Idle Thoughts on Idol Pursuits (Ronin Roundtable)

The shared world experience is an interesting one, something my earliest experiences with roleplaying games informed me about. After all, I started out playing around in imaginary worlds created by others, first as a hobby and later as a professional writer, so it’s a natural progression that now, other people are playing around in imaginary worlds that I created. One of the important things about shared worlds is that they’re like living things: They grow and change over time and, while you might help to create one, or even “raise” it, ultimately, it doesn’t belong to you and it can be better from a lot of different contributions.

Idol Pursuits, the Mutants & Masterminds novella from Nisaba Press, written by Michael Matheson, is an example of how those diverse shared-world contributions come together. Like the upcoming NetherWar adventure series for the Mutants & Masterminds RPG, the story of Idol Pursuits has its origins in the update of the Freedom City sourcebook (itself the origin of the Earth-Prime setting) to the third edition of the M&M rules.

One of the background elements that was updated in Freedom City is a change in the forces of magic in the world: The loss of Adrian Eldritch as Master Mage, followed by his successor Seven inadvertently becoming ruler of the Netherworld, forced to exile herself from Earth. Now sinister forces of sorcery that were once under control are rising in power. One strand of that story is told in NetherWar (NetherWar: Master of Earth is on sale NOW!), while others appear in M&M fiction like Idol Pursuits and the forthcoming novel The Doom That Came to San Francisco.

When there’s magic at work in the world of Earth-Prime, you can bet things are going to happen in Mystery, New Hampshire, a mystic part of the setting I first detailed in Altas of Earth-Prime, which is also the setting for Idol Pursuits. Just the place where you might expect a deathless vigilante dealing out harsh justice might come across a strange idol that everyone seems to want, and team up with a young sorcerer-detective and his sword-wielding barbarian protector. For me, it’s a fun experience to see Matheson’s Revenant, Kid Necro, and Ilkath, among others, meet up with some familiar Freedom City characters of my creation, mixed with other contributions to Earth-Prime like Scott Bennie’s specialists in magic and weirdness from Agents of Freedom, and some of Prof. Christopher McGlothlin’s creepy characters from Freedom’s Most Wanted, to name a few.

Intrigued? Well, no spoilers here, but if you’re interested in magic and misadventure in the Mutants & Masterminds manner, and maybe getting another perspective on the Rise of Dark Magic in the Earth-Prime setting, take a look at Idol Pursuits, the ebook and pdf are available today from Nisaba Press!

Mutants & Masterminds: NetherWar is Coming… (Ronin Roundtable)

So what good’s an adventure if the story doesn’t roll on into the next one? What good is winning the battle while the war rages on? And how can real heroes keep the world safe when the position of the world’s guardian remains empty?

The NetherWar is upon us, to answer these questions.

NetherWar is a six-part adventure series for Mutants & Masterminds—five main stories and a prequel—that pits the heroes against the rising tide of evil magic on Earth Prime. The champions must prove their mettle by defending the world from newly-empowered villains and uncovering the legacy of protection Adrian Eldrich created before his terrible death. But they’re racing the clock as a diabolical shadow from the Master Mage’s past works to unravel those protections and rise on Earth-Prime as a dark god!

Over the coming months, you’ll run through the harrowing challenges and ultimately save Earth-Prime. The adventure begins with a flashback in this week’s Master of Earth, written by me, then continues next month with John Polojac’s Assault on the Nerian Nexus. The months to come will unveil The Pentagram Peril, Broken Strings, Bound by Gold, and finally conclude in Three Made One. There’s plenty of space in between each adventure to add your own adventures and plot points, or you can run the entire series back-to-back as an extended mini campaign, and each volume of the NetherWar arc will work as a standalone adventure if you only want little a magical peril. As a treat.

No Spells Required!

You can run the NetherWar adventure arc using your existing heroes, or build a new team to tackle the crisis, but magical powers aren’t necessary to save the world from the magic apocalypse. There are plenty of expert NPCs along the way to explain the magical history of Earth-Prime and plenty of ways to solve the various challenges without resorting to spellcraft, so feel free to bring your mutants, aliens, and cyborgs into the fight!

If you do want to use NetherWar as the kickoff for a magical campaign, NetherWar offers Bequests in each adventure—tiny bits of Adrian Eldrich’s legacy as Master Mage left behind for others to inherit. Your heroes can keep bequests in their trophy case as plot devices they can pull out for a Hero Point, or invest the Power points to make any bequest a normal part of their heroic identity. And the greatest bequest of all is up for grabs: The title of Master Mage of Earth-Prime! While bequests and the title aren’t central to the campaign, they provide a little something extra for players who get into the themes and legacies involved.

A Blast in the Past

With the Time Traveler’s Codex  available now, it’s appropriate that the NetherWar kicks off with a little trip to yesteryear in Master of Earth. A slight departure from our usual Astonishing Adventure offerings, Master of Earth flashes back to events we already describe in the Secret Past chapter of Freedom City, Third Edition and further details Seven’s climactic confrontation with the Dark Lord Una to save the earth after Eldrich’s passing. The players step into the roles of Seven and several members of the teenage Next-Gen to stop Una the Unrelenting from conquering Earth-Prime! You can play the adventure as a slice of history with the same outcome, or use the adventure with your own heroes to create your own spin on Earth-Prime’s recent past. While the heroes of Master of Earth—are set years in the past—don’t necessarily tie directly into those you might play, the adventure with help players understand the status quo of Earth-Prime’s magical community and how we got here.

Your Guide to Adventure!

 

NetherWar has a lot of moving parts and expectations, not to mention six parts stretched out over as many months. To help players and Gamemasters alike keep track of all those moving parts, we’ve assembled a FREE NetherWar Guide. This 15-page guide gives players the rundown on what they need to know and expect going into NetherWar as well as advice on what skills, Advantages, and powers might be helpful. If you’re building your team from scratch for this adventure series, it also offers five team ideas and five concept roles to help you define your place in the group. You can build your teams only using these concept roles, or combine them with roles presented in the SuperTeam Handbook to flesh out your place on the team and the story.

For Gamemasters, the NetherWar Guide also includes a section just for you! It includes an adventure-by-adventure preview of what to expect so you can start early seeding any plot points you really like. It also includes a brief who’s-who of NetherWar villains so you can read up on their history and start perfecting your voice-acting skills for the table!

 

If you’re worried about magical mayhem overload, don’t fret! We’ll have plenty of Astonishing Adventures to come that offer some mystical relief! Take off to the stars, battle aliens, and stop a supernova in the cosmic adventure Prodigal Sun, or take your campaign back to high school for a LARP gone terrible wrong in Bite Club, or confront a mischievous cosmic imp as you journey Into the Idiot Box! All these and more lie in the future!

The NetherWar has been a really fun project to bring to life, and I hope everyone has as much fun playing it. Hopefully this will be the first of many multi-part adventures yet to come for Mutants & Masterminds, so let us know what you think on social media and the Ronin Army forums!

Blue Rose’s Map to Adventure (Ronin Roundtable)

As some of you may already be aware, this is Blue Rose Adventure Week here at Green Ronin. We’ve decided to make some of our lines’ adventures available individually, starting with the six adventures that make up Six of Swords, the first Blue Rose adventure anthology, as well as Nightmare Rider, an adventure from Blue Rose’s first edition updated for the current Blue Rose AGE ruleset.

To help you find your way around these adventures, we’ve put together what we like to call our Map to Adventure! A map of Aldea with markers pinpointing the locations where our various adventures take place, with links to the pages for those adventures for easy ordering.

This way, you can check and see if there are any adventures that take place near where your own campaign occurs, in case you want to fold one of them into your narrative.

As we go on, we’ll be adding the locations of more adventures as well. In particular, the already-announced Six of Cups adventure anthology will likely be included on the map once we begin releasing those adventures.

The Mistress of Gloamhale Manor: In the newly-settled Husqan Valley, children are disappearing. The heroes are called upon to investigate these disappearances, and all paths lead to the ancient Gloamhale Manor. What dark secrets await within? An adventure for 4 to 6 heroes of levels 1–4. (Editor’s note: A great introductory adventure for just .99!)

The Sixth Beast: The Trebutane fled the tyranny of Kern for the northerly reaches of the Pavin Weald. But now, they are prey to others: The bandits known as the Five Beast Army prey on the reclusive Trebutane. Can the heroes sent by the Crown uncover and resolve the deep conflicts at play here? An adventure for 4 to 6 heroes of levels 1–4. 

The Night Market: The criminal Silence, so subtle within the Kingdom of the Blue Rose, occasionally hosts the Night Market, an auction of goods forbidden and illegal. Assigned to infiltrate a Night Market being held in the Veran Marsh, can the heroes successfully recover a shard of the sorcerous Shadow Heptagram? An adventure for 4 to 6 heroes of levels 3–5.

A Harvest of Masks: Though the Pavin Weald lies within Aldin borders, the deep forest is a world of its own. When folk in the villages along its border begin to disappear without trace or explanation, will the heroes brave its verdant mysteries to discover what is going on before it is too late? An adventure for 4 to 6 heroes of levels 5–8.

Storms Over Kamala: A Rezean witch seeks help to free the old wintering grounds of her lost clan from dark and sinister influences. When she approaches the heroes, will they journey to the horse-plains of Rezea to discover what wickedness lies in wait? An adventure for 4 to 6 heroes of levels 9–12.  

A Wanton Curse: An autumnal gathering hosted by a borderland noble takes a turn for the tragic when an evil seeks to slake its thirst for blood and vengeance. Though the heroes were simply guests to the seasonal fete, can they rise to the occasion and help overcome the predator on the prowl? An adventure for 4 to 6 characters of levels 12–15.

Nightmare Rider: The marriage between the child of an influential Aldin family and the prince of a Rezean clan is an occasion worth celebrating! When the heroes are called upon to accompany the Aldin lady to her marriage bower in Rezea, can they protect her from the myriad threats that endanger the happiness of the new couple? An adventure for 4 to 6 1st level characters.

A Wanton Curse and Nightmare Rider will be available to purchase tomorrow, Friday the 24th of April.

Mutants & Masterminds: IT’S ABOUT TIME…(Ronin Roundtable)

Alright, so Green Ronin has released the Time Traveler’s Codex for Mutants & Masterminds, and we’re all interested. Time travel is a big deal, but you look at this development and you think “What has this got to do with me? Surely time travel and Green Ronin are in the pocket of Big Chronomancy. How can I possibly make time travel work for me, the little guy running a hand-to-mouth wooly mammoth ranch?”

Well I’m glad you asked, friend, because the Time Traveler’s Codex has so much to offer you! It’s got advice and skills to help you survive down the timestream, with not one, not two, but THREE brand new optional skills to help bring history to life! Pair those with new advantages designed especially with the worldly time traveler in mind and you’ll never feel out of place even when you’re out of your era!

“But every book has skills,” you say…

You, the discerning player have your eyes open for value! As a wary consumer, you know that companies aim so much at Gamemasters and their deep, tearstained pockets. You say “Well the Time Traveler’s Codex gives my Gamemaster everything she needs to attack me with a cyborg and a sabre-tooth tiger at the same time! How do I stand up against that?”

With time powers, my friend, with time powers. While the indelible Power Profiles offers you an in-depth look at temporal powers, this handy volume introduces new uses like Time Tampering and every 90s kid favorite, Time Out!

“But Crystal”, you say, interrupting again. “I was never bitten by a radioactive sundial! I have no powers to call my own!” Lucky for you, this stark tome provides a veritable catalog of new equipment with which to kit out your character! And the list doesn’t just start with our top-of-the-line time machines (including the Time-Hopping Muscle Car; tell Sal I sent you to get a sweet, sweet discount and no money down), but indispensable tools of the time-traveling trade like the Chronal Scanner and the emergency Time Suit! Defend yourself with an array of time-traveling weapons, whether you’re freezing them in place with the patent-pending Chronal Sink or wiping out the past, present, and future of your obnoxious neighbor with the still-technically-legal Quantum Disruptor! And that’s before we open the back of the book and start exploring vintage innovations from Earth’s history. No extra charge for that; it’s a feature.

I can see it in your eyes: You’re on the fence, but still you wonder, Is. It. For. Me? Canny, friend. You’re canny and I like that, so here’s what I’m gonna do. Now don’t spread this around, because I could lose my job for what I’m about to tell you, but every single element of this book intended for Gamemaster use is available to you, the consumer! Certainly your Gamemaster can unleash a horde of flesh-devouring cockroaches from beyond the end of time, but with time travel on your side you can have that self-same horde as a loyal and colorful sidekick! Crack wise with a loyal Dread Pirate or have an Egyptian Sphinx prepare your eggs in the morning; it’s doesn’t matter, they’re you’re sidekick!

Now how much would you pay?

Well, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna do! I’m gonna send you home—at no charge to you—with a hot sample to get you excited. One of the pre-made hero archetypes open to you: the Quantum Alien! Yes, that scion of an advanced race, whose very marrow is infused with the stuff of time travel itself! If this isn’t proof that your household is ready for time travel, then dear reader, you might as well stay in the 20th century!

AGE Specializations in Blue Rose (Ronin Roundtable)

Today marks the launch of the Adventures in Aldea series, starting with the Mistress of Gloomhale Manor for just .99! (Previously published in the Six of Swords adventure anthology.) If you enjoy that one, be sure to check out The Sixth Beast, also on sale today, and come back each day this week for another Blue Rose PDF adventure!

Since this is Blue Rose week at Green Ronin Publishing, let’s take a look at some ways to adapt other AGE products into your games in Aldea.

 

From the Noble to the Spirit Dancer, the Assassin to the Inamorata, Blue Rose gives players an awful lot of options when it comes to choosing specializations. There’s pretty much something in there for everyone and every play style.

Though that doesn’t mean we can’t look to other sources for even more choices!

Consider, for instance, the Sword Mage (from the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook); how might such a specialization fit into a campaign set in Aldea? Well, firstly, the mage class doesn’t exist in Blue Rose, but the Sword Mage easily converts over to a class requirement of adept, with no other mechanical alterations necessary. Of course, the term, “mage” also isn’t used in Aldea, so a name change is in order. Maybe “Arcane Knight?” The word “knight” necessarily implies some kind of organization—a knightly order, as it were—so the title could certainly work if that’s the route you’d prefer to take. What if you’d rather not have to consider the implications of a new group of this sort in Aldis (or whatever other nation), however? Perhaps, then, you might consider calling the specialization “Arcane Blade,” which has the same essential meaning as “Sword Mage,” but with an altogether Aldean spin.

Pretty simple, right? But what about a specialization that doesn’t translate quite so neatly?

Let’s try the Marked (from the Fantasy AGE Companion), as an example. The basics of converting the Marked to Blue Rose are the same: change out the requirement of the rogue class to that of the expert, since those are essentially equivalent for our purposes (and keep warrior, as normal). The Banemark looks to be a little too potent, as written; why not choose “shadowspawn” and receive +2 to attack and damage the majority of creatures most PCs will be fighting in the average campaign? Instead, it might make more sense to divide shadowspawn into “beastfolk” (such as troglodytes, ettins, and harpies) and “shadow monstrosities” (mock hounds, wyverns, chaos beasts, and the like), to prevent a single Mark from providing too much of a benefit. Then, there’s the matter of the Mark of Magic, as there is no Arcane Blast equivalent for the adept class, making that Mark a bad fit for the setting. In its place, this might make for a more authentically Aldean body modification:


Soulbond Mark: Whenever using a relationship to generate stunt points (see Chapter Two: Character Creation, in the Blue Rose Core Rulebook), consider that relationship’s Intensity to be one point higher.


How about something even further afield from the normal Blue Rose experience: the Gunfighter (again, from the Fantasy AGE Companion)? There are no black powder weapons in Aldis or any of its neighboring nations, but crystons fit pretty well into that mechanical and narrative niche. Again, swap out rogue for expert as a class requirement. Also, rather than training in the Black Powder Weapons Group, it makes sense to switch to a requirement of one or more arcane talents (as this is necessary to wield a cryston, anyway). Beyond that, all that’s needed is to change every reference to ‘firearm’ to ‘cryston’ (and the name of the specialization to something like ‘Crack Shot’ or ‘Cryston Marksman’), and you’re good to go!

You might decide that these specializations have always been around, whether overtly or in secret, in your version of Aldea, or you might want them to be new developments—perhaps recently arrived on Aldis’ shores from far-away lands, or even from other worlds (like Yarrion, found in Chapter Nine: The Blue Rose Series, in the Blue Rose Core Rulebook), accessed through previously long-lost and forgotten shadowgates.

With a few tweaks, here and there, and a little bit of consideration as to how best to fit into the world of Aldea, you’ll find that most of the specializations from the Fantasy AGE Basic Rulebook and the Fantasy AGE Companion can work just fine for any Blue Rose campaign!

Modern AGE in Rough Times (Ronin Roundtable)

Hello Modern AGE fans. I hope you are your families are doing well. COVID-19 has obviously made gaming tricky for some of you. As for me, I run my game using the Threefold setting most Tuesdays. I use Zoom with a little Discord on the side so I can see and hear my friends, who I miss dearly. I’m glad to have a way for us to share time together.

Five and Infinity

Second, I’m running through the adventures in Five and Infinity, the adventure book for the Threefold setting for Modern AGE. As our flagship setting, Threefold was always intended to get ongoing support. Unfortunately, COVID-19 had made printing and distribution all but impossible, even though the book was very close to print.

Thus, what we’ll be doing is releasing Five and Infinity online, in serialized form. Part 0 introduces a Threefold story generator, which we’ll share with you for the princely sum of… $1. The story generator allows you to roll up a basic outline for Threefold adventures, and the parameters are broad enough that much of it can be used for your own Modern AGE settings as well.

After that, each adventure will be released in turn. These adventures include two covering level 1-4, and one each for levels 5-8, 9-12, and 13-16. Loose connections between them allow you to turn Five and Infinity into a true campaign, but this is entirely optional; each adventure is also fully self-contained. And these adventures pack a wallop, since they include alien spiders, psychic terrorists, soul smuggling, infiltrating Hell and, to top it all off, the destruction of the Earth. Ron Rummell, Steve Kenson, Neall Raemonn Price, Crystal Frasier, Meghan Fitzgerald, and Jesse Heinig will guide you through it all. Watch for it.

Modern AGE Missions

Beyond the Threefold setting (though certainly compatible with it) we launched the Modern AGE Missions adventure series shortly before COVID-19 started to affect our operations. Warflower¸ the first mission by yours truly, is a scenario for starting characters that mixes alchemy, designer drugs, corporate espionage, and medieval swordplay You can pick it up in our store or on DrivethruRPG.

The next mission is due next quarter, and is an official adaptation of the infamous Feral Hogs scenario, originally run by the Dice Priori streaming gang. Members Chase Schneider and Matthew Foreman were kind enough to refine this post-apocalyptic, ham-plentiful scenario about guns, trucks, energy drinks, online retail distribution centers turned fortress towns, and 30-50…well, you know what. Look for it when it arrives in our store and DrivethruRPG.

Big Books

Let’s just say this isn’t an ideal time for hardcover releases. Yet last month we released Enemies & Allies, a full-fledged core sourcebook on creatures and NPCs for Modern AGE covering appropriate friends and foes for both down to earth and fantastic genres. Whether you need a cyborg to hunt the party or a mob doctor, this book has you covered with not only dozens of individual entries, but rules for the genres they exist in, and a section telling you how to build your own NPCs from the ground up. This book was in fact printed and distributed, but nowadays, it might be easier to get electronically from our store or DrivethruRPG.

Waiting in the wings, we have the Modern AGE Mastery Guide, a new book of options and advice for both players and Game Masters. This book is text-complete and edited, but is waiting for a better moment to enter the production cycle.

Modern AGE on Sale as Part of Green Ronin’s 20th Anniversary

One more thing! Be aware that until April 20, Green Ronin’s online store is running a 20% sale on numerous releases to celebrate our 20th anniversary. That includes the following Modern AGE titles (all electronic, because, well COVID-19 has not played well with shipping and distribution):

This is where we’re at, and this is what we’ve got. Be safe, and play well.

Ronin Report, April 15, 2020

tl;dr: Things in distribution are challenging; Green Ronin is adapting and new releases are on the way. Please buy our PDFs if you’d like to support us during the current crisis.

Mutants & Masterminds: TIME FOR TIME! (Ronin Roundtable)

Time Traveler’s Codex is now available in PDF format in our Green Ronin Online Store.

When you think about your favorite superhero teams—the Justice League, the X-men, the Ninja Turtles, the Sailor Senshi—what do they all have in common? It’s not masks or tights or even tragic backstories. None of those are universal.

No, to be real superheroes, you need to Travel. Through. Time.

Superheroes have flung themselves through the fourth dimension almost as long as comics have published their misadventures. The Fantastic Four were time-traveling by issue #5, and the entire Legion of Superheroes was kicked-off thanks to a one-off time travel story in the pages of Superboy. Even the world of cinema can’t resist the siren song of chronomancy, as (spoiler warning) the Avengers build a time machine to repair their scarred universe.

So where has the time travel for Mutants & Masterminds been? Right here.

Mutants & Masterminds Time Traveler's Codex PDF

Buy the Time Traveler’s Codex PDF today! (Even if you already bought it tomorrow.)

Time travel opens up so many new options for a superhero campaign, from the simple elegance of punching dinosaurs to the deep, characterful questions about their responsibilities and consequences for tampering in history. The Time Traveler’s Codex, which releases this week, gives you a smorgasbord of options for incorporating time travel as a side element or a major theme in your campaigns, including details on various eras of adventure popular in other time travel stories, new equipment and powers that revolve around controlling an traveling through time, a look at the tropes and themes that pop up around time travel, and plenty of advice for understanding how time travel works and determining the effects of your heroes’ actions.

There will be plenty of previews to come for this book, but for now here’s a look at the table of contents, so you know exactly what you’re in for!

I’ll see you… in time.

Mutants & Masterminds: Reign, Reign, Go Away

Between last month’s new offering Rise of the Tyrant, and this week’s own The Reign of Cats and Dogs, the all new lineup of Astonishing Adventures is in full swing, with superhero action and adventure for your Mutants & Masterminds table. Rise of the Tyrant brought a sinister plot by an extradimensional warlord, using the puzzle-loving villain Conundrum as his pawn. Despite the high stakes, the encounters introduce new concepts one at a time, from combat to skill checks to investigations, making Rise of the Tyrant a great introduction to M&M for new players or players new to Third Edition.

The Reign of Cats and Dogs is about as far, conceptually, from interdimensional conquest as we can get. The heroes must keep the peace and find a solution as the city’s animals begin developing super powers in one of the weirdest adventures we’ve ever offered for any edition of Mutants & Masterminds, making the adventure a fun fit for any superhero team, but especially appropriate for Hero High teens hoping to keep things calm.

But this isn’t the first appearance of The Reign of Cats and Dogs. The adventure began years ago as a homebrew convention game I ran for various events and based entirely off a bade pun from my good friend, author and DJ, Miranda Sparks. When I was double-booked during one GenCon event, I needed Green Ronin to send a relief GM halfway through my game: None other than Steve Kenson, who managed to pick up my notes with no prep time and run with them. He later admitted that reviewing my adventure notes for that game are part of what convinced him I would make a good fit for the Green Ronin team and M&M in particular, so The Reign of Cats And Dogs is actually responsible for my current position as head of my favorite game line!

We have plenty more Astonishing Adventures lined up over the next several months to keep you entertained and the city safe, running the gambit from wacky fun to deadly serious confrontations between good and evil! I don’t know if this bizarre escapade will bring you the same good fortune it’s brought me, but I know it’ll at least bring you a few hours of goofy fun, and I hope you enjoy it as much as my convention tables have!

The Expanse: The Science of Story (Ronin Roundtable)

It is often remarked that The Expanse novels are “hard” science fiction. While this may or may not be the case, it is undoubtedly true that the science is an important aspect. However, what really makes these novels shine are the characters and the story. If you want to delve into whether The Expanse is “hard” sci-fi or not, you can find endless discussions on the internet, but I’m not here to debate that. Today, I’m here to talk about how we try to capture the balance of science and story in The Expanse RPG.

Enjoy this sneak-preview of the upcoming Ships of the Expanse book! Cover Art by Ben Zweifel!

Some sci-fi and modern setting RPGs spend a lot of time focusing on the science and the inner workings of every gun, gizmo, and gadget. Finding how much detail is “fun” in a roleplaying game is a difficult tight rope to walk. Too much detail and the GM and players can end up focusing too much on the gadgets and not enough on the characters; too little, and the setting may feel to generic. With The Expanse RPG, we chose to focus on characters and the story. We’ve tried to give enough details to provide a rich setting without getting bogged down in the nuts and bolts. We are content to say that a ship has an Epstein drive without worrying about exact type of Epstein drive or that a ship has full PDC coverage without worrying about the exact number of point defense cannons a ship has. Rather than define particular types of pistols, rifles, or torpedo bays and require players to check off boxes to track ammunition, we use rules such as the Stunt System for special maneuvers and The Churn as a means to inject the drama of running out of ammo or weapon malfunctions.

Ultimately, a roleplaying game is about character interaction – either with their environment or other characters and NPCs. Epstein drives, PDCs, plasma torpedoes, spin gravity, and all the bells and whistles are cool and add to the story, but in The Expanse RPG, they take a back seat to the story and drama. Personally, I think if you look closely at the novels, the authors of The Expanse do much the same. The ships, weapons, and gadgets give the story context and a platform on which to stand. But it is the characters and their actions and interactions that form the core of the story. The Expanse RPG is designed very much with that thought in mind.

Players and GMs who want to add more detail to their campaigns are certainly free to do so. It is easy enough to come up with particular types of weapons by basing them on 21st-century weapons and using the Item Qualities listed in the core rulebook to spec them out. You can even come up with ammo quantities if you want. The same applies to spaceships. Different engine types could grant small modifiers, and you can decide how many torpedoes and PDC bursts a given ship can fire. Later expansions, such as the upcoming Ships of the Expanse will also delve deeper into the details of the mechanics of space travel.


Recently Steve Kenson’s adventure “Salvage Op”, which some lucky fans may have had the opportunity to play during conventions over the last year, has been made available for purchase! Check it out in our online store, or on DrivethruRPG.

“Salvage Op is a short adventure for The Expanse Roleplaying Game intended for a crew of four to six 1st to 3rd level characters. The characters encounter a small ship floating dead in space. Salvaging the ship’s cargo could be an opportunity for riches, but what danger awaits onboard? What happened to the crew, and why is it here? This adventure works well as a one-shot or can be easily inserted into an existing campaign.”