Ridiculous Thoughts

9 out of 10

Product Description

As the Nazi menace grows an ancient secret starts to leak out into the world. Will the characters prevent the Nazi’s from gaining access to this secret? Will they profit from it themselves? Will they even survive the journey home.

Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) is a role-playing game, published by Exile Game Studios, of pulp adventure set in the 1930’s. True to the genre, the game features true heroes, evil villans and fast-paced action. The HEX rulebook clocks in at 256 pages and is available as both a hardcover book and a pdf file. The hardcover costs $39.99 and is available at your local game store or you can order it online from the publisher (www.exilegames.com) and from amazon.com. The game is also available as a pdf file from the publisher and many of the online pdf games stores including www.rpgnow.com, for $24.99—as of the publication date the pdf version was on sale for $19.99 but I don’t know how long that will last.

Fit and Finish

While I love pdf gaming materials for their portability and searchability, this is one product that you want to be sure to own the hardcover for. It is a beautiful piece of work. The cover and binding are solid and look like they will hold up to use. The paper stock is heavy and easy to manipulate. The fonts are well chosen, evocative of the period and genre, but easy to read. The layout of the pages is simple, with an shaded, aged look on the edges of the pages that doesn’t detract from readability—unlike similar effects in other popular game books.

The art really sets this book apart. The exterior art, by Stephen Daniele, is gorgeous. It portrays a party, beset by dinosaurs trying to get back to their drilling machine and escape from the Hollow Earth. The interior has less color than I am used to seeing in books in this price range, but the vast majority of if is excellent; high quality and in an appropriate in context. In particular, I like the drawing of the T-Rex charging the hunter on page 140 and the illustration of the small boat traveling between giant Atlantean columns on page 189. These illustrations really convey the grandeur, danger and mystery of the setting. Even in the couple of places where the art doesn’t live up to these high standards, it is still better than much of the art floating around other rpg products.

Rules Overview

I found the rules to be similar in style to one of my favorite games of all time, Feng Shui. Like Feng Shui, HEX aims to keep the rules lite and out of the way of both the story and the action.

HEX is the first game based the Ubiquity role-playing system. Ubiquity uses dice pools to resolve conflicts and actions. Your skill determines the number of dice to roll, bonuses and penalties add or subtract dice from this. You roll the resulting number of dice of any type. Even numbers are successes. If you score more successes than the difficulty of the action, you are successful in your action.

This dice pool system is both simple and fun. If you like rolling dice you can roll them. If not, you can simplify this further by reducing large number of dice to the average. For example, if your dice pool is 12-dice, you can assume the first 10 resulted in 5 successes and roll the remaining two dice. Similarly, you can “take the average” on any roll where the average result of your dice pool is greater than the difficulty of the task. This allows you to avoid rolling dice altogether in these situations.

Character Generation

Character generation is done on a simple point buy system. You have 15 points to spread between the six different attributes. If you’ve played other games you can probably guess what these attributes are. Combinations of these attributes are used to calculate another six secondary attributes. From there you can select skills and talents and an optional flaw which can provide interesting role-playing opportunities.

Fundamental to character creation in HEX is the selection of an Archetype and a Motivation. The archetype helps define the type of character you are playing, a hunter, an academic, etc. Many examples are provided, but you can be anything with your GMs permission. Motivation is your character’s reason for adventuring. As with archetypes, many examples are provided. These two things provide a foundation for determining attributes, skills etc. They are not limiting in any way, instead they provide a concise description of your character. Motivation is similar to the plot-hook that required of Feng Shui characters.

One of the things I found particularly interesting was talents that allowed abilities other then strength and dexterity to be used for combat. A character could, for example, use intelligence instead of dexterity for firearms combat. This might represent a character who uses intellect and practice rather than a natural talent for this skill. I like this option because I can make a smart military leader who would be useful in an action oriented game. To do that, I’m sacrificing a talent that I could use to enhance other things, so there is balance and more choice for the player.

The other interesting character component are style-points. Characters start with a certain number of these and the GM can award additional points for role-playing or enhancing the game in other ways. Players can spend these points to get extra dice in their pool when they really need them. This isn’t a new idea, but it encourages role-playing and works well in this genre.

Combat

Combat is tight and simple. After an initiative roll, actions are resolved with opposed attack and defense rolls. The difference between the attack and defense rolls determines the damage done. This simplifies combat and keeps the number of rolls down. Rules are provided for most of the combat actions you would want to take, including aggressive attacks and defensive options. I also like the “Continuous Combat” option which replaces the usual initiative roll and round-robin combat sequence with a continuous sequence of phases. Your character’s initiative determines when he acts first, then the actions he takes determine how many phases later he gets to act again.

Background Material

The background material that is provided is of the caliber you should be expecting after the rest of this review. There is the usual bit of introductory fiction to set the stage for the game. In this case it is a series of journal entries from an expedition to the North Pole that accidentally ends up in the Hollow Earth. An extensive introduction to the 1930’s is provided. This section includes information on many countries around the world and their condition upto 1936 when the game begins.

The description of the Hollow Earth is broad rather than deep. This is just the way is should be; leaving the GM lots of options to run the kinds of adventures he wants. Additionally, the players, who may have copies of this book, don’t get enough information to ruin an adventure or the sense of wonder at their GM’s interpretation of the Hollow Earth.

Finally, there is a section of references and inspiration for pulp adventure in the 1930’s. A lot of this you are probably already aware of if you are interested in this game, but I found some interesting stuff in there.

Room for Improvement

There are only a couple parts of the game that I felt were lacking. I missed a system, or guidelines, for magic/psychic powers for the characters. Magical devices are discussed, but other than psychic sensitivity, occult characters don’t have much to take advantage of. This is disappointing given the amount of background material given to mytics and occult. I would also like to have seen a little more diversity in the beastiary. There are a lot of dinsosaurs and prehistoric animals. I would have like to see a few less of those and see some other staples of the genre. A mummy or animated golem would have been a nice addition.

Conclusion

In summary, if you like a fast, easy rule system and a genre where the emphasis is on fast moving stories, real heroes and action, then you will enjoy Hollow Earth Expeditions. I feel that this is one of the best games to come out in a long time.

Steve