[RPG]: Hollow Earth Expedition, reviewed by merb101 (5/4)

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/13/13209.phtml

Michael Erb's Summary:

An excellent lost-world pulp game and setting. The system is fun, fast and flexible, and the setting is beautifully described and illustrated.

Go to the full review for more information.

[Mechante_Anemone]

Good, clear review! This generally matches my experience with the game.

[Kaemaril]

Set in the late 1800s to early 1900s,

Eh? Isn't the default the 1930s? I'm pretty sure it is, though I'm only about five pages in so far ...

[madwabbit]

Originally Posted by Kaemaril

Eh? Isn't the default the 1930s? I'm pretty sure it is, though I'm only about five pages in so far ...

Yup, it's clearly 1936, although the Ubiquity system certainly would readily accommodate a shift of a couple of decades or so in either direction without any real need for modification, and will eventually see other, more fantastical settings such as the Desolation setting from Greymalkin Designs.

--tom

[His Divine Shadow]

How does the dice pool system work in practise? My gut feeling is that by increasing your skill, you increase the possibility of catastrophic failure. While it also increases the chances of better success, it doesn't sound right that by increasing your ability you increase your chances of screwing up badly as well.

[xenongames]

The key line, I believe is, and the more failures you miss your attempt by, the worse things go for you.. It's not the number of failures that matters (of so, adding dice would be bad), but the margin of failure relative to the difficulty. If you need 10 successes and only get 6 (missing by 4), you are worse off than if you had gotten 9 successes (missing by 1). In this light, having more dice is always better, as they increase your overall chance of success and decrease the margin of failure, should you fail. If you had to get 5 successes, would you rather have 5 dice or 10? The worse you can do is fail by 5, which is more likely with 5 dice than 10.

I have not read the game, but this was my understanding of the mechanics. I could be wrong.

[Mechante_Anemone]

Originally Posted by Kaemaril

Eh? Isn't the default the 1930s? I'm pretty sure it is, though I'm only about five pages in so far ...

Yes and no. The default starting point is 1936, but explorers of the Hollow Earth will rapidly discover strange temporal effects allowing you to justify a good deal of time-shifting if you want. I would definitely consider a setting point in time near Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. Perhaps even going after the notes left by Axel and the path of Arne Saknussen!

[merb101]

Originally Posted by Kaemaril

Eh? Isn't the default the 1930s? I'm pretty sure it is, though I'm only about five pages in so far ...

You are absolutely correct. I should have worded that differently. I really felt the game covered a wider range of time periods, though, and like another forum poster wrote, there are a lot of time travel/creatures out-of-time elements.

ME