Time to start saving up your bottle caps, because the Fallout RPG series is getting its first real board game soon.

Fantasy Flight Games teased a familiar-looking "please stand by" image on its social media pages on Tuesday morning, but the vague tease didn't last long. Shortly after, the Fallout board game's official announcement rolled out with plenty of details about how exactly the game will work. The adventure game, tentatively priced at $59 (~£55), will support up to four players, along with single-player adventuring, and it will challenge players to amass the most "influence" points by the time the game ends.











Gameplay unfolds on one of four pre-made "campaign" maps based on Fallout 3 and Fallout 4 (The Capital Wasteland, The Pitt, The Commonwealth, and Far Harbor). Each campaign includes a pre-made central core, specific event cards for "main" and "side" quests, and randomly laid cards to spice up additional play-throughs. Also, players must make RPG-like moral decisions in every game, and these cause ripple effects. Game Informer describes one in which a player chooses to free super-mutants from imprisonment, which ultimately fills the game's "draw deck" of monster cards with more oversized mutants.

Your character can be customized to a great, Fallout-like extent (yes, the series' S.P.E.C.I.A.L. leveling and perk system comes to the board game), and like the video games, you'll deal with both HP and radiation levels. Accepting radiation will often heal you, but once your HP falls beneath your Rads line, you'll have to start over (with all XP and items preserved, at least). You'll ultimately win by fulfilling conditions on acquired influence cards, and some of these will require allying and working with specific Fallout universe alliances (Brotherhood of Steel, Railroad, Slavers, et al). Many details, including how combat works in the game, haven't been detailed just yet, but Fantasy Flight would be crazy not to include some "slowed down," V.A.T.S.-like system via cards.

The biggest question mark at this point is how exactly Fallout will play out with other people at the table. Each campaign ends when either of a campaign's factions reaches the end of its power track—whether any player has gotten enough influence points or not—but how exactly human players will ally and even doublecross each other on their individual paths to acquiring influence has not been explained. (Fantasy Flight certainly hasn't advertised, say, players joining forces to create Fallout 4-styled settlements .) Ars' biggest board gaming fans will keep our eyes peeled at major events in the next month, including Gen Con and PAX West, in case Fantasy Flight brings any testing copies.

Listing image by Fantasy Flight Games / Bethesda Softworks