Exodus, Wizards’ big AAA video game gamble, is getting a TTRPG

Archetype Entertainment, a subsidiary of Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast, announced a tabletop role-playing game for its original AAA sci-fi RPG Exodus on Wednesday. With Hasbro CEO Chris Cock’s recent statement to Bloomberg about putting out one to two games per year over the next few years, Exodus’ moment in the sun is quickly approaching.

Helmed by a team of ex-BioWare developers, the studio behind games like the original Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and the Mass Effect trilogy; Exodus was first announced with flashy cinematic trailer introduced by Matthew McConaughey at The Game Awards 2023. The trailer promised a new spin on the sci-fi RPG genre that focused on the cost of time dilation in cosmic travel, building on the decade-long interest in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (hence the McConaughey cameo). Since then, eagerly-awaiting fans have seen relatively little information about the game itself, with articles about the transmedia property’s worldbuilding and the team behind it filling the gaps on the Exodus game’s official website and an in-universe novel by Peter F. Hamilton published earlier this year.

The tabletop game’s release is framed as a “special limited time offer” for anyone joining Archetype’s “founders” email list; those who join by Dec. 10 only receive a “chance to purchase” an early edition of of rulebook. The only concrete detail about the Exodus TTRPG is that it’s designed by Exodus developer James Ohlen, best known for his work designing Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Aside from a cover image and a few general bullet points about the game like exploring the Exodus universe, becoming “the Traveler” and confronting time dilation; there’s no real explanation about what this game is going to look like or how it will play.

Creating a tie-in tabletop RPG has become a common practice with large, IP-based games attempting to drum up hype for their crowdfunding or preorder campaigns, such as the Neopets RPG which raised hundreds of thousands of dollars before putting any mechanics on their Kickstarter page.

Whether this AAA gamble will pay off has yet to be seen, but as WoTC’s first non-Dungeons & Dragons tabletop RPG since Gamma World, right now the universe of the Exodus TTRPG is mostly void.

Exodus will be released on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. It has no release window as of this writing.