The Expanse Transport Union Edition Quickstart (PDF)

Welcome to the Expanse!

The Expanse: Transport Union Edition, based on the award-winning science fiction novels by James S.A. Corey, is a roleplaying game set in the far future of humanity. This Quickstart for the new edition contains a set of condensed rules and an adventure designed to get you playing right away. We hope you and your friends will visit The Expanse and give the game a try!

While the first edition of The Expanse RPG focused on the first three novels of the series, this new edition brings the timeline forward to the Transport Union era, the 30-year period between the end of book 6 and the beginning of book 7. This era is largely unexplored in The Expanse novels, leaving ample room for the player characters to be at the center of the action. If you’ve played The Expanse RPG before, you’ll find that the core rules and character creation are intact and completely compatible with the original. However, the new edition will be full of expanded information to include the history of the Transport Union era and plenty of new rules, ships, and technology!

The Expanse is designed for you to play out adventures and stories set in the solar system described in The Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey—a future where humanity has expanded throughout the solar system and to the 1300 worlds beyond the ring gates. The discovery of the protomolecule and the creation of the Ring gate changed everything, destabilizing the solar system in unimaginable ways. Multiple recent wars and conflicts have left devastation in their wake, and Earth is still struggling after being targeted by several massive asteroids manipulated by a radical wing of the OPA. However, hope for humanity lies in the future. The Transport Union, which rose from the ashes of the Free Navy Conflict, has finally given the people of the Belt and the Outer Planets an equal footing with the Earth-Mars Coalition.

In the full-fledged Expanse game, you and your friends create a custom crew of characters and decide what sorts of adventures upon which you want to embark. For this Quickstart, however, we’ve simplified matters, giving you a ready-made crew (find their character sheets at the end of this book) and a premade adventure for them.