Well, don't do drugs. They bad.

I try to be nice or at least give people their right to live. Attack in self defense only.

Staying true to first love, Cait. Just friends with other companions.

Current character doesn't like Synths, doesn't trust them, would love to see them all gone as they are just 'unnatural' to him. Joined the Brotherhood. Only good mutant is a dead one. Going forward in time he feels like he needs to help get humanity back on track and get rid of the other beings trying to exist in Man's world. Wants to help make the world like it was before, without Synths and Mutants. Feels sorry for non-feral ghouls, but thinks they'd be better off put out of their misery. Anyway that's his role-play so he's being played accordingly.

After I finish my Goodhood character, I usually play nothing but hardcoe. What I define as hardcoe is no reloading saves, and a dead character stays dead. You die you delete that character and make a new one. I like doing that with all the Bethesda games.

Lol

My rules largely come from my roleplaying. Myself and my wife actually co-play these games. We each make a character, each play the game ourselves in our own save files but one of us is the designated Beth protagonist of the game's story and one of us is an outsider. Our plays are made based on following party agreements and our behaviour based on a group consensus - who it was and was not right to kill, ally with, stay with and steal from.

In Fallout 2:

- I played the Chosen One, a self-agrandising individual known as 'The Mighty Kal-Tec' looking to bring his awesomeness to the wastes. She played Benedicion, his half-sister and party rogue.

In Fallout 3:
- I played a dog breeder/herder and scavver who had traveled up from Lousiana over many years looking for a place to settle and a man or two she could have children with. She played the Vault 101 dweller and a doctor of no significant physicality.

Fallout NV:

- I played my previous character's daughter and the courier, she played a local villager charmed in to joining the quest and abandoning her life of tedious brahmin herding.

Fallout 4:

- I am playing my FO3 character's son and NV character's sister, a Brotherhood scribe for the Lyon's Pride. (YEs, we modify the timeline and story elements to suit us). She plays the 111 vault dweller who was secretly a deep cover spy for China before the bombs fell and is now in a moral quandry and at a loose end.

We also did this with Skyrim, Dragon Age 1, Dragon Age 3 and Pillars of Eternity and did live multiplayer play-throughs of the Baldur's Gate Trilogy online before we lived together.

Rule 1, no fantasy weapons -all the "legendary" stuff goes strait in to locker.

Rule 2, death = end of the game!

My current PC is a stealth character aligned with the Railroad. He carries only 3 weapons, Suppressed .50 Sniper Rifle, Deliverer, and combat knife. All others are either given to settlers, scrapped, or sold.

I RP pretty serious with all my PC's.

This +1

I also limit weapons carriage to 1 x long, 1 x sidearm and 1 x melee - maybe ONE DAY there'll be a game in which the player model reflects your load-out, but alas, not yet.

I also never take clothing from corpses

I only use Rad and Stim meds, never the others, which I trade/sell

I avoid any quests that lead to my inadvertently becoming a settlement's protector - attacks/teleporting baddies = broken at the moment

Eat every day, sleep every night

Quicksave for fights, but never for decision-points

Fast travel only if settlement attacked (hasn't happened yet) and when scrapping a place I cleared because we still don't have Brahms as possible companions, like we don't all use them as backbacks anyways since we first had companions since the first game that had companions came out. I would actually be ok babysitting a Brahm full of my looted gear, back to my base. Would make a hell of a lot more sense then a couple fast travels with both me and my companion both carrying 250lbs.

Only if makes sense to use the PA; I use it...don't see myself recon stomping threw areas.

Pretty much stick to SniperRifle handgun both silenced and an auto-shotgun called Betty when things didn't go my way. But I will go/carry a Fatboy if I know I will be up against something like a chopper. Nothing wrong with flying things that go boom when against something that flies and goes boom itself.

I usually sell most meds apart from stims, and rads med, don't use them all that much but see nothing wrong with a mentat when you need to crack that code, althought with the new perk system I don't see how that it'll help seeing I need the perk star to do whatever it says I can do *shrugs*

Eat drink, but honestly it's just for the motion if I remember about it at all. Do sleep when I finish a job or recon that way I go out all fresh feeling

Save before fight/going into a structure but it's more in case of a bug then anything else, before conversations too, but more to see what the possibilties could be. I usually redo what I chose in the first place even if I failed or realise that another way would have given me more possibilities.

I'm basically CG who skates the line with CN pretty sharply sometimes so choices wise it's pretty open, way I like it RPwise but it's more of a mental process then anything else with this game.

No cheating. As in no console use beyond fixing the game's mistakes, and definitely no glitching.

Otherwise my character probably has enough restriction just from being a low carry-weight and low health guy on a modified difficulty. If I want to be prepared for something, I have to be careful about my "free space" because I can actually only pick up about 125 pounds of equipment at any one time, which is easily filled just going through a single location.

That's really neat. A self-imposed mechanic for deaths is common, but I've never seen someone make use of stats for it.

Rule #1: No Fast Travel, not even for settlement attacks (its possible to arrive in time by just heading there on foot.

Rule #2: 2 Longarms, 1 Sidearm, 1 Melee

Rule #3: Limit carryweight with console down to 65 and avoid carryweight perk. Rising strength is fine.

Rule #4: No lowering of dificulty (atm. playing survival)

Rule #5: Removing addictions only if not taken the chem for at least 5 ingame days.

Rule #6: No companions, no lone wanderer perk either.

Only 1 faction per character. No "join all the things" playthroughs.

I just finished a No Power Armor run, it was pretty fun. I figure that Kate my female protag was a lawyer not a soldier, so she shouldn't know how to use it. That's the only self imposed rule I've adopted, but some of the others in this thread have inspired me.

I love self imposed rules. Each time I need to go back to base to drop off goods I reset myself back to some basics.

Only carry two weapons and only carry ammo for those two weapons. I don't really limit how much ammo I take although I usually don't carry more than 200 for either weapon as that's plenty.

Wear nothing greater than leather armor. .. *(but collect all armor sets out there.)

I limit the amount of chems I carry.. 5 is the tops for any chem except stimpacks and rad away. I take 10 of those with me.

I have to take food and water with me and eat and drink at least once a day.

I have to sleep.

5 mines, 5 bottlecap mines, 5 grenades. I usually switch them up.. like maybe I'll take 5 plasma grenades and 5 pulse mines... or 5 cryo mines and 5 frag grenades. Usually just something different than what I've taken last time. However, I always take bottlecap mines. Those are awesome.

Don't buy anything except junk for modding. Really, all I've ever bought is screws and adhesive.

That's pretty much it. It really doesn't take long to build up a supply of grenades, mines and stimpacks when you're out adventuring. Next playthrough I might just store everything and only go out each time with a pistol and 5 stimpacks. Like I can only re-supply when out in the field.

This one is just for fun.. but I purposely started off as a thin little perfect pretty girl.. and over the course of the game I've been using surgery so that it seems like she's getting more muscular and picking up scars as she progresses through the world.

That's a good one, I found my self a member of all three and it kind of felt out of place. I'm totally sticking to a single faction from now on.

Not really "rules" but I don't use the best gear and guns (road leathers, pistol and shotgun for me), don't wear helmets, don't use power armor, don't use drugs and don't use any companions other then my loyal dog. I'm able to stick with a specific style for my guy and keep the game challenging this way.

No tgm. tcl only to get unstuck. I have an error on a quest where I'll have to set the quest status to get further (still wants me to eliminate all the eggs at the castle--I looked and looked and looked, even used twf and there's nothing left to kill).

My current character is the paladin-y type, so there's no making undue amounts of money. Always help people who ask. Always go for the non-confrontation outcomes. No stealing. No demanding more money (but asking for a payment is fine). Give settlers proper places to live. Advance in quests as long as it appears to help citizens of the wasteland. Shaun can wait--when so many people are in need, I can't be so attached. If Shaun was so important, he's probably safe. Very high intelligence and charisma. Extreme gun modder. Any/all armor is usable. No chems aside from sims, rad-x, radaway.

Next character: Find Shaun. The world's gone to [censored] and the morals of old no longer apply. Do anything to get me closer to Shaun. Melee berserker. Make Guts look like a wimp. Prefer intimidating looking armor. Find daedric armor mod. Only guns are very heavy (minigun, fat boy). Hates ghouls. Loves chems.

Self-imposed rules you say? Hmmm, well for some reason I've ended up a fully functioning junkie in my first play-through, when I never touched any drugs in Fallout 3 (and I usually play a goodie two-shoes first time round). I guess I just love how visceral the effects are when I'm high as a kite and blowing limbs off with Ma Boomstick (that is actually my shotgun's name).

So, right now my one rule is never fight sober. Blitz the Buffjet, then run around like Fry on coffee.

Don't you have to eventually make a choice between them?

I only fast travel to places that I have set up as settlements.. meaning no fast travel directly to somewhere else. My prerequisite for the settlements is at least 2 people and turrets set up.

I use only one self-imposed rule.

-I can't eat food during fights for healing. That's a no no. "Hey Raider, could you wait a tiny bit with trying to bash my skull in? I just need to set up this buffet of delicacies! There, all full, now we can proceed!"

Edit: Forgot one more actually. I never save during conversations, nor do I go back to a previous save, and load to alter the outcome.

I wish I had some of your resolve. I'm the type of person that would download a mod that made fast traveling impossible, but until then will judge fast traveling by "can I walk or load that distance faster". Once I stumbled on how broken water purifiers were, and that there was no fast traveling while over burden perk, I increased my carryweight to 10000. Now I wonder why the game is too easy...

I don't sleep to heal myself, I'll give myself that one.

I'm stealing this.

If Dogmeat is companion - do not use his inventory at all, because the dog got no lifting abilities

Well....there are dog packpacks in the Real World so why not pretend that Dogmeat is wearing a pack?

oh and they are so much better than the post-apocalyptic brahmin or a real world mule ... it's an attack dog!