The Inside Scoop on Gaming

I'm jumping into the Wayback machine for this review. Way back in the mid-'80s there was a game called Justice, Inc. which used the Hero system for pulp action. Aaron Allston wrote Lands of Mystery in 1985 as a supplement for JI and other games. As the years have passed, many gamers look back on Lands of Mystery as one of the finest supplements ever produced.

Although it was designed for use primarily with JI, it also included stats for Chill, Call of Cthulhu, and Daredevil. But it goes beyond even those games. The mark of a really great supplement is that I'll turn to it even when I'm not using the game it was written for. I can see using Lands of Mystery for nearly any game I play.

The first half of the book is a "how-to" manual on constructing lost worlds, but the advice in here goes even beyond that. A lot of the advice, like getting rid of random encounters and making sure that the player-characters have a reason to work together, doesn't seem that revolutionary to me now, after a couple of decades of gaming, but back when I was 13, this stuff would have been a revelation! (Of course, I only bought the book last week, since I saw it on sale at my local hobby store and knew I'd kick myself if anyone else bought it.) The second half of the book is a complete lost world campaign set in the alternate universe of Zorandar complete with player-characters, cave-people, Neanderthals, lost Romans, and dinosaurs. In addition to being a great sample adventure, it's also a great example of how to make a lost world.

I mentioned I could use this with any game. Let me give you a couple of examples. In Feng Shui a really radical critical shift could result in a world where apes ruled the world and humans were reduced to cave people. In Werewolf: the Apocalypse a lost valley in Antarctica could conceal a race of humans who never suffered the Impergium, don't fear werewolves, and are untouched by the Wyrm--until the characters arrive. Really creative (read: wierd) Millenium's End gamemasters could even have a team hired to investigate disappearances on a small island in the South Pacific which is home to a stone-age tribe of humans and their "gods", in reality a handful of surviving dinosaurs!

If you can find a copy of this supplement, grab it off the shelf and buy it immediately.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Lands of Mystery
Author: Aaron Allston Category: game Company/Publisher: Hero Games Page count: 96 ISBN: 0-917481-60-7 Capsule Review by Kevin Mowery on 06/09/98. Genre tags: none	I'm jumping into the Wayback machine for this review. Way back in the mid-'80s there was a game called Justice, Inc. which used the Hero system for pulp action. Aaron Allston wrote Lands of Mystery in 1985 as a supplement for JI and other games. As the years have passed, many gamers look back on Lands of Mystery as one of the finest supplements ever produced. Although it was designed for use primarily with JI, it also included stats for Chill, Call of Cthulhu, and Daredevil. But it goes beyond even those games. The mark of a really great supplement is that I'll turn to it even when I'm not using the game it was written for. I can see using Lands of Mystery for nearly any game I play. The first half of the book is a "how-to" manual on constructing lost worlds, but the advice in here goes even beyond that. A lot of the advice, like getting rid of random encounters and making sure that the player-characters have a reason to work together, doesn't seem that revolutionary to me now, after a couple of decades of gaming, but back when I was 13, this stuff would have been a revelation! (Of course, I only bought the book last week, since I saw it on sale at my local hobby store and knew I'd kick myself if anyone else bought it.) The second half of the book is a complete lost world campaign set in the alternate universe of Zorandar complete with player-characters, cave-people, Neanderthals, lost Romans, and dinosaurs. In addition to being a great sample adventure, it's also a great example of how to make a lost world. I mentioned I could use this with any game. Let me give you a couple of examples. In Feng Shui a really radical critical shift could result in a world where apes ruled the world and humans were reduced to cave people. In Werewolf: the Apocalypse a lost valley in Antarctica could conceal a race of humans who never suffered the Impergium, don't fear werewolves, and are untouched by the Wyrm--until the characters arrive. Really creative (read: wierd) Millenium's End gamemasters could even have a team hired to investigate disappearances on a small island in the South Pacific which is home to a stone-age tribe of humans and their "gods", in reality a handful of surviving dinosaurs! If you can find a copy of this supplement, grab it off the shelf and buy it immediately. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)