Liked the campaign system but not a fan of the resoltion of combat

Five parsecs it is the best rpg light skirmish solo system you could find anywhere , all the cores are superb well written and easy to play. The best expansion it is the planetary  generator. Wild animals , carnivourous plants !!! Simply  Great !! Every cores it is a new voyage in the unknown

Excellent. As good as Frostgrave or Walking Dead: All Out War.

The rules are simple enough to get out of your way yet flexible enough to simulate anything you might need to. Climbing, jumping down, kicking in doors, hacking computer terminals, it's all accounted for by one of two types of skill check.

The campaign is procedurally generated through a series of suggestions from random tables. A random mission might be that the heroes are hired by the [local authorities] to [investigate a location]. It's up to the player to determine who the authorities are, what the location is and how it's set up. The amount of justification/explanation is entirely up to the player. Grab a set of Story Cubes or something like the Mythic GM Emulator and it can easily take on rpg aspects. Or don't worry about it, go to a location, roll up an enemy group, fight it out, shoot first and ask no questions. As much or as little story as you desire.

While there is a great deal of rolling on tables during the campaign phase, the tables are largely there to guide your imagination. During the combat phase you won't have to roll on tables at all and you'll rarely need to consult the rules.

Characters level up both through the use of XP and the acquisition of loot.

The designer acknowledges that in a game with so many dice, there can arise situations which feel "unfair" or "spiteful." There are therefore provided 5 one-time bonuses that can be used during a campaign. They do things such as, "if you would die, instead do not die."

There's also some leeway given with random results on event tables. If it doesn't make sense for the situation, move on.

In exchange for the simple and fluid gameplay, the player may need to make a judgment call from time to time. A person with any minis skirmish or dungeon crawl background should have no difficulty making such snap judgments.

If this is your first minis skirmish game, be advised that there is no hand-holding. The rules are simple and fluid, but there's no tutorial and no hard and fast rules for terrain placement or scenario design.

Veterans of minis skirmish games on the other hand will find that the rules get out of their way and the structure provides a great deal of freedom.

I'm currently using minis from The Walking Dead: All Out War, Heroscape, Halo the Boardgame, and Warhammer40k.

It's worth noting that all the Five Parsecs games share a common ruleset so it's dead simple to switch to a Salvage Crew game or Gang Warfare game with your current characters.

If you buy this, I suggest getting the rules compendium as well. That gives a chunk of optional systems to flesh out areas in which you'd like a little more granularity in your simulation.

Then buy Salvage Crew and Gang Warfare. Add the other supplements as desired.

$8 is a great price.

[Please note that english is not my first language.] Five Parsecs From Home (FPFH) is not the first solo-wargame I've bought on wargamevault. But it is the first solo-wargame I played extensively.

0.) THE GIST You put a crew of more or less renegade space-adventures against a variety of foe. Inteded for (quick) solo-play.

1.) PRESENTATION Currently clocking it at 56 pages, the booklets layout is simple, yet effective. It is clearly meant to be printed out on half-letter/A5. Printing is a thing I can clearly recommend as it contains tons of tables which need to be referenced often. I should note: Tables are NOT used during combat! Only during the Campaign Turn (see below). It uses pictures sparingly - mostly "action" shots of sci-fi wargaming. Color is used to layout the tables (grey/yellow). Other then that, keywords are bold.

2.) FLUFF There is no "Five Parsecs"-Setting, though the influences are clear and stated by the author: Traveller, Trigun, Mass Effect, Firefly, and Borderlands. While there's no official background, the random tables give you a good feeling about the intent of the author, something often called "implied setting". For example, your crews ship can be a "Battered Mining Ship", your patron may be the "Local Authorities", your enemies might be "Isolationists" or "Mutants". All in all, enough to get your creative juices flowing if you want to add some story-depth to your fights.

3.) CREW/CHARACTER CREATION At first, you generate your crew of five. Characters are defined by four (five) stats - Reactions (Initiative), Speed (simple, in tabletop-inches), Combat Skill, and Toughness. The fifth skill, Tech is not really used in FPFH but will be needed if you want to mix the game up with other titles of the range. Abilities are increased via XP (and sometimes decreased via injuries), some items give flat bonuses to them, too. I won't go into detail, but let's say the following: While Speed-increases might be of obvious (minor) use, Reactions and Combat Skill are really powerful. Toughnes directly reduces your chance to get hurt, so it will be of use, too (1/6 chance per point). Since your character is generated randomly - Background, Motivation and Character Class are all rolled up randomly on beautiful designed random tables - you don't have too much influence on the results. All three instances give you a random assortment of Enemies, Patrons, Credits, Gear/Gadgets and increases on your Abilities. In addition to the items gained by character creation, you gain an assortment of gear that goes straight to your stash. Before your mission, you will need to allocate your equipment.

4.) WEAPONS/GEAR/GADGETS There are enough weapons to satisfy your crunchy needs. Weapons are grouped into Low-Tech, Military and Hi-Tech Weapons and, you guessed right, are determined at random. So your 1d100 roll can give you a lousy hand gun (12" range/1 shot/0 damage) or a mighty shotgun (12" range/2 shots/1 damage). As you can see, weapon range is used, a little bit more on that later. Shots shows you, how many attack dice you roll, sometimes (as with the shotgun) this is "Focused", meaning, you can only shoot at one target. Damage means a flat bonus to your Damage roll. Some Items are of single/limited use (e. g. Frakk Grenades come in a pack of three). Other then that there is a plethora of various Doodads, some very powerful (Combat Armor for example gives you a flat +1 Toughness and Reactions), other more casual (Loaded Dice give you +1d6 credits/turn but you'll lose them and get injured when you roll a 6). You'll find this throughout the book: Pleasure and pain go hand in hand, sometimes to a borderline frustrating degree).

5.) ENCOUNTERS Essentially there are 2 stages - the Campaign Turn and Encounters. The Campaign Turn can be played with just a pencil, paper and some dice. Essentially you'll manage your crew, next mission, patrons, enemies, experience, everything. This turn is really fun! Even if you don't have the time to put your minis on the table, you can create a crew and play up to the first encounter and have an hour or two full of fun with a simulation game. The Encounter is where the bullets fly. There are different types of encounters: Those given to you by patrons (earns you more money and sometimes patron-benefits), Enemy Encounters (which use predefined enemy-types and are generally not as profitable), Opportunity Missions (as with Patrons sans the bonus) and Quests (more of everything, harder to get). Once you get enemies, you'll sooner or later fight against them. Most often they will be reoccuring "Vendettas", so you'll have to develop a tactic how to defeat them. If you have no Enemies and Patrons and have no luck with Quests, you'll go on an Opportunity mission. Enemies use the same stats and weapons as you and come in all colors. You encounter 2d6h enemies (highest result of two rolled d6), modified by enemy-type. One enemy will be the leader (better weapon, +1 Combat Skill, the others will be foot-soldiers). Having fought six fights now, I can say: Enemy power varies widely, fitting snugly in the whole random-concept of the game. Example? You could roll "well" and fight against three punks (4"/0/3 - equipped with handguns), or you could fight against 6 black-ops (6"/+2/5 - equipped with auto-rifles and a leader with a fury rifle).

6.) RULES The rules are simple. Simple, yet quite brilliant. The best thing (in the current revision of the rules) IMHO is the initiative: You roll a number of d6 equal to your count of crew members. You then assign a d6 result to each member. If the corresponding die is equal or less to the characters Reactions ability, this character acts before the enemies' turn. All other characters act after the enemy. There is a "Guard" action called snapfire, which allows you to deliberately act later or as a reaction to enemy movement. This rule is simple, yet effective. Note that since your Reactions score is pretty low, most of your characters will act after the enemy. Shooting is allowed after movement, except with heavy weapons. A simple d6 roll (one for each shot of your weapon), a result equal or higher then 3/5/6 (depending on distance to the enemy and the grade of cover) is needed to hit the target. Here your Combat Skill is added. Damage is another die roll - you'll add your damage score, if any. If it comes up equal or higher then the enemies Toughness, it is taken out. Lower result means the enemie gets a Stun token, which may be reduced 1/turn, reducing you to movement OR attacking with each activation. If you move into contact with the enemy, you'll brawl. Brawling is a contested d6 roll, Combat Skill is added, there's a -1 penalty for not wealding a melee weapon/pistol or a +1 bonus for wealding melee weapons. The loser takes a hit, on a draw, both takes hits. Also: On a 1, you take an extra hit, on a 6 you'll inflict an extra hit. Damage is determined by best pistol/melee weapon/set to zero if none of both are used. As you can imagine, melee is pretty brutal! Well, this is it. Pretty much. There are more rules of course, but you'll have to buy the book for this :-)

7.) TERRAIN Terrain rules are pretty simple, too. Essentially you have a variety of terrain (Linear, Area, Field, Obstacle, Block, Individual), each with minor rules involved. There is no rule where to place what, but each Encounter gives you a Encounter site as a hint to what kind of terrain to place.

8.) THE A.I. As a solo-gamer you'll need to know how to handle the enemies. Of course you'll have a bias towards your little spaceship-crew, so it's good when there are rules how your enemies behave. FPFH deals with this with general movement routines: Each enemy is either Cautions, Aggressive, Tactical or Psycho. Example? Cautious enemies always stay behind cover if possible. When there's an enemy in sight, they will stand where they are and fire. Otherwise they will move behind cover, trying to establish a line of sight to an enemy. They will stay as far away as their weapons allow and won't deliberately advance nearer then 12". They won't enter a brawl. Does this description cover everything? Certainly not. Would it be nice if there would be more advice? A clear yes. So far I did not encounter a real problem, though. The fights were entertaining and if I'd would like more information on how to handle the enemies, it would have been possible without a hassle. Let's roll up an example patron encounter: Patron: Local gang. Job type: Patrol location. Mission target: Someone's turf. Enemy: Bounty hunters (tactical). Hah! That's easy: Your crew has to patrol the gangs home turf because they expect a group of bounty hunters to hi-jack them. Of course this leads to further questions, but hey: You'll need some imagination and some impromptu decisions to make this work.

9.) OTHER STUFF There are tons of other things in these pages: Optional rules en masse, including difficulty levels, oddball characters, rules for competititve (classic PvP) play and much more.

10.) CONCLUSION I did not really plan to do solo-wargaming. I started buying various sets of rpg and wargaming rules with a mild rules-fetish. The more I bought, the more I expected of them, effectively building a big hurdle to start gaming at all. Then came FPFH. This game seemed so easy to start with! I built some quick terrain with Duplos/Legos, some minis with Legos and started playing. This game delivers what it promises: Easy, fun and extendable solo-wargaming. If I needed to rate this product, I'd give it a flat 5/5.

BUY THIS, IF... ...you like wargaming at all ...you like sci-fi random tables ...you are interested in a good designed rules-set ...you are interested in a simple AI to handle opposition in solo-gaming

DON'T BUY THIS, IF... I have no really good idea. If you really hate procedural content, this won't be the game for you.

Hope, this'll help someone! F.Khalil

P.S.: Ivan Sorenson, the author, is very active at G+. He is a terribly nice guy and he will most certainly react if you contact him.

Five Parsecs From Home 2nd Edition

My first reaction to the email telling me about the new Five Parsecs game was excitement. Yes! A new Weasel title and an update that I'd been eagerly awaiting! I jumped straight on wargamevault.com to download the update but curiously it seemed to want me to pay full price for it, I was confused as updates to other games have been included in the original purchase price. I was also slightly annoyed because Five Parsecs went to Pay What You Want a day or two after I'd bought it and the thought of paying for it again was unpleasant. I emailed Ivan and he very kindly offered me a copy in exchange for an honest review, this it it.

What I can say now having read the new edition is that having to pay for the game is fully justified. This is a brand new system! I know it says so in the product description but this really is a whole new system that bears little resemblance to the original FiveCore-based rules. What follows are my initial impressions from a few complete read-throughs.

Let's start with the “Not So Good” stuff. I use the term loosely as most things are probably either errors or oversights and of course my own personal opinions.

Firstly, there are some spelling and grammar errors. Not the end of the world, I know, but I'm a stickler for these things and I feel they can really bring down the professional feel of an otherwise awesome document. Unfortunately, this is something I continually notice with independently produced games.

Ivan makes no bones about the fact that the page count had been heavily cut and for good reason, but I am left wondering if there is now something missing. At 43 pages, it's definitely lean and mean but there a few things I'd have liked to see left in. The fluff at the beginning of the first edition document was fun, well-written and linked the game into the Unity universe. Also, the Enemy Missions from first edition were a lot of fun and very thematic. Personally, although in general I very much approve of the massive page cut, I think 50 pages would've been fine.

There are a few errors and contradictions within the rules. They are being weeded out and dealt with though with Ivan's usual responsiveness to emails. The Non-Lethal Hit has a conflict regarding whether one has to equal or exceed toughness to score a casualty, the Campaign Reference sheet at the end of The Campaign Turn chapter is still missing multiple steps (Playing an Encounter, Campaign Event and Character Event) and the Find a Patron section of that sheet could have used an extra line to remind us of the +1 for each known patron rule. Such oversights are easily fixed and I'm sure they will be in the future.

Finally, something that is more a personal nitpicking. The Friends and Rivals mechanic has been pruned back, it used to be a really cool, and easy to track, roleplay mechanic with in-game effects. Although it would have had to have been tweaked to work with the new system I was sad to see it largely dropped.

Right. I wanted to get that done so the review could finish on the “Good” stuff. Now, where to start?

I think the best aspect of 2nd edition is the character creation and advancement system. I feel that it's a much more realised system than in 1st edition and it really lets you invest in your characters. Speaking of investing, the new economic system is something that I personally have been hoping for. For me it just adds so much more realism to my campaign than just the “It is assumed you have have the odds and ends you need to trade” of 1st edition. I actually tried to use the Fistful of Credits system from Starport Scum in my Five Parsecs games but this tailored mechanic is much better suited.

The new tabletop mechanics sound the business too. The Turn Phases with the integrated Snap Fire option are easy to get a handle on and add a level of randomness to the battlefield. The Difficult Terrain rules are simple and a good example of pruning superfluity. The Aim option is a welcome addition too, especially as you can't shoot then move, sacrificing your move for a better chance at a kill is a good trade-off in my opinion.

I was impressed to see that Difficulty Settings actually had several different options instead of the standard Easier or Harder modes. Including the Standard setting there are 6(!) levels of difficulty to play, guaranteeing the right level of challenge for almost everyone. I wouldn't mind seeing a future supplement that applied higher and lower difficulty settings for the rest of the campaign turn too.

One of my gripes with 1st edition was that I didn't really understand how one went about resolving rumours. 2nd edition has fixed this completely. I also enjoyed the inclusion of the Oddball Characters, although I missed who the crystalline life form was referring too. My own gaming universe contains aliens and it seems like I can slot most of them in to the different oddball slots.

One of the questions I had during my first read-through was “Is it compatible with Every Star An Opportunity?” In my opinion, yes! I've re-read Every Star and as it's mainly about expanding your playing world with little in-game (ie. actual tabletop encounter) effect, I still think that players who want to add a bit more depth to their characters' universe will benefit from the expansion. My favourite part of Every Star is the Starship Events chart and I think it'll lend itself well to 2nd edition with a few tweaks. Which reminds me, I'm glad to be shot of the Unreliable mechanic. If you rolled like I do, you'd understand!

So to wrap up, Five Parsecs From Home 2nd edition is an awesome game. I'm a big fan of everything sci-fi in Ivan's lineup and this is definitely no exception. It's a brand new system that will undoubtedly need a few updates over the course of its life, as most of them do, and it's a damn fine resource for solo gamers! I'll be playing a few games over the weekend and writing up an AAR, so watch this space for that.