Disclaimer: I am a super-fan of The Expanse.

When I heard about the Green Ronin roleplaying game coming down the pipeline, I was a mixture of excited and cautious. On one hand, I've always known them to have good quality products, but on the other hand I'm attached to the setting and I always want to see only the best for it.

When Green Ronin launched the Kickstarter for The Expanse Roleplaying Game, I was very interested. For those of you not familiar with the setting, the Templin Institute has a short overview of what you need to know about the setting on YouTube:

I'm going to break down the Kickstarter into four parts: how accurate it is to the setting, my thoughts on the product itself, the underlying game, and the value offered by the pledge levels.

I'm basing my analysis on the Kickstarter details, the published Quick-Start, and my knowledge of Green Ronin.

Is The Expanse Roleplaying Game true to The Expanse?

The Expanse started out as a roleplaying game campaign, and it's since become known to the world in the form of several novels, a couple comic books, and a TV series.

In a sense, The Expanse Roleplaying Game represents a return to the roots of the franchise, but it is made by Green Ronin and not James S.A. Corey, so accuracy in the adaptation is always a concern.

Fortunately, it seems to be a baseless one, given the seemingly close involvement of James S.A. Corey and the degree of care with which the Quick-Start has been crafted. Nothing in what we've seen so far indicates that there's any problems with sticking to the lore and universe, and overall I'd say it's looking like a really good opportunity to see into parts of the setting that the novels and show only give us glimpses at.

One place where The Expanse Roleplaying Game differs from the published content is in its art direction, at least from what we've seen in the Quick-Start. The colors are a lot brighter, and while the representations are generally accurate to the setting they're more what you would expect from a generic sci-fi RPG than The Expanse itself. There are definitely also places where the art is of different quality, including one piece where the characters seem to be heavily out of perspective.

We don't really know enough about the universe to know if some of the things that seem to be depicted differently from the show are necessarily true to universe or not and simply other examples of what you might see in The Expanse, but the core cast of character profiles and the promotional elements fall closer to what I'd expect for a depiction of the universe than some of the Quick-Start's interior art.

Of course, the show has a fairly dark tone, and the roleplaying game adaptation leaves that more up to the GM and players; this isn't a betrayal of the world, it's a matter of perspective: there are people in The Expanse, especially at the point in the storyline at which the game is set, who have relatively comfortable lives, and while the Ganymede we see in the Quick-Start is very different from the Ganymede that James Holden arrives at, it's also not necessarily an unrealistic representation.

Does the product look good?

Barring my personal preferences and the art, yes.

The layout is professional, the flow is great, the PDF has bookmarks–but not layers, which could help people print out the character sheets–and there's an included adventure that isn't scant on content.

I wasn't proofreading or anything, but I didn't see a single error in the text. That doesn't mean there weren't any, but other than one place where I accidentally skipped a word nothing was confusing to me, even as a stranger to the system and ruleset.

It's probably not going to win my "most beautiful" award, but it's really well put together, which is something we can expect from Green Ronin pretty reliably given their history as a publisher.

Does the system look good?

Yes.

Okay, fine, I'll explain in more detail.

I've already mentioned some of my concerns about some of the art, but that's my only concern with the whole thing (on a product level). I'm vaguely familiar with the old Dragon Age roleplaying ruleset, and the one used in this is an updated and, as far as I know, improved version.

The game definitely does a good job of sticking to the storytelling style of The Expanse with its mechanics. The 3d6 system used isn't going to be winning any awards for incredible depth, but what it lacks in depth it makes up for in accessibility, and, more importantly, being able to tell a story in a way that flows organically.

For people not familiar with it, the core mechanic is rolling 3d6 against a target number. You add attribute ratings and focuses, as well as situational modifiers, to this roll, and want to get a result equal to or greater than the TN.

The system is simple on the surface, but there are two elements that add a lot more depth: the drama die and stunts.

The drama die is basically a measure of how well someone succeeds. A high success on the drama die works better for some tests, and also gives stunt points if the character rolls doubles (which is pretty common).

These stunts factor into the more complicated elements of the game, though I hesitate to call them complicated because they're relatively simple. Stunts give characters a degree of narrative control that you wouldn't see otherwise, and I think they do a good job of bridging the gap between the core mechanics and play that allows meaningful decisions to be made in real-time (rather than just at character creation).

Speaking of character creation, we don't have any real information to look at for it, and I don't have enough familiarity with other AGE titles to speculate. The pre-made characters feel suitably diversified (they don't step on each others' toes) and deep (they have their own interesting mechanics).

The game itself feels like it would play at a suitably fast pace, be relatively friendly for novices (so much so as any large game is going to be), and have really solid underlying design principles. I look forward to having a chance to play the full game.

My only nit-picky thing with the mechanics is that it seems to have a lot of probability-driven exploration and a lot of overarching social mechanics, which I would generally not use in favor of going with my own thing (I've never found it handy to set an NPC's general attitude via dice). At the same time, there's nothing wrong with this in terms of foundational principles, and there are advantages to having a system like this in place for people who might have a hard time deciding; let the dice go, and then move on, even if you're not good at improvisation. I'm not going to use them, though.

How does the Kickstarter itself look?

Sparse, for a roleplaying game offering. Of course, since their main focus is on the core rulebook, there's not a whole ton of other stuff to offer. It's not like they've got an existing product line to build on, and they're not willing to promise future books in the pledge levels.

There are six pledge tiers currently available to the average customer, starting at $20 for a digital copy of the core rules, $30 for a digital copy plus GM's kit, $50 for a print+PDF combo of the core, $70 for the same but with the GM's kit as well, $80 for the special edition and $100 for the special edition plus GM's kit. Shipping is not included for any physical product, even for domestic orders, which is a bit of a shame.

Value-wise, that's not a terrible price for the products. The shipping is always a concern, since it's sort of an unknown future cost (there's no listed estimates, even). Green Ronin has apparently had problems with this–at least internationally–in the past, but they seem to have a setup that will work better for international backers in place, or so they say.

With a delivery date expected in November, I think it's probably not too far of a stretch to say that there's a chance that the game is largely already finished, and that this Kickstarter is primarily about helping with print setup costs. The prices offered are a decent deal; the PDF prices in particular are probably a little less than what you'd pay ordering post-Kickstarter, but nothing spectacularly low.

The big problem going into the cost equation is the shipping. If you're getting a core rulebook alone, you might wind up paying more than you would to get it from your local game shop by the time it winds up at your door, which is always concerning to me as a prospective backer.

If you're in the market for the deluxe tier, as I am since I'm an Expanse nerd, then it's probably a much safer bet since you're getting an exclusive "luxury" version of the product and the only way to get it directly from Green Ronin is via Kickstarter.

Wrapping Up

My professional judgment is that this will be a very good game by the time it comes to customers. It might not have art that fits everyone's preferences, but it'll be well-made and a deep dive into the universe of The Expanse.

I leave the decision for how you should spend your money to you, but I'm backing at the Battleship tier, which is the $100 one that gets the special edition and GM's kit.

The digital tiers definitely look good, but I'm hesitant about the $50 and $70 tiers; you will almost certainly be able to get the same thing in stores. Having a PDF copy as well is nice, but you can get a discount on the PDF by getting in touch with Green Ronin after buying a print copy from your local store (assuming they participate in Green Ronin's program, but typically customer service for companies will make an exception if your FLGS doesn't do their program). Since there's no early access, I would personally suggest holding off unless you want that special edition.