“The Fictional Sport/Game” is a fun world-building trope used by sci-fi and fantasy authors throughout the entire history of genre fiction. The idea being that having a game of some sort that is sort of explained, but not really, makes the world feel lived in. Some examples of this are Tak from Rothfuss’s Wise Man’s Fear, 3-D Chess from Star Trek, and Sabacc from Star Wars. Golgo is JSAC’s take on this tradition. It’s hinted at just enough for the reader to get a rough idea of how it works, but does not get matter at all to the plot, so it is never fully explained.
What I did with Golgo was to complete the other half of this tradition. Fans, since the start of genre fiction, have taken these incomplete game concepts left by the authors and developed them into something more fleshed out, in a complex puzzle that is equal parts fan fiction, game development, speculative world-building exercise, and love letter.
Below I explain the logic behind how I approached creating my head-canon version of Golgo. At the core of the design were three key pillars:
1. Canonical Plausibility
Every clue the authors left about Golgo needed to be included somehow. The text may be sparse, but what exists is evocative. From scattered mentions in Caliban’s War and Nemesis Games, we learn that: Golgo is played on special tables by opposing teams. It involves steel balls and floating goal objects. There are complex mechanics like “borrowing goals” and co-opting throws. Gameplay results in “sudden violent movements”, suggesting fast-paced interactions and reactive elements. The field includes distinct zones, as well as terms like “half mark,” “drive,” and “goals untouched,” implying a formal, spatial structure.
From these glimpses, I distilled the key ingredients: teamwork, spatial strategy, chaotic momentum, and a few odd terms that needed plausible rules. The rule, that “Goals are said to be ‘borrowed’ when the defense deflects the drive”, was especially fun to interpret. My solution: treat it as a mechanic where you can score by proxy, forcing another team’s ball through a goal. This not only preserved the strange phrasing but also added tactical depth to the gameplay.
2. Readability & Visualization
I wanted this version of Golgo to feel like something you could watch, or even imagine yourself playing. If a fan reads these rules, they should be able to picture a match unfolding beat by beat.
This influenced everything from layout to naming conventions. For example:
The Red, Yellow, and Green Zones give a clear sense of where the action happens. Green is calm, Yellow is the chaotic core, and Red is risky acceleration near the Dead Zone, a magnetic trap.
The obstacles (bumpers, spinners, U-curves, doors, corners) were directly inspired by the descriptions of sudden player movements and the table reacting to gameplay. Some come straight from pinball, while others echo a classic Expanse in-joke for fans, like Doors and Corners being places where “they get you”.
3. Layers
Golgo had to be fun, not just for readers, but for Belters in-universe. Why else would so many of them play it? That meant creating rules that:
- Feel like they evolved organically across different habitats and ships.
- Reward cleverness, improvisation, and teamwork.
- Can be hacked together with spare parts or played formally on any of the big stations.
- Would be a visually interesting spectator sport.
- Contained meta-references to the larger world of The Expanse.
This is why you’ll find multiple variants, each tailored to a different kind of setting:
- Corridor Rules are scrappy and chaotic, the “streetball” of Golgo.
Ship Rules strip things to the essentials, two bored engineers, a washer, and a bolt.
- Welwalla/Terash Rules reimagine the game in thrust gravity, changing the physicality of play and introducing table tilt mechanics for momentum control.
This is also the version we can most likely play at some point here on Earth. Although, I’m probably not going to try my hand at building a real Golgo field anytime soon. Each variant reflects the conditions of life in the Belt, and how games evolve based on context. Special shoutout to Redditor u/No_Tamanegi for inspiring me by asking if the game had “Roski Rules,” which sent me down the rabbit hole of variants.
Inspiration
The big mechanical breakthrough came when I was watching last year’s Jelle’s Marble League, specifically the bocce-style event. Something about the movement, targeting, and physics unlocked the way Golgo could feel. From there:
- The floating rings became movable, borrowed partly from bocce’s movable pallino and partly drawn from the symbolism of rings as things you pass through. A not so subtle hint at what is to come in the wider world of The Expanse.
- The goal toss phase gave players agency from the very first moment, setting the tone for chaos or control.
- I leaned into pinball mechanics and zero-g physics to simulate the frenetic energy the books imply.
Eventually, I used Canva to sketch the mock Golgo table you see in the document, which pushed me to refine how the obstacles would actually interact. I had to look at a few pinball machines for inspiration, but for the most part the Bumpers, Spinners and U-Curves were easy enough to incorporate.
The “Doors and Corners” were the last major obstacles to lock in, and the most fun to solve. I knew I wanted them there, but couldn’t find a good way to make it work. I tried putting in mini mazes on the field to represent the corners, but that made the field too cluttered. I tried little boxes with doors scattered across the field, but that looked goofy and didn’t seem very fair to have inescapable traps like that. In the end the “Doors” ended up being a trapdoors into a tube system under the field that captured the hesitation I wanted players to have around them, and the idea that you don’t know what’s on the other side. The “Corners” ended up being two right-angle blocks that sit close enough to trap someone in a back-and-forth ricochet loop if they are unlucky enough to hit it doing too fast I wanted it to be dangerous and evoke Miller’s warning, while also being potentially escapable and/or used to a clever belter’s advantage. I tried to keep it simple, trusting that players (both in the world of the Expanse, and the ones playing along at home) would have more fun making up their own strategies.
The TTRPG Minigame
The trickiest part of this entire project was trying to get it to work as an Expanse RPG minigame. That said, once GMLovlie convinced me to let go of the idea that the minigame had to mimic the mechanics I proposed in the lore in a literal sense, it freed me up to play it looser and lean into the strengths of the AGE system’s Advanced Test mechanics for inspiration.
Final Thoughts
Golgo was never meant to have clean edges. It’s a Belter’s game. Half-sport, half-brawl, all improvisation. I hope this design captures that feeling while giving us fans of The Expanse something new to explore, argue about, or even try playing. It was, and continues to be, a delightful little side project. What a fun way to spend the last couple of days. If you have any ideas on how to improve this or build upon what’s already here, please reach out to me. I love to collaborate.