This was clearly an attempt to merge superhero gaming with D&D. It’s likely from early 1981, as I hadn’t yet graduated to including things like player notes or descriptions, or anything that looks like a professional D&D adventure. Also, Dune, as there are sandworms that have something unspecified to do with a “melange” that does weird things to people.
Things that don’t make sense even now: I have cave maps 3, 4, and 6. Probably cave map 5, as I’m guessing it’s the unlabeled cave map below maps 3 and 4. But there is no cave map 1 or 2. Page 1 of my notes—which is marked as page 1—starts right out with cave map 3 as the “entrance to Mista”. This probably means that cave maps 1 and 2 were part of some other adventure. I was a big fan of putting entrances to home-built adventures into caverns or dungeons below existing adventures, whether commercial ones or other home-built ones.
I would have separated the cave maps out for this document, but cave 3 and 4 reference each other.
The notes for the entrance include a primitive version of THAC0, a simple calculation for the DM when rolling monster attacks. However, none of the monsters listed have a THAC0 listed, so I’m not sure what use I put that to.
Mist-Lak appears to have started out with an umlaut, but he/she/it quickly lost it.
The multiversal terminology is very similar to what DC used, with Earth-this and Earth-that. Mista is meant to be in another dimension. That’s why I occasionally refer to where the characters are from as “Earth-Fantasy”. The dimension is a tiny one, perhaps a precursor to what I now refer to as personal dimensions. The only thing that exists in the Mista dimension is what is shown on the top and bottom maps. There is nothing outside of Mista’s top and bottom. I don’t think I explicitly state that anywhere in the text.
Occasionally I refer to the top and bottom of Mista and top and bottom, and occasionally as light and dark.
I vaguely remember running this, and the player characters having a great time trying out their superpowers, but it doesn’t look like they ever made it to the Stronghold, because there are at least two unfinished pieces to it.
In the list of monsters, the Madriff and the Mud Slug, while mentioned in the text, were not on the original list of monsters. They were in an appendix sheet of sorts, and are clearly in a different format than the others, including treasure type, number appearing, movement, and morale.
Clearly, radio waves go between the modern world and Mista, as the player characters—and the effects of Mista upon them—were prophesied by a fifties superhero show.
And the fifties show was clearly real, as both it and Mista are in black and white…
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