NASA Releases The Lost Universe TTRPG Adventure

NASA, the American space agency, released a tabletop roleplaying game supplement titled The Lost Universe. The free download includes a 44-page PDF of the adventure, a map of the adventure location Aldastron, and a poster of the cover art.

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From the website:

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Calling all adventurers!​

It’s time to gather your party and your favorite tabletop role-playing game system.

A dark mystery has settled over the city of Aldastron on the rogue planet of Exlaris. Researchers dedicated to studying the cosmos have disappeared, and the Hubble Space Telescope has vanished from Earth’s timeline. Only an ambitious crew of adventurers can uncover what was lost. Are you up to the challenge?

This adventure is designed for a party of 4-7 level 7-10 characters and is easily adaptable for your preferred tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) system.

NASA’s first TTRPG adventure invites you to take on a classic villain (while also using and learning science skills!) as you overcome challenges and embark on an exciting quest to unlock more knowledge about our universe. Download your game documents below and get ready to explore Exlaris!

Want to share how your adventure unfolds? Share it with #NASATTRPG on social media.

Despite the very D&D terminology of party levels, the adventure itself is system-agnostic with no stat blocks or other rules beyond a few generic tables. It does involve fantasy elements with half-orcs, tieflings, and elves among the NPCs. As you'd likely expect from a NASA adventure module, there is a lot of real-life science involving research done on the Hubble Space Telescope including red/blue shift, dark matter and dark energy, gravitational lensing, zero point energy, and more.

The official NASA Twitter account listed this as "NASA's first tabletop role-playing campaign" indicating that there may be more supplements coming in the future.

 

[Abstruse]

I wonder if it would be hard to convert to mutants and masterminds.

So long as you can cover elves, orcs, tieflings, etc. you can use basically any system you want. The only game mechanics I noticed skimming over it were a couple of tables. One where you roll a 1d20 to determine how many of a hail of arrows hit and...honestly I can't remember seeing another one. It seems designed with the idea you're going to be playing D&D 5e, but there's absolutely nothing in the actual adventure that touches the system in any way and you're expected to make up any stats or skill checks or anything else you'll need using your preferred system. So use whatever one you like.

 

[Vinicius_Zoio]

Oh, come on!!!

Give as NASA-made sci-fi adventure already!

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The official NASA Twitter account listed this as "NASA's first tabletop role-playing campaign" indicating that there may be more supplements coming in the future.

Seems likely there will be one for each city mentioned on page 5. Pretty obvious teaser.

Aldastron - Astrophysics
Sarthelios - Solar Science
Beska-Pereya - Biological Systems
Paleridon - Planetary Science
Arketnum - Aeronautics

You are talking Slayers, as in Lina Inverse Slayers? An Ars Magica campaign?! That'd be awesome. Any more info on that?

Five volume light novel series, turned into a four volume manga and a 26 episode anime. I've only seen the latter, and it was...ah, the wiki page calls the production "troubled" and for good reason. It's apparently the origin of idiomatic use of "yashigani" for crappy art/animation because of how bad one of the episodes with that word as part of the title was. Still, the story seemed okay. It's tied to the Slayers multiverse - set in the "Black World" where Slayers is in the "Red World" FWIW.

I confess I don't see any obvious Ars Magica elements in the anime (which is space opera science fantasy, not fantasy set in a semi-historical Europe) but maybe I'm missing them. It was along time ago and I wasn't looking out for them.

 

[Abstruse]

I confess I don't see any obvious Ars Magica elements in the anime (which is space opera science fantasy, not fantasy set in a semi-historical Europe) but maybe I'm missing them. It was along time ago and I wasn't looking out for them.

No, the Ars Magica connection is just with the original Slayers. Lost Universe is in a parallel world from Slayers though and shares a lot of cosmology (for example, the Sword of Light exists in both but is known as Gorn Nova in Lost Universe and is a spaceship). But other than that connection to Slayers, there's nothing Ars Magica in Lost Universe.

But we're getting off topic anyway as that Lost Universe has nothing to do with NASA's Lost Universe.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

But we're getting off topic anyway as that Lost Universe has nothing to do with NASA's Lost Universe.

I don't know, we can hold out some hope for fantasy spaceships showing up in the latter. Maybe when the do the aeronautics module?

 

[RuinousPowers]

NASA should totally make their own hard sci-fi rpg.

 

[MGibster]

This must be a Delta Green psy-op.

 

[J.Quondam]

I must admit: this was not on my bingo card.

 

[Deaconhux]

Oh, come on!!!

Give as NASA-made sci-fi adventure already!

One would think making something with Traveller in mind would be more simpatico, but I can see why they wanted to cast the widest possible net and went with fantasy.

 

[overgeeked]

1980s. Satanic Panic.

2020s. NASA making an RPG adventure.