Tense up the narrative of space combat!

Joshua continues to produce impressive and intriguing additions to The Expanse RPG, and this time its house-rules!

Joshua’s “hack” of the space combat system is a tweak and in some ways a slight simplification of the existing space combat rules, in his own words:

Its goal is not to replace those rules, but to offer an alternative that hits the same narrative beats while flowing faster at the table and keeping the focus on character-driven action.
– Joshua

My reading is that it as slight simplification focusing on narration and speed, while also giving players and their ship a bit more plot armour. The rules follow the same basic steps and ideas, but has several changes that makes it flow differently, and ostensibly faster. Ships can take some more punishment, at least it looks like it – I have not tested this at my table.

It also comes with short outlines for different kinds of missions, from passenger missions and secure critical area to protecting or extracting personnel and holding the line. These are modular encounters for shipboard events.

Finally, the last chapter is about fleet combat and scaling space combat up – all within the same rules outlined on the preceding pages:

It pulls back to the full battlespace, allowing players to command skirmish wings, drone swarms, drop teams, and capital ships without heavy bookkeeping.

It is a well considered and nice expansion to a GM’s house-rule arsenal to spice up space combat and activities.

You can download it here – also look here for other resources and adventures. There is also a tracker in a google sheet here.