Five Parsecs From Home.

 

Campaign setup and first mission 

I have been playing solo wargames for 40+ years. During that time I have dabbled in several gang/group/band-level campaign-style games including Necromunda and Frostgrave so when I first noticed Five Parsecs From Home (5P) my interest was piqued.

Most other solo games are designed initially as multi-player. Then some home-baked or subsequently thought out rules amendments for solo play are bolted on with various degrees of success or otherwise. 5P is written specifically for campaigning and solo play. That is one thing different. Another is the insane (in a good way) level of detail and backstory that you can put into each battle if you want, as lots of rolls on random event tables give your miniatures reasons - and motivations - to fight that next group of bad guys. When I game solo I am often talking through the narrative in my head as I plan a battle, decide forces and terrain and get to playing. Here I have a structure to add my own creative input to in order to come up with some exciting storylines. That is what I find so pleasurable.

 

Let’s get quickly into generating my first crew.

My leader is a human, Captain Lucius Blackhart. He was born on the subjugated colony world of Banshee. A tough upbringing meant he was a willing and able fighter and so he joined a mercenary company and spent a number of years working his way up the chain of command. His motivation is Truth. (He left the mercenary company under a cloud after a mission he was leading ended in failure and he was advised to resign and get off planet. He believes that another mercenary officer betrayed him and set him up but hasn’t yet found out who it was or why they did it).

Blackhart has the normal characteristics of a human.

His equipment rolls resulted in an infantry laser, a hand cannon and a seeker sight. He also has a story point, a point of luck and 1 rumour (possibly to do with his back story?).

He cashed in his savings and put a down-payment on the Aurelian, an unreliable merchant cruiser, and he assembled a crew of five others to go out into the verse to make their fortunes.

Second crew member is Atsu Nushin, a Feral. Born in the Hive City of Sangslecht (giant dystopian city +1  speed) Atsu is quick-witted and a fast learner and managed to get a position in the Hive security services as a special agent.  Atsu used his contacts to become quite wealthy and has contributed 5 creds worth of funds to the pot. He dreams of making it big (motivation: wealth) and coming back home one day to improve the lot of his family.  For weaponry Atsu carries a shotgun and would any ‘Slechter’ be without their boarding cutlass? When he finally left the service he took with him a favourite little bit of spy-tech – a snooper bot.

Atsu’s special agent training included situational awareness and contact skills and drills giving him a reaction of +1.

The third crew member rolled turned out to be a bot – THX841. 841 doesn’t talk about his past so much but he must have had some combat experience because he walked into camp carrying a military rifle with a wicked blade attached (brutal melee weapon). 

 As a bot, 841 has no special background and just gets standard bot stats but that does include a reaction of +1, a combat of +1 and his metal-ceramic casing gives him a +1 saving throw, so he is quite an effective combatant. His Savvy of +2 also means he is really good at technical tasks and generally fixing things. 

  Goose Hawkins gained a reputation as a troubleshooter on the low tech colony world of Solidar IV. He acquired a good chunk of cash cleaning up one particularly irksome crime gang and then decided that he would head off into the stars to see what else life could bring him (motivation: adventure, +5 creds). He has basic human stats and he is armed with a colony rifle and carries a backup pistol ‘just in case’.

 The fifth member of the crew is a human, Petr Lermantov. He was the tenth son of the head of a wealthy merchant family on New Jebbadah. He ran one of the security companies owned by his family, learning the business by coming up through the ranks and honing his skills as a troubleshooter at the same time. Unfortunately his family was taken down by a bigger, nastier rival and he was fortunate to escape with his life. He made it off planet with a small fortune (9 creds) but not before he had assassinated the third son of the rival family in revenge for the downfall of his own.  That does leave the rivals out for his blood though (motivation: survival).

Lermantov believes in always being prepared for any eventuality. To that end he carries a colony rifle with a removable over-under shotgun attachment. He also packs a scrap pistol and a blade.

The last member of the crew is another human, Hastin Green.  A native of Halov’s World, an  industrial powerhouse near the centre of the local star quadrant, Greeny was born into the lower echelons of society and had to learn from an early age how to find value in other people’s rubbish (he grew up a scavenger). He believes himself to be good looking but he noticed that girls who live in scrap heaps are not known for their attractiveness so he has decided to head off and find a soulmate among the stars. (motivation: Romance).  Amongst a trove of valuable items he found on one of his better digs was a cache of encrypted data cubes (1 story point and 2 rumours). Over the years he has acquired a military rifle and a sonic emitter. Due to the polluted, often radioactive rubble and scrap heaps on Halov’s world, he and most of his scavenger contemporaries acquired one sort of hazard suit or another. Hastin has painted his a bright green colour, ‘for luck’ as he often says.

 

On the whole a decent mix of crew members, skills and equipment. An infantry laser, two colony rifles and a military rifle give a nice base of longer range firepower, supported by a couple of shotguns and some close combat weapons for more intimate death dealing. I think they will be a handful in a firefight – hopefully.   

8 story points and three rumours should be enough to keep the crew of the Aurelian alive until they get established and with 25 starting credits they seem positively awash with cash.

Rolling a few other initial backround facts determined that the crew met through the desire to make better of themselves (Atsu’s pursuit of wealth) and, with an ex-mercenary, a couple of troubleshooters, a lightning-fast, special agent Feral, a scavenger and what may be a retired combot amongst them, they are regarded on the whole as 'hardened rebels'. That’s not a bad billboard sign to have when you are on the lookout for patrons who need something done but want somebody else to risk doing it. 

They start out on the somewhat earth-like planet of New Sarthe where a recent long-running war has finally come to and end and so the place is full of people looking for an opportunity to utilise their warfighting skills (Planet trait – easy to recruit)

For this first crew I chose a campaign goal of completing three quests. 

Following is their first campaign turn and mission.