At the time this article will be reaching your eyeballs, there will be two weeks left on the very hotly anticipated Kickstarter for Green Ronin’s The Expanse Roleplaying Game. Completely funded in only one hour, at the time of the writing of this article, the campaign sits at $253,244 with 3,525 total backers.
The Expanse is a book series by James S.A. Corey (Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham) that showcases a dirty and gritty space opera – the solar system has been settled and generations have begun to create differences in humanity and the tensions that come along with that. The book series was adapted by SyFy into a television series for 3 seasons, after with it was briefly canceled before being picked up for further development by Amazon. This series actually started as a roleplaying game for Daniel Abraham before it was developed into a book series, and both authors are thrilled to see the game come full circle with an official roleplaying game.
The Pledge levels are numerous as are the rewards, including PDF, standard, and special editions of the book as well as GM kits. The campaign also features several reward tiers for merchants to stock their store. The campaign has absolutely smashed through 13 of the 15 announced stretch goals. This has already resulted in what will be greatly expanded background material in the book as well as included adventures in both the Core Rulebook and the GM Kit. What’s more, at this time, there have been four adventures unlocked of what could be a six-adventure series called “Abzu’s Bounty.” They have one additional stretch goal they plan to announce soon if they can crack $300,000 in pledges. I have to say after watching the campaign this first week, that number seems quite doable.
This game will use the rules for the recently released Modern AGE Roleplaying Game, the latest release of Green Ronin’s proprietary AGE Engine which was developed for the Dragon Age Roleplaying Game and then followed up with the Fantasy AGE Roleplaying Game. The game functions on a simple system. You roll 3d6 and add your relevant characteristic plus any focus you have to generate your total for your test. Further, one of your dice is known as your Stunt Die (or your Drama Die for The Expanse). If you roll doubles on any two of your dice, you generate a number of stunt points equal to the number on your Stunt Die. These points are then spent to modify or append actions in various ways. While Dragon Age and Fantasy AGE both included classes as a core part of a character, both Modern AGE and The Expanse feature classless character development to better fit the feel of those particular genres, that allow a great deal of flexibility in how you develop your character through a large selection of talents that can be purchased and improved.
There are a few additional changes and tweaks to the game to better fit with the setting that they have been slowly revealing in the campaign updates. The first is that characters do not have Health. They instead have Fortune which reflect their importance in the series. As they adventure and avoid injury and other damaging conditions, their Fortune Points decrease until they are in danger of taking a potential mortal wound. But like any resource, this can be spent. In this case, you can spend Fortune to alter your dice rolls, helping you to succeed. You can spend these Fortune Points to make any one die you roll in a test show the value of the number of Fortune Points you have spent, or half the number of Fortune Points if you wish to change the result of the Drama Die. Say ou roll a 1, 3, and 3 on the Drama Die, which results in a total of 7, but know you need at least a 10 to succeed, you can spend 4 Fortune Points to turn that 1 into a 4 and pass the test while also generating 3 Stunt Points for the doubles you rolled on the test. This adds a nice tactical element to playing your character as you have to manage between spending this limited resource to accomplish tasks while still keeping a healthy enough reserve to avoid bad things happening to your character.
The second element they have added to this game is known as “the Churn.” This is essentially a buildup that occurs as the heroes wildly succeed against challenges until it eventually boils over and bites them in the butt. The Churn Pool increases at certain points in the adventure or as the heroes perform certain actions until it reaches 10 points. When this happens, there is a chance that the pool “churns over” and something bad happens to the characters or it moves to the next stage. Once 10 more points are accumulated, it might “churn over” causing a bigger effect than stage one or it might move to stage three. If you reach 10 points while the Churn Pool is in stage three, the worse possible effect happens as the pool finally (and automatically) churns over and is reset back to 0.
As someone who has finally just gotten into the book series, I am very excited to see the end result of this campaign and get the book into my hands. If you like a good space opera that is ever so slightly more grounded in actual science than other offerings in the genre, definitely check it out. And absolutely check out the Kickstarter and give these guys your support. There are quickstart rules available for the game through the Kickstarter, and with an estimated fulfillment date of January of 2019, you’ll be burning through space with your crew in no time.
Ben Erickson
