I learned about this game and system at last GenCon Indy and bought the core book since it looked pretty and the rules didn't sound too hideous.
Anywho, I'm more familiar with it now and feel like sharing. My review is mixed much with how I am using the system since that colors my perceptions quite a bit.
The system mechanics:
It's actually a lot like awod and I am repeatedly drawn to make comparisons.
The system uses dice pools, but instead of d6 TN 5 (or d3) for successes, it is straight up piles of d2's. The lovely thing about it is that the odds are pretty easy for anyone to figure on the fly, you can take your average successes instead of rolling if you prefer, and they use custom d8's that can simulate rolling 1 (duh), 2 or 3d2 all at once (as there are 4 possible outcomes for 2d2 and 8 possible outcomes for number of succeses for 3d2). So I could potentially roll 18 d2 while only using 6 dice. Not too shabby for a system using dice pools.
Moving on to character generation...
6 primary stats which are somewhat similar to awod.
Body, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma.
Sadly the Body and Willpower stats are pretty crappy in execution as there are no real skills for them. They are little more than raw defense stats. There are bravery checks against Will x 2 dice pools to keep from freaking out, so you really don't want to dump in that stat, and Body is how much damage you can soak from 1 attack without being stunned.
I would prefer if they split skills into 3 pairs (physical, mental, social) rather than trying to make 3 physical and 3 mental.
Secondary stats are calculated from the primaries
Movement (Dex+Str)
Defense (Body+Dex-size)
Initiative (Dex+Int)
Health/Hit Points (Body+Will+size)
Perception (Int+Will)
Passive Defense (vs surprise attacks) and Active Defense (vs touch attacks) are just the primary attributes.
Instead of Edge, there are style points which serve a very similar function to boost rolls or other functions, and they are refreshed by acting in character (there are archetypes n goals n flaws) or doing other pleasing things. Some characters have been saving up tons of style points and I had to implement caps, as you can imagine, someone sitting on 10+ Edge can make a GM nervous.
Suggested starting stats are basically having a minimum of 1 die in each stat, and spreading 9 points amongst the rest, maximum 5 dice to start. It is not as elegant as the awod method of spreading stat points around.
Starting skills are much the same. You are given a pile of skill dice to spread around and have a max of 5 to put in any skill.
Skills are attribute linked. Basically you add your skill rating to your relevant ability to get your dice pool. Add in equipment modifiers as necessary. Skills cap out at 5 dice starting out, just like attributes. Weapons cap out around 5 dice as well, so you really aren't often looking at more than 15 dice getting rolled around.
Character creation is pretty fast and easy to accomplish, and you can make a very diverse array of characters.
Some folks on the HEX forums complained about characters min-maxing by dumping some stats at 1 while getting strong defense and attack ratings... I was the only one who found the problem was that they actually crippled their character to the point of uselessness (no perception and no willpower makes for a very shitty combat specialist) with those 1's rather than that they had high Def and ATK numbers (which aren't that big a deal). Anywho, if the stat and skill allocation process were more like awod, that would prevent that sort of dilemma.
While I feel the first parts of character creation are rocking (as they are quite simliar to awod), the next part of character creation is pretty substandard... to be kind.
Talents.
Oh talents. These are pretty much feats that have a very wide range of usefulness.
You go from:
F crappy enough to be considered penalties or total non-abilities
D- ones that are a mere +1 die to a very rare and specialized purpose
B stat substitution for an important roll (int for active defense instead of dex maybe)
B+ +2 dice to common actions
A +1 die to an attribute or a useful special ability (eg. buffing other players +2 dice or an enthralling ability)
My player group is smart enough not to take the traps, but it's a shame that the traps exist at all.
The biggest trap of all is boosting one's size category. Having your size go up by 1 lowers both your attack rating and defense rating by 1 (that's right, you deal less damage and are more easily wounded!), in exchange for 1 extra hit point and raising Body and Strength maximum attribute caps to 6 (raising a stat from 5 to 6 is as expensive as buying 2 talents... which is insanely costly).
Ironically, there is a flaw which gives you a -1 size "penalty" which lowers your max Body and Str caps to 4, and you get a +1 attack and defense bonus and -1 health. It's better than most talents, and you can take it as a flaw. Halfing party ftw!, but of course that's always true.
My quick fix to this retarded mix-up is to simply have sizes not affect attack ratings, and for defense x size gives +x passive defense and -x active defense (so a net +0 to total defense). Bigger stuff gets hit by touch attacks easier, but soaks stuff one cannot dodge easier.
There are out of the box broken talents which can let you basically pwn anyone via psionics or atlantean bullshit, and then on the other side, you can take talents to basically be allowed to buy resources... that anyone else could have just bought straight up. An example of this is taking Mad Scientist so that you can buy resources (same buying talents really) to create artifacts... when instead you could have just spent the same resources to own whatever artifact you wanted.
The supernatural...
Basically nearly all of the supernatural stuff is either too weak or too strong. An often bemoaned problem on the HEX forums are that players with supernatural abilities are able to break nearly any campaign that goes back to the surface world since they are nearly unique and win at everything. I'm planning on just scrapping it and converting awod disciplines and potence and such to my purposes.
Running combats and skills
In using the Hollow Earth system, things are incredibly easy and fast to run. Combats are pretty easy to eyeball their difficulties as all I'm really doing is gauging how many combatants and what their attack and defense ratings are. Since those are about the only stats that matter for a combat, I can usually just wing it and create some reasonable stats on the fly. There are plenty of examples given in books for dinosaurs, nazis, cannibals, man eating plants and other critters as well, but I don't even have to bother looking them up for reference unless someone is doing something funky like trying to enthrall them or sneak around. Even still, it's not hard to ball park things, and if I don't feel like rolling dice, I can just take averages for the NPC rolls. Easy as hell on the GM. I was brand new to the system and able to jump right in to running it.
Much like awod, skills and such have difficulty ratings that are fairly intuitive and easy to apply. The difficulty ratings are obviously a bit longer than 0-6 since it is a lot easier to score 6 successes on d2's than on d3's.
It's so damned pretty.
The production values for the Hollow Earth books are top notch. Very pretty artwork, easy to read fonts that are also thematically appropriate. The flow of the information in the book is pretty solid. The fluff is enjoyable and useful. Very, very few editing errors. I can't even remember any off-hand.
The setting is thoroughly interesting. Set in the 1930's, you have nazi's, potentially WWII underway, you have parts of the world that are not thoroughly explored, and then to top it off, for the fantastic element the world is actually hollow with various entrances (polar openings, verrrry deep caves, supernatural portals, mad science tunneling machines, etc.). Everyone is familiar with the basics of the 1930's, but nobody in my group is a historian so we can take many liberties with facts for the sake of story.
Within the hollow earth apparently gravity is reversed somehow (normally inside a hollow sphere, you would experience no gravitational attraction assuming mass is evenly distributed since the distance away is directly proportional to the amount of mass), and residing at the center is a light source which could be described as a mini-sun. So there is no night, as from any place on hollow earth the "sun" is always directly over head.
I decided that using some unknown principle the "sun" actually repels 'gravitationally' instead of attracting and at some point in the earth before getting to the juicy center there will be a zero gravity region where the strength of the repulsion is equal to the strength of the gravitational pull. On the HEX forums the most common response to how to deal with folks asking questions about how the hollow earth is supposed to physically be possible is "dinosaurs attack!" *sigh*
Anywho, in the hollow earth thar be dinosaurs and all the mega fauna you could ever want. Basically the Dreamlands. Natives too, along with stranded people whose ancestors may have been trapped in the hollow earth accidentally (via bermuda triangle or something loopier).
In my version of hollow earth, I decided to have all 3 awod planes having some coterminous existence such that you can actually walk into the Gloom or the Burning Reflection down there, and the default state is the more sane edges of the Dreamlands... though you can walk into the really crazy parts and actually enter the deeper Dreamlands entirely in some places. Likewise, for folks who can travel to the Burning Reflection, you may be able to escape simply by walking out of it into the hollow earth proper (which is mostly like the Dreamlands). Creatures native to the various planes are not able to so simply cross the threshold into the hollow earth proper however. Once the players have been to Hollow Earth, it will be a lot easier to find their way back, especially if they made visits to the other planes.
Hollow Earth Expedition is intended to be a pulp action adventure game, but I've been styling things more towards a mild horror atmosphere as the players slowly discover the elder horrors trapped in the under world.
I may at a certain point give them a presentation of the awod supernatural character options and work with them to see if they wish to transform into or discover their supernatural being... basically segue into an Origin Story.
I'm tempted to run several games in this same system but set at different times to have each party working towards setting up the future parties so that they will be able to prevent some elder being from awakening and doing very bad things. Basically Eternal Darkness as an RPG.
As I pile on more and more house rules, the game is going to be a lot like awod, except using d2 instead of d3. I'm sure folks are wondering, "why the hell didn't you just use awod to begin with?" Well, when I started prepping the game in August (I can't recall if my first session run was in August or September, meh), awod was less fleshed out, and the HEX system really does run a very fun game quite smoothly.
The number of house rules that I have implemented are pretty slim (I made weapons more generic since I didn't want players to have to dumpster dive to get the best possible pistol and rifle, and I altered the size rules... which hasn't come up other than making the bears and dinosaurs more dangerous), with the exception of the mad scientist character who I am helping by changing his talent into actually doing something inherently useful.
If anyone else is familiar with the HEX system and game, I'd enjoy bantering about it since I could definitely use another pair of eyes to show me things that I have missed for good or bad.
p.s. I must give props to Jeff Combos, the lead designer/creator of the game. My core book I bought at GenCon had its binding break the same week I bought it. We traded some emails and he arranged to have it replaced free of charge as there were a few in their batch that had that problem.
Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) Review
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