Railgun XXVI vs The Expanse Roleplaying Game
Compare Railgun XXVI and The Expanse Roleplaying Game side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Railgun XXVI | The Expanse Roleplaying Game | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi | Scifi |
| Tags | Tactical, Player-Only Rolls, Deadly, Gritty, Mission-Based, Random Character Creation, Beginner-Friendly | Licensed IP, Space Opera, Ship-Based, Crunchy, Social Combat, Investigation, Faction Play, Social Intrigue, Strong GM Support, Tactical |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d20 and add one of four stats (STR, CRD, AGI, or MND) against a standard difficulty of 12. Every roll is player-facing: players roll to attack and also roll to dodge incoming attacks, so the GM never needs to roll dice. Rolling a natural 20 banks an adrenaline point, which buys an extra action on top of the two each character gets per turn. | Roll three six-sided dice, two matched and one differently colored Drama Die, and add an ability score plus a focus bonus of +2 if applicable. The total must equal or beat a target number set by the GM or an opponent's result. Rolling doubles generates stunt points spent on combat, exploration, or social effects. The Drama Die's value sets the degree of success. |
| Dice | d20 | 3d6 |
| Complexity | Low | High |
| Accessibility | Very High | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | MÖRK BORG Third Party License | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | No verified route found |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | $$ |
| Publisher | Nathan Freeman | Green Ronin Publishing |
| Year | 2026 | 2019 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want short, lethal firefights on a grid and a GM who narrates enemies rather than rolling for them. Suits a few-session campaign or a drop-in mission night more than a long character-driven arc. | Groups who want a character-focused science fiction campaign of crew jobs, faction pressure, and danger across the Solar System. It suits tables that want structured action, investigation, and social encounters alongside ship travel. |
| Highlights | Every roll is player-facing, including dodges against incoming attacks, so the GM runs enemies without touching the dice. Dropping to 0 HP forces a critical injury roll that permanently reduces a stat, so downed characters degrade instead of bouncing back up. Several weapons chain into a free attack when they drop an enemy, making target order a tactical decision rather than a formality. | Backgrounds, professions, talents, and focuses build characters with mechanical ties to their lives before the campaign begins. Action, exploration, and social encounters each use dedicated stunts, giving different kinds of scenes procedures beyond a single skill roll. The Churn turns accumulated complications into escalating story events, giving the Game Master a structured way to introduce setbacks. |
| Considerations | Social scenes have no dedicated stat or subsystem, so persuasion is settled by player argument rather than mechanics. Play assumes a gridded map with movement and line of sight measured in squares, leaving theater-of-the-mind groups to convert those rules themselves. Out-of-combat scenes lean on ad hoc GM rulings and a single falling-forward technique rather than a dedicated exploration or investigation subsystem. | Combat stunts are drawn from six separate category tables covering roughly sixty options, requiring both players and the GM to check charts mid-fight to keep pace. Ground and air vehicles receive no example statistics, leaving their combat rules almost entirely improvised. The forty-page setting guide summarizes the solar system's factions and history at a survey level, so groups wanting deeper political detail need outside reading of the novels. |