NASA has released a free, original tabletop role-playing game, and it’s one part educational experience and another part sci-fi/fantasy epic with magic and dragons.
The crux of The Lost Universe, the organization’s first TTRPG, involves a mystery: What would happen if the Hubble Space Telescope disappeared? It’s a simple premise and one that hides the complex backstory underscoring the events of the role-playing game. Without getting into the weeds, the game takes place on a planet called Exlaris, which was once thrown into chaos when a black hole moved too close and kicked it out of its orbit. The planet has since gone back to some degree of normalcy and is now almost completely dedicated to academia. In one city, a scholar named Eirik Hazn made a spell to connect with Earth to study the Hubble Space Telescope, which has famously collected data on black holes. However, the spell and telescope are stolen by a dragon, and researchers working on the project have been disappearing, so the players — Earthlings who worked on the telescope at NASA who were brought through a portal to Exlaris — have to save the day.
The official 44-page gameplay book is available to download for free on NASA’s website. You can play it in a party with 4-7 players, but you may need to fudge a few things to graft this narrative onto your TTRPG system of choice. The book says it’ll take around 3-4 hours to get through the adventure.
Don’t let the heavy fantasy elements distract you from the educational aspects of the game, which is all about the Hubble Space Telescope and its importance to Earth’s history. The space telescope has taken some famous images of our universe, including of faraway galaxies and nebulas, and has helped us understand how many of these bodies work and how they evolve. If you scroll through the rulebook, a lot of the text involves explaining scientific concepts like gravitational lensing — the idea that a large enough grouping of matter can distort light as it travels toward the observer.
Photo by Space Frontiers/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A lot of the lore is also filled with references to Hubble and NASA. For example, Hazn has the same initials as Edwin Hubble, the astronomer whom the telescope was named after. Then there are some of the “magical” concepts used to flesh out the story, too: the energy the Exlari people use is based on dark matter.
The Lost Universe was made in conjunction with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and its credits are filled with NASA employees from various departments. The lead on adventure design is Christina Mitchell, who is a video producer, and Michelle Belleville, a web design lead, was in charge of graphic design. Other contributors include people from the Hubble team and Earth Science Outreach.
