Going back as far as 1980's Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, science fiction and D&D have always had a connection. Barrier Peaks was a D&D adventure by Gary Gygax which featured a crashed spaceship, robots, and ray guns. The player characters were regular fantasy D&D characters, but the unusual situation they found themselves in was pure sci-fi. You can grab a 5E conversion guide for it over on DM's Guild, and Goodman Games put out a conversion back in 2019.
Earlier editions of D&D's d20 System even powered official Star Wars games from WotC. These days it feels like D&D sci-fi is having a moment! With Traveller 5e currently crowdfunding, let's take a quick look at some of the various 5E-powered science fiction games currently available:
- Esper Genesis
- Dark Matter
- Carbon 2025
- Voidrunner's Codex
- Exodus
- Traveller 5E
- Neon Odyssey
Dark Matter from Mage Hand Press came along in 2018 (and there's a new Mega Box version which just recently crowdfunded) as a campaign setting. It was followed by a full starter set in 2020. Like Esper Genesis, this is inspired by space opera with influences like Star Wars, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Expanse, and Doom.
In 2019, Dragon Turtle Games crowdfunded Carbon 2025. This one was more cyberpunk than space opera, set in a dystopian America. Like many cyberpunk games, it features cybernetics, hacking, and evil corporations.
The Voidrunner's Codex from EN Publishing (that's us!) was in 2024, and was a big slipcase containing three books, a GM screen, and a box full of maps, deckplans, and tokens. Again, space opera was its inspiration, with Star Trek, Star Wars and the like at the forefront.
Exodus is a sci-fi TTRPG originally developed by one of WotC's game studios, based on the upcoming video game, was shared with early adopters in 2025, and is due to be released via Renegade Game Studios later this year. It sounds like Renegade has plans to continue the line; the initial releases in August will be the Exodus Traveler's Handbook and the Creature Catalog.
Traveller 5e is the currently crowdfunding project from World's Largest RPGs. It's an adaption of the iconic Traveller game to the 5E ruleset, and is another with a big box full of tokens and maps and stuff.
There's also an unofficial community-built Star Wars 5E out there, and games like Stars Without Number or Starfinder are D&D-adjacent, while things like Spelljammer are more fantasy than sci-fi. And, of course, there are plenty of non-D&D sci-fi games out there--Alien, The Expanse, and so on.
So, as long as space opera is your jam, it looks like you're spoiled for choices! Most seem to come in boxes or slipcases and loaded with maps, tokens, and other goodies, and they generally cover similar things--psionics, starship building and combat, big equipment lists, vehicles, and so on. Since they're all 5E-powered, in theory they should all be cross-compatible so you can pilfer alien monsters from one game and use them in another, and select your choice of psionic systems. The props--deckplans, tokens, and so on--will be useful in any sci-fi game.
Now we have space opera well-covered, is it time for some gritty sci-fi? Mongoose has its new NASA-adjacent Pioneer game coming (which is very timely with today's Artemis II launch!) but that's powered by (non-5E) Traveller rather than the D&D ruleset. Perhaps 5E isn't the right ruleset for a gritty game, as the zero-to-hero trajectory is definitely designed with high fantasy in mind. Shattered Worlds from Siegebreaker Games is a post-apocalyptic game, and Scrapper: Powered by 5E is a sci-fi setting where you play salvage engineers in space.
What's your favourite 5E-powered game?
