Hollow Earth Expedition
Hollow Earth Expedition
Oct 12Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) is a Pulp Adventure RPG by Exile Games. The setting is the 1930′s, but with a twist – the Earth is actually hollow (!), and all sorts of anachronistic wonders await within for adventures to encounter, exploit, or expeditiously retreat from. Dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and other pulp oddities give the game an Indiana Jones meets The Mummy meets Jurassic Park (Indiana Jones and the Mummy of Jurassic Park?) feel – if you even choose to leave the surface. The surface world has enough cool stories waiting to be told that you may not even need to enter the Hollow Earth (all of the demos I played in were on the surface world).
Out of the gate, the mechanics are very much like the World of Darkness rules. Success/Failure of an action is derived from successes in a dice pool, with the pool being made from Attribute + Skill + Modifiers. HEX is a bit more forgiving here with their “Ubiquity” mechanic. You can use any even-sided die you want for each die in the pool, and evens count as successes. For example, lets say you rolled a dice pool of 5 with a d4, d6, d8, d12, and d30 and got results of 2, 5, 8, 11, and 30. Three even numbers mean three successes. With higher dice pools this can mean a lot of dice, so Exile Games has released special Ubiquity Dice that greatly speed up the action by combining the average of up to three dice into one – drastically reducing the number of dice you have to roll. Players may even choose to “take the average” on checks where applicable, which is as easy as it sounds. It’s a very simple mechanic that takes a bit to get used to, but it really makes the game fly. Encounters both social and combative focus more on storytelling than on tactical details, though there is enough of a balance for both kinds of players to have fun. Being used to combat always involving a battlemat and minis, a combat done without them was very odd at first while also very liberating. It reminded me of my first AD&D 2nd edition games when I first started playing RPG’s when minis were very rarely used.
It’s the roleplaying that maxes HEX shine. Along with the streamlined rules, characters can earn “style points” when they play out motivations and flaws in their characters, along with good roleplaying. These style points give the pulp infusion into the game, as characters can use them in especially tough situations for bonus dice to make that amazing shot or narrowly avoid the spears from the tribal warriors. In all the demos I played, the style points were given out and used quite liberally which made for a great time all around. The system is flexible enough for fast-paced storytelling that can quickly go from a social scene to a velociraptor chase with a ranged combat with hostile natives in between rather easily. There are a few quibbles, notably with how health is tracked, but the system is very smooth and easy to learn. This game is all about the story, and the rules exist only to help the story along. I’m planning to begin a regular HEX campaign soon, and I’m excited to see what the game’s capable of. A definite “Buy” for RPG fans!
