One of my favorite activities is sitting around a table, dice in hand, and playing TTRPGs with my friends, even if my rolls are hilariously bad. For decades, Dungeons & Dragons has defined that feeling. But as I get older, I’ve branched out to other TTRPGs like BREAK! RPG or Critical Role’s Daggerheart. But a new TTRPG has me trading fantasy for sci-fi and taking to the stars with my companions. It combines the cinematic scope of BioWare’s Mass Effect with the freeform creativity of Dungeons & Dragons. That’s the promise driving one of the most ambitious sci-fi roleplaying projects to emerge in years.
Exodus is a science fiction tabletop role-playing game that fuses cinematic storytelling, tactical gameplay, and the moral weight of spacefaring adventure. Imagine the sweeping emotional arcs of Mass Effect: the choices, the consequences, the ragtag crew of aliens and humans bound by purpose now placed entirely in your hands as both player and storyteller. Exodus invites players to craft epic space operas from scratch or place them in the in-universe setting.
What makes Exodus stand out immediately is its commitment to story-first design. Like Mass Effect or The Expanse, its universe is vast, layered, and morally complex. But unlike a video game, there’s no developer script limiting what can happen. Every decision, every planetary negotiation or starship chase, unfolds through the choices of the players and the roll of the dice. Players cooperate with the game master to tell a story.
I played a game with a small group, and within an hour, it was clear that this wasn’t just “D&D in space.” We began as a scrappy crew of mercenaries ferrying cargo through a politically fractured galaxy. By the second session, we were knee-deep in an interstellar conspiracy and way above our heads. No pre-written video game could’ve captured the chaos or emotion that followed, but at the table, it all felt perfectly alive.
The rule system, while borrowing the backbone of classic tabletop design and feeling very similar to D&D, emphasizes narrative control and cinematic flow. That balance between structure and freedom is what makes Exodus feel like a bridge between two worlds, the rich lore-driven storytelling of Mass Effect and the player-driven chaos of tabletop classics. You’re not just following Commander Shepard’s story anymore; you’re creating your own.
Science fiction has always had a tougher time breaking into the tabletop mainstream than fantasy. The reason is simple: it’s hard to create a universe as flexible as D&D’s while managing the complexity of technology, starships, and intergalactic politics. After all, in fantasy settings, you simply wave your hands and use magic to explain anything and everything. Sci-fi settings don’t typically have that luxury.
Exodus builds its systems around themes: exploration, morality, identity, and discovery. It uses these to encourage players to explore the setting. The mechanics are sleek but robust. Skill checks drive everything from hacking into alien databanks to negotiating peace between warring species. Character creation encourages depth through origins and classes, but gives players plenty of freedom to shape their characters.
Exodus also handles scale beautifully. You can zoom from intimate, character-driven drama to sweeping interplanetary politics without losing the human heart of the story. Whether you’re charting a new world, debating alien ethics, or planning a heist on a corporate moon base, the game never forgets that science fiction is, at its core, about people, and their place in a vast, indifferent universe, especially when Celestials are involved.
The tabletop renaissance of the last decade has proven that players crave stories over stats. Games like Blades in the Dark, BREAK! RPG, and Cyberpunk RED pushed the boundaries of what RPGs could be, but science fiction has lacked a unifying hit, the Dungeons & Dragons of deep space. Exodus might be the one to fill that void. From an accessibility standpoint, it’s refreshingly straightforward. Its rules are modular and approachable, especially for those who have played 5E.
While this may bother some, I loved it. I’ve played so much 5E that I was able to jump straight into game design after familiarizing myself with the setting. The system scales easily, so groups can play anything from a tense, three-session rescue mission to a years-long galactic saga. It has clear guidance for Game Masters who want to blend tactical combat with narrative storytelling, and for newcomers, it’s easier to learn than crunch-heavy systems.
As someone who’s played dozens of tabletop systems over the years, I left my first Exodus session feeling awe. It has me beyond excited for when Archetype Entertainment launches the Exodus video game, but for now, I’ll be journeying through the universe through dice rolls and cooperative storytelling. Anyone looking for a new TTRPG or an alternative to Dungeons & Dragons does not want to miss out on Exodus.
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