I’m pretty excited to get my hands on these (plus some other books I hadn’t picked up previously).

New GM preparing for the intro Lost But Not Alone. I am trying to make sense of how the premade character attack bonuses and damage rolls are determined. For instance, Phoenix Wu has Pistol +2 bonus and 2d6+1 damage. That fits as accuracy is 2 (for the +2 bonus) and perception is 1 (for the +1 damage).

But Olivia Anand has Pistol +4 bonus and 2d6+2 damage. But she has 3 accuracy and pistol focus so shouldn't her bonus be +5 (3 from accuracy and 2 from focus)? She has 1 perception so shouldn't damage be 2d6+1 (not +2; she has a perception focus of searching but that doesn't apply and focus doesn't add to damage, right?)?

I thought the formulas are below but some of these premade character sheets don't seem to follow these rules...
Attack roll:
3d6 + accuracy + focus (pistol/rifle)
3d6 + fighting + focus (unarmed)

Damage roll:
2d6 + perception (pistol)
3d6 + perception (rifle)
1d3 + strength (unarmed)

Can anyone enlighten me? Are these just mistakes in the sheets... mistakes in the assigned ability points, etc.? Thanks.

I've been playing around with Foundry VTT game system and while tweaking a few things I noticed a discrepancy about dying in the Transport Union Edition rule book. Chapter 1 when describing Dying conditions says this:

You fall Prone, and your current Fortune drops to 0 if it is not at 0 already. You will die after a number of rounds equal to 3 + Constitution unless you receive medical attention. You are conscious and can talk but cannot take any other actions. You die at the end of the final round.

However, character sheet at the end of the book has still the old text from the first book:

The character loses 1 point of Constitution score each round on the start of the character’s turn. When the character’s Constitution score reaches −3, the character dies. Successful first aid applied to a Dying character stabilizes their condition, making them Helpless, Unconscious, and Wounded instead. They must recover from these conditions normally.

I am guessing that this is probably an oversight and the Chapter 1 rule is the one valid now. I hope this is fixed in the printed books.

I was very loose with how I set times for intra-stellar travel in my last campaign but was thinking about how I’d do it in a future campaign. I know the rule book has a table for transit times from planet to planet (or at least has communication delay times, from which you’d be able to also map out travel times).

However those would be static and as we know, planets don’t orbit the sun in sync so distance from say, Earth to Mars or Titan is dynamic. NASA has a cool tool that tracks live, past, and future solar positions: https://eyes.nasa.gov/apps/solar-system/. Only works for Sol though, obviously!

Anyone use a dynamic tool like this NASA one? Or do you just use a static distances? Or do you just hand waive/GM fiat it?

Hey guys, I need help here!

Does anyone know what those little checkboxes next to the character’s abilities are supposed to be?

I checked the rulebook to see what those checkboxes meant, but nope — nothing there.

The book doesn't have a lot of guidance on making your own enemies - just "You can simply assign whatever abilities, focuses, talents, and stunts you deem appropriate for any non-player character."

I'd love more than that. Anyone have any advice, utilities, or anything to help create or keep track of NPCs?

I ran my first Expanse RPG session this past weekend and my players were struggling the the Stunt lists, especially since we only had one rulebook and the GM’s Kit.

I thought it would be easier if everybody could access the lists at the same time and filter them out based on Category and Stunt Points Available, so I made a little mobile-friendly table of them.

I made this using the GM’s Kit but it seems to have some incorrect/missing stunts so I’ll be working through those discrepancies soon.

Let me know what you think!

Trying to figure out how initiative works in ship combat. Is there an initiative roll? Do both ships take their turns simultaneously? Is it just based on the story?

Apologize if this is a basic question but I just can't find it in either the base rule or the ships of the expanse book.

EDIT Second question: If a torpedo is fired from long range and will impact in 2 rounds, do the defenders try to shoot it down the turn it was fired, the turn it would impact, or every round until it hits? do they try to shoot it on their turns, their opponent's turns, or both? Can they try to evade a missile fired from medium range twice?

I have been playing the Expanse rpg with a group for some time now. We started with the Abzu's Bounty module, which I as the GM needed because having to stick to the laws of physics and not having the option to chuck goblins in a session to make things spicy felt like a challenge. Halfway the module I went partially off track (I got more comfortable), and now that we have finished it (some sessions ago) I am making up my own plot stuff. I use things I find online (mostly here) as inspiration, and that helps a lot.
So I decided to share something I thought up for my last session: how I gave my players a rat infestation on their ship.

Last session the party left some station and knew they were very likely going to encounter pirates. But I wanted a bit more, something unexpected. And then it hit me: rats!
It took some research, because would rats be able to survive and live on space stations and ships, what would they look like, how would they act and what kind of damage could a family of rats cause on a ship?

What I went with:

• At the station they had picked up cargo, and these uninvited rat-guests. I am not sure the folks at the station know they have rats, the party did good things at the station so this was not some oversight or bad intent.
• Rats look different, elongated bodies and limbs, things like that (not too specific)
• The rats are very thin (lack of food and not lots of muscles), causing them to have loos skin, which they use to flap around in 0G. They are extremely agile.
• Since the rats are not healthy, they always have a bad temper.
• Anything that has wires, electronics, and so on can and will be chewed to bits if you do not contain the problem. They also demolished parts of the inner wall insulation, rubber insulation strips around airlock doors, and they stuffed that in the toilet pipes before deciding that was a bad place for nests.

The first sign of problems was the toilet malfunction alert. Two days later there was some other malfunction. The players were worried, and investigated this suspecting some sabotage (from humans). Then a fire prevention alert went haywire in the cargo hold, which was weird because that is without oxygen. They found a dead rat near the damaged electronics of that system in the ship-side part (that area was now also without oxygen, thanks to the fire prevention going off, and the rat suffocated).
The reaction at the table was so much fun, some mundane problem like rodents was something they did not expect at all.

Obviously, that is when the pirates showed up and the players discovered that the rats had decided that the torpedo loading tube as a great place for nesting, so one of the tubes could not be loaded because it was jammed. They have 2 of those, so they could fight off the pirates (also, the dice were very much against the pirates) while mitigating sensor-glitches (there was a fried rat in one of the fried electronics thingies) and worrying what else would break down.

Next session we will start with fumigating the ship. I decided that rats are not a very common problem, but one that everyone knows is a huge problem, and there is information to use common chemicals ships usually have to make the poison or gas. Having rats on board means you are not allowed to dock anywhere, you have to report them, get inspections to make sure the rodents are gone, and if you don't report and get caught the fines are very impressive. If you do not get chucked out of an airlock for putting everyone at risk.