After hearing about HEX for awhile, I finally bought it. I, too, wanted to wade into the prehistoric jungle of lost treasures and strange beasts deep within the earth's core.  What did I find?  A solid book that attempted to help me build my own pulp, action-adventure world, setting, and forces of opposition in 1936.  Not, however, a core RPG book that did everything for me.

Buyers should be aware that the 2006 hardcover, 8/5 x 11" size, color plates and end papers edition is out of print. The latest edition (or printing, since none of the content - that I know of - has changed) is a smaller travel size softcover that's all black and white.

Because playing a tabletop game for the first time with a gaming group can be a daunting task with lots of book passing, I decided to acquire both versions. The softcover retailing for about $20 while the former hardcover retailed at about $35.

So, finally got to run it for my players. The session went well. Even though there's a lot of period information and suggestions, I think GMs will have their work cutout for them if they're trying to emulate films like Big Trouble in Little China, King Kong, and possibly even Indiana Jones.  Limited space and scope keep GMs from getting everything they could possibly imagine.  The rules for creating characters, combat, and just playing the game take up a fair amount of territory. Then there's play examples, a bestiary, some NPC stats, introductory adventure, and list of resources. Not too much about outside-the-box cinematic storytelling or capturing the feel of your favorite 1930's pulp and/or hollow earth film.

But then HEX is supposed to be rather vague and open-ended. It's not engineered for telling one particular story really well, instead it helps the GM run a bunch of story possibilities - all with the same general type of setting; and it does that fairly well. I can see the value in not getting too specific.  Too much detail might steal a bit of GM creativity.  That means the hollow earth is all rather nebulous, of course.  Besides dinosaurs, jungle, beast men, Atlantis, and fellow explorers (possibly Nazis), there could be anything down there!

So, HEX loses a little something when it tries to stretch itself between Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Time Machine, Jurassic Park, or Lovecraft's "Beneath the Pyramids". A successful HEX campaign really needs a talented GM with a lot of free time or one of the supplements to aid him.

If you've read other reviews, then you most likely know about the dearth of sorcery rules and weird science material.  Again, there are sourcebooks for that stuff, assuming you don't want to create your own or just wing it.

As for the system, I think Ubiquity is fine. Not awesome... but fine.  Coming up with the number of evens needed to call an action "successful" (are 2 enough? 4 too many?) felt completely arbitrary, even to me.  Combat was super lethal. A couple of the PCs were a little trigger-happy (which is perfectly understandable when one of the main character archetypes is Big Game Hunter) and NPCs/beasts didn't last more than a single round.

Aesthetically speaking, it looks impressive. Back in 2006, there were very few black and white RPG books with this kind of high quality artwork. Nowadays, however, it might not seem quite as special. The 6 x 9" travel size re-print is nice but lacks the breadth of artistic vision which the hardcover embodied.  Also, there's a PDF, but I don't know anything about that.

All in all, I'm glad I bought the game and look forward to running Hollow Earth Expedition again!

~ Venger Satanis

After session #2, I have some fresh insight into HEX: given enough time and enthusiasm (especially when fueled by an awesome idea), the PCs will pretty much be able to do anything they want within the setting's context and never die.

It would have been nice if the introductory text had said that up-front, but I got there in the end.  That's how this style of game should go and that's what the system facilitates.  Once the GM is aware of this, the game noticeably improves for all.

If your players are tired of scrounging and scavenging for a +1 sword, constantly trying to survive battles with giants, dragons, and wizards, then they'd probably enjoy a little vacation.  Give them some well-deserved R&R.  Run HEX.  Somewhere between 1 and 3 sessions should do the trick.

VS