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How do?

So, you know I effing love Necromunda, Game of Games and all round best thing ever?

Well, I also love Fallout 4 (only one I’ve played).

And recently I’ve been pondering why the Underhive can’t contain a Vault. And I can’t come up with a good reason.

From there, I’ve been chewing over how such a thing could be realised for a campaign. My first thought is ‘well, how long has it been down there, sealed’. Because that’s an important question. Also, what are the contents? Do I go low tech, or high tech (compared to Necromunda). Are the inhabitants alive, dead, or just sort of gone?

In theory, this could be an interesting way to reinvent Spyrers. They’re not so much Uphives on a sport shooting holiday. Just people from another time defending their patch, with weapons even the like of Van Saar cannot imagine.

From here, I hope you can see the ‘galaxy brain’ myriad ways this could be explored. Are their strictly finite warriors within the Vault? Should Gangs be allowed to form alliances with them, or present it as a ‘free-for-all’ type thing, with specific scenarios available to try to wrest control of the vault itself?

If so, do I make the Vault itself a territory, combining rules of various others? Should that mean all others are forsaken as the Gang and their associates move wholesale?

Could that be an option solely for Outlaw Gangs, with Law Abiding instead being charged with aiding the Vault Dwellers, and gaining a specific benefit/favour for each successful defence?

Gah! So, so many options! And that’s where your brains come in, fellow Dakkanauts. Let me hear your thinks on it. I’m definitely not planning this as a one off encounter. Rather, it’ll be a background thing for a whole campaign season, a point around which many others revolve.

Please be as ambitious or conservative as you wish. I’m sure you’ll all have something fun and interesting to add, and I totally reserve the right to steal the bits that tickle me! Trade off is you of course should feel free to steal any of my ideas

A sealed evil. Let it be necrons, tiranids, or any other eldritch thing that somebody sealed eons ago and now it's been released. A nice way to introduce an overpowered NPC gang as foil to the other gangs.

M.

That could be fun, if we allow Gangs to essentially clear the vault out.

But I still fancy presenting a sort of moral quandary. Lawful Gangs have the choice of helping or assaulting. Palanite’s can only defend, outlaw Gangs can either assault, or help defend to try to earn ‘Brownie Points’ and lose the outlaw status.

Really depends how far the Arbitrator wants to take it?

119 views and one comment?

Ouch.

Right in the ego!

Take a page from Borderlands 1: Have it be empty.

I would do it the other way round, if it's full of ancient tech then the guilders would want that. Making defending it the outlaws jobs while the lawful gangs try to take it for the builder bounty, or horde it for themselves at risk of being outlawed if found out.

Honestly, get crazy with conversions. The 'vault' is multi-tiered... and occupied. For every it of tech that's found, maybe a chamber opens an unleashes something nightmarish.

Make a few 'DarkTech Abominations of the Dark Age'...

Use a combination of the Murder Cyborg and Iron Automata. Maybe it's a techno-zombie virus that can infect random people...

...so create a few bounty hunters, and roll on a table for which ones appear.

Yeah, I say take the Fallout approach - each vault had some "experiment" done on it that went wrong in some way releasing some horror (but the preserved techno-artifacts inside are still well worth the risk!)

Some ideas:

-Zombie/Poxwalker/Gellerpox plague type situation in there
-Men of Iron
-deadly Saw style traps have already killed all the vault occupants
-Vault occupants unfroze early, mutated into cannibal monster mutants ala Pandorum

The multiple floors idea sounds good - different beasties on different levels - either sealed off from each other until the vault is opened from outside, or having been in a constant stalemate of war for millenia.

High tech, possibly DAoT level guys on one level, who the Admech (hence the law abiding gangs) will want to plunder the absolute hell out of.

A nation of clones, fast grown for combat and defence of their turf (Think "The Doctor's Daughter" episode of Doctor Who) who have no real idea who they are or of anything outside the Vault.

Plague Zombies. Obviously.

Ratskin equivalents!

Plenty of sides to take for law abiding and outlaw gang, rather than a monoculture.

And I'd definitely say that in the event of a Vault Of Cool Stuff opening, the likelihood is that the Authorities on Necro are NOT going to be defending the occupants.

Wee bit of threadomancy, mostly because my friend and I have been riffing on this topic lately.

I’m intending to run a campaign when I move into my girlfriend’s at some point in the future. This will help me establish a new hobby circle, and be a laugh.

Super keen to explore the Vault idea in particular, alongside having set, repeatable locations for certain things, such as a settlement/trading post.

Likely to set it in a newly discovered Dome, with the Gangs being sent in to sniff out what’s worth having. And the Vault will be part of that.

My main inspiration right now is The Hive from the Resident Evil films. Some kind of Dark Age experiment, sealed away for millennia.

I’d probably run the opening as a group game, and have an absolute flood of Zombies shuffle out.

Depending on the reactions of the gangs (fight it out, leg it, etc) it’ll then inform things further. If a decent number choose to pull out once things start getting hairy, I’d probably have Zombies as wandering monsters, causing everything to get more dangerous.

If they make a fight of it, I can come up with clearance scenarios etc.

And those can vary depending on what Gangs are taking part. If there are Enforcers, they’ll have a job on their hands to protect whatever snacky tech lies within. Van Saar might aid in that, if only to preserve their monopoly - and so on and so forth.

And there will be something decent in there, otherwise my players would likely end up feeling very cheated at the end of a campaign season!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

Likely to set it in a newly discovered Dome, with the Gangs being sent in to sniff out what’s worth having.

My group ran a campaign on this concept.
The arbitrator drew up a simple grid (iirc 7x7) map. Each tile had a predetermined territory type (this was Dominion), along with terrain type and any Book of Peril Badzone effects. None of the player's knew what the map was like, we discovered it as we went along.
Us gangs each started around the edges of our map, and in each campaign cycle could declare which territory the gang moved into. When two or more gangs met or walked to one another, there would be a fight.
On top of that, there would also be various narrative things, such as scouting out areas, finding long-forgotten-loot and similar.

That might be an idea for you to consider, sticking a vault at the centre could be an interesting twist, especially how that affects games once opened sounds very cool.

All ideas valid and fair game for stealing!

I feel Necromunda does benefit from these custom touches. Make the Dome feel somewhat defined.

I totally agree, some of the most fun I've ever had in Necromunda is when we stepped away from a strict fight and just played for a narrative.

Yeah, it also gives the GM more to do, as I’m a strong believer that one should not be a player in a campaign you’re running. Frees up the thought process from bias, whether conscious or not.

Great thing about the vault concept (and indeed any ‘sandbox’ concept) is that I can adapt the whole thing on the fly depending on player feedback. And I can get my dice rolling fix by playing the part of NPC forces if I so wish.

To use the Zombie concept? I can either give them fixed behaviour to govern their movement, or take control. Can even do both to change it up. Perhaps I play them in an “intelligent” way all the while a specific model is up and about, and then put them on automatic once it’s dropped.

Heck, can even drop that into a post game sequence (requiring me to maintain some secrecy from the player/s), giving an intelligence test to see if the gang member responsible for the “disruptive shot” makes the connection. If so, they’ll need to actively test the theory.

The “put them on auto” mechanics can also, if mood suits, be kept secret until similar observations are made. So, if I do standard Zombie Trope? Mill around standard behaviour, move toward non-silenced gun fire, move toward position of the last visible gang meme et, if they were within x inches (to be eyeballed).

From there, it’s entirely possible for a well informed, organised and played Gang to actually weaponise the nasties.

Example? Gang A has figured out their behaviour patterns. During a “dark” game (played against me), they coral a bunch of Zombies (using pipes, vents, cunning and strategic door closing) after they’ve taken out the Control Zombie to trigger their Auto/Herd behaviour into a single chamber. And there they stay, until some poor sod opens the door.

Gah! So much I could do!

We did zombies in one mission.
Three of us just got together, each with a small gang of 500 points (incidentally three fighters each).
We didn't have an arbitrator so we just made up some basic stats and have the zombies run towards fighters (we originally said they'd run towards noise, but fighters never not-fired so it didn't make any difference).
Our objective was to run through, download data from a terminal, and return. However only the gang with the terminal would win.
It was an amazing game, I played my cards and alliances just right such that in the end I made it out with the chit and my full gang, whereas none of the others made it out lol.

It definitely sounds a great concept with a commanding zombie. Although I wonder if the difference would be too subtle if the zombies are only secondary to the overall mission.

Depends on how it pans out.

I plan on having a Big Old Box Of Tricks at my disposal, and a similarly sized Tool Kit to adapt on the fly.

Bearing in mind Campaign Fatigue is a very real thing, I think I’d do it as Seasons.

Season 1 - nice and straight forward, largely basic campaign stuff. Let’s people dust off the cobwebs, and more welcoming to new blood. Ends with the discovery, and ideally opening of the vault

Season 2 - the Zombie (or equivalent, quite like the idea of cyborgs at the moment) begin to spread, rising in intensity until the end of that season, where the gangs break the back of them

Season 3 - mopping up, and initial exploration of the vault itself.

Seasons could bleed into one another as events dictate. Quite keen on “tricking” a single gang into opening the vault and unleashing the horrors to come.


Ooooooooooooh. Tech Zombies.... Given the Vault could be millennia old, imagine a sect of tech heads who became ever more cybernetically enhanced, until their central computer took over? Due to some disaster or other, it sealed the vault, putting its charges in deep freeze type.

It’s influence is akin to the Nid Hive Mind, but strongest within the vault. The “leader beasts” type thing are signal boosters, hence taking them out causes disorganisation.

In terms of models, something like Tech Thralls mixed with Servitors - and the threat that any Ganges left behind will be “adopted” to replenish their ranks.

That could be cool.
I concept I saw in a computer game is a techpriest that's died and long since mummified, however their automated cybernetics and still active and fighting.
That techpriest had, before they died, downloaded their conscience to a CAT unit.

Because you could have such a 'reanimated' techpriest leading an army of tech thralls that are all just rotting/mummifying from age and ticking over on autopilot.
If you want to copy the idea wholesale the CAT unit could be a cool reward for whichever gang actually gets the vault, it would be a lark to have a little CAT trundelling around the underhive.

Now I'm giving myself ideas xD

That idea is being pinched!

Do keep us posted!