Susan Arendt said:
I ran into a tiny grocery last night in which some clever wastelander with homicidal intent had set up a Rube Goldberg-style apparatus meant to set off a cluster of grenades. It was amusing, but there are only so many of those moments in the game.
I think what kept me rapt during my sojourns into the Capital Wasteland was the story of the setting itself. Breaking into that house in Minefield and finding a child's bedroom with crutches, braces, surgical tubing... but no sports toys, and no body; and then finding the master bedroom with two adult skeletons embracing on the bed, with painkillers on the nightstand. That spoke eloquently on what this little family's last days were like.
The general's quarters with the pile of empty liquor bottles next to a bathtub occupied by a skeleton and a toaster made for a grim-but-amusing tale of its own. As did the diary of the triage nurse conscripted into the National Guard, and the diary of the family trying to reach a shelter after the attack...
Maybe that's the reason I don't get into MMOs and most RPGs; I'm not a phat lewt type, I'm a story-hound.
-- Steve
PS: also, nukes. Blowing up abandoned plutonium-fuelled Edsels never got old.