# More on NASA's Lost Universe tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/lost-universe Ah, yes, the inevitable eventual reply to [[NASA Squeezes Out Turd of RPG|my public statements about NASA's The Lost Universe]]. It had to happen. We *needed* it to. > [!quote] [RogueFirefly on Twitter](https://twitter.com/MightyPen246/status/1765528558879818238) > > > ![[Lost Universe Twitter Response.png]] > > I think taking it so seriously isn't too beneficial, it seems to be a way to reach out to people in the ttrpg hobby and teach some fun science along the way. While I wouldn't run this for my group, I would definitely run this for some kind of teen hobby group for a few sessions. You can always depend on Twitter to have something insipid to say. [Unfortunately for Twitter today, I had time to compose a reply](https://twitter.com/squidlord/status/1765544382046863578): --- This is the "why would you care so much" argument? Because it never works well and it's not an actual argument. If anything, it affirms everything that I said you just don't think it's important enough to tell people. Well, fuck you very much. I'm glad we can get that out of the way. But let's look at your points and see if they make sense? "A way to reach out to people in the TTRPG hobby." Do you know anyone – *ANYONE* – who plays tabletop role-playing games who isn't additionally a geek? Who needs to be told what NASA does and who they are? No. You don't. Because that would be silly. Anybody who's actually spent five minutes at the table with anybody playing TTRPGs knows we're a bunch of goddamn geeks, at least half of whom fetishize space. But let's assume, for whatever reason, given whatever diseased ideation is necessary, you didn't already know that and it wasn't true. Let's imagine a universe where it's not. If you wanted to reach out to people in the TTRPG hobby on the issue of space science, NASA, and the Hubble space telescope – why in the name of electric testicles would you do so by pitching to [[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D 5th edition]] tables? Wouldn't you do so by, if only to be timely, pitching to **[Cyberpunk Red](https://talsorianstore.com/products/cyberpunk-red)** tables? Or structure for a very minimalist, stripped-down RPG core which has the protagonists in a scientific setting? In fact, wouldn't you focus on something that actually was and felt like hard science fiction – theoretically what NASA is actually engaged in – rather than trash fire fantasy world building, which is what's in the actual text? I wish I was overstating the case, truthfully, but what they actually put out is less creative than [[Feast of Legends|what Wendy's put out]], and that was no great work of Shakespeare itself, but at least it was thematically coherent. I would sooner plop a group of teens down in front of **[[Tekumel]]** if I wanted to do science-fantasy which at least adheres to its own rules. https://www.tekumel.com I'd sooner plop them down in front of **[[Gamma World]]**, if I wanted to play to the pretense of being science-like or science-adjacent. https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/44/Wizards-of-the-Coast/category/262/Gamma-World (**[[Mutant Year Zero|Mutant: Year Zero]]** would be an acceptable third option.) https://freeleaguepublishing.com/shop/mutant-year-zero/ I would definitely sooner plop them down in front of **[[Traveller]]** if I wanted them to get a taste of the scientific. https://www.mongoosepublishing.com/collections/traveller-rpgs What I wouldn't do is take a bad **D&D** adventure with an isekai set up and a very light pretense of useful scientific thinking and enough railroad that you could fill up 16 work camps. And let me be clear, for the people who haven't actually read this piece of garbage: Page 10 sets up who the characters are, scientists who were involved with the Hubble telescope project – in the alternate universe where it wasn't stolen by a dragon. Who then immediately get [isekai'd](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2019/07/15/beginners-guide-isekai-manga) to a new, amazing fantasy world – which they explicitly know nothing about and somehow get railroaded immediately into a tavern. Let's count how many bad scenario ideas are set up here: - There's no reason for the players to care about who those characters are because they have no idea who they are. - Whoever they are, there's no time spent on establishing them and having the players actually inhabit them in the real world for a little bit with some sort of conflict to get them hooked. - They get sucked into the fantasy world almost immediately and due to no action or inaction on their own part. They have no stake in it. - They get dropped into an alien world explicitly with no knowledge of who they are or who the other players are because they are now inhabiting the bodies of the characters they created. Remember, this is a level 7-10 module, not a 1st level module, in an entirely new (if tedious) setting. I'm sure any sapient person who has read a story at any point can tell immediately why and how this is a massive failure, and why it can never survive first contact with a player. It's not just trash – it's insulting trash. It's badly designed trash. It's wagon-jumping trash. The only bit of "science" that really comes up in the course of this entire scenario, other than some name dropping, is a single puzzle that involves gravitational lensing. That's it. That's the whole thing. Oh yes, and the multiple pages of Appendix which have nothing to do with the actual play of the scenario which you have just dealt with. So why is taking it this seriously beneficial? Because it's my tax dollars at work. Because this is a national organization which is supposed to be promoting scientific thought and interest in space technology… And this is the best they can do. I can literally go down to my local tabletop RPG shop on open table game night, grab a random kid playing anything science fiction related, and have them write something better. That night. This is insultingly bad. But worse – it never had to be. That's the problem. That's why we should take this incredibly seriously, because nobody else will. This is a joke. This is an *anti*-education campaign. This will make anyone exposed to it less interested in what NASA has to say because shows the least interest possible in the community it should be pitching to. TTRPG people don't deserve better – the entire inhabitants of this planet deserve better. Taking it seriously would have been very beneficial for NASA. But they didn't. --- The worst thing for social media was me actually having a place to put relatively medium for more longform content and thinking about it a lot, because that just makes me more verbose. I stand behind everything I posted here. **The Lost Universe** is tripe, which might have been forgivable if it had come from a new be posting their first thing on itch.io. But this is from NASA. They want us to take them seriously. Somebody got paid money to lay this thing out. Somebody got paid to write this thing. As TTRPG enthusiasts, we should be insulted by this. It's a blatant attempt to try and jump on the bandwagon of **D&D** without even committing to being **D&D** while simultaneously being **D&D** – and being bad at it. Demand better.