art by StriderSyd

I’d like to start out by saying a big “Thank you!” to the reviewers AnYPony, Jim Fear, Dr. Wolf and Antony C. for the amazing collaborative review of Fallout: Equestria that they posted late last week. I know they put a lot of effort into it and had been working on it for quite some time. The hard work paid off. If you haven’t seen it, check it out below:

That was a little something “new”. Now for something “old”…

I’ve long considered one of the best things for Fallout that Bethesda has done was giving out the G.E.C.K. and openly allowing modders to play with their world. Years ago, I was part of a Fallout fan community called Fallout3Underground, a community built primarily by Fallout 3 modders and a number of hardcore fans.

A lot of the modders there enjoyed creating ports of crossover content, such as weapons and armors from other game systems – something that Nexus, the primary Fallout mod site, was strongly against. In addition to being a host site for mods by people who didn’t want to deal with some of the shenanigans happening on Nexus at the time, the site included art, fiction and roleplaying forums… and, of course, both Fallout-related and general chat. (I’ll admit, I spent an inordinate amount of time taking screenshots, finding just the right ones to post on the screenshots threads.)

The fiction section was my baby, though. I started it by posting PipBoy diaries detailing my playthroughs of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas. This was also the birthplace of Fallout: Equestria.

The first several chapters of Fallout: Equestria were originally written on Fallout3Underground’s fiction forum. It helps put the first chapters in perspective when you picture them written as posts on a thread: no benefit of proofreaders, the scene breaks designed to conform to storytelling-by-post and written with an eye towards Fallout3Underground’s attitude against Walls-o-Text.

Sadly, while I had a several readers, almost none of them gave feedback. (Several admitted they were unwilling to interrupt the posting of the story to do so.) A fan of some previous work of mine suggested I try getting the story on a brony site for more feedback, specifically Equestria Daily.

[Edit: After checking the dates, I discovered that I had forgotten the sequence of events. While drafting my ideas for the story, I asked some fans for other locations that I could post the story to in addition to Fallout3Underground in order to share the effort with more people and get more feedback. While the story was originally crafted for, and the first chapters written on, Fallout3Underground, I had actually submitted it to Equestria Daily simultaneously.]

I lost touch with Fallout3Underground in the year that followed. Fallout no longer garnered the same passion from the modders, who were moving on to newer games. The whole site underwent a shift to being the more generic Video Games Underground. And with that, my interest waned.

For the last year, I only returned to the place to revisit a few of my old works there, such as finding online links to old screenshots that I wanted to pass around. I was attempting to do just that earlier this week when I discovered that VGUnderground, formerly my Fallout3Underground, is no more.

Fallout3Underground had always been a site by fans and for fans. It depended on donations and money from ads to keep it running. Unfortunately, the donations were rarely enough – usually the same few donating each time the site was in dire need – and most people use ad-blockers. The owner went bankrupt, and the site had to be shut down.

art by King-Koder

Rest In Peace, Fallout3Underground

You were the birthplace of Fallout: Equestria.

One of the fun events on Fallout3Underground was a communal writing project – something between shared universe writing and play-by-post roleplaying – between several of the writers on the site. The concept was Fallout: New York City. Everybody was essentially writing their own stories with their own characters, post-by-post, with occasional character meetings or indirect interactions.

art by Turbopower1000

As it turns out, I still have a copy of some of the stuff I wrote for F:NYC. So here is a little pre-Fallout: Equestria treat: the first post that I made in that writing project.

Coney Boardwalk, Brooklyn. Day One. 8:42 pm "What's a knish?" The downpour wrapped Coney in a blanket of sound -- rain falling on the wooden planks of the boardwalk, showering on the ocean, tap-dancing on the sheet metal and racing madcap through gutters. Alexander could barely hear his sister's voice, and turned towards her in the hopes she would repeat it. She was speaking aloud, not using their private channel, and softly so as not to attract attention. It was unwise to attract attention on the Coney Boardwalk at night. This was Joker territory. The rain had soaked through Kitrina's armored suit in a way that Alex feared the Jokers would find far too appealing. The hunting rifle slung over her back would probably be an insufficient deterrent, should they be spotted. Alex followed her gaze and the directional spotlight of her Pip-Boy to the edifice of the pre-war storefront across from them. Faded and eroded by weather, the words "Jerry's Knishes" were barely legible above the boarded-up windows. The fact that the store had been boarded up told Alex that sometime in the two intervening centuries, someone had fortified and used the building. From the rotting state of the boards, probably not anyone who had breathed recently. Chances were, there was nothing salvageable in the place, much less any of Jerry's nomenclature-worthy knishes. But nobody ever scavenged anything by not checking, and it was an excuse to duck out of the storm. Alex strode up the the door, pulling out one of his combat knives and started to work on it, using the screen-light from his Pip-Boy to illuminate his work. Kitrina had already turned her lights off, unslung her rifle and was pulling her goggles down over her eyes. The night vision optics for the left eye had been damaged during an incident while passing through Middlesex, leaving her blind in that eye whenever she used them. Alex hadn't yet been able to find the parts to fix it. Maybe, if they were both absurdly lucky, Jerry's Knishes would offer what had eluded them in the Brunswicks. (It would make a fine birthday present -- their seventeenth was just a few weeks away.) But he'd settle for a leftover box of Salisbury Steak. Alex suppressed a chuckle as the first board tore loose with the squeal of reluctant nails. As if boarding up a door from the outside ever stopped anyone determined to get in. "Hey Alex..." Kitrina's voice this time spoke directly into his ear, carried there by the dedicated channel between the sibling's specially-rigged Pip-Boys. Alex turned to see his sister staring out over the churning water. The storm sent waves crashing against the boardwalk. "...there's a ferry out there."

I’ll leave you with some exciting wasteland action, care of Mistermech and Stormcaller.