NASA is known for many things, including landing a man on the Moon, designing robots to explore Mars, support citizen scientistsbuild a High-speed Internet in space and be a global leader in all forms of space exploration and scientific advancement. And now they can add another exciting accomplishment to that long list of accolades: creating the first Dungeons and Dragons-style adventure officially published by a federal government agency.
Of all the federal agencies, NASA probably conducts the most comprehensive outreach efforts. They have their own television networksponsor many public events and even support a solid video game development program – all with the aim of educating and informing the public about science and space. But even with all that, releasing a Dungeons and Dragons-style role-playing game module might seem a little surprising to a lot of people, but maybe not to many. tabletop role-playing game – or TTRPG – fans who work at NASA.
“Of course I have a huge personal interest in TTRPG games, but so do a lot of people at NASA,” said Christina Mitchell, senior production specialist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. “I was playing with some of them when I first had the crazy idea of creating an adventure role-playing game that could become a new type of outreach for NASA.”
Mitchell wanted to create a role-playing adventure module that blended traditional gaming elements with the types of science and education that NASA projects are well known for. “Most of all, I wanted it to be fun, but in an educational way,” Mitchell said.
She presented her idea to various groups at NASA and eventually gained support from The Hubble Space Telescope team. As such, the Hubble Space Telescope features prominently in the adventure and is even stolen by a young green dragon near the beginning of the story, something players will face during their adventure in the module . Most importantly, the Hubble team has helped by contributing and supporting much of the game's science, much of it taking the form of unique puzzles that players will need to solve while pursuing their quest objectives.
It took a lot of design work and even more testing to make sure it would work well for most players, but ultimately, The lost universe began to take shape as NASA's first adventure game. And while there's a lot of science to the game, there are also plenty of opportunities for traditional role-playing and even some of the challenging combat these players expect from a Dungeons and Dragons-style adventure.
“It was extremely fun to bring it all together and mix the science with the game elements,” Mitchell said. “But it was also difficult to find the right balance. At one point, I was DMing (dungeon mastering – a term for running the game for players) during a playtesting session while the adventure was going on, and I I eliminated a whole group of experienced roleplayers, one (total party kill), in the final fight with the green dragon. So we had to go back and readjust the difficulty to keep things challenging, but also fair.
The plot of The Lost Universe is that players begin the adventure as ordinary, normal people living in our modern world, here on Earth. However, they quickly drag their minds and consciousness into another world where they find themselves in a city called Aldastron on the rogue planet Exlaris. And since players jump into other bodies, this is how they can quickly “become” traditional fantasy heroes like rangers, barbarians, witches, fighters, thieves, clerics, etc. This process also allows The Lost Universe to work with almost any game system, since players can become any class that fits into a specific game's world.
It turns out that the people of Aldastron are very passionate about science and were using magic to be able to secretly use the Hubble Telescope to explore space and advance their own scientific endeavors. This didn't sit well with the adventure's main villain, a young green dragon who not only physically steals the telescope, but completely deletes it from Earth's timeline so that no one on our planet remembers its existence. This also means that many scientific advances supported by the telescope, such as the International Space Station, no longer exist either. This is a series of fairly complex problems that players will have to solve using swords, sorcery, science and brain power.
Science is woven throughout the adventure. For example, in one of the first puzzles, players discover that a holographic display is based on the principles of redshift and blueshift. Red shift occurs when objects in the universe move away from us, causing visible light emitted in the red spectrum to shift slightly from our point of observation – which is true for most celestial bodies, since the universe is expanding. However, anything moving towards us has its light wavelengths compressed, causing a blue shift. Players of The Lost Universe must find the right balance in this puzzle to correctly display the hologram – while also hoping to learn more about this important scientific principle.
Later in the game, the puzzles become more difficult and deal with things like gravitational lensing, but the science is seamlessly integrated into the module and becomes part of the fun instead of an obstacle.
“I've played quite a few role-playing games over the years and was fortunate to be able to test out The Lost World as a player and DM,” said Karl Hille, public affairs manager for NASA Cutting Edge Tech. “The game is so fun to play. I'm really excited to see other people embarking on this adventure.
In fact, NASA would like to hear about other players' adventures now that the module has been officially released and is inviting people to share their experiences with the hashtag #NASATTRPG on social media.
The Lost Universe adventure and companion map are free download and play from the NASA module home page. Although the module is designed to work with almost any RPG system, it is generally recommended that a good sized party should consist of four to seven players. Each character should be around seventh level, although given that they will have to fight a green dragon at the end of the module, known for killing entire groups, reaching tenth level might not be a bad idea. idea.
On the same home page as the game mod, players can also experience some of the amazing things that the The Hubble Space Telescope does – assuming that a brave group of hearty adventurers can save him from the clutches of evil so that he can be sent back to Earth's timeline to continue his critical mission.
John Breeden II is an award-winning journalist and critic with more than 20 years of experience in technology. He is the CEO of Technical Editors Desk, a group that creates technology thought leadership content for organizations of all sizes. Twitter: @LabGuys
