Mission 2 (Five Parsecs From Home)

This is a reconstruction of my second Mission from my current Five Parsec From Home campaign. I wasn't originally planning to blog these, so my notes from the mission are good, but not perfect, and I've played 5 more missions since this one, so my memory is a little fuzzy on certain details. I ran the game on Roll20's virtual tabletop rather than on an actual table with actual minis. (For these first couple of games, I was going to a lot of unnecessary trouble using the dynamic lighting and line-of-sight features of Roll20, which was mostly a waste of time and actually caused me to screw up the 5 Parsec cover rules a bit. After this game, I turned off all the dynamic light stuff, and the games have been much faster and more fun since making that change.)

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.

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

See also: Crew Roster, and Index of my Five Parsecs articles.

Pre-Battle:

Upkeep and Ship Repairs: - I paid a story point to gain $3, then paid $6 via planet Medical Facility to recover H'Xex, who had been shot up pretty badly in the first mission.

Crew Tasks: - Sick Bay H - recovers this turn in time for the mission
    Train - K (Raises his Toughness)
    Trade - J (Starship Parts)
    Explore - I (Delivery Package)
    Repair - G (Jump Belt)
    Decoy - L

Job Offers: - Free Job Offer from previous turn's Busy Condition

Assign Equipment: - H'Xex gets the Shatter Axe and the fixed-up Jump Belt, so he can bring the pain to the enemy ranks.

Job Description: This is the first mission in the The Strange Brain Of The Skulker Quest chain. (It's a randomly generated name, but it is extra appropriate given how we just fought Skulkers in Mission #1).  We discovered that the Skulker Mercenaries had something buried on an old piece of rural property.

Battle:
Deployment Conditions:  - Bitter struggle: Enemy Morale is +1. (Presumably this means their Panic value is reduced by 1. I think this is an error in the rulebook, probably an artifact of the change between the three editions of the game.)

Notable Sights:  - Really shiny bits (Gain 2 credits). It is 8" to the East of the center of the table.

Objective: - An item needed for the Quest is placed at the center of the table. A crew member must move into contact, take a Combat Action, and then move off the table. If the carrier becomes a casualty, roll 1D6: On a 1, the item is destroyed. Otherwise it can be picked up by spending a Combat Action at the location they fell. If you drive off the enemy, you can pick up the item at your own leisure.

Enemy Type: - Interested Parties - Colonial Militia
Numbers: - +1   Panic: - 1-2    Speed: -4”     Combat: -+0     Tough: -3     AI: -C     Weapons: - 2B

We are fighting 3 regular Colonial Militia with Infantry Laser, 1 specialist with an area-effect Shell Gun ,  1 LT. w/ Inf Laser + Blade   No uniques, thankfully.

Home field advantage: Colonial Militia always count as being in Cover if they are on their third of the table and are not within 12” of the shooter. (This basically worked out to all of them being in cover the entire battle, if I'm not mistaken.)

Deploy: We're on the East, Colonial Militia in the West. They've got a Shell Gun and lots of Infantry Lasers, so it's going to be dangerous to go anywhere near the objective, and hard to get close to them. Thankfully, killing them all and ignoring the objective until the battle is over is actually an allowable strategy.

The red arrows are the movements of the NPC colonial militia. They had long-range weapons, tactical AI, and a cover bonus if they stayed near their edge of the map, so they didn't move much the whole game.

The green arrows are the movements of my PCs. 

The cyan line is the movement of H'Xex. He's one of my PCs, but he has a Jump Belt that allowed him to move over the buildings and terrain. The green arrows on his cyan line mark the spots where he landed.

The purple line is the movement of my Bot (GcViib) after his motivator circuit blew and he just marched straight forward, through and past the burning house, for an hour.



Round 1: - Creeping up and spreading out. No contact yet. H'Xex finds something really shiny hidden in a woodpile next to a building.

Round 2: - Moving into position. H'Xex uses the jump belt to get a look at the enemy, they've got a Shell Gun almost certainly zeroed in on the objective, so he drops down on the other side of the building out of LOS. The Kid spots the Shell Gun and gets excited. He pops off a Laser that goes wide and mostly just alerts the enemy to our advance.

Battle Event between Round 2 and 3 - Renewed efforts: The enemy is making a concerted effort to push you back. For the rest of the battle, after all enemy figures have acted, select a random figure that may immediately take a second Move and second Combat Action. Good going, Kid.

Round 3: - (We only get 1 success on Initiative, so) The Kid tries to duck out of sight, but the Shell Gunner anticipates it and fires blind ahead of the kid. Unfortunately, the Kid ran right up next to GcViib in the process, so the Shell Gunner nearly slags our Bot without even knowing it existed. The is stunned and knocked over out in the open.

Meanwhile, H'Xex's recon leap over the building unfortunately put him in the sights of the enemy. (I spend a Story Point to force a reroll on the militia's crack shot.)

Renewed Efforts - Northernmost militia goes into a farmhouse. (I'm really lucky it's a random enemy that gets the extra action, because 4 of the 6 would have been able to get shot off.)

H'Xex jumps over another building, and gets a successful kill on a militia on the southern flank.  While the enemy is distracted by him, Juniper moves through a farmhouse, and takes a shot out a window that blasts the militia.

Round 4: - The Kid scrambles into cover, again getting foolishly close to our Bot, but at least they're both out of view of the Shell Gunner. Inshubur moves through a building and fires a shot out a window that shakes some of the Militia out of their cover.

(The enemy LT fires at Juniper in the farmhouse. It's a miss, but it makes me realize that all my efforts with LOS via Night Vision programming is wasted efforts. Per the rules, it's arguable that she shouldn't have been able to shoot out, and he definitely could shoot back in at her. I'm going to keep using my LOS system for this battle, since I went to a lot of trouble to set it up on this map, and we're mid-game, but I will try to use more sensible rules in future battles.)

Renewed Efforts - The northernmost militia keeps firing out the door of the farmhouse at GcViib.

GcViib returns fire, and the farmhouse falls silent other than the crackling sound of a plasma fire.

H'Xex rushes the Shell Gunner, and the risk pays off. No more artillery for the enemy.

Battle Event between Round 4 and 5: Lost! A random crew member loses their way and misses the rest of the battle. Remove the figure from the battlefield. They rejoin you safely afterwards, looking a bit sheepish. Ignore this event if you are currently outnumbered.

That militia must have shot the navigational sensors off our Bot, because GcViib just kept advancing on the smoking farmhouse, right into the fire. At the time, we thought our Bot had just marched to its doom, but he burst out the plasma-scorched wall in the back of the building a minute later, and kept walking until someone had the time to beam the recall program at him.

Round 5: - Though now outnumbered, the Militia fight on. H'Xex jumps over a hedge and drives his new Shatter Axe though a helmet. The weapon is well-named.  The sniper battle between the enemy LT and Juniper finally breaks in our favor, and we hold the field.

Renewed Efforts does not trigger, as the last Militia has died.

Analysis: - It seems I NEED to get some armor for my people. H'Xex is devastating if he can get to the enemy, but in both Missions there have been early Rounds when he was exposed to the fire of 3 or more Enemies in a single turn, and even with cover they just rolled enough dice to smoke him. Either I need to change tactics completely, or I need to figure out a way to increase his defenses. I guess it could be map design, and I may need to place a central terrain piece, rather than a "no-mans-land" clearing in the middle of the table.

Handling terrain features correctly will help as well. I was trying to make use of Roll20's ability to handle Line-Of-Sight and Range via some complicated vision features. The idea was this would be all the pre-game effort because of how it would simplify and automate game play. Thing is, 5 Parsecs system is fast and elegant, so I don't really need to automate it. Also, I'm not sure having Roll20 calculate Line-Of-Sight actually saves time, at best it just moved that time to pre-game prep. Anyhow, in the process, I was drawing sight lines on the maps, and didn't really realize how much this was NOT the rules-as-written. Being INSIDE a building should make you incapable of shooting out or being shot at from outside, unless you're at a window and within 1" of the edge. Being able to automatically eyeball if three windows happen to be lined up just perfectly is kinda spoiling me, and has become an unintentional house-rule that makes 1-in-a-million sniper shots unrealistically easy. So, no more vision systems on maps for me. I'm reverting to the rules as written.


Post-Battle:

Rival Status: - Didn't trigger.

Quest Progress: - Dead End, the quest continues.  Maybe neither we nor the militia realized that Skulkers use a different coordinate system on their maps.

Pay and Benefits of Success: -  Base pay is 3. Really Shiny: +2 credits, for a total of 5 credits.

Battlefield Finds: -  1 dose of the consumable drug "Still" The user gains +1 to Hit, but cannot Move during this and the next round.

Gather the Loot: - Gun Mod: Shock Attachment: The weapon receives the Impact trait against targets within 8”. Impact: If the target is Stunned by this attack, place a second Stun Marker.

XP and Upgrades:  G0 H-4 I-3 J-3 K-4 L-3  - First Kill: - H    Rookie: - K
J spends on Combat Skill,  L spends on Toughness.

Purchase Items: - A roll on the Gadget table gets us a cyberhand. "Cyber Hand: The character may take any one Pistol they own and build it into their hand. Range is reduced to half, but the weapon always shoots with +1 to Hit and an additional +1 bonus when Brawling."

The only pistol we have right now is a Scrap Pistol. That's not very good, so we probably won't install the cyberhand yet. I was thinking of that as Juniper's old service revolver, so I can justify it from a narrative perspective, as she might have a sentimental attachment that could lead to her wanting to keep it forever... but it seems like a bit of a waste in a minis game to embed the weakest possible gun in your irreversible and quantity-limited implant slot. I hold off for now.

Campaign Event: - Rolled 93 "It's time to go!" and decided this was too soon to leave the planet, so it was worth a Story Point to turn that bad roll into an Equipment Malfunction that will require us to fix the Trade Goods before we can sell them.

Character Event: - Inshubur has a chance meeting that turns into a new ally. Roll up a new character and add them to the crew, OR add +1 story point. You may decide after rolling up the new character.

The result is Morev Mudo, an Engineer (species) of the Lower Megacity Class, motivated by Discovery, and professionally a Scavenger. I didn't really need another low-Toughness, high-Savvy character, but they definitely fit the themes of my crew, so would probably fit in well. They came with a Machine Pistol, a Plasma Rifle, and a Frag Vest. I was just saying I needed a better pistol and some armor. Mind you, it's a marginally better pistol, and the weakest Armor. Again, it's not a great choice for min-maxing, but it's something the characters would definitely say yes to. I've decided I'm going to RP this stuff, not just be coldly calculating like I'm trying to "win" the campaign... this time, anyway.