Five Parsecs from Home – a Review

Cover art of the newst edition

Modiphius was kind enough to gift me a pdf of Five Parsecs from Home to review and let folks know my thoughts. I was moderately familiar with the previous version of the rules, having bought it a few months ago from WargameVault not long before the 3^rd Ed was announced. This is not uncommon for me, I have this happen quite often: I got back into 40k in 5^th edition RIGHT before 6^th was announced, I got into Pulp Alley RIGHT before 2^nd edition was announced. I started Malifaux RIGHT before M2E was announced, I got into In Her Majesty’s Name RIGHT before 2^nd Ed was announced. So, alas, I’m no stranger to buying something just to find out that it’s pretty much already obsolete. Thus, I was very glad I didn’t actually start into 5PH because I can look at it with completely fresh eyes.

So what ARE my thoughts? First I really like the graphic design work for this book. The little graphics and watermarks throughout make it look rather sci-fi without it being a SPECIFIC sci-fi. I also really liked the images that illustrated what the various races look like. I mean, sure, we all have head canon but it can be nice to really see what a certain alien race looks like rather than NEEDING to imagine it.

The layout of the book is also pretty decent. I personally don’t necessarily care about the universe in which a game’s rules are set. More often than not I’m buying games to fit a theme I already have planned. This was no different. I got this game because I wanted what Stargrave doesn’t seem to offer: depth and rules that aren’t just combat and picking up treasure.

The fluff section of this book FOLLOWS the main game rules so if that part isn’t relevant you don’t need to flip past it first. In addition, the rules are so streamlined that they take up about 20 pages. 20 pages! There are still more advanced rules and campaign/scenario rules. But those aren’t even necessary to just play a quick game. For the rules I found that they’re pretty easy to grasp and won’t take much to remember. I did find the weapon ranges to be interesting as most games feature weapons with ranges that are easily lower than the maximum table size. In this case a well-placed sniper can indeed cover the entire board area. This makes much more sense than a sniper only being able to cover half a table. I may adjust the ranges to be anywhere within the table but it’s a very long ranged shot so it will only hit on a 6+ if the target is in the open, 7+ if in cover. Close combat is not really anymore deadly or brutal than shooting. Plus characters aren’t locked in, the loser gets knocked back.

The scenario and ongoing campaign rules are very interesting and enjoyable but not too deep or granular (though they CAN be if you choose}. You can adjust the difficulty of your campaign harder or easier. There are built in curves and you set the goal of your campaign so you decide how long it will take to complete. You will make rivals who can show up at an unexpected time just to ruin your day. You’ll earn the support of patrons who will give you jobs and reward your competence. Make no mistake, though, the game is designed for you to take casualties. People will die.  You can pretty much build your crew in any way you can think of: a random collection of different species a la Star Trek or all humans such as the Galactic Empire and anything in between. To wit the rules as written with no adjustments or house rules offer you 3 ways to pick your crew: standard which is up to 2 aliens and up 1 bot, random which is where you roll for each crewmember, and then the method I prefer which is get together a bunch of models you like and determine their races based on the minis themselves.

Each member of your crew has their own history and background as well as their reason for being there. These are generated by tables in the book. When creating my crew I did tweak the rolls a bit if they were TOO similar or just didn’t fit the model (in my opinion). I mean, who ever heard of a Vulcan being on a mission for love/romance? There are ways to make it work or exceptions to every rule, sure, but for me I just wanted it to be simple. The less work upfront the more time I could spend actually in the game itself. Your available weaponry and equipment is also relatively random. This can be a positive or a negative to gameplay, depending on what you’re going for. However, even though some crew will come with advanced equipment but they don’t have to be the ones to use it. So if you get some good high tech weaponry don’t be ashamed of giving it to your combat specialist. No reason to keep it with that nerdy poindexter just because he brought it with him. Gotta make choices that will keep everyone alive longest, after all.

There’s an entire section in the back of the book that’s longer than the base rules that provides extra and optional rules that add to the game’s depth or difficulty including making it more of an RPG with a GM and NPCs.

The ONLY things I found lacking in this game was any form of real starship combat rules and a lack of a planet/system generator for fleshing out the locations for jobs. There are a few options for generating these such as Sectors Without Number and Systems Without Number. Plus, the author, Ivan, has a supplement freely available called Every Star an Opportunity if you’d prefer. This just leaves the starship rules. But that’s a bit more open-ended. Basically you’ll just have to pick one and adapt it. I’ve chosen Full Thrust Light. Ships are more of an abstract concept than a reality. The only way your ship plays much role in the game is via events or bonuses in games. It’s actually unfortunate and I hope this is remedied in a future supplement. While I don’t believe a perfect game exists the only thing really holding this game back at all from its full potential is a lack of starship rules and a bit more depth to the locales. Also the game is very much akin to one of the ‘Grave or Osprey wargames in that you need a pretty good collection of NPC antagonists. There are about 30 options for what can show up just to get in the way of accomplishing your goals. There’s some overlap so you can reduce this to about 12 types but you’ll still need somewhere in the ballpark of 20-40 different enemy models because with all the options you’ll need anywhere between 1 and a dozen in a scenario. I will probably be houseruling this to reduce the types and make it more streamlined.

I don’t know what future plans Modiphius has for supporting 5PH but I do know the ruleset it’s based upon: FiveCore brings in a lot more options for rules, stealth scenarios,, vehicles. Plus there are several supplements for FiveCore that change the setting . The author mentioned on Discord if you want to add in vehicles he suggests Five Men from Kursk, a WW2 skirmish set of rules that uses the same core as 5PH. I have these but haven’t really poured over them much yet. I’m also curious about the added value of having Starport Scum for expanding 5PH. Even the older versions of 5PH do have some things this edition does not, so hopefully we will see the game expanded upon in the future. I’d also like to see a crew management app for convenience.

Since my setting is Star Trek in the late 2150s I’ve equipped most of my crew with hand lasers, this was fortuitous because I rolled them heh, I’ve also modified the rules for hand lasers a bit: I’ve added the stun rule. Even back then Starfleet didn’t go around vaporizing enemy combatants unless it was necessary, like those Xindi Reptilians. This is an optional setting that must be declared before the shot is taken.

Ultimately I highly recommend picking this up if you like firefly, rpg-lite games, games where the campaign actually has some depth to it, or just a fun sci-fi game.