AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Fallout is a series of RPGs that act as the spiritual successor to Wasteland, depicting a post apocalyptic world with the general idea being "what if the cold war was actually a thing as opposed to not a thing?". The actual story is a lot more complicated and involves the U.S. annexing Canada, Europe breaking apart, and China and U.S. nuking each other to death completely (but maybe aliens fired the first shot???). It's a weird blend of gritty, post-apocalyptic Mad Max shit and some inappropriate vintage 50s stuff (the concept of inappropriate 50s stuff was way newer in 1997).

Fallout 1 and 2 were straight-up parallax view RPGs, Fallout 3 and Fallout: NV are first person Bethesda style action RPGs. Fallout 1 and 2 were both published by Interplay before their budget dissolved away, while Fallout 3 was a Bethesda only endeavor. Fallout: New Vegas, however, was developed by Obsidian, which is made up mainly of the Fallout Interplay vets. The writing is noticeably different as a result. Technically there were also many spinoffs of different stripes, mainly being tactical RPGs, but no one really cares about those.
Fallout 4 returned to being a Bethesda-only affair set in Boston with a different artstyle, a town-building simulation system. Certain elements of New Vegas, like conflicting factions that tied into the main story, returned, while things like character progression and gameplay went through massive overhauls. It's expected that Bethesda will continue to write and direct games like these set on the East Coast. Rumors were recently floated about a "New Vegas 2", though they turned out to be entirely fake, and Obsidian is currently busy with what seems to be a non-Fallout project.
You can find the Fallout wiki here (it's pretty big! try reading the timeline if you want to investigate some of the lore).
If you're looking for proletariats to your fallout games beyond the developer-made DLC, you can use either the Steam Workshop or the Nexus for either Fallout 4 or New Vegas. proletariats on Nexus tend to modify your game files to a greater extent and also tend to skew more worse-than-NC-17 rated (don't ask me), so viewer beware. Might I also direct you to a personal favorite of mine, the jsawyer total conversion mod, created by the lead game designer of Fallout: New Vegas, designed to increase the difficulty of the game and effectively change it into a whole different experience? Entire systems are introduced in that mod, including stuff like Damage Threshold. I'd recommend it for even a first play-through of the game, although it does require all DLC of the game installed (the Ultimate Edition).
Have fun!

Cleaning out the NCR Prison is fun. Go up the towers, use Silenced Pistol from sneak to one-shot the guards, one-shot the people on the ground, carefully one-shot the people in the cells, loot everything I can carry/lockpick.

Or you could just tell the NCR to attack the prison with you in the Powder Ganger questline and have a squad of NCR soldiers rushing the place and doing the work for you.

Eh I haven't gotten that far yet. Just started it. And it's more fun this way since it lets me learn what is and isn't possible for Sneak types. For instance, I know now that I can shoot someone from stealth and the person next to them won't realize it for a few seconds.

It took me three playthroughs to realize I can murder anyone I want as long as no one hears it. Except for the Mysterious Stranger guy who's death will instantly lead to the entire Strip of New Vegas hating you.

Super lame, and the revolver you get off him isn't even that good.

I played through Honest Hearts too quickly and didn't get too much of the flavor dialogue and quests. I won't make that mistake with Old World Blues.

This Think Tank is about the funniest daisies thing I've seen so far in this game. I've got high hopes for the Big MT.

Let the NCR guys kill the Powder Gangers and Eddie so I got all the XP with none of the danger. Then I one-shot each of the NCR guys except the leader from stealth so I got all of their XP too.

Dr. Dala is getting off on me acting like a living person, or at least as much as a brain in a jar can "get off."

The think tank was a ton of fun, but playing through Old World Blues in different playthroughs is way less fun since I know all the jokes and I did almost everything there was to do on the first run. But the stealth missions are a ton of fun and some of the weapons you get are just ridiculously good and they make me feel a little guilty when I use them (looking at you, LAER).

Speaking of DLC, I never finished Dead cheddar. Fuck Dead cheddar.

Dead cheddar was a colossal pain in the booty, but if you manage to catch all the bits of story it has an incredibly rewarding end. I didn't appreciate it until I was finished with it, but its backstory, atmosphere, and ball-crushing difficulty make it a very memorable add-on.

Old World Blues is deceptive in it's gifts. Things like the armor you get that helps you sneak, and auto-uses stimpacks and med-x. Sounds good, seems great, then it uses all your stimpacks every time you get scratched.

Just found a recording of Ulysses' voice after hearing bits and pieces about him in the other add-ons. It was... sufficiently ominous.

Caesar's Legion is fucked up. Finished up tonight's session by clearing out Nipton's valuables and found a horror story.

Says the omnicidal maniac.

If they didn't want to be turned into XP then they should have had actual names. No one's going to miss NCR Soldier #4723.