So its no secret that when the original story came out that there only was so many Fallout games around, and while the newer games have been a bit... well lackluster compared to the older ones are there never something so bad that it can't be used for something good.

So which parts of Fo4 and Fo76 would you say are salvageable, and how would you go around pulling treasures out of the muck?

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One of the big thing I think could be pulled from Fo4 is the Synths. similar things have been floating around Fo:E for awhile but for 76? I don’t know nuff bout the game to say.

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My thing right now, Pillars of Society, is using a lot of Fallout 4 stuff for the simple reason I’ve lived in the Boston area most of my life and wanted to fix all the things the game got wrong. :) I’m also using the Institute as a way to bring changelings into Fallout Equestria. I like almost nothing about the Institute, mind you, but they’re. just enough like Changelings to get my brain going.

I also like the IDEA of the settlements and building a community, even if there are a lot of games that handle it better that Fallout 4. This works especially well in stories, because community building is more of a character development thing than a game mechanics thing.

I don’t like MMOs, so I’m not interested in 76.

I wonder if it would be fun to write the creation of a town like in Fo4? Start with just a small destroyed town, salvage what you can. Get to work building a workshop, a farm, weapons. Recruit people to populate it with skills like medics and engineers. Get attacked and realize you need defenses and have to explore nearby to keep everyone fed. Basically like a written out survival town builder.

I still haven't finished the Fallout 4 main story, but I feel as though the Minutemen are one of the more believable ideas for a faction. They aren't too complicated: Just some people who banded together and used salvaged radio equipment as a backbone for civility and decency, if not quite law and order. In that regard, they're superficially like the Desert Rangers in Wasteland.

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For Fallout 4, the obvious big piece is the Institute, which I can see going a couple of ways.

One is focusing on the aspect of being a surviving group of intellectuals using questionable or violent means to support their own more comfortable lifestyle. It's certainly got some similarity there to the Twilight Society and Tenpony Tower, so there would be some overlap, but it seems like a proper Institute substitute would be much more aggressively self-centered. It's like a mix of Twilight Society and Steel Rangers. Some hidden threat that's been swiping technology, maybe to the point of raiding some unfortunate settlement that had some piece of tech they really needed, and wiping out all the occupants to maintain the secrecy of their existence. There's plenty of possible candidates. Maybe it was a Stable that opened up decades ago, saw the conditions outside, and said "fuck that, we're staying in here where it's safe and pleasant, and screw any outsider who comes knocking." Or maybe it's a splinter group of Steel Rangers that are basically doing the usual Steel Ranger thing (Confiscating valuable arcanotech from primitive tribals) but in more secrecy (Maybe they're at odds with the rest of the Steel Rangers, so they have to remain more hidden). Or maybe they started as some group of Ministry ponies involved in advanced arcane technology, who were lucky enough to survive the initial megaspell exchange, and pooled all of their talents to shelter themselves, and eventually decided that they were so much better off in their arcanotech mini-utopia than all of those savage ponies that emerged from the Stables (And if they needed some tech that those other ponies happened to have in order to support their utopia, then they may as well just take it, because it'll hardly matter to those surface ponies if their life of misery is cut a little short).

The other idea is leaning more into the whole synth-style issue of ponies that might not actually be ponies. Now, maybe I'm a little biased, but the first thing that makes me think of is changelings. A secret group that's infiltrated various settlements and groups with agents that look exactly like normal people? Sounds perfect for changelings, and I know there are some stories that use changelings as something of an Institute stand-in. You lose out on some of the aspects, like substitutes who really think they're the real thing (Unless you go with extreme magical conditioning for some agents), or escaping synths (Though you could possibly have something with changelings fleeing the hive to live with ponies, though that might be awkward). But you can also go full-on artificial pony, and I know some stories have done that. That works well with some of the "surviving group of intellectuals" focus, too, especially if it's something like a surviving Ministry group. Some arcanotech golems disguised as actual ponies (Maybe alchemically grown flesh, maybe spell-matrix powered illusionary shell, or maybe even some advanced transformation magic!) might be a perfect tool for a small group of well-supplied scientists who really don't want to leave the comfort and safety of their underground utopia, and the parts necessary to make them give them even more reason to send these agents out to "requisition" them from the surface. I do kinda favor the changeling version, though. Not just because I love changelings (I'm not obsessed, I swear ), but because it seems like a perfect ponyism, and allows the introduction of something Institute-like without being a mere carbon-copy of the Institute with different technobabble.

There's lots of other parts from the game that could be worked into a story. Some of the Nuka World details might give inspiration to another MoM Funfarm Amusement Park. Far Harbor could serve as inspiration for some coastal region (And given the deadly fog, might even be another place where Pink Cloud or some similar weapon was used). In general, I think Fallout 4 had some good ideas, and I could appreciate what they were going for (Multiple factions all coming into conflict, supposedly with no clear-cut good/bad), it's just that the execution was a bit lacking (Particularly the "no clear-cut good/bad" part wasn't handled as well as it could have been, and you had fairly limited influence on a faction other than "support" or "destroy"). It was a decent attempt, just kinda uninspired. Far Harbor managed to do the whole multiple factions aspect a lot better (Even the Children of the Atom were presented somewhat reasonably).

For Fallout 76, I think the biggest and most clear-cut thing it could serve as inspiration for is making more stories that aren't two hundred years after the megaspells. The majority of stories are set then. It's to the point where I feel a little guilty about having set my story in that period. I think the period shortly after the megaspells, with ponies emerging to settle the Wasteland (Or maybe even struggling to survive outside the Stables!) has a lot of potential, and it doesn't get much attention. I know there are at least a couple stories set earlier like this, but it's very rare. Amusingly, the only story I can think of that features a Stable opening up to explore and resettle the world just 20-ish years after the megaspells was started years before Fallout 4 was a thing, much less Fallout 76.

Being earlier means less time for radiation to have decayed (Assuming magical radiation works that way), which could possibly explain some unusual and powerful mutated creatures, which might explain some analogue to the scorchbeasts. And there's lots of little details that could be carried over or used as inspiration. You'd probably have to swap out the coal mining for something else, though, which also means you have to get rid of some fun stuff like the forever-burning mining tunnels, unless you're able to come up with some substitute (Like, I dunno, literal-fire-opal gemstone mines or something). The cryptid stuff could be good material. But mostly, I think it's the potential of emerging into this new world to explore and survive, with the conflicts and threats being much more about nature instead of other people (Or if it is people, it's the people that came with you instead of people you come across).

Well, Crazy Person has their Fallout Equestria: Commonwealth. Which is a decent take on a pony-fied Fo4. As for 76, I haven't touched it and have no interest in it.

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sweetie bot/as the first senth?

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I would read the hell out of something in that vein. Not every FO-inspired tale needs to be filled with gunfire and mysteries. The everyday struggle to simply rebuild and renew would make for an interesting twist.

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And I wholeheartedly agree that FO76 could be mined for some nicely woven tales featuring nature as the primary antagonist with fellow survivors/Stablemates being a source of emotional conflict.

Ponified West-Tek experimenting on local wildlife and then getting hit by the Scorched Plague which unleashes it on the surrounding area and ultimately wiping it out because everyone refuses to work together despite having all the tools needed to solve the problem would make for an interesting background for a newly awakened Stable Dweller trying to find the Overmare.

Fallout 76's story is ridiculously deep and spread out in hundreds of notes, recordings, and terminals, which makes cobbling it all together rather difficult, although there'sa few YouTube videos that are kind enough to do it for you, whether it's Oxhorn's lore videos, or ManyaTrueNerd's zany antics which isn't that far off from a usually Fallout Equestria story already about a character who barely knows which end of the gun to point at the enemy managing to get themselves ensnared in a massive hidden conspiracy

Also there's enough content in 76 alone to make a completely original backstory for a story, where the Main 6 were members of the various factions who tried the whole Friendship is Magic thing and having it not work, backfire horribly, and/or inadvertently doom the entire country

Then there's the whole "one year later" thing with Wastelanders, which completely reshapes the game's story and opens up even more stories to tell

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Well, in Fallout 4 there are a lot of things that could be salvaged and adapted.

Institute could work out as Changeling Hive. Group of Changelings survived megaspells and they do Changeling things. They abduct ponies for food, they infiltrate settlements and other factions, they do other evil shit. Hell, I used similar concept in my own story, where Solar Flare was planning to go Institute. She even took over group of survivors, by replacing their leadership, but her evil plans were foiled by her utter inability to use anything more advanced than basic shape-shifting, so she have turned her Hive into something resembling Enclave from F3.

Railroad could be splinter group of Changelings, who just want to be free, or they could be Rival Hive, wanting to stop their evil cousins, or having their own sinister goals. And in the meantime they pick fights with Steel Rangers, Enclave and anyone else who tries to prevent them from spreading soulsucking bugs everywhere.

BoS from F4 could be successful Chapter that is actively expanding under leadership of progressive and charismatic Elder and at some point even planning to create real country. Of course at some point they would fail, and their failure would be epic, but right now they are on the rise, and their forward contingent is establishing base of operations in the region, to gather technology and put an end to Changeling threat.

Being honest there isn't much I can add at this point, but I'd admit Fo76 has some potential.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, which very well may be the case as I've never played the game nor watched lore videos worth three hours of my time to understand it so all I have is other people's descriptions of it, but having a society tryig to claw back immediately after the apocalypse is a good base for story. As Phoenix said, we too often we see stories of the right before or a while after, but never quite enough of during or right afterwards of the apocalypse.

To my knowledge (once again, correct me if I'm wrong) there has been little or none at all on that particular subject, maybe some stories with snippets of those times hidden in memory orbs or the like, but never an active story in that fluster cluck. I'd imagine it'd be a good tale to tell of some mare fighting to protect her filly, or even an army stallion trying to keep the peace after Armageddon. With that last one, I'm reminded of that one National Guard guy in the beginning of Fo4, the vertibird that crashed into the museum.

Those types of stories would be neat to read, absolutely. Kinda like how the novel 'Alas Babylon' by Pat Frank had me snared until I finished it. For those who don't know of it or haven't read it, the tl;dr on it is the Cold War era culture falling due to nukes of clurse and they have to completely readjust to that living; the ultimate culture shock, I suppose.