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The book includes some eighty pages of sourcebook material for Central America from Mexico to Honduras, plus four scenarios running for a bit longer than that. Throughout, Pagan Publishing keeps to its usually-high standard of visual presentation (although some of the cursive fonts can be difficult to read). Hieroglyphs, site maps and detail illustrations of artifacts and artwork are copious and wonderful. Likewise, sections about ancient peoples and geography of the lowland regions are dense and informative. Other parts detail Mesoamerican entities and calendrics. However, there are odd gaps in places, and what seem to be extraneous material in others. For example, there is very little information about where travelers might arrive in the region, as well as what amenities are available to house and equip a group. Readers get a list of Aztec and Maya towns, but not of cities they will strike forth from. Likewise, we get a detailed list of primitive weapons (including some which are statistically identical) but only a handful of these appear in the scenarios.
Also conspicuously missing is information about possible character types. It is generally assumed that investigators will have an interest in the archaeological riches of the area, so there is no information about the presence of clergy (missionaries), military personnel (US forces occupied many Central American countries in the relevant time period, and Pagan's own P Division is active in Nicaragua during 1933), or diplomats, who served as intelligence agents abroad before the FBI became interested in Latin American espionage. Likewise, few resources exist for the creation of native characters.
Four scenarios comprise the majority of the book, written by Pagan stalwarts John H. Crowe III and Brian Appleton. While each one is excellent on its own, there is a problem with them when considered as a whole: each one involves going to an archaeological site and dealing with what is present. Fortunately, what sets each adventure apart from the others are the types of dangers that await their investigators.
The adventures in Mysteries of Mesoamerica are really three semi-connected stories and one outlier, “The Well of Sacrifice,” that feels like a convention game. Not only is the latter set in 1914 – a decade before the others – but it starts with the party assembled at a library in the capital of the Yucatán, with little thought as to why they are there, and no motive to prevent a hasty departure in an unexpected direction when the opportunity presents itself (Keepers looking for details about the city can find some, oddly, in the third adventure, set close by). Actually, it may be good advice to play this as a one-shot, because it will devolve rather quickly into grim survival horror against a powerful non-Mythos foe.
“The Menhirs in the Grotto” resembles a more conventional Call of Cthulhu investigation, of the murders of workers at an Aztec site in Mexico. This scenario features acolytes of three different Mythos gods, although this will not be evident to most parties. And while two of them are working in concert, the next scenario twists this setup.
“The Heretics” involves two cults with conflicting views about the true nature of a Mayan deity (not the kind of a disagreement that gets resolved in a court of law). I enjoyed this fresh take on the otherwise commonly-appearing motif of investigating a sacred site, and there are plenty of complications to bedevil the group. Background material about the city of Mérida and organizing an expedition appears here, though it is arguably needed more in the first scenario.
“The Temple of the Toad” picks up where a Robert E. Howard story leaves off, providing a tangible connection to the primary text. It brings the party to a site in Honduras, hopefully with enough time to prevent a ritual from culminating.
All throughout the book are short obituaries of dearly departed investigators who did not survive their respective scenarios. A rather larger number of them, actually. They are quite amusing and might provide some inspiration for NPCs.
The only danger of using these scenarios together, as mentioned earlier, is that the setup is a bit monotonous. This is compounded by some of the keener similarities, especially between “The Well of Sacrifice” and the others. Some of that adventure's elements – significant calendar events, stelae, heretofore lost journals, even the use of Mérida as a starting point – can all be found in the other adventures. If this one comes first, the effectiveness of the others is dulled. I would recommend recommend running “The Well of Sacrifice” for a different groups, and certainly using other investigators, since a TPK is entirely likely.
What would have made this book perfect is a more modular approach that allowed Keepers to customize their own adventures, choosing the time period and locale while mixing NPCs, mundane complications, and Mythos encounters as they saw fit. Also, the material about hiring on to an expedition should have been part of the sourcebook, rather than hidden in one scenario, as it is useful enough for all four, as well as anything a Keeper dreams up. Still, a campaign of sorts might be made out of the final three adventures – even running “The Well of Sacrifice” as an introduction to the region and lead in for the main event.
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