It turns out that D&D and the best tabletop RPGs cannot be held back by something so trifling as gravity, because an astronaut just showed off how to roll d20 dice in space.
While in orbit around Earth’s poles, astronaut and card-carrying tabletop fan Rebea Rogge solved one of science’s great mysteries – how to roll for an ability check in zero-g. Because seriously, how are you meant to roll Initiative against troublesome goblins when your D&D dice float off around the cabin in a shower of polyhedral chaos? Turns out the answer is pretty simple; spin the d20 upward (or downward, or sideways, I suppose), catch it, and see which number is visible between your fingers and thumb. That’s your result.
“As a pen & paper nerd, I experimented with this 20-sided glass die (that caught the light beautifully) and found that the next round of D&D or similar in space is saved,” Rogge writes on her Instagram account. After apparently trying a few different methods while on the SpaceX “Fram2” mission to achieve the first ever human spaceflight orbiting Earth’s north and south poles, this straightforward spin-and-catch technique was the most reliable.
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So there we have it; the Artemis II crew has no excuse not to be running a campaign as they dart around the moon.
I suspect it’ll be a long, long time before any of us can achieve the dream of a D&D campaign in space, so until then, why not try the best board games or the best card games here on Earth?
