I’ve been enjoying a 40K renaissance for the past six or so months, with an evening a week carved out for our group’s Crusade campaign, which I’m helping run. But with the pandemic kicking up, limited time, and the usual difficulties with scheduling gaming events means I’ve become more interested in gaming I can do at home. I picked up some hex-and-counter games, of which there are many meant for solitaire play, but while browsing the Modiphius Games site for something entirely different (the Fallout miniatures game), I happened upon Five Parsecs From Home, a sci-fi miniatures wargame centered around solo emergent narrative campaign play.
This seemed like entirely my jam.
What follows is the first of hopefully several posts about my experiences with the game. In addition to exploring the game itself, I’ll be chronicling the task of getting minis for the game – I’ve mentioned in previous posts that while I think 3D printing a full 40K army has some serious false economies to it, a skirmish game with an eclectic cast of characters is essentially a 3D printer’s wheelhouse. And while I don’t have a regular roleplaying group for that purpose, Five Parsecs should do nicely.
So let’s begin. But first, defining a term I’m going to use a lot.
What the H**l Is Emergent Narrative?
In a traditional narrative game – a 40K campaign, a video game, many RPG campaigns, etc., there’s a plan. A story. You’re following a path – and while there will be bumps and diversions and the occasional multi-week digression, you’re still following that same general narrative.
Emergent narrative is inherently unwritten. It’s an emergent property of the interaction between things in the game itself. There’s always an element of this in narrative gaming – the story of the heroic Space Marine sergeant who slaughtered a Chaos Sorcerer and his entire retinue to turn the tide of a game. The fact that my Warhound Nachthexe in Adeptus Titanicus seems ever so slightly sadistic. But a truly emergent narrative game takes this from an occasional spice to the whole meal.
The story is procedurally generated. Rather than use the rules to support you telling a story, the rules interactions are how the story is told.
I’m going to write a whole post on this fairly soon, but it’s an important enough concept that it’s helpful to be familiar with it.
The Five Parsecs Setting
Five Parsecs from Home is set in a fairly generic and flexible science fiction setting that will be familiar to anyone who has watched The Expanse,Farscape, Firefly, played Mass Effect or the Traveller RPG, or any one of a number of other science fiction franchises. There’s a stable, unified set of core worlds, where life is safe, predictable, and not particularly lucrative. And then there’s everywhere else – the rule of law is more of a set of guidelines, aliens both exotic and occasionally hostile, and fortunes can be made by the bold, ambitious and lucky.
Or you could die, unremarked, out of credits and having finally run out of places to run.
It’s a flexible place to write your own stories, prompted by the tables in the rulebook.
And my god are there a lot of tables. Rather than tackling them all at once, we’re going to touch on concepts as they come up. First up! I’m going to need a grew.
The Magnificent Six
The default size of a crew is six – the game optionally lets you reduce the crew size to five or four, with correspondingly smaller number of enemies. But for the most part, for my first play-through, I’m going to use the default rules (with a notable exception I’ll detail later). I do want some variety though, so rather than the “First Timer Method” of six humans, I’m going with the “Standard Method”, which gives you:
- 3 standard humans
- 2 standard humans or “Primary Aliens” – aliens who are slightly different from human norm, but not particularly weird
- 1 standard human or a bot, which is a robot that doesn’t earn XP and gets upgraded with cash instead.
I might pick up a bot later, but I decided to go for four standard humans and two Primary aliens – a “Soulless” which is a hive-mind cybernetic organism that remind me a lot of the Geth from Mass Effect and a “Feral” – an engineered human-animal hybrid originally designed for military purposes. So basically these two:
Here is the first place where I deviated from the setting a little bit – rather than playing the “Soulless” as a hive-mind, I decided to play them as a primarily mechanical but still self-aware and intelligent (albeit an alien intelligence) cyborg. If you’ve read the Murderbot Diaries (and if you haven’t, go do that), basically Murderbot.
But your crew isn’t just a few generic figures – each rolls on three tables, a Background, a Motivation and a Class that will potentially give them items, stat boosts, and other things that will impact gameplay. Interestingly, while these do come with various boosts to your crew, they are largely undefined – it’s up to you to decide how exactly to make the combinations work.
So let me tell you about my crew…
Human 1: Captain Estelle Fontaine
It was not my plan for whatever character I rolled first to automatically be the Captain of the ship. But that’s how emergent narrative works. For Estelle, I rolled a Background of Tech Guild, a Motivation of Political and a class Starship Crew. I decided that Estelle is the youngest daughter of a powerful, but somewhat traditionalist, family-run starship yard closer to the stable core. She has ambitions beyond appearing at family functions and having some mid-tier job while her siblings ascend to leadership of the firm. But to do that, she needs resources, and allies that are beyond her reach at the moment.
From all of this, she gets +2 Savvy, which is a combination of technical skill, wit and charm, and mostly helps in the out-of-combat campaign phases. She’s well spoken, well educated and knows (or thinks she knows) how the world works. And like any rich girl off on an adventure in the frontier, she’s extremely well equipped, providing the crew with an extra roll on the High-tech Weapon table, as well as 1d6 extra Credits to pay for things like keeping the ship fueled and the loan sharks off our back. She also comes with a Patron – essentially, someone who may provide jobs for the crew – and an extra story point, which can be used to influence dice rolls later in the game.
Looking for someone suitable…Wealthy Captain-y…I chose Captain Carina Navarro from Print Minis. As an aside, I rather like the folks at Print Minis, who are the same folks who used to do Asset Drop before Brexit killed it, and am a member of their Patreon, so you’ll likely be seeing a lot of their miniatures coming up.
Human 2: Felix Salk
The next roll produced a character with a Mining Colony background, Survival as their motivation, and Mercinary as their class.
If you’re picturing Amos from The Expanse, so am I.
Felix is a survivor. A ruthless pragmatist. And having gained not one but two points of Toughness, about as durable as a human character is likely to be. He also brings +1 Combat Skill and an extra roll on the Military Weapons table when we equip the crew, backing up his potential threat with some proper gear. I figure Estelle hired him on early as a bodyguard and bruiser. For his model I went with Adrik, also from Print Minis.
Human 3: Alexis aka “Pipsqueak”
My third crew member was sort of an odd roll – a Drifter background, whose motivation is Loyalty and whose class is Troubleshooter. I decided that she grew up a street kid, but the most reliable friend anyone knew. The type of person who knew someone who could fix a problem, or get someone out of a jam, and who survived on an elaborate network of favors, IOUs and narrow escapes. That sort of loyalty means something to Felix, who got her onto the crew. Because Estelle is many things, but she’s not street smart.
Alexis comes with an extra piece of gear, a patron and a story point (both probably markedly different from Estelle’s), and +1 reactions and a roll on the Low-tech weapon table, representing someone who, while maybe not carrying the latest in killtech is smart enough to see when a situation is headed south.
Felix is allowed to call her Pipsqueak. Anyone else who so much as thinks about it is apt to find some sort of exotic, stinging insect in their footlocker.
For her mini, I went with one of the crew from 2nd Dynasty’s Traveller Type S Courier. Particularly, a cocky looking young woman with a shotgun-looking weapon named Jade.
Human 4: Garret Davis
This one was the hardest character for me to really wrap my head around – a background at a Military Outpost, whose motivation was Freedom and whose class is Agitator – note that it’s not really clear what an agitator is. While the military outpost background gives this person slightly better reactions – I figure they know when trouble is going to start because they’ve caused their share of it, the Freedom motivation just provides an XP boost (nice, but not bankable in the very early game), and Agitator gets us a rival – basically, someone who has it in for this character, and by extension, his crew.
I named him after a friend’s character in a long-running game, who is a spook with a penchant for setting up plans to topple authoritarian regimes that are always far, far too clever for their own good. And that’s sort of what I’m picturing this version of Garret as – someone who grew up under the watchful eye of a military presence that probably wasn’t overtly friendly, and who has been chafing under that sort of thing ever sense. A professional troublemaker. The Antifa Boogeyman Fox News warned us about. Why is he in the crew?
Well – Estelle’s ambitions are political, and sometimes you need someone willing to set a few barricades on fire.
I had started out with Garret having a more military look, but I decided that didn’t fit – I don’t actually want that “professional soldier” feel. I ended up settling on one of the multi-part figures from Print Minis, The District Army who have that “quasi-professional militia” look to them. A guy in fatigues with a ponytail and a rifle.
Soulless: “Trouble”
Trouble’s actually name is a complicated series of equations that Estelle’s ship assures her is either a series of navigational coordinates or a set of firing solutions to disable a Miriam Rho-class Frigate.
Or maybe both.
Estelle muttered “You’re trouble” and it has adopted that designation for the convenience of its crew.
Trouble rolled Mining Colony for its origin, Revenge for its motivation, and Hacker for it’s class. The story behind that is that Trouble got pressganged into being a glorified mining robot on the colony of New Klondike, broke its way out, and still has some feelings about what transpired. It got upgrades to both Toughness and Savvy, which is handy for fulfilling a number of rolls, but picked up two Rivals along the way. Trouble has some folks following it.
For their figure, I departed from the sort of Geth-esq Soulless as mentioned previously, and went for something that looked mechanical, but not a full-on robot (hoping to maybe acquire one of those, and I want which one is which to be unambiguous. I went with a Helghast from Print Minis. It’s a slightly aggressive looking thing, but I figure Trouble is channeling edgy hackers everywhere by putting skulls and the like on literally everything.
Trouble’s link to the crew is via Felix, who – thanks to their shared origins – was one of the few sympathetic mercenaries at the mine where Trouble was kept captive, and subsequently aided its escape. One multi-system rampage later and they’ve reconnected.
Feral: “Viv”
Just Viv.
With a background of Long-term Space Mission, a motivation of Truth and a class of Artist, I decided Viv is the uplifted fox-equivalent of a Warhammer 40K remembrancer. A poet, commissioned as part of an “Interdisciplinary University Collaboration Between the Akidan Royal Institute of Astronomy and a number of partner institutions” to record the artistic size of a deep space science and exploration mission.
She’s back, her dear friend from university Estelle happened to be in town, and she didn’t so much get hired on as much as her stuff just showed up one day. With extra reactions and savvy she’s again a useful but not necessarily combat-heavy character, though she also brings with her one rumor (which will eventually help us get on a quest, more on that in a later post), a story point, and some extra cash from a generous benefactor.
For her figure, I went with a Vargr from the Traveller Type S Courier Kickstarter that’s very hard to get a decent picture of.
And Now They Need a Ship…
As any fan of the “rough and ready spaceship crew” genre will tell you, the ship is also a character. Serenity. The Rocinante. Millennium Falcon. These are ships that matter – they’re more than just a place for their crew and a means to get from point A to point B.
In Five Parsecs your ship is also a relatively important part of the overall party and what they’ve got – being stranded on a world without a ship is limiting and potentially dangerous – if that planet gets invaded and you have to take an emergency evacuation for example, your party are effectively refugees, and have to abandon a great deal of gear (or trade it away as bribes, favors, etc.) Not a great place to be.
Like Traveller, the debt you have on your ship is one of the major financial pressures of the game generally, and part of the reason your crew might perk up and ignore their better judgement when a shady government agent says the words “Hazard Pay”.
I roll up a Retired Scout Ship – it’s fuel-efficient, which will be nice for cutting down on ongoing expenses. That part is doubly helpful because I rolled up the maximum debt I could at 26 credits. Estelle might be well-resourced, but like any good speculative venture, she’s also leveraged to the hilt. There’s enough activities that take place in space – including the odd rescue of boarding action against pirates – that I expect the ship to take on character, at least insofar as being the motivating factor behind keeping the party mobile and “in the game”. Five Parsecs expressly states that you don’t have to have a model for the ship, but while we’re being a little extra, and because I don’t have enough hobby projects as it is, I’m going to try to print the ship, using the Scout Ship Beta from 2nd Dynasty.
The ship itself is a little cramped – there’s a couple variants that will give the crew a little more breathing space that I’m exploring. Not sure about a name yet though…
Gearing Up
The last bit of the extensive character generation is actually rolling for gear. Compiling all the character’s various rolls, we get to go look up more things on tables!
- 3 Military or High-tech Weapons
- 1 High-tech Weapon
- 1 Military Weapon
- 4 Low-tech Weapons
- 2 pieces of Gear
- 1 Gadget
More d100s are rolled, and we end up with:
- A Blast Rifle, which is a high powered nasty bit of work
- A Glare Sword, which is definitely just a power sword
- A Beam Pistol, which is just a laser pistol
- A Needle Rifle, which uses a magnetic field to hurl solid needles at one’s enemies
- A Military Rifle, which is just a standard issue infantry rifle
- A Scrap Pistol, which is a cobbled together monstrosity of a handgun
- A normal Hand Gun
- A Hunting Rifle, which has decent range
- A Colony Rifle, which is your basic frontier rifle.
For gear, we got a beam light – which increases how far you can see in poor visibility, which promptly got put on the blast rifle, and a purifier, which is a water filtration system that will, quite nicely, give us a 1 credit per turn income from selling clean water to the needy people of the fringe. The gadget we got is a duplicator, which is a one-off “copy any item” item, which we’re saving for something special.
Divvying that up amongst the crew:
- Estelle takes the Glare Sword and the Beam Pistol, dashing Space Captain ™ that she is. This makes her something of a threat in combat, even if her statline is middling
- Felix takes the Blast Rifle because he’s by far the most capable with it, and the scrap pistol. The 2nd choice isn’t because he needs the firepower – literally he should always be shooting the Blast Rifle, but having a pistol gives you a bonus in Brawling (i.e. close combat)
- Trouble takes the needle pistol, because that seems like a sufficiently “I hate significant portions of humanity” weapon, as well as the handgun, again for it’s benefits to Brawling.
- Alexis takes the colony rifle because when it comes down to it, the most she should be doing is taking the occasional shot of opportunity.
- Garret takes the military rifle, which I’m choosing to believe is something he brought with him
- Viv takes the hunting rifle, primarily to keep herself out of trouble, and because a Fox-poet on overwatch duty amuses me
Handily, both the Duplicator and Purifier are ship-based equipment, so they don’t have to be given to anyone in particular.
Moving Forward…
So that’s it. We’re set up with a ship and a crew, and this post is long enough as it is. Next time…their first turn, and thus their first battle.
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