NASA D&D Adventure (& Interview)
NASA has put out an adventure for Dungeons & Dragons!
Players take control of adventurers on the rogue planet of Exlaris. They will be introduced to multiple scientific concepts such as: dark matter, gravitational lensing, and red/blue shifts.
“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!”
I had to opportunity to chat with Christina Mitchell, the author of the adventure. You can find that fill interview below with links to the adventure at the bottom.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
So, you’re the NASA Production Coordinator. As part of that role, what are your duties at NASA?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Well, I sort of work between the NASA multimedia projects and the actual science and research projects. I help with deciding which parts of the science make it into those multimedia projects.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
What’s your history with tabletop roleplaying games?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
I got into Dungeons and Dragons right before the pandemic and during the pandemic I got really deep into it. I watch tons of different live plays and started playing more myself.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
What made you decide to write the adventure “The Lost World” for NASA?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
It seemed like there was a lot of crossover. The people really into space are the same sort of people who are also really into D&D. They’re both such nerdy hobbies and things to be into, so it just made sense.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
D&D and space, definitely nerd culture crossover 100%.
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Yeah.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
So. There are. There's quite a few different scientific concepts that are in the adventure. I mean, just like right starting off the bat at the very, very beginning, you already mention habitable zones and rogue planets, and then at the end you even have more complicated things that are mentioned like the red and blue shifts, the gravitational lensing, dark matter, dark energy, and more.
Those are pretty complicated things. Did you have any issues integrating them into the adventure as you were writing them? Was that your initial goal or did they just kind of flow in naturally with what you were trying to do?Christina Mitchell - NASA
So yeah, it definitely took a little bit of time to hammer some of those elements out, you know, at the start, like the dark energy, the rogue planets, the habitable zones, that'll float in very naturally with the setting that we were building out. But the red shift, blue shift, the gravitational lensing that took a little bit more work to get it to feel natural in. Story so especially during the play testing phases, we were really trying to make sure that that all flowed, you know, within this fantasy setting in a way that not only like made sense for the science, but also felt natural in the setting. That definitely took a little time.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Yeah, that makes sense. They're a little a little tougher to fit in easily, I would imagine.
Christina Mitchell - NASA
We wanted to keep it really educational at its core, so it was really important to us that we get all of that right.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Nice. So, considering the sort of varying degrees of complexity of the stuff that's in there. Did you have a specific grade range or age in mind when you were putting it together or were you just trying to kind of stuff as much in as you can?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
No, we didn't really have a specific age range in mind. Most NASA games are for small kids, right? We wanted this to be for a little bit of an older audience. So like the people that we don't normally target games to, we wanted to give them something as well. So, there wasn't a specific age range in mind. Just more, you know, pretty much anyone who's going to be playing tabletop role-playing games.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Fair enough. So you said that you would intentionally angled it to be educational, which makes sense considering you know, your NASA. But beyond like this specific adventure, do you think that there's a place for tabletop role-playing games in education?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Absolutely. I think that they can be a fantastic educational tool. I'm a big fan of, you know, making learning fun, like using games to learn. My mom's a teacher. She does a lot of that in her classroom and finds that it works really well. So that was definitely, definitely a big goal here was we wanted to make it fun. We wanted to make it educational, and I definitely think that there is a good place for that.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
So was this was this the first D&D adventure you'd ever written?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
When I initially started writing it, I had never even DM’d (Dungeon Mastered). So I did start DMing a campaign as this was in development and that sort of helped inform the development process a bit, but yeah, it's definitely the first adventure that I've written.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
How long did it take you to write it?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Yeah, I'd say probably over the course of about a year it probably took me about a month to write it and put it all together.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Nice. Have you had the chance to run it for any of your coworkers there at NASA?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
I have, yeah. So the first play test I ran was actually for a group of friends that played with me before, which was a whole lot of fun. And there were some easter eggs in there specifically for people who played with me that they picked up on. And then, you know, I later ran a play test for colleagues here at work, and then I was able to play in a colleague run and play test of it at work as well.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Awesome. I feel like inserting specific references from your group is like a tried-and-true tradition of D&D. You know, so many of the spells we have now are named after players from Gary Gygax's original groups back in the day.
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Right. There was one of the NPC's that has been a character in a couple of my home games. That I introduced to the group and they were. All like “ohh!”. That was a lot of fun. None of them knew that I had put.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Her in there. Oh, right. So that was a fun surprise for them to run into them for the first time, yeah. So I'm going to be honest, when I initially like saw that NASA had released it in the adventure, I kind of opened it expecting it to be, I don't know, two or three page, you know, like a micro one shot. I think yours comes out to about 44 pages. Not all of it is adventure. Some of it is a little background. Some of it is, you know, a little discussion of the scientific pieces. But was it pretty daunting to sit down and write dozens of pages worth of adventure?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Well, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't really until I got near the end of it. I really enjoy to write. So I I started with building out the setting. I started with building out the adventure background. You know, I wanted there to be fleshed out NPC's that people could interact with. So, putting together what would people who live in this world be like? That took up probably. I'm gonna ballpark just that took up around 15 pages.
All said and done, but you know then it was building out the adventure, which I was just having a ton of fun with. Just trying to anticipate where the players might go and how you know that might be handled within the world and definitely that grew a lot during play test days where they went off the rail and I was like, oh, well, I hadn’t considered you doing that. So you know that took up a lot of space and I don't think it was near the end until I realized just how massive it had become and I was like, Oh my God. So I had some other colleagues like read through it and do some editing. To see like, OK, is this just really excessive? Should we trim it down? And they were like, you know, if you want to set it in this setting that this world with these characters is pretty much the length that needs to be. So yeah, it wasn't until the end that I realized exactly how massive it.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Yeah, I mean, you definitely have a lot written in here. I mean there are tips for role-playing different NPCS, there's background information. So, there's certainly like a lot for the DM to sink their teeth into here I think or even to like continue playing in as a setting. This is certainly like a good seed to start an entire campaign inside the setting.
Which, on that note, in the world there are like 5 major cities mentioned that are all tied to different scientific disciplines, the primary one being Alabastron which is astrophysics. So, is there any plan to do follow-ups that like take place in the other disciplines or anything like that?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Well, we don't have anything else in development right now, but we are definitely tracking how this is being received and we're keeping our options open going forward.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
And how has it been received? What kind of feedback have you guys gotten so far?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Sso far has been overwhelmingly positive. Which has been really amazing to see all the different articles, all the different videos that have popped up about it. Yeah, it's been overwhelmingly positive. We've all been really, really thrilled with how it's been received.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Awesome. Well, I quite enjoyed reading it. I thought it was a fun read. I think it would probably be very fun to run. I have not had the opportunity to sit down and run it myself, but it will definitely go into the adventures to be run stack. I'm a big fan of the kind of more educational stuff as well.
I think it's a really interesting adventure. Was there anything else that you wanted to share out to folks about NASA or TTRPG's or education or any combination thereof.
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Yeah. I mean, I think I would just add, you know, we did this all internally and the whole group that worked on it with me none of us were there because we had to be there, we were all working on this because we wanted to. So, it made it incredibly fun to work on. Just a great atmosphere, great group of people, we all really put our heart into this game.
I think in terms of education, I'm really glad that you reached out. I'm really glad to see it getting to this audience and I can't wait to see what people in the education realm do with that.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
One of our one of our other board members wanted me to ask you if no one can hear you scream in space, can you still cast spells with verbal components?
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Hmm. I think that's going to be up to GM discretion.
John Johnson - Let’s Quest
Well, thank you so much for your time. We very much appreciate it. I'm sure you have lots of things to do today. So thank you very much. I hope you have a good rest of your day.
Christina Mitchell - NASA
Thank you. You do the same. Thanks.
