I wanted to play the standard edition of Fallout 3 before trying the DLC. The DLC intrudes on the main game to an annoying degree. It loads at the beginning of the game in the form of quests, but it would seem it interferes in other ways that are far worse. I wanted to get the Alien Blaster from the Alien body near the spaceship but the DLC is triggered as soon as I approach it. Am I missing something? Is there a way to avoid having this happen?

If you use a Mod Manager, I think you can disable the DLC in that.

Though I wouldn't. If you want any other mods these days (like bug fixes), they generally expect all the DLC to be present.

I don't really have any interest in mods. Other than testing one or two mods in a couple of games briefly years ago, I have never used mods. I haven't had any significant problems with Fallout 3 so I don't think I need any bug fixes from mods for it. If what you say is true regarding mods now expecting all DLC to be present in games, then I have even less interest in using any mods. As a general rule, I don't play DLC except on very rare occasions.

Thank you for your response.

i believe you can disable the dlc from the fallout 3 launcher via data files
just uncheck each of the dlc .esm files

apologies if this does not help

I looked at the data files in the launcher before because I was wondering what they were, but it never dawned on me that it was to select the DLC that you wanted. I'm really living up to my moniker lately. Maybe I should change it? :) Thank you.

I'm wondering what happens if you turn it off after you have already played the game. I guess I will find out.