Originally posted on YouTube on 23 September 2023 (part two followed on 6 October 2023).
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NAMASTE FROM THE FUTURE MOTHER NUGGETS!
First, a quick word on what’s going on around here. I’m overhauling the website, and while I’m at it, I’m going back through my old YouTube videos and turning them into proper write-ups. Some of these games, like this 5150 campaign, I fully plan to pick back up and keep playing. Before I do, I want the earlier chapters documented properly, all in one place, so that one day I can pull the whole story together from start to finish.
So if you see posts popping up with dates from a few years back, that’s why. Think of it as me tidying up the campaign notes before the next session. Happy days.
Right. Back to the past. On with the show.
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Namaste Mother Nuggets!
Every good story needs someone to happen to. Today we’re making ours: an average Joe, in the future, with big dreams and absolutely no idea what the dice have in store for him.
If you’d rather watch the dice roll live, subscribe to Arjades Rangers on YouTube and come along for the ride.
This post covers my first two 5150 videos: building our Star, and then working out how the campaign actually runs. If you want to know what kind of game this is, start here.
Just Play the Game
Before anything else, one thing I love about 5150: New Beginnings is the attitude. Ed from Two Hour Wargames is so casual in his commentary and his videos. I look at games like 40K and Grimdark Future and worry I’m getting the rules wrong, and Ed’s whole approach is basically: just play the game. Roll the dice. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. Who cares, as long as you’re having fun? The book even says it: use as many or as few of the tools as you want, because it’s your game.
That’s the energy we’re bringing. (Also, Ed, if you’re reading: how do you pronounce your surname? I’ve been getting it wrong for years, I’m sure of it.)
Stars Get Special Treatment
In 5150, your main character is a Star. Everyone else is a Grunt: NPCs that come and go, are a bit weaker, and are run by the game. Stars get three big perks to help them survive the story:
- Star Power. At the start of each encounter you get a D6 for each point of rep. When your Star takes damage, you roll them: each 1–3 knocks the damage down a level (obviously dead becomes out of the fight, out of the fight becomes duck back, and so on), and that die is gone for the rest of the encounter. Fours, fives and sixes don’t help, but you keep them. It’s like a save in 40K that wears away as you use it.
- Extraordinary Effort. Once per encounter, you can add a bonus D6 to a roll when you really need it.
- Free Will. When your side takes a will-to-fight test, you can skip the dice and just decide to bail. Nah man, this is too much for us, we’re out.
There’s a catch, of course: using Star Power earns you a “decreasing rep D6”. More on that in a sec.
Rolling Up Orin
I like to let the dice decide as much as possible, so here’s how our guy came together:
- Race: Basic, which is 5150 for human. Stars start at Rep 5 (technically a Basic would be a 4, but I’ve played with the lower number before and it hurts, so let’s keep it simple). Basic male, rep five. That’s me, man. Basic.
- Gender: rolled. Male.
- Class: he’s a Joe, an average working-class person. I rolled for Service Joe or Labour Joe and got Labour, then rolled a 10 on the professions table: manufacturing. Factories, machinists, that kind of thing. Manufacturing Joe. Pretty straightforward.
- Attributes: Stars get two. The first random roll gave him Agile: plus one rep for physical challenges. I’m allowed to choose the second one, but you know me, I don’t like to choose. Rolled again, and got… Cruel. He gets a bonus D6 when interacting with anyone of equal or lower rep.
I’ve never played a cruel character before. I’m playing a bad guy! But honestly it fits: a factory worker who looks down on everyone around him, which is probably exactly what’s driving him to get out of there.
- Skills: you set one skill equal to your rep and the other one point lower. He’s cruel, so I don’t think he’s much of a people person: People 4, Savvy 5.
- Gear: a P1 pistol firing bullets (one shot, nice and basic), no armour, and a UVB, the Universal Voice Box translator everyone carries. No drones, no cyber enhancements, no space suit, no vehicle.
That last one’s on purpose. Partly because he’s poor, but here’s a little secret between you and me: if you take public transport, you get more encounters. And more encounters means more fun.
- Lifetime rep: I rolled for where he starts in life and landed right at the bottom: poverty. So he lives in some apartment in a not-great part of town. Perfect.
I’m also holding off on recruiting Grunts. Band members cost you every month, and if one gets hurt, or you have to cut them loose or leave them behind, that costs you too. Let’s not start with any encumbrances.
My One Complaint: Rep vs. Rep D6
I love this system, but I do have one grumble. Your character has Rep, which is the number you roll against. Then there’s Rep D6, which is basically XP: you earn increasing D6s when good things happen (taking someone out of a fight, getting paid for a job, a positive interaction) and decreasing D6s when bad things happen (paying your band, leaving the battle board, using Star Power, rent). At the end of each month you tally them up and roll to see if your Rep goes up or down. Your total over the whole campaign is your lifetime rep.
The first time I played, I got very confused because it all sounds like the same thing. I just wish they’d called the XP something else. That’s it. That’s my only complaint.
(I’m tracking all of this with a Faber-Castell Connector pen, by the way, so it actually shows up on camera. Pencil doesn’t film well.)
Part Two: How the Campaign Works
In the second video I named our Star Orin Ryder and walked through how the campaign runs.
First, a correction. In my review I complained that 5150 gives you a lot of separate card piles, one per area of the city. Then I watched Ed’s videos, and his advice is: just shuffle them all together. Let the card you draw decide the area for you. One big smooshy deck, draw a card, and it tells you “you’re going to an office building in the financial district”. Problem solved. We’ll be doing that from now on.
Here’s the shape of the whole thing:
- The goal is retirement. You get ten years in-game to build up your lifetime rep, and wherever you land at the end is how comfortably you retire. Just like real life: get your super going. (That’s superannuation, for the non-Aussies. I think it’s a 401k in America?)
- Two encounters a month. Each month you get one involuntary encounter (stuff that happens to you) and one voluntary encounter (stuff you choose to go and do). The boring day-to-day stuff, like going to work or the dentist, doesn’t count. Only the important moments.
- The city fights back. New Hope City is split into areas, each with its own law level and its own chance of an encounter by day or by night. Some places are a lot less safe after dark.
- PEFs. As you move around you run into “possible enemy forces”. They might be nothing, they might be friendly, or they might want to give you a hard time. This is what makes 5150 so good solo: you don’t decide who turns up, the cards do.
To show you, I drew a card: a strip club. Ooh la la, as my little boy would say whenever someone on TV is a bit scantily clad. Rolled who’s there: a criminal. Rolled what kind: a dealer. Flip the card over and it tells you how many there are and their stats. Suddenly you’re standing in a strip club deciding whether to deal with a dealer. That’s how the stories get made, one little dice roll at a time.
(Apologies to anyone who watched that one, by the way. I was coughing the whole way through. They were doing hazard reduction burns nearby, and my asthma is not friends with smoke. I also misspelt “voluntary”, “encounter” and “robbery” in my campaign notebook, all in about thirty seconds. Can you believe I teach people how to spell for a living?)
So Who Is Orin Ryder?
Orin is an average Joe, a manufacturing guy, and he doesn’t want to be one forever. Factory work is hard, and he wants out. I think his dream is a desk job, something a bit more cushy: to go from Labour Joe to Service Joe. White collar. Maybe start his own shop, maybe even end up as crew on a starship one day. Who knows.
He’s going to try to get there by moving up in the world, doing a bit of socialising (which, with People 4 and a Cruel streak, is obviously going to go great), and hopefully meeting the right people. I think he’ll play it safe, too. I don’t see him going down the mercenary route.
We’ll see what the dice have to say about that.
Next time: Orin’s very first encounter. Spoiler: it does not go to plan.
What do you reckon? Would you have let the dice pick Cruel, or would you have chosen something nicer? Let me know in the comments.
Watch Episode 001: Character Creation on YouTube
Watch Episode 001a: How the Campaign System Works on YouTube
Ciao for now.
(Note: This post was created transcribing my youtube videos using tools which may include elements of artificial intelligence.)