Five Parsecs From Home

What is Five Parsecs From Home

Five Parsecs From Home is a solo sci-fi adventure wargame by Ivan Sorensen, published by Modiphius. You “assemble a ragtag crew of galactic trailblazers and head out to explore the stars, pick up jobs,” and fight your way through whatever the galaxy throws at you. Modiphius calls it an “RPG-lite adventure wargame experience with miniatures,” built for solo play from the ground up, with co-op and Game Master options on top.

Your crew can be human, alien, or robot. Battles are procedurally generated from tables of enemies, weapons, battlefield conditions, and objectives, with more than 50 enemy types. After each fight your crew may die from their injuries, or level up and find new gear. Between fights you upgrade your starship, look for contacts, trade, explore the colony, and recruit replacements.

Sorensen’s own label, Nordic Weasel Games, published it first. Modiphius launched its full retail edition in March 2021, reviewed as the Third Edition: a 184-page full-colour hardback with new content and a free PDF. It’s the sci-fi sister game to Five Leagues from the Borderlands.

How it plays

A campaign first, a battle second. Each campaign turn runs travel, then the world you land on, then a tabletop battle, then the post-battle sequence. Sorensen calls it “a campaign experience” and says you should get through a whole campaign turn in one evening.
There is always a fight. Every campaign turn has a battle. With no job or rival to chase, you fight an Opportunity Mission.
Small crews. A typical starting crew is six characters, with options to play with four or five. You’ll usually face five to eight enemies, including Specialists and Lieutenants, with Unique Individuals added on top.
Simple combat on purpose. Sorensen kept the core rules short because one player has to track everything. He says a battle usually takes about 20 minutes once you know the game.
The enemy runs itself. Enemy AI types tell you how each force behaves, and the system isn’t random, so you can work through the enemy’s decisions quickly once you know a type. The enemy always knows where your crew is.
XP and Story Points. Characters earn experience, and Story Points give a solo player some say over how the story goes. Patrons offer jobs, you fight rivals, and rumours build toward quests.
Any setup, simple dice. You need a few six-sided dice and a couple of ten-sided dice, plus tokens for Stunned and Activated figures and markers for objectives.

How to start

Get the rulebook. Modiphius sells the hardback for about $47 (it comes with the PDF) or the PDF alone for about $27 on its US store.
Find a crew and some enemies. Any sci-fi miniatures work. Sorensen’s FAQ suggests starting with three sets you can recycle: eight or so figures that work as criminals, eight futuristic soldiers, and eight alien bug things.
Clear a small table. The game plays best on 3’ × 3’ and still works on 2’ × 2’.
Want official figures? Modiphius sells the Titan Forge range of official STL files for 3D printing. It also has 32mm multipart resin kits for the game (Crew, Security, and Soulless) on pre-order, with shipping expected to start in October 2026.
Want more after that? The Compendium collects all three expansions (Trailblazer’s Toolkit, Freelancer’s Handbook, and Fixer’s Guidebook) with the updated standalone Bug Hunt, where a squad clears alien lifeforms out of wrecks and abandoned colonies. Tactics is a standalone take on bigger battles, with platoons, tanks, and points-built armies for solo, head-to-head, or campaign play. Planetfall is a standalone solo and co-op game about building a colony on an alien world. Characters carry over between all of them.