Conquering the verse, one parsec at a time.

So, there we have it.

That is my background for the start of my little campaign.  I will most likely flesh out Veyr’s Fall a bit more as things progress, and I am really looking forward to expanding the setting onto other worlds down the track.   I did purposely decide to give quite a detailed intro to the campaign, the idea being that the Heptagon can provide patrons, enemies, rivals, quest hooks, and moral compromises. CivicSec, corporate troops, android police, off-world mercenaries, desperate citizens, and alien workers all fit neatly into the kind of encounters the game creates.

The wider campaign can then use the game exactly as intended: the crew takes jobs, makes enemies, leaves the starting planet, visits new worlds, and gradually builds its own legend. The idea of eventually discovering or founding a colony on an uncharted world fits especially well, because Five Parsecs thrives when the campaign is allowed to wander. Veyr’s Fall gives them the push. The stars give them the choice.

So, what is Five Parsecs from Home, you ask?

Five Parsecs from Home is a solo or cooperative sci-fi adventure wargame about a small crew trying to survive among the stars. You create a ragtag group of humans, aliens, robots, soldiers, drifters, criminals, explorers, and oddballs, then send them from job to job, world to world, building a campaign through the consequences of their actions. Modiphius describes it as a solo/co-op RPG-lite miniatures wargame with procedurally generated battles, patrons, rivals, jobs, loot, and crew advancement.

At its heart, it is about emergent storytelling. You are not following a fixed plot. The game throws up contracts, enemies, complications, injuries, rivals, discoveries, and opportunities, and you interpret them into a campaign narrative. One mission might be a quick data recovery job. The next could be an ambush, a bounty hunt, a rescue, a corporate raid, or a fight against someone you angered three turns ago.

It is also miniature agnostic, so you can use almost any sci-fi figures and terrain you already own. The rules are designed around small skirmishes rather than huge battles, making it ideal for a crew-based campaign where a handful of characters try to scrape together credits, survive enemies, and, in my case, eventually get off Veyr’s Fall.

A typical campaign cycle has your crew looking for work, dealing with patrons and rivals, preparing for the next mission, fighting a tabletop encounter, and then resolving the aftermath. Characters can gain experience, suffer injuries, collect loot, make contacts, train, trade, recruit replacements, upgrade gear, and improve their ship.

It only needs a few six-sided dice, a couple of ten-sided dice, a small number of miniatures and a bit of imagination to begin.

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