Introduction
Playing a Five Parsecs From Home 1st edition campaign. Starting with one party member. No aliens, no psionics.
Week 2
Inventory: pistol, rifle, jump belt, nano-doc.
Chirsu again trades and needs to choose between a grenade
launcher or an autorifle. They take the
autorifle as it is a better all-round weapon for close and long range.
Chirsu did not realise it at the time but sometime in the past they made an enemy of some Isolationists. They choose now to enact some revenge. Chirsu gets a little advance notice of their assault and holds up in an office
Assault: Select a location, item or terrain feature that you are defending. The player's forces set up in, on or within 6” of this feature. Attackers set up with 6” of any table edge of their choice.
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| Isolationists |
Enemy: 2 Isolationists, both armed with pistol.
Terrain:
LOS blocking forest or ruins | Scatter e.g. boulders, debris, single trees
LOS blocking forest or
ruins
Structure | LOS blocking hill or bushes
This terrain screams to be inside a building. I setup some rooms and walls using Battle System Cyberpunk walls. Chirsu is guarding the room on the bottom left.
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| Deploy |
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| 1st Isolationist gets a scurry (no reaction fire) so moves close. |
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| 2nd Isolationist moves close but just out of sight of Chirsu. |
Chirsu fires at the 1st Isolationist and they are suppressed.
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| 2nd Isolationist moves into range of Chirsu, who reaction fires for no result. |
2nd Isolationist then fires and pins Chirsu.
Chirsu activates, as they are pinned they may only fire at
closest (i.e. 1st Isolationist).
The 1st Isolationist is suppressed and must retreat (as they
are already suppressed).
2nd Isolationist fires and misses, Chirsu fires
back and the 2nd Isolationist is Knocked out.
1st Isolationist unsuppresses and needs to get into range but has no choice to move into the LOS of Chirsu. They move to where the 2nd Isolationist was located. Chirsu fires at 1st Isolationist and the 1st Isolationist is Knocked out.
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| Chirsu KOs 2nd Isolationist next to the 1st one (also KO) |
Chirsu wins!
Winning does not convince the Isolationists to leave Chirsu
alone (no change to enemy list).
Chirsu also finds out that it is not only the Isolationists
he has annoyed in the past, there was a
run-in with some Star crew that have made them an enemy (campaign event).
Faction changes: Bandits (6) rolls 6; Corporation (4) rolls
6; Cultists (5) rolls 5. No change
While chilling, Chirsu runs into Jayy who was a soldier he
served with years ago. Chirsu convinces Jayy to join him for the next mission while Jayy is between jobs.
Jayy, Soldier, War torn hell hole origin. Brawler; SMG,
jump belt.
Very exciting stuff! Need to find a way to imitate this. Are one-figure parties the/a typical way to play 5 Parsecs? I haven't read/played it, but 5 Leagues usually pre-supposes a slightly larger starting party. I also want to write something slightly longer form about one of the techniques you use here, and I like too, about making the narrative the emergent property of the rolls as much as the other way around. Like the terrain too, will have to look it up.
ReplyDeleteI have 3 more weeks already done and the draft posts just need some editing and the pictures added.
DeleteSo far (5 turns) it is working for me. And so glad I picked 1st Edition with less chrome. I did code up a spreadsheet to do the pre-mission stuff, create the mission and enemies and do the post-misison stuff. It is clunky but saves all those rolls and looking up tables. It did take ages to do but worth it now as it is so simple to auto generate the mission, enemy, weapons, terrain, setup etc. Most of the non-battle stuff is from the spreadsheet and I reword it a little bit, add some narrative if something come to me and delete some stuff that is not important. May not be helpful but I am definitely finding that if it is not hard to do the campaign stuff then it is easy to run the campaign. In my case it was hard (but fun) to setup the spreadsheet but now easy to run the campaign.
Even then, setting the table up (quick as it is) is still longer than the battle itself! They take minutes.
I answered the party size on another post (4-8 is recommended). I recruit someone in week 5 - I needed some tactical decision making in the battles!
The terrain I have used for a few years now and is really useful for shipboard (or underground colonies). While it is for 28mm, it works OK for 20mm. Dale Hurtt (RIP) put me onto the Battle System Cyberpunk stuff in one of his posts many years ago.
Thanks Shawn. It seems to be going ok so far. I have found my interest of peters out after a few turns but still going strong with this one.
ReplyDelete