# 5150: Book One tags: #game/wargame/5150-book-one ![[5150 - Book One (cover).jpg|600]] This is where the **[[5150 - Wargames]]** line starts, and 2006 was a long time before New Hope City had a mayor. **5150: Book One** is the original Two Hour Wargames sci-fi game — the complete Reaction-System skirmish-and-campaign core that every later 5150 book (Star Army, Star Navy, New Beginnings, and the rest) grew out of. It opens on a wry prologue of peacekeepers, Grath, and a family's vacation in New Vegas, then settles into being the engine-room book for the whole universe. ## Setting Book One lays down the 5150 universe's ground rules in one place: the human **Gaea Prime Star Army** as the peacekeeping military, and the roster of **races and factions** that keep the galaxy interesting — the hulking **Grath**, the **Hishen**, the **Hydrissians**, the **Razors**, clone races, and more, each with its own force list and weapon tables. The fiction makes it a lived-in future; the tables make it playable. It's the origin point, so the tone is a little rougher and the scope a little looser than the more polished later books. ## Mechanics Book One contains the complete original engine later games inherit: **Reputation**, the **taken-versus-Rep** 2d6 roll, and the full set of **Reaction Tests** (in-sight, received-fire, wanting-to-charge, rally, and the rest) that make THW games reactive instead of IGO/UGO. It ships the whole **weapons catalogue** — ranged, hand-to-hand, melee, vehicle, support, and anti-armor — with the stat columns (range, targets, armor vs. REF/DIS/SHIM/EXO/BTA…) that later line books reuse. On top of the skirmish rules sit **random character generation** and a **military campaign game** with both a Player Campaign and a Strategic Campaign (turn sequence, reinforcement and vehicle-availability tables). ## The books in this corner - **5150: Book One** (2006) — the original core game; the root of the 5150 line. *In the library.* - **5150: First Contact** — a supplement to Book One: the **Mars/Sahadeen rebellion** scenarios (the book's intro is explicit that you must have Book One). *In the library.* - **Conversions** (in the library): - **First Contact → Star Army** — conversion sheet bridging the original to Star Army. - **First Contact → [[5150 - Battalion Commander|Battalion Commander]]** (Earth Force & the Sahadeen) — conversion sheet. ## References - [5150 – Two Hour Wargames](https://www.twohourwargames.com/) - [5150 – Sci-Fi Games — Rebel Minis Press](https://rebelminispress.com/collections/sci-fi-games)