Green Ronin To Publish The Expanse RPG

Green Ronin have announced they have signed a licensing agreement with James S. A. Corey to adapt The Expanse series of novels as a tabletop roleplaying game. The Expanse series is one of the best sci-fi series of novels and novellas around at present and is currently also on TV screens worldwide as a hit TV series.

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“The Expanse is the most exciting thing to happen in science fiction in the last decade,” said Green Ronin President Chris Pramas. “It’s not just that they are cracking good stories—which of course, they are—but like all of the best science fiction they reflect the issues of today. We could not be more delighted to bring the Expanse to roleplaying games.”

“The Expanse began as a gaming concept nearly two decades ago, and was played as a home brewed RPG for years before becoming a book series,” said Ty Franck. “To have Green Ronin taking the universe of The Expanse back to its roots is very exciting. I’ve loved their game adaptations of other literary works, and I couldn’t be happier to be partnering with them on this project.”

“I came to the story first as a RPG, and clearly I had a great time with it,” added Daniel Abraham. “I’m delighted to have other gamers get the chance to make their own stories in this setting.”

Green Ronin will run a crowdfunding campaign for The Expanse RPG next year and publish the game in August, 2018. The Expanse RPG will use Green Ronin’s popular Adventure Game Engine, which powers its Blue Rose, Fantasy AGE, and Modern AGE RPGs. More information about The Expanse RPG will appear on greenronin.com in the coming months.

You can read the Full Press Release here.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Added it to The World's Most Complete List of TTRPG depictions of licensed worlds from other media.

 

[Scarlet.Knight]

I am very excited about this. I love The Expanse. I love the AGE system. I have been a Green Ronin fan for years. Life is good.

 

[Aldarc]

As if Green Ronin's docket of late released books was not already full as it was...

 

[Connorsrpg]

Another one that looks very interesting

 

[akr71]

Yay! This is the kind of SF RPG I wanna play. No lightsabres, no teleporting, no ftl

 

[Superchunk77]

Sorry, knowing it's using the AGE system makes this a solid pass for me.

 

[fantasmamore]

I had two problems using the AGE system when I was playing Dragon Age.

1. The Dragon Die was enabling the extra powers randomly which was kind of anti-climactic and most importantly
2. there was no easy or simple way to design a combat encounter. I had to manually check each monster against each PC to see how probable it was to hit or be hit by.

I haven't followed the AGE system and whatever came afterwards and I am pretty sure that the equivalent of the Dragon Die works in the same way. But what about the "designing encounters" part? Has this been fixed?

P.S. Yes, I know that there is no reason to balance everything and that some encounters have to be more difficult or even impossible, still I want to have some kind of control over how my story is going to evolve...
P.S.2 But it had the most beautiful spell system I've ever seen (you have mana points - each spell costs a specific amount of mana, feel free to choose which spells you want to use, for how many times you want, until you run out of mana).

 

[Scarlet.Knight]

I had two problems using the AGE system when I was playing Dragon Age.

1. The Dragon Die was enabling the extra powers randomly which was kind of anti-climactic and most importantly
2. there was no easy or simple way to design a combat encounter. I had to manually check each monster against each PC to see how probable it was to hit or be hit by.

I haven't followed the AGE system and whatever came afterwards and I am pretty sure that the equivalent of the Dragon Die works in the same way. But what about the "designing encounters" part? Has this been fixed?

P.S. Yes, I know that there is no reason to balance everything and that some encounters have to be more difficult or even impossible, still I want to have some kind of control over how my story is going to evolve...
P.S.2 But it had the most beautiful spell system I've ever seen (you have mana points - each spell costs a specific amount of mana, feel free to choose which spells you want to use, for how many times you want, until you run out of mana).

I honestly never found the stunts to be such a game breaker. I personally find the stunts to be a kind of a 20 roll that happens more often and gives you more interesting options. Since most of the stunts cannot be taken more than once during the same 'stunt' event, you are not looking at anything that substantially breaks the game IMHO.

I will agree with you that encounter design was problematic. However, FAGE has fixed this to some degree. TPKs do happen in D&D despite their system. It's not an exact science. That's why I roll behind a screen...

 

[fantasmamore]

TPKs do happen in D&D despite their system. It's not an exact science. That's why I roll behind a screen...

Thank you for your response. My problem was that I once designed an encounter where it was (almost) impossible for my players to hit the monsters and another one it was the contrary - the monsters could not hit the players. I used monsters from one book only (it was level 1-5). When the second book came out (and years later the 3rd with levels 10-20) it was almost impossible for me to balance an encounter without manually checking each monster vs each PC. It's not the TPK that I am worried about (yes, it happens occasionally) but the fact that I could accidentally create extremely easy or impossible battles without planning to have these types of encounters.

However, I am not that into "strange" science fiction with super technology and aliens as PC races etc, I prefer something closest to Asimov's early Foundation works, so I just bought the first book of the series. If I like the books then I will certainly try the system.