Justice, Inc. (role-playing game)
 Justice, Inc. cover | |
| Designers | Aaron Allston, Steve Peterson, Michael Stackpole |
|---|---|
| Publishers | Hero Games |
| Publication | 1984 |
| Genres | Pulp magazine adventures |
| Systems | Hero System |
Justice, Inc. is a role-playing game designed to simulate the adventure stories in the pulp magazines of the 1930s.
It was one of the first non-superhero applications of the point-based game system that had been developed for the Champions superhero game. The generalized point system would eventually be published as the Hero System, following in the footsteps of Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing System, but preceding GURPS as a non-genre-specific game system.
Publishing History
Justice, Inc. was published in July 1984 by Hero Games, and was written by Aaron Allston, Steve Peterson and Michael Stackpole. The two-volume set included a rulebook and campaign book containing a discussion of the pulp genre, the "Empire Club" campaign setting, a timeline of real-world events of the 1920s and '30s, and several pulp adventures.
Two supplements were published:
- Lands of Mystery (May 1985), a critically acclaimed sourcebook describing how to design and run "Lost World" adventures, like those found in the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H. Rider Haggard. ISBN 0-917481-60-7
- Trail of the Gold Spike (August 1984), an adventure set around a Colorado gold mine.
Both were written by Allston, and also included statistics for Chill, Call of Cthulhu and Daredevils.
Unlike several other products in the "Hero" line, Justice, Inc. was not revised or republished in the decades after its release. However, Hero Games finally published a Pulp Hero genre book that covers much of the same ground at the end of 2005.
System
Justice, Inc. used a variation on the point-based rules that were then being published in the Champions superhero game. It placed a heavier emphasis on skills, used lower point totals, and introduced "Talents" rather than "Powers", simulating the paranormal (but not superheroic) abilities of genre characters like the Shadow and Fu Manchu. It used most of the "Disadvantages" of Champions, but halved the points gained from them.
Publications
- Justice Inc. (1984)
- Trail of the Gold Spike (1984), by Aaron Allston
- Lands of Mystery (1985), by Aaron Allston (ISBN 0-917481-60-7)
See also
- Justice, Inc. - the pulp magazine story that inspired the game title
References
- Pulp Hero Pulp Hero section on Hero Games' official web site
- Aaron Allston's game credits list
- Hero Pulp Web Site Dany St-Pierre's fan site
- Pulp Review: Justice Inc. by Paolo Marino
- Lands of Mystery Supplement review by Kevin Mowery on RPGnet