The Expanse Game: Five Ways to Play in the Belt
If you are looking for The Expanse game, there are four of them, and they want very different evenings from you. Telltale’s episodic adventure puts you in Camina Drummer’s boots before the TV show. Green Ronin’s tabletop roleplaying game lets a group build its own crew. WizKids made a strategy board game about the solar system’s factions, and Owlcat Games is building a full computer RPG. There is also a fifth way for readers of the James S. A. Corey novels: play inside the books themselves, as a character of your own, with a narrator that has read them.
This guide covers each, says who it suits, and ends with how to try the last one in a few minutes.
What people mean by “The Expanse game”
A search for an Expanse game usually comes from one of four people.
- The TV fan who finished the show and wants more of Drummer, the Belt and that sound design. That is the Telltale game.
- The tabletop group that wants a hard science fiction campaign with ships, debts and faction politics. That is the roleplaying game.
- The strategy player who likes the politics more than the people. That is the board game.
- The reader who closed the last novel and wants to stay in that solar system as someone new. That is the gap the existing games leave, and the reason this guide has a fifth section.
The facts about the games below were read from Wikipedia’s articles on the series and the Telltale game, Green Ronin’s store and Owlcat’s own site, as of October 2026.
The options side by side
| Telltale series | Green Ronin RPG | WizKids board game | Osiris Reborn | Play inside the books | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | Episodic adventure | Tabletop RPG | Strategy board game | Action RPG | Written game in a browser |
| Based on | The TV series | The setting | The setting | The setting | The novels you upload |
| Who you play | Camina Drummer | A character you make | A faction | A character Owlcat sets up | A character you make |
| Players | One | A group with a GM | Two to five factions | One | One |
| Story | Written branches | Your group’s | Emerges from play | Written branches | Grows from your choices |
| Available | Out now | Out now | Out now | In beta for founders | Out now |
The Expanse: A Telltale Series
This is the one most people mean. It is an episodic adventure game made by Telltale Games with Deck Nine, a prequel to the television series. Wikipedia lists five episodes released between July and September 2023 on PlayStation, Xbox and Windows, a bonus episode called “Archangel” in November 2023, and a Nintendo Switch version in April 2026.
You play Camina Drummer, executive officer of the salvage ship Artemis. The crew picks over abandoned wrecks in zero gravity, and the plot turns on a wreck with a very valuable cargo and what happens once they take it. You walk the environments, click to interact, and choose dialogue that changes how the crew sees you and how the story ends.
Pick it if you love the show’s version of Drummer and want a polished, voiced, cinematic story about her. It is weaker for readers who want the books’ world on its own terms: it follows the TV continuity, and every branch was written in advance, so you choose between endings rather than make one.
The Expanse Roleplaying Game from Green Ronin
The tabletop game uses Green Ronin’s AGE system, designed by Chris Pramas, with the core rulebook written by Steve Kenson. It launched on Kickstarter in July 2018, and the setting has a fitting origin: Ty Franck first built the world of The Expanse as a homebrew tabletop campaign before it became a series of novels. Green Ronin still sells the core book and supplements on its own store as of October 2026.
You make your own character from any faction, Earther, Martian or Belter, and the group adventures across the system, often on a ship of its own. The rulebook even carries a short story by James S. A. Corey written for it.
Pick it if you have a group and a game master and want the full weight of a campaign, with dice and rules handling the tension of hard vacuum. It is weaker for solo readers: it needs other people, a scheduled evening and someone willing to prepare.
The Expanse board game from WizKids
Designed by Geoff Engelstein with input from the authors, the board game came out in October 2017. Players take Earth’s UN forces, Mars, the OPA or Protogen and compete to become the dominant power in the solar system with cards, action points, fleets and influence. It is often compared to Twilight Struggle, with a shorter playing time. A “Doors & Corners” expansion added five modules.
Pick it if the politics were your favourite part and you have friends around a table. It is weaker for anyone who wants to be a person in the setting: you move fleets for a faction, so nobody gets a name or a line of dialogue.
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn from Owlcat Games
Owlcat, who made the Pathfinder and Rogue Trader computer RPGs, announced an action role-playing game set in The Expanse in June 2025. Its own site posted in April 2026 that a beta was open to founders who bought certain packs.
Pick it if you like Owlcat’s big branching RPGs and are happy to wait for the full release. It is weaker for anyone who wants to play tonight without buying into an early-access package, and like the Telltale game its story is written ahead of you.
Playing inside The Expanse novels yourself
The fifth way is built for the reader. You give a narrator your copy of the novel, and it reads the book before you begin: the stations, the ships, the people, how they talk, what each faction wants and what it hides. You make your own character, step into the solar system and type what you do in ordinary sentences. There is no dialogue wheel and no fixed ending. You can follow the Canterbury’s route, ignore it completely, or spend an evening on a corner of Ceres the book only mentions in passing, and the narrator keeps things consistent with what the book established.
This is what LLM RPG does. You upload a copy of a book you own, as a .txt
or .epub file, and it builds an atlas of the book’s world before your first scene.
Because it works from the text rather than from a preset, it works for Leviathan
Wakes and for each sequel, which matters in a series where the solar system changes
so much from book to book.
Some characters a reader might make:
- A Belter dockworker on Ceres whose water ration just got cut and who has started listening to the OPA recruiters in the bar.
- A junior Martian marine on her first tour, who has never seen open sky and is quietly afraid of Earth.
- An ice hauler’s mechanic who answers a distress call against the captain’s orders.
- An Earther lawyer sent to Eros to sort out a contract dispute just before everything goes wrong there.
Pick it if what you miss after the last page is the solar system itself and you would rather be someone new in it than replay Holden’s choices. It is weaker for players who want voice acting, graphics or a group at the table. It is a written game: you read, and you type. It also needs the book file, so you use your own copy, and a long novel needs more than the free credits to read in full; the pricing page has the plans.
How to start an Expanse game tonight
If playing inside the books sounds right, this is the whole path.
- Try it with no account. Open a ready-made world and play five turns. A few minutes tells you whether typing your own actions suits you.
- Sign up with your email if it does. You get a one-time code, no password, and 50 free credits.
- Upload the book. Choose your copy of the novel as a
.txtor.epubfile. The narrator reads it and builds the world before you play. - Make your character. Belter, Martian, Earther or someone the factions never counted. Give them a job and a problem.
- Type what you do. “I ask the dock boss why the water ration changed.” “I check the distress beacon’s registry before we answer it.” The narrator answers in the book’s tone and remembers what you did.
If you like hard-edged science fiction, our guide to the Dune roleplaying game covers another big setting, and solo role-playing games explains the wider family of games you play alone.
When one of the official games is the better choice
Be honest about the evening you want. If you want the show’s Drummer, with music, faces and a story somebody wrote for you, the Telltale series is the one to buy, and nothing written replaces that. If you have a group, the Green Ronin RPG gives you a campaign that can run for years. If you want to argue about Protogen over a table with friends, the board game is built for exactly that.
A written game fits a different moment: you have just closed the book, the next one is not out, and you want to be on Ceres again tonight as someone the novels never followed. That is the moment it was built for.