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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kronovan" data-source="post: 9636442" data-attributes="member: 6775134">While I haven't run The Expanse, I own it and wouldn't agree it's system heavy. It's based upon Green Ronin's Modern Age (Adventure Gaming Engine) rules which is the same rules light system that Dragon Age and Fantasy Age use. I've used those rules for Dragon Age and homebrewed campaigns and IMO they're relatively easy to learn - you can fit all character actions with their descriptions on 2 letter-sized pages. The only challenge with any version of AGE are focuses, which are its take on skills and work a bit like the skills+proficiency bonus in D&D 5e. The only challenge with them is that there's many of them, so players need to become familiar enough with them to know those they want during PC creation and advancement. I've had children as young as 10 play in AGE campaigns and they didn't have problems using the rules.The Expanse does describe and treat the setting well. That said, if you didn't want to run a campaign in the Expanse verse with its themes, it may not be worth it. A nice thing about the book is it includes the Modern Age rules, so you don't need to buy the Mod Age core rulebook.I've homebrewed my own setting that's restricted to Inter-system (Solar System) space travel. I'm a bigger fan of universal TTRPGs for such homebrewing. So I've used both Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE)+ Science Fiction Companion and the Cepheus Engine to run it and had good results with both.  For CE, I used Moon Toad Publishing's edition of the rules and also used their terrific vehicle and ship design guides - my homebrew was Military SciFi and involved a lot of space and surface combat and travel. I would recommend CE over any edition of Traveller which I also own and run, because CE is specifically tailored for homebrewing and adapting other settings. As well, there's a dizzing amount of 3rd party support for it. So if there's something you nees that core CE doesn't have, you'll be able to find a publication for it and it will almost certainly be low cost and possibly even free.I own Orbital 2100 for CE, but not the newer Orbital Cold War. I would recommend Orbital 2100 with 2 caveats; 1) it requires the core CE rules for which there's a free SRD, but IMO poor in comparison to the handful of payed-for editions; 2) it's very spaceship focused with campaign themed around things like cargo haulage, mining, salvage, search & rescue, exploration & science. It doesn't contain threats like aliens, but IMO that's not a problem because you can find a 3rd party publication that would contain just about any threat/adversary/monster you could imagine.All I've said above for CE would be true for SWADE. Its Science Fiction Companion is all encompassing allowing you to build any ship or vehicle you could want -robots & power armor too- and its bestiary is expansive and impressive.Considering these comments though......in some situations that can be tricky with SWADE. That's due to the effects of dice rolls that ace, the effect of the Wild Dice that's always rolled with a PC's skill/trait roll and the ability to use metacurency (called bennys) to make rerolls. It's the reason I'm not a big fan of those rules for certain Horror sub-genres. They're terrific rules for Action-Horror, but IMO not necessarily the best for survival horror or Lovecraftian/Cosmic Horror. Of the two, I'd give more of a nod to CE as a system that could make skill rolls uncertain and allow the GM to easily tweak things to make environmental dangers more threatening.If you like BitD, have you considered possibly using Scum & Villainy and houseruling it to restict it to inter-system travel?While I own S&V, I haven't run it and I'm less familiar with it than The Expanse. My limited understanding of S&V though, is that if you removed jump drives and Ur Gates, you should be able to make it more Solar System focused. Alas, I haven't given it a thorough enough read to know if it could be used to deliver a survival-horror vibe like Alien. What it would give you, is similar rules to BitD as it's another Forged in the Dark based system.And as someone has already stated; have you considered tweaking Alien to make it inter-system only?  I don't own it, so I wouldn't know how doable that is.</blockquote>

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