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'Evil' / Dark Themed Plots Ideas (20+ and growing)

defective_android

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TLDR / Essence: Fallout 4 is basically the Beach Boys vacation edition of Fallout, it lacks the darkness that previous ones had. And after sinking 100's of hours into the game only allowed to be - at worst - the morally kinda not great guy, it'd be nice to actually be allowed to be evil. Let's inject some Cormac McCarthy's The Road into this, some apocalyptic gritty, dark reality.

In past Fallouts there has consistently been a dark tone to the game with certain quests, characters, etc. Whether it be slavery (ex Eulogy Jones, etc), genetic discrimination (ex. humans vs ghouls, etc), children (various themes), torture, murder, cannabalism etc. In Fallout 4 it seems to me like this has been tuned so that the player character pretty much is all but forced towards being a good guy* with the exception of some sarcastic dialogue comments and morally relative yet ultimately philosophical meta decisions (ie. railroad vs institute vs BOS vs minutemen, all kinda morally gray). I didn't really mind this as I could basically put the Beach Boys entire catalog on play and get a 'Fallout: Vacation' game but there comes a point where, 100's of hours in, you get tired. There's only so much time you can spend in relative paradise before you long for the dark side, the gritty reality that makes your gut kinda twist. Like Negan in the Walking Dead or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Even in modern times, the world sucks. In reality, the wasteland would be a much much darker place, "and I'm tired of pretending it's not!". Who's to say your character didn't totally mentally snap at one point, or was actually dark deep down but forced in a society 200 years ago to play the role of a good citizen. Dictator? Slave kingpin? Psychotic Vault Reject? Negan Ripoff? Want to run a "captured raider reform" settlement? With these plots, you too can live the dark side!

These could also be used for prebuilt evil towns you have to "save" for good characters

Note: For alot of these, the 'workers' don't really need to be real settlers and alot can be implied by props placed there and signs / plot design. Perhaps slaves/workers/whatnot could be permanent NPC's on those plots doing preset work action and the 'settler' is a 'manager'.
Note: There are already plots for a couple of these but they fit thematically with a neutral or good settlement. Ideally, the below plots would have a neutral evil/dark theme/design. However, not raider themed to be open to as many roleplay/player-designs as possible.

DARK PLOTS
  • (Agri) 'Pig' Pen fed humans/mutant/other meat
  • (Agri) Human/mutant/other meat butcher - Hunger doesn't discriminate, it all grills the same
  • (Agri) Mirelurk Hatchery / Pen - Fenced in or in a vat/pit and a slave takes the risk of feeding/raising them. Lost a few fingers to baby 'lurks? Still better than being raider meat.
  • (Agri) Slave-Run Farm - Fenced in, with a neck collar on a long enough chain to reach only the edges of the farm. Could be a ex raider serving time, you decide the story.
  • (Martial) Guard tower with spikes and a few corpses - Corpses could be ambiguous so you don't know if they're settlers, raiders, criminals, etc (for diff themed settlements)
  • (Martial) Hangman / Guillotine - Ambiguous so it could be used for good (zero tolerance for raiders / bad offenders) or evil (dictator) themed settlement.
  • (Martial) Ghoul Pen - produces ghouls by forcibly irradiating people, for release outside the city walls like war dogs or such
  • (Martial) Ghoul Wall - Ghouls with iron collars chained to a wall, for a city wall, similar to Negan's zombie wall. Ghouls can "come from" the ghoul pen above.
  • (Martial) Torture Chamber/Prison - for interrogating raiders, being a dictator, breaking psyche to create a slave, etc
  • (Commerce) Slave Trader - Men, Women, Kids, Tamed Supermutants, Ghouls, Self Aware Robots, whatever. Bleak nihilistic wasteland doesn't discriminate. If it can be sold for caps, it probably will be. Throw in an innocent vault dweller from 81 ("New stock! Untouched from the Vault!") for extra player-character-nihilism. Nothing says "I don't care anymore" like allowing fellow vaulters to be sold for caps in your own settlement.
  • (Commerce) Evil-themed Drug Dealer, now featuring Chems for Kids
  • (Industry) Workhouse, akin to early industrial revolution with children / poor / underclass working
  • (Industry) Caravan Hunters, bring back scrap material, humans for Slave Trader, caps, etc.
  • (Industry) Dangerous Scavengers, desperate/enslaved settlers "go into the dangerous areas to get the best scrap, at a risk"
  • (Recreation) Brothel, doesn't have to be gender or even species based. Could have Codsworth earn some caps featuring as Fisto lmao
  • (Recreation) Drug den - could toss in a ghoul 'kid' as a permanent 'patron', stuck in a 10 year old body but mind lived through 200 years of wasteland hell was just too much. Don't have to write many voiced lines as they went there to escape not to relive it. Idea comes from 'Claudia' from 'Interview with the Vampire' novel.
  • (Recreation) Thunder dome / Death Matches - nuff said
  • (Recreation) Church of the Blessed - nothing says "apocalypse" like a screwed up new religion based around human sacrifices and blind zealotry
  • (Residential) Slave/Prison pen - Beds, shackles, open concept or prison cell style, lots of different designs in different apocalypse movies
  • (Residential) Slums - Various designs
  • (Residential) Workhouse - could double as an industry and residence. "Please sir, can I have some more?"

If I get good feedback I'll keep adding to this list. I've played hundreds of hours of Fallout (>700) and I'm done with good characters but I don't wanna have to manage a raider faction to get a taste of a bad one, especially since my ideal evil character wouldn't let himself work for someone else. Raiders are also pretty overdone in fo4 and have a preset image whereas with these plots you could build any style settlement with any backstory you like, not just raider. With these plots you wouldn't need to manage a faction, you could just have an "evil" or "dark" town.

These could also be used for prebuilt evil towns you have to "save" for good characters. Also, the pre existing sim settlements is based around pretty much a "good" aligned theme, especially apparent in the Ss2 missions mood/Jake/etc, these would open up characters to true story / thematic freedom.
 
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I hope @uituit doesn't see this...... shudder ;)
Why? Did I say something wrong? :(I just went off what gritty post apocalyptic movies and books I've read plus prior fallout games. The evil plots could be used for good players as well if you set up a prebuilt evil plan and rp you have to save the city from its fall into darkness.
 
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Why? Did I say something wrong? :(I just went off what gritty post apocalyptic movies and books I've read plus prior fallout games. The evil plots could be used for good players as well if you set up a prebuilt evil plan and rp you have to save the city from its fall into darkness.
no no uituit is the mod author that makes all the raider related plots in ss1 it is just a joke, you have done nothing wrong :pleasantry
 
TLDR / Essence: Fallout 4 is basically the Beach Boys vacation edition of Fallout, it lacks the darkness that previous ones had. And after sinking 100's of hours into the game only allowed to be - at worst - the morally kinda not great guy, it'd be nice to actually be allowed to be evil. Let's inject some Cormac McCarthy's The Road into this, some apocalyptic gritty, dark reality.

In past Fallouts there has consistently been a dark tone to the game with certain quests, characters, etc. Whether it be slavery (ex Eulogy Jones, etc), genetic discrimination (ex. humans vs ghouls, etc), children (various themes), torture, murder, cannabalism etc. In Fallout 4 it seems to me like this has been tuned so that the player character pretty much is all but forced towards being a good guy* with the exception of some sarcastic dialogue comments and morally relative yet ultimately philosophical meta decisions (ie. railroad vs institute vs BOS vs minutemen, all kinda morally gray). I didn't really mind this as I could basically put the Beach Boys entire catalog on play and get a 'Fallout: Vacation' game but there comes a point where, 100's of hours in, you get tired. There's only so much time you can spend in relative paradise before you long for the dark side, the gritty reality that makes your gut kinda twist. Like Negan in the Walking Dead or Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Even in modern times, the world sucks. In reality, the wasteland would be a much much darker place, "and I'm tired of pretending it's not!". Who's to say your character didn't totally mentally snap at one point, or was actually dark deep down but forced in a society 200 years ago to play the role of a good citizen. Dictator? Slave kingpin? Psychotic Vault Reject? Negan Ripoff? Want to run a "captured raider reform" settlement? With these plots, you too can live the dark side!

These could also be used for prebuilt evil towns you have to "save" for good characters

Note: For alot of these, the 'workers' don't really need to be real settlers and alot can be implied by props placed there and signs / plot design. Perhaps slaves/workers/whatnot could be permanent NPC's on those plots doing preset work action and the 'settler' is a 'manager'.
DARK PLOTS
  • (Agri) 'Pig' Pen fed humans/mutant/other meat
  • (Agri) Human/mutant/other meat butcher - Hunger doesn't discriminate, it all grills the same
  • (Agri) Mirelurk Hatchery / Pen - Fenced in or in a vat/pit and a slave takes the risk of feeding/raising them. Lost a few fingers to baby 'lurks? Still better than being raider meat.
  • (Agri) Slave-Run Farm - Fenced in, with a neck collar on a long enough chain to reach only the edges of the farm. Could be a ex raider serving time, you decide the story.
  • (Martial) Guard tower with spikes and a few corpses - Corpses could be ambiguous so you don't know if they're settlers, raiders, criminals, etc (for diff themed settlements)
  • (Martial) Hangman / Guillotine - Ambiguous so it could be used for good (zero tolerance for raiders / bad offenders) or evil (dictator) themed settlement.
  • (Martial) Ghoul Pen - produces ghouls by forcibly irradiating people, for release outside the city walls like war dogs or such
  • (Martial) Ghoul Wall - Ghouls with iron collars chained to a wall, for a city wall, similar to Negan's zombie wall. Ghouls can "come from" the ghoul pen above.
  • (Martial) Torture Chamber/Prison - for interrogating raiders, being a dictator, breaking psyche to create a slave, etc
  • (Commerce) Slave Trader - Men, Women, Kids, Tamed Supermutants, Ghouls, Self Aware Robots, whatever. Bleak nihilistic wasteland doesn't discriminate. If it can be sold for caps, it probably will be. Throw in an innocent vault dweller from 81 ("New stock! Untouched from the Vault!") for extra player-character-nihilism. Nothing says "I don't care anymore" like allowing fellow vaulters to be sold for caps in your own settlement.
  • (Commerce) Evil-themed Drug Dealer, now featuring Chems for Kids
  • (Industry) Workhouse, akin to early industrial revolution with children / poor / underclass working
  • (Industry) Caravan Hunters, bring back scrap material, humans for Slave Trader, caps, etc.
  • (Industry) Dangerous Scavengers, desperate/enslaved settlers "go into the dangerous areas to get the best scrap, at a risk"
  • (Recreation) Brothel, doesn't have to be gender or even species based. Could have Codsworth earn some caps featuring as Fisto lmao
  • (Recreation) Drug den - could toss in a ghoul 'kid' as a permanent 'patron', stuck in a 10 year old body but mind lived through 200 years of wasteland hell was just too much. Don't have to write many voiced lines as they went there to escape not to relive it. Idea comes from 'Claudia' from 'Interview with the Vampire' novel.
  • (Recreation) Thunder dome / Death Matches - nuff said
  • (Recreation) Church of the Blessed - nothing says "apocalypse" like a screwed up new religion based around human sacrifices and blind zealotry
  • (Residential) Slave/Prison pen - Beds, shackles, open concept or prison cell style, lots of different designs in different apocalypse movies
  • (Residential) Slums - Various designs
  • (Residential) Workhouse - could double as an industry and residence. "Please sir, can I have some more?"

If I get good feedback I'll keep adding to this list. I've played hundreds of hours of Fallout (>700) and I'm done with good characters but I don't wanna have to manage a raider faction to get a taste of a bad one, especially since my ideal evil character wouldn't let himself work for someone else. Raiders are also pretty overdone in fo4 and have a preset image whereas with these plots you could build any style settlement with any backstory you like, not just raider. With these plots you wouldn't need to manage a faction, you could just have an "evil" or "dark" town.

These could also be used for prebuilt evil towns you have to "save" for good characters. Also, the pre existing sim settlements is based around pretty much a "good" aligned theme, especially apparent in the Ss2 missions mood/Jake/etc, these would open up characters to true story / thematic freedom.
Whilst not the vibe I like with my settlements, absolutely love it for alt factions (and Conqueror addon for SS2)
 
Did I say something wrong?
No, as Karvoc said, it was a joke. I could see Uituit taking some of these ideas and making something really cool. :cool: I really liked his SS1 Conqueror plots. It really added to the theme.

(I could have sworn I hit the like button on your post... I fixed it!)
 
Whilst not the vibe I like with my settlements, absolutely love it for alt factions (and Conqueror addon for SS2)
The thing is for 'knight' players (alignment: good, order), which the game and SS is basically designed for, you need an enemy or foil for your character. If every faction is basically morally Doctors Without Borders + Minutemen, there's no point to ones playthrough. Nor is it realistic. On the other hand, if you walked into a prebuilt settlement that used these to create a dark settlement where the bleak reality has sunk in, it'd feel real. I imagine any number of possibilities. One is a Raider Neutral Zone, a settlement where drugs, alcohol, chems, brothels, slaves (if FO4 bothered to include them, which it scrubbed them despite being lore since Fallout 1), flow freely. How does your character react? Not all of the population are evil, many are desperate innocent people who never murdered, just live this way because its better than dying in the wastes and Diamond City isn't an option for whatever reason. Maybe they've got debts to criminals who'd kill them if they moved. Can't kill the whole settlement and take it over, that'd be murdering innocents as well as the lynchpins who make the evil town work. How will your good character face this? Great story opportunities.

For Conqueror it'd also be great, though I have my own theories on how to improve Conqueror, which I'll post later after a thorough playthrough and brainstorming/design.

no no uituit is the mod author that makes all the raider related plots in ss1 it is just a joke, you have done nothing wrong :pleasantry
Oh awesome, sorry I just saw that they're a mod and thought that I unknowingly broke some rule. Good to know! Also great to know there's a modder who does raider/dark stuff!


@uituit I'd love if you picked up any of these ideas. I'm writing/conceptualizing for a non-raider, dark, bleak, criminal tone. Like the Road plus the dark parts of the Walking Dead plus early Fallout games. Or any other really gritty, brutal post-apocalyptic setting where humanities true face is exposed. This way it could be used for an 'Raider Neutral Zone' like Combat Zone as a settlement, a more mafia style evil crime syndicate prebuilt plan, or for players to create their own version of hell within the commonwealth. For me? I'd use it combined with another mod that allows slavery to create the ultimate crime syndicate (see response above). Drugs, alcohol, chems, brothels, slaves, all highly profitable in the lore/context of Boston. Other players might wanna do a psychopath player. Another example, I can imagine Vault 88 become "the door to hell" as a despotic, psychopathic player or NPC makes it their headquarters, only rivalled by The Pitt or Sierra Madre in dark atmosphere/tone. Pure human suffering turned into pure profit via an oiled crime machine. Capitalism unchained by morals that died in nuclear fire 200 years ago. With neutral dark plots, they can be used for many storylines, players, NPCs, prebuilt designs, etc. We have SOOO many good aligned mod packs for SS but near-zero or zero Dark-Themed Packs.

The little raider gangs that hang out with pool cues and hit caravans or kinda deal drugs are like peasant tier crime groups compared to what is possible in the lawless Boston wasteland. Also, taking over a settlement like Conqueror is both costly and counter productive, like the Mafia and Yakuza, it is much more profitable to insert your operations into the existing structure and deal your 'wares' there while letting the rest of the city deal with operating the city (roleplay wise, in game mechanics I'd imagine you "control" both settlements.

hey, I hope he does more raider plots the better.
See my reply to Uituit above but basically, I'm hoping these plots go dark neutral rather than raider specific so they can be used in any dark themed settlement / town / city / whatever.


New Plot Design Ideas
After extensively (several hours) discussing this with someone else including stuff I'm not putting here ('evil' economic settlement design, lore, etc), I've come up with the following plots (will add to the main post later):

  • (Industry - Production) Brewery - produces base alcohol like beer, wine or other femented drinks. For you non-homebrewers, this is the first step to making hard liquor, as the yeast that makes alcohol dies at around 7-14% ABV. However, for an evil twist, perhaps the brewery has a chem station with various drugs lying around to develop new alcohol-based drinks that are both a better high, more addictive and more profitable -- thus stealing the market from other alcohol producers. Soon Goodneighbour will be stocking your brews as it flies off the bar.

  • (Industry - Production) Distillery - takes alcohol from your brewery and distills it into pure alcohol aka vodka. There's youtube videos on this but basically alcohol boils off first at 77C so you do that in an enclosed vessel and cool it back from a gas into a liquid in some cooled copper tubing, thus making your higher percentage alcohol. Two or three runs will get you from 10ish percent up to 40-60 percent from personal experience in brewing and distilling at home (make my own beer and vodka as a homebrewing hobby). However, like the Brewery, it wouldn't be as profitable if we're competing against regular stuff, plus evil design, so another chem lab to make even more addictive and profitable alcohol by mixing.

  • (Industry - Production) Chem Lab - pretty much self explanatory, though like Breaking Bad I'd dress whoever runs this in a hazmat suit or at least a gas mask for the fumes. Making amphetamines (basically Jet) and other stuff is toxic work. It'd be also delightfully evil if someone intelligent was either talked into or convinced to run it to make even better, new chems. If Curie (or similar science character) can make a universal cure, they can surely churn out a Crime Nobel Prize winning concoction.

  • (Commerce or Production) Smuggler - Okay let's say you've got one settlement that's your HQ. It's got your henchmen and 'slaves' (dressed appropriately, playing pretend here until someone makes the mechanics for it) running your production. But the first rule of crime is never deal to yourself, so you go to another settlement and setup shop there. Only thing is, (while you own it, say its a prebuilt or something), someone else controls it and you don't want the hassle of it. So you work a deal to build a "warehouse" for your 'regular' goods, tatos and stuff. Meanwhile, in your shipping boxes under a layer off fruits are the alcohol, chems, and drugs you're dealing. It takes in chems, alcohol, etc. Wholesalers come to the muscleman at the door to buy. The rest goes to your other estabalishments, like the speakeasy...

  • (Commerce) Speakeasy - Great for a 3x3 plot. Looks like a shack home but it's got a secret back entrance for the bar area. Perfect for setting up shop in unsuspecting prebuilt settlements. Alcohol, chems, drugs, it's all there. A version of this could include rooms upstairs for Brothel services. Proven by the 1920's Mafia and brought to the Boston Wasteland. If it's a 3x3, one could be a bar worker and another either the bouncer or a brothel attendent.
An easy 'evil' playthrough character would have one settlement as their HQ with appropriately dressed settlers as either gang/syndicate members and/or 'slaves' though not actually slaves since a seperate system doesn't exist on NMM for them yet. That HQ has most of the dark plots for security through to production and housing, etc. Most important: production. Another settlement is built 'vanilla'/good style but you drop down the Smuggler and Speakeasy to start your operation. Done, it looks like you're a kingpin and no super complex scripting systems needed like Conquest.

As for lore acceptance, here we are:

Fallout 1/2/3/NV slavery and the in-lore Slave Guild are proof of lore and acceptance in the Fallout universe. Also, at least two other raider factions deal chems and one was setup in a brewery so probably alcohol so thats not new either, we're just doing it better.
Conquest had slaves so that was NMM approved too.
"Although their trade is almost universally disliked, the guild has few overt enemies. Smaller towns in northern New California are usually too weak to deter visiting slavers, while the larger ones greatly benefit from the guild's business: Vault City frequently purchases slaves from guild traders from the Den,[9] while New Reno buys them for prostitution, manual labor and even drug testing. They are one of the largest customers of the Slavers Guild, with the Jet project alone having consumed at least a hundred slaves during development.[10]"
 
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With the city comp starting up again at the end of this month you better believe the raider settlements I am known for will be returning with Karvocs Konquests. I will be entering them into city comp contests and working on my more scrapper settlements under the mod Karvoc Kollections. I just take the very talented work by the mod authors and make city plans for them. I am unfortunately slow at this and normally release one a month.

I am with Uituit here and strongly suggest you have a read over the documentation for how to make plots, I have a feud with the CK, I hate it with a passion I dislike the controls of it so much and I am not at all happy using it so I make cities but the instruction and walkthrough for how to make plots are straightforward to follow.
 
You could definitely do some cool things with the Recreational plots, too. Along the lines of.. whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger...
 
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