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The name’s Davenport. I review games.
And normally, this bit starts with a knock at the door. Well, not this time. This time, it was a knock on the floor.
By “knock,” of course, I mean “a giant drilling machine busted in.”
It was Jeff Combos droppin’ by – or risin’ up, I guess – to say hi, all tricked out in a lab coat, ritzy goggles, a big tool belt, and an even bigger grin.
I’d met the guy back at GenCon ’05, when he couldn’t stop goin’ on about this “Hollow Earth Expedition” he had planned.
Looked like he’d pulled it off.
At least, that’s what I figured based on the brontosaurus head that poked up behind him outta the gizmo’s hatch, a nice batch of fronds danglin’ from its mouth.
But then he says he didn’t just find dinos down there. (Personally, I thought that was plenty impressive on its own.) Says he found mammoths and cannibals and man-eating plants and Amazons and fancy gizmos…
And Nazis, he adds. Lots and lots of Nazis.
So what was he doin’ messin’ with Nazis in the Hollow Earth, I wanted to know?
“Forming an underground resistance, of course!” he says.
Even after that, I agreed to review the game. Which goes to show just how much I like Combos and pulp stuff.
So anyway, here’s the review. I hope you dig it.
Substance
Flight of the Eagle
This charming bit of introductory fiction takes the game’s setting back to its roots in Victorian-era scientific romance, telling the tale of hapless explorers entering the Hollow Earth by airship in 1896. While intro fiction often annoys me as a waste of space, “Flight” is both well-written and practical, serving as an entertaining guide to describing the true wonder of the Hollow Earth – and, more specifically, the strange visuals resulting from entering it by air.
Introduction
This section describes pulp adventure both in general and as it relates to the game’s setting, covers the “What is Roleplaying” issue, and explains the book’s organization.I’ll address these points in detail in the order in which the book does so. For now, it’s enough to know that HEX focuses on (unsurprisingly) a hypothetical hollow region in the Earth’s interior filled with savage lands and primitive beasts from Earth’s past and with some amazing secrets that men would kill to possess – men like the Nazis.
I have to fault this section on one point, and that is its use of characters such as Doc Savage and the Shadow to exemplify pulp adventure heroes. While they certainly do that, they’re also far beyond the capabilities of default starting HEX characters. In point of fact, the characters’ heroic competence far more closely resembles that of Victorian explorers such as those in “Flight of the Eagle” than it does that of two-fisted heroes like Doc. The problem, then, isn’t with the accuracy of the text, but rather with the expectations it may set in the minds of players. As we’ll see, however, that’s easily remedied.
Chapter 1: Setting
Despite the name, this chapter covers the status quo of the “real world” circa 1936, not the nature of the Hollow Earth. (That part begins after the rules, in Chapter 7.)The book takes one of the most common-sense approaches to historical timelines I’ve seen. Having the advantage of a specific default year as the game’s start time, the chapter eschews a year-by-year breakdown in favor of what the characters would remember about the world 1, 5, 10, and 25 years ago and how many people felt about events of the day. This method results in a more “personal” feel to history – a history that the players’ characters actually lived.
Of course, with “history” comes “history buffs,” and the chapter wisely advises GMs to talk with their players over just how much they care about historical minutia, such as the exact month Boulder Dam went online. It further reminds GMs and players alike that different characters will know different facts depending upon their backgrounds, and that even then, they’ll likely differ about the truth and/or significance of those facts.
The chapter also features a valuable discussion of everyday life and a fairly comprehensive gazetteer of countries of the world circa 1936, helping players and GMs get up to speed before throwing in the curve ball that is the Hollow Earth.
Chapter 2: Characters
Character creation in HEX is a very straightforward process, largely accomplished by point distribution from category-specific point pools.
ArchetypeIn HEX terms, “Archetype” is purely conceptual rather than mechanical in nature. The Archetype is nothing more than a core concept, such as Doctor, Hunter, or Occultist, around which the player can build his character.
MotivationsIn contrast, the Motivation selected for the character, such as Fame, Greed, Love, or simply Survival, does indeed have a game mechanic effect: whenever the character acts in a way particularly in tune with that which motivates him, he earns a Style Point (see below). I always appreciate these sorts of positive reinforcement techniques to encourage roleplaying.
AttributesPlayers have 15 points to divide between six attributes: Body (toughness), Dexterity, Strength, Charisma, Intelligence, and Willpower. With a score of 2 being average, this means that a character could have distributions of 2x3/3x3, 2x4/3x1/4x1, or 1x5/5x1 before having to drop another attribute below average to compensate. That’s not the most pulpy point spread by any means, but it’s also not the final say on attribute levels. More on that below.
The section further describes typical attribute rolls, which I appreciate, as this clears up the question of what is an attribute roll as opposed to a skill roll before the question even comes up.
These primary attributes go toward calculating the character’s secondary attributes:
Size = 0 (Average Human)
Move = Strength + Dexterity
Perception = Intelligence + Willpower
Initiative = Dexterity + Intelligence
Defense = Body + Dexterity – Size
Stun = Body
Health = Body + Willpower + SizeThe secondary attributes mostly impact combat, which I’ll get to in just a bit.
SkillsAs with attributes, players have 15 points to spend on a one-for-one basis for their characters’ skills, again with a 5-point maximum. These skills tend toward the broad end of the spectrum (e.g., Melee Weapons); however, players can spend half a point to get a Specialization (e.g., Swords) which will give their characters +1 on rolls related to the Specialization. Other skills are Specialized Skills (e.g., Science), which require the selection of a specialized field (e.g., Physics).
Talents & ResourcesPlayers get exactly one point to spend on Talents and Resources – these being cool things you can do (the former) and cool people you can know or things you can have (the latter).
Talents include some really cool pulpy abilities like Knockback (as in knocked backwards by a blow) and Skill Mastery (which changes a skill from Specialized to standard, allowing a character to know all things scientific, for example). They also include abilities to swap out attributes associated with given attacks; e.g., while Strength governs Melee Combat, a character might use Dexterity for swift blows from his rapier and sheer Willpower to parry attacks.
What you won’t find are any supernatural powers beyond “Psychic Sensitivity,” an ability that makes the character able to detect psychic and magical phenomena – an ability of dubious use when playing from this book alone, as there are no real rules for psychic or magical phenomena to be detected. (Amending that requires the sourcebook Secrets of the Surface World. Another day, another review…)
Ironically, the very coolness of the Talents is a source of frustration, given the limit on the number characters can have. Yes, there is a way to have a total of two (see below), but even then, there’s still the issue of Resources, which come from the same pool of points.
Each category of Resource comes in 5 levels. These categories include Artifacts – products of magic, weird science, etc. – as well as more mundane factors like allies, contacts, military rank, and wealth. Given the lack of Artifact creation rules, this Resource will be limited to the pre-generated Artifacts in Chapter 5. As for the others, the book emphasizes that Resources, unlike Talents, can be lost. Considering the fact that the heroes presumably will be exploring the Hollow Earth with little to no contact with the surface world, being extremely wealthy or knowing J. Edgar Hoover wouldn’t seem to be all that useful in the long run. (Again, Secrets of the Surface World addresses this issue.)
Playtest: Even though the game that I ran was on the higher end of the power scale, with players having access to five Talents and/or Resources, only one of them made his character remotely wealthy and influential. I strongly suspect this was a combination of the coolness of the Talents and a fear of quickly losing the Resources. (To be fair, I probably didn’t emphasize that fix in the sourcebook for the lost Resources issue.)
Experience PointsThe final step in fleshing out a character involves spending the 15 Experience Points with which the characters begin the game. Note that spending these points isn’t mandatory – players can hang onto them for a larger purchase later.
The point costs are:
Primary Attribute: New Attribute Level x 5 points
Skill: New Skill Level x 2 points
Skill Specialization: 3 points
Talent: 15 points
Resource: 15 pointsAs you can see, spending these points won’t exactly rock a character’s world. Again, we’re only talking about the addition of one more Talent or one more level of Resource, and a Primary Attribute raised in this manner won’t be able to exceed 3. As previously mentioned, these are not world-beating characters. These are characters who will need each other to survive, which is, in fact, exactly what the designer intended them to be.
That said, the game does allow for characters of whatever power level you’d like simply by increasing the number of initial Experience Points you give them.
Playtest: As previously mentioned, my characters were several magnitudes more powerful than the standard starting HEX adventurer. However, I used a more straightforward method suggested by the author that kept the players from having to do a lot of unwanted math. Under Resources, Allies receive an increasing allotment of points in each area depending upon their Resource level. I simply gave my players the point breakdown allotted to Allies of the highest level – the same level that the author used to create such heroes as Doc Savage and the Shadow in his “League of Extraordinary Pulp” game at GenCon ’07. No muss, no fuss. And given the small number of points involved in even my higher-powered game, character creation proved to be a breeze. With a character concept firmly in mind, I’d be surprised if the process took anyone more than 30 minutes on the outside.
The chapter concludes with a dozen pre-generated characters (all of which may be downloaded here): Big Game Hunter, Dying Moneyman, Field Biologist, Fortune Hunter, Imperiled Actress, Intrepid Reporter, Jungle Missionary, Lost Traveler, Mad Scientist, Occult Investigator, Rugged Explorer, and Snooty Professor. Again, note the point spreads on the Attributes, for example. To be a crack shot, the Big Game Hunter ended up being no more rugged than Joe Average. And I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play the Mad Scientist using only the core rules just to get their hands on that stun rifle – if I’m going to play a Mad Scientist, I want to be able to play with some Mad Science, dammit! Still, the breadth of the pregens should offer something to appeal to just about everyone.
Chapter 3: Rules
HEX uses an (Attribute + Skill) or (Attribute x 2) dice pool success-counting system, which in and of itself is nothing unique. What is unusual is the fact that the game can use any sort of dice, in any combination, because the numbers don’t matter. Instead, an odd number is a success and an even number is a failure. Or vice versa. Or 1-3 on a d6. All that matters is a 50-50 chance of success on each die. The difficulty numbers of tasks – or the number of successes rolled by an opponent – indicates the number of successes required to succeed. Extended tasks may be simulated by requiring a given number of successes to be accumulated in a fixed time period. Degree of success/failure matters, and a roll with no successes at all results in a Fumble.The system proceeds to have a lot of fun playing with this basic concept. For example, lots of factors can add bonus dice to a roll: possessing other relevant Skills, capable assistants, and appropriate tools, for example. (That last bit includes weapons and has some major implications for the combat system in the next chapter.)
The system offers some niftier tricks than just these, though. For example, “Taking the Average” lets the player or the GM take the average possible score to a roll as the automatic total, removing the need to roll at all in order to keep the story moving. Furthermore, using this method means that a GM can run a game without ever rolling if he so chooses.
Then there are “Chance Dice”: at any time, a player can choose to make an impossible roll possible by adding two extra dice at a time in exchange for a one-point increase in the target number. So, for example, if a character has three dice and the difficulty is 5, the character can add two dice (thus raising the difficulty to 6, and hence still impossible for a dice pool of 5), then add another two dice (thus raising the difficulty to 7, now possible to beat with a dice pool of 8.) The trick is the fact that every increase makes a catastrophic margin of failure more likely. (Of course, it also makes an outright Fumble less likely, and the book isn’t clear on what level of failure corresponds to a Fumble in severity. But this is a minor complaint, as I’d much prefer nothing to be completely impossible for pulp characters.)
Style Points provide a much more direct way of influencing the chance of success, adding dice on a one-for-one basis. The handy little buggers can also reduce damage, temporarily boost Talents to higher levels, and earn favorable plot twists. Players earn Style Points for their characters by acting on Motivations, succumbing to Flaws, and generally being entertaining and cool.
Playtest: When I initially played the game prior to its publication, the author/GM was using only Chance Dice to emulate pulpy action. That never felt right to me, since (to use my example at the time) an aging professor still won’t have much of a chance of making a desperate leap across a chasm – something that his literary counterpart probably ought to be able to do, albeit very much by the skin of his teeth and with a great deal of drama. Style Points, by contrast, worked exactly as advertised when I played in several post-publication games at GenCon ’07. Style Point awards encouraged players to play up their characters’ foibles, and Style Point expenditures allowed them to decide when their characters might beat the odds – in my case, successfully leaning out the window of a speeding car and using a pickaxe to take a drive-by whack at some scaffolding, causing it to collapse onto the pursuing Nazimobiles.
Chapter 4: Combat
As with the basic mechanic, the combat mechanic doesn’t break a whole lot of new ground at first blush: an Initiative roll determines order, and attackers pit their (Attribute + Combat Skill) roll to the defenders’ Defense stat. If the former comes out ahead, the difference is the damage applied to the defender’s Health Points. At 0 Health, or if the defender takes more than twice his Stun rating in one blow, he’s unconscious; at -5 Health, he’s dead.So far, so good.
Now here’s the weird bit about the details: HEX managed to go against some of my most deeply ingrained personal gaming preferences regarding combat and still come out as one of the finer combat systems I’ve ever enjoyed.
First of all, by default (i.e., not counting Talents), Strength governs the chance to hit in melee combat. Partially as a result, armor reduces the chance of a hit rather than the amount of damage taken. In fact, HEX takes the HeroQuest route and front-loads all factors in combat – including weapon accuracy, weapon strength, target agility, and target toughness – as bonus dice in the rolls for attack and defense. Yes, these are abstractions, calculating the chance of a damaging strike rather than any strike. (The system accounts for the latter with “Touch Attacks,” in which the target’s Body score doesn’t apply.)
Still, this means that the “Ninjasaurus Effect” – strong creatures being more likely to make successful attacks – is in full effect precisely when it could prove most devastating: we’re talking about real -asauruses here, after all. The system mitigates this by making large creatures easier to hit and small creatures harder to hit, which on the face of it would seem to make a battle of large-vs.-small a wash. Well, not quite. Smaller creatures have fewer Body points and large creatures have more of them. In addition, progressively larger creatures can defend themselves against progressively more attacks without accruing the penalties smaller creatures would suffer.
This adds up to a system that averages out the result of a combat. In other words, a T-rex’s attacks will do less damage on average than you’d expect them to do, but over the course of a fight, the beast will dish out (and survive) some serious punishment. That would bother me conceptually in any setting, but in one such as this that regularly involves massive creatures trying to stomp on puny humans, it just doesn’t feel right for the puny humans to suffer the Death of a Thousand Stomps – either they should be crushed, or they should narrowly escape.
Playtest: Note that I said “conceptually”. As a player, none of this mattered. I was way too busy having a great time punching out Nazis and vicariously crapping myself as a dinosaur thundered into the clearing. That’s due in large part to the sheer fun of the setting, but the factor gained from all this abstraction was just as much a factor: speed. With all the information about an attack readily apparent in one pair of rolls – or even a single roll, if the GM uses Taking the Average for the NPCs – combat proved to be smokin’ fast and rollicking entertainment.
In fact, the system didn’t even bother me once I was on the other side of the GM screen. Taking the Average proved to be every bit as liberating for me as had similar systems requiring no GM rolling, such as Unisystem and Whispering Vault. I should note that some of my players grumbled about the seeming randomness of the system, but that seemed due mostly to a run of really rotten luck early on. Also, the one combat I’ve run as of this review involved the PCs versus Nazi goons, so I can’t say for certain how I’ll feel about the hit/damage combination once they’re fighting giant prehistoric monsters.
My one remaining qualm about the abstracted combat involves, regrettably, a staple of the genre: the “dino-trap.” Smart players are going to want to come up with clever ways of dispatching dinosaurs and other megafauna without going head-to-head with them – huge pits, man-made avalanches, improvised ballistae, etc. The abstract system waters down the one-shot power of such attacks, assuming them to be one of many blows that will create an averaged result.
Chapter 5: Equipment
The chapter sports a wide array of ranged and melee weaponry available during the era. The only criticism I can muster relates more to the system than it does to the list itself, and that is the coarseness of the damage and its tendency to eliminate any game mechanic distinctions between weapons. For example, aside from style, there is absolutely no reason to purchase a kukri over a machete – both do the exact same damage, and the former is both heavier and costlier. Likewise, why spend $10 more for a .38 Special when you can get a pocket revolver that packs just as much of a punch and is easier to conceal?On the other hand, explorers will have need of an enormous amount of equipment beyond weaponry, and the chapter does not disappoint in that regard, either. The list includes everything from lanterns for lighting the way to movie cameras for recording what’s illuminated, with game stats as needed. (Grappling hooks both aid in climbing and can serve as improvised weapons, for example.) For adventures in which the players know their PCs will be doing some serious exploring – and for GMs who enjoy being sticklers about such things – shopping to prepare for “every eventuality” may be half the fun. (Futile, of course, but fun…)
And what good are preparations for exploring if you can’t get anywhere? To that end, the chapter offers a relatively small but reasonable selection of land, sea, and air vehicles. (And yes, pulp fans, airships are in there.)
This is where you’ll find a few examples of Weird Science devices as well – just enough to whet your appetite, but fun nonetheless. Appearing here in order of increasing Artifact Resource cost are a ghost detector, multi-spectrum goggles, a jet pack, a steam-powered suit of armor, a robot, and, of course, a drilling machine. (Considering the potential importance of the latter to plot hooks and the fact that it’s a level 5 Artifact, I have to wonder whether the game expects PCs to share the Resource cost to purchase one.) Again, bear in mind that the rules for creating these and other wondrous devices appear in the Secrets of the Surface World supplement, so from a purely game mechanics standpoint, there’s no more reason for a mad scientist to own one than anyone else.
Chapter 6: Gamemastering
A game like HEX lives and dies by its genre conventions. It’s only fitting, then, that the GM advice chapter covers those conventions and their effects on game play, one at a time. From the general, such as the moral clarity of pulp heroes and the ways to evoke a sense of wonder, to the specific, such as how to design deathtraps and handle the inevitably separated party, this chapter really does contain everything the GM needs to know.
WARNING: Everything from here on out gets into spoiler territory. Potential players who want to be utterly surprised by what waits below the surface should skip ahead to “Style” below.
Chapter 7: The Hollow Earth
Since the existence of the Hollow Earth wouldn’t be nearly so cool if there were no way to get there, this chapter addresses that issue right up front. The setting provides plenty of methods, from the massive polar openings to the mysterious Bermuda Triangle to caves and volcanoes. Of course, nothing says “underground pulp adventure” like a big-ass drilling machine, and the chapter covers that route to the Hollow Earth, too – complete with the drawbacks, like probably not knowing for sure where you’re going and probably not being able to turn around anyway.Surprisingly, the description of the Hollow Earth itself doesn’t take up a huge amount of space, largely because the game leaves the vast majority of the specific contents of the place up to the imagination and requirements of the GM, from the land/ocean ratio to whether the miniature sun at the true center of the earth has miniature orbiting moons to allow for night in the otherwise eternal noon.
Instead, the chapter focuses on general characteristics to spark the imaginations of GMs, such as the aforementioned eternal noon of the Hollow Earth, the strange time dilatation effect on travelers from the surface, the reverse-curvature of the landscape, the electro-magnetic disruption of compasses, and, above all, the sheer extreme nature of the place. The forests and mountains are taller, the rivers are wider, the animals are larger and tougher, the weather is wilder, and the geography in general is more diverse and insane than anything the Surface World has to offer.
The chapter isn’t all generalities, however. While descriptions of the flora, fauna, and population – human and otherwise – wait until the following two chapters, here the book delves into the mysterious Atlanteans: a vanished(?) race that left the Hollow Earth littered with cyclopean ruins bearing intriguing resemblance to lesser structures from ancient cultures worldwide, and, more importantly, with powerful artifacts of their nigh-magical superscience. The chapter provides statistics on many of these devices, any of which could be a MacGuffin to spur a desperate race with agents of the Reich.
The chapter wraps up with a brief discussion of assorted oddities that might have ties to the Hollow Earth (such as the Loch Ness Monster), as well as strangeness unrelated to the Hollow Earth (such as flying saucers) that GMs might wish to incorporate into their campaigns. The former provides some tasty food for thought, but the latter tends to be mostly idle speculation using only the core rulebook – the discussion of magic-using cultists in the absence of magic for them to use, for example. Still, it’s nice to know that the setting can accommodate such things, even if the rules aren’t in the core rulebook to support them. It gives enterprising, do-it-yourself GMs some idea of how far they can go without leaving the setting reservation, so to speak.
Chapter 8: Friends and Enemies
Dinosaurs are great, but without some self-aware opponents, HEX would be just one long monster hunt interspersed with Survival rolls here and there. Fortunately, the book more than comes through with potential foes and allies from both above and below the surface of the earth.For the former, we have conspiracies, cultists, spies, and other movers and shakers who have some vested interest in the Hollow Earth. Each group gets a solid history, a full write-up and stat block for a high-ranking member, and stats for a typical member (a.k.a. mooks).
For the subsurface folk, the chapter takes advantage of the unique time compression properties of the Hollow Earth to present humans from various eras – including honest-to-Johnny Depp pirates – as well as some bestial but intelligent species to challenge Our Heroes.
People of the Surface World
- Secret Societies
- Terra Arcanum (A conspiracy of movers and shakers dedicated to protecting the secrets of the Hollow Earth… from everyone but themselves, of course.)
- Thule Society (Nazi occultists. Need I really say more?)
- Explorers
- National Geographic Society
- Royal Geographic Society
- Government Agencies
- U.S. Army Intelligence
- Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) and Section Z (A pulpy British James Bond-style spy agency dedicated to countering Nazi occult efforts.)
Denizens of the Hollow Earth
- Native Peoples
- Cargo Cultists
- Noble Savages
- Cannibals
- Amazons
- Pirates
- Beastmen
- Apemen
- Lizardmen
- Molemen
Chapter 9: Bestiary
I feel the same giddiness reading this prehistoric menagerie that I used to feel when I broke out my plastic dinosaurs as a child. I particularly appreciate the details regarding how creatures mismatched in time – dinosaurs and mammalian megafauna – interact as part of the Hollow Earth environment.
- Dinosaurs
- Brontosaurus
- Plesiosaur
- Pterosaur
- Stegosaurus
- Triceratops
- Tyrannosaurus Rex
- Velociraptor
- Carnivores
- Cave Bear
- Dinichthys
- Dire Wolf
- Giant Ape
- Giant Spider
- Hyaenodon
- Kraken
- Megalodon
- Roc
- Saber-Toothed Cat
- Herbivores
- Aurochs
- Equus
- Giant Unicorn
- Glyptodon
- Irish Elk
- Leviathan
- Woolly Mammoth
- Woolly Rhinoceros
- Plants
- Blackbreath (for increased lung capacity underwater)
- Death Spore
- Glowroot (the name says it all)
- Heartflower (possesses incredible healing properties)
- Ironcane (good for making really strong spears)
- Mantrap (good for eating people)
- Stranglevine (also good for eating people)
Sample Adventure: The Hollow Earth Expedition
I love introductory adventures for two reasons: they give me a way to use the book right off the bat without further time investment, and they give me an idea of how the author expects a typical adventure to play out.This rather unimaginatively-named adventure fulfills both functions, and with panache to spare. In fact, unlike many intro adventures, this one really is good enough to kick off a campaign.
Playtest: As it happens, this adventure was my first exposure to HEX -- a demo game at GenCon 2005 run by the author about a year before the game’s actual publication. The huge display on the demo table comprised of what is now the cover art promised a true sense of wonder, and the adventure delivered. From the airship journey and its dizzying transition through the North Polar opening, to the first appearance of the dinosaurs, to the discovery of a “recent” plane crash that should have been decades old, to the arboreal village of cargo cultists, to the final clash with a Thule mastermind and his Nazi stormtroopers in Atlantean ruins guarded by killer apemen, by God, it delivered. As far as I can tell, the only potential drawbacks to this adventure are that it assumes that (1) the characters won’t know about the Hollow Earth at the outset and (2) they will be stranded there by the end of the adventure. These are only drawbacks if (1) you’re worried about the characters being prepared and (2) having the characters stranded in the Hollow Earth somehow hampers your long-term plans. And those are a couple of pretty big “ifs,” since having heroes trapped unprepared in a prehistoric wilderness has a proud tradition in both pulp fiction and in the Victorian scientific romances that preceded it.
Appendix: Pulp Resources and Inspiration
A fairly comprehensive list of pulp authors and pulp-influenced works in various media, these suggestions, like the prior discussion of the pulps in general, may give players and GMs alike the wrong idea about the competence level of default HEX characters. Then again, they could serve well enough to show what a pulpy Earth circa the mid-1930s ought to be like.Style
The artwork of this 8-1/2” x 11” hardback ranks among the best I’ve reviewed, both in terms of quality and consistency. The T-rex attack on the cover thwarted by Atlantean mind-controlled pteranodons, the dimetrodons feasting on a fresh kill amidst ancient ruins, the pirates menaced by a sea serpent, the shaman mysteriously blasting a Nazi zeppelin from the sky… all of it sounds a siren call to wonder and adventure.The writing likewise left me chomping at the bit to game, and did so with no obvious typos. The typesetting makes navigating the book a breeze, as do the glossary and generous index.
Conclusion
When I first saw that display I mentioned at HEX’s demo table at GenCon ’05, I thought to myself, “This is an author with a vision.” The demo itself and the final product both bore out that initial impression. This isn’t the best general pulp game out there. To be honest, I’m not sure what game, if any, deserves that title. However, it easily rates alongside Call of Cthulhu as the best of the focused pulp games – games that don’t try to cram All Things Pulp, from Cthulhu to cowboys, into a single setting. Since pulp stories themselves didn’t try to pull off such a feat, HEX may well deserve the title of “Best Pulp Game” after all.
SUBSTANCE:
- Setting
- Quality = 5.0
- Quantity = 4.5
- Rules
- Quality = 4.5
- Quantity = 4.5
STYLE:
- Artwork = 5.0
- Layout/Readability = 5.0
- Organization = 5.0
- Writing = 5.0
- Proofreading Penalty = n/a
- Organization = 5.0
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