Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure

Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure was an early working title for Fallout, later changed to Fallout: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure, that utilized the Generic Universal Role Playing System (GURPS) by Steve Jackson Games. Legal disagreements between Interplay and Steve Jackson Games eventually led to Interplay dropping the license and replacing it with its own system, developed in-house: SPECIAL.

See also Vault 13: A GURPS Post-Nuclear Adventure timeline.

Background
Initially there was a lot of skepticism coming from Steve Jackson as Interplay approached him with an offer. According to Scott Campbell, Steve Jackson only responded once he was offered up-front license money. Scott was appointed Lead Designer, as his previous project, SimEarth had been canceled.

The first draft for the game's story was written down on a "night of many beers". This draft was never intended to be used, and bears little resemblance to the Fallout universe. At this point, Interplay had still not decided what their first GURPS game would be about.

After some time, the development team decided they wanted to do GURPS: Wasteland, based on the old post-apocalyptic game from Interplay. At the same time, Steve Jackson Games was working on GURPS: Survivor, which was a role-playing sourcebook with rules for post-apocalyptic adventuring. During the last meeting before Christmas break, it was revealed by Interplay's legal team that EA still had the rights to Wasteland, due to the fact that Interplay had recently released a 10th Anniversary pack containing the game through EA. Though this meant that they could no longer use the Wasteland name, they would carry on work on a post-apocalyptic game.

The one that first proposed the idea of using Vaults was Tim Cain, who claimed he had dreamed it. Campbell claims that this one idea was what started the creative process for himself.

The team laid down some simple rules:


 * Rule #1: Multiple Decisions. We will always allow for multiple solutions to any obstacle.
 * Rule #2: No Useless Skills. The skills we allow you to take will have meaning in the game.
 * Rule #3: Dark humor was good. Slap-stick was not.
 * Rule #4: Let the player play how he wants to play.
 * Rule #5: Your actions have repercussions.

The game was supposed to be no holds barred. Anything would be allowed, even the killing of children. This was early in 1995, when something as innocuous as the word "ass" was considered unfit for public broadcasting. Interplay wanted to push the limits on the game, and in order to give more depth to some of the characters of the harsh environment, the language was spiced up.

Termination and legal issues
On June 11, 1996, Bob Apthorpe reported that SJG received more screenshots of GURPS Fallout, noting that the game will be as true to the real GURPS "as a computer version can be. Interplay is paying close attention to the rules and plans on fully supporting the reaction rules (in case anyone takes a Charismatic, Very Beautiful character with Voice and Sex Appeal." On January 13, 1997, Steve Jackson reported on the SJG website that Fallout is rolling along, scheduled for an April release and mentioning that SJ Games received an alpha version for in-house evaluation. He was not aware that a month later, Interplay would release a statement that the license would fall through.

To this day, the precise reasons behind Interplay and Steve Jackson parting ways remain unclear. Feargus Urquhart in a response to PC Gamer claimed that the reason the license was dropped was to avoid red tape and legal wrangling over the game's content, including Vault Boy, the violent introduction, and a small character scale. Similarly, Scott Campbell claimed in The Origins of Fallout that Steve Jackson Games was satisfied with everything but the Vault Boy pictures in the character screen and the execution scene in the introduction - but also stated that the game would likely have to be remade in order to retain the license. No Mutants Allowed, The Origins of Fallout by R. Scott Campbell, Part 1, page 6: "So, Leonard and Jason had just completed the opening movie for the game. It was a slow pan-out from an old 50's style black and white television showing quick documentary style scenes that silently gave the player an idea of the dystopian future they were about to step into. In one of these quick scenes, two soldiers in power-armor shoot a kneeling and unarmed man in the back of the head, and then gleefully wave to the camera. It was a tiny scene, but one that let you know that you were about to play a violent game. We all liked the movie and, just to keep Steve Jackson Games in the loop, a copy was sent to them.

''And then it happened. The response came back "Unapproved". The reason? They stated that "The movie was too violent".''

''Whaaaaa? Too Violent!? Haven't they been looking at the game we'd been making!? There was blood and violence all over the place! We had Head Of Gore TechnologyTM! You could split people in two with a chainsaw for chrissake!''

''Apparently they hadn't been looking at the game we'd been making. All of that "The more violence the better" stuff was long forgotten. With that rejection it became apparent the game would need dramatic changes to get approval from our IP holder.''

A decision had to be made: Keep GURPS, abandoning our creative freedom and yielding to the mercurial whims of the licensor - or throw out all of the mechanics and interface we made functional in the game and start over.

And thus, the SPECIAL System was born, and both problems, IP rights and overly complex game system, were removed in one stroke.

''The SPECIAL system was almost identical to the "GURPS-Lite" system that we had been implementing, so in the end, what could have been a big setback was in actuality an enormous boon. ''"

However, Sean Punch, GURPS Line Editor at Steve Jackson Games, remarked in an interview with RPG Codex that he is "skeptical of claims that a single cut scene, loading screen, dialog line, etc. caused the parting of ways".​ He has also stated that the issue that was cited as a reason for the abandoning of the license was "that the license didn't word the approval process in a way that was good for either party" and that it was ultimately easier to remake the RPG elements than rewrite the licensing agreement with all the legal wrangling involved. Urquhart did mention the vague approval process, which was a simple statement that Steve Jackson Games "had control over the environment in which the license would be used", in the aforementioned PC Gamer interview, supporting this notion.

Regardless of the reason, Interplay claimed in an official statement that this was a mutually agreed decision, Steve Jackson, in a February 12, 1997, statement released through The Daily Illuminator on the Steve Jackson Games website stated that he wished he knew why Interplay decided to drop the license, and that no official correspondence to that effect was received by that date. It was a surprise to the Fallout development team as well. The Daily Illuminator: "February 12, 1997

Rumor Control about Interplay

Executive Summary: We wish we knew.

''I had problems with a couple of features of the otherwise very impressive alpha version of GURPS Fallout. As I corresponded with Interplay staff about this, I got handed up the ladder but their responses remained puzzling -- and that is the most detail I'm going to give for now.''

''Just before leaving for Europe last week, I got a call from a reporter asking me to comment on the Interplay decision to drop GURPS. I told him this was the first I'd heard of it. Calling Interplay, and talking with the last man I'd corresponded with, I got first "We haven't decided that, where'd you hear it?," then "Well, we have been talking about it and somebody must have gotten the idea it was decided," and finally "Yes, we have decided to drop it, so sorry.''"

''The statement on the Interplay web site, to the effect that this was a mutual decision of SJ Games and Interplay, is not true. Scott Haring tells me that no written correspondence from Interplay has YET been received at our office. We are not clear what their proposal to finish and release the game without the license entails, for us or for the game, and have absolutely not agreed to it.''

''I can't imagine how Interplay could take three years working on a GURPS. computer game, and then be able to create and install a completely dissimilar game engine in a few months. Nor have I read (or heard) any explanation of how they might plan to do that. So "no comment" on that for now, too.''

''I've been invited to meet with Brian Fargo, who I understand owns Interplay, when I'm in LA in a few days. I'll be very interested to see what he has to say. I hope we will be able to announce that this was a tempest in a teacup." In a subsequent meeting with Tim Cain, he made a lot of concessions to save the project and the implementation of GURPS created by the development team. However, the decision was handled by the executives of Interplay and Cain or the Fallout'' developers had no vote in the matter. On March 14, 1997, Steve Jackson received a phone call confirming that GURPS was being dropped, as the development team was told to remove all licensed content and was too far along creating a replacement (SPECIAL) and redoing art assets for them to return to GURPS. The caller laughed when Jackson asked to receive a confirmation in writing, saying that he would "see" if he could send a formal letter confirming this. The unilateral dropping of GURPS after three years of cooperation soured Jackson's relations with Interplay.

While agreeing that the split was a blow to the project, Chris Taylor said "instead of compromising and making an inferior product -- Fallout will be produced with conviction." The title was changed to the final version: Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game and the SPECIAL character system was designed. However, the name was retained in one instance: In the game files' DATA directory, there is a file called VAULT13.GAM which stores the global variables for the game and retains the game's initial title name.

GURPS sometimes appears as a terminal password in Fallout games since Fallout 3 onwards.

GURPS implementation
As Fallout is identical to the GURPS game in all but the character system, this section focuses on the implementation of the GURPS system. GURPS is an acronym for Generic Universal Role Playing System and is a table-top role playing game system published by Steve Jackson Games. Originally released in 1986, it is currently in its fourth edition. GURPS is designed to be easily applicable to any role playing game setting, and is played with three six-sided dice. It uses a point-based character creation system, and represents characters using four basic stats (Strength, Dexterity, IQ, and Health) along with advantages, disadvantages, perks, quirks, and skills.

While there is no publicly available playable build of GURPS Fallout, the Fallout demo contains a large number of GURPS assets in its primary DAT archive: Graphics used by the GURPS user interface, illustrations for skills, advantages, and disadvantages, and SKILLDEX.LST, a plain text file that contains a listing of all character screen assets, separated into its distinct categories. When cross-referenced with the third edition GURPS Lite free source book and other available materials, like Roleplayer #8, Roleplayer #4, Roleplayer #1, it allows for approximating how GURPS would have worked in Fallout.

The most important difference is that all social standing, appearance, and other variables usually listed in GURPS source books separately are instead divided into Advantages or Disadvantages.

Attributes

 * Strength (ST), a measure of “brawn” or physical muscle.
 * Dexterity (DX), a measure of agility and coordination.
 * Intelligence (IQ), a measure of brainpower, alertness, adaptability and general background experience.
 * Health (HT), a measure of energy and vitality. HT also stands for “hits” – the amount of physical damage a character can take.

An attribute of 1 is the lowest score, with no upper limit. 10 is the average ability and is the default setting. 8 to 12 is considered normal. 16 and above are unusual. Ratings of 20 and more are equal to superhuman ability.

Skills
A self-explanatory section. Unlike SPECIAL, GURPS has a lot of skills the player can acquire. Based on the number of assets, the player would have been able to select a total of 56 skills. This was cut down to just 19, a little over a third of what the GURPS version featured.

Indirectly, this also explains why the game seems slanted so heavily towards a particular playstyle, namely, a character with Speech tagged. Conversations which would normally require one of eight separate skills (estimation according to the purposes of various social skills in the game) just require one: Speech. There is no other skill that has such utility and versatility in the game.

Advantages and Disadvantages
These act like Traits, in that they help define the character. Advantages are explicitly positive, while disadvantages quite the opposite. Most were merged into Traits or recycled into perks, if not verbatim, then the underlying principles.

Quirks
Quirks are additional elements that define a character in GURPS. While the game files contain an image referring to them explicitly, it is unknown if they would be implemented, given that certain quirks, like Delusions, have been folded into disadvantages.

Gameplay differences
While the general gameplay between the games remains identical, there are some differences. For starters, the game still used the triangle menu for deciding on the type of interaction the player wanted to have with the target object or character.

Another difference is that there was a single item field divided into two halves, representing the player's hands. This indicates that it was, at one time, possible to fire two single handed weapons (hence the Ambidexterity advantage). Unlike the final product, where the player has two active item slots to use and allowed to freely switch between them, in the GURPS version the player would have to switch weapons by entering the inventory.

The SkillDex was completely different and allowed the player to view all of the skills, advantages, and disadvantages in a separate window, apparently assign them to six different quick use slots, and access the character sheet (it was not accessible from the main interface bar).

Interestingly, the screens also indicate that the player would be able to directly select the skill to use in a given setting, as well as allow the game to choose it for them (the Auto setting).

Combat
Combat was majorly different, due to the use of Fatigue Points (FT) on top of Hit Points, as well as including disadvantages that can severely cripple the character in combat - including Combat Paralysis.

There were also more options for calling shots, including aiming for feet and hands, the neck, and even the brain. The groin was referred to as vitals. Another interesting feature is that the game included many of the combat maneuvers that make GURPS famous (and slow to play), including Step & Attack, Step & Ready, Aim, Move, and so on and so forth. These were accessible through a button now used to access the SkillDex.

Early design
These two previously unreleased screenshots from the GURPS version of the game were provided in 2007 courtesy of Chris Taylor, as part of the 10th anniversary celebration for Fallout. They were created when Scott Campbell was still in charge of the design.

User interface
The following screenshots come from the official press pack and demonstrate the GURPS interface.