Hollow Earth Expedition is back in the exciting supplement to the core rulebook, Secrets of the Surface World. This book holds the answer to many questions that might have popped in your head while you leafed through the original. Like who would win in a dogfight between a fighter pilot and a flight of pterosaurs, or how do I build a cool doomsday device? In my opinion this book is so useful that it's indispensable, and here’s why: entire sections of the rules have been retooled to make them more useable.

Everyone knows that in the Pulp 1930s morality wasn’t grey and everything was cooler from the gloating bad guys to the rugged diesel-punk toys. It should come as no surprise that Hollow Earth Expedition is cool, too.

In designing a role playing adventure, the writer is always faced with determining how much role playing will be involved versus tactical combat. Some players really like to get into character and act out every aspect of the adventure. Others prefer to skip to the fights. Mansion of Shadows by Robert J. Schwab takes the more role player, less fighting approach.

Hades, at least to me, marks a return of the Palladium Books to where they were before the finanical crisis hit the publisher about 16 months ago. Sure there have been new books released during that time, but they were far and few between, with many being smaller supplements and books that really didn’t carry the weight of a good Palladium release--which is namely a very rich, imaginative idea scaled down into an easy-to-read book that’s entertaining and full of enthusiasm that you don’t get with other RPG companies. Hades is the start of yet another Palladium series that shows a lot of promise; however, as someone who’s accustom to Palladium never finishing what they started--I’m looking at you Land of the Dammed, Wolfen Wars and Beyond the Supernatural—it’s hard for me to see the book as anything more than a two-part series (the second book, Dyval, is in printing at the time of this writing) and not the first of a promised five book series.

 Some role-playing games confine the players to a strict set of rules. Steve Kenson obviously does not believe in such rigidity as is made apparent by the Mastermind’s Manual for the Mutants and Masterminds system. The rules get blown open in the Mastermind’s Manual allowing players to make the game into whatever their little gamer-hearts’ desire.