Happy New Year, 4821

This January kicks off turn one of my solo 5150 campaign. To make it easy to track, the campaign system follows a regular Earth-month schedule, consisting of two turns per month; early and late. There are four total "strategic campaign turns" per year consisting of three month seasons; winter, spring, summer, and fall.

The pace of the campaign will pick up obviously and not follow the course of our year as it progresses. Right now is just a good place to start being an "official" new year and all. Strategic campaign turns only happen four times in a campaign year and set the tone for war in the universe, setting up which races are at war with whom.

Within each season of the campaign, there are six encounter turns, which may or may not yield and actual game on the tabletop. You can set your own encounter ratings, so it can be skewed for battle or not. In this first turn I had a lot of other 'bookkeeping' to get done laying the campaign groundwork, so I skewed it towards peace.


There are sixteen total races/empires to keep track of. I whipped up the above chart shown here to put all of the information in one place. Many of these factors determine how often a race goes to war and whether or not they stay there.

I divided the races into two categories with the first eight races as the 'major' players and the second eight races, that were released in the aliens sourcebook, as the lesser races. All this means is if there were star charts drawn up, those first eight races would occupy larger territories. I put on the chart a territory size, which is a number I made up mostly derived from the race's tech level and its motivation for war as well. My plan is to flesh out these systems as the races are pulled into conflict, which should be staggered.

Man, there's not a lot of "fun" in this post is there? Well I've gone on long enough, next time around will be the results for the first strategic campaign turn as well as the encounter for the first half of the first month. Just as a side note, the number 5150 in the game's title refers to an intergalactic penal code, not the year itself. For the year, as you can tell from the title, I went with 4821, one hundred game years after the last time I tried a 5150 solo campaign. That's all for now, until then, enjoy!