As Bethesda Game Studios gears up to release Fallout 76 on November 14, modder "SKK50" released Fallout 4-76 on the Nexus. "Experience Fallout 76 in the Commonwealth, the place where you belong. No NPCs, L33t griefers stalking you and sharing valuable git gud advice, suxorz randomly nuking you." Presented with this tongue-in-cheek tagline, the mod performs "an NPC extinction level event," making it so the Commonwealth is as sparsely populated as Fallout 76 is expected to be, hiding "95% of rural folks and 80% of urban populations".
The experience begins right from the Vault 111 exit. Quest limitations are unlocked to make up for the absence of NPCs, and the player character is granted ownership of all workshops. The game spawns "random mixed human griefers" who follow and taunt the player character. When the player kills them, more are spawned in time, "like roaches on bad meat". The mod includes a "player to griefer level matching system" with levels such as N00b, Scrub, Plat, and L33t.
As players explore the Commonwealth wasteland, nukes are occasionally launched (mostly at the player), with a short period allowed for escape. These nukes can also land on unsuspecting griefers, whose intelligence isn't high enough to understand the warnings. Workshops are safe areas from nukes, allowing players to do their "arts and crafts" in peace.
Upon death, the player is respawned, as part of a "GriefProof PlayerUndead™ feature," at a random owned settlement. The inventory is left intact, allowing for an ongoing extension of the player's progress. It is possible to disable the mod entirely and resume vanilla gameplay at any point.
The modder says that he is "pleased that Bethesda is bringing the Fallout franchise to new audiences," though he also understands the skepticism from single-player fans. He also adds: "This mod is just for fun, if you don’t get irony walk on by." -- A healthy attitude, and one which even this diehard single-player Fallout fan can respect.
The Fallout 4-76 mod is available for PC and also on Xbox One if you want to give it a try yourself.
