5
Parsecs From Home campaign, Mission report #4. 5 Parsecs is a solitaire miniatures game,
which I'm playing on Roll20. The game is a lot like Firefly or The Expanse, following the adventures of a small spaceship and their crew.
As a refresher, the crew of the merchant ship The Rhapsody of Inanna
have names starting with the letters G to M. At various points in these
posts, I will 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 / "Hopeful Rookie"
- L: Leonidas, a Human military brat and scavenger
- M: Moreva, an alien Engineer
Pre-Battle:
Upkeep and Ship Repairs: 2 upkeep on crew, 4 payment on ship, 1 interest increased on ship debt
Crew Tasks: - Moreva gets to take two actions this Turn, due to a character event last Turn.
Juniper goes to meet with a Patron about a job
M and I train. Moreva makes use of the disposible Teachbot to gain a total of +6 XP.
For her second action, Moreva Trades, and gets a Stabilizer. I have no Heavy Weapons to attach it to, so it's mostly junk for now. When she goes trading, she brings along our bot G, who purchases some damaged Combat Armor. Moreva would be good at fixing that, but she's used up her action for this Turn, so the body armour just sits in our cargo hold for now.
L and H go Exploring. L finds a Quest Clue that will be helpful later. H samples the local cuisine, which it turns out is toxic, but since H'Xex is a K'Erin, he's immune to food poisoning, and kind of likes it.
Job Offers:
- My total is an 8, which would mean 1 existing patron job and 1 new
patron job. I The Rules-as-Written really make your initial Patrons on
the first world not do much, since you can easily start with 3 or more
of them. It can also basically get you infinite Patrons, all of which
will eventually go away at once if the planet gets invaded. It's clunky. I'm implementing a house rule
option where if there's 2 new jobs, the first one is a random existing
Patron. Then you roll 1d6 for the second job, with each existing Patron
other than that first one getting numbered, and a roll above the
existing Patrons generating a new Patron. That should make existing Patrons hand out jobs more often, eliminate dead ends from narrative/world-building, and fix the weird thing that can theoretically snowball into infinite Patrons over time.
My roll gets me a job from the Seraphim Foundation (which is the Orphan-Utility Program that Juniper graduated from), and from Segno Bioscience (the company to whom we'd brought Vital Info in the previous Turn).
Assign Equipment: - Trade GcViib's Plasma Rifle with Moreva's Shotgun. Last Turn I forgot to do that, and it resulted in M standing around with no enemies in range of her gun all game.
Battle Sequence:
Patron Mission: Segno Bioscience (Patron from handing over the Vital Info on the Skulker Mercenaries. ) Type: Corporation.
Danger Pay: +1,
Deployment Condition, if any? Small Encounter: A random crew member must sit out this fight. Reduce Enemy numbers by -1 (-2 if they now outnumber you).
Notable Sight, if any?: REALLY Shiny Bits: Gain 2 Credits - it is 13" to the North of the center of the table.Mission Objective? Secure: You must end 2 consecutive rounds with crew within 2” of the center of the table. A crew member with an enemy within 6” of them does not count. Once this is achieved, you Win. If you drive off the opposition, you can complete the objective at your leisure.
Enemy Type: - Hired Muscle - Black Ops Team
Numbers: +0 Panic: 1 Speed: 6” Combat: +2 Tough: 5 AI: T Weapons: 3A
2 regulars with Blast Rifle. High-damage but effective range of less than half the table.
Deploy: I'm in the north. The small encounter randomly removes Moreva for the turn, so I just have 5 figures. There's a notable sight up north as well, so I'm going to send a figure laterally to pick it up. Just for fun, I put three moving cars, and 3 parked cars, all on the map at random locations.
If the map looks familiar, it's basically reused from Mission 1. I was eager to get another game happening ASAP, and didn't want to take the time making another map. So I just moved a couple of parked cars, and called it good enough for gaming.
Round 1: - Bad guys advance in cover. We do the same, and Inshubur runs out in the street to grab the really shiny bits. Rolling 13" North of center for the notable sight on a map where I deployed in the North was basically free points. If the opposition had sniper rifles or infantry lasers it might have been a little trickier, but with just 16" range on their blasters, there was almost guaranteed to be at least one turn where I could stand out in the open to get the credits without worrying about incoming fire.
Round 2: - More advancing, using cars for cover. Kid gets up on a building and misses the sniper shot.
Battle Event between Round 2 and 3 -
"Enemy reinforcements!" This is just about the worst possible result, as
these are really tough foes, and it would double their numbers. So I
spend a story point to reroll, and get "Ammo fault". That means one random PC's main weapon stops working for the rest of the battle.
I remind myself that I should be narrating story points, so here we are:
The reason Moreva isn't at
this small encounter, is that we detected enemy reinforcements several minutes out, so she took our transport away to decoy them. At
the time, she'd been doing last-minute maintenance on The Kid's laser,
which this interrupted, that's why his gun fails.
Round 3: -
Inshubur fires and misses. One of the mercs fires at H'Xex, and stuns
him, but he nopes out of sight with his Jump Belt. The Kid figures out
his gun is broken, and tucks himself out of sight behind a tall
building. Unfortunately, he's got no other weapons, so he's probably
useless, and should bail in the next turn or two. Leonidas and Juniper
can't quite get into range, so they maneuver behind cover. We're 3 turns
in, and there have only been 4 shots, of which 3 are misses. I may need
to use smaller maps.
Round 4: - An amazing initiative
roll: 1,1,2,2,2. Leonidas climbs onto a roof and fires across the
street, stunning the enemy on the opposing roof. Juniper follows him up
the stair, and shoots the same guy twice. Inshubur prepares for Snap
Fire. Remaining Black Ops baddie doesn't have range to anyone, so he
moves forward. This leaves a tiny opening where he's in Inshubur's range
and LOS in the open, so she Snap Fires. He's stunned, but has enough
movement to get into cover even after being knocked back. But he can't
return fire now because he's stunned.
Battle Event between Round 4 and 5: Clock is running out: At the end of the next round and each round thereafter, roll 1D6. On a 6, the game ends immediately, and you are unable to complete any objectives. You will not count as Holding the Field unless you clear the table of enemies before this happens.
Round 5: -
The clock is ticking. Inshubur fires and misses. H'Xex jump-belts over
traffic to engage the remaining Black Op. Shatter Axe for the win.
Analysis: -
Snap Fire isn't written up as clearly as it could be. It doesn't actually say that a
character stunned mid-move gets rid of their Stun immediately, but I'm inferring that it should since it
costs them their attack this turn. That's how I'm interpreting it, as
the alternative would leave the NPCs more vulnerable and cost them
attacks in two turns. The stun clearing instantly is also harder for the
PCs, which is why I'm interpreting it as correct. After all NPCs don't
get to interrupt at all, so it seems fair to make it a trade-off that's
not always the best move a PC could take against high-toughness
low-threat enemies. Sometimes, the better play will be to wait until all the enemies have moved, and then lay into them with multiple PCs at once.
I also feel like I may be using maps that are too
large. We started really far apart, and it took a lot of turns just
closing in. If that "The Clock Is Running Out" Battle Event had come up
at the end of Round 2, I probably would have had a stalemate instead of a
win, and stalemates have some rules vagueness that's not ideal. Shorter
encounter distances wouldn't benefit the PCs so much as benefit
whichever side has the shorter-range weaponry, and that's highly
variable. This map is 44x44, and would have been better as 36x36, or if I
just let characters deploy further in to the map. I didn't use all the space, mostly keeping the action to within 36x36, but I should probably deploy both sides closer to each other in future games. Technically, they only have to be 18" apart at the start of the first turn, and they were more than 20" apart at the start of this game.
Ironically, I may be under-charging for going up a ladder. I've been just charging 1 inch of vertical movement, but if these buildings were physical models, they'd be 1.25 to 2 inches tall. So I probably need to make one tweak to tighten up the map and speed things along, and then a second tweak to slow down one specific type of movement.
It is game four, but I'm still kind of learning the system.
Post-Battle:
Rival Status: - Thankfully, the Black Ops baddies don't decide they need vengeance later.
Patron Status: - I completed the mission, locking in Segno Bioscience as a long-term Patron.
Pay and Benefits of Success: - (Base 3, Danger Pay: +1, REALLY Shiny Bits: Gain 2 Credits) for a grand total of 6 credits.
Battlefield Finds: - Curious data stick: You obtain a Quest Clue.
Gather the Loot:
- Nano-Doc: Prevent one roll on the post-battle Injury Table, no matter
the source of the injury. You must decide before rolling the dice.
Single-use.
XP and Upgrades: G.0 H.3 I.3 J.4 K.5 L.3 M.1 - First Kill: - J Rookie: K The Black Ops mercs have the modifier: Tough fight: a random survivor gains +1 XP. I roll it, and get the Kid. K - The kid fails utterly this battle, but apparently learns a lot from it.
Moreva falls further behind the party, so I'm glad she got that Teachbot in the pre-battle sequence.
I decide to give her 1 XP, as though she were in the Mission but got
KO'd by stun in the first round. The reason for this is that she was
selected as a mission participant, then removed by a random event.
(Also, when I spent the story point, I narrated that it was her efforts
that prevented the other enemies from joining the fight.)
Campaign Event: - The crew spends a night drinking, watching movies, and playing cards. +1 story point.
Character Event: - Leonidas earns a little on the side. (That sounds like he's a stripper, or gigolo.) Receive +2 credits.
Thank you for reading this battle report. See also the Index of my Five Parsecs articles for additional content.
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