Friday, June 11, 2021

5 Parsecs, 1 Mission

This is a Battle Report (or "BatRep" as the kids say) for Mission 1 of my 5 Parsecs From Home campaign. 5 Parsecs is a solitaire miniatures game, which I'm playing on Roll20 (mostly because projects from work have consumed our dining room table). So instead of actual miniatures, I'm using little token images on a virtual tabletop.

As a refresher, the crew of the merchant ship The Rhapsody of Inanna have names starting with the letters G to L. At various points in these posts, I will no doubt refer to them by just the first letter of a character's name.  See also: Crew Roster, and the Index of my Five Parsecs articles.


G: GcViib, a standard Bot
H: H'Xex, a K'Erin soldier
I: Captain Inshubur Nastarastar, a Precursor hacker and spiritualist
J: Marshal Juniper Sasparillax, a Human enforcer
K: The Kid, a Human technican and Hopeful Rookie
L: Leonidas, a Human military brat and scavenger

Crew Member Spotlight: Captain Inshubur

Inshubur Nashtarastar spends a lot of her time online, experiencing holos and VRs about various ecstatic religious experiences. The pursuit of knowledge is of great importance to her, but she gets caught up in her eclectic, pantheist epiphanies. She's a religious experience junky, and a technophile. She won't lecture you about a one true religion, but will absolutely ask you a never-ending series of questions about your personal religious and philosophical beliefs. That's part of why she's collected this crew, is that she's gathered around her people that are capable of engaging in spirited philosophical debate.

Her own beliefs are a syncretic melting pot of philosophies. The foundations of it were the Precursors star-worship that she grew up with, but to that she has wedded parts of the K'Erin warrior goddess cult, terran zen archery and martial arts training, and a potpourri of interesting theological tidbits from a few dozen cultures.

Lately, she's fixated on a Skulker cult relic called "The Strange Brain", which she believes to be technohypnological in nature. Rumor is its hidden somewhere in this sector. While she'll be perfectly happy to give it to a Skulker religious community after it's been recovered, she hopes to interface with it before turning it over. This has caused her to run afoul of Ratlobe Kur, an insular and conservative Skulker community of dubious moral character. Skulker's are generally quite open-minded, but Ratlobe Kur is uncharacteristically xenophobic, and has threatened to kill any non-Skulker that comes in contact with The Strange Brain.
While Inshubur isn't afraid to fight (she's quite good at it, actually), she would much rather find an amicable solution to problems when possible. Who does she have to sleep with (or bribe, or rob, or kill) to get an hour alone with The Strange Brain Of The Skulker and the higher dimensional mysteries contained therein?

Pre-Battle Sequence:

Crew Actions:
J talks with Menrva Bail Bond company, gets a mission, and an introduction to Mr Manselli who will have another Mission for us later.
I trains for +1 XP
L and G trade for a pre-owned Jump Belt in need of repairs, and miscellaneous Trade Goods.
H explores, and is offered a small job to take out a particular baddie for 2 credits.
K decoys successfully.

Rumor Roll: 1, so a new Quest has been triggered, but I had not yet found the page in the rules that really explains that, so I started with the Bail Bonds job. As it turns out, the rules are pretty vague about what constitutes a Quest.

Later, I put together a random "Quest Object Name Generator", and rolled up something called The Strange Brain of the Skulker. That's why such a thing is mentioned in the Captain's bio, above.


Job Description: 

Patron Job from Menrva Bail Bonds. Danger Pay is +1 Credits. Time Frame is Turn 1 only.
Hazards is "Hot Job: After the Job, you will earn an enemy on 1-2 instead of just a roll of 1".
Conditions is "Busy: If the mission is a success, this Patron offers a new job next campaign turn." 


Battle Sequence:

Deployment Conditions: Nothing Special

+ Special Modifier this turn only: "Offered a Small Job" from Explore: "When fighting this campaign turn, select a random enemy figure. If your crew kills them, earn 2 credits. No reward if they run away."

Notable Sights: Priority target: Select a random enemy figure. Add +1 to their Toughness. If they are slain, gain 1D3 credits. (This is in addition to the Small Job above)

Objective: Eliminate: Select a random enemy figure. They are the target. If they are killed, you Win the mission.

So  there's three random targets I need to take out. One for 1d3 creds, one for 2 creds, and one to actually complete the mission. What they call a "target-rich environment".

Enemy Type: Hired Muscle:  Subtype: Skulker Mercenaries
So basically I'm fighting skaven / ratlings.  They come in large numbers. In this case, 5 regulars with Military Rifles, 2 specialists with Plasma Rifles, and an LT with higher skill and an extra melee weapon.

I deploy in the North-West. Skulkers are in the South East. There's a lot of open space along the major road in the middle, so this is going to be bloody and awful. The Skulker Mercs have got longer range weapons then most of my crew, which proves problematic.


When I was playing this first mission, I wasn't yet planning to blog these, so I didn't take good pictures. I'll try to at least save higher resolution shots for future missions, but these first few BatReps at least will have little imagery.

 

The green arrows represent the movement of the PCs. Red arrows are the NPC opposition, Skulker Mercenaries. Purple and blue arrows are the randomized motion (and intended motion) of neutral NPC cars, explained in detail below. The red "X" is where H'Xex (one of my PCs) got shot and taken out of play. Not visible is the ladder The Kid used to get up on a roof, and the underpass my team used to get into the starting position.


Round 1: The skulkers were waiting for us. They had guys on the roof, and started raining firepower down on us like you wouldn't believe. H'Xex took cover behind a bollard, but was hit anyway, and taken out of the fight instantly.

The Kid slagged one of our targets with their Infantry Laser. Good kid.

Round 2: The Skulkers shoot first. Inshubur had a close call, but Luck let her fall back around a corner out of sight. GcViib was hit but not damaged. No one died on either side.


Round 3: Leonidas took out their other specialist. GcViib took out their LT.  

Then the Kid nearly died, but Luck took them off the roof safely, and into cover. One could argue that the change in elevations should have been a fall, and potentially a hit of it's own, but that seemed to be against the spirit of Luck, so I assumed he landed safely. (Also, since I wasn't yet planning to blog these, I didn't take good notes on The Kid's actual position. It's possible he was actually on the roof of the building at the NorthWest corner of the map.)

Round 4: Leonidas took out our second "extra" bounty. The Kid hit our main target, but his laser didn't have the power to kill it. Two cars pulled out into the intersection and provided brief cover for Inshubur and Juniper to inch closer to the enemy. Their shotguns are not proving effective at long range.

Round 5: The cars nearly collide in the middle of the street and brake hard amidst the screaming and gunfire. Inshubur takes advantage of the opportunity and runs around them to blast a skulker that had been taking cover behind a dumpster. Two of the skulkers bail and run as Leonidas pegs our final target with a fatal plasma blast.

Analysis: That was a challenging fight. Both characters with Luck used it up. Two PCs never got in range for their shotguns, and one of them was knocked out by enemy fire well beyond his own range. Big wide empty areas like that are really dangerous in this game.

I did make it a little harder on myself by taking out the bonus bounties. If I had concentrated all my firepower on the "kill him to win" target, I probably could have won in Round 3 instead of Round 5, but that gamble seemed worth it at the time, and paid off successfully.

I forgot three rules during play, and taken in aggregate I think forgetting them made the game harder for me.
1) I forgot to have hit-but-not-killed figures fall back 1". This may have actually saved H'Xex from being taken out if I had remembered it, as he was stunned by a shot before the one that made him a casualty, and I know a couple of those attacks were at extreme range.
2) I forgot to roll on the Battlefield Events table at the end of rounds 2 & 4. This is hard to say if that helped or hindered me, but I did do something else more homebrew-y with NPC cars that helped and was hella flavorful, so it was still plenty unpredictable even without that chart.  
3) If you don't shoot, you can Dash an extra +2". This would have helped my shotgun characters get into cover, or maybe even get into range.


The Cars:

You can't really tell from the crummy image above, but I had a cool map with a bunch of streets on it, so I got out some car "models". (I'm playing on Roll20, so everything is virtual miniatures, basically just movable pictures.) I numbered 8 possible entry points, dictated by traffic lanes. After the PCs and Enemies were deployed, I rolled 3 random entry points and put cars at them, then moved each 2d6 inches forward. These represented innocent motorists unfortunately driving down the street at the worst possible moment. The cars provided mobile Cover if Line-of-Sight  on a shot passed over or through them. Each turn, I had each car move 2d4 inches forward. If this would have caused it to collide with anything, it would instead stop just short, and if that something was a model it would become stunned.  It worked really well. 1 car ended up irrelevant, just moving near the edge of the map. I had planned that if a car exited the map a new car would enter the map at another random spot at the start of the next turn, but it didn't quite happen due to how the die rolls played out. One really cool piece of emergent behavior happened, with two cars coming to an intersection at the same moment (not intended, and one had randomly traveled much faster than the other in order for it to happen this way). They stopped short of colliding, and this provided 2 consecutive turns where my fastest PC could rush across the street using them as cover, and get in range with her shotgun as a result. It was dramatic, unpredictable, and felt totally awesome like a moment from an action movie. I will likely try this again sometime. Now that I remember there's a +2" dash option, I probably should increase car speeds to 2d6, so PCs would be less likely to outpace them.


Post-Battle:


Pay and Benefits of Success: "Success" plus "Priority Target" and "Small Job" and "Danger Pay" pay a total of 8 credits, which is off to a great start.

Thanks to the Busy Condition, I also get another Job offer from the Bail Bonds company.

Battlefield Finds: Scavengers: Roll twice on the Battlefield Finds Table. I get another Plasma Rifle! I also find Vital Info that can be turned in to gain an automatic Corporate Patron without rolling.

Gather the Loot:
is a "Shatter Axe"! That sounds awesome.

Injuries and Recovery: H'Xex has a Serious Injury that will have him out of commission for 4 Campaign Turns! This is pretty dreadful.

XP and Upgrades:  G0 H1 I3 J3 K5 L3  - How to read that: The Kid got first kill (+1 XP), and their Hopeful Rookie reward (also +1 XP). So the Kid gets a total of 5 XP, and most of the other non-bots get 3 XP each. H'Xex gets only 1 XP because he was knocked out. GcViib is a bot, and thus gets no XP.

I spend a story point to give Inshubur an extra 3 more XP so she could level up her Toughness. Even with the Luck point, the Toughness 2 of the Precursor species is a very limiting vulnerability.

Purchase Items: Not worth it while my cash is in short supply, especially since I found a new gun and a shatter ax. Eventually I'll want some Gear and Gadgets, but for the moment getting my ship debt under control is probably a better early goal.

Campaign Event: Made friends among the locals. +1 Story Point.

Character Event: H'Xex find the local food is good. Reduces his recovery time by 1 Turn! Now I see why they let you roll Character Events even from the Sick Bay.

Thank you for reading my first 5 Parsecs From Home battle report!

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