Category Archives: Five Parsecs From Home

Play

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If there’s one thing I’ve picked up from watching more Solo RPG videos, especially from The Grouch Couch, it’s that I should be playing more, not trying to write a novel.

There should be more dice rolling and less treating the play session as a creative writing exercise.

And that goes for any other tabletop games I’m trying to play, like Five Leagues and Five Parsecs.

I’ve found myself lost in simple things like trying to hard to come up with background details for a character I may or may not ever play, or trying to come up with names for regions/cities for my Five Leagues map.

And that’s probably one of the things that subconsciously prevents me from delving more into any of the Solo RPGs that i’ve already set up, all three of them.

I have one campaign underway (Star Trek Adventures/Captain’s Log), and two ready to start (Dragonbane, D&D 5E) but  now I believe that the issue I was having was trying to describe events THAT HAVE NOT HAPPENED YET.

You can’t write a good story without an outline, so how can I describe how my adventure is going without playing out the situation?

For Star Trek: Excalibur, we’re about to continue our mission of exploration.

Irony: the last bit of storytelling for Star Trek: Excalibur was *totally* a creative writing exercise, no dice were rolled, just trying to advance the plot.

For Dragonbane, my character is about to delve into the unknown catacombs.

For D&D, my two-man party is about to enter the forest in search of a lost scouting party from a local town.

Other games will have some sort of after action report as they are played.

Don’t touch that dial!

Upcoming: August 20 – 26

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Like I did with my Sports Gaming Blog, I hope this list will act as a prompt for my other gaming.

Paint miniatures for Cyberpunk Red Combat Zone
Paint miniatures for Star Trek Adventures
Setup Star Trek Adventures Captains Log RPG: TOS Era Captain
Setup new crew for Five Parsecs From Home

That should be plenty for the week,

Stand by!

Been a while, hasn’t it?

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So, what’s been going on since last year?

I managed to start that Legendary Kingdoms solo game, but haven’t gotten very far.  I hope to continue playing fairly soon.

My crew for Five Parsecs from Home got a little boring, so I’m going to restart the game with a new campaign and a new crew.

I’ve sold off practically all of my Warhammer 40K armies (Guard, Ork, Necron, Marines) to an online store, I have maybe a handful of figures for Kill Team, or…

I’m looking into a newer, miniatures-agnostic system called Fistful of Lead, specifically the Galactic Heroes version, from Wiley Games.  This new system will allow me to use whatever miniatures I have laying around and finally have those battles we’ve always wanted to see, like Federation crew vs. Mandalorians.

Okay, maybe battles that *I’ve* wanted to see.

Speaking of miniatures, I’ve been printing them out on my resin printer and have way more than I need for any system.

I’ve also shelved a few games (Car Wars, Battletech, Blood & Plunder, etc) while I try to focus on what I actually want to play between these types and my sports games…

I’ll have it all figured out by the time we reach the Frontier.

*klaxon alert*

What’s that?

The Frontier.

Stand by!

What Ships are For

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Remember that 3D-printed spaceship that I had started making last year?

I got a new printer late in 2021, and decided to start printing it from the beginning, and the results have been more than satisfactory for me.

The main issue that I had with what I had done last year was the overuse of support material, rendering the printed pieces almost unusable without a lot of work.

I also followed the directions more closely this time, configuring the printer to the optimum settings per the ship creator, and realizing that MINIMUM supports were necessary for printing.

The results as of this morning:

I should have everything finished this coming weekend.

And as of now, I’m still not sure what I’m going to be using it for, primarily.  It can be my crew’s ship in Five Parsecs from Home, but most if not all the game play for that takes place planetside.

In any case, it will be a nice touch of nostalgia around the house, much like it was when I was 12 or so.

Catching Up

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Five Parsecs From Home: I really need to get back into this one, the crew has yet to make planetfall on a new world.  They had just escaped from a world that was undergoing a planetary invasion.

Stargrave: I’m probably not going to play this one anytime soon because it’s similarity to Five Parsecs From Home, and it’s more geared toward 2 players.

Marvel Crisis Protocol: Haven’t finished going over the rules, but at least I stopped printing/buying terrain.

Fire Team: newly released baby brother to the newest Kill Team release (huh?).  It’s like how Blitz Bowl was for Blood Bowl, an ‘entry level’ self contained game.

Kill Team: the latest flavor of the month, rules have been read, miniatures painted, terrain prepped.  Just need to find time to set up and play, which is not going to be soon because…

Battletech: Clan Invasion Kickstarter pledge is waiting to be picked up.  That oughta keep me distracted for the next few days/weeks.

Black Ops: Need to do some painting: Russian soldiers, insurgents, and my own Black Ops team that I’m basing off The Unit TV show.  Which means I gotta come up with some cool call signs for my 5-man team.

Gaslands Refueled: I have lots of slightly modified matchbox cars, plus templates and tokens, waiting to be played with.

Necromunda: all the above games have been keeping me busy with no time to delve back into this one, as much as I would love to do so.

And this list doesn’t even include the tabletop sports games that I’ve been neglecting.

FPFH Update

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Since I’m still learning the rules, I’m using the option where you have 5 ‘mulligans’ to use in your Five Parsecs From Home campaign, and invoking this:

  • Looked worse than it was! Ignore a roll on the Injury Table. The character recovers immediately.

Pepsiman will not be in sickbay for 4 campaign turns.

Meanwhile, my crew will be escaping the planet with the new, improved 3D printed version of the Vulture.

Stand By!

Skirmish

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I’m taking a plunge into a few skirmish-level games that have come out over the past few years, some of which I picked up some time ago, others I just picked up.

Necromunda

I don’t want to think of myself as a Games Workshop fanboy, since I’ve pretty much given up on keeping up with whatever version of Warhammer 40K is currently out there.  Even Kill Team is less interesting to me.  But Necromunda has always been an interesting game, both background and core rules, which plays much like earlier editions for 40K.  This and Blood Bowl are the only two GW games that I’m planning on playing.

Marvel Crisis Protocol

If anything this scratches the itch for superhero gaming, more than the Marvel Champions card game does.  There’s nothing wrong with the card game, I just bought too many supplements for it.  For MCP I’m sticking to the core set and a handful of supplements that I find interesting.  I’m probably not getting Thanos, for example.

Five Parsecs From Home

I had picked up the previous two versions of this game from the designer through Wargames Vault, and was about to embark on a campaign, when I found out the the 3rd edition was being put out by Modiphius, the game company that currently has the Star Trek and Dune RPG licenses.  This has proven to be a fun one to play, a solo skirmish game, miniatures agnostic, which allows me to mix and match miniatures for my crew and adversaries from ones that I own, thought I bought minis for the next game that I’ll probably use for this one, too.

Stargrave

After watching a lot of review videos, I picked this one up, along with the miniatures sets, even though this one is also miniatures agnostic.  Like 5PFH, this one involves creating a crew to run missions, though this one is designed to be played with at least 2 players, though I may have found a solution around that.

Hostile Tactical AI

This card set emulates an opponent in 2-player skirmish games, like all the ones listed above.  I haven’t tried playing with it yet, but I hope to soon, with one of the games systems listed above, or possibly with Memoir ’44 and the Commands and Colors games in my collection.

Five Parsecs From Home – Mission 3

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I should have been posting after action reports here instead of just on Facebook.

Anyways, I sent the crew on the following assignments:

  • Exploration: Mal Castle
  • Trade: Ban Rolo and Jake Banner
  • Training: Pepsiman
  • Find a Job: Nick O’Donnel and Harry Brisbane

Mal found nothing while exploring, though he did get some alone time.

Ban and Jake acquired an auto rifle, which was given to Harry.  They also received a quest rumor.

Pepsiman gained experience and raised his Combat Skill attribute.

Nick and Harry met up with the Vulture crew’s Patron, Bungo McJankeypants, who offered the following job:

Fight off a group of Abductor Raiders, who may have arrived ahead of a possible planetary invasion.

The crew were outnumbered 7-to6, but in the end the crew were victorious, but sustained casualties.

Pepsiman suffered a potential crippling injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 4 campaign turns.

Mal suffered a serious injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next 2 campaign turns.

Nick suffered a minor injury, and will be in the ship’s sickbay for the next campaign turn.

The crew was well paid for the job, but found no loot in the area post battle.  They also gained another quest rumor.

Oh, and the planet is about to be invaded.  The crew is going to high tail it out of here in the next campaign turn.