[RPG]: Hollow Earth Expedition, reviewed by Andrew Ellis Troubio (4/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/12/12420.phtml

Andrew Ellis Troubio's Summary:

Can this new game from Exile Studios break the Curse of the Pulp Game???

Go to the full review for more information.

[Tim Gray]

Good review. But I think you should have told us about the Hollow Earth of the title, and how characters interact with it, as well as talking about the game's use as a generic pulp ruleset.

[Dan Davenport]

Originally Posted by Tim Gray

Good review. But I think you should have told us about the Hollow Earth of the title, and how characters interact with it, as well as talking about the game's use as a generic pulp ruleset.

I agree. While I have a few quibbles with the frontloaded nature of combat, I think the setting is a <b>huge</b> selling point for the game. The biggest, in fact.

[Destriarch]

I may be missing something, but what exactly is meant by the term 'Ubiquity Dice'? Is this a special game mechanic, a dice product I've never heard of, or did you simply mean 'Ubiquitous Dice'?

Ash

[Andrew Ellis Troubio]

Doh! I sent off an incomplete draft! Here's the missing bits.

What makes this different from those other pulp games that have come and gone? Hollow Earth has a narrower focus in its core book. Most of the other pulp games on the market have spread themselves thin trying to make a game where The Shadow, Doc Savage, Indiana Jones, and Nathan Zachary can exist in the same PC group. This game is primarily about ‘Lost World’ adventures inside the Hollow Earth. Time there is strange and doesn’t flow normally. As such, you have some pirates, amazons, dinosaurs, and various other anachronisms existing in the same place. The sun always shines. Characters range from hardy explorers trying to document the Hollow Earth to poor souls that were lost there by mistake. A good template would be the recent Peter Jackson King Kong movie, where everything is bigger, meaner, and nastier. I suspect that forthcoming books will add in more adventures on the Surface World, but for now, dealing with the threats of the Hollow Earth is good enough for me. Of course, the one threat from the surface world that does merit mention in the main book is the Nazis. As the prevalent pulp bad guys, Exile Games brings them in to menace the players with a human antagonist along with raptor packs and ancient temples. It’s a good move, because everybody likes an Evil Empire to face off against, and honestly, Nazi Villain and pulp go together like Indiana Jones and his bullwhip. And, when you have Nazis on the left and a T-Rex on the right, it can make like for the PCs very interesting.



There is also mention of mad science and mysticism with big drilling machines and strange Atlantean artifacts for the players to chase after. While many examples are given, anyone looking for a creation system will be disappointed. It’s easy to deal with Atlantean artifacts being relegated to the background as strange, forgotten items of magic. Considering it is one of the templates in the middle of the book, the lack of a mad science system makes playing such a character a challenge. If part of the fun is building gadgets and there are no rules for that process, why play the character?

I may be missing something, but what exactly is meant by the term 'Ubiquity Dice'? Is this a special game mechanic, a dice product I've never heard of, or did you simply mean 'Ubiquitous Dice'?

Ash

The Ubiquity Dice are for use with the Ubiquity system, which is what hex uses. You don't NEED the specialty dice to play, but if you are adverse to big handfuls o dice, you may want them.

[Von Ether]

To quote Dan in another H.E. thread
"In our adventure alone, we had a zeppelin, a spy for a secretive cabal, a triceratops herd, a T-rex attack, a glimpse of a sabretooth tiger, mysterious time anomalies, a tribe of natives dwelling in an Ewok-like tree village, killer apes guarding Atlantean ruins containing a dangerous artifact, and Nazis lead by a fiendish scientist using a weird science force field device of unknown origin."

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?...t=hollow+earth

[Destriarch]

Originally Posted by Andrew Ellis Troubio

The Ubiquity Dice are for use with the Ubiquity system, which is what hex uses. You don't NEED the specialty dice to play, but if you are adverse to big handfuls o dice, you may want them.

Aha, thanks! I may have to seek some of these out for my collection

Ash

[Sangrolu]

Originally Posted by Destriarch

I may be missing something, but what exactly is meant by the term 'Ubiquity Dice'?

I just learned about this myself, so those who actually have the book might correct my terminology, but the probability math should be correct.

Ubiquity dice is basically the mapping of the probability curve of 1 or more "1d2-1" dice (using standard gamer terms) to an eight sided dice.

So a ubiquity d1 is an eight sided dice with 1 on 4 sides and 4 blank sides.

A ubiquity d2 is an eight sided dice with 2 blank sides, 4 sides with "1", and 2 sides with 2. This is the same as rolling 2d2-2.

A ubiquity d3 is an eight sided dice with 1 blank side, 2 sides with 1, 2 sides with 2, and 1 side with 3. This is the same odds as rolling 3d2-3.

So, basically what you get is the ability to roll Exalted style dice pools with fewer actual dice. If you want to roll dice for high/low, a "Ubiquity" d2 takes the place of 2 dice and a Ubiquity d3 takes the place of 3.