Justice, Inc. is a role-playing game designed to simulate the adventurestories 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 1930s, and several pulp adventures. Two supplements were published:
Lands of Mystery, 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.
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 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.
Trail of the Gold Spike, by Aaron Allston
Lands of Mystery, by Aaron Allston
Reception
Paul Mason reviewed Justice Inc for Imaginemagazine, and stated that "If you like the Champions rules system, and want a campaign set in the era of the pulps, then Justice Inc will be perfect for you. Otherwise I'm afraid I can't recommend it over its competition." Allen Varney reviewed Justice, Inc. in Space Gamer No. 72. He commented that "Justice Inc. is fundamentally solid work, and certainly adaptable to a wide spectrum of pulp-era melodramatics. If your players want lots of variety in one campaign, this is your game! I realize it's a close call, but I'd say that with this publication, Hero Games probably has the strongest roleplaying line on the market."
