The game itself, although easy to understand, is difficult to explain genre wise. The game rules allow for any genre, and the game is set up to have all of them available at once. Dimensional travel, time shifting, pocket universes, planes of existence and interaction between all of them are the norm in a standard LoC campaign. Intended for multi-genre play, it would also work well as a generic rpg system for running any genre a GM can detail himself. No real reason is given for the PCs travels, but their goal is to rise to the level of Lord of Creation and be capable of creating their own dimension/world/campaign. I can see the broad capabilities of these rules used in creating campaigns like; Quantum Leap, Stargate, and Fringeworthy.

Characters attributes (muscle, speed, stamina, mental and luck) are rolled on 2d10, these determine modifiers to rolls for things like; damage, healing and powers. Most importantly, all attributes added together and divided by ten (always rounded up) equals the character's Personal Force. Personal Force determines a character's level, and therefore their powers, the number of skill levels they can choose, and how far below 0 their life points can go before unconsciousness turns to death.. Powers are abilities that help regular people survive in a multi-dimensional game world, like Dimensional Language which allows them to speak any language as necessary.

Skills are grouped by profession, like pilot, 5 levels of associated skills per profession. Pilot skills, for example, start with "Land Vehicles" at first level and run through water, air, futuristic/magical, up to "Special Ships" at 5th level. Although highly general and simplistic, in a game world with the broad possibilities LoC contains, this system not only works but excels. Organized like skills are powers the characters earn as they advance in level, again grouped in progressively powerful lists of five powers. Powers, by definition, are more like magic, psionics and super-science abilities than the profession based skills. Sorcerer, telepath and cyborg are examples of the 12 power groups.

Combat is equally simple but functional. Base chance, modified by level, and armor must be beat on 1d20. Hits result in rolled damage ranges, very AD&D ranges. Armors are separated into what they are affective on, like ballistic and energy armors are only effective on certain attacks/weapons. Some optional, advanced rules are provided but none are really surprising, innovative or difficult to run with.

The next part of the rule book provides GMs with advice and examples of how to set up scenarios and campaigns. This is the shinning part of the work. Without boring a veteran, the text discusses campaign creation from the basics. Six game worlds are provided as samples, ranging from mythic, to fantasy, to scifi, alternate universe and historical. Although the assumption of the game is that characters can travel between such worlds, the rules and background material could easily support games where no inter-dimensional/game world travel is possible. Aside from the campaign outlines, lists of foes to encounter from the other book (Book of Foes) are provided for the campaign types mentioned above and others, like horror for example. I found the alternate history Earth world of Priddo and the scifi campaign of Imperial Terra as the most interesting. On Priddo, old empires have not faded, and due to magic, technology is somewhat stunted at a fantastical 19th century level. Imperial Terra is a despotic universe, ruled by a mad emperor and a lunar IA. Both were worth reading in and of themselves.

The Book of Foes is 63 pages of 450 very original Monster Manual-like entries, of creatures and individuals for characters to encounter in any dimension or campaign world. Each gets a small picture and at least a couple of lines of text, but never more than a half page, along with their game stats. The abilities of these "foes" are provided in the context of the rules for characters' skills and powers. All the art is well done black and white, which is extremely helpful as the text descriptions are often very thin and the GM will need every one of the 1000 words each picture is worth.

Lords of Creation is worth its cover price to any gamer of any genre. It's a resource and a good game for short runs to take a break from regular gaming campaigns. Easy to learn, satisfying in execution and so broad in scope. Go find it, you'll wonder why you ever needed more than its two books to play any genre of rpg.

This review appears in Alarums & Excursions #334 and was posted here with permission.