Duck And Cover - interview with Brotherhood of Beer

(march 2002)

Kreegle: What is the Brotherhood of Beer?

DarkMiagi: The Brotherhood of Beer is a fellowship founded July 27th, 2k by Micha³"Rhotax" Kulikowski and myself - £ukasz "DarkMiagi" M³otkowski, in a suburban area of Tczew, Poland . The name purposely resembles the Brotherhood of Steel, as it was (and still is) our intention to create a similar organisation in the real world. The 'Beer' part relates to the fact that we all are slightly addicted to alcohol (after all, we're Slav). All members share common interests: the millitary, firearms, weapon construction and handling, etc. We all grew up on sci-fi and the post-apocaliptic. We're all great fans of titles such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Mad Max, etc. so it was great fun to actually see those as part of Fallout games' climate. In fact, we liked the idea so much that we came up with the idea of BoB. We began recriuting members thru the Internet (most of our members were affiliated with the former StarWars-Pl fangroup) from amongst the closest friends primarily. In time BoB began to stand not only for Brotherhood of Beer, but also Band of Brothers. And we are still more than happy to accept new faces into our fellowship.

Kreegle: What do you guys do when you get together? Is it all beer drinking?

DarkMiagi: Definitely not. Our goal is to be as active and creative as possible. That is why we came up with numerous activities for our Brothers. For instance, patrol missions we are carrying out raise the Outdoorsman skill. We usually move along carefully ploted waypoints - cmdr. Rhotax and sgt. Mrok are the ones responsible for preparing different routes. Our patrols are chiefly limited to the areas in the near vicinity of the city of Tczew. However, we are planning to obtain a vehicle which would serve as a troop-transport unit, thus making it possible for us to cover more land during our missions. For those who wish to raise the Unarmed and Melee weapon skills sgt. Chewie conducts mock-fights sessions. His experience in close combat as well as a profound level of side-arms lore is unquestionable. Moreover, we conduct RPG and LARP sessions, set in the world of the post-apocalypse.
But it is not only in real life that we get together and do things. Most of the members have a 24 h access to the Internet, so it is possible for us to meet on a regular basis on the IRCNet for instance. Discussions are held, different contests are organised (fan-fiction, best_graphic contests), etc. Having great fun is one of our top priorities (the other is drinking beer whenever possible).

Kreegle: Is it true that you guys have built your own fortress? What's the story behind that?

DarkMiagi: Indeed yes. The fortress is, I belive, our greatest achievement yet. The main idea was to construct an object resembling a stronghold for our LARP sessions, thus providing greater realism and experience. The construction began on the 13th of August. Construction team, led by cmdr Rhotax, sgt Mangus and sgt Chewie, managed to erect two watchtowers and a fence using wooden elements and miscallenious junk, found in the nearest vicinity of the construction site. We also used some already present structures to form a camp (vide JunkTown) near the unfinished fortress. Unfortunately, the project came to a halt due to lack of funds. To make matters worse, in December 2001 a storm came past the Tczew region, damaging the entire site seriously. Presently, we are gathering resources and planning to relocate the fortress.

Kreegle: How many people are in the Brotherhood? Do you accept new recruits?

DarkMiagi: There are currently 20 members in our Brotherhood. Based on their activeness in the Brotherhood, the High Command confers relevant ranks, based on military hierarchy (for additional info please visit our homepage and the DA_CREW section). Our ranks are still growing. We are eager to accept new members, as long as they agree to our Code and are ready to carry on the ideas of the Postapocaliptic. Presently there are 5 people on the wait for the membership approval.

Kreegle: Do you play Fallout Tactics much? Or do you play the pen & paper RPG?

DarkMiagi: Some of us (including myself) do play Fallout: Tactics quite much. There is however a question of the game's requirements and, well, some of our members have not upgraded their computers yet to match the level. Moreover, we tend to give much more affection to good ol' Fallout 1 & 2 (equipement requirements are one of the factors why we do). Outside our vaults we play LARPs more than the regular sitting-in-the-room-and-rolling-them-dices method. We did however manage to construct our own role-play system, based on some experiences with other games. Recently, we became aware of the PnP system and it looks like something fun to do. We will probably conduct some PnP sessions in the near future.

Kreegle: What is it about the Fallout universe that you guys love so much?
Lastly, what do you guys hope to see in the next Fallout game (if it is ever made)?

DarkMiagi: As for the first question, there are as many answers as there are Brothers (and Sisters) in our Brotherhood, thou some points were similar. Members often mentioned most realistic and detailed world creation, also, the ability of exploring it to a great degree. We appreciate the fallout reality, because it is so 'burned down', full of death and at the same time full of humour and motives from our favourite post-apocaliptic movies. The Fallout world is actually like a memory of our childhood games which took place in abandoned buildings and wasteland-like terrain which Poland is full of. Exploring old, secret bases, guarded by mutants in search of untold treasures - its the world like in our childchood's fantasies - inspired by SF movies and in some cases by fear of atomic war (some of us grew up during end phase of cold war, when the possibility of nuclear conflict wasn't a fantasy at all).

As for the second question, I shall quote cmdr Rhotax:
As for things we'd hope to see in F3 (if its ever made ;] ), well, we all hope to see alot of new places, and we're curious how do they look after the wold in the eyes of "Fallout" creators. We'd be especialy pleased to see the Disneyland (all kids in the world want to see this) and the Europe, our home cities, our camp near Tczew (if we survived the war, and do we still have enough Beer to carry on? ;] ).

And more seriously, we all hope to see more vehicles in the new game some cars, tanks, maybe even railawy like in Mad Max 3 (Fallout Tactics was a step in good direction). Possibility to fly one of those vertibirds or other 'garage made' aircraft would kick ass. We also hope
that the one of main lacks of fallout series will be corrected - bikes! There are no motorbikes in Fallout (we don't count those in walls of Junktown) and some of us think that it would be cool to create band of motorbike travelling riders in game.

We hope to see more powerfull weapons in new Fallout - posibility to play with an orbital Superlaser or Howitzer in the middle of a town is very tempting idea (remember "Wasteland"? ;] ). We hope that there will be more NPC to interact (Naked chicks! Naked chicks! ;] ) in new game, maybe some others organizations like BOS rivaling between themself, also, we'd like to see a few more kinds of Beer and creatures (do entire fauna of post nuclear world consist of brahmin and those goddamned lizards and bugs? ;] ) And we trust that creators of new game will give us another good portion of the same characteristic humor like in previous parts.