07 - Five Parsecs From Home - Planetfall

# Day 07: Five Parsecs From Home: Planetfall tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/wargame/five-parsecs-planetfall > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice So far we've done a fair amount of single character-focused action, but now we're going to step over into the wonderful world of adventure wargaming, where procedurally generated experiences are the norm and the amount of experimentation going on is more than a little impressive. This is another game so new that the hardcopy hasn't even hit the market yet, but pre-order and you can have the PDF, which is what we're going from. ![[Five Parsecs from Home - Planetfall (cover).jpg|400]] Welcome to *[[07 - Five Parsecs From Home - Planetfall|Day 07: Five Parsecs From Home: Planetfall]],* the latest entry in the *[[Five Parsecs From Home]]* series, which so far has covered your fun-loving crew running from bad decisions made on planets and doing their best to keep their ship flying, as well as [[Five Parsecs from Home - Tactics|larger significant military ground forces slamming into one another over and over]], and an ongoing thrill ride of a bug hunt where your small squad can go down into the tunnels and try to root out the insectoid infection at the heart of your world. *Planetfall* is just exactly what it says on the tin. The point of the game is to establish a colony, keep it crewed, explore an alien planet, build buildings which help you do all of the above, research new weapons and technology, and eventually either integrate into the Galactic Union, go rogue to go your own way, or ascend to a higher state of being. Keep it crude. Explore an alien planet. Build buildings which help you do all of the above. Research new weapons and technology. And eventually, either integrate into the Galactic Union, go rogue to go your own way, or ascend to a higher state of being. Yes, there's an endgame. No, we're not going to touch on that today. If you ever wanted to play *[XCOM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCOM)* as a tabletop hybrid wargame/RPG, this is probably **exactly** what you're looking for. You have map exploration, resource harvesting, research, weapon upgrades, randomly encountered enemies, the whole nine yards. This is it. It's handled. We're not going to get into all of that, but we are going to put together our particular crew and see what we can find out about our starting space. Let's get on that. ## Acts of Creation First up, let's get this out of the way. The characters that we create here are not the only people that live in the colony. There are dozens, probably even hundreds of people making this thing a functioning foothold. The book says you can think of them as the focal characters in a television show, and I think that's a really good way to approach it. These are the characters that you're going to be spending time with, that you're going to care about whether they live or die, and whom are going to be pivotal to how things shake out. ### Characterization Now, you're probably thinking that eight is a lot of characters to be creating at a single sitting, which would normally be fair if we thought about these characters as our individual characters. But our character, in the sense of the overall abstraction, is the colony as a whole. It is the colony that evolves and changes, which gains new abilities and grows as a person might. Whereas the individuals are merely representations of aspects of our character. Technically, we do have an actual character, the administrator, but they have no actual manifest presence, and if you create a mini for them, you can just have him sitting on the side of the board overseeing things because that's what you're going to be doing. #### The Hateful Eight So we start with eight. The specific breakdown that's usually suggested is two scouts, two scientists, and four troopers. Scouts are good at scouting and moving quickly. They come with their own jump pack. Scientists do scientist things and are quite clever when it comes to solving problems. Troopers are hardcore gung-ho, gun-toting badasses. Oh yes, and we also get 12 grunts. They don't actually get full-bore character sheets, and they typically operate in groups. Somebody's got to hold the line, right? As we go, we will be able to add to the number of characters that we can have. So don't worry over much about that. I think I'm going to go with the default selection, though it is tempting to swap out one of the troopers for an extra scientist. The scientists can actually add dice to your initiative pool and allow more of your characters to move and activate before the enemy. But let's stick to the standard for the moment. | Class | Name | | --------- | ---------------- | | Scientist | Eleanor Rigsby | | Scientist | Derek Hightower | | Scout | Park Ji-Hoon | | Scout | Miri Solas | | Trooper | Anos Valdegarten | | Trooper | Thiago Beltrão | | Trooper | Sloane MacTyre | | Trooper | Vespera Nyx | Thanks be to name generation, which is always there to step in and help out when you need a large group of people and you only have a few ideas. #### Grunts There's 12. Do they get individual names? Not a chance. I'm not saying that they're disposable, but they aren't likely to show up twice in a row. Though, if you do have somebody that feels like they are becoming a real human being, feel free to give them a name. That way, when they die, you can make a proper little miniature headstone for them and put them in the graveyard, which will inevitably grow without bound. #### Colony Bot We have one vaguely humanoid colony bot which can go on missions and fill in for people, but doesn't have the ability to improve its skills until later in the tech tree. It is pretty sturdy, so it'll be handy early on, but every time you use it, someone else is not getting XP. Tradeoffs, man. At least it can use civilian weapons, right? Actually, no, it can probably carry several horses. Don't worry if it gets broken during a mission. The colony can repair or replace one every campaign turn. Our bot is: - **Bot Name** IPSP-437 "Dipsy" #### Character Profiles Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of the characters have some stats, and all of those stats have numbers associated with them. Somewhat amusingly, there are default stats for everybody, which will get modified here and there in a future step, so don't worry. Not every starting colony looks exactly alike. Mechanically, it's probably worth talking about the different stats briefly. Reaction is your initiative speed. At the beginning of a round, you roll a number of dice equal to characters on the field and assign them. If you assign a die less than or equal to the character's reaction, they move in the fast part of the round at the beginning. Then the enemy moves, and everyone that wasn't assigned a die that was higher or equal to their reaction moves after that in the slow part of the round. Easy, straightforward, rather physical. Speed is just how far they can move in inches. Combat skill is how much training they've had in killing things. Toughness is how resistant they are to damage, with the typical civilian having a 3. Then there's Savvy, which is about exactly what you think it is—the skill used for technical aptitude. Scientists get a bonus here in that they roll twice and take the highest. Now we do have an interesting choice here. We have the option of taking a couple of members of human subspecies. There are ferals, hulkers, and stalkers. Ferals are what they sound like: genetically uplifted Earth animals, generally carnivores. This is your furry option. They have keen senses and little self-control. You've got hulkers, which are ridiculously large, overly muscular, extremely tough sons of bitches who can't shoot for shit. And you've got stalkers, which are blue people who can teleport short distances. If you've read or seen any of the other *Five Parsecs From Home* games, you might be wondering where the aliens are. If you've got a copy of *Five Parsecs From Home* or the *Compendium*, you could certainly create a character from those mechanics and bring them over. There are conversions, and they are extremely simple. You could also have a member of the crew who is one of the soulless, which are part of a machine culture—your AI hive minds, who actually aren't currently at war with Unity. I don't think I want to take any aliens because I'm way too lazy to go grab the other books. I'm tempted to switch out one of our troopers for the Soulless. I think Sloane is going to go take a break, and we're going to replace him with someone a little different. Do I want any human subspecies? Well, Vespera Nyx's name screams out for being a stalker, so that clearly needs to happen. | Class | Name | Reaction | Speed | Combat Skill | Toughness | Savvy | Special | | ---------- | --------------------- | -------: | ----: | -----------: | --------: | ----: | -----------------------------: | | Scientist | Eleanor Rigsby | 1 | 4" | +0 | 3 | +1 | | | Scientist | Derek Hightower | 1 | 4" | +0 | 3 | +1 | | | Scout | Park Ji-Hoon | 1 | 5" | +0 | 3 | +0 | | | Scout | Miri Solas | 1 | 5" | +0 | 3 | +0 | | | Trooper | Anos Valdegarten | 2 | 4" | +1 | 3 | +0 | | | Trooper | Thiago Beltrão | 2 | 4" | +1 | 3 | +0 | | | Trooper | Maltheon (Suoulless) | 2 | 4" | +1 | 4 | +1 | 6+ Armor Saving Throw, No Augs | | Trooper | Vespera Nyx (Stalker) | 2 | 4" | +1 | 3 | +0 | Shift! (teleport 1d6 then act) | | Colony Bot | Dipsy | 2 | 4" | +0 | 4 | +0 | 6+ Armor Saving Throw | That went surprisingly fast for assembling a group of nine characters effectively. It looks like we do have some resilience going on here, so maybe we can survive a little while. Yes, all the stats start pretty low, but part of development is building those things up. #### Character Backgrounds With the basic roster in place, we get to pick four of these people to be experienced. That is, they get a little bit of boost, some motivations, and some events that set them apart from the others. Luckily, we have d100 tables for that. No, I'm not kidding. Let's pick four of our fine representatives to find out a little bit more about. | Class | Name | Motivation | Prior Experience | Notable Event | | --------- | --------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------: | | Scientist | Derek Hightower | Curiosity *If you didn’t go, someone else would get to see all the cool stuff instead.* | Records Deleted (+1 Toughness) *No records found: please contact sector-level Enforcement Command for details* | Great Danger *You experienced great physical danger.* | | Scout | Park Ji-Hoon | Greater Cause *Being part of something much greater than yourself.* | Trader (+3 XP) *Independent space merchant or sector-level corporation* | Betrayal *Someone betrayed you or you betrayed someone.* | | Trooper | Maltheon (Suoulless) | Independence *Striking out on your own.* | Unity Agent (Loyal) *Affiliated with one of the many clandestine covert operations programs maintained by Unity* | Good Luck *Something lucky and unlikely happened.* | | Trooper | Vespera Nyx (Stalker) | Obligation *Fulfilling a responsibility, promise, or expectation.* | Bug Hunter (+1 KP) *Served in one of the Bug Hunting squads; flinches when motion trackers beep* | Change of Lifestyle *You changed something fundamental about your lifestyle.* | You know, I was a little iffy on completely randomly generating these guys, but honestly, the dice fell such that we have a really interesting and screwed up bunch of people. We've got a scientist with a shady, dangerous past. If Derek Hightower hasn't been out there on the fringe plundering alien artifacts like a sci-fi Indiana Jones, I'll eat my hat. In fact, he probably even has a fedora. Park Ji-Hoon used to be an independent space merchant, also out on the fringes because she believes that the expansion of the human unity is one of the highest callings of the species. But she got into some sort of imbroglio and ended up on a new colony world. Is she hiding out? Maybe! Maltheon, somehow split from the soulless hive mind, has been working as an agent of Unity. One of the soulless getting out of connectivity and going out on their own? That is a stroke of good luck. Who knew that individualism still existed within the wider AI? And then there's Vespera Nyx, who has spent a lot of time in the tunnels hunting bugs and is fulfilling an obligation in being on a new planet—with new bugs. I think there's a good chance she made a promise to a fallen comrade to get out of the business, but that's how they get you. You never get away from the bugs. I'm curious as to what's going to happen to this bunch of madmen. I kind of just want to play at this point. #### Equipment Perhaps surprisingly, we don't actually assign equipment at this point. Instead, we have basic gear in the armory, and we break it out at the beginning of a mission based on who's going and what they're trained for. Starting out, you can essentially guess that the scientists are going to be lucky to have a pistol. The scouts are going to have a lightweight rifle or a better pistol. The troopers are going to have really nice assault rifles. And the grunts, taken in sufficient numbers, can actually have an LMG. Let's just say there's goodies in the bank. #### Loyalty As you saw from, ironically, the background of Maltheon, there is a level of character loyalty associated. It ranges from loyal to committed to disloyal. Anyone not specifically said otherwise at the beginning is assumed to be committed. Needless to say, this is going to come in later in the game when you start dealing with colony morale. #### Names Normally, this would be where you actually assign names. I jumped the gun a little bit at the beginning. Technically, this is one of those games where you put together the characters' capabilities and then figure out what their name should be, which does work for me most of the time. #### The Administrator Remember how I said that technically we as players have a character on the board called the administrator? Well, this is where you define him. In fact, there is a table for his background, which you can either pick off of or roll on. We've gone this far by depending on the dice. Let's see what shakes out. **Administrator Background:** Colonial. Prior experience colonizing new worlds. Well, I guess that makes sense. We are an experienced colony organizer. Now, it remains to be seen whether we were a successful colony administrator or not. You know what? Let's roll for that. I'm going to take a d6, and we're going to assume that one is absolute garbage collapse, and six is a successful. Unity joining Colony. What do we got? > 1d6 > [1] You know, I'm not even going to put on my shocked face. We are a failed colony administrator, and I mean of the worst possible kind. This might explain why we have at least two covert operations people from the Unity in the core colony team. We've got a scientist who used to be undercover law enforcement, and we have a soulless who is probably still affiliated with Unity covert ops. I'm starting to think that the Unity doesn't trust us. ### Campaign Setup Because that was so easy and so fruitful, I'm actually going to go through the basics of setting up a campaign. We'll assume that we've gone through the three "tutorial" missions with our crew successfully. That gives us some resources to start with, etc. #### Colonization Agenda The Unity had some sort of reason to send us out here and drop us on this planet, which is great because someone needs a reason to send a complete loser of an administrator out and drop him on a brand new planet with tight oversight. There's a table for that. | Expedition Type | Description | Effects | | --------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------ | | Unity Colonization Drive | All is proceeding according to the directives of the Bureaucracy. | You begin the campaign with **3 units of Raw Materials.** | You know, that may have been the most terrifying possible answer. *"All is proceeding according to the directives of the Bureaucracy"* may be the most chilling series of words I've read in the last half hour, possibly even the last couple of days. The Bureaucracy knows who we are and has a plan. Dear God, we are so fucked. At least we start off with a few extra raw materials. #### Map Creation So here's a fun thing. *Planetfall* actually has an explorable map, and we generate it here at this point. It doesn't have a set scale. If your campaign concept is that it's a smaller colony, it may only be a 20to 30-mile square area. If you're imagining a huge, sprawling settlement, it might be hundreds of miles. But regardless, it's broken down into sensible chunks. In our case, we're going with a 6x6 grid, which gives us 36 sectors in total. That means we can easily randomize locations in there with 2D6. Traveling won't be a problem from square to square. It's assumed that we have vehicles to get there, so that's not a big deal. ##### Initial Placement It can be just wherever. I could roll randomly for it, but I think I'm just going to say that it's in 3,3, read as squares over and squares up, close to the center. ##### Exploration Locations Now we need a list of ten randomly generated sectors for interesting exploration locations, and everything else is just unexplored. I have cleverly marked these with a red spiral. Why a red spiral? Because you need those spiraling shapes. ![They Might Be Giants - Spiraling Shape](https://youtu.be/Em6v3sF7stM) And that brings us to a very comfortable point. Eventually, we'll have markers for enemy occupation, resource levels, hazard levels, ancient signs, and more. But for the moment, we've got what we've got. ##### Map Terrain We also need to throw a little bit of terrain onto here, so I'm going to dot some things around just because I can, and it seems like a good idea. I suggest you just use things that match the terrain you have available to throw on your minis. ![[07 - Campaign Map (illo).webp]] (If you want the Affinity file for this, [[07 - Campaign Map (illo).af|I've got your hookup]].) Frankly, I like mountainous terrain, and I thought we needed some forest. So there you go. A few areas have both. You can imagine what that's going to be like. #### Colony Stats It should come as no surprise that, since it is really the central character of the game, our colony has stats itself. ##### Morale The first important one is morale, which starts at zero and can go up and down as far as you can survive. Up is fine. High morale works in your favor. Anytime morale drops to -10 or lower, set it back to zero, but there's a morale incident. You don't want one of those. ##### Milestones There are colony milestones that determine how much progress we've made, and they hinge on certain levels of scientific research or colony development. They are pretty cool, and they can lead to some interesting storytelling experiences. ##### Capabilities We've already talked about a lot of the colony capabilities, and they are all pretty self-explanatory. Plus, they all start in the same place. | Capability | Value | | ------------------------------ | ----- | | **Initial colony roster size** | 8 | | **Build points per turn** | 1 | | **Research points per turn** | 1 | | **Building repair capacity** | 1 | | **Colony defenses** | 0 | | **Colony integrity** | 0 | ##### Resources If you've been following along this far, congratulations. You could probably guess that, like all other base-building games, there are resources that our colony has as well. Raw materials can be processed into build points and used to repair damage to the colony. | Resource Type | Description | | ------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Research Points | The usual expected output of scientists. | | Build Points | Processed materials that are ready to construct new buildings. | | Augmentation Points | The outcome of genetic augmentation, which can adapt the biology of your colonists. | ##### Starting Numbers Remember those initial tutorial missions that I blew off and said that we are just going to assume that we succeeded at? Well, this is where that pays off because for the scout mission, we will take two free units of raw materials. For the scientist mission, we're going to take two free research points. And for the trooper mission, we're going to take +3 colony morale. That puts our starting resources at: | Capability | Value | | ------------------------------ | ----: | | **Initial colony roster size** | 8 | | **Build points per turn** | 1 | | **Research points per turn** | 1 | | **Building repair capacity** | 1 | | **Colony defenses** | 0 | | **Colony integrity** | 0 | | Colony morale | +3 | | Raw materials | 2 | | Research points | 2 | Aren't you glad we notionally did that in our imagination? Me too. ##### Story Points Just like the other 5X games from Ivan Sorensen, in *Planetfall*, there are story points. Essentially, it's a currency that lets you fudge the rules now and again. Want to pick the outcome of a roll and not actually throw the die? Spend a story point. Want to introduce something new or customized? Spend a story point. When a character dies, you actually receive one story point, and some other things will give them to you. But ultimately, this is a permissive mechanic that lets you tell a story. You don't have to use them, but they're there if you want them. #### Campaign Turn Now I know what you're thinking: "Holy Christ, is this ever going to be over?" Well, you're in luck because we are almost done.[^1] There are a lot of steps in the campaign turn sequence, but at the beginning, there's absolutely the bare minimum of things that make a difference because very little is established yet. Let's run through really quick. ##### Recovery Well, no one's in the sickbay because we've run no missions yet, so it doesn't matter. ##### Repairs Nothing's been damaged. We've lost no integrity. We're in good shape, and the colony bot isn't broken. ##### Scout reports This we actually have to do something with. Every campaign turn, our scout teams are out busting their ass to find out what's going on around the base. We can perform one Scout Explore action and roll once on the Scout Discovery table. We will take a Scout Explore action. So first, we select a map sector that's not enemy-occupied, which is pretty much all of them at this point. I'm going to pick sector 3,4, which contains a potential interesting exploration site. We're going to roll 2d6 twice, pick the lowest score each time. The first is the resource level of the sector, and the second is the hazard level. The resource level says how likely we are to find something useful materials-wise in that sector, and the hazard level is how dangerous it is. > 2d6 > [3, 2] > 2d6 > [6, 2] Okay, a lucky and unlucky break. We've got a resource level of 2 and a hazard level of 2. Not much to be mined, but at least we're not going to get killed by swarmers there, or at least that's the theory. We'll go ahead and mark that on the map. We're also going to take a Scout Discovery role because we need some discovery here. Of course, bad things can fall out of it. That's part of the fun. We can also assign one of our Scout characters to lead the expedition, and it doesn't keep them from going out on a mission later this turn. In our case, I think I'm going to send Park Ji-Hoon on the recon mission. She's earned it. | Event | Description | | ----------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Scout Down! | The scout vehicle crashes. If you assigned a scout, they need rescue. You can opt to have them escape on foot. If so, they must roll on the post-battle injury table but earn **+2 XP** if they survive, or you can play the Scout Down! mission this turn to rescue them. If you did not assign a scout, the crash left no survivors. (If you would really like to play the mission, go ahead and do so this turn. You get **+1 Colony Morale** for your dedication). | You know, I probably should have expected something like that. These guys literally drive out of the base, head north, and as soon as they get out of earshot, somebody drives into a tree. There aren't even that many trees in the area. It's a flat plain. Maybe they hit a rock. I think we'll just have Park Ji-Hoon hoof it back to base, which means she needs to roll on the post-battle injury table. | Injury | Description | | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------- | | Moderately Wounded | The character must recover for **4 campaign turns**. | You know, I probably should have expected something like that. Park, the poor bastard who hoofs it out of a wrecked vehicle, makes her way back to base, and it turns out that she broke her leg and an arm and is going to be out for four campaign turns. That's brutal! On the positive side, she's got an extra 2 XP, so that's nice. There's no enemy information that we picked up because so far we don't know about any enemies, nor do we have any ancient signs because we haven't actually obtained any ancient signs. ##### Enemy Activity No tactical enemies on the board? No enemy activity. That makes it go really quick. ##### Colony Events Sometimes random stuff just happens. | Colony Event | Description | | --------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Rapid construction | *Streamlining the process has made great strides.* Receive **2 Building Points.** | While I'm not sure it makes up for losing part for four turns, we do have a couple of extra building points, which might come in handy later. Maybe to build an upgraded Medlab, because I think we're going to need it. ##### Mission Determination Finally, we've come around to actually being in the position to pick what mission we want to go on. We're not currently being attacked in our home base, so we don't need to do a pitched battle mission. We could do some exploration with a **scouting mission** and find out what its resource level and hazard level would be. We can go check out a sector that's marked for investigation to look for interesting items that can get us mission data, which will let us learn more about the planet. That would be an **investigation mission**. We could go to a sector that's been explored but not exploited yet and play an **exploration mission** in order to get resources. Or we could play a **science mission** to get research samples. We could go **hunting** for lifeforms in order to collect samples for bioanalysis, but we don't need that at the moment. We could just stay close to the colony and conduct a **patrol mission** that can be used to explore map sectors near the colony. It can also be used to shore things up and make the colonists feel a little more secure and thus stop morale loss. There are no tactical enemies on the map, so there's no point in picking a **skirmish mission**. Frankly, having lost Park for a bit to a vehicle accident just north of the base, I think we owe it to her to set up for an **investigation mission** and find out what it is out there that's pinging our radar. ##### Lock and Load Having picked a mission, now we just need to figure out who's going along with us. Park can't go because she's in sickbay. We could take the bot, and we could even take some civilians if we wanted. They're not particularly capable or effective, but train them up and they can become grunts, which at least gives them some military application. We're not actually going to run the mission, but let's figure out what's going on in terms of setting it up. We know we're going on an investigation mission, so the first thing we need to do is figure out the campaign conditions. None of them have been set for this planet yet, so we need to just roll one and add it to our campaign condition table. That's right, we randomly generate the list of conditions that are applicable to our planet and don't know what they're going to be beforehand. It's a harsh old world out there. | Slot | Condition | Description | | ---: | --------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | 1 | Drifting clouds | Great clouds of gas, vapor, or pollen drift through the area. WhVisibility onlyen setting up the battle, place **three cloud markers 6”** from the center of the table in random directions. Each produces a **2” radius** cloud. These clouds cannot be fired through. Figures within a cloud can fire and be fired upon but it counts as cover. At the end of each round, roll 1D6” and a random direction. Every cloud drifts the same distance and direction. The clouds interfere with visibility, but are not dangerous. | That slot is comfortably worked out. There are ten slots possible for conditions on your planet, and each of the entries on the larger master condition table have sub-conditions. So those clouds might not have been safe. Things could have been very, very ugly. In this case, they're just concealment. I can live with that. Sometimes we have low drifting fog on this world, and I think that's lovely. The investigation mission has some certain requirements that we are going to run through here. Map location is an investigation site. It'll be a 3x3 table populated with terrain. There's a discovery marker in the center of each table quarter. If a terrain feature covers that exact location, place the marker in the center of that terrain feature instead. There are no other battle conditions. We can deploy four characters from the roster. We pick a battlefield edge and roll 1d6. On a 4+, we may arrive from that edge. Otherwise, pick randomly from the remaining edges, and the crew sets up within one inch of each other and within one inch of the battlefield edge. We're dropping in hard and fast, so we won't be attacked by the Slyn, which is good because you don't know what the Slyn are yet, and neither do we, because we haven't run into them.[^2] We put a contact marker at the center of each of the battlefield edges we didn't come in from, and the first time a contact is revealed to be a hostile lifeform, roll on our campaign lifeform encounter table to determine the encounter. If it's a blank, we generate that creature and add it to the encounter table, and it will be blank because we've never encountered one before. At the start of each enemy phase, label the battlefield edges 1 to 3, excluding the deployment edge. Roll a d6. If the die result matches an edge, place a contact there. If the die is 4, 5, or 6, there are no extra contacts. The objective is to search the area for interesting sites. Each of the discovery markers can be investigated by moving within two inches of the marker, at which point it's removed and we roll on the mission objectives table.[^3] The mission's over when nobody on our side is still on the table, whether it be due to finding out what it's like to be a casualty or leaving a battlefield edge. Any edge will do. If we complete at least two discovery markers, it's no longer an investigation area, and it turns into a different kind of area, which is just fine. We're not actually going to set up, but if I were going to send a crew out to investigate what's going on here, it would look like this: | Crew | Position | Weapons | Notes | | ---------------- | ------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Derek Hightower | Science team leader | Handgun Range: 6" Shots: 1 Damage: +0 Trait: Civilian, Pistol | The man earned the right to be on the first investigation team from this colony, and he's going to get it. And by that, I mean he might literally get it at the claws or jaws of some alien horror, because I don't trust law enforcement. | | Miri Solas | Scout forward | Scout pistol Range: 9" Shots: 1 Damage: +0 Trait: Civilian | With our experienced scout out of the way, recuperating in medbay, Miri is going to have to step up and show the colony she can get the job done. We'll really want to scout, considering we don't have any idea whatsoever of what we're going to run into. | | Vespera Nyx | Trooper lead | Trooper rifle Range: 30" Shots: 1 Damage: +0 Trait: Trooper, AP Ammo | I want someone who can get in, get out, and fade into the woodwork if things go sideways. Vespera ought to excel at that. Plus, she gets to carry a little bit of extra hardware. | | Anos Valdegarten | Trooper support | Colonial shotgun Range: 13" Shots: 1 Damage: +0 Traitt: Civilian, Critical | The new kids have got to get experience somewhere. This is the time and the place. Besides, he's armed for close encounters. | You've probably noticed that I've gone ahead and assigned their weaponry as well, and that by and large our weapons generally suck. It's going to be close range all the way, except for Vespera, who can show the enemy a good time at significant range, even if it's armored. Anos can do a little damage as well. Critical means his shotgun does two hits of damage on a natural six. By and large, we're just not going in hunting for bear, literally. But since the question's on the table, what is it that we would actually run into out there for our first encounter? We should generate that. Needless to say, there are full tables for figuring that out, but we're just going to run through it real quick, and I'm going to give you the results. - **NAME: Terrorvore** - 7" move - +1 Combat Skill - Melee +2 Damage - **Ferocity:** When the creature initiates brawling, it rolls twice and picks the best die; this bonus does not apply if one of your characters moves to engage it - **Eruption:** When the creature activates, roll **D6** to hit every character within **6”** and Line of Sight. On **6**, they take a *Damage +0* hit, and are knocked *Sprawling* - **Armor Saving Throw** of **5+** - **Jump:** The Lifeform jumps 1D6+1” towards the nearest character. It will clear Human-height obstacles and if the jump takes it into or past an enemy, they are knocked *Sprawling* Jesus fucking Christ. Have I mentioned that dice hate me and will pick as hard an option as they can on a regular basis? Our first encountered native creature moves like shit through a goose, is terrifying in close combat, does incredible damage, and likes to get in close and hurt people, activates and knocks people down, is inherently armored, and it has a unique ability of being able to jump and knock people down. Let's hope our encounter team actually manages to avoid triggering any of these motherfuckers, because we might not have anybody left after the first contact. ##### Play It Out Nope. Not the least reason being that I don't really have time to do that today, along with all the character and colony generation, but I'm pretty sure that would end in massive death if I get my usual rolls that involve combat. Let's assume that somehow, magically, we managed to succeed with the mission by getting two objectives and everybody came out alive and uninjured. Let's just assume that for the sake of argument. | Mission Objective | Description | | ----------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Action required | A closer look is required. A character must move into base contact and take an action. Roll 1D6+Savvy. A score of 5+ will earn you 1 unit of Raw Materials. No extra raw materials | | Data | You have found **Mission Data**. A character must move into base contact and spend an action to collect the data. It is then transmitted to your colony where it will be analyzed during the post-battle campaign sequence. | Hightower failed us, just as I expected him to. That dirty undercover bastard. But we did turn up some mission data. Excellent. ##### Injuries No one got hurt in our imaginary play out of that, but if they had, we would have rolled just like we did for Park to find out if they were out, dead, okay, or got a little XP out of the experience. ##### XP Progress We know that Park got 2 XP for his exploits earlier, and I think we can probably figure out why the vehicle was trashed. One of the Terrorvores took it out. I'm shocked Park made it back alive. She's earned that 2 XP. Everybody else that went on the mission also got plus 2 XP—one for participating in the battle and one for not becoming a casualty. But I'm not giving anyone credit for killing one of those things. They don't deserve that much credit. I'm not sure anyone does. Ji-Hoon, bless her broken soul, has 5 XP thanks to that starting +3! That earns her a roll on the advancement table, which I'm a little bit excited about. | Ability | Advance | | --------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | | Speed increase (max **8"**) | First time, **+2”**. Second and third time, **+1”** | You know, maybe she had her legs completely taken off in that accident and replaced with cybernetics because now she's going 7 inches a turn. I feel like this is the best apology I can possibly offer, given that I sent her off into the wild unknown on day one into a place populated by horrific nightmares. ##### Colony Morale Here's an interesting complication. Every turn, colony morale automatically drops one point during this step, no matter what. If you take casualties in the battle, it drops another point for each one. If we were playing a rescue mission, for instance, if we had decided to go rescue Park rather than go research the area, we wouldn't have had a morale loss due to casualties. Luckily, we are not at -10 or worse right now, so everything's okay. Just a -1. It could be so much worse. We're at a steady +2. ##### Track enemy Info and Mission Data We don't have any tactical enemies, thank hell. So, nothing to do in this particular slot for them. We did get some mission data that will progress us toward a campaign milestone, but we're a long way from there. ##### Replacements Nobody did, but only because we didn't actually play that out. If we needed to recruit somebody, we could try to at the rate of one plus one per milestone we've achieved, which would be none at this point. So we could just attempt one replacement. We don't have a slot for them. ##### Research Luckily, we generate one research point, and we started with two extra ones, which brings us to a grand total of three. Is that enough to actually buy a research? Shockingly enough, yes, it's at least enough to open up one of the research paths. In this case, **Infantry Equipment** because those Terrorvores are terrifying. We don't have quite enough research points to actually fully get any of the applications because at this point I would really love to have a killbreak shotgun, but it's a start. ##### Building You knew there would be some building eventually, and this is when it happens. We've got two in the bank already. We get one additional now, which brings us to a total of three, and that might be enough to do something useful. We definitely don't need to tear down a building to reclaim the BP. I think we're currently living in a bunch of mud huts around the side of a downed starship. There's really nothing we can build out the gate, and most things have a research requirement we aren't even close to having open yet. Out of an abundance of caution and a certain level of intelligence, we're going to drop all three BP into getting an **advanced manufacturing plant** started because that's a prerequisite to producing any tier one equipment, and we want better hardware across the board. ##### Colony Integrity Everything's cool. Integrity is 0. We don't need to start worrying until we hit -3. ##### Character Event Sometimes stuff happens to characters. All we need to do is pick one at random and roll on the table. Yes, Park is eligible even though she's in medbay. **Anos** comes up as the random pick. | Character Event | Description | | --------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Losing faith | *The character has serious disagreements over the mission and how it is being done.* If the last mission was a failure, they lose one level of Loyalty. | You know, having seen what's out there on the planet, I can't really blame the man. Things look pretty grim. Luckily, the last mission was a success due to GM Fiat, so he doesn't lose any loyalty, but that is an interesting emotional moment for the poor guy. ##### Character Roleplay Event While it's entirely optional, we've come this far. So let's find out what kind of a strange roleplay event is about to kick off and who it's going to happen to. **Derek Hightower**. That sumbitch. *The character goes out for lunch or dinner with another character.* With **Park Ji-Hoon!** That sumbitch! I bet he's just pumping her for information about our operations or starting to establish some sort of emotional rapport to exploit later. Or he's just pumping her. Either way, this is important information. ##### Update Colony Sheet And that's it. We make sure the sheets are up to date. Everything's nice and lined up. And that really is the end of the campaign cycle, from character generation to colony generation to generating that first mission and working out the fallout. ![[07 - 5PFH-Planetfall - Colony and Crew_1.webp]] ![[07 - 5PFH-Planetfall - Colony and Crew_2.webp]] ![[07 - 5PFH-Planetfall - Colony and Crew_3.webp]] ![[07 - 5PFH-Planetfall - Colony and Crew_4.webp]] (Yes, that's a lot 'o pages.) ## Exunt I will openly say that ended up being a little bit longer than I expected. I really should have expected it to run like that. The entire *Five Parsecs from Home* cycle is detailed and crunchy. There is no way this would be different. I will admit I really like how much this drives drama within the framework of an adventure wargame. Yes, the focus is firmly on the missions and pulling them off effectively, managing your team—the whole nine yards. But a tabletop base-building exploration game is a great thing to layer on top of that. I suspect people who are really into hex crawls may also really enjoy this. In fact, I think it would probably be just about trivial to change this from squares to hexes. I can see that being a lot of fun. In the meantime, I hope you found that entertaining, and if not entertaining, at least a little bit intriguing and you're looking forward to what comes out next time, which might be one of the most minimalist games I've had the pleasure of. After this, I deserve the break. [^1]: I'm such a liar. [^2]: They are teleporting, psychic, crazy lizard-bug-people raiders, for the record. [^3]: Readers who have been with me for a while recognize this is very similar to the way that *[[5150 - Total War (wargame line)|5150: Total War]]* handles mission setup along with their potential enemy forces markers. It works. I like it. It's a winner.