Five Parsecs Campaign Turn 2. Communication Breakdown.

 Welcome back, a year later, for the continuation of my Five Parsecs campaign. I have been excitedly writing down the existing characters and rolling up three new characters. My crew is six humans all with various backgrounds. There are the original three characters from the first game, then the person who joined, and the other two grunts. Each of these are now a full character with a background and possible abilities. Some of the names changed though.

Augustus Holmes (Blue top, rifle)
Origin - Religious Cult
Motivation - Glory! Defeat the biggest and baddest!
Class - Hacker. Re-roll one hack/intrusion per mission
True Believer - On a BAIL result, move 6" towards nearest enemy.

Aralay Brenk (Red had, blades)
Origin - Primitive/Regressed/Out in the sticks
Motivation - The hunt for tech of any kind
Class - UCS agent. Add a goon with rifle on 1 or 6 on 1D6 if fighting mutants, dissidents, anarchists.
Counter Attach - May reroll when attacked in brawl.

Ward Roberts (Orange Armour)
Origin - Lower class mega city
Motivation - Order. Disorder is bad
Class - Bounty hunter. Find a single use patron on 1 or 6.
Free auto rifle

Oslan Baratski (hood and bag)
Origin - Industrial world. Resourceful but probably a filthy red.
Motivation - Power. Wants to be on top
Class - Trader. Roll twice on trade table and pick best.
Psionic - Premonition. Each campaign turn, pick one enemy and DON'T roll for it. OR pick one and roll twice.

Mao Yung-Zu (Oriental hat)
Origin - Military brat. High parental expectations.
Motivation - Freedom. Lots of space left in Fringe Space
Class - Traveller. Roll 1D6 on a new world to generate a patron.
Talent - Tough. Ignore first hit each game.

Estelle Phillips (mask and bag)
Origin - Dystopian hell hole
Motivation - Find the best tech
Class - Scoundrel (basically does nothing)
Lucky - When a bad thing happens, roll 1D6. On a 6 they escape with no ill effect.

A few months on the go and the crew of The Pelican were ready for a restock and refit. They also needed work, and besides, some time planetside would allow them to breathe air that hadn't been recycled countless times. This would be nice. 

Ward Roberts was still recovering from the gun wound from the scavenging job, and Augustus Holmes was assigned to guard the ship, local law enforcement being what it is. The rest went out to find a job and try to trade for some upgrades. Luckily they managed to find someone willing to pay them to do something, although it might be dangerous.  

In a break in the woods there lies a small, hidden enclave. Local law enforcement don't venture there out of either fear or due to the right cash going into the right pockets. Neither is good. Both put public trust in these lawmen at somewhere between zero and nil.

A small group of renegades who have been trying to stay below the radar, but one of them went missing a few months ago. They tracked their missing person down to a press gang, who basically kidnap people and sell them to any military or paramilitary organisation will pay. This led to a skirmish, and the press gang now feel like they can cash in, report the existence of this group and sell them all off. To avoid this, the renegades tasked the crew of The Pelican with destroying a communications array. It should be lightly guarded by a couple of armed gang members, but it was a small operation.

To begin, the crew advanced in two groups hoping to catch any defenders in a cross fire

Unfortunately they were too slow about it and one of the defenders caught them out in the open. He fired off a few rounds and hit Estelle Phillips...

 who crumpled and fell to the ground. Augustus Holmes promised to come back and check on her, if they survive that is.

Ward Roberts and Augustus returned fire and the enemy fell. Unsure if seeking cover or injured they stayed where they were just in case.

Meanwhile another ganger got caught in the open by fire from Mao. Nothing came of it though with the shots kicking up little plumes of dust and grit.

Another ganger attempted to flank the crew but took fire. It was also ineffectual but slowed his advance as he thought better of moving away from cover.

At the same time Roberts and Holmes took more fire from the ganger, who had shot Phillips. Holmes panicked and retreated behind a nearby clump of trees.

Another ganger advanced to get into better gun range, but took fire from Aralay Brenko and Oslan Baratski, going down in a hail of bullets and blood.

Another gang member came under fire from Baratski, panicked and retreated around the rocky outcrop. Brenko and Mao dashed up to close the distance and get behind the rocks.

Mao took fire from a ganger but it went wide, he still wanted to find cover though, just in case.

More shots rang out and Roberts took some hits, bullets punching through his armour. The trauma modules kicked in to try and save him as he led there bleeding.

The gang member responsible for the most carnage tried to advance on Holmes. Unfortunately for the ganger Holmes had rallied and opened fire first, knocking him back again.

The panicking ganger retreated further away from Brenko, especially considering she burst round the corner, handgun blazing! Slugs found another gang member and he toppled, unmoving to the floor, a red pool seeping out underneath him.

Brenko then charged up to the formerly panicking gang member, blade swinging! She forced him back, desperate to escape her humming blades. In the background Baratski managed to set up explosives on the communication array.

In an attempt to support Brenko and Baratski, Mao ran out of cover to charge over to the communications array. He took fire, panicked and ran back into the cover of the trees.

The earth shook as the explosives detonated, rendering the communications array unusable, and turning it into so much scrap metal! Mission accomplished, although it was not a cake walk. The remaining gangers ran, fearing the attention the explosion and resulting smoke plume may bring, while our hardy crew took a moment to take stock and check on their wounded comrades. 

Upon reaching Robterts, Holmes discovered it was too late. The trauma modules on his armour had not reacted well enough to save him, and the armour itself was too damaged to use without serious repairs. Phillips on the other hand while bleeding heavily was able to use the med-gel to seal the wound and has a big scar across her face. On the bright side she might be more useful to intimidate people now. 

The walk back to town was a sombre one. Ward Roberts would be missed. Brenko's comm unit beeped with an incoming call and their contact arranged a time and place to meet and get paid. 

I didn't enjoy this game very much. I feel like I rushed into it (with days and days of planning) and wasn't familiar enough with the combat rules. I had excitedly rolled up enough characters to have a full crew of 6, and then did all of the campaign turn stuff, ignoring that one of the crew probably shouldn't actually be allowed to be on this mission. I rolled up the mission which looked promising, although I forgot that the original target was to destroy a "nano fabrication machine" (communications array seemed better anyway). They had originally traded for a thing that basically allowed me to ignore 1S result in the game, which I should have done. That was all fun. I enjoyed it. But the game itself, I ended up referring to a badly printed PDF of the FiveCore 3rd edition rules, while trying to look at my character book, and remember all the benefits I had. It made me wish I was playing Starport Scum a little bit. In fact, why can't I play Starport Scum mechanics with the Five Parsecs campaign structure?

The combat in FiveCore is brutal. People go down quickly, whereas Starport Scum seems to be more about telling heroic stories with almost impossible to kill characters.