5 Parsecs from Home Review

 5 Parsecs from Home is a Sci-fi Solo Wargaming system (called an Adventure Wargame) where you assemble or generate a crew from random tables and then skirmish with procedurally generated enemies. The hefty element to the game is the Campaign system where your crew can develop their skills, pay off the loan for their spaceship, get into trouble, and buy and trade weapons and gear between battles. It also includes robust Patron, Job, Rival and Quest subsystems.

The combat is punchy and quickly resolved. One battle will take about an hour and there are a large variety of enemy types.

The combination of solo skirmish wargame and campaign system creates a rich environment for writing prompts which can easily be turned into a narrative. That is what I have done here. Below is the 5 Parsecs from Home squad creation session. The actual wargame skirmish will come in another post.

5 Parsecs from Home is $20 for the pdf on DriveThru or $35 for the physical hardback plus pdf at Modiphius.


Squad Creation

I decided to let the random tables whip up a crew for me. Since I am terrible at making up names, I also turned to an online randomizer for scifi names. The results surprised me at how much they made up a cohesive and interesting back story. Randomized elements from Five Parsecs are in bold.

I picked my first randomly generated crew member to be the leader, sight unseen.

Bjorn Ivannox is the captain’s name. He grew up in a wealthy merchant family, but for him a safe and comfortable life was not in the cards. His family was brought low and raided by a criminal element, that he has vowed revenge on. To prosecute his personal war against the criminal enterprise he has become a spacefaring nomad, bouncing around the galaxy from planet to planet in his retired troop transport ship; taking on all sorts of work to fund his mission. During his travels, Bjorn has acquired a Nano-Doc which he uses to keep himself in fighting shape and ahead of his addictions as he quests among the stars.

Anriel, just Anriel is a taciturn soldier. Leading the life of a drifter from spaceport to spaceport Anriel picked up a smattering of survival skills and experience in odd jobs before he eventually wandered towards the military. Discipline and brutality became his daily bread as he was shipped off to planet after planet in the Guard, part of one Company’s Dirtkicker’s Dozen or another’s. He doesn’t say much about his previous billets, all he does is polish his standard issue steel boots carefully and keep his infantry laser well maintained. Anriel bonded with Bjorn over their shared desire for revenge over those criminal elements who disrupted their lives. Anriel however will not talk about his personal grudge; he just serves as Bjorn’s enforcer and first mate on the ship, and he kills on command.

Fallox Encia. You may have heard of her from the resident spacers’ youth, talking about how her melodious cello over dubstep and screamcore tones is just electric man, electric! An irrepressible and unfatigable artist, this music-mixer and instrumentalist par excellence, nearly never made it to the top 1000 space-billboard charts. Armed with only a scrap pistol the plucky Fallox escaped from a subjugated colony on an alien world that Bjorn and company had decided to land on for refueling. Bartering the use of her personal repair bot (stolen of course) as collateral for oxygen and food on the spaceship, Fallox now peruses her desire for Galactic fame along with carrying out any mercenary work the captain finds for the crew.

Levian Nuende wasn’t worth a dram of good air on his old home. Always a scavenger, a schemer and when necessary, a thief in the slums of the space station that raised him; Levian learned to survive to adulthood with a little help from his genius counterfeiting abilities (Fake IDs) and a shadowy private organization that stepped in from time to time to keep Levian on the right side of an airlock. Armed with a potent blast pistol, Levian now seeks order in the universe. For Levian that order is made manifest by carrying out sometimes inscrutable instructions from his shadow patrons.

Lemoes Gallo. Holy man of the ship. He jokes that the only reason that Bjorn and Anriel keep him on is for luck, and the fact that he knows a Firebird 1200 engine backwards and forwards in his sleep. Born on a backwater isolationist enclave, faith was an omnipresent presence for Gallo. Every moment in life and star in the sky was a gift from the Universal; and the Universal was present in all things, even technology, Gallo drones on and on to the crew. The ship’s technician, most crew-mates put up with him since he is responsible for the life-support and mess hall auto-chef. Gallo’s only heirloom of home is a dusty bipod, and a careworn colony rifle which he tinkers with in his off time, humming psalms to himself.

Piklov Demir. The scourge of the orphan utility program he was born into. Supposed to be raised into upstanding citizens of planetary administration and the military alike, Piklov turned his back on all that and began a life of petty criminality. If there was something you wanted, Piklov could acquire it by means fair or foul, all for a price. Constantly on the outs in his orphanage, Piklov was voted most likely to be spaced in his class until the influence of a wealthy individual took a shine to Piklov’s machinations and bailed him out of jail occasionally. Worshiping on the altar of Wealth, Piklov repays his patron by taking on increasingly more dangerous missions that reap progressively more lucrative rewards.