The Expanse Roleplaying Game vs Traveller
Compare The Expanse Roleplaying Game and Traveller side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| The Expanse Roleplaying Game | Traveller | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Scifi | Scifi |
| Tags | Licensed IP, Space Opera, Ship-Based, Crunchy, Social Combat, Investigation, Faction Play, Social Intrigue, Strong GM Support, Tactical | Sandbox, Simulation, Exploration, Deadly, Character Building, Faction Play |
| Core Mechanic | 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. | Roll 2d6 + skill + modifier ≥ 8 to succeed. Character generation is a mini-game. |
| Dice | 3d6 | 2d6 |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Accessibility | High | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Traveller Fair Use Policy |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Green Ronin Publishing | Mongoose Publishing |
| Year | 2019 | 2022 |
| Languages | English | English, German, French |
| Best For | 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. | Hard sci-fi sandbox campaigns with trading, exploration, and realistic space travel. |
| Highlights | 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. | Comprehensive sci-fi toolkit, lifepath character creation, detailed trade/travel systems |
| Considerations | 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. | Lifepath character creation rolls for aging and career mishaps, so a Traveller can leave chargen weakened or pushed onto an unwanted path. Subsystem rules are spread across multiple supplements, so the core book leaves several procedures without full depth. Characteristics are recorded as a hexadecimal Universal Personality Profile string, an unusual notation newcomers must learn before they can read a stat block. |