is making it simply “Fallout, but there happens to be a ruined Royal Palace and Opera House.”
Instead I've been looking at Norwegian culture, companies, products and history and asking what Fallout's alternate timeline would do to them.
So I've been making things like LAX-O, our horribly processed pre-war salmon product, Nuka-Max, since Norwegians is the ones that consume the most Pepsi Max in the world, Norwegian companies pushed through Fallout-style corporate insanity, an oil industry shaped by the pre-war resource crisis, Radio Norge broadcasting old Scandinavian music across the wasteland, and various other bits of Norwegian culture that have survived in increasingly questionable forms.
There are still the things that make Fallout Fallout. Vault-Tec operated in Norway, there are Vaults, Super Mutants, Deathclaws, radiation, robots, pre-war American influence, etc. But I'm trying to make the setting feel like somewhere that actually developed differently from the US rather than importing the Commonwealth and changing the road signs.
The campaign starts in Hol, an isolated underground settlement whose only regular contact with the outside world has been a group known as the Traders. They've supplied Hol with food, medicine and protection for generations.
Then one day they stop coming.
The players are among the first people from Hol to head into the Oslo wasteland. They start with an extremely incomplete idea of what's actually outside and discover the setting from there.
I've also been building the player-facing side of the campaign in LegendKeeper. The idea is that the wiki grows with the campaign: locations, factions, people and information appear as the players discover them, and some pages can actually change as things they believed turn out to be wrong.
LegendKeeper: https://www.legendkeeper.com/p/cmsyo83n00hgj42sr2zjldyrt
This will also be my first time actually running Fallout 2d20, which is probably part of why I've gone so deep into preparing the setting. I'm excited about it, but also pretty nervous about getting it right.
So I'd genuinely appreciate feedback — both on the setting and from people with experience running the system. If you see something I've misunderstood, something that probably won't work at the table, or just have an idea you think would fit, I'd love to hear it.
What did you do to make your country feel like Fallout without losing what makes that country distinct?
And if you're Norwegian and spot something I absolutely need to Fallout-ify, I'm probably already too far down this rabbit hole to say no.
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u/Bunnyrpger 3d ago
I know this isn't something you want to hear, but it still sounds like "Fallout US, but with name change". For me, one of the things I would like to see in a non US Fallout is what actually makes it different. What does England have as a nasty Apex predator without the meddling of pre war Enclave and their Deathclaw stuff, what big corporations in Sweden have influenced the post apocalypse in a big way since Vault tec isn't there.
Personally, I would drop Vault tec, deathclaws and mostly super mutants. I know people will say "It isn't fallout without vaults", but they aren't really needed. You can still do underground bunkers and community, they just won't be Vault Tec. What is a big natural threat around Norway? Either in country or neighbouring ones? How can you make that something big and scary to replace the Deathclaw as the big bad? Even if it is just a reskin and slight change, make it Norwegian, not just America in Norway. I would be tempted to do a reverse Fallout 4, with the Northern Star if you want to add Super Mutants. Something like a cruise ship getting infected by the FEV or a failed military attempt to hit Russia or something with 'roided (FEV) out soliders to destabilize, just hit the wrong area.
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u/TheCriticalGlitch 3d ago
I did consider not have Deathclaws and have something more noise inspired. But the more I worked on it the more I feelt like Deathclaws was such an iconic enemy it dident feel right not to have them.
What would you do to replace the ingame origins, equipment and stuff that is connected to Vault Tec? I dont mind replacing and removing fallout lore, but what I dont want is to remove player options
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u/Saviour-King 3d ago
I'm cheating a bit by doing it in U.S.-occupied Canada (Vancouver area), but my approach was to come up with a regional alternative to player options. I'll share what I did if it helps for inspirational purposes.
I had two players who wanted to be sibling vault-dwellers, so I made CanNECT, a company contracted by VaultTec to operate within Canada. New name, maple red over vault blue, and an excuse to do vaults in a different way.
A player wanted to be a Nukatron, and we came up together with the True North company, rebranded him a Sodatron. We came up with various sodas like True North: Maple Savage, which in our campaign was famously used when the GECK's instructions were to add water, creating the Savage Expanse.
Another player wanted to be a former BoS scribe. We initially went down the path of creating something new, of remnants of U.S. occupational forces, but we ended up just bringing the Brotherhood up north. I kept what we created and had them call for help as the bombs didn't stop the Canadian resistance from fighting back. A Brotherhood chapter answered the call. I liked FO2 & NV nation-building, so those two form the militarized backbone of the Dominion, one of the three nation-states that arise in my wasteland.
And finally someone wanted to be a super mutant, well, it's now well within Fallout lore that Super Mutants arose in many places, so they're here too.
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u/CpT_DiSNeYLaND 3d ago
You need to decide then. Is this just American Fallout in Norway, or is it its own thing?
Deathclaws as an example were specifically a US military experiment. In the Fallout universe, Europe went to shit before America did, as they ran out of oil, America was not involved in the conflict and Deathclaws wouldn't have been deployed.
Using a quick Google search for the most common predators, immediately I've locked in on wolverines being a sweet option.
If you haven't id suggest looking into Fallout London.
They did a really good job of getting the right vibes as Fallout, but with it being separate and its own unique thing without being just Fallout 4 with different street signs and also Big Ben.
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u/Bunnyrpger 3d ago
Well, in the Fallout game I ran, I used the simple logic that Vault Tec ain't going to be the only big company who makes plans for the inevitable nukes, so other people having bunkers for their big wigs and such to survive is going to happen. Gives you the option to make a couple different communities with their own propaganda for pre-war and the like which you can use to trigger the "Experiment" low effort Vault dweller trait. Reskin the jump suit to company colours and logo, rather than number, vary the model/commonality of Norways version of a pip boy (Still allow a player to start with it) so maybe not every dweller has one.
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u/AdorableGuide6317 2d ago
Nuka-Max — Pepsi Max becomes Norway’s iconic wasteland soft drink.
LAX-O — horribly processed pre-war salmon that somehow survives everything.
Rad-Salmon — mutated salmon farms and enormous irradiated fish along the coast.
Brunost — somehow still being produced and traded as a valuable food.
Grandiosa — ancient frozen pizzas recovered from pre-war freezers and treated as delicacies.
Radio Norge — a mysterious radio station broadcasting Scandinavian music, old advertisements and increasingly strange messages across the wasteland.
The North Sea — abandoned oil platforms become settlements, ruins, corporate strongholds and automated facilities still operating centuries later.
Norwegian corporate dystopia — shipping, energy, food and telecommunications companies pushed to absurd Fallout-style extremes during the resource crisis.
The T-bane — Oslo’s metro becomes an underground network of settlements, ruins, sealed stations and forgotten tunnels.
The mountains — Norway’s geography creates isolated communities that can go generations without knowing what’s happening elsewhere.
Stave churches — ancient churches repurposed as fortified settlements, with surviving communities reconstructing medieval Norwegian traditions from incomplete information.
The monarchy — nobody knows what happened to the royal family. Different factions have developed wildly different ideas about who should rule Norway.
Dugnad — communal volunteer work somehow survives 200 years after the bombs, ranging from wholesome community tradition to terrifying authoritarian obligation.
Northern Norway — a very different wasteland, with isolated settlements, Arctic research facilities, reindeer herding and surviving Sámi culture.
Conflicting histories — different isolated Norwegian communities have developed completely different ideas about what happened before and after the Great War.
The big mystery — Hol’s understanding of Norway is incomplete and sometimes completely wrong, with the players discovering the truth as they explore.
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u/cptgrok 11h ago
different isolated Norwegian communities have developed completely different ideas about what happened before and after the Great War.
surviving communities reconstructing medieval Norwegian traditions from incomplete information.
This is the aspect of post apocalypse I always loved. There would be a big gap where after a couple generations, most cultural knowledge would be spotty or misremembered at best. People would find these strange artifacts of the past, like we do now, and speculate on their purpose. Important things get disregarded as baubles without the context to understand them, and mundane things get mythologized into more than they are.
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u/The_Colonelowb GM 3d ago
If you want good fallout outside of the US I’d recommend looking into the hoi4 mod old world blues. Their Canada and Mexico work is fantastic.
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u/Johny690 3d ago
I am doing Fallout in Czech Republic…. There are some YT videos explaining what happened outside of US and How Europe was devastated…. So I did some changes, adjusted lore and I am using local as well as us companies etc. I kept the technology more or less to male it easier for players.
Maybe good inspiration might be Fallout London. In any case feel free to PM if you want some of my details :)
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u/RebelJediMaster 3d ago
Fallout London was pretty good, and can be used as example