Section 5
A downloadable game
This game was written on the lands of the
Awabakal & Worimi people.
I offer my respect to their People and Elders.
This was, is, and always will be Aboriginal land.
***
You are Agents of the GGC’s Section 5 Taskforce.
Covert operatives tasked with protecting the GGC from existential threats,
by any means possible.
Recruited from across the system and from many different walks of life.
Officially, your mission is to prevent the trafficking of Antimatter Weaponry.
Unofficially? Your job is to keep humanity from exterminating itself.
Your actions are ultra top secret.
Your missions are known only to you and your handlers.
Your status as agents of the GGC is deniable.
Sometimes you will be forced to act on incomplete information,
other times you’ll be picking up the pieces of someone else's mistakes.
Whatever the mission, you’ll get it done.
Don’t fuck up, and don’t get caught.
There’s no help coming for you and the whole Solar System is at stake.
IIIII
OVERVIEW
Section 5 is a Tactical Espionage Space Opera RPG. Section 5 takes FIST by CLAYMORE and transforms it into a game about spies in a solar system wide cold war.
A companion game to Assault Fleet Centauri, Section 5 takes place in Reizor’s Solar Cold War setting, focusing on the events of the late 22nd and early 23rd centuries. An era where humanity has spread across the Sol System using antimatter powered FTL jump ships. Where powerful nations vie for control of humanity's fate, struggling with the legacy of the Solar Wars and the horrors of an antimatter fuelled holocaust.
Players take on the role of Agents working for the intelligence services of the Gas Giant Combine, or GGC. A resource sharing collective based around the gas giants of the outer system. The GGC was born from the ashes of the Solar Wars, throwing off their capitalist overseers and striving to build a just future for all.
As agents of the GGC players will take on all the dirty jobs of protecting a socialist utopia from the greedy hands of capitalist nations. Stopping assassinations, undermining weapons development programs, bringing in defectors, and killing traitors. You’ll build your characters from a bountiful variety of character traits, roles, and skills. All adapted or designed especially for Section 5 and the Solar Cold War setting.
INSPIRATIONS
AFC is a full conversion of FIST. As such most of the mechanics are remixes or reinterpretations of FIST Ultra Edition. With some additional inspiration from Vampire: Requiem, Killteam, and GUMSHOE.
The fiction and themes are inspired by The Expanse, Hunt for Red October, The Bourne Identity, Mission Impossible, Eclipse Phase, Neuromancer, and The Old Man.
CONTENT WARNINGS
This game deals with themes of Violence, War, Imperialism, Colonialism, Fascism, Transhumanism, War Crimes, Mass Loss Of Life, Nuclear Annihilation, Space and the dangers there in.
LICENCE
The text of Section 5 is CC-BY-SA 4.0. Meaning you can share it, remix it, expand it, or make it into something completely new, as long as you use the same licence and give credit back to us.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
What's included in your purchase?
- The Early Access version of the core book covering the setting material, character creation, and referee advice. Over 50 pages so far, in both PDF and Epub format.
- The Agent Sheet, with room to track your skill ranks, your characters history, their traits, roles, and items.
- 4 Example characters to help you jump right into your games of Section 5.
Section 5 also has a free online setting encyclopaedia full of extra information about the worlds, nations, people, and technology of the 23rd century.
You can read it on World Anvil.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $9 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Development log
- Update Inbound10 days ago
Comments
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Section 5 is a space opera espionage game that sits at sort of a tonal midpoint between Eclipse Phase and Babylon Five. It is based on FIST, but the FIST rules are not required to play this game.
The PDF is large, with a nice bold cover, cleanly organized text, and an easy to use character sheet. The bulk of the layout is just bare print, but it's all perfectly readable.
Setting-wise, this is a big hard fi solar system with a lot of geopolitical intrigue, and so learning the game means spending a little bit of time learning the setting. The tldr is that you play as agents of a nominally progressive fuel consortium trying to prevent species-ending weapons development by destabilizing other factions.
The overall angle is a bit Delta Green and a bit Eclipse Phase. You're not the A Team. You're disposable assets doing dangerous work, and the setting treats you like it.
There's an expanded setting wiki at worldanvil that the book links to, and it's not strictly required for play, but the GM may want to skim it anyway. It's hard to run geopolitics without having a good grasp of all the pieces in play.
Mechanically, Section 5 works very similarly to core FIST. There are a few new mechanics like tickdown (rolling a d6 to set a timer), and roll bonuses have been broken into a wider Skill list. There's also a nice addition to the game's lethality, where if your character dies on a mission, you immediately reroll a new PC and are inserted back into the mission with the goal of joining up with the rest of the team.
For character creation, the process is much the same as standard FIST, although TRAITS are sorted into categories by profession (civilian, military, criminal, etc) and give lots of small bonuses to Skills. These new TRAITS are mostly custom built, and a lot give you cool choices rather than just straight bonuses.
Section 5 is written very thoroughly, just like core FIST Ultra, and there's plenty of support for GMs threaded throughout the book. Guidance is also given to players, and the dice system and character building mechanics are easy to learn and player-friendly.
Overall, this is a neat, thorough, and genuinely very high effort FIST mod. If you like hard fi, espionage, and simple, graceful rulesets, give Section 5 a look!
Rereading this comment has reminded me that, not only do I do good work but others see the effort and care I put in to my projects. Thank you for taking the time to compose such a thorough and supportive review. 💜
You make good stuff! People are kinda inconsistent when it comes to leaving reviews, even on stuff they really like, so I'm always happy when one of my reviews reminds a designer that their rpgs are solid.
If you like Section 5, why not check out it's companion game Assault Fleet Centauri? If you like Space Socialism and Battleship Carrier Hybrids, it's the game for you.