# NASA Squeezes Out Turd of RPG tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/lost-universe ![[NASA - The Lost Universe (cover).jpg]] All right, I'll say it. I'll be the first one to say it. I'll say it loudly and honestly: [What is this absolute garbage from NASA?](https://science.nasa.gov/mission/hubble/multimedia/online-activities/the-lost-universe/) Surely they can do better than this. The **[[Feast of Legends|Wendy's RPG]]** was at least forgivable. Bad, but forgivable. The fantasy setting with a twist on fast food at least was a cool idea and made sense within its own context.[^feast] But this? A garbage scenario transparently for **[[Dungeons and Dragons|D&D 5th edition]]**, introducing a custom planet (with some of the worst world building I've seen in the last couple of years), claiming to be generic and patently not? Introducing a whole new planet (with five specific science-specialized cities on it, mind you), which you are instructed are within a scenario intended for levels 7-10, so not for beginning characters but with no history or sufficient set up to actually *start* characters in that world. Because Hades forfend it be a starting funnel *or* be easy to bring your current extant party into play. There are hundreds, possibly thousands, of really good hard science sci-fi RPGs out there which are absolutely open licensed and/or whose publishers would be thrilled to have NASA [notice them, sempai](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-hope-senpai-will-notice-me). (See: **[[Entity]]**, **[[Those Dark Places]]**, **[[Alien - The Roleplaying Game|Alien: The Roleplaying Game]]**, for Hell's sake. Or **[[Sanction]]**, to mention a game I haven't ingested here, yet.[^sanc] Even **[[Traveller]]** if they wanted to go classic and old-school sci-fi! The better choices are myriad and deep!) Instead they squeezed out a crap D&D scenario with one of the most boring setups, culturally, I've seen in a while (but I said D&D so I repeat myself), and I'm supposed to be feeling good about that. Look, if SpaceX wants to chase the Dragon (see what I did there?) and put out their own TTRPG in reply, for the love of all that's unholy, Elon, get in touch with me. We'll do it right. It may seem that I am unduly worked up about this, and perhaps that's true. But as someone who is not just passing through and who actually cares both about planetary/interstellar science and tabletop role-playing games, it's hard to read this as anything but trying to jump on the bandwagon and missing the back ledge because you don't understand that it moves. I hate to see a bad job being done – by anyone. This is a bad job. It pains me. [^feast]: https://archive.org/details/feast-of-legends [^sanc]: https://paulbaldowski.itch.io/sanction