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In Short

The Good: The writing is engaging and the new toys are fun, making me want to run or play a game at every turn. The supernatural powers have a pulp feel, provide some casting flexibility, and don’t unbalance the game. There’s something for everyone here.

The Bad: As a broad supplement, there’s little detail on any one new toy introduced here. Magic is introduced but very little support is provided. Some of the material feels a little too much like filler at times, including some of the new Skills and a few of the organizations presented (organized crime).

The Physical Thing

Under the Cover

Chapter 1 Rules - 38 pages.

Rather than list every small change included in the product I’m focusing on the highlights, the content that really defines it. Just be aware that there’s always more here than what I’m discussing.

New Skills kick off Chapter 1, most notably Martial Arts. The downside to Martial Arts is that it’s little more than the Brawl Skill with a different name. For flavor the player is encouraged to pick areas where the martial art of choice is particularly good or weak, such as by giving a bonus to Throws but a penalty to Blocks. While flavoring Martial Arts provides at least some utility the same cannot be said for Warfare. This Skill functions for large scale military encounters, but unlike Martial Arts there is no support for the Skill provided in the form of Talents or suggested uses. This is one of many examples of a neat idea tossed into the book that has little support or explanation, one of the drawbacks of a product more focused on breadth than depth.

Talents tend to be character defining since most characters have so few, and the new Talents continue that trend. Special abilities such as psychic powers, magic, and weird science are purchased through the Talent system thereby asking players to pay a high price for access to such abilities. A variety of generally more mundane Talents, such as Wheelman, are included as well. Of final note, a system for Atlantean power word magic is included for players interested in playing Atlanteans or people of Atlantean heritage. At the high end it allows for a moderate degree of mind control while speaking words of power, definitely something of interest to any pulp adventurer.

The chapter wraps up with an overhaul of the Resource system that enables characters to purchase Level 0 Resources in order to have a little more breadth at the start of a campaign. New example flaws and a host of pregenerated characters showcasing the new toys introduced in this product bring the character options to a close.

Chapter 2 Supernatural Powers - 8 pages.

Psychic abilities and Magic take up a whopping 8 pages here. Psychic powers include all of the classics such as Telekinesis, Mind Control, Telepathy, and others. They involve simple Willpower based opposed rolls to function, and characters can buy them repeatedly for bonuses. As a slight aside, they are unintentionally hilarious. Written up as Talents each one has a sentence for Normal. This works well with more standard traits, but here we have examples like this one for Mind Control “Normal: Your character cannot read minds.” Not a flaw, but a funny result from consistent formatting.

The psychic powers work well. They’re mechanically intuitive, useful, but not unbalancing. A dedicated psychic character could work towards being a user of all, master of none or just take one power and become exceptionally competent with it.

While psychic abilities are bought one at a time, magic is taken as a whole. A Talent is purchased to indicate magical aptitude (for light or dark magic) and then a specialty Skill is purchased to reflect the character’s knowledge of magical rituals. Ranks in the Skill provide bonus rituals known to the character from a short list, though the character can always attempt other rituals at a penalty. This provides some bread and butter utility magic while also leaving the door open for the GM to seed The Necessary Plot Spell when appropriate.

The downside to magic is that there are only five Necromancy and five Theurgy spells included (mutually exclusive), providing very little in the way of options or flexibility. This is an extremely limited number of spells, especially since some are just replicated psychic powers. Anyone looking to this product for even a modestly detailed magic system to add to their game will be disappointed. Magic is mechanically sound, there are some interesting options for powering magic with life force and such, but the product simply fails to deliver what the would-be sorcerer most needs: spells.

To sum up, the mechanics of both psychic abilities and sorcery are intuitive and well done. They’re not unbalancing in a HEX game, and the primary concern should be one of mood. Unfortunately, the sorcery options are so limited that many players interested in a magically inclined character may not bother.

Chapter 3 Secret Societies - 20 pages.

Allies and enemies galore, this chapter introduces a host of different organizations and provides a sample member from each for characters to immediately interact with. These groups are time and theme appropriate, fun, and can easily push the game off to a new adventure. Let me tell you about my two favorites to illustrate what I mean.

The Thule Society are Nazi mystics. As presented here they have significant infighting between loyal Nazis and the occult mystics who really control the organization. Based on the write up players could easily encounter them as villains (Nazis being natural villains for HEX) but they could also get embroiled in the internal political fighting. Missions involving rescuing a defector, joining forces with the Nazis to fight against an out of control sorcerer, or infiltrating the dangerous group could all result in several sessions of fun.

The Order of Prometheus is generally a good guy group that focuses on building a better tomorrow through science. However, some of the members also believe that only scientifically educated leaders can be good leaders. Since the Prometheans are all well educated then they are the best leaders for the world. The organization’s celebration of technology can easily be given a sinister bent with little trouble, and mad scientists, ambitious rulers, and those who know too much can all lead to exciting adventures.

The host of included groups serves to help the GM create adventures while also exposing players to groups of interest for their characters to belong to.

Chapter 4 The Surface World - 18 pages.

With all of the attention on the Hollow Earth it’s easy to forget that there’s limitless opportunity for adventure on the surface. This chapter runs down dozens of interesting locations for adventures to be set in, and it does a good job of fulfilling its objective of being an idea generator for a GM. London, the Amazon, Antarctica, and other locations receive a few paragraphs to a few pages of discussion with a strong focus on adventuring possibilities. This is a good resource for whenever you’re drawing a blank for the group’s next adventure.

Chapter 5 Equipment Catalog - 42 pages.

Fourty two pages of equipment covers just about anything you could think of. Lots and lots of weapons are featured, but survival gear, vehicles, and other useful adventuring equipment receives some attention as well. The most fun part of the chapter is the catalog presentation that draws the reader back to the time period in question. The goal here isn’t just to provide new gear, but to provide some flavor to the gear the characters have. The world famous game hunter might talk at length about this gun or that gun, while the survivalist only puts their trust in a certain brand of survival gear. For a mix of useful equipment and roleplaying opportunity the chapter does a fine job.

Chapter 6 Weird Science - 10 pages.

The weird science system is split into Design and Creation steps, and is an intuitive system. For design the player takes an existing item, writes up the modifiers, and makes a Science roll every week until a total difficulty is met based on the changes. Creation requires a Craft roll and the expenditures of experience points to build the item. This is a little disappointing to me considering the fragile nature of the devices. They may have the potential for broad application, but then so does magic and it doesn’t cost XP to make use of. A Talent, two high Skill checks, downtime, money, and XP just seems a little on the high side.

A list of suggestions for modifications and examples of devices is provided to help the reader get a sense for how different devices might be built. The examples are quite numerous, and a devoted tinkerer character could have a lot of fun building and tweaking a variety of different devices. Assuming you’re sold on the costs then the system does easily allow for the character’s vision to be made a reality with a simple influx of cash and time.

Chapter 7 Vehicle Combat - 6 pages.

A hodge podge of intuitive rules for different situations covering combat with all types of vehicles, this very short chapter just takes standard HEX combat and tweaks it a bit for vehicles. Vehicles have Structure instead of Health, crashing vehicles injure all the occupants, called shots suffer a penalty… you get the idea. The best thing I can say about the system, which is the best thing about Ubiquity in general, is that it retains almost all the same mechanics as the other sub-systems and is easy to remember for play.

Sample Adventure Prisoner of the Reich - 8 pages.

A short but fun adventure focusing on the Nazi Thule Society, my only complaint is that the resolution is a bit of a deus ex machina. Otherwise it can easily serve as a single night’s fun, and it does a good job of showing off a little bit of the new material (especially weird science) introduced in Secrets of the Surface World.

My Take

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