Five Parsecs From Home - A Temporary Post-Script

Just for patrons, this one.

So, having really enjoyed reading the Five Parsecs from Home (3rd Edition) rulebook, I thought it'd be fun to get it out on the tabletop and have a go at the game itself.

Anyway, three hours later... I'm yet to so much as move a mini, because this game requires a lot of pre-game organization, note-taking and cross-referencing which, in a book with no index, is a pretty confusing and frustrating experience.

I was expecting a handful of simply tools to throw together a simple battle that I could just get on with.

But instead I was given an avalanche of long tables, in no particularly logical order and which required me to make a lot of notes. And not everything was very well explained when it was referred to (still not clear on Rivals or Patrons). It all feels quite "Traveller" in some respects.

For example, I had a Patron who commissioned my crew for a job which I had to right now and couldn't delay until later. Cool. That's my next battle, and I generated the rewards and benefits I would earn from fighting this battle. But then a Rival turned up in a result that forced me to abandon my previous work to create a whole new battle and, because I couldn't delay the work for my Patron, all those rewards were lost. The rules implied that I should pick the scenario that best fitted the nature of the Rival but at no point had I been prompted to actually work out who the Rival was and, with no index, I had no way of checking where those rules might be if I'd missed something other than to flick, page by page, through the whole book looking for the rules (I didn't find them).

Also, the process of creating my crew, my ship and my battles... wasn't that fun. It required lots of cross-referencing, flicking back and forth and making notes of things the purpose of which was unclear (what's Luck for? Is a Rumour the same as a Story Rumour? If I go and look for a Patron and don't find one... is that the end of this campaign turn?).

Now, I don't doubt that there are good answers to these questions (don't tell me what they are - the process of finding out is part of the review experience), but they aren't laid out in a way that makes finding them easy or logical.

Five Parsecs is in its third edition. It's a well-regarded, well-played, popular set of sci-fi rules. In fact, for 28mm solo skirmish, it's practically the set of sci-fi rules. And perhaps players who are more familiar with them find the process of creating their crew and battles more engaging. But, so far, I'm pretty disappointed with the amount of time it's taking me to get from "yes, I want to play this game" to actually playing the game. Perhaps this is indicative of a key difference between my approach to design and Ivan's. For him, the pre-game work is part of the experience and, sure, I can definitely see the narrative that arises from my intended mission being cancelled because of the sudden appearance of a Rival. But I want to start shooting things!

Anyway, this probably sounds pretty salty, which is why it's a "patrons-only" thing. I need to work through this carefully and actually get to playing a game or two so I can give it a fair appraisal.

I definitely think the pre-game process would be more fun in a pseudo-RPG context, with, say, three players each having two crew members each and a GW to manage the story.