As we march on into the weekend, today's update is from The Expanse lead developer, Ian Lemke, who has taken some time to go into a little more detail about the new Crew Companion book!
Take it away, Ian!
There’ve been many questions about exactly what will be in the Crew Companion for The Expanse RPG. If you’re one of those people or just a wee bit curious, you’ve come to the right place. In short, the Crew Companion is a player’s guide for The Expanse RPG. Its primary purpose is to expand character options for players, allowing you to make exactly the kind of character you want and to fill in some of the gaps. It offers tons of new options and even explores new ways to play. Now, let’s break it down.
We released Trades of the Expanse: Bounty Hunter in the spring of 2022 in PDF format only, and since then, there have been six additional Trades books: Scouts, Planetary Surveyor, Journalist, Entertainer, Trader/Smuggler, and most recently, Pirate. For those unfamiliar with these books, each examines a different profession (or trade) in which player characters might have been before a campaign starts or is currently engaged. To summarize, the Trades books delve into the life and culture of people involved in these trades, provide rules for finding jobs and getting paid, and offer specialized ships (along with new ship Qualities and Flaws) and equipment. Each trade also has a new specialization directly related to that trade. Finally, there are new Churn results connected to each of the trades and their activities.
The central feature of the Crew Companion will be taking all of these Trades books (plus several never published) and putting them into one book. However, we’re not going to just cut and paste the Trades books into the Crew Companion. The information will be organized to make finding the information you want easier. For example, all of the equipment and ships will each have their own chapters. We’ll also be going back over all of the existing Trades and tweaking the text to bring them into the Transport Union era. And, of course, there will be several new trades to look forward too!
But that’s not all! There’ll be advanced rules for tinkering with your tech and buying black market implants. Don’t have enough cash for that really spiffy implant? Now, you can get it at a discount, but watch out for those side effects! We’re also taking a deeper dive into Interludes, including advanced rules and advice for players and GMs.
The Crew Companion will be a fantastic addition to The Expanse RPG collection for both players and Game Masters. That’s about all I can say right now, but keep monitoring these comms for future updates. You never know what surprises we might have in store.
